Thomas Sniegoski - Where Angels Fear to Tread

Remy instantly pushed open the door, strode across the office, and snatched the scissors from Parsons’ hand. “I don’t think you want to do that,” he said, tossing the scissors to the floor.

Parsons stared at him for a moment, his face damp with tears. “I’ve tried so hard for her,” he finally sobbed, covering his face with his hands, shaking his head as he cried.

And that was when Remy noticed the mark on the doctor’s neck, a dark patch on the cocoa-colored flesh—shaped like a pair of pursed lips.

He called upon his angelic nature again, allowing his human senses to become something more. He sniffed at the air around the wailing doctor, taking the scent of the man into his lungs. He could smell his soul, but there was something not quite right about it.

It was damaged, traumatized.

“Get ahold of yourself,” Remy said, moving around the desk and placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.

Parsons lifted his head and looked at Remy. “I. . don’t know what to do,” he said, turning his attention back to the desk. He began to shuffle through a pile of Zoe’s drawings, looking at one colorful piece after another.

“They’re supposed to help me,” he said. “They’re supposed to tell me how to find them.”

“The girl and her father?” Remy asked.

“Yes,” the doctor replied. “The answers are here, I’m sure of it, but I can’t figure it out.”

He was crying again, his teardrops staining the corners of the child’s drawings.

“Is that why you sent those men to Frank’s place?” Remy asked. “Did you tell them Frank would know where they were?”

Parsons looked up again, his eyes red and wet.

“I didn’t want to disappoint her,” he said, his voice quivering, and as he spoke he reached up to touch the mark staining the flesh of his neck. “I promised her. . ”

“Who?” Remy asked. “Who did you promise?”

The man crumbled, sobbing and shaking.

“I can’t,” Parsons said, suddenly standing. “I can’t do this anymore.”

He lurched across the room, grabbing his suit jacket from the coatrack behind his door, and headed out into the hall.

Remy felt as if he were standing in a minefield, at first not quite sure how to proceed. Then he figured he had probably gotten as much as he could from the doctor; the man was an emotional wreck. He turned his attention to the desk and picked up Zoe’s drawings. Maybe I can find something that Parsons wasn’t able to , he thought, folding them up and placing them beneath his arm.

Remy left the office. Dr. Parsons was nowhere in sight, so he headed for the lobby and left the building, his mind once again ablaze with questions.

He was halfway to the street and his car when the sounds of commotion distracted him. He turned back to the hospital and saw people running toward the side of the building. Someone called out an order to dial 911; another voice screamed, “He fell off the roof!”

Before he even realized what he was doing, Remy was moving with the crowd as sirens filled the air with their banshee wails.

Still clutching the child’s strangely portentous drawings, he made it to the edge of the gathering. A number of people were kneeling around something on the ground. And as one of them slowly rose to his feet, his form no longer obscuring Remy’s view of a broken, bleeding body, he knew the victim wasn’t some poor soul who had accidentally plummeted to his death, but someone who had been in the depths of remorse, so painful that the only way to relieve it was to end his worthless existence.

But by the look on Dr. Parsons’ face, frozen in death, not even that had been enough to free him from his agony.

Remy sat on his rooftop patio with his closest human friend, a glass of Irish whiskey in his hand as he gazed out over the buildings of Beacon Hill to the Esplanade, almost visible through the hazy fog.

His mind wandered as he allowed the first few sips of Jameson to affect him. And as his thoughts strolled the night, and his mental guards fell, he could hear the prayers of the devoted and desperate all across the city.

The cacophony of voices filled his head to bursting, and he immediately pulled himself back, blocking out the petitions to a higher authority.

“What is it?” Mulvehill asked, reaching for the chilled bottle of whiskey in the center of the circular table. He slid the bottle over and then reached for the ice bucket, filling his glass with more cubes. It was so humid that the ice seemed to melt as quickly as he dropped it into his glass.

Remy took a sip from his drink and set it down on the tabletop. “I let my mind wander too far,” he said. “Sometimes that’s not such a good thing.”

“Huh,” Mulvehill said, filling his glass for a third time. “Thinking about stuff you don’t want to think about?”

“Sometimes,” Remy said, his eyes drawn to the city view again. “But if I’m not careful, I also hear things I don’t want to hear.”

“You’re hearing voices now?” Mulvehill asked. He leaned back in his chair, resting his sweating tumbler on his rounded paunch of a belly. He picked up his already-lit cigarette and had a puff.

“Prayers,” Remy said, swirling the liquid in his glass, making the ice tinkle like chimes. “I can hear the requests of all kinds of folks looking for a little divine intervention.”

“Jesus,” Mulvehill said, leaning his head against the back of the plastic chair and blowing smoke into the air. “That must get a little much.”

Remy nodded. “It does, which is why most of the time I try to tune it out, but every once in a while I let my guard down and the solicitations come rolling in.”

“What are they asking for. .? Like, to make sick family members well, or for the bank not to foreclose on their houses and stuff?”

Remy nodded. “Sometimes, and sometimes they want God to help them get a new bike, or a puppy.”

“I prayed for a bike once,” Mulvehill said, then took a large gulp of his whiskey.

Remy glanced over at his friend. “Did you get it?”

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I guess the Almighty figured I needed some new school uniforms more than a bike.”

“The Almighty is very much into school uniforms,” Remy said, confirming his friend’s beliefs.

They both laughed then, mellowing out from the effects of their drinks.

“So nobody’s really listening then,” Mulvehill said, fishing another cigarette from the pack lying on the table.

Remy thought for a moment, not sure how to respond.

“No, not really,” he finally said, turning his attention to his friend. “It’s just sort of a hit-or-miss thing as to when someone’s listening. . and whether they decide to do anything about what they hear.”

“Sounds complicated.” Mulvehill finished what remained in his glass and reached across the table for more.

“Yeah,” Remy agreed, his thoughts drifting in the direction of ancient times, when he’d first left Paradise to make the world of man his home. “It always was.”

Mulvehill helped himself to some more ice, and yet another splash of whiskey. “More?” He held the bottle out to Remy.

“You know I prayed you’d ask me that,” Remy said, sliding his glass within reach.

Mulvehill obliged him with ice and booze.

“And I decided to answer.”

The homicide cop slid the glass back to the angel.

“So, Frank Downes,” Mulvehill began, settling back in his chair.

“Very dead,” Remy added.

“He certainly was,” Mulvehill agreed. “And what exactly did you have to do with his untimely demise?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Remy explained. “I asked him some questions about a missing person’s case I’m working on, and when he wasn’t forthcoming with the info, I followed him to see if he’d lead me to a clue.”