Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Larger pieces of stone and glass were now being sucked up from the rooftop, and he could see that his friends were having difficulty staying on their feet.

There was no more time for hesitation.

“It’s time for you all to go,” Remy yelled over the storm.

They all began to balk, and he spread his wings and began to flap them furiously, adding to the winds and driving them back.

Francis was the only one who did not move, standing his ground, gun still in hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked Remy.

“I’m ending this before it’s too late.”

“Is there anything that I can do?”

“Get them out of here,” Remy said. “Keep them safe until it’s over.”

Francis knew what he had to do; they’d always had an understanding about these things. Remy turned away from his friend, knowing full well that he would do what Remy had asked of him.

Remy couldn’t think of them anymore, only of what needed to be done. Springing off the rooftop, his wings beat the air, propelling him skyward, fighting the insane winds as he allowed himself to be sucked up into the cyclonic force.

He did not fight it as he was spun around and around, inexorably pulled toward the center of the widening gyre. This was what his life had felt like of late-slowly being pulled toward the eye of storm, no matter how much he fought, inevitably being dragged toward the center.

But he wasn’t going to fight it anymore.

For at the center was solution.

Remy felt the cold of the mouth as it yawned wider to accept him, and for the first time in a long while, he was completely at peace. His natures-his human and angelic-were as one, knowing what needed to be done.

What the Almighty would want them to do.

And as the darkness took him, he heard the words so often attributed to his Heavenly Father.

Let there be light.

And there was light.

An old woman pushing a shopping cart filled with bottles and cans was coming toward him, terror in her eyes. Something was after her, something that jumped from one patch of shadow to the next as it stalked its prey.

Mulvehill saw this and acted, guessing where the beast would next appear and aiming his pistol accordingly. He smiled at the fact that he had been right as the lionlike monster sprang out of a shadow cast by the overhanging sign of an Indian restaurant that he frequented.

His pistol barked twice, the shots hitting the unearthly animal in its muscular side, sending it thrashing to the ground in death. Mulvehill ran to the old woman, who had fallen. Her brimming cart had tipped over, spilling its contents onto the sidewalk.

The shadow beast had crawled onto its feet, considering them with hungry eyes as it bled darkness onto the sidewalk.

“C’mon, then,” Mulvehill said in defiance of the monster. “I’m not afraid of you.”

As if accepting his challenge, the monstrous thing sprang across the expanse of sidewalk, as Mulvehill raised his weapon once more to fire.

And that was when the sky became filled with a sudden brilliance and the threat of the beast was gone like the passing of a nightmare with the coming of dawn.

The light was like nothing he had ever experienced before, permeating every crack, crevice, and corner of the city where the darkness could hide.

He could feel it even inside himself, burning away any despair and fear that still remained and filling him up with fire.

Filling him up with hope.

Eyes watering from the intensity of the flare, Mulvehill’s vision cleared and he found himself making his way into the center of the street across from Hermes Plaza, where he gazed up to the desolated top floor of the building.

But the sky above it was as blue as the sea and twice as calm, and the shadows around him were just shadows.

He didn’t know where the words came from. They just came, bubbling up from one of those places locked inside the brain where things like that were stored away.

And God saw the light, and it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness.

Remy knew where he was even before he opened his eyes.

He could hear the sound of the crashing surf, the smell of the ocean invigorating him as it came into his lungs.

It was a Cape Cod beach that didn’t really exist, an amalgam of many of the Cape beaches and other seaside places that he and Madeline had enjoyed in her lifetime.

He had created this place in his mind as a kind of tribute to her after she had died, and would come here often when things were tough and he wanted- needed — to see her again.

It was foggy here today, heavy, moist air cutting visibility down to mere feet. Despite the gloominess of it all, Madeline and he had always loved these days, walking for hours hand in hand, never knowing what was in front of them in the shifting haze.

Never knowing what was ahead.

Now he walked the shore alone, searching for the one that would make this piece of life he had carved away for himself complete.

A cool gust blew off the water, stirring the miasma of gray that filled the air, and he could just about make out a shape there in the distance, and moved toward it.

He found it a little strange that she hadn’t been there waiting for him when he’d first arrived, but really didn’t think all that much about it. When they finally found each other, he would ask where she had been, and she would likely say something fresh, like it was good that he had to wait until he found her, that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or one of those things she liked to say.

And he would tell her that he had no patience when it came to things involving her, and he would take her into his arms, remembering all the times he had done just that.

Holding on and never wanting to let go.

The shape was becoming more defined and Remy was just about to call out to her when he came to a most startling realization.

It wasn’t Madeline.

A spark of anger flared within him as he approached the male figure standing with his back to him in the rolling surf. The man was dressed in a dark suit, his slacks rolled up to his knees as the water surged up to greet him like an excited dog before receding in play. This was his special place, his and Madeline’s; there shouldn’t have been anybody else here.

He didn’t want anybody else here.

“What are you doing here?” Remy asked the man’s back.

“Which name do you prefer?” the man spoke over the roar of the tumbling waves.

Remy was confused by the question.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Which do you prefer, Remiel or Remy?” the man asked, slowly turning his back on the ocean to face him. “I think I’d like to call you Remy,” he said, and smiled.

There was no mistaking who this man was, and Remy felt the air sucked from his lungs as he dropped to one knee in the sand, head bowed, eyes averted.

“Oh, stop that,” the man said. “Stand up and look at me. I didn’t come here to make you grovel.”

But why did you come? Remy thought, his mind in turmoil. Why did He come?

Remy rose ever so slowly, eyes gradually drifting to the older gentleman’s kindly visage, wondering if there was any reason why He had chosen to appear like this…as if He needed a reason.

“You’d once seen this man walking the boardwalk of Coney Island with his wife, his grown children and their wives, and their children,” He said, answering Remy’s question before it was asked. “Then you believed him to be the embodiment of a happy existence-everything that you wished for yourself, the things that you would strive for.”

Remy recalled the moment suddenly; it had happened not too long after he’d decided to live among humanity-to live as one of them.