A woman hires an exorcist to clear an infestation of 32 angels who think they’re helping her. (They are not.)
The fifth time Mrs. Mead won the lottery, she finally had to admit to a rather annoyed IRS agent that her home had been infested by angels for around eight months now. The agent said it was time to do something about it. That or get arrested.
Mrs. Mead, fearing above all else the deep silence and loneliness that imprisonment would bring, agreed.
After donating eighty percent of her winnings, she finally called the exorcist she’d highlighted in the local paper five months ago. It took a few days to schedule an appointment, by which time the angels had healed several paper cuts, repainted the basement, and sent visions of her mother’s spirit trapped in their hot embrace, eyes full of knowing, to help her fall asleep to.
When the exorcist arrived, Mrs. Mead took in the face of the man who had been staring at her for months now, his ad and information in the local paper burning a hole in her worn dining room table. He was just as fashionable as his photo, today dressed in a tailored maroon suit with burgundy suspenders. As he removed his hat, the same color as his jacket, she noticed his head was completely shaved, far different from the dark-haired pompadour in the photo. When she looked down at the ad in her hand to double check, he gave an easy smile and looked, if anything, a bit sheepish.
“Sorry for any confusion. The haircut and stubble are a newer look, but I paid for that ad and headshot last year. My line of work pays just fine, but good headshots are wicked expensive.” He smiled, bright and easy, extending his hand. “Jude. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Mead.”
Mrs. Mead put the paper down and shook Jude’s hand. “Well, I think your new look suits you well. Margaret Mead. It’s quite nice to meet you, Jude. Please, come in.”
The minute he crossed the threshold, Jude’s posture changed.
Gone was the easy way he moved, gone the languid look in his eyes. He paused like a hunter in the woods, hearing some faraway sound that could be anything with teeth, anything hungry. His gaze sharpened, and he held very still, eyes sweeping the room, landing on Mrs. Mead.
“Why, Mrs. Mead,” he said, voice casual and calm, eyes steady and appraising, “you were very much not exaggerating the circumstances of your infestation.”
Guilt surged inside of her like rising vomit. “How many?”
Left shoulder up, then down. Eyebrow cocked. “Hard to say. The air is . . . thick with them. At a guess, maybe thirty? Thirty-two?”
Putting a number to it staggered her; she hadn’t felt so hollow since her mother’s diagnosis. “That’s . . . that’s too many, isn’t it?”
She hated asking silly questions, but it was a bad habit from her childhood; if she asked the silly question, someone else got to be the one to assert reality, to ground her in the truth, to hurt her. It didn’t have to be self-inflicted, giving up the whimsy that maybe something strange or difficult could in fact be normal. She didn’t have to be the one to say it. To make it real.
Jude gave a soft, sad smile that didn’t try to reach his eyes. He nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Mead. Not everyone in this world is lucky enough to get even a single angel, let alone a whole radiance to themselves.”
Before he could continue, she said, “Radiance?”
He was quick, Jude. If he saw her deflecting, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he set down his briefcase. “Our taxonomy for a gathering of angels. Like a bonfire of devils or a humble of reapers. A radiance of angels.”
Mrs. Mead let out a weak laugh. “I like that, a bonfire.”
Jude knelt, opened his briefcase, and began to search through it. “Oh, yes. Demons and angels and other beings of the outer dark enjoy approaching people, but devils? Fiends love when a person comes to them. That’s when the soul is at its brightest. For them, anyway. They prefer to wait at their fire, salivating at the sound of footsteps.”
He found what he was looking for, a candle with golden wax, thick as his forearm and just as long. “Did you know a soul is bright when it’s suffering, Mrs. Mead?”
A pit opened in her stomach. Her heart fell toward it like a brick. “No,” she finally managed, trying not to let her polite veneer crack.
Jude smiled at her, not unkindly, and began to look for a place to set down the candle. It was tough between the piles of newspapers and magazines and old dishes, the detritus of a life imploded. “See, another rumor. That a soul would be, I don’t know, brighter when it’s happier, as though happiness were the surprise it should glow for. But,” he said, finally clearing away a space, “happiness is the norm for a soul. When all is well, a soul hums and glows like that final ember in a fire, just content and toasty. It’s only when a foul wind comes by, kicks at that ember and tries to get it to go out, that it flares, becoming bright, desperate to hang on to that happiness.”
Mrs. Mead didn’t look at the dozens of shadows she saw out of the corner of her eye, many of them featureless, formless, but so hungry, she knew. They knew they were being talked about. As mindless as they could be, they knew their name when called.
“And angels, well.” Jude chuckled as he reached into his coat pocket for a match. “Angels are everything they say and more. Miracles? Done and done. Light? They have that in abundance. Prayers? Oh, they’ll answer you, time and time again. But they are also moths, and they’re drawn to the flame of suffering. The brighter the hurt, the more angels flutter and clutter around it, aching to eat that hurt and make it better by any means necessary.”
He struck the match against the heel of his black combat boot and put it to the wick before she could stop him.
The wick caught. But if a flame danced there, Mrs. Mead couldn’t tell. She saw nothing but felt some alien light push on her, smelled something like sea air and ozone. There was no fire, and yet, some element shimmered there, hazy and iridescent, at the top of the candle.
As it burned, Mrs. Mead gasped. From the not-flame, a fuliginous smoke poured forth, thick, a darkness deeper than midnight that spilled down the candle, down the table, and filled the room.
For a moment, the smoke danced around Mrs. Mead and Jude.
And then, as it flowed like a shadow through the house, Mrs. Mead watched the smoke snag and catch, torn this way and that, displaced.
Displaced by the sheer weight and presence of unseen others in the room.
Around them, their hidden forms pulled into human sight by the black smoke and the not-light of the golden candle, Mrs. Mead saw in grotesque detail the thirty-two angels that had made a home of her long and earned suffering. They were many-limbed and vaporous and multi-jawed, some entwined around her or sprawled on the ceiling; some skittered across walls, and others were flapping on seven silent, membranous wings, and some were, frankly, just eyes, the color and width of the white noon sun, buzzing in the language of heavenly wasps.
Jude didn’t look at any of the angels around him. Instead, he kept his gaze level and steady, staring at Mrs. Mead until she looked back at him. When they locked eyes, he said in his kindest voice, “Mrs. Mead, have you had any suffering in this house lately?”
Not long after, Jude was ushered out of the house, the door slammed behind him, and Mrs. Mead fell to her knees and wept at the foot of the stairs, having been unable to answer him.
As she did, dozens of wispy mouths alighted on her face and drank her tears before they could even think of falling past her lips. And in their feather-light, mycelial touch, in their soft, inarticulate whispers, she felt comfort.
Jude returned two days later.
He rang the doorbell and in the dark of her home, Mrs. Mead waited, praying he’d go away. And as always, her prayers were answered.
Dozens of silken, angelic tongues drank her words into them and went to make them real. Their voices overlapped, echoing around her as they moved to the door: we’ll get rid of him we don’t need him no no no he doesn’t know us he doesn’t know you doesn’t know what you need we do we know what you need mrs. mead don’t we please let us help help help—
But then, Jude did something. The angels that had raced toward the threshold slowed down and seemed to lose interest, drifting back into their cobwebbed corners, terrifyingly quiet.
“Mrs. Mead?” Jude said, voice muffled by the door. “Can you please let me in? I just want to talk. I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”
The quiet turned vicious as the suddenly silent angels seethed; it felt like a hot, rattling breath on the back of her neck. If they had not reacted so, she would have been tempted to let them charm her again with their serpentine assurances.
But they didn’t want her to speak with the exorcist. And that was what made her get off the couch and make her way to the door, fighting through furious shapes every step of the way.
Turning that doorknob was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do (well, one of them).
But the moment the door opened, the angels scattered, drifting away, mindless once more.
Before her, in a tailored suit of houndstooth, stood Jude. On his lapel shone a bundle of herbs wrapped in what looked like a dandelion’s stem. The air smelled heavily of rosemary and juniper. He smiled apologetically as he entered, gesturing at the herbs. “The ward won’t hurt you; I promise. It just makes angels go a little hazy, forgetful. I figured I’d need it if we were to speak.”
He waited there, briefcase held before him, and waited for her to respond. Then, “You do wish to speak, yes? I doubt you’d open this door only to tell me off again.”
Why did she feel so ashamed? Why couldn’t she look at him? She studied his boots instead, dark and thick-soled. Scuffed but sturdy. She wondered how many miles they’d seen, how many more they had to go.
“They . . . they didn’t want me to open the door,” she said, still looking down. “Normally, they want so much. And that they didn’t want this to happen . . . it made me think . . . that it was better to open the door.” Her voice, so soft. Her demeanor, small, tremulous. She felt like a child before this young man who was no more than half her age. When had she grown so small?
Jude’s voice was level, and heavy with empathy. “When a radiance gathers, they tend to cede collective sentience for a lot of, let’s call them base instincts. If it was just one or two angels, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d managed to have full conversations, help direct them a bit. But the way they’ve congealed here? Yeah, it’s a lot of protective instinct. A lot of fear, especially of someone like me who could pry them apart.”
He leaned down and Mrs. Mead found herself looking into his kind amber eyes. “Opening this door was very brave, Mrs. Mead. I mean that. Thank you for agreeing to see me again.”
It had been so long since someone had spoken to her like a person. What was left of Mother howled. And the angels—the radiance—they mewled and pleaded and luxuriated, pawing at her soul.
“You’re welcome,” she said. It felt good to be seen as a person, by another person, in this house of ghosts and angels.
Standing in the doorway, Jude gestured into the house. “Now, I want to make something clear, Mrs. Mead. I came back because you are a person who needs help; even if articulating it is tough, opening this door means some part of you knows what’s happening is wrong. But you also need to know that I can only pry apart the radiance; you need to be the one to banish it. I’ll help, but”—here his gaze turned flinty and tough—“I can’t do it alone. You need to put in the work. If that’s something you want, say the word, and we’ll begin.”
Mrs. Mead lost herself in that hard gaze; something about it thrummed through her, igniting memory after memory of another’s eyes, hard and unyielding. But those eyes couldn’t hurt her again, they wouldn’t let her, they took care of her, this was a mistake, a mistake, it was okay to make those, all she had to do was—
A sharp strike of green in her nose.
Her mind fogged, fuzzed. Mrs. Mead tasted honey on the back of her tongue, sweetness in the hollow of her throat.
She coughed, shook her head. Saw a dozen phantoms suddenly drifting away from her. Panting, heart racing, she looked at Jude, whose hand was on the herbs on his lapel. “I don’t know if you understand just how deeply they’ve buried themselves in you, Mrs. Mead. It’s possible they’ve influenced your mind more than you know. Have you found yourself not in control of your speech or movement these last few months?”
Mrs. Mead recalled the howling, the torture, the ending that had sent her into this terrible spiral. She remembered, word for word, how every command had been hers.
That was the true poison, she knew: in every instance, they had made sure it was her will, her choice, not theirs.
“No,” she said, voice small and shaking. “No, only like now. When they’re trying to—to—”
“Preserve their existence?” Jude chuckled. “Such is the way of every parasite. May I?” he asked, holding out a hand to her.
Before they could speak through her again, make her wrench the door shut, she grabbed his hand. She felt stronger, and the sharp smell of grass and honey came to her again. “I ask again,” he said, “with your mind your own: Do you want my help? Do you want to banish the radiance?”
Strength was fleeting, she knew. If she waited, she’d say no. She’d remember the thousand reasons why the radiance was here, why they were latched on to her soul, what she made them do when they weren’t winning her lotteries. She could live in misery and satisfaction. It was easy.
But another voice within her, here for the moment Jude’s magic cleared her mind, spoke up. And it said if she didn’t get help, she would die here, drowning in that very satisfaction. She’d die just like the old witch and worse, be trapped with her forever.
It was enough. Mrs. Mead nodded, eyes wet, voice resolute. “Yes. Please come in. Please help me.”
Jude nodded back and crossed the threshold. “First things first,” he said, pointing at his jacket. “You’re going to need one of these.”
After a week of study, research, taxonomy, and labelling of her radiance, Mrs. Mead knew two things: one, Jude was very good at his job.
And two, if she didn’t tell him the truth, he would find out for himself.
For every angel identified in the radiance, he grew closer to her terrible secret. Mrs. Mead had no idea there were so many different kinds. Lightculls and sundrifters, crucibles and witnesses, feather-weighers and penances, on and on and on.
On day four, he shared an odd discovery that made her blood run cold. “I’m trying to go backward, make my way from the newest angels to the first that arrived. And while the last ten or so are benign angels of various orders, I’m noticing a real shift the older I get. See, there’s an order of angels obsessed with justice and punishment, called smitebringers. Mrs. Mead,” he said, turning to her with an appraising gaze, “you have . . . more than twenty smitebringers in your home. I do think it’s time we talked about that, don’t you?”
Hearing that number, part of her bitterly wondered why so few had answered her prayers.
Yes, she knew why. But such things couldn’t be told, soundwaves doing little to convey the depth of pain, the hot red of scar tissue. Such things could only be shown.
The next day, she brought Jude up to Mother’s bedroom.
Hand on the knob, what she found she could say was simple.
“Please don’t judge me too harshly, Jude. Please help me.” She found she didn’t want to look at him, to parse his scrutiny.
So she opened the door and let him look on the tableau within. For a moment, she thanked God, wherever the fuck he was, that there were only eight angels feasting on her mother’s soul. That only a handful of her guardians surrounded her mother’s gauzy, faint soul on the bed, framing what little remained of her like a beautiful halo.
Mrs. Mead knew how Jude would see them, huddled around Mother’s soul like campers by a guttering flame in the deep, dark night. Knew he would only see them as leeches, would read this length of light as a proboscis, or that shaft of flame as a fang, sucking and rending the spirit stuff of her mother into them, growing fat in a parasite’s paradise.
But she just couldn’t see them that way. She really had so little faith in anything, but what remained at the very bottom of her heart was in this room. It read that fang as a spear; it read that proboscis as a sword. They were her angels, no one else’s. And they fought with tooth and claw, blade and spear, to keep slaying the monster who had spent all her long, hateful life hurting Mrs. Mead.
Jude said nothing, his face as impassive as a field of snow: cold and white, unmoving. His eyes roamed across the sight. The angels were so enamored, they didn’t even know he was there. His ears twitched at the high, tinny sound of Mother’s scream; so little of her was left, she sounded like a kettle boiling in the house next door. Most days, Mrs. Mead forgot she was even screaming, she’d become so used to it.
Well, add it to the list, she thought grimly. There were far worse things she’d become used to in this house already.
Jude drank in the scene like the angels drank of Mother. When he turned back to her, he had tears in his eyes, red and searching. Mrs. Mead stared back at him, not feeling a twinge of remorse, and refusing to; she’d always been a sympathetic crier, would well up with ease at the sight of another’s tears. But she would never cry for this monster again.
Jude opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again, waited; when nothing emerged, closed his mouth once more.
The air became heavy with all that was unsaid. At some point, he must’ve realized what Mrs. Mead had realized some time ago: After such a lifetime of trauma, what the fuck could be said, really?
Walking over to Mrs. Mead, Jude led her out into the hallway, closing the door behind them both. And he folded himself over her, wrapping her in a hug that was tight and warm, and even if nothing could ever be said to make sense of it, it felt good, in this small way, to be seen.
An hour later, after tea and tissues, when each of them had caught their breath, Jude asked her if she was ready to send Mother on her way and free the radiance.
And Mrs. Mead, after a moment, said, “No.”
Jude took a long, deep breath. Then: “You realize we can banish all of them but one, and if her spirit is still here, devoured as it is, they will all come back. More, possibly. Right?”
Mrs. Mead didn’t think of herself as mean. But you didn’t survive decades of abuse without a little meanness rooting itself in you, just enough to growl when you had to. That meanness flared, a hot cinder that burned her as much as it warmed her. “I understand that. I also understand that if she leaves, she won’t get to suffer anymore.”
Jude tried to hold her hands, but she pulled them back. “She made me suffer my whole life. And no angels came. Not until she was dying in that bed, in agony. Not until I prayed she would keep suffering, until she’d felt a fraction of the pain and terror I had felt my entire life. Because of her. I watched angel after angel arrive, drawn to her light, answering my prayer. I watched them eat, drink, sing over her. I watched her face as EMTs carted her dead body away, her horror that it wasn’t ending. I have . . . decided so few things in my life, Jude. But now I get to decide when she gets to leave.”
With a long sigh, he said, “Mrs. Mead, the punishment or joy due to the dead is out of our hands. With what I can sense of . . . your mother’s soul . . . there’s little doubt where she’s headed, if there’s even enough of her left to know it.”
The meanness made her snarl, her body trembling at ten thousand remembered hurts. “But I won’t be the one doing it to her. She won’t know she hurt me. She won’t know I’m the one hurting her now.”
If her meanness affected him, it didn’t show. “Mrs. Mead, do you . . . do you really think you’re alone here? I promise, you’re not the first person to try to destroy herself by indulging past pain.”
He stared at his hands intently. “I—I’m . . . this is pretty personal, Mrs. Mead, but I want you to know. When I was younger, when I finally knew I was Jude and began transitioning, I had some good people who stood by me, who helped me.” He paused for a moment, watching her from the corner of his eye. When she said nothing, he continued, “That’s why I came back, Mrs. Mead, to help you.
“But I had other folks, too, people close to me who . . . used that closeness. To try to hurt me. Stuff me back in a box that wasn’t me, lock me in a room that would always feel wrong.” Mrs. Mead saw in Jude’s jaw a tension she’d not seen yet, a weariness to his shoulders that he’d hid well while on the job.
“I, too, had people I would have gladly bled myself dry for if only they could know just how badly and how deeply they’d hurt me. I know that hunger, which is why I’m trusting you with all this, Mrs. Mead. Because I’ve spent years working to live for myself, here and now. Let myself live a little freer, even on the days I get angry, and the work is hard. And as best I can, I try to help others get the chance to do that work, too.”
Jude rubbed his eyes, and then turned that level, piercing gaze back to her. “I had good people help me realize that choosing my future and my happiness was the first step in that work. Because why am I going to listen to people who are furious that I’m me, who still insist I’m someone else? The joy I feel being Jude can’t and won’t be contained by any box they want to keep me in. I want that freedom for you, Mrs. Mead. I really do. But you have to want it, too.”
For a moment, his words almost made it. Almost sank right into her, body and soul; almost helped became a mirror to her own rage and pain. But no angels were needed to reinforce the scar-tissue walls she’d spent a lifetime building. Not even Jude’s vulnerability could break through the solid walls of hate and sorrow around her heart.
She just stared at him, unblinking, golden forms wisping around her like a bright shroud.
Jude didn’t reach for her again. He settled back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. He suddenly looked exhausted. He might have been just speaking out loud, but the words were for her alone. “So you’ll really let her control you still? Even eaten as she is, with so little of herself left inside her anymore, you’ll still let your fear of her winning keep you from your own happiness?”
Later, when she came out of her rage, when all she could feel was the cool touch of light on her cheeks, lapping at her hot tears, when all she wanted was the smothering blanket of wings to drown out the world and that fucking kettle whistling a house away, Mrs. Mead would concede that Jude was probably right.
But what the fuck did he know?
The angels agreed, every last one of them.
That was rare, all of them agreeing.
And so, it must have been true.
A week later, a slip of paper arrived under the door.
Mrs. Mead, it read, I am sorry our conversation last week ended in my causing you pain, though I do not regret my frankness nor my sharing my personal experiences. It was not my intention to hurt you. But you must understand: if things keep on as they are, you will find no solace in your mother’s suffering. You will suffer, too, and these angels care not about the source of their light, only that it is bright. Please, save yourself. You still have a full life to live. Do not let your pain drown you. And if you choose to, despite my warnings, please know I will miss you. For sooner or later, you will end up exactly as your mother.
She tore the letter in half, then quarters, then more and more, until the kitchen was filled with little bits of paper. With her angels praising her in their celestial songs and lowing laughter, she danced across them like she was a little girl again.
Mrs. Mead did not pick them up. Why bother? The house was as clean as it was ever going to get.
She spent the rest of her day watching her mother cry out, attempting words, and in failing, only weep. It was better than anything, and Mrs. Mead wished Jude were there, to make him eat his words.
A month passed. There was no word from Jude. There was no word from anyone, really. Mrs. Mead felt as though she were haunting her own life, moving from room to room, consuming food and water out of habit. At some point, she felt as though her waking hours, the ones she remembered, had become stage directions.
Walk here, eat this, sleep now, wake. But there was no one to direct her, the only audience her ghoulish radiance who cheered and clapped and drank her tears before they left the duct.
In that time, the local government stopped calling every time she won the lottery; they just dispersed the winnings to the handful of charities she’d provided. She kept the radio off so she would stop winning shock jock contests for this musician or that vacation. She finally had to make an auto-reply email to her boss, discouraging the promotions offered, insisting that divine intervention was not a good enough reason for a corner office. She learned to ignore her body’s changes, as the angels did their best to turn back the clock on her crow’s-feet, her encroaching liver spots, her receding hairline; she thought of them like little gifts you get at holidays from children who don’t understand the concept of gifts yet, who only get you what they think you might enjoy. Even on the days when she felt she could climb a mountain, when she felt so young, so energized, she forced herself to sit and do nothing, knowing it would fade as soon as she left the house.
And why would she leave anyway?
All this fortune and every day she found herself rapt before Mother’s withering spirit. Mrs. Mead drank in her suffering, that tea kettle howl tinnitus now, an ever-present sound that simply was part of her every day. Some days, she wondered if there was a limit to how much she enjoyed this.
No, enjoy wasn’t even the right word. She didn’t enjoy it. But she needed it. She needed Mother to know. And she’d wait as long as she had to for that to happen.
Another month went by. And then another. If the seasons were passing outside, Mrs. Mead didn’t know it. If it rained, if it snowed, if a tornado spun toward her, she couldn’t have cared less. The world outside her home fell into myth; when she looked out her windows, she could only guess at what was happening, for nothing made sense anymore.
She vaguely understood that she wasn’t eating, wasn’t showering or shitting; those had been replaced by the light of her radiance. They fed her, they cleansed her. They were in her blood, hot and gold, energizing her.
It didn’t matter that the stage directions were fading, erased day by day. It didn’t matter that the theater was getting dusty, gathering cobwebs. It didn’t even matter that the audience had stormed the stage, sinking their fangs into the actors, listless and drifting and happy.
Mrs. Mead knew she wasn’t dead or dying. Some vague part of her knew that she had simply given over her life to the angels. It let her focus on Mother’s suffering, and she was grateful.
Thinking had also left the realm of Mrs. Mead’s control. She’d always believed her mind mattered, that it was one of the things her torturous mother couldn’t control, couldn’t snipe at, couldn’t mold with threat or harm.
But as the angels became her, gave her life support so she could enjoy the culmination of her life’s hurt, she realized: thought was just another burden, like a body, like a heart. Just another frail, breakable thing.
And so she gave it up.
Time passed; how much, she did not know. She had given in to the gold of her radiance; little else mattered.
So, when things changed, it took her too long to realize.
And when she did, it was almost impossible to stop or fix it.
She had become a frog submerged in a water-filled pot, the world changing degree by degree, so slowly she didn’t even notice she was the one in pain.
It was when the vague form of her mother, a shadow among shadows, turned toward her in the doorway, and in a fit of pain screamed, “Just like you! To stand by and watch while I burn. Fucking ungrateful daughter I raised, I tell you that much.”
The gold fell away. It had to, in order to make room for this fresh fright, this sudden pain. It lodged in her breast, fear in the form of a dagger, Mother’s voice lunging into her, planting it deep. Mrs. Mead blinked away tears of molten light, lower lip trembling.
“W-what?” Her throat hurt. She hadn’t spoken in months.
From the squirming cloud of light that was her mother’s soul, a shape emerged; two lips formed a disdainful mouth and from it, her voice, ringing like funeral bells. “You’re a disgrace, Margaret, I know you know that. No need for me to say it, I can see you know it. It’s all over your face, wide as it is. But you’re so dense, I’m doing you a favor reminding you. I imagine you forget, going to la-la-land where you think you have it all together. Always was like you, escaping to a little world in your head where everything was bright and sunny. Waste of a mind.”
Mrs. Mead’s very nerves were on fire, every twitch of fear igniting them like a spitting live wire. She watched that mouth spew its filth and go quiet.
She waited. Waited like the hare waited for the owl to sleep, prey ready to run. A last gasp, she thought in that little corner that hadn’t given in to the radiance. Just a little fitful ember; it will go out and then I will be free.
The next morning, she was awoken by a familiar, awful scream. “You sleep the day away and can’t even help your poor, sick mother with a little breakfast? I may as well be dead, the way you treat me!”
Mrs. Mead came into the room to see those horrible eyes, dark and blue like the bottom of the sea, slitted like a paranoid viper’s, hovering over a mouth that hadn’t gone away.
She fed the specter of her mother cold oatmeal; like before, Mother complained with every spoonful, even as she sucked it down.
The next day, Mrs. Mead, muscles atrophied, rearranged the bed for five hours, trying to find a spot to keep her mother’s reforming skin from being hit by sunlight. She could do nothing right, the sun’s journey following Mrs. Mead like a terrible, bright witness. Her mother’s spirit, looking like a burn victim, swatted her with a ghostly hand.
Mrs. Mead flinched as she felt it brush her shoulder, cold and cruel and real.
The days came and went, dripping like blood from the edge of a knife, slow, deliberate. Her mother grew stronger as Mrs. Mead faltered, paled, weak in the knees and heart, confused and scared.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. She was dead. Gone. She had been gone! She had been!
Except . . . she hadn’t, really, had she? A voice spoke in the small corner left of Mrs. Mead’s mind that she could call her own, a little space her will had retreated to, like a child under the blankets, shivering in the moonless night. That part of her knew: her mother hadn’t left. Because she hadn’t let her. Mrs. Mead had wanted to torture her, hurt her mother as she had been hurt by her.
Maybe this is karma, she thought, painting her mother’s nails a garish pink, each one long and sharp enough to draw blood. Maybe I deserve this, she thought as her mother raked a nail across her cheek for sloppy work. Maybe I will die and become a spirit, and she will hurt me back again, both of us stuck in some awful loop.
But the truth was both simpler and more horrible than any question of cosmic justice.
Weeks after her mother began to return to the land of the living, Mrs. Mead awoke to the sound of more than thirty wispy mouths crawling across her.
Her angels surrounded her in a swarm of light. Their song was one she knew by heart: they only sang like this when they fed on a suffering so pure it crawled down their long, hollow throats, like honey, rich and thick.
She had lost track of them, she realized. She had always been so careful to know what direction their mouths were facing. But you couldn’t watch what didn’t want to be seen. What had begun to hunt you.
As they suckled at her, lapping up her tears and heartbreak and anger and fear, it struck her what had happened. Like Sisyphus staring down the boulder hurtling toward him, two truths came to mind at once.
The angels, fearing a loss of their food source, had created a new one for themselves.
And if Mrs. Mead didn’t call Jude right now, she realized, she never would. She would die in every way that mattered.
More than that, her mother would live.
If there was anything to motivate her, it was that.
Every muscle in her body was either taut or sluggish; moving a limb felt like shoving against a brick wall, unyielding. And when something did move—a hand, a foot, an ankle—it seemed she was trying to push through syrup, the world suddenly thick, the air redolent with concern as the radiance sensed her motives.
From their mouths and eyes and palms and even from the very fine hairs of their limbs came a deep and strident song, one sung in a key of command.
sit stop no sit down sit down sit down right now dearie darling sweetie honey honey honey please sit SIT WE SAID SIT SIT SIT SITSITSITSITSITSITSIIIIIIIII—
The words fuzzed, garbled, became one voice droning at a pitch meant to drive her to her knees. The sound was both sharp and heavy, like a hypodermic needle being hammered into her skull.
Mrs. Mead tasted blood; she’d bitten her tongue hard. One knee gave out suddenly and she fell against the wall, forehead driven into the wooden doorway. It became hard to see; the world on the fringe of her sight blurred, becoming hazy.
Her radiance was singing her down to the ground. Even ungentle as they were, she wasn’t angry with them. She knew that desperation, that fire stirred by fear, to hold on to a thing that was harming you. She remembered her last conversation with Jude.
She rounded the corner, limping. Her phone was on the kitchen table.
In the doorway opposite, her mother stood, her shadow long and smoking with rage. Angels had gathered around her like a cloak and as Mrs. Mead took a step forward, the very air boiled, all their voices colliding, smearing together.
SIT SIT SIT SIT DOWN HONEY SIT DOWN SWEETIE YOU FUCKING IDIOT SOME DAUGHTER YOU TURNED OUT TO BE WEAK WEAK WEAK JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER SO WEAK CAN’T EVEN DO THIS ONE LITTLE THING AND HOW COULD YOU PATHETIC DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE BALLS TO KILL ME YOURSELF SEND ME TO HELL AT LEAST THERE THEY’D CARE ABOUT ME BUT YOU YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE IT IN YOU WHAT CAN YOU DO TO STOP US STOP ME WE ARE HUNGRY WE ARE HUNGRY SO HUNGRY ALL WE WANT IS THE SWEET SONG OF SUFFERING AND YOU WOULD DENY US AFTER ALL WE DID ALL WE DID FOR YOU ALL I DID FOR YOU RAISING SOME UNGRATEFUL BITCH WHO CAN’T EVEN MAKE A PHONE CALL TO SAVE HER LIFE
Mrs. Mead, tears in her eyes, mingling with the blood there, her vision red. Her hands, numb and pale; they’re stopping my heart, she realized. Her phone, gripped in limp fingers, screen lighting up. Her mother, these angels . . . neither could touch her, neither corporeal enough to rip it from her hand, smash it to the ground.
With a shaking swipe of numbing fingers, the phone unlocked.
In a voice like judgment: WE HAVE ONLY HELPED YOU WE HAVE ONLY EVER LOVED YOU YOU LITTLE SHIT WE HAVE ONLY WANTED THE BEST FOR YOU
Bloody tears touched the corner of her lips; she tasted heat and sorrow.
For a fleeting moment, she knew what it was to be an angel.
In a voice like poison: I HAVE ONLY EVER DONE MY BEST YOU UNGRATEFUL GIRL ONLY LOVED YOU AS BEST I COULD DON’T YOU THINK I WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER IF I COULD
When she pressed the phone icon, she couldn’t feel it. She saw his name as the last person who had called her. Who cared.
Together, their voices combined and shook her very soul like an animal in the jaws of a wolf, thrashing her into death.
NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU NO ONE WILL HELP YOU EVERYONE WHO EVER COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING YOU DROVE AWAY YOU YOU YOU YOU’RE THE MONSTER YOU’RE MEANT TO SUFFER HOW WILL YOU EVER GET HELP IF YOU’RE TOO WEAK TO ASK TO ADMIT YOU NEED IT TO EVEN ACCEPT IT
She didn’t know if she pressed the call button. The red in her vision fled and the world was fading into darkness. It was so quiet. No one spoke. Her mother, the angels, and Mrs. Mead all held their breath, waiting to see who would win.
Mrs. Mead didn’t find out because she fell unconscious, the world and its suffering, her suffering, dimming as she fell into some new depth, dark and cold.
She could only hope her mother wasn’t waiting for her there, too.
It took a week for her to look Jude in the eye.
Not that she was unable to. Much was injured. Some would heal, some wouldn’t. No, it was shame that kept her from looking into his eyes. It was harder because he wouldn’t leave her alone to wallow.
Every morning while she stayed at St. Monica’s Hospital, he’d come in, newspaper under his arm, cooling coffee in hand. He’d pretend she wasn’t pretending to sleep, murmuring to her under his breath as he read, did the crossword. And when she could no longer pretend to sleep, she kept her eyes far from his for the rest of the day.
It seemed his patience would outlast her shame. After a week she finally looked at him and said in a whisper, “But I was so cruel to you.”
He paused behind the paper. Then he folded it, set it on his lap, and looked at her, the setting light of the day casting his kind features in a light like gold. “And? Do you hold things said in anger against those in your life?”
Yes, she almost said. Then stopped moving her jaw, not trusting herself. Instead, she nodded. Then, “But I’d like not to. I’d . . . like to get better.”
“You already are,” he said, putting a hand on hers, stopping just shy of her intake bracelet. “You called me. Simple as that.”
Despair seemed to grab her organs and pull them in, down, dragging her into its grip. “But I should’ve—there’s so much I could’ve—” Tears threatened, and she hated herself; she had almost gotten herself killed, and here she was, crying over her own stupidity. She wanted to welcome that despair, welcome its pull, when Jude squeezed her hand hard enough to make her look at him.
His eyes were hard and bright, like pennies in the sun. “Stop that, Mrs. Mead. Stop that, please. For your own health.” He tried to smile, but the motion of his mouth didn’t diminish the hardness in his eyes. “We both know how addictive the past can be, Mrs. Mead. How comforting its familiarity is in your hands, even as it cuts you, weighs you down like a stone. But you put it down. You called me. You chose your future. In the end, you chose to survive and see what tomorrow can be. More than that, all of your tomorrows? You get to choose how to live them. And in time, that will be an exciting thing, though I know right now it’s scary. But I promise, one day it will be a joyful feeling to decide what tomorrow is and know that when it mattered, you were able to put your yesterdays down.”
Mrs. Mead found she couldn’t stand the light of his gaze anymore. The words, she heard; she tried to be inspired by them, even as, yes, they scared her. She turned away, let her hand go limp in his. “And the house?”
Jude took his hand back, and his smile was gentler. “I . . . well, when I came for you, it was a mess. Apologies for the state of it, whatever that state is. I . . . sort of went into survival mode, just getting you out again. Had to rely on brute force and technique to clear out the radiance. I got as many as I could. Whoever’s left will most likely leave once your mother’s spirit is gone.”
Something twisted inside her. The words barely eked out. “She’s . . . still there?”
Jude’s face was solemn, though his tone was kind. “I told you, Mrs. Mead. Only you can banish her. You have to be the one. I’ll help; you won’t be alone. But it has to be your decision.”
He stood suddenly. “I’m going to go for a jaunt around the building, stretch my legs. Give you a little time. But I think after this experience, it shouldn’t be a hard decision. Still. You have to make your own choices, Mrs. Mead. And you’re finally able to now. In this hospital, you’re free. And if you go back to that house and decide to pick that stone back up, you won’t be free. Simple as that. I’m not sorry for saving your life, Margaret. But,” he said, reaching down and placing his right hand on top of her own, “only you can save your future.”
He left. The door clicked behind him. Without him, without the angels, without her mother, Mrs. Mead was alone for the first time in . . . well, years.
She savored it. Let the stale hospital air sit on her tongue like holy communion. The beep of her heart monitor thrummed through her. Every little disturbance to the quiet—breathing, sheets rustling, birds out the window—spiked through her, sparking off nerves used to violence and light and noise.
Mrs. Mead was completely alone.
Before, that would have terrified her.
And if she was being honest, some part of her still was terrified.
But the relief she felt was greater than the fear, and so, she wept in this new silence. Not only because she was free of her angels and ghosts.
But because in being alone, she felt at peace. She was . . . okay being alone. More than that, against everything her mother had ever screamed at her, everything her radiance had ever cautioned against, she found, after a few moments, that she liked being alone with herself, too.
Relief settled around her in the quiet, holding her like an embrace. In the utter stillness of the hospital room, Mrs. Mead breathed, joyous in the reverent quiet that she could be alone. She did have a future waiting for her.
And she felt ready to move toward it, finally.
She lay in her bed, reveling in the silence, and watched out the window as the birds finished their songs in the fading gold light of day.
As night approached, Mrs. Mead felt a calm come over her, and she waited patiently for Jude to return.
“The Angel’s Share” copyright © 2024 by Martin Cahill
Art copyright © 2024 by James Zapata
Buy the Book
The Angel’s Share
