Falling From Grace (65 page)

Rounding the corner that led me back to that fateful hallway, I saw him, bent on his hands and knees, his back arched in pain; I fell down in front of him, slamming my knees against the cold floor.
 
“Robert-Robert what’s wrong?” my hands gripped his shoulders, trying to pull him up.
 
Realizing that that was impossible, I allowed my hands to roam his body, trying to find what was hurting him.

He shook his head at my searching and opened his mouth to say something, but another cry erupted from his lips.
 
It sounded like the scraping of metal against each other, and I covered my ears.
 
He was in pain
—
undeniable and invisible pain
—
and I couldn’t stop it.
 
His body twisted from the force of it, his muscles straining, twitching from unbearable agony.
 
“Robert tell me.
 
Tell me what’s wrong!” I pleaded, my voice sounding frantic as I backed away from his flailing limbs.

His reached for me with a shaky hand.
 
I watched as it trembled and fell; he was too weak.
 
Again, he raised it
—
reaching
—
and finally fitted itself against my face.
 
I grabbed his wrist with both hands, keeping it there, not wanting to lose this small connection.
 
I tried to pull him up, tried to help him, but even weakened, he was the impenetrable wall.
 
I finally stopped trying and cradled his head in my arms, my mind trying to erase the look in his face, erase the way his eyes had looked so colorless and drained from the excruciating torture.
 
Please, Robert…

He fell on his side, his head landing in my lap.
 
I placed my hand on his chest, searching for his heartbeat, finding it weak and desperate.
 
He closed his eyes and moaned.
 

“I love you, Grace.”

And the wall tumbled down.

The sight of Robert collapsed in my arms did things to me that nothing else ever could.
 
The desperation in that moment was suffocating.
 
I couldn’t scream for help.
 
Who would hear me?
 
Who could help me?

Lark?
 
Lark!
 
My mind was screaming.
 
It was screaming its denial, its hurt, its misery.
 
I clutched at Robert’s still form, not caring that it felt like he was boring me through the floor.
 
I wouldn’t leave him.
 
No matter how he had hurt me, no matter how late his final utterance, I would not leave his side.
 
He had said he loved me.
 
He had said it and that meant it was true, and there was nothing that could take that away from me now.

“Don’t leave me,” I sobbed softly into his hair, my fingers absentmindedly running through it.
 
“Don’t tell me you love me and then leave me.
 
Don’t break my heart and then put it back together again only to shatter it once more.
 
I’m not strong enough for this.”

I tried to find his heartbeat, tried to find his glow, even the one that was pitch and ominous in its darkness, but there was nothing.
 
There was no warmth, no breath, no life.
 
Whatever it was that had cause him to suffer so horribly had taken from him, from me, his immortality
—
it had killed him.

I kept stroking his hair as a strange sound started echoing in the empty hall.
 
It sounded airy, and harsh.
 
It bit through me, vibrated through me, and I admitted to myself finally that it was the sound of the sobs that were ripping through my chest, splashing the darkness with my colorless grief.
 
I sank into him, pressing my face against his, needing to feel his skin against mine.
 
I brushed my lips across his, once, twice.
 
“Feel this.
 
Feel me.
 
Please, please…feel,” I pleaded, not caring about anything anymore.

It was as though I were telling myself to feel; I felt the numbness of loss settle in me, so familiar, and so hated.
 
First my mother, then Graham, and now Robert.
 
Surely the heart couldn’t stand for so much destruction of its reason for beating.
 
It had been robbed of a mother’s love, denied the love of a friend, and now, now that I knew what being in love really meant, what it meant to live for love and lose it, to risk for love, and to pay the cost, what was there left to beat for?
 
What else could there be now after this?

 
“Robert
—
no!” a voice cried out from the darkness.

I looked up as the gasps of horror reached me and saw the stark white faces of Ameila and Lark
—
shock and grief battering their beautiful features.
 
They had heard his cries of pain, felt it as deeply as I had.
 
They had come, not caring what they were doing or who saw them.
 
They had dared to hope, praying that they would be in time to help him, save him.
 

They had lost.

“My son.
 
My son!” Ameila wailed, ripping his body from my arms.
 
She buried her face into his chest, her soprano keening blending with the alto of Lark’s sobs, the harmony of their grief filling my ears, but not my arms that now felt empty and cold, useless sticks that hung limp at my sides.
 
I couldn’t see anymore, my tears too thick with grief to focus on the orange glow that blazed from their bodies, filling the hallway with the tragic light of their loss.
 
I shut it out.
 
I shut it all out and closed my eyes, pushing myself away into a corner to be alone with my sorrow.

 
“Oh my God,” Lark whispered, her trembling voice mirroring the pain I felt pulling me under.

I wouldn’t look.
 
I refused to look.

“Mom, let him go.
 
Let him go, Mom, look!”

I looked.

The body of my beloved angel started to lift, his arms hanging lifelessly at his sides.
 
His legs dangled below him, bending at odd angles, his shoes planted flat on the ground.
 
Ameila reached for his hand, bringing it to her lips and kissing it, while brushing his hair out of his eyes.
 
All things a mother would do to a child who slept soundly.
 
Did she not realize that he wasn’t asleep?
 
She began to rise as his body did, never dropping his hand, never breaking contact from him.
 
I felt the heat of jealousy bubble up in me as I stood up, too.
 
He loved me.
 
He loved me and I should be the one holding him now.

But I couldn’t say it.
 
The thought alone burned me, and added to the guilt that was slowly starting to build up inside of my chest as I played over and over again in my head the last exchange I had had with Lark about Robert, about not caring about hurting his feelings.
 
I had lied out of anger, and spite, and now I’d never be able to tell him that I was sorry, beg him to forgive me for being so selfish for being so…human.

Another gasp brought my attention to his shirt
—
one that I didn’t recognize
—
as it started pulling at his front.
 
The buttons were straining against his chest, and one by one, they popped off, sailing into some obscure corner or rolling under a door.
 
Higher he floated, until, as we stood around him, his head was nearly level with ours.

“Robert…” the three of us whispered together.

His shirt hung open behind him, and beneath his back
—
no, from his back—I could see a grotesque branch-like staining of his flesh bulging and pulsing with darkness.
 
Ameila hissed at it, and lurched forward to
—
I don’t know what she planned on doing, and I probably never would because Lark held her arm out to stop her.
 

The sound of Ameila crashing into Lark’s arm sounded like a giant hammer hitting a steel beam.
 
It echoed around us, but only I seemed to notice it.
 
Lark and Ameila were both staring at the grotesque markings that were spreading across Robert’s back.
 
I watched in fascinated horror as the branches started to protrude out towards the floor.
 
The skin was pulled so taut, it was nearly translucent, a dark film of flesh and…bone.

“Oh my God, it’s his wings,” Ameila breathed, her hand over her mouth in shock, her other hand gripping Lark’s shoulder so tightly, I could see a grimace of pain on her lips.

The branches and skin stretched further as Robert’s body rotated so that he was upright, his head lolling to the side, like a puppet whose string had been cut.
 
I wanted to help hold his head up, the silly human worry that his neck would get stiff causing me great concern, but Lark shook her head, her hand grabbing a hold of my arm to prevent me from interfering.

As his body rose higher, the branches on his back stretched further.
 
Wings, Ameila had said.
 
Biology class was paying off in a strange way as I could make out the rough skeletal shape of a wing in the base of the branch, but the outer branches, they were not so easy to identify.
 
As the branches grew in number, smaller and smaller still, the dawning of recognition hit me.
 
Each one of the divisions weren’t bones.
 
They were feathers.

“Yes,” Lark breathed, nodding her head in agreement.
 
Her face was filled with awe.

Fully formed, fully plumed, the span was surely beyond even the width of the hallway.
 
I shook my head in amazement at such an unfathomable sight.
 
Robert’s body was still limp, but stretched out behind him
—
in a magnificent display of unintentional beauty
—
were his wings.
 
Full, glossy, and…

“Black,” Ameila gasped.

Like the wings of a raven.

His body started to lower, his wings folding inward.
 
Lark rushed forward to catch him, her diminutive form belying her strength as she handled him with ease.
 
She gently laid him to the ground, carefully settling his wings around him, shimmering tears falling from her face as she did so.
 
“Brother, you did it.
 
You’ve got your wings.
 
Open your eyes and see them.
 
Open your eyes and see that those who care the most have shared this moment with you.”

Her voice was so soft, I could barely make out what she was saying, and I wanted to ask why she was saying them at all but the answer was already there.
 
She couldn’t think them, because he wasn’t there.
 
He would not receive her thoughts.
 
He wouldn’t receive any of our thoughts anymore.

“But I thought angels didn’t die,” I murmured, mainly to myself because I knew differently
—
other angels died, but not mine.
 
“You’re not supposed to die.”

I felt a pulse of emotion start to softly beat within me as I stared at my beautiful angel lying prone on the ground, his strong and sarcastic sister broken and crying on his chest.
 
Ameila, beautiful even in her sorrow, stood stony, her arms at her sides, as though she accepted this, accepted the fate that had befallen her son.
 
The slow beating within me grew.
 
It grew bold, and loud, and strong, and fierce.
 
It pushed me, jerked me around like a rag doll in the hands of an unruly child.
 
It grew hot inside of me, and it leaked out in scorching tears that ran down my face.

“No!”

The shout echoed around the hallway, the final crack in my heart, the fissure now too large to stem the overflow of emotion.
 
It was angry, fire drenched, and vengeful.
 
“No!
 
No, no, no!”
 
I leaped onto Robert’s still form, my intense reaction somehow enough to shock Lark away.
 
I began to beat on his chest, his shoulders.
 
I grabbed his head and looked at his face, perfect and exquisite, even in death, and shook it.
 
“No, you’re not supposed to be the one to die, damn you!”

I slapped him.
 
I don’t know why, and I’ll always question myself later what compelled me to do it, but at that moment, it was the only thing that seemed reasonable.
 
My hand began to throb; I forgot how hard and unforgiving their skin was.
 
Unlike the punch that I had given to Lark, this was
supposed
to cause pain.
 
This was supposed to bring with it hurt and contempt to the abused, and instead I was the one feeling the bite of it.
 
But I didn’t care.
 
Pain was better than falling numb again because if I accepted the numbness then that would mean that I accepted Robert’s death, and I couldn’t accept that.
 
I wouldn’t accept that.
 
Instead, I slapped him again.