The Wrath of Angels

11





Chris put his hands on his knees and paused for a breath. The air was so damn still, and it tasted foul. That stink of rotting food was stronger now, and he had lost his bearings entirely. He thought that they’d been following the unknown man northwest, but he could be wrong. He had, it seemed, been wrong about everything else that day. Now the stranger had disappeared from sight, and as far as Chris was concerned they were even more lost, if there was such a thing as gradations of being lost. The flies had grown more persistent too: even the DEET spray wasn’t keeping them away, and he’d been stung on the back of the neck by a wasp, which hurt like hell. He’d killed it under his hand, which gave him some satisfaction. He’d have to look up the life cycle of wasps when he and Andrea got home. Wasps in November was just plain bizarre.

The light had changed as the sun began to set. The lines of the trees were already less clearly defined, as though someone had dropped gauze across the landscape. He no longer had any concept of time. When he looked at his watch, he found that it had stopped. They were trudging through a darkening fairytale world, and he was ashamed to admit that he was afraid.

He looked back. Andrea was struggling. She indulged his amateur’s taste for outdoor pursuits, but she had never really embraced them. She suffered through them because he enjoyed them, and also for the promise of luxury at the end of a day in the wild. Maybe it was the Catholic in her. She was the religious one. She still went to church on Sundays. He’d given up on his faith a long time ago; in a way, the child abuse scandals had provided him with an excuse to feel better about himself and his reluctance to sacrifice an hour of his weekend to the religion of his childhood. He did occasionally feel a lapsed believer’s pang of guilt, and was not above making the odd plea for assistance in times of trouble. Now, as he watched his wife drink thirstily from her water bottle, he offered up a prayer for their safe return to Falls End, or anywhere that even resembled a settlement.

‘Lord, I can’t say that I’m going to return to church, or that I’m even going to be much of a better man, but we need some help here,’ he whispered. ‘If not for my sake, then for hers, please: get us safely back to civilization.’

As if in answer to his prayer, their guide – if that was what he was – appeared among the trees again. He lifted his arm, enjoining them to follow him.

‘Hey, where are we going?’ Chris called to him. ‘Talk to us. We can’t keep doing this. We’re tired. Jesus.’

Andrea joined him. She pulled down the collar of his jacket to expose the wasp sting, and hissed in sympathy.

‘That looks bad,’ she said.

She slipped her pack off and found the tube of antiseptic lotion in the small first-aid kit. Carefully she applied it to the sting.

‘You’re not allergic to wasp stings, are you?’

‘You know I’m not. I’ve been stung before. They don’t affect me badly.’

‘Uh, this one is really big, and it seems to be spreading.’

‘I swear, I can feel it in my spine.’

‘I have some lorazepam in my suitcase,’ she said. ‘That should help. You might need to see a doctor if it doesn’t start going down.’

In the distance, one more thin shape among the trees, she could see the man watching them.

‘How long have we been following him?’

‘I don’t know. My watch has stopped.’

‘Stopped?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Mine too.’

They compared watches. The time on Andrea’s watch showed five minutes later than her husband’s, but Andrea always set her watch five minutes fast. Both watches had stopped at the same time.

‘That’s weird,’ said Chris.

‘This is all weird,’ said Andrea. ‘And it’s going to be dark soon.’

Her voice cracked slightly on the word ‘dark’. She was holding it together, but only barely.

‘We could go back the way we came, but what good would that do?’ he said. ‘We’d be back in the same position that we were in earlier. We have to trust him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what people do when they have no choice.’

‘He means us harm.’

‘Come on, not this again . . .’

‘I’m telling you. And I’d swear he’s leading us in circles.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I don’t know it, but I feel it.’

She saw the stranger’s head tilt slightly, as though he had heard what she said. She couldn’t get over how dark his silhouette was. Even when the light had been good, she’d been unable to tell how he was dressed, or discern the lineaments of his face. He was like a shadow given life.

‘What’s he doing now?’

The man’s gestures had changed. He was pointing to his right, jabbing a finger in that direction. Once he was sure that they’d seen what he was doing, he raised the same hand and waved them farewell, then disappeared into the trees, away from whatever he had been pointing at.

‘He’s leaving,’ said Chris. ‘Hey, where are you going?’

But the man could no longer be seen. The shadow had been absorbed by the greater shade of the forest.

‘Well,’ said Chris, ‘we may as well go see what he was pointing at. Could be a road, or a house, or even a town.’

Andrea adjusted her pack on her back and followed her husband. Her eyes kept returning to the patch of darkness into which the stranger had vanished, straining to penetrate it. She wanted him to be gone, but she was not certain that he was. She sensed him waiting in there, watching them. It was only when her husband spoke that she realized she had stopped walking. She willed her feet to move, but they wouldn’t. She wondered if this was how vulnerable animals reacted when faced with a predator, and if that was why they died.

‘He’s gone,’ said Chris. ‘Wherever he was taking us, we’re almost there.’

The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. Her skin prickled. He isn’t gone, she wanted to tell him. We can’t see him, but he’s still out there. He’s led us somewhere, but it’s nowhere that we want to be.

The slightest of breezes arose. It was almost a blessing until they smelled the stench carried upon it. There were birds in the air now: crows. She could hear their cawing. She wondered if crows were attracted by dead things.

‘It’s stronger now,’ said Chris. ‘It smells like a rendering plant. You know, paper mills smell real bad. That could be what’s causing it: a paper mill.’

‘Out here?’

‘Out where? We don’t even know where here is. We were so lost we could have traveled to Canada and not realized it. Come on.’

He reached out for her hand again, but still she did not respond in kind.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You stay here, and I’ll go see what’s up there.’

He moved away from her, but she grabbed at his pack, holding him back.

‘I don’t want to be left here alone.’

He smiled. It was his other smile, the indulgent, patronizing one that he gave her when he thought she was failing to grasp something very simple, the one that made her feel about nine years old. She thought of it as his ‘man smile’, because only men ever used it. It was ingrained in their DNA. This time, though, it didn’t make her angry, just sad. He didn’t understand.

Chris came to her, and gave her an awkward hug.

‘We’ll see what he was pointing at, then make our decision, okay?’ said Chris.

‘Okay.’ Her voice sounded tiny against his chest.

‘I love you. You know that, right?’

‘I know.’

‘You’re supposed to tell me that you love me too.’

‘I know that as well.’

He gave her a playful poke in the ribs.

‘Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.’

‘A cocktail. With champagne.’

‘With champagne. Lots of champagne.’

Hand in hand, they walked to the rise.