The Wrath of Angels (11 page)

She rested her hand on my shoulder as she passed.

‘Just don’t mention
our
names,’ she said, and then she was gone.

In the pristine kitchen of a Connecticut house, Barbara Kelly was fighting for what little life she had left.

Darina Flores took an instant to react to the pain as the coffee struck her face. She screamed and raised her hands, as though she could simply wipe the liquid from her face. Then it began to burn, and her shrieks rose in pitch as she stumbled back against the kitchen island. Her legs tangled under her, and she fell to the floor. The boy’s mouth formed a silent ‘o’ of shock. He froze, and Barbara pushed him aside so hard that the back of his head hit the marble countertop with a hollow, sickening sound that set her teeth on edge. She didn’t look back, not even when she felt Darina’s nails raking at her ankle. Barbara almost lost her footing, but she held her nerve and kept her eyes fixed on the hall stand, and her car keys, and the front door.

She grabbed the keys in passing, yanked the door open, and found herself out in the pounding rain, the car parked a few feet away in the drive. She clicked the ‘unlock’ button on the fob, the lights came on, and the car beeped its welcome. She already had the driver’s door fully open when something landed on her back, wrapping its legs around her belly as its hands tore at her hair and eyes. She turned her head and saw the boy’s face close to the left side of her own. His mouth opened, revealing nasty, rodentlike teeth, and he bit hard into her cheek, tearing at the flesh until a chunk of it came away; now it was Barbara’s turn to scream. She reached behind her, pulling at his windbreaker, trying to yank him off. He held on tightly, and now his jaws were coming in for a second bite, this time at her neck.

She slammed him hard against the body of the car, and felt the wind go out of him. She did it again, and this time she followed through with the back of her head. His nose broke against her skull, and he released his grip on her, but he knocked the keys from her hand as he fell. He slumped to the ground, one hand protecting his ruined nose. She turned on him and aimed a sharp kick at his ribs. God, her face hurt! She could see her reflection in the glass, a jagged red hole the size of a silver dollar in her cheek.

She looked to the gravel and found the keys. She bent to pick them up, and when she stood again Darina was behind her. Barbara had no time to react before the knife sliced at her left leg, cutting the tendons behind the knee. She went down hard, and the full weight of the woman struck her, followed by more pain as the second sweep of the blade disabled Barbara’s right leg. Now she was the one being kicked as the woman forced her onto her back, forced her to gaze upon what Barbara had done to her looks.

Darina would never be beautiful again. Most of her face was a deep, scalded red. Her left eye was red and swollen. From the way she held her head, Barbara could tell that she was now blind in that eye.

Good, thought Barbara, even as she writhed in agony against the hard gravel, her legs on fire.

‘What have you done to me?’ said Darina. Only the left side of her mouth moved, and then just slightly, slurring the words.

‘I fucked you up, you bitch,’ said Barbara. ‘I fucked you up good.’

Darina raised her ruined face to the heavens, allowing the cooling rain to fall upon it. The boy appeared beside her. His nose had swollen and was streaming blood.

‘Where is your three-headed god now?’ asked Darina. ‘Where is your salvation?’

She pointed at the boy.

‘Show her,’ she said to him. ‘Show her the meaning of true resurrection.’

The boy lowered his hood, exposing an uneven skull that was already balding, wisps of hair clinging to it like lichens to rock. Slowly, he unzipped his jacket, revealing his neck to her, and the purple goiter that was already swelling there.

‘No,’ said Barbara. ‘No, no . . .’

She put her hands out, as though they might have the power to ward him off, and then her arms were being grasped, and she was being pulled back into the house, her screams lost against the thunder and the rain, her blood spilling then vanishing, washed away just as surely as hope and life were about to be.

She began to whisper an Act of Contrition.

N
orth again: north of New York, north of Boston, north of Portland. North, to the last places.

They were lost. Andrea Foster knew it even if her husband wouldn’t admit it: he never admitted his failings if he could avoid it, but she could tell that he wasn’t sure of where they were. He kept looking at his map as if its neat details of hills and trails bore any relation to the haphazard reality of the forest around them, and consulting his compass in the hope that, between paper and instrument, he might be able to find his bearings. Still, she knew better than to ask if he had any idea where they were, or where they were going. He’d just snap, and sulk, and an already irksome day would deteriorate further.

At least they’d remembered to bring the 100 percent DEET spray so the insects were being kept at bay, although probably at the cost of some kind of long-term damage to brain cells. If it came down to a choice between being eaten alive in the woods right now and a deterioration of her mental functioning somewhere down the line, she’d take her chances with brain death. He’d assured her that insects wouldn’t be a problem at this time of year, but here they were: small flies mostly, but she’d also had to fight off a wasp, and that had bothered her more than anything else. Wasps had no business being alive in November, and any that survived would be in a foul mood. She’d killed the wasp by swatting it with her hat and then crushing it beneath her boot, but she’d seen others since then. It was almost as if, the deeper they went into the woods, the more of the insects there were. There was still some repellent in the dispenser, but it was running disturbingly low. She wanted to get back to civilization before it ran out entirely.

It was warm too. Logic said that the shade of the trees should have cooled them some, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She had found herself struggling for breath on occasion, and her thirst never seemed to be slaked no matter how much water she drank. She usually liked day hikes, but after this one she’d happily spend a couple of days in a nice hotel, drinking wine, taking long baths, and reading a book. Once today was over and they were back in Falls End, she’d talk to Chris about heading up to Quebec or Montreal a little earlier than they’d planned. She’d had enough of the great outdoors, and she suspected that, secretly, he had as well. He was just too stubborn to admit it, just as he was too stubborn to hold up his hands and confess that, if they weren’t quite up shit creek, they could smell it from where they were.

She’d only reluctantly agreed to this trip. Pressure of work meant that Chris had been forced to cancel his summer vacation plans, so she and their daughters had joined her sister and her kids in Tampa for ten days while Chris stayed in New York. It was the downside of being self-employed: when the work was there you had to take it, especially with times being so tough. But he loved the Maine woods: they reminded him of his childhood, he said, when friends of his parents would offer them the use of their camp at The Forks for a couple of weeks each summer. So this was a nostalgic trip for him, particularly since his mother had passed away in January, and Andrea could hardly have refused to accompany him. She had been a little reluctant to go traipsing through the woods during hunting season, but he assured her that they’d be fine, especially decked out as they were in reflective orange.

Orange was not her color.

Orange was not anybody’s color.

She looked to the sky. There was an oppressive clouding to it, which concerned her. There might even be rain coming, although she couldn’t recall it being forecast.

‘Damn it,’ said Chris. ‘There should be a stream around here. If we follow it, it’ll take us back to town.’

He looked left and right, hoping for some glimmer of silver, listening for the sound of running water, but there was nothing, not even the song of a bird.

She so badly wanted to shout at him: I don’t hear a stream. Do you hear a stream? No, because there’s no fucking stream here. We’re lost! How long have you been leading us in the wrong direction? How fucking hard can it be to distinguish between north, south, east, and west? You’re the great outdoorsman. You have the compass and a map. Come on, Tonto, figure it out!

He turned to look at her, as if she’d screamed so loudly in her head that some atavistic part of his brain had picked up on it.

‘It should be here, Andrea,’ he said. ‘I’ve been heading east, following the compass.’

He sounded bewildered, and he looked like a small boy. Some of her anger at him diminished.

‘Show me,’ she said.

He handed over the compass, and pointed a manicured finger at the map. He was right: they seemed to be heading east, and at their rate of progress they should have been at the Little Head Stream by now. She tapped the compass, more out of habit than anything else.

Slowly, the needle turned 180 degrees.

‘What the hell?’ said Chris. He took the instrument back from his wife. ‘How can it be doing that?’

He jabbed at the compass with his own finger. The needle didn’t move.

‘Could we have been going west all this time?’ asked Andrea.

‘No. I can tell east from west. We were heading east. I think.’

For the first time, he sounded genuinely worried. They had an emergency kit, and some food, but neither of them had any desire to spend the night out in the woods without the proper equipment. In fact, they weren’t fans of sleeping outdoors at the best of times. Both of them liked their creature comforts, and a long day’s hike was made worthwhile by the promise of a little luxury and a good meal at the end of it.

She looked up at the sky again, but there were only glimpses of it to be seen between the trees. They were thicker here, and more ancient. Some of them must have been centuries old, their trunks distended and tumorous, their branches like broken limbs that had been set wrongly. The terrain was rocky in places, and there was a stench on the air. It smelled like old stew made with innards.

‘Maybe you could climb a tree and get our bearings,’ she said, and giggled.

‘That’s not helpful,’ said Chris.

He scowled at her, and she giggled again.

She didn’t know why she was laughing. They were lost, and while it wasn’t as bad as being adrift in the woods when snow was falling and there was a chance that they might freeze to death, their cell phones had no signal, they still only had limited supplies, and the temperature was bound to fall once darkness came. Nobody knew that they were out here, either. They’d checked out of their motel in Rangeley shortly after dawn, just in case they found somewhere more interesting along the way north, and their car was now parked on the main street of Falls End. It might be days before someone noticed that it hadn’t moved. She’d told Chris that they should have made a provisional booking somewhere in Falls End, but he’d replied that it was too early to start thinking about that, and the town seemed quiet anyway, and if they made a start on the hike they’d be back by late afternoon. That was one of his other faults: he hated committing to anything in advance, even a motel room in a small town. When they went out to dinner in a new city, he would walk her from restaurant to restaurant examining each menu in turn, always looking for the perfect food in the perfect place. There had been evenings where they had walked and debated for so long that everywhere good was either closed or full by the time Chris made a decision, and they’d ended up eating burgers in a bar, her husband simmering at missed opportunities.

‘And what’s that stink?’ said Chris.

‘It smells like cheap meat was boiling in a pot, and then it went off,’ she replied.

‘It might mean that there’s a house nearby.’

‘Out here? I didn’t see any road.’

‘You notice how thick the trees are? There could be a four-lane highway a stone’s throw from here, and we wouldn’t know about it until we heard a truck.’

There’s no highway out here, she wanted to say. There isn’t even a hiking trail. We lost that when you decided to ‘explore’, and now look at the mess we’re in. She remembered a cartoon she’d seen in a magazine once, depicting a family in the wilderness surrounding a father who was examining a map. The caption read: ‘What matters isn’t so much where we are as who we blame for it.’

‘If there’s a house, there may be a phone,’ Chris went on. ‘At the very least we can ask for directions back to town.’

Andrea supposed that he was right, although she wasn’t sure how much time she wanted to spend dealing with someone who lived so deep in the Great North Woods. Anyone who had come this far to find some solitude wasn’t necessarily going to welcome two lost city dwellers smelling of sweat and DEET into his lovely, secluded home.

‘There!’ said Chris. He was pointing to his right.

‘What?’

‘I saw someone.’

She looked, but could see nothing. The branches of the trees moved, creating a faint rustling. Odd: she had felt no breeze.

‘Are you sure?’

‘There was a man among those trees. I’m sure of it. Hey! Hey! Over here! We’re lost. We need a little help.’ He put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. ‘Sonofabitch. I think he’s heading away from us. Hey! Hey!’

Andrea still couldn’t see anyone, but she joined in with her husband’s shouts, just in case the man was concerned at the presence of a solitary male on his territory.

‘Please,’ she called. ‘We don’t mean any harm. We just need to get back on the trail.’

Chris folded the map and stuffed it into his rucksack.

‘Come on,’ he said to her.

‘Come on where?’

‘We’re going after him.’

‘What? Are you crazy? If he doesn’t want to help us, that’s his business. Chasing after him isn’t going to make things better.’