The Fallen

Aaron turned to see Zeke standing over him.

“Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” he spat. “You did this! You did this to him!”

“Listen to me,” Zeke hissed close to his ear. “If you don’t want him to die, you’ll do as I say.”

For the first time Aaron felt as if he couldn’t go on. Even after all he had been through, caught up in the merciless current of the foster care system, he never gave up hope that eventually it would turn out for the best. But now, as he gazed at his best friend dying in the street, he wasn’t sure.

“Aaron,” Zeke shouted for his attention. “Do you want him to bleed to death on this dirty street? Do you?”

He turned to look at the man, tears ru

“Not me,” Zeke said with a shake of his head. “You. You’re going to help Gabriel.”

The old man knelt beside him. “We don’t have a moment to spare,” he said, looking upon the dying animal. “Lay your hands on him—quickly now.”

Aaron did as he was told, and placed the palms of both hands on the dog’s side.

“Now close your eyes,” the old man instructed.

“But we can’t—” Aaron started to protest.

“Close your eyes, damn it!” Zeke commanded him.

Aaron did as he was told, his hands still upon Gabriel’s body. The dog’s flesh seemed to have grown colder, and he grew desperate. The noise around them receded.

“Please, Zeke,” he begged as Gabriel’s life slipped agonizingly away.

“It’s not up to me now,” the old man said. “It’s up to you.”

“I don’t understand. If we can get him to a vet maybe…”

“A vet can’t help him. He’ll be dead in a couple a’ minutes if you don’t do something,” Zeke said. “You gotta let it out, Aaron.”

“Let what out?…I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand? It’s there, inside you, waiting. It’s been there since you were born—just waiting for its time.”

Aaron sobbed, letting his chin drop to his chest. “I…I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“No time for crying, boy. Look for it in the darkness. It’s there, I can smell it on you. Look closely. Can you see it?”

Gabriel is going to die, Aaron realized as he knelt by the animal, hands laid upon him, feeling him slip away. There was no way around it. The old man was delusional and dangerous. He debated whether he should hold the man for the police—imagine if Gabriel had been a child. It might be best for the old man to be behind bars or at least in a hospital where he could receive the proper care.

Aaron was about to open his eyes when he felt it stir inside his mind, and he saw something. In the darkness it was there, something he’d never seen before.

And it was moving toward him. Is this what the old man is talking about? he asked himself near panic. How did he know it would be there? What was it? What was coming at him through the blackness behind his eyes?

“I…I see something,” he said with disbelief. “What should I do?”

“Call to it, Aaron,” Zeke cautioned, “not with your voice, but with your mind. Welcome it, let it know that it’s needed.”

Aaron did as he was told, and reached out with his mind. He couldn’t make out exactly what it was, its shape kept changing—but it seemed to be some kind of animal—and it was moving inexorably closer.

“Hello?” he thought, feeling foolish, yet desperate to try anything. “Can…can you hear me?” Was it all some bizarre figment of his imagination brought on by the stress of the situation? he wondered.

It was a mouse scrambling through the darkness toward him, a mouse with fur so white that it seemed to glow.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do—or what you are—but I’m willing to try anything to help my friend.”

The mouse stopped, its beady black eyes seeming to touch him. It reared back on its haunches, as if considering his words, and then began to groom itself.

“Do…do you understand me?” he asked the tiny creature with the power of his thoughts.

It was no longer a mouse, and Aaron gasped. The mouse had become an owl, its feathers the color of snow, and before he could wrap his brain around what had just happened, it changed again. From an owl it turned into an albino toad—and from the toad, a white rabbit. The thing inside his head was now morphing its shape at a blinding rate; from mammal to insect, from bird to fish. But though its form continued to alter, its eyes remained the same. There was an awesome intelligence in those deep, black eyes, and something more—recognition. It knew him, and somehow, he knew it.

It had become a snake—a cobra—and it reared back on its bone-colored muscular shaft of a body, swaying from side to side, its mouth open in a fearsome hiss as it readied to strike.

“I don’t like this, Zeke,” Aaron said aloud, eyes still tightly closed. “You have to tell me what to do.”

“Don’t be afraid, Aaron. It’s a part of you. It’s been a part of you since you were conceived,” Zeke counseled. “But you have to hurry. Gabriel doesn’t have much time left.”

“I don’t know what to do!” he cried as a humming-bird fluttered before him.

“Talk to it,” Zeke barked. “And do as you’re told.”

“My dog is dying.” Aaron directed his thoughts toward the shape-changing creature floating before him in a sea of pitch. “In fact he might already be dead, but I can’t give up. Please, can you help me? Is there anything you can do to help me save him?”

It had become a fetus that looked vaguely human. It simply hovered there in its membranous sack, unresponsive, its dark eyes fixed upon him.

Aaron was angry. Time was ru

“I’ve had enough,” his thoughts screamed. “If you’re going to help me, do it. If not, get the hell out of my mind and let me get him to a vet.”

Like a ship changing course, the child-thing slowly turned, shifted its shape to some kind of fish, and began to swim away.

“It’s…it’s leaving, Zeke.”

Aaron felt the man’s hand roughly upon his shoulder. “You can’t allow it to go. Talk to it, Aaron. Beg it to come back. Whether you’re ready or not, it’s the only way that Gabriel will survive.”

“Please,” Aaron projected into the sea of black. “Please don’t let him die, I…I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

The fish, now an iguana, continued on its way. A luminous bat, and then a centipede, the force within his mind receded, growing smaller with distance. Aaron wasn’t sure why he did what he did next.

In the ancient language first spoken to him by Zeke, what the old man had called the language of messengers, he called out once more to the thing in his mind.

“Please, help me,” he thought in that arcane tongue. “If it is in your power, please don’t let my friend die.”

At first he didn’t think his pleas had any effect—but then he saw that a chimpanzee had turned and was slowly returning with a comical gait.

“It’s coming back,” Aaron said to Zeke, not in English, but in the old tongue.

“Open yourself to it,” he responded in kind. “Take it into yourself. Accept it as part of you.”

Aaron shook his head violently, eyes still clamped shut. “What does that mean?” he asked.

The old man dug his nails painfully into his shoulders. “Accept it, or you both die.”

A jungle cat was almost upon him, and Aaron gazed into the fearsome beast’s eyes.

“I accept you,” he thought in the ancient speak, unsure of what he should be saying, and the panther lifted its head to become a serpent, but this was unlike any snake he had ever seen before. It had tufts of silky fine hair flowing from parts of its tubular body, and small muscular limbs that clawed at the air as if in anticipation. And the strangest and most disturbing thing of all, it had a face—something not usually associated with the look of a reptile. This serpent wore an expression on its unusual facial features, one of contentment, and spread its malformed arms, beckoning in a gesture that suggested Aaron, too, had been accepted.