Strange Angels

another, like the movie of life had just hit pause and someone had forgotten to tell me.

A snow-pale fluttering moved atop one of the buses. I stared.

There, on top of the long, blunt-nosed shape, Granmama’s white owl fluffed its wings, pinned me with a yellow stare. Its head cocked to the side, as if to say, What’s up, boss?

It was hard to move. Clear air had hardened to syrup around me. The best I could manage was a swimming amble, fighting against drag. Three steps, four, toward the bus, which stood with its door open, the driver inside motionless, a CB handset to his mouth and his eyes shut, in the middle of a blink.

The world snapped around me like a rubber band. Sound flooded back, engines and coughs and people talking, the low moan of the wind. I stood for a moment, staring up at the driver as he finished jabbering into the radio and glanced down at me.

“Getting on the bus, kid?” He had Santa Claus apple cheeks and a full white beard, and a kerchief of the American flag knotted around his neck. His knuckles were swollen and reddened, and he looked as cheerful and nonthreatening as you’d want someone to be behind the wheel of several tons.

I climbed aboard, heart thumping, showed my bus pass, and took a seat a quarter of the way back—close enough to the driver that delinquents or crazies in the rear wouldn’t bother me, but far enough back the driver wouldn’t notice much of anything I did unless I had some sort of vomiting seizure or something.

The way I felt, a seizure might’ve been an option. I had to struggle to breathe deeply.

I was sweating under my coat, scarf, and hat. But my teeth kept wanting to chatter, and goose bumps prickled hot and hard on my arms and legs. I folded my arms, trying not to feel as if I was hugging myself for comfort, and when the bus started up and began lurching, I wondered if the owl was still on top. Or if anyone would see it.

Way to go with the woo-woo, Dru. But there was a curious comfort—Gran had taught me about running on intuition. If her owl was here, I didn’t have to worry much about being led astray. I just had to go with it, and I didn’t have to convince Dad that it was serious and for real instead of just kid fears or an overactive imagination. Sure, I was supposed to watch out for stuff he couldn’t eyeball, and he always said my instincts were good. . . . But still, I guess adults have problems with this sort of thing, even when they know the monsters are out there.

I’d never had the world stop around me before. And the owl had never shown up during broad daylight. It was a nighttime thing, a dream thing.

I shivered again.

Watch your ass, Dru. Just because you’re getting a message doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

It was just what Dad would have said. Gran might have just nodded, her peaky gray eyebrows going up in that particular way, the one that meant I’d just stated something so obvious it didn’t bear repeating or remarking on.

I swallowed a sudden wave of homesick loneliness. The taste of oranges faded as the bus wallowed through a turn, tires rasping and gritting on sand-covered roadtop, and crept out of the transit center. I looked steadily out the window, my eyes pricking with hot tears, and waited for the next thing.

* * *

Two hours later the sky had turned into a pale gray bruise, small stones of snow were pattering down, and my mouth tasted like I’d been walking in a citrus grove again. I heard that same ringing, like a gong after its tone has faded but before it stops vibrating, and pulled the stop cord. My hand just flashed out and caught it, really without any direction on my part.

Running on intuition is like that. You never know what crazy shit’s going to happen next.

“Keep warm out there,” the driver said as I passed. He’d said the same thing to every ever-loving person who got off. I just pulled my cap further down, almost to my eyebrows, and hoped I wouldn’t slip and fall on my ass when I hit the ground outside.

I exhaled sharply, looked around. The bus shelter here was a shell of plastic, scarred with graffiti, and warehouses slumped all around under the iron-dark sky. The light had deepened but was failing fast, sunshine struggling to make it through whirling snow. It was late in the afternoon, and it gets dark quickly in winter this far north.

Real dark, and real quickly.

I cast around. Considered spitting to get the taste of wax oranges off my tongue. The snow hissed, driving in small particles against the bus shelter, and Granmama’s owl glided in on soft muffled wings, a cleaner white than the dirty sky.

You know, I’d be diagnosed crazy if I told a shrink about this. What the hell is an owl doing out here? But I followed carefully, my soles crunching against snow that started to creak when I stepped in it. What sidewalk there was wasn’t cleared out here—I had to fight through a shin-deep freeze, scramble over a heap of dirty crap thrown up by snowplows, and cross the street. Then there was another waist-high mountain of exhaust-blackened, sand-laden snow to scale, and the mouth of a dark alley to navigate. The owl glided in noiselessly as if on a string, a tongue sliding through a gap in broken teeth. The warehouses on either side were abandoned, Sunshine Meatpacking on one faded sign spackled with chunks of frozen stuff plastered there by the wind.

The alley had been sheltered from the worst of the snow. It was stacked with wooden pallets and other assorted junk. Good for an ambush, especially with the shadows growing by the second. The owl floated above me in a tight circle, then sailed down and around a bend.

Great. A blind turn in an alley. Dad would be motioning me back to the open end of it to keep watch. He’d go from cover to cover, but I was just strolling down the middle as if I was on rails.

Tiny little dots of snow drifted down one at a time, the alley only getting a desultory sprinkling. The wind rose with a moan, tiny ice pellets whispering wherever they touched a flat surface. I slipped my right hand in my pocket, touched the switchblade’s cold handle. My fingertips were frozen solid, not stinging anymore.

The alley made an L shape, and the bend was choked with junk on either side. I halted, peered around the corner, saw more daylight.

Looks okay. I looked up—no owl. The oranges vanished, leaving only the cold and the sudden miserable feeling that I was being watched.

I slid through the gap between pallets and headed down the other half of the alley. There was less trash here, but it looked older and more rotten—a drift of decaying newspaper over a shape that might have been human.

I flinched nervously. Looked again and it was just a busted-down old couch. Overflowing trash cans, one with condensation frozen on its sides, frost flowers blooming across the galvanized surface. I shuddered at the thought of what they might have in them and hurried past, because the end of the alley suddenly seemed brighter.

I came out, blinking, in a weedy, trash-strewn vacant space. At the far end, a chain-link fence sloped drunkenly back and forth. It looked weirdly familiar. And there on the other side . . .

I turned in a full circle. Yep, there were the two buildings squinched together, broken glass staring out into the cold night. I’d seen them from a different angle. I finished the turn, squinted at the chain-link fence. Let out a disbelieving sigh, my breath louder than the snow.

Our truck hunched on the other side of the fence. It was buried under a hood of deep snow, but I’d know the camper shape anywhere. And under the snow it was faded blue, the blue of a summer sky, the best color in the world.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. The buildings behind me crouched, groaning like they intended to get up and hobble for a hot bath.

I took another two steps forward, through a knee-deep drift. The wind smacked me, rising and moaning eerily, loaded with stinging snow-buckshot. My jeans were sodden, clinging below the knee, and I couldn’t feel my feet. I lurched forward again, tripped over something buried under the snow, and fell headlong. My palms hit snow, and I hoped there was nothing sharp under its soft white blanket.

Good one, Dru. I floundered up to my feet, shaking like a dog to get the powdery stuff off me. Considered cursing, but another bolt of pain slung through my head, this one jolting down my neck and spreading across my sore, aching back. I let out a half-garbled sound and hunched, crossing my arms over my belly, cold burning against my cheeks.