The Wrath of Angels

Brightwell glanced down at the sleeping woman. He removed his fingers from her mouth, sniffed them, then licked at their tips with a tongue that was almost pointed. In texture and color it reminded Harlan of a piece of raw liver The man allowed his other hand to rest on Angeline’s brow. Her mutterings grew louder, as though the pressure of his hand troubled her, yet still she did not wake.

‘Look at her: she barely knows who she is anymore, and I guess that, most of the time, she doesn’t know who you are either. Whatever you loved about her once is long gone. She’s just a shell, a hollow burden. It would be a mercy for you both if she simply . . . slipped away.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Harlan.

Brightwell smiled, and his hard, dark eyes looked at and into Harlan, and they found the place where Harlan hid his worst thoughts, and even though Brightwell’s lips did not move, Harlan heard the word ‘liar’ whispered. He could not hold Brightwell’s gaze, and he felt shame as he bent his face to the floor.

‘I could make it happen,’ said Brightwell. ‘A pillow over the face, a little compression on the nose and mouth. Nobody would ever know, and then you’d be free.’

‘You stop talking like that, mister. You don’t dare say that again.’

Brightwell tittered. It was a strangely effeminate sound. He even covered his mouth with his free hand while he did so.

‘I’m just playing with you, Mr Vetters. To tell you the truth, somebody would find out if she died under, um, unusual circumstances. It’s easy to murder, but it’s harder to get away with murder. That, of course, is true of most crimes, but particularly so with killing. You know why that is?’

Harlan was keeping his head down, and his focus fixed on his shoes. He was afraid that this man might stare into his eyes again, and see his guilt. Then he began to feel concerned that this might be taken as the aspect of a guilty man, that he was, in effect, admitting the crime before he had even been accused of it. He composed himself, and forced himself to look up at this loathsome intruder.

‘No,’ said Harlan. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s because murder is one of the few crimes that is rarely committed by practiced criminals,’ said Brightwell. ‘It’s a crime of rage or passion, and so is usually unplanned. Murderers make mistakes because they’ve never done it before. They have no experience of killing. That makes them easy to find, easy to punish. There’s a lesson to be learned from that: crime, of any kind, is a pursuit best left to professionals.’

Harlan waited. He tried to keep his breathing under control. He was grateful for the cold in the room. It stopped him from sweating.

‘Such sacrifices you’ve made for her,’ said Brightwell, and his hand began stroking Angeline’s hair again. ‘You can’t even afford new shoes.’

‘I like these shoes,’ said Harlan. ‘They’re good shoes.’

‘Will you be buried in them, Mr Vetters?’ asked Brightwell. ‘Are those the shoes you’ll want peeping out of your casket when they come by to mourn you? I doubt it. I reckon you probably have a pair in a box in your closet for just that eventuality. You’re a careful man. You’re the kind of man who plans ahead: for old age, for illness, for death.’

‘I don’t think it’ll make a difference to me one way or another how I’m tricked out when I’m dead,’ said Harlan. ‘They can put me in a dress for all I care. Now would you mind taking your hand off my wife. I don’t like it, and I don’t believe she does either.’

Brightwell’s hand left Angeline’s skin, and Harlan was grateful. She grew calmer, and her breathing deepened.

‘This is a nice place,’ said Brightwell. ‘Comfortable. Clean. I bet the staff are kind. No minimum wage employees here, right?’

‘I guess not.’

‘No whore nurses stealing small change from the lockers, taking the treats left by little children for Grandma,’ Brightwell continued. ‘No bored deviants slipping into rooms in the dead of night, fingering the patients, giving them a little something to remember, a relic of the good times. You never know, though, do you? I don’t like the look of that man Clancy. I don’t like the look of him at all. I can smell the badness on him. Like knows like. I’ve always trusted my instincts when it comes to deviancy.’

Harlan didn’t reply. He was being baited here, and he knew it. Best to remain silent, and not get angry. If he became angry, he might give himself away.

‘Still, no harm done, right? Your wife wouldn’t remember anyway. She might even enjoy it. After all, it’s probably been a while. Let’s give old Clancy the benefit of the doubt, though. Looks can be so deceptive, I find.’

He grinned, and fingered the growth at his throat, exploring its wrinkles and abrasions.

‘To return to the matter in hand, what I’m saying is that it must cost more than small change, this kind of ongoing care. A man would have to work long hours to make the payments. Loonnnng hours. But you’re retired, aren’t you, Mr Vetters?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I guess you put the pennies aside for a rainy day. Like I say, a careful man.’

‘I was. Still am.’

‘You were part of the warden service, weren’t you?’

Harlan didn’t bother asking how the man knew so much about him. The fact of the matter was that he was here, and he’d done his research. Harlan shouldn’t have been surprised, and therefore he wasn’t.

‘I was.’

‘Did it pay much, being a warden?’

‘Enough, and then some. Enough for me, anyways.’

‘I accessed your bank account details, Mr Vetters. It never seemed like you had more than nickels and dimes in your accounts, relatively speaking.’

‘I never trusted banks. I kept all of my money close by.’

‘All of your money?’ Brightwell’s eyes opened wide in mock astonishment. ‘Why, just how much of it was there? All: that could be quite a lot. That could be thousands, even tens of thousands. Was it, Mr Vetters? Was it tens of thousands? Was it more?’

Harlan moistened his mouth and throat. He didn’t want his voice to crack. No weakness: there had to be no frailty in front of this man.

‘No, there was never very much of it. It was only the sale of my parents’ house after my momma died that left me with a cushion, you might say.’

Something that might have been doubt flickered across Brightwell’s face.

‘A house?’

‘They lived over by Calais,’ said Harlan. He pronounced it ‘Callas’, like the singer, the way everyone did in the state. ‘Me being the only child, it came into my possession. Fortunate, given what happened to Angeline.’

‘Fortunate indeed.’

Now Harlan met Brightwell’s gaze. ‘I told you at the start, sir: I don’t know what you came looking for here, but I warned you that you wouldn’t find it. I’d be grateful to you if you’d leave us now. I’ve had enough of your company.’

At that moment, Angeline opened her eyes. She stared at Brightwell, and Harlan expected her to start screaming. He prayed that she wouldn’t because he didn’t know how the intruder would react. He was capable of killing to protect himself, of that Harlan was sure. He could smell death on the man.

But Angeline did not scream: she spoke, and the sound of it brought tears to Harlan’s eyes. She spoke in a voice that Harlan had not heard for so long, in the soft, beautiful tones of her middle years, yet there was another voice behind hers, one deeper than her own.

‘I know what you are,’ she said, and Brightwell looked at her in surprise. ‘I know what you are’, she repeated, ‘and I know what lies imprisoned within you. Soul-keeper, binder of lost men, hunter of a hidden angel.’

Now it was her turn to smile, and it seemed to Harlan more terrifying even than any expression he had yet seen on Brightwell’s face. Angeline’s eyes were bright, and her tone was mocking, almost triumphant.

‘Your days are numbered. He is coming for you. You’ll think that you’ve found him, but it’s he who will have found you. Leave here. Hide while you can. Dig yourself a hole and cover your head with dirt, and maybe he’ll pass you by. Maybe . . .’