The Storm (9 page)

‘Angels are agents of God, more than men. They are messengers, mainly, bringers of revelation – like when Gabriel came to Mary in the Visitation, for instance. But they are warriors too.’

Brick stared at his feet as the vicar spoke, trying not to listen. Nothing this man said could have anything to do with what was happening, no way. He was talking about the Bible, a book written hundreds of years ago by guys who had nothing better to do. This . . . This was something else, something different. And yet there were words that the vicar used, words that seemed to hit home.
Warriors,
Brick thought, listening to the priest,
isn’t that what Daisy said? That we are here to fight?

‘What do you mean warriors?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t angels like goody-goody cherubs with fat faces and halos and stuff?’

‘Well, no,’ the vicar said with a shake of his head. He was still pale and trembling, and in the heavy shadows of the far end of the church he looked like a ghost. ‘Maybe now, perhaps, on Christmas cards. But originally they were more like an army, or . . . guardians is maybe a better word. They are usually depicted with flaming swords. Some stand by God’s throne.’

‘Like an Imperial guard or something,’ said Cal from the back wall. Brick could hear the exhaustion in the boy’s voice, wondered how long either of them would stay awake. It was just so still in here, like time had decided to cut them a break, stop a while. Adam was already curled up on the bench like a dog, eyes scrunched shut. ‘You know, like with the Emperor out of
Star Wars
.’

‘Well, I’m not sure about that comparison,’ Doug said. ‘But yes, I suppose so. As for the others, they were mainly tasked with carrying messages to mankind. They’re not just in the Bible, you know, they’re found in almost every religion across the world.’

‘So what are they made of?’ Cal asked.

‘I don’t understand why you think angels are responsible for this, for whatever is happening,’ Doug replied. ‘It’s . . . It has to be a chemical thing, a reaction of some kind. A disease maybe.’

‘Trust me,’ said Cal. ‘You haven’t seen what we’ve seen. Go on.’

‘What are they made of?’ the priest shuffled uncomfortably, cleaning his glasses once again. This time he didn’t put them back on, just held them in his hands and examined them as if the answers were written there. ‘They are ethereal, I know that much. They are spirits. Have you heard the phrase “how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?” The answer is an infinite number, because they are not creatures of this world. Scholastic theologians teach us that they are able to move between places instantaneously, which allows them to travel back and forth between here and heaven. Because of this they are often shown as being crafted from fire.’

At this, Brick peered over his shoulder and met Cal’s eyes. He felt the sudden rush and shiver of goosebumps on his arms, folding them across his chest as if to hide them. Brick faced forward again, feeling a blush blossom over his cheeks and wondering why.

‘So no robes and little harps, then?’ he said.

Doug pushed his glasses back on and blinked, seemingly unsure if the question was serious or not.

‘But there must be something in the Bible that says what they do, and how they speak to people, yeah?’ Cal asked. ‘Do they just show up and put the kettle on?’

‘No, usually they are more of an internal spirit, they speak from within you without showing themselves.’

‘Convenient,’ grunted Brick.

‘Don’t you think he’s on to something, Brick?’ Cal asked. ‘Made of fire, living inside you, warriors. Any of that ring a bell?’

He didn’t reply, just sat and chewed on his simmering anger.

‘What did you mean by guardians?’ asked Cal.

‘Um, they watch over us. Many people believe that – you must have heard the term guardian angel, yes?’

‘Duh. But you get bad angels too, right?’ Brick asked, thinking of what he had just seen on the TV, the man in the storm. Already the image was ebbing from his head, just a big, black mark on his vision, as though his retinas had been scraped away. Better that than to see it again, though, the beast with its cloak of storm and its endless inward breath. He shuddered so violently that the bench rattled.

‘Bad ones? Yes, yes. According to the Bible, Lucifer was once an angel, an archangel really. He believed that he could be more powerful than God, and attempted to lead, well, a rebellion I guess, with his army of angels. Because of his sin of pride, God cast him down into the Lake of Fire, hell, along with his supporters. This is part of the scripture that I, personally, have difficulty with. It’s always tempting to believe that human evil can be blamed on the devil, and yes there are occasions when this is the case. But I think evil is also part of who we are. We have only ourselves to blame for the bad things of the world.’

At one time, Brick would have believed that. But not now, not with everything he’d seen. The man in the storm, that wasn’t human. It was the very opposite of human, the very opposite of all life. But it wasn’t the devil either, not the one out of the Bible. It was something else, something that roamed between worlds long before anyone ever even uttered the word God. Brick could feel the truth of that in his guts, in the huge, groaning weight of breaking time and space that he could almost hear in the immense quiet of the church. It was impossible to explain, but it was there nonetheless.

‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ he said, just so there was noise.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Cal replied. ‘I know. Look, Doug, some of the stuff in the Bible, though, it’s probably based on real things, yeah? No offence or anything, mate. I mean, I remember hearing that the great flood, the one with Noah and everything, might have been because of some massive tidal wave or something.’

‘Yes,’ Doug said. ‘There are, of course, relativist theories. In fact I studied science in the Bible, back during my curacy in Oxford. You’re talking about the Black Sea deluge theory. Around 5600
BC
, water from the Mediterranean Sea breached a sill in the, um, in the Bosporus Strait I think. It would have caused a terrible flood. There are other examples, too. The story of Moses and the Red Sea. There are conditions where a strong wind could actually part the waters of a river. It’s called a wind setdown. It has happened other times too, in the Nile Delta. It is quite astonishing.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Brick asked. ‘That science does all the work then God just takes the credit?’

The vicar laughed, shaking his head.

‘I’m saying that many years ago, we didn’t know all that we know now. A . . . a volcano, say, was an angry beast beneath the ground. Or a hurricane was the gods battling in the heavens. Humans need to know the truth of things, even if that truth is fiction. It’s in our nature to try to understand our lives. If science cannot explain something, then we invent our own science to explain it. And that science is usually called religion.’

‘So religion isn’t real then?’ Brick said. ‘Stupid thing for a vicar to say.’

‘No, you misunderstand me. Religion is about faith, and faith is a very different kind of knowledge. God is a scientific fact, and there is a science that explains the nature of God. Of course there is. But we do not know what that science is yet. Perhaps one day, we will understand it, the same way that we now understand the science of gravity, of lightning, of some, um, quantum particle behaviours. Perhaps one day we will know the scientific truth about God, and our creation. Then science and religion will be one and the same.’

Brick hissed a laugh through his nose, although there was something in the vicar’s words that made sense.

‘You’re saying that weird things happened a long time ago,’ said Cal. ‘And people saw these things and blamed them on God. They told their kids, and those kids told their kids, and then eventually somebody was writing a book of the Bible and they remembered this thing they were told about the sea parting, or a big flood or whatever, and that’s how the Bible got written.’

The priest ran a hand across his head and nodded.

‘Well, partly. Some miracles are God’s, without a doubt. But perhaps not all. Everything is science. It
has
to be. But just because it is science that we do not understand yet, does not make it false.’

‘So angels,’ Cal went on, and Brick realised he was talking to him. ‘Maybe this has happened before. Maybe, like thousands of years ago, people got possessed by . . . by whatever is inside us. Only they didn’t know what they were, they just saw these things made of fire, with wings; creatures that could destroy a whole town with a single word. They saw them, and they called them angels, God’s messengers, and they told their kids and so on and eventually it just became a part of religion. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

It did, but Brick didn’t say anything.

‘And the thing in London, the man in the storm. Maybe he’s been here before. Maybe people saw him and thought he was just like us, like the angels I mean, but a bad version. They might have just made up a story about how he was cast down and wanted to take his revenge. It could have all happened before, Brick.’

‘So what, Cal?’ said Brick, turning around. Cal was hunched against the wall, wrapped up in his own arms. He looked small, and weak, but his eyes were fierce.

‘So, it means they’ve fought him before, the angels,’ Cal said. ‘It means they stopped him doing whatever he is here to do. It means they won.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because we wouldn’t be here otherwise, would we? That thing wants to eat everything. It’s like a black hole. It won’t stop until we destroy it.’

‘Yeah?’ Brick had to swallow a sour lump of bile that rose from the churning pit of his stomach. The image of the man in the storm appeared before him, seeming to fill the church with darkness. Trying to fight that would be like trying to stop a train with a toothpick. They’d be torn apart, pulled into that raging mouth along with everything else. And then what? There would be no afterlife, no heaven or hell, not in there. There was nothing but an end of things. ‘How do we do that, Cal?’

‘We wait,’ the other boy said. ‘Until they hatch.’

And that thought was equally terrifying, the idea that there was something in his chest – no, deeper than that, in his
soul
– that was waiting for the right moment to burst through in a fist of fire, to take control of his body. The idea of it made him want to scream, and he pushed himself to his feet, out into the aisle, pacing with his hands clenched in his hair. He went back and forth, wishing he could cut a trench in the stone with his feet, bury himself there forever with the skeletons beneath the church. Only when he stepped too close to the vicar, when he heard the man’s breaths curl up into the unbearable whine of the Fury, did he force himself to sit down again.

‘But why do people hate us?’ Brick asked eventually. ‘That’s the bit I really don’t understand. If we’re here to fight that thing, then surely people would be on our side, they’d help us, not try to kill us.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cal. ‘Doug, do you remember anything about what just happened, when we were filming?’

The vicar went two shades paler, and shook his head.

‘It’s as if . . .  as if that part of my memory, my life, just doesn’t exist. One minute I was talking to you, then I black out, then everything’s back to normal. Only . . . only it’s not, is it, because I tried to kill you.’ He wiped a hand across his face and Brick realised the old man was crying. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.’

‘Have you ever hated someone so much you lose your mind over it?’ Brick said, the words out of his mouth before he even knew they were coming. ‘Hated them so much your whole vision just burns white and it’s like you’re somebody else?’

Nobody answered. He shuffled, uncomfortable to be sharing so much.

‘I have. So many times. I used to get so angry.’

‘Used to?’ said Cal with more than a hint of sarcasm. Brick felt it now, even as he talked about it, as though there was something erupting out of his stomach.

‘Sometimes I can’t control it. I think maybe I’m going to do something I can’t take back, something bad, like hit somebody or worse. Like
kill
somebody sometimes. When I get like that, I feel as if
me
, you know, the bit of me that thinks about things and holds back from doing stupid stuff, as if that bit of me is pushed out of my head, like something else has just taken the controls. It’s hard to get it back.’

The sound of his own voice, speaking for so long, felt strangely alien to him. He licked his lips, wishing he had some of Cal’s water. He realised he hadn’t looked up from his filthy trainers since he’d started.

‘I think that’s what it’s like. The Fury. You get so angry, so full of rage, that you just lose yourself. Only, times a million.’

He swallowed noisily, realised that he was blushing again. Still that rage boiled in his throat. After a while, Cal spoke.

‘Yeah, that makes sense. But it’s not a chemical thing, or an emotional one, it’s
this
, the angels. People can’t accept them, because they’re so . . . what’s the word?’

‘Alien?’ said Brick.

‘Yeah, I guess. They’re so alien that they make people lose themselves. People just have to kill them, kill
us
. Can’t think of any other reason.’

More silence, as deep as the ocean. Brick looked down the church and saw the hot-dog stand from Fursville, burning, and beyond that the Pavilion. He snapped his eyes open, realising that sleep had ambushed him.

‘We should go,’ he said, wiping his eyes. When Cal didn’t reply, he looked over his shoulder to see that he too had dropped off, his head resting on his knees. ‘Cal, we can’t fall asleep.’

‘It’s okay,’ said the vicar. ‘You can. You have my word, I won’t move. I know what will happen. I couldn’t bear to be like that again.’

Brick scowled at the man. He was a feral, he couldn’t be trusted.
But just for a second, just to get your energy back.
He closed his eyes and looked past the pavilion, saw the ocean there. There was a boat on it, a boat that became an island, and then a house, and by the time Brick had swum to it, opened the door and walked inside, he no longer knew he was dreaming.