If Angels Fight (28 page)

At that moment, I saw gray winter sky and felt the damp cold of the ice covered Neponset.
On old familiar ground,
said a voice inside me, and I knew Mark was back.

9.

Some hours later, passengers found seats as our train pulled out of New Haven.

“Ruth said you were waiting for me,” I told Mark silently.

And Red Ruth is never wrong
.

“She told me about Decker.”

I thought I had selected him. But he had selected me. Once inside him I was trapped. He was a spider. I couldn’t control him. Couldn’t escape. I led him to Ruth as I was told.

He showed me an image of Ruth pointing an automatic pistol, firing at close range.

I leaped to her as he died. She was more relentless than Decker in some ways. I had to promise to make my existence worthwhile. To make the world better.

“If angels fight, weak men must fall.”

Not exactly an angel. Ego? Id? Fragment? Parasite?

I thought of how his father had something like an angel himself.

His body, soul and mind were a single entity. Mine weren’t.

I saw his memory of Mike Bannon smiling and waving in the curved front windows of his house at well-wishers on the snowy front lawn. Bannon senior never questioned his own skills or wondered what would have happened if they’d been trapped in a brain that was mildly damaged. Then he saw it happen to his son.

When I thought that, I found myself in the dark tower again with two tiny slits of light high above. I found hand and foot holds and crawled up the interior stone walls. This time, I looked through the slits of light and saw they were the eyeholes of a mask. In front of me were Mike and Marie Bannon looking very young and startled by the sudden light in the eyes of their troublingly quiet little boy.

When the train approached Boston, the one inside me said,
Let’s see the old neighborhood.

We took a taxi from Back Bay and drove out to Dorchester. We saw the school we’d gone to and the courthouse and place where I’d lived and the houses that stood where Fitzie’s had once been.

My first great escape.

That night so long ago came back. Larry Cullen, seen through the eyeholes of a mask, stood with his thin psycho smile. In a flash I saw Mark Bannon slack-jawed and felt Cullen’s cold fear as the angel took hold of his mind and looked out through his eyes.

Cullen’s life was all horror and hate. His father was a monster. It should have taught me something. Instead I felt like I’d broken out of jail. After each time away from my own body it was harder to go back.

Melville Avenue looked pretty much the way it always did. Mrs. Bannon still lived in the family house. We got out of the car and the one inside me said,
When all this is over, it won’t be forgotten that you brought me back to my family.

In the days since then, as politics has become more dangerous, Carol Bannon has grown bolder and wilier. And I wonder what form the remembering will take.

Mrs. Bannon’s caregiver opened the door. We were expected. Carol stood at the top of the stairs very much in command. I thought of her father.

“My mother’s waiting to see you,” she said. I understood that I would spend a few minutes with Mrs. Bannon and then depart. Carol looked right into my eyes and kissed me. Her eyes flashed and she smiled.

In that instant the one inside my head departed. The wonderful sharpness went out of the morning and I felt a touch of the desolation that Mark Bannon and all the others must have felt when the angel deserted them.