Fallen Angels

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. She stared at the creature in front of her. Eyes darting from left to right, always moving, picking up every change. Like an animal, a hunted animal. Eyes too big for his long face, his skin too pale, his lips unnaturally small.  And his wings where horrible, scaly things, folded and hunched like bats.  This wasn’t an angel at all. 

Suddenly it flapped its scaly wings, a desperate attempt to be free. It rose too high, and bumped its head on the low cabin ceiling. It let out a high pitched screech, and flew towards the girl. She screamed as its talons dug into her arm.  She tried desperately to open a window, to shoo the creature through it. But it sensed her fear, and now deciding that it was prey, dived towards her. But she ducked out of the way just in time, and the creature hurtled through the window, it’s claws just scraping her back. She slammed the window down and watched it fly away, the blood dripping from her arm.

And she never saw her angel again.

20 years later… 

“Mummy, Mummy, I saw it again!” The little girl rushed into the kitchen, her long plaits flying.

“Don’t be ridiculous Lilly.”

“I did, I did! It was closer this time, peeking out from behind the old oak tree!”

“Angels don’t exist! At least not on earth.” 

“Yes, they do. You call Callum an angel when he tidies his room.”

She smiled and shooed Lilly out of the kitchen.

“Go and play in the snow. And don’t mention that angel again, you hear?”

“Ok Mummy.”

She watched her child play, feeling the scars running down her arm.

Lilly leaned back on the coarse heather, smiling at the rare Scottish sunshine. The sky was perfectly blue, only a few light clouds drifting along the horizon, birds diving and swooping among them. 

“Come on! I thought you said we could play football!” Groaning, she leaned up and glared at Callum.

“Why do you only want to play football all the time?” 

“It’s fun? Come on, lets go play down by the loch!” 

She sighed and chased after her brother, leaping down the rocky hill towards the loch, which was still turbulent and grey.  Then she stopped. There it was, her angel. Crouched over something at the water’s edge. She blinked, and it was gone. Slowly she made her way down. She kicked off her shoes when she reached the shoreline, feeling the wet sand between her toes.  Her brother reached the water line, his back turned. “Lilly! Don’t come any closer!”

He turned around, his face transfixed with horror. And she saw what was behind him, screaming at the sight of all the blood bleeding into the water. And looked up to see her angel standing on the other side of the loch, the wings splattered with red. She turned to look at the man face down in the water, a huge gash in his back. 

The man was Gary Bourne.  A local postman, he had been on his way to deliver a letter to Lilly’s mother when he was killed. Lilly said nothing about her angel all throughout the police investigations. She said nothing at all about it, actually. By the next Monday morning, the village was filled with gossip about his murder. When she reached the school gates, a huge crowd of students where waiting for her, desperate to hear what a corpse looked like. Lilly shrugged off most of the questions. She had something else on her mind. All this time she had seen the vision, she had been sure that it was good. But thinking about the gash down Gary Bourne’s back, and she wasn’t so sure any more. She felt nervous, and afraid every time she saw a glimmer of white, but it was never her angel. She wanted to see it. To speak to it. But it was never closer than 10 or so meters, as if it was keeping its distance. 

She didn’t see the angel. But she saw its affects. The next week there was another funeral, this time for an old lady murdered in her home, apparently by thieves. Lilly walked past her house on the way to the shops. The front door had claw marks scratched from top to bottom, windows smashed, tiles fallen from the roof. Suddenly she was scared, so scared. What if it was her next? 

By the third death, the threat of a serial killer was announced. Lilly and Callum where no longer allowed to play outside on the moors, and where only allowed to walk to and from school on their own. And they had to come straight back home, no more dawdling in the playground. But Lilly broke this rule. She burst out of school the second the bell went, too early for Callum. Instead of taking the usual route, she ducked round the backs of houses, leaping over garden fences until she reached the church.  She pushed open the rusty graveyard gate, shuddering at it’s creaking and picked her way over to the fresh graves. Gary Bourne, Elizabeth Oakden, Mildred Saxby. She felt sure that it was her angel. But why had it killed those people? She desperately wanted answers, but her mother had forbidden her to talk about it.

“It’s disrespectful, going around saying that these people have been killed by some magical creature that only you can see. People will think you’re crazy.” 

Maybe I am crazy, she thought, as she knelt down by their graves. There, at the bottom of Elizabeth Oakden’s grave, was a carving of an angel. “May she rest in peace.” Was written next to it. Lilly was about to move onto the next grave, but she looked back at the face of the angel. It was so small, she could hardly see, but the eyes looked narrow, the wings scaly and the hands clenched. Lilly shuddered.

“Mildred Saxby, forever an angel.” Again, Lilly’s heart beat faster.

But Gary Bourne’s grave was the worst. A huge statue of an angel stood beside, looming over her. 

“angel of love,

angel of hate,

angel of pain, 

angel of hope,

angel of God,

angel of the dead

Gary’s angel.” Read the inscription.

Lilly gulped. Had Gary seen the angel as well? And Elizabeth, too? Was that why they where dead?