Fifty-seven
David saw the concrete angel envelope in green fire.
And then came the thread of light tearing into the earth. Where it
touched the earth, the ground erupted. Dirt spewed skyward in an
expanding circle of destruction. Trees split asunder. Tombstones
shattered. Broken vaults disgorged from the bowels of the earth tumbled
in broad arcs out over the streets and sidewalks of Eagle Junction and
exploded upon impact in clouds of dust and scattered debris. Coffins
spilled forth and ruptured, spilling their horrific contents everywhere.
Within a two block radius on all sides, the windows of cars and windows
shattered. Car alarms shrieked. Neon and sodium vapor lights detonated
in showers of sparks.
David’s scream resonated with the roar of destruction
engulfing him in a nightmare that had reverberated down through his life
and planted the seeds of horror wherever they associated. They took root
while watching a horror movie, or while dreaming of his mother buried in a
cold winter night.
Or while thinking of the power it would take to make
his sickly life whole again.
His nightmares come to life. Somewhere ahead in the
maelstrom, his mother's body was being unearthed. He clawed his way
toward her in a panic, screaming for the thing in the sky not to harm her,
reminding it that both he and his father had given everything of
themselves they had to give. She had proven beyond any shadow of a doubt
that the mirror understood what it meant to be human. There was nothing
left for it to learn, and it had promised to free her should she prove
herself.
In that instant, David reconciled his memory of
irrevocable loss with the stunning horror of resurrection of the dead.
David crawled across raw earth at the bottom of the
evacuation, but was stopped by green fire. He watched from the bowels of
his own personal hell as the stone angel fell into the graves and burned
in emerald flame. He could not be certain, but he thought he saw the
angel spread her wings, leap into the sky, and take flight. From beneath
where it had rested, the earth parted and a shimmering transparent sphere
like a soap bubble rose into the light.
And then did the light die, and only distant echoes
roared, and raw earth fell back to cover the cavity. In the pale light of
a crescent moon, a hand erupted from the loose earth and reached
desperately skyward. In his nightmares, he had not known it as his mother
being reborn of the earth and her grave. Instead of fleeing in terror as
he had done a thousand times in those nightmares, he grasped her warm hand
and helped her rise wailing in defiance from the cold earth.
