The Fallen

PROLOGUE

LEBANON, TENNESSEE, 1995

The Tennessee night was screaming.

Eric Powell ran clumsily through the tall grass behind his grandparents’ house. He stumbled down the sloping embankment toward the thick patch of swampy woods beyond, hands pressed firmly against his ears.

“I’m not listening,” he said through gritted teeth, on the verge of tears. “Stop it. Please! Shut up.”

The sounds were deafening, and he wanted nothing more than to escape them. But where? The voices were coming from all around.

Eric ran deeper and deeper into the woods. He ran until his lungs felt as if they were on fire, and the beating of his heart was almost loud enough to drown out the sinister warnings from the surrounding darkness.

Almost.

Beneath a weeping willow that had once been a favorite place to escape the stress of teenage life, he stopped to catch his breath. Warily he moved his hands away from his ears and was bombarded with the cacophonous message of the night.

“Danger,” warned a tiny, high-pitched squeak from the shadows by the small creek that snaked through the dark wood. “Danger. Danger. Danger.”

“They come,” croaked another. “They come.”

“Hide yourself,” something squawked from within the drooping branches of the willow before taking flight in fear. “Before it is too late,” it said as it flew away.

There were others out there in the night, thousands of others all speaking in tongues and cautioning him of the same thing. Something was coming, something bad.

Eric fell back against the tree trying to focus, and his mind flashed back to when he first began to hear the warnings. It had been June 25, of that he was certain. The memory was vividly fresh, for it had been only two months ago and it was not easy to forget one’s eighteenth birthday—or the day you begin to lose your mind.

Before that, he heard the world just like any other. The croaking of frogs down by the pond, the angry buzz of a trapped yellow jacket as it threw itself against the screens on the side porch. Common everyday sounds of nature, taken for granted, frequently ignored.

But on his birthday that had changed.

Eric no longer heard them as the sounds of birds chirping or a tomcat’s mournful wail in the night. He heard them as voices, voices that exalted in the glory of a beautiful summer’s day, voices that spoke of joy as well as sadness, hunger, and fear. At first he tried to block them out, to hear them for what they actually were—just the sounds of animals. But when they began to speak directly to him, Eric came to the difficult realization that he was indeed going insane.

A swarm of fireflies distracted him from his thoughts, their incandescent bodies twinkling in the inky black of the nighttime woods. They dipped and wove in the air before him, their lights communicating a message of grave importance.

“Run,” was the missive he read from their flickering bioluminescence. “Run, for your life is at risk.”

And that is just what he did.

Eric pushed off from the base of the tree and headed toward the gurgling sounds of the tiny creek. He would cross it and head deeper into the woods, so far that no one would ever find him. After all, he had grown up here and doubted there was anyone around who knew the woods better.

But then the question came, the same question that the rational part of his mind had been asking since the warnings began.

What are you afraid of?

The question played over and over in his head as he ran, but he did not know the answer.

Eric jumped the creek. He landed on the other side awkwardly, his sneakered foot sliding across some moss-covered rocks and into the unusually cold water.

The boy gasped as the liquid invaded his shoe, and he scrambled to remove it from the creek’s numbing embrace. Its chilling touch spurring him to move faster. He ducked beneath the low-hanging branches of young trees that grew along the banks of the miniature river, then he plunged deeper into the wilderness.

But what are you running from? a rational voice asked, not from the woods around him but from his own mind. His own voice, a calm voice, that sought to override his sense of panic. This voice wanted him to stop and confront his fears, to see them for what they really were. There is no danger, said the sensible voice. There is nobody chasing you, watching you.

Eric slowed his pace.

“Keep running,” urged something as it slithered beneath an overturned stump, its shiny scales reflecting the starlight.

And he almost listened to the small, hissing voice, almost sped up again. But then Eric shook his head and began to walk. Others called to him from the bushes, from the air above his head, from the grass beneath his feet, all urging him to flee, to run like a crazy person, which was exactly what he decided he was.

At that moment, Eric made a decision. He wasn’t going to listen to them anymore. He wasn’t going to run from some invisible threat. He was going to turn around, go back to his grandparents’ home, wake them up, and explain what was happening. He would tell them that he needed help, that he needed to get to a hospital right away.

His mind made up, Eric stopped in a clearing and looked up into the early-morning sky. A thick patch of gray clouds that reminded him of steel wool slowly rubbed across the face of a radiant moon. He didn’t want to hurt his grandparents. They had already been through so much. His mother, their daughter, pregnant and unwed, died giving birth to him. They raised him as if he were their own, giving him all the love and support he could have ever hoped for. And how would he repay them? With more sadness.

Scalding tears flooded his eyes as he imagined what it would be like when he returned to the house and roused the poor elderly couple from sleep. He could see their sad looks of disappointment as he explained that he was hearing voices—that he was nineteen years old and losing his mind.

And as if in agreement, the voices of the night again came to life: chattering, wheezing, tremulous, quavering, gargling life.

“Run, run,” they said as one. “Run for your life, for they have arrived!”

Eric looked around him; the ruckus was deafening. Since his bout with madness began, never had the voices been this loud, this frantic. Maybe they suspected he was coming to his senses. Maybe they knew that their time with him would soon be ending.

“They are here! Flee! Hide yourself! It is not too late. Run!”

He spun around, fists clenched in angry resignation. “No more!” he yelled to the trees. “I’m not going to listen to you anymore,” he added to the air above his head and the earth beneath his feet. “Do you understand me?” he asked the darkness that encircled the clearing.

Eric turned in a slow circle, his insanity still attempting to overwhelm him with its clamorous jabber. He could stand it no more.

“Shut up!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

And all went instantly quiet.

As intolerable as the voices had become, the sudden lack of them was equally extreme. There was nothing now: no buzz of insects, no cries of night birds. Not even leaves rustled by the wind. The silence was deafening.

“Well, all right then,” he said, speaking aloud again to make sure that he hadn’t gone deaf. Made uneasy by the abrupt hush, he turned to leave the small clearing the way he had entered.

Eric stopped short. A lone figure stood on the path.

Was it a trick of the shadows? The woods, darkness, and moonlight conspiring to drive him crazier than he already was? Eric closed his eyes and opened them again trying to focus on the manlike shape. It still appeared to be somebody blocking his way.

“Hello?” He moved tentatively closer to the dark figure. “Who’s there?” Eric still could not make out any details of the stranger.

The shape came toward him, and so did the darkness, as if the undulating shadows that clung to the figure were part of his makeup. The comical image of Pig Pen from the Charlie Brown cartoons, surrounded by his ever present cloud of dust and dirt, quickly flashed across Eric’s mind’s eye. In a perverse way it did kind of remind him of that, only this was far more unnerving.

Eric quickly stepped back.

“Who is it?” he asked, his voice higher with fear. He had always hated how his voice sounded when he was afraid. “Don’t come any closer,” he warned, making a conscious effort to bring the pitch down to sound more threatening.

The figure cloaked in darkness stopped in its tracks. Even this much farther into the clearing, Eric could not discern any features. He was beginning to wonder if his psychosis had started to play games with him, this shadow being nothing more than a creation of his insanity.

“Are…are you real?” Eric stammered.

It was as if he had screamed the question, the wood was still so unusually silent.

The darkness in the shape of a man just stood there and Eric became convinced of its unreality. Yet another symptom of the breakdown, he thought with a disgusted shake of his head. It couldn’t stop with hearing voices, he chided himself, oh no, now I have to see things.

“Guess that answers that question,” Eric said aloud as he glared at the figment of his dementia. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Miss your cue or something? When I realize you’re nothing but crazy bullshit my mind made up, you’re supposed to disappear.” He waved the shape away. “Go. I know I’m nuts, you don’t need to prove it. Beat it.”

The figure did not move, but the covering of shadows that hugged it did. The darkness seemed to open. Like the petals of some night-blooming flower, the ebony black peeled away to reveal a man within.

Eric studied the man, searching his memory for some glimmer of recognition, but came away with nothing. He was tall, at least six feet, and thin, dressed in a black turtleneck, slacks. And despite the rather muggy temperature, he noticed the man was wearing a gray trench coat.

The man seemed to be studying him as well, tilting his head from one side to the other. His skin was incredibly pale, almost white. His hair, which was worn very long and severely combed back, was practically the same color. Eric had gone to elementary school with a girl who looked like that; her name was Cheryl Baggley and she, too, had been albino.

“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Eric said to the man, “but…” he stammered as he tried to formulate the most sane way to ask the question. “You are real…right?”

The man did not respond at once. As the mysterious stranger pondered the question, Eric noticed his eyes. The oily shadow that had cocooned him previously seemed to have pooled in his eye sockets. He had never seen eyes as deep and dark as these.

“Yes,” the pale-skinned man said curtly, his voice sounding more like the caw of a crow.

Startled, Eric didn’t grasp the meaning of the man’s sudden reply and stared at him, confused. “Yes? I don’t…” He shook his head nervously.

“Yes,” the man again responded. “I am real.” He emphasized each of the words as he spoke them.

His voice was strange, Eric thought, as if he were not comfortable speaking the language.

“Oh…good, that’s good to know. Who are you? Were you sent to find me?” he questioned. “Did my grandparents call the police? I’m really sorry you had to come all the way out here. As you can see, I’m fine. I’m just dealing with some stuff and…well, I just need to get back to the house and have a long talk with…”

The man stiffly held up a pale hand. “The sound of you, it offends me,” he said, a snarl upon his lips. “Abomination, I command you to be silent.”

Eric started as if slapped. “Did…did you just call me an abomination?” he asked, confusion and fear raising the pitch of his voice again.

“There are few words in this tongue that define the likes of you better,” growled the stranger. “You are a blight upon His favored world, an abhorrence in the eyes of God—but you are not the one that incites me so.” The hand held out to silence the boy was turned palm up. Something had begun to glow in its ghostly pale center. “However, that does not change the reality that you must be smited.”

Eric felt the hair at the back of his neck stand on end, the flesh on his arms erupt in tingling gooseflesh. He didn’t need the voices of the wood to warn him that something was wrong; he could feel it in the forest air.

He turned to run, to hurl himself through the thick underbrush. He had to get away. Every fiber of his being screamed danger, and he allowed the primitive survival mechanism of flight to overtake him.

Four figures suddenly blocked his way, each attired as the stranger, each with a complexion as pale as the face of the full moon above. How is this possible? His mind raced. How could four people sneak up on him without making a sound?

Something whined at the newcomers’ feet, and he saw a young boy crouched there. He was filthy, naked, his hair long and unkempt, a thick string of snot dripping down from one nostril to cling to his dirty lip. The boy’s expression told Eric that there was something wrong with him—that he was touched in some way. And then he noticed the leather collar that encircled the child’s neck, and the leash that led to the hand of one of the strangers, and Eric knew something was very wrong indeed.

The boy began to strain upon the leash, pointing a dirt-encrusted finger at him, whining and grunting like an animal.

The strangers fixed their gazes upon Eric with eyes of solid shadow and began to spread out, eliminating any chance of escape. The wild boy continued to jabber.

Eric whipped around to see that the other figure had come closer. His hand was still outstretched before him—but now it was aflame.

His mind tried to process this event. There was a fire burning in the palm of the man’s hand, and the most disturbing thing was, it didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

Eric felt his legs begin to tremble as the orange-and-yellow flame grew, leaping hungrily into the air. The stranger moved steadily closer. Eric wanted to run screaming, to lash out and escape those who corralled him, but something told him it would be for naught.

Fear overcame him and he fell to his knees, feeling the cold dampness begin to soak through his pants. There was no reason for him to turn around; the feral child growled at his back and he knew the four strangers now moved to flank him. He kept his gaze on the man standing above him holding fire in the palm of his hand.

“Who are you?” the boy asked dully, mesmerized by the miraculous flame, which appeared to be taking on the shape of something else entirely.

The stranger looked upon him with eyes black and glistening, his expression void of any emotion. Eric could see himself reflected in their inky surface.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked pathetically.

The stranger cocked his head oddly. Eric could feel the heat of the flame upon his upturned face.

“What was it the monkey apostle Matthew scribbled about us in one of his silly little books?” the man asked no one in particular. “ ‘The Son of Man shall send them forth, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who do evil, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire.’ Or something to that effect,” he added with a horrible grin.

Eric had never seen anything more unnatural. It was as if the stranger’s face lacked the proper musculature to complete the most common of human expressions.

“I don’t understand,” he said in a voice nearly a whisper.

The man moved the flaming object from one hand to the other, and Eric followed it with his eyes. The fire had become a sword.

A flaming sword.

“It is better that you do not,” the man said, raising the burning blade above his head.

The boy watched the weapon of fire descend, his face upturned as if to seek the rays of the rising sun. And then all that he was, and all that he might have become, was consumed in fire.