dark. The clock on my side table says it’s three a.m. Helene stands next to me, her hair braided back, her face tense.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I had another nightmare.”
She runs her hand under my pillow. “And with the halo too.”
“I don’t understand why it keeps happening.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” she tells me. “Are you presentable?”
“Yes, of course.”
Without another word, she lifts me from my bed and pulls me into the Celestial, the fear of death melting within her wings.
18
Brielle
Helene’s wings push against the air, pulling us through the roof and over the old Miller place toward the outskirts of town.
Something’s wrong. I see fear crawling down the street. A sludge of blackness, a mist fogging the air above it, makes its way down the highway. It moves quickly, speeding over the pavement toward us. I see fear daily, but this . . . this is a lot.
Helene dips low, and my stomach lurches. We’re just inches off the road now, Helene’s thin arms extended. We approach the fear with the crazed speed of a drag racer, but as soon as Helene’s fingers make contact with the gloppy stuff, it hisses and dissolves, leaving behind only a foggy residue. Her hands have a different effect than Jake’s prayers, but at her touch the fear glubs and glops to a stop. It actually retreats. Or tries to.
We’re flying too fast for it to succeed, and Helene doesn’t seem to be keen on letting a single gurgle of the stuff escape. I’m mesmerized.
“Where is the fear coming from?” I ask.
I hear Helene’s voice in my head. “From the crowd.”
The crowd?
I lift my eyes from the highway and look ahead, but the scenery’s flying by so fast and it’s all so bright.
“There,” she says.
My eyes stream tears, but I force myself to focus. Just ahead, lining the gate to the Stratus Cemetery, are nearly a dozen people, their focus arrested by whatever’s going on inside.
And there is something going on.
Strange flashes of light split the night. They’re not yellow streaks, or orange, or even red like I’ve seen in the celestial sky, but silver, electric flashes. Not unlike lightning, but less chaotic, more focused.
Both of Stratus’s patrol cars are parked haphazardly at the entrance to the graveyard. Deputy Wimby stands guard at the gate, though by the fear pooling from the onlookers, I don’t imagine a single one of them is too eager to enter.
“What’s going on?”
Helene doesn’t answer, but her wings pick up speed, lifting us off the highway and over the crowd. Over Wimby. We fly over headstones and statues, over placards and grass wilting in the summer heat. I can’t help but notice how calm it’s gotten in the past few seconds, and then I realize we’re approaching the eastern boundary of the cemetery, near my mother’s grave.
My heart couldn’t beat any faster—not after that nightmare and Helene’s unexpected visit—but it’s trying its hardest.
And then I hear it. High pitched and eerie, like the sound of a missile falling. Every half second brings it closer and closer. I see nothing, but I sense it, hear it, the sound of something large dropping from above.
“Here it comes again!”
The cry comes from below us, where the sheriff squats behind a crumbling gravestone. His hat is askew, his orange hair almost neon in the celestial light. His walkie-talkie is pressed to his mouth.
“Everybody down!”
There’s authority in his voice, and even within the safety of Helene’s wings, I flinch.
And then destruction. A crash like I’ve never heard or imagined. The world shudders as that strange silver lightning explodes everywhere. So bright it cows the buttery yellows of the celestial sky.
Helene doesn’t slow, doesn’t wince. She moves forward, faster, if anything, and I see the willow tree come into view. Like the spattering of a strobe, the umbrella-like canopy of its branches spits shades of silver light into the sky.
Whatever’s happening is happening beneath that tree.
Where my mother’s been laid to rest.
Helene rises above it, giving us a bird’s-eye view. I look down in awe—terrible, horrible awe.
Mounds of dirt encircle my mother’s grave. Upturned soil and grass mingle in violated bedlam. Tree roots protrude like skeletal fingers from the soil, and the cement bench I’ve sat on so many times is nothing but a pile of concrete crumbles.
Nothing about this image makes sense. It’s like a sick kaleidoscope—the original image twisted and twisted beyond recognition.
And then I see the stone angel. The one who’s been weeping over my mother for a decade and