Grim by Em Jay

This is what I remember:

He stands by the howling void. Chalk white cliffs plummet downwards to the raging sea. The blue-blackness froths beneath him. Wind screams. It is absolute zero.

Shadows fall like dolls into the abyss. There are no cries of pain. Merely silence.

The Legion stands before him. Michael brandishes his flaming sword. His face is raw with suffering.

“Don’t do this, brother,” he pleas.

His cry falls on deaf ears. It is a corpse that stands before him. Razor thin. Pale as winter snow. He towers over the archangel, still as the grip of death.

He opens his hollow eyes. All Heaven holds its breath. The void yawns, grating its jowls. Its master smiles wretchedly. His flesh cracks like ice as he speaks:

“Either way, I win.” His voice is like bitter wind.

The pull of the Pit wraps around the Host like a vise. The weakest crumple like smashed mica. Their shards plummet into the abyss.

Michael’s bones shake. His sorrow turns to wrath. He roars, and delivers the killing blow. The serpent is crushed beneath him.

The corpse laughs as the sword pierces him. “Come with me, my brother,” he whispers. He takes him by the heel. Lightning strikes fire as they embrace. Michael surrenders himself to his adversary. Finally, the Host is freed.

The brightest stars blaze into the darkness. The void is sealed shut. They leave a graveyard of angels behind them.

Time begins.

Death is born.

“You should run, human girl.”

___

My body strained as I ran mad-dash down a twilit path, imagining hounds on my heels. The darkness of the forest transported me to a primal time.  Trees whispered ragged like ghosts in the wind.  Muscles honed from years of training propelled me onwards as crisp autumn air filled my lungs, spiced with woodsmoke and loam.  Instincts awoke and the desperate need to escape propelled me onwards, into the bosom of the woods, away from the impending threat- though it was only a waking dream.

“How do you run so damn fast, Callie!” coach had asked once in disbelief after I'd finished a 5K in 16:30.

“Rabid dogs,” I'd replied,

He'd raised his brow a mile high and plastered me with a pitiful stare.  It was no use explaining my unconventional techniques to the unimaginative, just like it was impossible to convey the sweetness of danger to the tamed.  That beautiful feeling:  heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through my veins.  There was nothing but me and the darkness.  Me and the night.

In the midnight hour, when the flocks of suburbia slept, I'd slip outside, onto the roof and down to the dead end of Halcyon Street. Tonight was no different- I had scrapes up and down my legs from the worn shingles.  Thorns from the rosebush  were lodged in my palms.  Come morning, mom would float about in her dreamy state and dad would be off to work- only Mo would notice the purple stains under my eyes and grin wryly, thinking I'd snuck out to party or rendezvous with the boy next door.

I smiled deviously, imagining my family's shock at my midnight escapades. Straitlaced Callie, the aspiring naturalist, surely not a nighttime wanderer.  It never occurred to them to ask where my ever-growing collection of artifacts, feathers, and unusual stones came from. Parents could be oblivious, but mine were incredibly so.  I guess that’s what I got for being the offspring of a workaholic lawyer and flaky artist, along with a disaster-zone house and gross amounts of freedom.

A crow cawed, knifing me back to the present. Golden twilight receded and I flicked on my spelunker-worthy headlamp, bathing the root-strewn path in yellow light. It laughed, flying from the path on tattered wings and soaring over my head. I reached into my jeans pocket and tossed a handful of dried Craisins its way. My offerings set it into a series of cackles as it swooped down and pecked at the food. Crouching down, I admired it, imagining sketching its dark form in charcoal on blue paper, adding it to the notebooks that documented my nocturnal explorations.

Those were my secrets: maps of the uncharted woods that had no name, wilderness survival skills clipped from books and magazines. Pressed leaves and flowers dried amidst documents of ruins and sketches of wildlife, even a pathetic poem or two.

I could name the constellations.  I knew the hidden hollows; I'd visited the forgotten lake and the ghost towns consumed by the woods.  I could navigate this forest by heart.  It was my heart, in a way.

“Keep out of the forests at night,” goes conventional wisdom.  Especially if you're a girl.  They think us defenseless, prey to rapists and murderers.  Instead of teaching us to fight, they give us warnings, forbidding us from the tempting beauty of the world.

They never speak of the fox's eerie cries, of lightning-bugs like will-o'-the-wisps and the smell of sweet, damp earth.  Of what it is to navigate by stars and see yourself reflected in a moonlit pool, like some lunar goddess of long ago.

I’d learned how impermanent things really were here- how bluebells wilt moments after being plucked, how a settlement could vanish in the blink of time's eye. There were rusted belongings of Civil War soldiers, forgotten graves bordering an ancient basketball court. Even a small, secluded pond with a rotting chestnut skiff, made of wood now extinct on the Eastern coast.  It was beautiful, and a bit sad, how easily things were lost to time.

The crow cocked its head and I cupped a few Craisins, daring it to draw closer. Bold, it hopped over, defiantly plucking the food from my hand. I reached out and stroked its blue-black wing.  It jolted back, hopped into the air and flew away through the darkness.

I felt the thrill of coming so close to a wild thing. Maybe that was why I sought the woods, for the rushes only it could provide. I’d seen strange things here, things all the science and reasoning in the world couldn’t explain away. Tunes fluted in the dead of night, whispered voices that followed me down the winding paths.  Ghostly eyes stared out from the darkness and strange silhouettes sliced through the moonlit sky.  There were fires that eternally receded, phantom cries like sound trapped in a vortex of time, and strange scents that tainted the wind.

Tonight was peaceful.  The woods slept.  I shed my worries like a snakeskin, casting away thoughts of calculus tests and prison- or, as the polite called it, high school.  I began to run again, taking a right at a burnt oak down a deer trail. 

I remembered the stormy night when lightning had struck the tree.  Thunder snapped like the jaws of a lion as it burst into a pillar of flame.  I'd watched it sizzle, mystified as the fire struggled against the downpour. 

The trail had perhaps been a road long ago, leading to the village church- now rotting wood and a crumbling stone foundation.  The dead had outlasted the living; they greeted me with silent salutes, their worn gravestones piercing the air with aged humility.  I paused for a moment, eyes lingering on the worn inscriptions. 

The vegetation that usually covered them was gone.  The marble shone under my light.  Knitting my brows in confusion, I knelt down to inspect a cracked stone angel.  Her kudzu veil had been snipped away by phantom hands.  Clippings littered the ground.  In fact, the entire graveyard had been tended to; I could even see the remnants of a wrought-iron fence, once obscured by ivy.