PRESENT DAY I turned back into the truck. One of the guards–the one in the ordinary uniform–was still unconscious, the other in his black armor was sitting there as if he hadn’t a care in the world, despite the gun held on him by Father Antonio.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO As Alex appeared I heard several gasps from around the room. For all I knew, one of them could have been mine. It was one thing to know that Alex was a ghost and to know that what we were doing was supposed to call him hear to us. It was quite another for him to just appear there like that.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO It was quick and it was brutal. And then it was over.
Just like that, a dozen or more men were dead or dying right in front of me.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO Chanting in what felt like Latin–although a good portion of the words I’d never heard before–brought me back to the days when I’d been studying at the seminary. There had been many a class where we’d been expected to know the exact text of manuscripts that predated the English language itself by hundreds of years–translations not allowed.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO I arrived back at Mrs. Claire’s before John Smith. I debated if I were actually going to tell the women there about the details of our arrangement–that he’d be arriving shortly himself–but eventually I settled on not. They would find out soon enough; otherwise, it would only serve to complicate things further.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO “What in the world is going on?” I heard one of the people I hadn’t known that had been abducted with us whisper.
I didn’t have an answer for him, but at the moment, it was just as well. For just when he spoke, the cop in the dark armor–it was slightly shiny, which I hadn’t noticed until we were in the light of the back of the truck–glared at him and shifted his gun in a way we were all sure to notice.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re dead. Your brother is dead. Everyone is dead.”
Sure. Perhaps it was a bit of an overreaction. But my head was still spinning from that particular revelation.
SEVERAL YEARS AGO We ran. We ran like the very hounds of hell were after us, across that courtyard, right up to the very front doors of the museum. I kept expecting shots to ring out. To once again be shot, this time in my chest rather than in the back. And this time, I was sure, that I wouldn’t be so lucky.
PRESENT DAY When I saw that angels are fast, that really doesn’t help to describe how terrifying it is to be directly in front of not one, but two angels running directly at you–one with sword raised over his head and the other with a smaller, curved blade to her side.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO Time seemed not so much to slow as to go sideways for a moment, a whole series of things not happening so much as at once but rather in a timeless sort of mishmash.