The Source Of His Power
There were no lamps or bulbs lining the stone steps, and I was beginning to worry that I might trip and damage myself down here in the dark, where it was likely no-one might ever find me, when I noticed that down below me somewhere there was a glow, bouncing off the old stone.
It couldn’t be much further, I was certain. Trent was as old as I, and quite infirm as well, and I could not imagine him travelling down much further than this, and then back again, on any of the times that I had spied him stealing through the door that broke onto the top of this spiral stair.
It was a lockable door, and the anticipation of finally having a chance to see what was down here diluted the strain that the journey was having on my legs and back. This was Trent’s house, and though I was his long-time guest, there were still certain parts of it, and of his privacy, that he guarded jealously.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t resent this a little.
The light grew in intensity as I descended. Finally, a dozen or so more hard stone steps down, the stairway ended in a mean little wooden door. The door was only barely tall enough for a man, and worn enough at its edges that it didn’t look sufficient to protect any valuable treasure or secret, the individual planks rounded at their edges. Damp and drought had worked at them, until now they had shrunk against each other, and there were long, worn gaps between them.
The light shone through where the door sat lonely in the frame, and through these long, vertical gaps. It had a peculiar aspect to it, soft and natural for all of its intensity. It looked for all the world as if it opened out onto a gloriously sunny day, even though it and I were deep below the ground. It was disorienting.
I chose to submit to the curiosity that had brought me this far, and pushed on. There was an old, blackened metal handle to the door, and I took it, and stepped forward, half expecting to meet the resistance of a lock.
There was none, and I stepped through, not knowing what to expect.
But not expecting what I found at all.
Jonathan Trent and I had known each other ever since our respective parents had seen fit to send us both to the same horrific and Draconian boarding school, over half a century before.
Trent called me friend from the off, but I knew that we were truly rivals. Every achievement I reached, I found myself outstripped, by a man who was otherwise neutral and mundane, but who somehow found himself easily reaching for the higher hoop. In sports, and in studies, and in business, the boy and the man won endlessly, garnering a half-dozen successes for each one managed by his peers.
However, when the markets crashed ten years hence, and the rest of us lost everything, he stood over us, untouched and dominant, and I never really knew what had allowed him to get away with it.
When I was finally divested of the final shreds of my estate by a departing wife bored of the near-poverty of the only slightly wealthy, Trent invited me to stay with him here at the mansion house until I “got back on my feet”, and though masked as a generous and magnanimous offer, we both knew that he was really showing me that he was still beating me at the game of life, and offering me the chance to surrender.
Having no other options, I had to accept his offer. Though I confess that I had never fully overcome the desire to know how Trent managed it… how he had pulled off the sustained trick of coming out on top.
After noticing him sneak, almost every other night, behind the only locked door in the house that I couldn’t account for by counting windows or performing rudimentary arithmetic with the dimensions of other rooms, I had become a touch obsessed with the notion that this was where the secret to his success lay – some secret hidden stash of plundered treasures that he used to subsidise any faltering limbs of his business, perhaps, or a wealth of compromising materials that might have been used to blackmail favourable results from old school masters or later, government inspectors.
To be honest, I don’t know what I really expected, but I didn’t expect what I found.
The man sat in the middle of the floor, his head bowed as if sleeping. Around him, and binding him, were chains. Many chains, their links as thick as fingers and as grey as concrete. The room was otherwise sparse… no food remains or human waste, and no furniture. Very little dust. No window, but at this depth I hadn’t expected one.
There were no candles or lamps or bulbs in the room at all. Despite the impression the light coming through the door had given, there was only a soft, comfortable glow actually in the room, but there was no clear source for it. I even looked to the man in a moment of twisted intuition, but if he was somehow the origination point of this illumination, it was masked from me. Instead, it was diffused, the air shining around him, not from him.
He looked broken, wasted somehow.
He looked up.
There was a weary defiance in the way he looked at me, but he kept his tone even.
“You aren’t Jonathan Trent.” He said. No question in it, just a statement, and it seemed clear that this wasn’t a man who would often ask without already knowing the answer. He paused. Looked to one side of me, as if sniffing the air, and a brief look of distaste flickered on his face, as if he had caught a scent of something vile, but then it was gone. For a second, there was confusion, and then: “You are Michael Templeton.”
“How do you…?” I began, but then thought better of it. It seemed like the least of the many unlikely things that I had been introduced to, since walking through the door. I wanted to conserve my incredulity for a point where it might have more currency.
“Jonathan Trent is gone.” He said, and then, “He has kept me here for a very long time. Fifty years, at least.”
Fifty years seemed like it was about right, if this man had somehow helped Jonathan build his wonderful life. And though the room had no outward signs of being inhabited for all that time, the condition of his rags, and the wear on the chain links where they had rubbed against each other and filled with rust seemed to bear it out.
“And yet,” I said, “you don’t look nearly that old.” Because he didn’t. Though at first his face had been worn, and dirty, the more I looked at him the more I realised that I was looking at a very young man. And I also realised that I hadn’t, in all of the times that I had seen Trent come down here, ever seen him carry any food, or water.
And there was the other thing, as well. This man was an exceptional creature, indeed!
“I have lived a very long time. Long enough that the time that I have been captive here, measured against the amount of time that I have been alive, and the amount of time that I will yet live, is almost beneath notice.” He winced, then. “But to me, this place is all noise and detail and dirt. I am built for grander things, and every second I have spent trapped down here has been forever.”
“But… so how did Jonathan capture you? How has he kept you here? He is only a man, after all – couldn’t you have evaded him? Or overpowered him in the intervening years? Especially now, after he had grown so old?”
“When he and I first met, he was lucky, that’s all. My focus was elsewhere, and Trent was, for various reasons, able to blindside me. I think it was as much of an accident for him as anything else, but it was also far too easy for him to do. At the time, I think he had no idea of what I am. Not really.” He looked away from me. “And as to how he managed it, and how he has kept me here, and kept me weak, it is simple: Jonathan Trent doesn’t believe in what I am, and that makes me powerless.”
“He didn’t believe…” I said, spluttering a little. “…but you have those wings!”
“I do not mean that Trent did not understand my basic nature. He is no fool, after all.” He seemed to struggle to find the next words, and I felt very much that it was explaining these things to me, rather than the concepts themselves, that was giving him problems.
As the son of a well-known physicist, this was not as unfamiliar expression as I would like – in childhood, I would ask him questions about the world around me all the time, and it wasn’t until many years later that I realised that his impatience with these questions was born out of the knowledge that he was having to simplify his answers to the point where, at least to him, they were almost unrecognisable from the facts of matter, so that I would understand him.
“…No fool,” the man continued, “but not completely a man, either.”
“What on earth do you mean, man?” I replied.
“You must understand that what I experience of the world is very different from that which you experience. We are all bound by basic laws of reality – of gravity, and the chemistry of fire, and the abilities of light. But I am conscious of deeper, or more complex laws, and my functions in the world are important at levels that you aren’t privy to.”
“You mean, you are about the business of Heaven?” I suggested.
“Yes, and yet no. In fact, that illustrates the problem. You see me as an angel, and it is possible, by the process of how notions form and items get their names, that that is what I am. But we don’t know ourselves as angels. We are simply what we are.”
“But you speak to God? You work in God’s name?”
“I have never met a god, nor met anyone who ever met a god. But we are driven by a higher purpose. A higher, deeper understanding of the world, that drives us to fulfil certain roles that seem inexplicable to your kind.” He looked me in the eye. “With only one limited view onto this nature, does that sound like God?”
“Yes,” I said, with my bewildered agnostic’s view of the subject, “I admit, it does.”
“Human faith in God doesn’t give us power. God isn’t an authority that we recognise. But we have our roles. And those roles are intricately in-tune with human nature. Without human complicity, we cannot carry them out. Our ability to influence the world around us dissipates, when met with a lack of affinity in your kind.” He paused. “Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I responded, because my father was a physicist, and one inherits some things from one’s father, “but I am still unclear on what exactly your role is? What is it that Trent didn’t believe?”
“My specific function is the harrowing of murderers.” He said.
“Jonathan Trent killed someone?” I replied, and felt an odd pang of relief.
“You misunderstand. As I told you, he and I met by accident. I found myself in a London alley, preparing to strike my subject, and that was when he found me.”
“Ah. And overpowered you?” I said, confused. “But I still don’t understand how.”
“Michael Templeton, you believe that murder is wrong. You believe that ultimately, whether the law finds them or not, a murderer is punished for their actions, by Heaven or by their own tormented, guilt-ridden soul.”
I thought about the last few days, and sighed.
“Yes, I do believe that much, I’m afraid.”
“And you believe in justice for the murdered.”
I nodded.
“…And I am the embodiment and the engine of that belief. I do not physically assault the perpetrators of this most awful of crimes, but I have the ability to prod and provoke the memory of their actions, until it becomes too much to bear. It is my function.”
I shuddered inwardly, but he didn’t notice. I admit now that it sounded like the most horrid of ideas.
“But Jonathan Trent does not believe in guilt. Jonathan Trent does not believe in love, or justice. Jonathan Trent does not believe in anything, and his proximity made me impotent against him.”
“But… so… you can’t, and haven’t… You haven’t helped Trent over the years? He hasn’t taken anything from you, and used it to his own benefit?”
“I couldn’t have helped him even if it had been my wish. In fact, I don’t think he had any idea what to do with me. Around him, I am reduced to a shell.”
I considered this, and suddenly the weight of all this arcane knowledge began to crush me down.
“And now?” I asked, dreading the response.
“And now.” He replied, and seemed to consider the question for a second.
Then, the chains around his torso and legs began to stretch and jangle against some tension that I couldn’t see. Until finally, they burst. Broken links snapped against the walls, and rained down across the room. And amid all this chaos, his wings opened and filled the dull air of this pathetic prison.
He stood, and the wings, acting as if on their own, folded down until they were pressed closer against his back. He walked toward me, where I stood in the doorway, and for the first time, he smiled.
“I am eager to get back to my duties.” He said.
“I am not surprised.” I responded, now trying to hide the fear in my voice, as this alien thing stood tall over me.
“I thank you for the strength of your belief, Michael Templeton.” He said, and moved past me, heading in even, quick strides toward the stairs. “You are unlikely to see me again.” He said, finally, before he was gone in a rush of feathers and air.
I thought about the body, probably now cold, in the master bedroom of the house above me. And knew, for all of the angel’s certainty, that he was probably wrong at the very last. With dread I knew that I would see him again.
