I choked, gagging on emotion. My stomach, the odd thing that I’d neglected so long that I could no longer taste food, cramped until I was left vomiting air onto the pristine grass. I saw her feet, shook my head until I was in vertigo, my vision blurred and failing. Fire crept up my spine until I felt flushed, ill from shock.
‘Stop it.’ I said it somehow, even as heaves took my stomach again. My fingers clawed the grass, left an ugly patch on my Catherine’s grave. That knowledge, somehow made it all settle again. This person, this thing, was not her, could not be her, for the same reasons that I came to this place every single weekend. She was dead.
I wondered if I’d already entered Hell. I wondered if somehow I’d forgotten and taken my own life and simply couldn’t remember doing it. Maybe this was my torture. Maybe I’d already fallen.
I gathered what strength I had left in me to stand. My eyes stared at the scored patch of grass I’d left on her grave. I finally, with great effort, met the eyes of the thing before me. The sensation of my throat closing didn’t keep me from studying each detail. The earrings she wore were the same ones I’d given her for her 26th birthday. The birthmark that distinguished her eyes from any other set, was there.
I took her in quietly, and studied her as she studied me. ‘You’ve changed, Gabriel.’ She said.
I didn’t reply. Some part of me was still trying to decide if I had tipped over into insanity, or if I’d already taken the flightless fall to Hell. I felt confusion, looked down at my hands to see if they still had substance. When I looked at her again, I’d regained some of my composure, felt the tide ebbing back out. ‘You are not her.’ I said. I turned from her and picked up the dead lilies from my last visit. ‘Go away.’
I turned and walked away, light and shadow playing off of my body as the sun tried to break through the heavy growth of trees. ‘Gabriel.’ She said my name and I only walked faster, wanting to get away, crawl back into the sameness of my grief, the comfort it offered me. I saw the shadow of someone ahead of me and was glad for there to be someone else here, someone else who could break the disquiet that was thick in the air.
I stopped short when I saw who it was coming through the gate. ‘Michael.’ I said, flatly. There was no denying him. I saw him as clearly as I felt the hollowness of my own empty soul.
‘Gabriel.’ He replied. ‘You’ve wandered here long enough. It’s time to come Home.’ The last word echoed and I felt its power strike me.
‘No!’ I backed away from him only to feel the impostor come from behind me and wrap her arms around my waist. I felt her cheek rub against my back just as my Catherine had. My shoulders began to burn. ‘No!’ I raged, and tore her arms from around me, shoving her until she went stumbling and fell at Michael’s feet.
‘Where were you when I prayed to come back?’ I felt the burn intensify in my shoulders. ‘Where was He?’ I gestured wildly at the sky, hidden by the canopy of trees.
‘He wants you back.’
‘Now? When he knows he’s going to lose? He could have come at any time! I begged him. I BEGGED him to come and take me after she was gone.’ I felt my skin split on my back and cried out. ‘No! No!’
‘Gabriel.’ I heard her say. I felt blood skate down across my back. Felt my life begin to echo in my head as if I hadn’t lived it.
*****
‘Gabriel.’ It was His voice. ‘I’m going to send you to them. They need guidance. Help. You will be my watcher. The guide for the faithless.’
He’d never been given a chance to protest, to beg not to leave Him, or leave the warmth that living in heaven had given him. He had simply opened his mouth and cried, only to realize that he had been born into the very world he did not want to visit.
Somehow he’d managed. His mother had been an addict when he’d been born, and the first struggle was overcoming his own addiction to the chemical she’d unknowingly pumped into his new body. She’d passed not long after he’d been born and Gabriel had been adopted and adored by a childless couple living just outside New Orleans.
There had been temptation, growing up, yet somehow Gabriel had remained true to his purpose. He was there to guide and protect, to offer hope and faith. He had. He had protected, comforted thousands in his time there.
His father had passed away two years before he’d found himself in the hospital watching his mother die from cancer. It didn’t seem fair that their lives, already short, were to be consumed by worry and sickness. He had watched her fade away like a ghost, had whispered in her ear and shown her just before she died what he was, and seen the joy, the peace that took her in those final moments. He always knew which way they were headed, and been glad to see him be welcomed into heaven, thinking, one day soon, he too, would return home.
He’d watched them clean her room, watched the shell of her body be taken away, before he’d turned and walked down the long hall leading from the cancer wing. He’d seen her parents leaving, their eyes filled with tears. Something caused him to stop at her door, to push it open. It was there that Gabriel had learned the depth of true temptation.
Catherine had a glow about her that could not be superseded by the tubes going in and out of her. He’d spent the night with her, laughing and later, comforting her when the chemicals in her body reduced her to tears.
Catherine was his reward, he reasoned, his own joy amid the sadness that was his time here. Catherine was his home. He was where she was. She was where he was. And for the years following, up until the time the cancer came and claimed her back, they were one.
His Catherine. His personal joy. When she’d died, there was nothing left to give. The one that had been sent to guide, to give faith, was empty, faithless.
*****
Her hand rested on my chest. I grimaced, not from the contact, but from the agony of having the wings torn out of my back. They unfurled, forced out by a greater angel, a stronger power. I was light-headed. Dazed. My vision, an angel’s vision, was sharp, bright and lit on her face.
‘Catherine.’ I said, thickly. ‘Catherine.’ I cupped her face.
She was crying. ‘I love you Gabriel.’
‘Catherine.’ I said again. My thumbs stroked the wet skin of her cheeks. I smelled the scent of wood polish and ash, of thousands of lilies. Everything began to fade. I saw her take something and press it urgently into my hand, and then everything faded.
When I awoke, I unfurled my palm, only to see my cross, the one she’d given me, snaked around my fingers. The scar on my arm, healed.
I turned and saw her sleepily blink her eyes open. ‘Good morning.’
And I smiled for the first time in a century.