Dark Angel
My friends were all up for trying the Ouija board in a graveyard, but this didn’t excuse me for going along with them, especially considering the warning.
Goodness, as though this evening hadn’t been bad enough; but yes, the real nightmare was yet to come.
The recurring dream I experienced as a little girl, now made sense.
Here I was, alone on an isolated road, with the sound of hooves cantering towards me, the thing, whatever it was, aiming for me, for some reason, wanting me.
I screamed, but this time did not wake up.
“No, please,” I whispered.
Why did I have to pay the price, when all of us were equally guilty for meddling with the supernatural?
Shivering, I recalled the picture in my brother’s Horror Annual; Death, the skeleton, in a hooded cloak, with yellow triangles for eyes, sitting on the mangiest looking horse, a sword raised high above his head in a hand of bone.
Then, it happened.
A black horse screeched to a halt at my feet. An arm reached down around my waist. I shrieked again.
The beast, snorting wildly, reared up, as a matter-of-fact voice said,
“Quiet! You’ll unseat both of us!”
I turned.
My terrified face met the night rider’s, who wore a cloak of crushed velvet in a vaguely damson shade. A sword hung from his belt, which was of a beautiful and intricate design, but the form was human.
Uncombed, tangled brown curls falling just above his shirt collar, framed cherubic features and his soft, hazel eyes, were the roundest I have ever seen.
His lips were of a deep pomegranate red, and lush.
His cool, measured voice said,
“Go!” and his horse jerked into a walk.
The full moon highlighted a road which was little more than a dirt track and full of potholes. No cars were in sight and an owl hooted. Then, I heard what sounded like a wolf howling.
I moaned, but he reprimanded me with the word,
“Hush!”
“I want to sleep!” I moaned.
“Then sleep!” he replied.
He pulled me backwards towards him, so I felt a human heartbeat and smelled his scent which was of myrrh. I knew this because my best friend Janine’s mother was an aromatherapist.
I remembered my Gran telling me that this perfume was used on dead bodies in Biblical times before burial and it would have been used on Christ’s body after his crucifixion.
I froze inside.
Yet I could imagine Janine and Emilie, my next best friend saying,
“What are you fretting about woman, he’s gorgeous!” but they were a bit nutty.
I closed my eyes as he pulled his cloak around me, sensing that you did not argue with this man or being and hoping I would just wake up in my own bed.
He leaned forward to check I was going to sleep and his hair brushed my cheek, which made my heart beat much faster and suddenly filled me with the wildest feelings, I had ever known.
Then I felt him raise his slight, almost girlish body upright again.
Was he the devil in disguise. Had God chosen me to accompany him to Heaven’s gates?
I didn’t care.
Just to be so close to a grown man, to this man, who was caring for me in some way, was worth more than all the money, gold or precious jewels in the world.
Had he sought my mouth to kiss, I knew, at that moment I would not have turned my face away. Now, it was but an empty wish.
If Janine had been in my place, she would have grabbed him, giving him no choice in the matter. I knew that such action would have been foolish for her.
I finally began to get drowsy under the thick cloth. This had to be a dream. It was too absurd. Alas, I remained conscious, though my eyes were closed as he turned into a yard where I heard hens cackling and barking dogs.
He lifted me onto my feet, leaving me little choice but to follow him into his house. It was terribly cold inside and old in style, though the furniture seemed quite new.
` My host threw logs onto a fire.
I sensed his disdain at my appearance.
. Then he strode around the large, drafty room.
“I have never seen such conduct,” he declared. “To think, my men laid down their lives; and that it was me who thought to spare the rod for future generations!”
“What?” I said, utterly confused.
Had he followed me out of that pub? Was he sitting at the back somewhere?
Why was he wearing these weirdo clothes? Sure, people dressed up at Halloween, but usually as vampires, not like something out of Madame Tussaud.
I went over the events of this night in my mind, after my friends had gone home and everything had gone wrong.
There was the walk into town and then to the town square bar. That crowd were there, who turned on the jukebox. The disaster might not have happened, but for that woman with white-blonde hair in the leopard print pants and suede boots with spurs on.
Boy did she know how to dance the Devil Beat Blues! Everyone looked at her. Then her gang followed her, and I joined in with them.
Why did they lie to me and say that the cocktail they bought me was non-alcoholic? Perhaps it’s a silly question, but there was no need for them to do what they did to me. They must have laced the glass with double or triple shots of all kinds of spirits.
I was in pain, being sick over and over again outside, with people looking on and they just laughed.
When the barmen looking after me looked for my coat, bag and mobile, all were gone, so I couldn’t phone for a taxi. Of course, they phoned home when I told them the number, but Mum, my step- Dad and my older sister were all out themselves. Mum and my step- Dad were at some crazy, all-night party, while my sister had decided to stay at her boyfriend’s. Dad was miles away in Le Mans.
To those bar guys I was just a young wastrel from a decaying French province, running wild.
That was when I said the prayer, asked for help to the mysterious Someone out there, anyone. Too late, I remembered the Ouija board experiment and that it was Halloween.
The rider’s voice pulled me back to the present.
“Sit,” he said, pouring himself a brandy.
I sank onto his chaise long, as he gulped down his measure.
“Democracy’s sword is the greatest for humanity,” he declared. “Ah, what a grief it was to me to witness human energy wasted in the manner I have witnessed!”
My teenage heart beat faster, as I gazed into those amazing eyes, full of a fire I’d never seen in anyone before. Nor had I ever heard such amazing words.
Hell, what was there to lose?
I went into full flirt mode, even beating my mother, pulling up my skirt even further than my thighs and lying back on the chaise long, gazing at him.
He seemed to explode.
I yelled, protesting as he yanked me off his sofa and carried me like a sack of potatoes up a flight of stairs before kicking open a door, shaking me violently, lifting me and then dropping me in front of a mirror.
“Look at yourself!” he shouted. “What are you thinking of? You walk around alone in night hours, looking and acting like a whore, seek out low life, then wonder why it cheats and robs you. Have you no sense of shame?”
I wept, for I was proud of my denim mini skirt with a Minnie Mouse patch on the pocket, my stocking top decorations just visible.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I — just — love you!”
“Nonsense!” he cried. “I am a military officer and statesman, you a girl. I give the orders and you obey!”
“What do you mean?” I cried. “Look, who are you? Why have you brought me here?”
“It is for you to find out,” he said in a haughty voice. “Do you go to school?”
“Of course I do!” I said. “We have to go until we’re sixteen.”
“Just as I desired!” he said, “Surely our country’s greatest achievement.”
I pulled a face.
“Such ingratitude,” he said.
He sighed, then folded his arms, staring at me sternly.
“Stay here,” he said.
At his direction, I disappeared between maroon-colored curtains of a four poster bed.
He opened them, threw his cloak over me, then marched away.
Wakened by a cock crowing, I sat up.
He opened the door as I stepped onto a wooden floor.
“Sorry for what I did,” I said, “and thank you for looking after me, but please, take me home now. I just want to go home and be in my own place.”
“A moment,” he said, and marched to a wardrobe, throwing some short, dark trousers on a bed.
“Here are breeches for you,” he said. “You cannot let people see you in the streets as you are.”
He then left the room.
Trembling, I stuffed my skirt into a large pocket, struggling into the pants which I rather liked, and which were probably his as we were about the same size. He was a little taller.
I wanted him to take me in his arms, for him to desire me. I longed to kiss him and wept a little as I knew it could never and would never be.
He was my knight, but someone I would never have. He didn’t look like the army man he claimed to be. He looked like a gypsy or an actor in a play or on TV. Maybe he was a person with an alternative lifestyle?
When I walked down the stairs again, a plate of bread, cheese, ham and grapes were waiting for me on a plate at a wooden kitchen table. He had already eaten his share.
Feeling obliged to accept everything, I munched my way through and accepted grape juice offered in a goblet.
Crossing into his living room, I saw that a sand timer stood next to a double-sided mirror.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Numbers and glass may shift Time’s sands,” he said. “Ages usually stand apart. They never quite meet but it left us a place so you could come to my house for me to guard you through the night. We must part now.”
A wind whipped up outside. Sand in the glass started to drop slowly, like a snake moving in its cage. Above us the Ouija board numbers flashed and moved.
The stranger raised a hand in farewell then made his way to the door which he seemed to melt through. I closed my eyes and said another prayer, this time, to the Lord Jesus.
When I opened them, daylight shone on a twenty-first century street. My watch read quarter to eight. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw a Renault Clio nearby in a familiar place.
I opened the door of my home to collect my bag for school, taking care to make as little noise as possible as my step-father and mother did not want to be disturbed.
No food or anything was on the table for me, which told me they must be in bed and they must have had too much to drink.
As I made my way to school, I only thought about this freaky, bossy man with looks to die for who for all his faults had helped me.
No ghost has solid flesh and a beating heart.
It couldn’t have been a TV company playing tricks could it?
If he was the devil why was I not now in hell? If it was punishment for black magic why had I escaped so lightly?
When I arrived at school everyone noticed my velvet pants.
“They’re so cool,” said Janine. “Where did you get them?”
“I found them at that new vintage shop,” I lied. “I bought them last weekend just before closing time. We’ll have to go shopping there some time. They also have a coffee bar.”
“Sounds good,” said Janine.
The bell rang.
“Guess we’d better make our way to class,” she said with a grimace. “So boring!”
M. Thomas waited for his class to file in then spoke in his mellow, baritone voice.
“Everyone, turn to chapter five, page one hundred and sixty four.”
Unable to stop myself I said,
“My God, it’s him!”
I stared at the page, feeling the colour drain from my face as I stared down at the photograph of a painting.
“Are you alright?” whispered Emilie.
M. Thomas continued, oblivious.
“You will see the portrait of Antoine de Saint-Just, the French Revolutionary and poet, also known as the Angel of Death.”
Saint Just is one of the most enigmatic, fascinating and controversial figures of the French Revolution, to some, a bloodthirsty tyrant, to others a tragic figure. Here is a quote from one of his poems.
“Dans la vertue l’audace se ranime
et la faiblesse est compagne du crime.”
“In virtue, courage is revived,
and weakness is the companion of crime.”
