She planted the artifact in the east wing by moonlight, cold luminescence spilling through charred slats in the roof and casting a pallor over her work. She dug for hours in the cold earth beneath the floorboards, lying on the floor beside her wheelchair. Plastic hands made it difficult, but she passed the time in something like a dream, cooing to herself as she made the hole and placed the stone inside, then shoveled black soil over it and lovingly patted it down.
"Hello again."
#
Ms. Rigby's nurse came to the house the next day. The other servants had been sent away long ago, and the manor had fallen into decay, with dust choking keyholes, motes breeding in pillars of sunlight.
"Hi there, darling," Ms. Rigby called in her sing-song voice. It was an unsettling, off-key song that she sang, her voice more like that of an effeminate man than a woman; that was due to the cooked vocal cords. Her nurse put on a pleasant smile and wheeled the old woman down the hall to the room with the large cast-iron tub. There, the nurse gently removed Ms. Rigby's brown wig, then the doll-like mask that covered her face. Painted-on eyes and lips fell away to reveal an infected ruin. Pus crusted the puckering flesh at the corners of Ms. Rigby's weeping eyes. Her lips made a clacking sound as she smiled. Her mind drifted elsewhere, not wanting to be there as the nurse removed her prosthetic arms and legs and then slipped the dress off her stumps. Wearing arm-length gloves and a smock, the nurse lifted the old woman's blackened torso from the Victorian wheelchair and lowered it into the warm water of the tub. The water darkened as dead skin, like ash, flaked away from the limbless shell.
Ms. Rigby often found her dreams far more engaging then the real world, what with the empty skeletal house entombing her, rainwater dripping down through broken bones and punching holes in the dust-carpet. Such a lonely place it was, and dreams were far better. In dreams she walked and danced and cradled born-again children in warm, fleshy arms. It was a pleasant escape from the rigors of bath time, that was for certain. The sickly warmth of the water eroding away her burnt flesh paled in contrast to the feel of the icy cream that the nurse worked into her crevices after toweling her off. Her lidless eyes swam in and out of focus as she dreamed. The nurse was saying something now, placing Ms. Rigby back in her chair and pulling on her dress. Ms. Rigby nodded dully as her arms were returned to her. Cold plastic. These arms would never hold a baby again. Her rotted breasts would never receive an infant's yearning lips. She moaned. Needed her shot and her pills. Still the nurse kept talking, going on and on about foolish nonsense that the old woman never paid attention to. The poor girl probably thought she was fulfilling some need for companionship. Ms. Rigby didn't want this intruder in her house, this antiseptic-smelling invader who held her down in fetid bathwater and scrubbed her flesh away. This wasn't at all what she wanted. She wanted—
The bathroom door flew open, slamming against the wall and spitting broken hinges into the air, and as the nurse turned with a sharp cry, a thing poured through the doorway and filled the room with its glorious being. Ms. Rigby watched in silence as the nurse fell back into the tub and soft dead skin sloshed into her screaming mouth.
The thing fell upon her. The lights were flickering on and off, and Ms. Rigby felt a fierce wind tearing at her dress; she realized it was the beating of the thing's mighty wings, four feathered gray wings churning the air and blocking out the lights. The nurse was shrieking inhumanly now, and blood spilled over the side of the tub. Crimson speckles decorated Ms. Rigby's plastic legs. She kicked them lightly and cooed at the sight. She stared in wonder at the winged thing standing on the edges of the tub and clawing at the scarlet water. The nurse's head surfaced one last time, bloodshot eyes swimming in mangled cavities, then she went under and stayed there.
"Ooh." Ms. Rigby reached out with fused fingers, brushed the thing's beating wings. They began to calm, and the thing looked over its shoulder at her.
It was male — she knew that much from its nude form — but its face, a face surely beautiful, the face of an angel, was covered by a thick veil of flesh. Of course! Ms. Rigby turned toward the sink and fumbled for her mask. He had done her the courtesy of covering his visage. He didn't want to see her like this.
The angel took the mask in its hands and gently placed it over her face. "Oh. There. Thank you." She turned her painted smile up towards him.
On his arms and torso, the faces of a dozen tiny cherubs shifted in meat, smiling toothlessly back at her, their eyes shining. Some of them still had blood in their mouths. They gurgled at Ms. Rigby, and she couldn't help but laugh.
"My baby. My babies. Hello again!"
#
The angel followed her into the east wing. She took it into the room where she had buried the artifact. There was a gaping hole in the earth there.
"This is where you came from," she told the man as he stood in silence, cloaked in shadow. There was a gentle thrumming as his wings flitted. "Yes!" cooed Ms. Rigby. "We're together again, darlings. Isn't it wonderful?" Then she touched her hands to her mask with a sigh. "Do you recognize me, darlings? After all this time?"
The angel turned its veiled face toward her, and its wings rose up high and spread in the waning sunlight. It was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen; for the first time in years she wished she could cry.
She ran her plastic fingers over his chiseled muscles, over the plump, sighing faces of the cherubs nestled there. "This is how God made the angels," she told them. "But the angels were made of light, and you …" Her gaze turned to the burned room.
A cherub's mouth yawned, and something dark and wet writhed in the back of its throat. "Are you hungry?" she asked. "Again? Oh dear. Hello again."
She would have to call the servants back. There were mouths to feed now.
#
She found him a pair of pants in her husband's wardrobe. The angel followed her through the house as she tried to think. So many mouths after so long! She wasn't entirely prepared for this. A mother's love wasn't quite enough, was it? And now the cherubs were staring to cry, faces pinching and twisting in the angel's flesh.
They were in the day room when the angel seized the sheet covering a sofa and yanked it off, hurling it across the room in a ball. "Now you behave!" Ms. Rigby croaked. The cherubs' whining stabbed into the pits of her ears. She thrust her arms into the air. "Stop it! Dalton! Barry! Michael!"
The angel spun to face her, fists clenched. She looked into the dark eyes of the cherubs and, with a feeling of terrible dread, she realized she didn't know these faces. These weren't her boys. Not her babies.
"But I planted it in your room," she protested. She'd never felt helpless in her chair before. She'd never cared. Now, alone in the skeleton house with this tableau of alien faces, she felt like she was in a nightmare.
This was not the dream of her sons born again. This was not the dream of an inferno undone, cribs untouched by tongues of flame, young pink babies alive and loving her once again.
This was a nightmare.
She turned and wheeled herself down the hall. The angel followed her with heavy footfalls. "Leave me alone!" she cried. Her chest rose and fell with a terrible popping sound. Her useless legs kicked at the air. And she knew she still had that stupid painted grin on her face, like some kind of madwoman. She shook her head violently until the mask came off.
The angel grabbed the chair's handles. Ms. Rigby shrieked and pulled forward, crashing through a half-closed door and hurtling down the dark hall toward the east wing. THRUMMMMMMMM filled the air. The walls rattled like they were made of paper. Ms. Rigby rolled into the boys' room and threw the door shut, fighting to turn the lock with her plastic fingers. "Stop! Go away! I don't want you anymore!" she wailed.
The THRUMMMMMMM swelled and the knob began to jostle. Ms. Rigby backed across the room, barely missing the hole where the artifact had given rise to this … thing. This terrible thing!
"Go away! I don't love you!"
The knob fell onto the floor. The door thundered in its frame, as if trying to jump out. Ms. Rigby tore the rotted curtains from the nearest window and beat on the brown glass.
She had refused to let them tear the east wing down after the fire. She'd always known in her heart that her babies were still there, and often sat alone in their room for hours on end. She'd been there when her husband died in a bed upstairs. She'd been there when the artifact was delivered unto her, and she was told what to do. Somehow she'd known it would end here.
"Hello again!" she screamed at the shaking door, praying it would somehow drive the thing away. "Hello again!" And she threw her head back and sobbed.
The door exploded. The angel's wings pushed through and spread from floor to ceiling. Its faceless face focused on her.
She swung both arms into the window. Glass rained in her lap. She thrust her arms through the window and tried to pull herself from the chair.
Pop! Pop! Her arms came off and hung there, stuck on the jags in the window frame, mocking her.
The angel grabbed the chair and turned it around. Ms. Rigby spat and screamed as it was lifted off the floor. The angel carried her over to the hole.
She sagged against its chest. "I'll feed you! I'll love you!" But she knew that she couldn't feed it, for her breasts were hardened lumps of dead tissue; even now the cherubs gnawed at her, and their lips curled in disgust, and they sounded a bitter cry and then she was falling through space.
The angel looked down into the hole. There, Ms. Rigby lay in a bed of splinters, barely moving as she took ragged breaths.
She stared up at the angel. She tried to see her sons there, tried to love the thing. Her eyes pleaded with it, and she smiled a lipless smile.
The angel knelt and shoveled an armful of dirt over the edge of the hole.
Ms. Rigby screamed. She screamed for a long time, until the dirt filled her lungs and she was loosed from the prison of her blackened body.
#
Father MacKenzie came calling on a Sunday evening. Rain was pouring down through the ceiling, and his thick-soled shoes splashed through puddles as he crossed the front hall, calling the widow Rigby's name.
In the day room, on a small table, he found the artifact.
Picking up the tear-shaped stone, running his thumbs over the strange symbols etched in its surface, the priest held his breath and closed his eyes.
"Are you here?" he asked, softly.
The house was silent, save for the falling rain.
He slipped the artifact into his coat. Perhaps it had taken flight, to find its place among the hosts. Perhaps he would never set eyes on a single one of them. Maybe that was simply his burden to bear — always the deliverer, never the receiver. To think he envied the old woman.
Thrummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
The priest turned and studied the shadows. His hand, grasping the stone in his coat pocket, turned to ice.
The sound swelled to a violent crescendo. He shook his fists tearfully and cried, "No! I don't want to see! I don't want to!"
The wall before him erupted, and the angel's wings enfolded his body. And, for one second, before a dozen tiny lips caught hold of his flesh, it was all he'd dreamed.
