My name is Lily Madwhip and I saw the angel of death.
“Did you take a bath last night, Lily?”
That is not the angel of death. That’s my mother. Maybe sometimes she acts like the angel of death though. More often she acts like Anubis. He’s a god from Egyptian mythology. I read a big book on Egyptian mythology last year during library. It was huge and had full color illustrations. I love full color illustrations. Maybe I’ll be an illustrator when I grow up.
Anubis had a dog for a head. Not a full dog, but a dog’s head, just the head. He would take people when they died and weigh their heart on a scale with a feather. If your heart weighed less than a feather, you got to go on to paradise or something. I don’t think anybody could really pass that test. In health class Mr. Poyer said our heart is about the size of our hand clenched into a fist, and weighs almost a pound. I’m pretty sure a feather doesn’t weigh that much. Maybe an ostrich feather. Maybe that’s why ostriches can’t fly, because their feathers are so heavy. I wonder if they had ostriches in ancient Egypt.
“Yes, I took a bath last night. You brushed my hair, remember?”
Mom does that thing where she touches her chin like it activates her brain. “Oh now I remember. Well you don’t smell like you took a bath.”
I sniff myself. “That’s my clothes. They didn’t take a bath.”
“Oh, Lily! Go change into clean clothes. I don’t want you smelling like this. We’re going to the mall today.”
Yes! I love the mall. There’s a carousel at the food court and you can ride it for like five minutes for just a dollar. Of course, when you’re on the carousel it feels like just a minute, but when you’re waiting in line you can tell it’s five minutes. Also someone had the good sense to put a candy store right next to a toy store. That person deserved a raise.
I jump to my feet and run upstairs to change, “Can we go to the pet store?” I call down to my mom.
Ever since Roger got turned into mincemeat, my mom has been letting me get away with things she didn’t used to. I know if I beg enough, she’ll probably get me a new hamster. Or maybe a turtle. I still have two ninja turtle names left to use. No snakes though. She says if I ever bring home a snake she’s kicking me out to go live with it outside.
Mom sighs. “Just to look. You’re not getting a new pet. Your last one barely lasted a week.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is,” I hear her say to herself. I wonder if she believes it. Sometimes I wonder if I believe it.
I come back down in clean clothes. Paschar is tucked into my arm, dapper as always. My dad is putting on his shoes and coat and notices me.
“Leave the doll, Lily.”
I hug Paschar. “What? No!” I’m not leaving Paschar, he’s my angel. That would be like Ren without Stimpy or Gilligan without Skipper.
Mom pets my head and starts doing that thing where she slowly tries to pull Paschar out of my hands like a crocodile hunter trying not to get bit by a crocodile. I only bit her once, but I was six and she’s never forgotten. I thought that was the point of biting people… so they don’t forget. Anyway, I’m not going to bite her now. “I was thinking it would be just the two of us today. Just some mother-daughter time. How does that sound?”
“What about Dad?”
Dad stands up, “I’ve got a lot to do around the house, starting with reseeding the backyard.”
I can’t believe he dug my entire pet cemetery. He let me keep the shells leftover from Raphael and Donatello my ninja turtles, but only after he ran them through the dishwasher. I put them on my dresser in their honor along with a stick I broke to look like a bo staff for Donatello. I couldn’t find sticks that look like Raphael’s sais. Sais are like little pitchforks. So they can share the bo staff.
I don’t want to leave Paschar, but both Mom and Dad are against taking him. They’ve got that look parents get where one is ready to tag the other in if I start to throw a fuss.
“Okayyyy,” I mutter, “but let me talk to him first.” I know they’re both looking at each other like I’m crazy, but I don’t care.
Paschar tells me it’ll be okay.
I set him at my spot on the dining table facing the door so he’ll know the second I’m home. Of course, he always knows anyway. That’s what Paschar does… he knows everything.
Mom says the mall is twenty minutes away. Without Paschar to talk to it feels like an hour. I try talking to my hand, but I see Mom giving me looks in the mirror and I don’t want to add to her thinking I’m crazy. Instead I look out the window. There’s a guy walking a dog. I want a dog. But then I see that the dog is going to poop and the guy is going to pick it up with his hand inside a baggy and I decide maybe I don’t want a dog. Cats are cleaner. Dad’s allergic to cats though. They lick themselves and then their saliva dries up and it turns into dandruff and you pet them and their dandruff gets petted off and people inhale it and in my dad’s case it makes his nose clog up and he sneezes constantly. My Aunt Hazel has twelve cats. Dad doesn’t come with us when we visit her. She lives in Oklahoma anyway, and that’s a long way off.
When we get to the mall, its packed. Mom circles the parking spaces near the Macy’s several times trying to find a space. I don’t know why she doesn’t just park in one of the thousand empty spaces farther out. There are other people doing the same thing as us. It’s some sort of game grown ups like to play. Like musical chairs only with parking spots.
“I heard you made a new friend at school,” Mom says as we finally walk to the store.
“Maybe.” I don’t want to talk about Meredith, because I might mention her burning people or her melted Barbie Nathaniel. Sometimes when I talk about things I just say stuff without thinking and then find out I shouldn’t have said it. Maybe if I hadn’t told Roger he was going to die he wouldn’t have died.
“I got a call from your principal that you were in his office because of an altercation.”
“I don’t know what that is.” It sounds like some sort of vacation where you turn into an animal.
“Did you get in a fight with Lisa Welch?”
“No, I told her to go away and she ran off and fell on her face. Then her friends said I did it.” I don’t mention that I told her she was going to break her teeth and then she broke her teeth. I especially don’t mention that I had made it up but it happened anyway.
“So you didn’t touch her?”
I shake my head. “Is that why we’re at the mall? Are you going to abandon me here?”
My mom laughs. I don’t think it’s funny though. Some parents do that to their kids. They take them somewhere far off and just drop them off and then go home. I saw a cartoon once where someone did that to their dog. They pretended they were going on a picnic, then threw the dog a stick to fetch, and while the dog was fetching the stick they piled all the stuff back into the car and drove away.
“I wanted to find some new clothes for you, that’s all. You’re growing out of the ones you have.”
That’s not true. I don’t think I’m growing at all. We have a chart on the inside of the kitchen doorway where Mom and Dad used to have Roger and me stand up straight and they made a mark with a pencil and then wrote our name and age to show our height. I don’t think mine has moved an inch in over a year. Roger’s last measurement was back in August. Sometimes Dad stands there and stares at it and gets real sad, then goes and works on a dirge.
We walk by the food court. There’s like a hundred kids waiting to ride the carousel. I hope they clear out by the time we come back, because I like to get on and ride and then run back in line and get on the next time over and over until Mom makes me stop. The longest I pulled it off was a half an hour. I only had five dollars, but the girl who was working the carousel told me that I was such a good customer that I got my next ride for free as long as it was my last.
Oh shoot, I didn’t loot my piggy bank before we left.
“I forgot my money!” I tell Mom.
“Don’t worry, honey, I’ve got cash if you want to ride the merry-go-round later.”
She is being highly suspicious with her generosity. Normally if I forget to bring money I’m S-O-L as Mom says. That stands for something bad but I didn’t say the S word so it doesn’t count. I’m still not allowed to say S-O-L though, at least to other people.
There’s a lady with four little kids hanging onto her dress and she’s carrying a tray of food. She’s going to trip over one of the kids and spill all the stuff on her tray that she’d just paid for. Like any second now. Oh God, maybe I should help her, but what if I run over and startle her and she trips and spills the stuff anyway? Then it’s my fault instead of her kid’s fault. I don’t want to get in trouble. Nobody’s going to get seriously hurt. It’s just going to be loud and there’s going to be yelling and crying. Sometimes I wish I couldn’t see things before thy happen.
“Let’s hurry!” I grab Mom’s sleeve and try to pull her past the food court to get away before it goes down.
“What on Earth is your hurry?” she asks. Then the lady trips behind us and Mom turns to look at the commotion as the tray bangs on the floor and a soda spills on her kid’s head and he starts crying and she shrieks in panic and everyone’s stopping and looking except me because I already saw it happen. I think Mom pieces together a bit that my rush had something to do with the lady spilling her food, but she comes to the wrong conclusion.
“Lily, did you make that happen?” she looks at me and she’s got kind of a mix of fear and concern in her eyes. Not anger, thank goodness.
“No, what do you mean?”
She goes back to convincing herself that things are normal. “Never mind. I just thought– nothing.”
The sound of the lady yelling and her kids crying seems to fade away. But it’s not like a “we’re walking away” kinda thing, it’s more like someone twisted the knob on a radio and turned down the sound kind of deal. I look back over my shoulder and I can see her grabbing a handful of napkins and trying to wipe her son off, and there’s the son with his mouth open bawling, but the entire scene looks like I’m watching it on TV and someone pressed the “MUTE” button.
It’s not just me either. Other people are looking around kinda confused. I see a guy on his cell phone and his lips are moving but then he holds the phone up to look at it like it burned him and he adjusts his necktie and seems to cough but there’s no sound so he starts talking really loud and it maybe sounds like a muffled shout. Where did the sound go?
I look up at my mom who doesn’t seem to notice, and I call her name. “Mom?” but nothing comes out. My voice is gone. “Mom, can you hear me?” She turns to look at me, and I think for a moment she did hear me, but she flashes me a smile and then looks away. Maybe I’m going deaf? Why can’t I hear anything?
After we pass a kiosk selling phone cases the sound comes back. It feels like being trapped in a soundproof box and then kicking the lid off and finding yourself in a dinner party. Mom stops, still holding my hand, and looks at me.
“That was weird. Did it just get louder?” she says.
I nod. “I couldn’t talk.”
She ignores what I said. “How strange.” She’s going to come up with some explanation for what just happened, I know it. She always does. Sometimes I think I could melt the car with my brain and she’d tell me it must have been sunspots or something. I can’t actually melt the car with my brain. I can’t even pop popcorn. Maybe when we go back to the food court, I can have some popcorn. Only now I kinda don’t want to go back to the food court. There’s something strange going on there.
Puppies! I see the pet store. They keep all the puppies and kittens in glass boxes right out front so people can look at them. You’re not supposed to actually buy from those kinds of stores because someone said they get their puppies from “puppy mills” I thought mills were used to grind up grain. I read that in a book. Wouldn’t a puppy mill grind up puppies? Poor puppies. Maybe these were rescued from being ground up. I don’t know what people would use puppy powder for, but some countries grind all different parts of animals up for medicine. Mom says that’s barbaric.
“Can we look at the pets before we shop?” I beg. “Pleeeease?”
Mom looks across the mall at a makeup store. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to step into Sephora. You can look at the animals, but don’t touch. When I’m done in there, we go get you some new clothes. Deal?”
“Can we also stop by the toy store?” I ask. This is actually a trick. I know that if I can get her to the toy store, she’ll go into the candy store as a reward to herself.
“We’ll see what time it is when we’re done.”
Well played, Mom.
Now I have to weigh my options. Do I go look at the kitties first, because they’re so cute? Or do I go look at snakes because I know if I am looking at them last when Mom comes back, she’ll see them and any chance of negotiating a new pet goes right out the window. I don’t really need to see the snakes. They’re cute when they’re small but some get big and they can eat you. I don’t know how big the garter snakes get. I think I heard about a snake getting flushed down the toilet and growing to the size of the sewer pipes. They made a movie out of it called Anaconda or something.
I’m going to look at turtles in the back first, because those are my safest bet for getting a new pet, and if I look at puppies last, I know Mom will say no, but then I can ask to show her the turtles, already have one picked out, and she’ll say yes to that just because it’s not a puppy. There’s a big turtle who I could totally name Leonardo. I just gotta make sure he never learns what happened to Donatello and Raphael, otherwise he might not want to come live with me.
Everybody else in the store is running to the front. I wonder what’s going on? I walk over to the kitties/puppies section and see a pair of EMTs run past pulling one of those stretchers they lay sick or injured people on. Oh no, did somebody get hurt? They’re running back to the food court! I wonder if the lady or one of her kids ended up getting injured from the incident with the food tray. I can hear one EMT calling onto her walkie-talkie device.
“Upgrade to priority one. Send another unit. Possible priority two on scene.”
I don’t know what any of that means, but they sound urgent. Everybody’s clearing out of their way as they run down the mall. Her radio squawks a response that I can’t hear and then they’re both out of sight. The rest of the people in the pet store start talking to each other all at once about if anybody knows what’s going on. I see Mom across the way in the entrance to Sephora, and she looks at me, then back down the way the EMTs ran, then back at me, waves, and goes back inside.
Something bad is coming. I feel it. It’s not a knowing, like I usually do. It’s a feeling. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something strong and angry and it’s coming. I’ve never felt something like this before, and it scares me. I back into the pet store, bumping into a shelf full of bags of dog treats. Now I have to pick them all up because I always pick up after myself. Stupid dog treats.
Oh right, something bad is coming, I almost forgot. Now I see it. I don’t see the bad thing, but I see the people in the store with me, and they’re all looking shocked and horrified. They’re looking at me like “What did you do?” but I didn’t do anything. I just knocked over these dog treats. That’s not it. This isn’t now, this is going to happen.
“I didn’t do it.” I whisper. Why are they looking at me like that? Why are all the pets lying down? Why is the snake lying so limp on its branch? Why aren’t the puppies moving? None of the puppies are moving. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all–
The mall thoroughfare is dark. I don’t think anybody else can see it… it’s not like the lights went out, it’s more like fog but it’s black, and it’s coming down like octopus tentacles, slithering and filling the mall. I’m scared. I wish Paschar was here. Paschar would know what this is. He’d tell me to run.
Run, Lily, run.
I go out to the thoroughfare to a kiosk full of sunglasses. I’m standing in the black fog and looking at it as it wraps around my legs and over my shoes and makes it so I can’t see my feet. There’s a man at the kiosk. He’s got on glasses with a little magnifying lens and he’s a pocket protector with little screwdrivers and pliers in it. He sees me looking at my feet and asks me if I’m okay, but as he asks it his words fade away like the radio dial got twisted again.
Everything gets silent, all the people standing around, still talking about the EMTs who ran past are talking to each other, but I can’t hear them. They sound like they’re on the other side of a wall from me. They slowly start to look confused as everything goes quiet.
And then I see her. She’s walking down the thoroughfare toward me, not looking at me, but looking around her with something of a similar look of confusion on her face as I probably got on mine. The black fog is thickest at her feet, and I can’t see much of her lower half. It’s a lady with long, black hair and dark skin. She’s got a big, black coat on like they wear in old movies. I saw one once when I snuck downstairs and crawled under one of the living room chairs and watched what my parents were watching.
The lady looks at her feet, or where they should be. Then she looks up and sees me looking at her. She’s confused, but she also seems suspicious. I think she knows I’m seeing what she’s seeing. She starts toward me.
I am going to owe the swear jar so many quarters.
The air is getting cold. The man at the kiosk puts a hand on my shoulder, startling me, and I jerk away. I inch slowly back toward the pet shop, watching the lady watch me. She’s walking straight at me, stepping past people who seem to be yelling to try to hear each other. Nobody notices her but me. Please don’t get near me. Please.
And then I hear a voice. It’s calm, almost a whisper. It’s in my head but not in my ears, just like when Paschar is talking to me. The voice isn’t coming from the lady’s mouth, but it’s coming from somewhere on her.
Run, child, it says. I cannot stop her. She doesn’t understand.
“Who are you?!” I yell, but nothing comes out of my mouth.
I am Dumah, It says, we’re not here for you. You must run. We cannot be this close to each other. Run.
The lady is closing the distance between us. She can’t hear it. She can’t hear the voice. She sees me trying to scream but nothing is coming out and she’s marching toward me to do something to me. Maybe she thinks she’s going to help me. I think she’s going to kill me. She’s only feet away. The man at the kiosk with the glasses seems to get dizzy and stumbles back, clutching his arm.
I turn and run. I can’t go into any of the stores, they’re all dead ends. I can’t go into Sephora, what if she comes in and my mother meets her? I don’t understand what’s going on, I just run in the opposite direction of the lady in black.
All the animals in the pet store have stopped moving. Everybody’s pointing at them and some of the employees are pushing past customers to see what’s happening. Nobody’s making a sound. There’s no sound at all, it’s like a silent movie. Some lady is holding a puppy and it’s flopped still in her arms and she’s petting it and I don’t think she realizes yet that its dead. They’re all dead.
My mom comes out of her makeup store just in time to see me run past. I look at her and hope that I’m looking sufficiently scared for her to get the message and understand why I’m running. She mouths my name, but no words come out. Then she looks across the thoroughfare at the pet store and sees the commotion going on over there. I don’t wait to explain, I just keep running, pushing my way past groups of people, trying to outrun the black fog snakes that are all over my feet and legs.
I look back and the dark lady has stopped outside the pet shop. She’s looking directly at me, concerned, but isn’t chasing me. She looks at the glass case full of dead puppies and kittens, then back at me, and then slowly backs away and disappears into the crowd. I don’t chance it. I keep running. I run until I reach the escalators by the Sears and my legs are tired from running and I can’t breathe. I’ve been able to hear my own sobs for about a minute now, ever since I got out of range of the lady and her black smoke and whatever that was, Dumah, the voice coming from her.
“Lily?” my Mom finds me ten minutes later. She didn’t run after me because she’s got on heels and she probably figured I’d stop once I reached the escalator because I hate riding the escalator. I’m always afraid I’m going to get my feet caught in it and get sucked up into the machinery. I’ve heard that’s happened to people. Some lady in China fell into one and got ground up. I don’t know why people don’t just take the stairs.
“What happened, Sweety?” she asks gently. She doesn’t usually sound so genuinely concerned.
I don’t know what to tell her, so I try just telling her the truth. “There was this lady. She was dressed in black and there was this black fog all around her. And she was coming after me because I could see her. But when she got close all the puppies and kitties died, so I ran.”
She hugs me, but she doesn’t say anything. I can feel her start to cry and she squeezes me. I don’t know if she believes me or not. “I didn’t kill the animals, I swear. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.” I cry too and hug her back. I think deep down I don’t believe myself. If I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened. Dumah said it. We can’t be this close to each other.
Poor Leonardo didn’t even get a chance to be named.
Mom walks me outside to go around to the car. There’s a bunch of ambulances parked near the front entrance. Some people are standing around watching and gossiping. We hear a pair of ladies talking about an old man who had a heart attack while watching his granddaughter ride the carousel. There were others too, but I don’t hear the details. Just that several people had “medical emergencies”. The ambulances rush past with their sirens and lights on as we’re trying to get out to the highway. I think I shouldn’t have come here today.
“We’ll just order you new clothes online, how does that sound?” Mom asks as we watch the ambulances race through a red light.
“I didn’t do this.” is all I say.
“I know you didn’t, Lily.” she tells me.
When we get home, Paschar is not on the dining room table. I go up to my room to see if Dad moved him to my bed, but he’s not there either. Dad is outside, pulling up some of the weeds and dandelions from Mom’s garden. I go outside and wait for him to take a break. He doesn’t like it if you try to talk to him when he’s focused on a task.
“Did you move Paschar?” I ask him.
He doesn’t look angry, but he looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in weeks. I don’t think I’ve gotten to look my dad in the face in a long time. Not since Roger’s funeral at least. I remember he gave a eulogy and the whole time he just looked at me as he read it.
“Your doll is put away for the time being,” he says, “I was hoping maybe we could spend some time together instead. Do you want to help me garden?”
“I need to talk to Paschar.” I really need to. I need to know who Dumah is. I’m so scared, but I can’t let my parents know.
“You can talk to me, honey.”
I can’t. I shake my head. He’s not going to give me back Paschar. I know it. I already see him getting angry at me and yelling at me if I keep telling him I need Paschar, so instead i run inside and up to my room and lie on my bed and cry. Where are you, Paschar? You said you’d always be here!