Keith Donohue - Angels of Destruction: A Novel

ALSO BY
Keith Donohue

The Stolen Child

For my brothers and sisters

S he heard the fist tap again, tentative and small.

From the cocoon of her bed, she threw off the eiderdown duvet and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders against the winter's chill. Alone in the house, Margaret took the stairs cautiously, holding her breath to verify that the sound at the front door was not just another auditory hallucination to disturb her hard-won sleep. On the fourth step from the bottom, she peered through the transom window but saw only minatory blackness and the blue reflected light of moon and stars arcing off the cover of new snow. She whispered a prayer to herself: just don't hurt me

Margaret pressed her palms against the oak to deduce the presence on the other side, without seeing, without being seen, and on faith undid the locks and swung wide the door. Shivering on the threshold stood a young girl, no more than nine years old, with a tattered suitcase leaning against her legs. Between the hem of her coat and the top of her kneesocks, her bare skin flushed salmon pink. She wore no hat, and even in the dim light, the tops of her ears blazed red through her fine blonde hair. A visible chill sashayed up the girl's spine, and her bony knees knocked and her thin hips wriggled as the shiver ended in convulsions of the shoulders and an involuntary clacking of the teeth. She flexed her fingers into fists to keep the circulation going. Beneath the threadbare plaid coat more suited for early autumn, the girl appeared no more than a frame of bones, all lines and sharp angles. Winter blew right through her.

You poor thing, come in. How long have you been out there in the cold?

Margaret Quinn regarded her visitor, then stepped outside to the porch, brought in the miniature suitcase, and locked the door behind her. What had seemed unreal through the open door now confronted her in the safety of the house. The girl stood in the foyer, thawing and shaking with tremors. Pinned to her cloth coat was a torn paper badge with three letters printed in an earnest and unsteady hand: N-O-R.

Is that your name, child? You're missing something. That's no way to spell Norah. It's with an A and an H. Is that who you are? Norah?

The child did not reply, but the heat had begun to work its way into her, loosening the icy grip on her personality. When she noticed the woman watching her, she grimaced with thin blue lips. Margaret busied herself, switching on the lights, through the dining room and into the kitchen, and the girl followed like a pup as Margaret struck a match and lit the woodstove and, with a kindling stick, shut the iron door. Come warm yourself.

Old habits and dormant instincts returned. Margaret heated milk in a saucepan and spread butter on saltines. Perched in a chair by the wood-stove, the girl unbuttoned her coat and worked her arms from the sleeves. When her severe glasses fogged with condensation, she took them off, wiped the lenses on the hem of her dress, and then promptly returned them to her nose. The blood rushed back to her cheeks and set them ablaze. Her eyes brightened, and without a word, she took the mug and gulped down half her drink.

You'll have to excuse these buttered crackers, that's all I have. Don't get many children here.

The saltines vanished. The drained mug was refilled. The old house groaned and ticked, stirring from sleep. Behind her eyes, a light came on inside as she sat perfectly still and poised next to Margaret at the kitchen table, the two creatures considering one another in the enveloping warmth.

Where did you come from? How did you get here?

The coat slipped from the girl's shoulders, revealing a blue jumper with a yellow blouse and white kneesocks dingy from a hundred washings. Two mismatched barrettes held back her ragged hair, and a chalky rime glistened above her chapped lips. Contemplating her answer, she disappeared into blankness, and when she closed her eyes, small veins laced across the pale lids. Realizing the lateness of the hour, Margaret felt all at once her weary age, the heaviness in her arms and legs, the ache of her joints. A saturnine mood came over her. Can you speak, child?

I was frozen, she answered in a phlegmy voice. Cold as the point of an icicle. An old soul in a child's body, one of the preternaturally mature. In one swift swallow she finished her milk, and then she cleared her throat, the tones of her speech lightening an octave. I hadn't had a thing to eat all night, so thank you, Mrs. Quinn.

Margaret wondered how she knew her name, and then reckoned that the child must have read it off the mailbox. The little girl yawned, revealing the jagged mouth of baby molars and holes, the serrated edges of her adult teeth piercing the gums at odd angles.

You must be tired, my girl.

Norah, with an A-H at the end. I feel like I haven't slept in a thousand years.

Both hands of the clock slipped off twelve. There's an extra bed at the top of the stairs. But first thing we'll call your mother.

I haven't any mother. Or father either. No one at all in this wide world. I am an orphan, Mrs. Quinn.

A sliver of sorrow cut through her heart. I'm so sorry. How long have you been on your own?

Always. Since the beginning. I never knew my parents.

And where have you come from? We should call the police to see if anyone is missing a child. She tried to remember the name of the detectiveWillet was it?who bothered her for months after Erica went missing. They never did find her daughter.

I am not lost. The girl stared, unblinking.

The police are useless, she thought. But how did you get here?

I have been looking for some place, and your light was on, and there is a welcome mat at your door. You were expecting someone.

No one ever comes.

I am here.

That you are. On her fingertips, she calculated the years, thinking all the while of the possibilities. Her daughter had been gone for a decade, and the girl appeared to be just shy of nine. Old enough to be her own granddaughter, had such a child ever existed. Margaret led the girl upstairs to the empty room, which she rarely visited any longer, not more than once a month to run a duster over the wooden bureau, the desk, the bedframe. There had been many times when, suddenly tired of life, she sat on the edge of the mattress and felt unable to ever move from the spot. Sending Norah to wash her face and hands, Margaret stood before the closet, afraid of what might spring out, and reached in its dark recesses to pull out a trunk reeking of camphor. Under layers of too-large coats and a never-worn dress, she found a young girl's nightgown, creased and stiff. Norah wrapped herself inside the old clothes, crawled under the covers, and chirped her goodnight.

The question, dormant but habitual, arrived without thought. Have you said your prayers? She looked at the child's tiny head upon the pillow and saw in the faint light an unexpected answer to her own hopes. Switching off the lamp, she dared touch the child's soft hair, whispered sweet dreams, and left the room to stand, breathless, outside the bedroom door. Listening from the hallway, unnerved by the presence of another, Margaret waited for the rhythmic breath of sleep, and nodding to the sound of the slumbering child, she padded back to her darkened bedroom.