Nephilim Children

Chapter 1

I bolted upright in bed, my chest heaving, my heart hammering loudly in my ears. My palms were slick with sweat and I brushed them on my sheets, which I then kicked off in disgust. The heat was almost solid, like soup, and it felt hard to breathe. I could feel the memory of my nightmare slipping, and the more I tried to hold onto it the further it slid away. I eventually gave up and fell back down onto my pillow, letting my head thump against the fabric and down. I closed my eyes and willed sleep to come to me- I was exhausted. But, no matter how hard I tried, I could not find the will to let my thoughts drift off and let my weariness seep through me again. The half-forgotten images of my nightmare flashed behind my eyelids, annoying me- they were there and gone too quick for me to really analyse them. I did catch glimpses often of bright lights and soft clouds- clouds I was looking down upon, as if I were standing on them. I suppose I eventually forgot because sometime later I fell asleep.

I woke slowly- my eyes felt crusty and my back ached. The light stabbed like daggers into my still-tired eyes, and I wondered what time it was. I flung my sheets off, which had somehow climbed up to my shoulders during the night again, and reluctantly swung my legs off the bed, groaning when my upper back protested. What did I do last night?, I wondered. My cold feet found my slippers under my bed and hooked themselves in automatically. I stood and shuffled to my dresser, and, after selecting a faded blue tank top and some hand-me-down shorts, moved to my mirror and picked up my brush. Then I looked at myself, really looked, and I saw two lumps forming between my shoulder blades. I didn’t know what they were, or where I had gotten them from, and they were rather odd. I poked one and felt a sharp pain travel down my spine. The air hissed out through my teeth as I controlled the urge to yell out. What are they?, I asked myself. A memory of my dream tugged at me, wanting me to see it, to let it form. I pushed it away- it wasn’t important. The important thing was to find out what these lumps were, and to do something about them. I thought of asking my mum- she would probably know what they were, but then she could also freak out. She always did that whenever I would fall over. She would tell me to be quiet, not to show anybody my scratches, cuts that seeped black fluid. I never really understood what it was- I had always assumed it was just a weird part my blood. But whenever I asked my mum about it she acted squeamish and avoided the question. It made me suspicious, but didn’t hold my attention for long. I thought of the mystery lumps as I pulled a brush gently through my knotted curls. They always ended up like that in the morning- frizzy, knotty, and just plain unmanageable. My mother had straight waist-length hair, straight as a ruler, and very pale strawberry blond, whereas my hair was black and in tight little ringlets that went to my shoulders. Before my 12th birthday it had been a dark brown, then, when I turned 12 it darkened until it was completely black. My eyes also changed- they used to be a dark brown, but in recent times that had started changing to a dark purple. Everybody at school either thought it was fake or really cool, so I was pretty popular.

I took the creaky steps two at a time as I stuffed my puffy rain jacket into my backpack. I could hear the sound of a kettle boiling in the kitchen, along with a clothes iron being drawn across a uniform. My mother worked for a big, secret Government agency, so secret I wasn’t even allowed to ask her how her day was.

“Hey mum,” I said when I walked into the kitchen.

“Meymunny,” she mumbled back around a piece of jam toast. I laughed quietly at her goofiness. My mother had always wanted to be an actress, to make it big in Hollywood, but her dream was lost when she broke her back in a car accident, just after she had me. So instead she settled for a secret agency, which sucked, but I suppose the whole ‘asking about your day’ thing would have been the same if she were working on the set of a to-be Blockbuster.

“Did you hear about the school play this year? It’s called ‘Feathers’.”

My mum stiffened. She reached up to her moth and took the toast out, setting it on the counter. “What’s it about?” she asked, almost nervously.

“Um, angels that have to protect the world from these devil things. At least, that’s what May told me.” May, my best friend, and practically my sister, came from an adoption centre in Africa when she was seven. We have known each other since then.

Mum nodded stiffly. “Oh, okay. That sounds a bit odd for your school. Don’t they usually do a nativity play?”

“This is this year’s nativity play, but it isn’t how Christ was born, it about these people called Nephilim and how they were born into the wor-“

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, NEPHILIM?!”

I dropped my coffee mug in the sink, and the light brown liquid went everywhere, including on my pyjama shirt. “Jesus Mum! I just spilled my coffee all over my shirt!” She looked at me then, and, remembering the lumps, I turned around so she couldn’t see them as easily. The hot liquid was cooling, but where it touched my skin it stung. “I’m having a shower…” I said. Mum nodded, her eyes still wide and… fearful? I narrowed my eyes at her, wondering what was going on. She looked away, back to her ironing, before I ran up the stairs three at a time.

“It was really weird. She just had a go at me for no particular reason.”

“What did you say? About the play, I mean? Like, ‘It is a nativity play, it’s just how the Nephilim came to earth instead of Jesus’?” I nodded weakly. “Well,” May said, “maybe she doesn’t know what a Nephilim is, and she thought it was a swear word or something.” We both giggled.

Then I asked her, “What is a Nephilim, then?”

She shrugged. “We can always find out.” I nodded. We made plans to meet at the library after 1st and 2nd periods.

“Nephilim. I hope I spelled that right…” May clicked on a web link that took us to a page that almost screamed the word. It was decorated with falling and bloodied feathers. I shuddered, getting a strong sense of déjà vu. But, how could I, if I had never seen the word, let alone knew what it meant? When May spoke again, she startled me. “Hey, Nic, look at this. It says, ‘Nephilim are a mythical race born from the fathers of the sky and the wombs of the earth. They were first discovered when an ancient Angel, Rafael, fell from the sky, and then fell in love with a young woman, Rebecca. She carried and gave birth to his child- a male named Antonio, who, when he came of rightful age, sprouted wings and flew to his father’s homeland. The Angels in the story of the Nephilim Children are not the spirits of the dead in Heaven- they are more the Governors of the High Places, such as Christian Heaven and Hell. On earth the Nephilim are looked down upon with scorn, as are their mothers- it is a shame to fall in love with a Fallen Angel. The fathers generally die, or, in rare cases, are welcomed back to the Government.’”

I was silent for a few moments after she stopped reading, allowing my brain to process this material. Then I said, “Hey, click on that link that says ‘Turnover’. I want to know what that’s about.” May clicked on it, and a page of writing came up again. This time I read it. “‘The Nephilim Children do not always know they are Nephilim, not until they sprout wings. One case of this was observe a middle-aged woman, Andrea, fell in love with a Fallen Angel and had his child. It seems that all Nephilim Children born are males, perhaps because they are better suited to their jobs in the ranks of the Government than female Nephilim. In fact, there has only ever been one case of a female being born, and even then she did not survive her first week on earth. Andrea’s child, Benjamin, sprouted his wings on his 15th birthday, and when his natural instincts took over, he left his protesting mother dead in their family home and flew for the Heavens. In killing his mother, he left his human half-brother and two half-sisters and his stepfather on their own. But when he got to the Heavens, he was not well received- killing his mother killed part of him too, and he was left hollow and died within a month. The Archangels looked down upon him disdainfully- he was not welcome there if he killed his parents. The term 'Turnover' means when the Nephilim Child's natural instincts take over and they ascend to the Heavens- it is a Turnover of mortality, like turning a worn page over to find a blank new one.'" I grunted. "Nice story. Very cheerful." May nodded.

"Yes. Lovely story."