Red Rain

Chapter 5 - Who Are You

Three more days pass by, and life appears to be returning to normal at Balthazar. No more unexplained murders on either side of the Bridge. No more sleepwalking for me - yet.

On Tuesday afternoon (after the assembly, during which we heard nothing we didn't already know, and again on Wednesday, grief counselors from Bearville stopped by to render assistance to anyone who might need it. Luca suggested I go see one, but I decided against it. I've always been a bit leery of counselors, for some reason. It's not exactly a phobia or a hatred, but just a deep-seated feeling of uneasiness that's cropped up anytime I've ever had to step into a counselor's office for any reason.

On Thursday evening, as promised, the candlelight vigil was held in the front courtyard. This time, I went along with Luca's suggestion to attend, because I felt I could do much more good honoring the dead this way. A few seniors gave little speeches, including Paul and Juliet (she had gone out with Steve for a short time last year.)

But Marco's speech was by far the best. He talked about having been the first to have inadvertently found Steve's head, and how he'd wished afterwards that he hadn't. "But then I told myself that if I didn't see his corpse on TV," Marco said, wiping a tear from his eye, "I could probably trick myself into believing he wasn't dead at all. I don't have that option now, and believe it or not, I'm actually grateful for that." He looked up to the sky and said, "Sorry, Steve. You're not worth a psychotic break. Bon voyage, dude."

It amuses me sometimes, seeing people look up to the sky like that. Humans do it thinking they're looking at Heaven, unaware that they should instead be looking sideways. Demons tend not to admit to any kind of religious or spiritual beliefs, but I've often seen them do the same thing. As for us angels, we're told that God just stands up there alone, keeping watch over all the dimensions and deciding whether people get to go to Paradise or Purgatory when they die.

Gabe and I used to have this church class on Saturday mornings, way back in the days before our First Communion, and we'd been left wondering how the rules applied to all people, of all races. The way they made it sound, angels always get to go to Paradise, demons are forever condemned to Purgatory, and humans went to one or the other, depending on their behavior in life (in other words, mostly Purgatory). We've since agreed that we don't think the answer is quite that simple. I've also come to suspect that God is pretty indifferent - otherwise, how else would one explain homelessness, or wars, or the endless string of swine flu scares?

Steve wasn't perfect, not with his penchant for pranks. So I find it tough to believe that, especially if the popular belief system is true, he'd be in Paradise without question. But at that moment, surrounded by people who firmly believed he would be, I found myself joining in as everyone raised their candles towards the night sky. Hope you're there to get the message, Steve, I thought.

Before we went to bed that night, everyone stopped to watch the latest news report. The Sheriff's Department (or, on the other side, Coldfire Creek PD) hadn't provided any information about what exactly had happened to either Steve or Freddie, and this report was no exception. The sheriff appeared poker-faced at another press conference, unless you count the fact that he was blushing just a bit as he admitted that he and his people remained utterly baffled by the crime.

"You'd think they'd have found some kind of forensic evidence," I said as Luca and I turned in for the night.

"Someone bring in Sherlock Holmes," Luca laughed.

"Yeah, he'd know exactly what happened, just from one cursory look at Steve's body," I said. Switching to my Jonny Lee Miller impression (it's easier for me than Benedict Cumberbatch), I added, "The boy's head was found in his room, but the body was dismembered in the woods. It appears that someone was trying to fake an alien abduction and murder, hmm?"