Gabriel's Story - Part 5

Sean stood and invited Gabriel to the window. Like the room, the neighborhood was dark. The forecast hadn’t called for rain, but Gabriel saw lightning in the distance and knew from the violence in the clouds that they were in for a long night. Pastor Sean might have to use his spare room.

“Sometimes looking into the darkness isn’t seeing nothing,” Sean put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, “but seeing into everything.”

Without warning Gabriel found himself staring face to face with a presence so evil, so grotesque, he couldn’t put it into words. The face materialized from the darkness and filled his own weak reflection in the glass. At first, Gabriel thought he was hallucinating, like his first encounter with his dad’s ghost in the purple room. But when the face grew shoulders and a torso, arms and legs, and began to snarl an unearthly sound that he could actually hear, Gabriel knew he must have crossed over some line in the purple room that he may never cross back. He looked at Sean, not afraid, but overwhelmed.

“You see it, don’t you?” Sean’s tone was both expectant and wary.

Gabriel wasn’t sure how to respond. Could Sean see the evil specter too? “Uh, yeah. And hear it, too.”

“You can hear me?” The lesser demon’s low growl was not only inhuman, but barely audible. “How wonderful.” He snarled, showing sharp, yellowed teeth and a forked tongue. His face transformed into a field of bubbling blisters that popped, oozing green and yellow vapors.

Sean raised his hand in what Gabriel could only think was preparation for defense, but it wasn’t necessary. A bolt of lightning stuck the ground outside and the demon galloped away on three legs, dragging a fourth appendage that was barely attached at its hip. Gabriel watched its path and gasped when the next flash of lightning revealed an army of equally grotesque figures amassing throughout the neighborhood.

Agares stared at the angel’s sword and fingered the wounds on his right arm, wounds that refused to heal even a thousand years after they were first inflicted. “You shouldn’t be so full of yourself, Gabriel. You know that could be construed as a sin.” His words were meant to distract the angel as his right hand cast a rune in the air – the clarion call to Agares’ army. Thunder cracked as his demon horde arrived by the thousands, filling the air, fouling the ground, and pressing in around Gabriel. Although the angel was one of God’s top echelon, not even an archangel would dare confront Agares’ legions alone.

From the relative comfort of his darkened living room, Gabriel watched as the horde closed ranks around the lone angel and he noted that the angel not only refused to give ground, but seemed to relish in the thought of battle. As the horde encroached on the angel’s light, Gabriel was temporarily blinded as a massive bolt of lightning struck the ground beside the angel that carried his namesake. In the strike’s wake rows upon rows of demons were thrown from the inner perimeter and into piles of writhing, putrid carcasses. Gabriel’s eyes adjusted rapidly to the new light emanating from a second angel who dwarfed even the massive Gabriel. He estimated his namesake angel stood at least eight feet tall but this new angel , who still knelt in what Gabriel thought was a bit of a Holywoodesque superhero arrival, rose above him by at least two feet. When the new arrival stood tall, he stood at least fifteen feet fully erect.

“Michael,” said Gabriel’s voice from within. “The Archangel.”

Both Gabriel and Sean stood silent and in rapt awe at the sight of two of God’s elite standing among thousands of Satan’s minions. Even just the holy light cast by the Archangel’s presence was enough to drive away hundreds of lower devils without a fight, and the horde thinned. Gabriel watched the Archangel’s face, stoic, emotionless, as he reached across his body and palmed his massive still-sheathed sword. Simply gripping the device of holy retribution drove away another thousand demons, but not all.

Agares and Abaddon commanded a loyal following of powerful, mid- and senior-level demons from every level of Hell. They would not be kind to their captains and lieutenants who fled. That knowledge led dozens of senior demons to remain, weapons drawn, ready for battle.

Gabriel nearly fell faint when the Archangel looked his way, stared into his eyes, and bowed. His knees buckled and his hips failed him, but he managed to remain upright as Michael spoke.

“Agares, we did not come to destroy you today.” He removed his hand from the pommel of his sword as he walked over and stood inches from the large demon. “Gabriel’s message is a warning to you, not a threat. Touch the man Gabriel and the preacher Sean at your own peril.”

Gabriel couldn’t believe his senses. He was witnessing a supernatural battle between angels and demons. He could hear them speak from hundreds of feet away. He could smell the sulfur emanating from the demons along with the sweet smell of honey from the angels. He wasn’t schooled in religion, but he knew the “archangel” was God’s most powerful emissary. And Gabriel, the angel, was his grand communicator – that much he learned in Sunday school. What he didn’t understand is why he was able to witness it all – and live!

He watched as the Archangel turned his back on Agares and walked away, stopping to address the Angel Gabriel before vanishing in a flash of lightning. The Archangel’s departure left the neighborhood darker, but not too dark for Gabriel to see. He watched as the Angel Gabriel sheathed his own sword, knelt to touch the woman who remained motionless on the ground, and then disappeared in his own flash of light. He was left standing beside Sean, looking out on his neighborhood, witnessing a scene that was too grandiose even for the minds of Hollywood. How would he ever believe what his eyes were showing him?

“You aren’t seeing with your eyes, Gabriel.” Sean placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder again, but neither man turned away from the scene taking place just outside the window. “You are seeing with God’s eyes.”

Before Gabriel could process Sean’s words, the beast Agares filled the pane of glass. He moved from the street to the window with a speed and precision Gabriel had never considered. Thanks to Hollywood, Gabriel had always thought of demons as slow, lumbering, and awkward. The demon snarled and growled at Gabriel through the glass, but made no attempt to breach the window. “Master,” Abaddon knelt as he addressed the Duke of Hell. “What you are thinking, it is not wise.”

“Silence, you fool.” Agares backhanded the lower demon, sending him tumbling across Gabriel’s lawn and out into the street. He leaned in so close to the pane of glass that Gabriel could see his stinking breath steam up the window. He could feel the demon speaking through him, disregarding Gabriel entirely. “The human will fail you, as they all do. And when he does, he will be mine for eternity. That’s the law and I will collect.”

Agares growled one final time before dissipating into thousands of tiny vapor particles that drifted off on the wind. Gabriel and Sean stood transfixed as the remainder of Agares’ horde dispersed, some in fits of awkward flight and some dissolving into the ground. What bothered Gabriel the most, though, was that some passed into his neighbors’ houses – every house except his.

As the last of the demons and minor devils disappeared, Abaddon stood alone near the mangled Ford truck. He watched with Gabriel and Sean as the red and blue lights of the first responding police cruiser crept along the houses and stopped a few yards from the Ford. Gabriel watched as a single ambulance came to a stop just feet from the rear of the cruiser and two paramedics emerged, one heading straight towards the woman on the ground and while the other retrieved a medical kit from the back of the ambulance. The policeman alternated between talking into the mike strapped to his shoulder and giving direction to the paramedics. Gabriel realized the driver had died in the accident when the officer pulled a white sheet from the back of the ambulance and draped it over the driver’s side.

Abaddon glanced between his former host and Gabriel first nervously, then with confidence. He watched as the demon stepped in front of the approaching policeman and seemed to disappear into the man as he walked past and proceeded to observe as the paramedics strapped the now awake and visibly shaken woman onto their gurney for transport to the hospital. He presumed the officer would wait for the coroner.

“Let’s sit down a minute.” Sean turned Gabriel away from the window as the yellow lights of the Central City Power truck added to the cacophony of colors. “This is a lot to process.”