Hey, everybody! I'm back with yet another one of my oneshots that could be lethal if they dropped on you. Yeah, I can't seem to make them be shorter than about 10k words usually. Not sure why. Oops.
I don't know where on earth this idea came from. I wasn't gonna write it, but then the next thing I knew, I was writing it. *scratches head* Funny how that works with some of my stories. Strange things, stories.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. Let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I do not own ROTG. Should be obvious, but meh. People like disclaiming, so who am I to break the sacred tradition?
The legend of the mysterious angel was the main thing that continued to draw crowds to the old church, despite its years of wear and tear. According to the stories, the entryway of the church had crumbled away during a particularly harsh snowstorm about a hundred years ago. The community had been so impoverished that the only choice had seemed to be to abandon the building altogether before it grew to be too dangerous.
That's when the miracle occurred. Just in time for the Christmas service, the entryway had reappeared, and the unstable structures that had been about to collapse had been stabilized. But the church was no longer the way it had been before, for the missing pieces of the building had been fabricated from an intricately sculpted block of ice.
No one had seen how the miracle came into being, and the ice melted with the next thaw, leaving the church exposed to the elements once again. It continued to degrade over the next year, and the congregation was forced to seek solace elsewhere. But come next Christmas, the magical ice was back in place, and the people held their Christmas service there, grateful to be blessed with the miracle once again.
Years passed, and the same phenomenon continued to occur each year. Eventually the town scraped together the funds to preserve the old church and protect it from rotting away completely, but they could not repair the entryway. Still, the mysterious ice appeared every year, right around Christmastime.
The town grew, and other churches sprung up over town. New generations sprung up and raised their own children, and those who had originally attended the services every week in the old church gradually died off. But the mystery remained, and the townspeople continued to meet in the strange church every Christmas in the hopes of finally solving the mystery.
It was a young boy with a runaway pen who finally started to cause the thinking of the people to shift. He had deemed it necessary to depict the church choir in a drawing so that he could remember how they looked during the rest of the year. But when other members of the congregation saw the drawing, they noticed the figure of a boy standing in front of the choir who none of them had noticed. The leather cloak over his shoulders and the long hooked staff suggested the boy might be a shepherd, but his white locks suggested something else. Something almost angelic.
From that moment on, the townspeople strained to capture a glimpse of the shepherd boy at the Christmas service. First a young child saw him. Then an older girl. Then one of the elderly men who everyone knew was nearly ready to enter Heaven for himself. He claimed to have seen the shepherd boy turn and face him at one point and flash him a smile. The boy said nothing, but it had put the man at ease, and he peacefully greeted his passing several weeks later.
More drawings appeared, and the mysterious shepherd boy made his appearance in them more frequently. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes he danced, sometimes he was drawn where his back was turned to the viewer, but always he was enthralled by the choir. The rumor started to circulate that the shepherd boy angel preserved the church so he could hear the choir, and so the choir began to include more elaborate pieces in their repertoire. Anything to show their thanks to their invisible and mysterious benefactor.
Photography becoming an affordable option put yet another spin on the mystery. The first few curious shutterbugs to find their way to the church at Christmastime found difficulty with capturing any sort of anomaly on the film. But the longer people attended the services and the more they attempted to capture the mystery on film, the more people started claiming that they had indeed captured something.
As photography matured, so did the mysterious images. The boy gradually became clearer, though he always maintained a blur that none of the normal people held in the photos. And at some point along the way, the boy had shed his cloak in favor of a more modern sweater. That eventually got replaced by a jacket, and then a shirt, and then a hooded sweatshirt. He never seemed to age despite changing with the times, but without his original garb, he no longer resembled a shepherd quite as strongly as before. The townspeople began to dub him the Angel of St. Mary's.
From the first time she had heard the story of the mysterious church angel, Susan Shepard had desperately wanted to attend and see if she could catch sight of the boy himself. Her parents had insisted it was just a promotional stunt to keep the church alive and that nothing supernatural actually happened there, and she agreed that they were probably right. But she couldn't help her curiosity. Even if it was nothing more than a hoax or a promotion to keep people coming to the old, weather-worn church, she wanted to be there to see it with her own eyes.
In the December of her 18th year, she decided that regardless of her parents' views, this was the year she was going to go and see the old church. She had saved up her wages at her fast food job for months to be able to afford the gas to drive herself down there, not to mention the food and lodging she would require while she remained in town. She had learned how to put chains onto her tires so that she could safely go over the pass that led to the little town, which was bound to be filled with snow at this time of year.
Then, making up some excuses to her parents about why she had to spend Christmas with her friends instead of her family this year, she drove off before they could protest too strongly. They would survive without her. There was always next Christmas, but there was no telling how long the miracle would keep reoccurring. Despite the constant work of preserving the old church, its age was catching up with it, and she feared it would fall apart soon, and the miracle would go with it.
After nearly a full day of driving, Susan finally pulled into a little motel in Burgess, Pennsylvania. It was still a week before the famous Christmas service was to occur, but she had wanted to arrive early enough to know about what was happening the instant it happened.
The person behind the counter at the registration desk had said that the ice had not appeared yet, but never to fear, because it was sure to appear sometime this week. It always did. Still, Susan chewed her lip as she tried not to fret out loud. What if her coming here somehow ruined the miracle so that no one had the chance to enjoy it anymore? What if she never got the chance to see it, even though she had come all this way?
Susan knew very well that she was being a worrywart, and so she had come prepared. As soon as she got to her room, she whipped out the scrapbook she had created over the years of all the news clippings and pictures taken or drawn of the angel of St. Mary's. She traced her finger over the blurry figure of the being everyone had come to assume was an angel. There didn't seem to be anything remarkable about this church in particular, so why had he chosen this one to bless? It didn't even have a unique name. So many churches were named St. Mary's. She had checked. What was so special about this one? There had to be some reason the angel kept coming back.
She hugged the book to her chest and stared mindlessly out the window. More than why the angel was so interested in the church, she wondered why she was so interested in the angel. There were supernatural anomalies all over the world. There were even strange happenings all over Pennsylvania if she wanted to keep her search local, but none of them drew her to them the way this one had. There was something about this event that she needed to see. Something that her heart couldn't bear to go without any longer.
Susan spent the next week exploring the little town that housed this anomaly, just trying to understand the culture that had spawned this sort of lore. Burgess was a sweet little town, full of people with bright eyes and big hearts. And they all believed in the angel. There was no convincing them otherwise. Even if the show at the church was just a hoax or a promotion, none of the townspeople believed it. Susan could see sincere belief in their eyes. The angel was an every day reality for them.
It was on the third day she was there that she met a boy whose appearance tickled that same sense of mystery she'd come to associate with the angel. Granted, he wasn't the shepherd boy depicted in the pictures, but he had a quality to him that resembled that boy somehow. Perhaps it was his chin shape, or maybe the sparkle in his eyes. Whatever it was, she knew she had to get to know this boy a little better.
The boy seemed equally keen on getting to know this strange young girl, and so offered to take her out for a cup of Holiday Spiced Hot Chocolate, a holiday specialty at the local coffee shop. Susan smiled and accepted, both to talk to the boy and to get the free hot chocolate, as she never turned down a cup of free hot chocolate.
Curling her fingers around a steaming cup of hot chocolate with a generous dollop of whipped cream on top, she looked up into the boy's eyes and blatantly informed him that she had been so intrigued by him because something about him reminded her of their local angel. She hoped she hadn't come across as offensive or rude in any way. When the boy simply responded by laughing, her tension melted away like the cream into her hot chocolate. He hadn't taken that with even a small amount of offense.
"There are those who claim that my family is related to the angel in some way, actually," he said.
Susan choked mid-sip. Related? Out of all the research she had done over the past ten or so years, living relations to the angel had never even entered her mind, nor had it entered the minds of the journalists. "How can you be related to an angel?"
The boy shrugged. "No one really knows for sure," he said as he calmly took another sip of his chocolate. "But the word 'angel' can mean many things, you know?" Susan nodded that she understood that concept. She had wondered precisely what sort of "angel" this boy was, and had hoped that coming here might answer that question for her.
"There are some who say he was a boy who died to save his sister's life, and that now he lives on to watch over the town where his family lived after he was gone." His hand twitched, and a small amount of the drink splashed down his chin. He wiped it off with his napkin, then wadded the napkin up and threw it into the trash. "Whether any of that is true or not, the sister is my multi-great grandmother."
Susan's cup hung in midair. Her eyes were transfixed on the boy in front of her. Could it be possible that the "angel" was really the ghost of a long departed family member who just wanted to watch over his remaining family? She figured it made as much sense as anything else she had come up with. She cleared her throat and set her cup down before looking directly at the boy in front of her.
"Well, supposing that story is true, and this angel really is a distant uncle of yours, there's a chance that there are records of him."
He waved at her with an air of nonchalance. "Of course there are records of my ancestors. I can show you if you like."
She did like, and as soon as they had both finished their hot chocolate, they stole away to the library, where genealogical records were stored. Susan hadn't bothered to learn to use the microfiche readers in the library back home, but now that she was here, she had someone showing her how to get the information she wanted with them. It was wonderful. The library had archived every newspaper and various other kinds of information since back when it was built. And sometimes even before, as the boy was able to show her.
"It's fairly easy to trace my family line back that far," he said. "Our last name hasn't changed in a very long time. The sister married a Bennett, and the family name has stayed Bennett to this day."
"That was lucky," she said, and she smirked at the boy, who then returned the smirk and helped her sort through a few books until he got to the records he was looking for.
"It seems that our family immigrated to America just before the family name changed to Bennett." He pointed at a listing. "As you can see, the name was Overland just before it turned to Bennett. And the Overlands came here from Norway."
"Huh!" Susan looked up at the boy with interest brimming in her eyes. "So your family is Norwegian."
"Mostly Dutch, actually," he said. "The Bennetts came from the Netherlands. But yes, it seems I do have a little Norwegian blood hiding in there somewhere. It explains my urge to grow up and be a viking." That had been unexpected, and Susan found herself cracking up right there in the library. In no time, the boy had joined in her cacophony of laughter, and the two shortly found themselves booted out into the cold until they could learn how to be quiet in the library.
Susan's chuckles gradually died down as her hands rubbed her arms to try and keep them warm. "So, what should we do now?"
"Follow me," said the boy. "There's something else I want to show you."
She obediently followed the boy down several blocks until they faced a building that looked like it could have been a house at one time. The sign out in front read, "Burgess Museum". The boy turned to her, raised an eyebrow, and said, "So, you want to go in?"
Susan laughed and threw up her shoulders in resignation. "Oh why not?" The boy then grabbed her hand and led her into the building.
She was fascinated by the various keepsakes that had been preserved in the museum, and she wanted a chance to look at them more thoroughly, but the boy kept pulling her along faster than would allow her to read the plaques to see what the items were. Finally, they reached a wall of portraits, and he guided her toward one of them in particular.
"There, you see?" He pointed to the engraved golden plate just below the picture. "It's the Overlands."
Susan's face lit up as she realized what she was looking at, and her eyes quickly scanned the figures in the picture to see if she could spot the one who may or may not have become Burgess' mysterious angel. There was a middle-aged man, a middle-aged woman, a little girl, and a teenage boy. She looked closer at the teenage boy. His colors were different than what everyone described of the angel, but aside from that difference, she could easily picture that boy's face on the angel. He looked like he enjoyed having fun, and like he would enjoy spending every Christmas listening to the church choir in his hometown. Susan pointed to the boy and said, "It's him, isn't it?"
The boy next to her simply smiled and nodded, then said, "His name is Jackson. Jackson Overland." Susan sighed happily, then looked between the painting before her and the boy next to her. Now that she could see both faces next to each other, the family resemblance was quite striking. There was no doubt that the boy next to her was related to this Jackson Overland kid, but were Jackson Overland and the Angel of St. Mary's the same person?
Eventually, the two realized they had other things they both needed to do to ready themselves for the holidays, and they reluctantly said their goodbyes. "I'm Patrick Bennett," said the boy, who hurriedly scribbled something down on a piece of paper and handed it to her. "That's my phone number and address. If you need anything, don't hesitate to call on me."
Susan smiled. "I'll remember." She held out her hand for a handshake. "Susan Shepard, by the way. I'm staying at the inn down the road. Room 102 if you want to call me."
"That I might do," said Patrick. The two then finished their goodbyes and went on their separate ways. Susan had planned to get to bed early so that she could be up as soon as the sun rose and spend some more time getting to know the town, but she found her head was too full of thoughts of angels and genetics to allow her any sort of sleep for a while. Finally, after hours of trying, she finally drifted off to sleep.
It wasn't until about 10 o'clock the next morning when she woke up to her phone ringing. It was Patrick. She was about to tease him for being a bit overeager when he interrupted her. "I was just calling to warn you that the weatherman has predicted a nasty winter storm on the day of the service. You might want to stay home, just to be safe. That old church is pretty rickety."
"Not a chance!" said Susan. "I saved up for half a year to travel all this way, bargained my way into having enough time off of work to make this trip, and then drove all the way out here. I'm not going to grow cold feet now just because of some storm."
"Okay," he said. "I just felt the need to warn you. Also, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. We've never had a severe storm on the same day as the Christmas service. There's a chance that the miracle might not even happen this year."
"It had better!"
"Well, I'm just saying to keep your mind open. We have no idea what will happen."
Susan thanked him for his concern and then hung up the phone. Now her mind was all aflutter as she worried about the things Patrick had told her. Was there really a chance that the miracle wouldn't occur this year? It had to. She had come all this way.
She bounded out of bed and threw on some clothes and quickly made herself decent, then shoved a pastry in her mouth and ran out the door. After rummaging around in her glove compartment, she found the map she had drawn to get her from the motel to the church. It seemed she was going to be testing the route a couple days earlier than she had thought.
It seemed like it took her forever to drive across town to the historic district where the old church was. She wanted to slam on the gas, but knew it wasn't safe in these icy conditions. Still, the historic part of town eventually popped into her view, and then over the horizon, there was the church.
She drove up to the old building, and then unfastened her seat belt and jumped out of her car, not bothering to even close the door or turn the car off. She had to see things for herself, and she had waited long enough without waiting a couple extra minutes to properly shut everything down.
There was currently no ice on or around the church aside from what was a natural result of the season. It was only a couple days until the service, and the miracle still hadn't occurred. Didn't it normally appear in time to allow the choir to have at least one practice inside the church? That had been her understanding. If it still hadn't happened, then maybe it really wasn't going to happen.
She shook her head. No, she wasn't going to think like that. This had to happen. She needed it to. Susan ran her hands along the rotting wood around where the entrance should be. Now that she was actually able to see it for herself, she could see that it really was no longer just the entrance that would need to be frozen over, but a large part of the foyer and even some of the sanctuary as well. If not for the miracle that made this such a historic landmark, this place would have undoubtedly been condemned long ago. It clearly wasn't safe to enter.
Before she knew what she was doing, she felt tears begin to run their way down her face. Actually seeing this place in person sunk home the reality that the miracle probably was just a bunch of hogwash, as her parents had always tried to tell her. Unless something really amazing happened, that building was way too unsafe for anyone to set foot in, especially if a winter storm might be showing up on the day of the service.
"Oh, Angel, I so wanted to believe in you," she said aloud to nothing in particular. "I really needed to believe that there was something else out there. I'd hoped to find that something here, but now I just don't see how. The miracle isn't going to happen, is it?"
She waited in bitter silence, as though expecting the wind whistling past her ears to respond to her cry, but it only seemed to be humming a mournful tune of its own. She almost wanted to pity it. It seemed to be the bearer of bad news, and kept repeating over and over, "Sorry... sorry... sorry..." Even the wind regretted the lack of a miracle this year.
Then the air changed, and Susan felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The wind continued to whistle past her, her breath still puffed out in little clouds of mist, and she continued to rub her arms for warmth, but there was definitely something different. It felt like she was no longer alone.
A crackling sound caught her ear, and she turned to see a piece of the church nearby getting swallowed by quickly growing frost. She gasped and took a few steps away so she would be out of the way, just in case this was the miracle she had hoped for. She did not want to be in the angel's way while he created his masterpiece.
Despite her trying as hard as she could, she could not see any mysterious boy behind the spreading frost, but she couldn't deny that the behavior of the frost was in and of itself peculiar. Soon the frost began to rise up into vertical shapes, and eventually she started seeing the form of the missing part of the church come into being. Tears streamed down her face again, but this time from relief and awe instead of desperation. There really was something magical at work here. It was real.
"Thank you," she said to the atmosphere in front of her. "Thank you!" She then jumped into her car and drove back into town, telling everyone she saw that the miracle had just occurred. She had seen the ice form with her own eyes, which it seemed no one had ever had the privilege of witnessing that part of the miracle before now. The church service was still going to happen. And the angel would be there. She hugged herself for sheer joy. The angel would be there!
The next couple days dragged on into eternity for Susan, and she almost feared that she would be dead by the time the Christmas service arrived. But she knew she was being silly. If the service had happened the instant the miracle had occurred, then the choir would not have had time to practice in the church building before their performance. They had been a bit rushed as it was, but they had managed to pull themselves together to have an emergency rehearsal at the old church.
The day finally arrived, and Susan couldn't contain her excitement. She almost forgot to bring along her mittens and scarf, which she knew she was going to need considering how much of the church was made from ice nowadays. Even indoors was going to be a bit chilly, but it would be so worth it. And all that ice had to create some amazing acoustics. She couldn't wait to hear the choir.
She pulled up to the church and bolted inside. It was a good thing that she had arrived early, because half the seats were already filled, and people were pouring into the church in a steady stream. If she had realized just how popular this service was among the townspeople, she might have come even earlier. But she was just grateful that she was able to get a decent place to sit at all. It was a really good place, in fact. Not too far away from the front of the sanctuary, but not so close that she had to crane her neck up to see the choir. Somehow she had landed in the perfect place.
The pews continued to fill up, and soon her own pew was full to the brim. Since she had chosen to sit by the aisle, she only had one immediate neighbor to deal with, but she thought she might as well be friendly to them, since everyone in this town had treated her so nicely thus far.
She turned to face the person and see what kind of church buddy she was going to be dealing with for the service, but like almost everyone in the sanctuary, his hat and scarf made it a bit hard to make out what he looked like. No matter. She didn't need a face to be friendly. "Hi!" she said, "I'm Susan Shepard. Are you looking forward to the service?"
There was a moment's hesitation on the part of the other person as though they were startled to suddenly be spoken to by a complete stranger, but then they responded with, "Yeah, I look forward to the service every year." A pause, and then a moment later, "Are you new in town? I don't think I've seen you here before."
Susan nodded enthusiastically and clapped her mittened hands. "I've been wanting to attend this service ever since I was very young, but my parents would never take me. So now I've finally come down here on my own. I got so worried that the miracle wasn't going to happen at all after all the trouble I went through."
The guy next to her chuckled. "I know how you feel. I love this church and don't want to ever have to stop attending this service, but I know its time is limited." He shook his head. "It's going to fall apart. Really soon. I thought it might even fall apart this year. It still might because of the storm, and then these services will die too." The guy's voice took on quite a sad tone, and Susan didn't like the thought of that.
"But we're here now, aren't we?" she said. "At least we can enjoy it while it lasts."
The guy nodded. "You're right. We'll enjoy it while it lasts."
Soon the sanctuary was filled, and the choir came out to start the service. From what Susan had heard, the Christmas services had grown more and more musical over the years until the sermon was obliterated entirely for the sake of the music. And as the voices in the choir raised their voices at the start of the first song, she had to admit that she thought the decision was a wise one.
Never had she heard music like this. The community and the richness of the local mystery and lore had filtered its way into the way they sang, and the rich tones reflected their way off of the ice that made up the wall behind them and parts of several others. The crystalline sound then danced through the air until it found a pair of ears willing to dance with them, and then it took the listener on a journal with it.
Susan closed her eyes for a moment to bask in the music, and she might have listened to the entire service like that had she not suddenly remembered that she might never see the angel if she kept her eyes closed. She snapped her eyes open and looked around, but it didn't appear she had missed anything. That was a good thing. Or a bad thing. She wasn't sure which it was.
As the first song faded and the choir prepared themselves for the next one, Susan leaned over and whispered to her pew buddy, "So, do people really see the angel here?"
"Angel?" The person then chuckled slightly, as though her choice of wording tasted a little bit funny to him. "Sort of. I mean, there's definitely a person who comes here to make the church usable every year, and the collective belief of everyone in the congregation makes it possible for people to see him. But sometimes he tries to avoid being seen."
"Why?"
The guy rubbed his head. "Maybe he's just a little uncomfortable with people expecting him to be an angel or something. I'm not entirely sure."
"Oh." She nodded like she'd understood, but she really didn't. Was this boy an angel or wasn't he? He did repair the church. She had seen that with her own eyes. Normal people couldn't do that. Didn't that make him an angel of some sort?
The next song started up, and Susan fell back into silence. It was just as beautiful as the first song, but now her mind was muddled with thoughts she didn't understand. She had come all this way to see the angel and understand what he was. But was there a chance that she might not catch sight of him at all because he didn't want to be seen? Was that selfish of him to hide like that? Or selfish of her to expect him to show himself just because she wanted it?
As the song ended, she leaned over to her buddy again, since he didn't seem to be interacting with anyone else anyway and could use a friend. "So, if you don't mind my asking, what brought you here today? I mean, why were you willing to come despite the storm and everything?"
The guy shrugged. "I don't know. I just had to come, I guess." It seemed he'd wanted to drop it there, but Susan's persistent gaze made him speak up again. "Well, a long time ago, a little girl went here. She was in the choir back then. She grew up of course, but I haven't seen her in a long time. I guess I just keep hoping that she'll come back."
"A close friend of yours?"
The guy shrugged once more. "I honestly have no idea. I just keep hoping that if I come back, I'll eventually find out." That made no sense to Susan, so she decided to drop the subject. The next song was starting anyway.
The songs passed one by one in this manner, Susan sneaking in a little chat with her buddy between songs and getting uncertain responses back. He did seem to be gradually warming up to her though, which she counted as a success. There was still no trace of the angel boy, but she felt like she was at least going to be able to walk out of this claiming that she'd made a friend at the service, which had to count for something.
Then the storm hit. Everyone knew it. It sounded like a heavy weight had smacked on top of the church and shook it, causing some of the ice to fracture and shatter. The choir stopped mid-song. Someone leapt up and shouted for everyone to get out of the church, as it was clearly not safe to stay indoors. Everyone hurried to obey.
Except that when they swung open the heavy ice door, they saw that the wind and snow was rushing by so fast that it was perhaps more dangerous to go outside than to stay inside, even with the church about to shatter all around them. What were they to do?
Meanwhile, Susan's pew buddy was pacing back and forth and muttering something about "telling her he was going to get to it as soon as the service was over" and how "she was always so impatient". Whoever "she" was.
Another gust of wind shook the church, causing the ice fractures to spread even further. People screamed and scrambled for something to hold onto in the shifting ice. Was Susan's decision to come to this service going to be the last thing she ever did? Would it be worth it if it was?
Susan's buddy finally seemed to come to some sort of decision as he said, "I guess I'll just have to do it." He then grabbed his long coat and handed it to Susan, who had come painfully under dressed to this frozen service. "Here, Miss Shepard, you need this a lot more than I do." He then tossed his hat and scarf at her and then dashed off to do who knows what, leaving Susan only a split second to take in his appearance before he disappeared.
She stood frozen to the spot, clutching the mysterious guy's coat. Her eyes couldn't move from the place she had seen the guy vanish to.
The guy had been a boy with white hair.
Had she been sitting next to the angel the whole time? And talking with him, no less? In all the articles and stories she'd read, everyone had indicated that he'd never spoken a single word. Was this guy really the same person? Why now? Why her?
It wasn't long before the boy was back in the room brandishing the telltale staff that could only be the one belonging to the angel. He must have hidden it to avoid being recognized, and was now willing to allow people to see him.
The effect on the people gathered in the room was immediate. People began pointing and gawking, and then when the boy leaped into the air and hovered there, everyone gasped and went silent. There was no longer any doubt. This was the Angel of St. Mary's.
Finally remembering that he had given her his coat so she could stay warm, she slipped the coat on, and then fumbled with the scarf and hat until she was reasonably comfortable. Satisfied that she at least wasn't going to turn into a Susancicle, she looked around to see where the angel had run off to. She found him close to the ceiling, magically repairing the damage to the structure right before their eyes. Her jaw dropped in awe at the sight.
The ice he conjured up spread from the ceiling, down to the windows, and eventually covered the floor. It hadn't bothered to go around any of the doors or windows, and had instead covered them up, which meant that they were all now trapped inside this structure of ice. On the plus side, the church was no longer shaking. It didn't appear it would shatter over them now, so they were at least safe.
The angel boy alighted down on his feet, looked around at the throng who all held him in their gaze, and then bowed his head apologetically. "I'm sorry," he said, "I've kind of trapped you all inside. It was the only way I could think of to keep you all safe until the storm passed."
The crowd immediately started murmuring excitedly among themselves. Whether from the shock of realizing they were trapped, or from the shock of actually hearing the angel speak for once, Susan didn't know. One thing was for sure though, that this seemed to be the year everything changed.
As soon as people started to recover, the angel bolted somewhere. Susan thought at first that he was going to run off and leave them there, when she saw him stop in front of the pastor and mention something to him. The pastor then turned to the slightly panicked crowd and said that there were provisions of food and water in the other room, and that they would make sure that everyone had what they needed to be safe until this storm passed.
So the angel was just providing for everyone's needs instead of running off? Might he still run off in a bit? She glanced around to try and ascertain where he would be able to escape from this enclosure, and soon realized that she couldn't see any exit from this place. He had trapped himself among them to keep them all safe.
After a while, everyone had situated themselves around the church wherever they were comfortable, just chattering and drinking hot chocolate and spiced apple cider while they waited for the storm to pass. The fear had died down for the most part, which struck Susan as kind of odd since people would have still been panicked back where she had come from, but then she remembered just how much everyone here believed in the angel. They absolutely trusted that he would take care of them. Somehow that high level of belief seemed to make it possible for everyone to see him when they were all assembled in this church, as the belief almost became tangible here.
"You look like you could use a little hot chocolate yourself," said a voice, startling her out of her musings. She looked up from her seat to see the angel boy standing next to her, holding out a cup of hot chocolate. She hesitated, shock preventing her from being able to move. Taking her hesitation as reluctance, he said, "You seemed afraid of fighting through the crowds, so I just thought I'd bring you something."
"Oh no, it's not that!" She then realized that she might have insulted the boy for brushing him off like that. "I mean, thank you!" She then took the cup of hot chocolate from his outstretched hand and eagerly took a sip. It wasn't like the fancy stuff she'd had a few days ago, but in the moment, it tasted wonderful. It was anybody's guess how they were heating things up in these conditions, but maybe they had portable hot plates somewhere in the church. She hadn't bothered to go searching through the rest of the building. There was too much on her mind.
"So, you're the angel who repairs this church every year for Christmas?" She stirred her hot chocolate with her stirring stick, suddenly needing an excuse to look anywhere but at the boy's face. Things had strangely gotten awkward now that she realized how flamboyantly chatty she had been with him during the service.
He plopped down next to her. Socializing didn't seem to be his strong spot, though that made sense considering that it didn't seem he had talked with anyone in at least the past hundred years since he had been keeping this church from falling apart. "I keep bringing the church back, yes, but I'm no angel."
Susan cautiously glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Then what are you?"
She just shook his head, then his shoulders slumped as if the thought had left him feeling dejected. "I have no idea. I wish I did, but I just..." He shook his head again. "I don't know."
Her heart went out to the boy. She wasn't quite sure what he was, though he clearly wasn't human considering what she'd seen thus far, but she had no better idea what he was than he seemed to. Or maybe she did. Lonely. That was what he was. His posture seemed to reflect that he was extremely lonely.
"So..." She stirred her hot chocolate again, trying to figure out something else she could say that wouldn't be too awkward. She took a sip. Maybe she could ask him about the other day. "So why did you take so long to fix the church this year? I'd heard that you usually do it a lot earlier so the choir can practice."
He hung his head sheepishly. "Yeah. I try. But I knew that storm was coming and I thought I should probably not try to gather people here this year."
"So why did you?"
"Heh." He chuckled and looked at Susan meaningfully. "You begged me to."
Once again her jaw dropped as the implications of what he was saying sunk in. She had begged him for the miracle the other day, and then she had promptly been granted her wish. So that had happened all because she had asked him to? He went against his better judgement just because he couldn't stand the sight of a poor girl crying?
"I'm sorry." A blush was coming on. She knew it. "If I had realized the storm would be this bad..."
He cut her off with a shake of the head. "But I knew. Don't be so hard on yourself. I just thought that Mother Nature would let me postpone the storm for a bit longer, but apparently not. So now..." He gestured to the chaotic arrangement that everyone had taken around the church. "As you can see, things didn't quite go according to plan."
Susan nodded, pretending to understand why he was speaking of Mother Nature as if it was a real person, even though she had to admit she didn't understand. She didn't understand much of this situation at all.
She cleared her throat. "So what's going to happen to the church after all of this is over?"
The boy shook his head, then heaved a sad sigh. "The only thing holding it together now is my ice. Once I stop forcing it to stay frozen, it's going to all come crumbling down."
Susan's hands went to her face. "Oh my goodness! So this is the last time the miracle will ever occur?"
The boy nodded. "I'm afraid so."
Tears pricked at Susan's eyes, but she blinked them away. "Is it my fault since I begged you to do the miracle one more time?"
"No," he said, and then he leaned over and gripped her shoulders, forcing him to look at her. His hands were cold. Not just a little cold like most people when they get cold, but cold enough to feel through the coat she was wearing. How could he survive while being that cold? "Stop being so hard on yourself. This storm would have knocked the church down this year one way or another. It was ready to go. You just made me give it one more fanfare before it had to die forever."
Susan sniffed and nodded, the tragedy of never being able to return to this service starting to sink in. She hadn't even gotten to see the full service, but at least she'd gotten some one on one time with the angel himself. She hadn't counted on that. Still, he seemed awfully sad and lonely, and she hated leaving him that way.
Then she remembered something he'd said earlier when he was still in disguise. "Oh, you're still looking for that choir girl, aren't you?"
His shoulders sagged and he nodded dejectedly. "But she isn't here. If she isn't here today, she's never going to be able to come back to this church and sing in the choir. It's hopeless." He dropped his face into his hands and stayed there, motionless. Susan wasn't sure what to say to snap him out of this, or even if she should.
A thought suddenly occurred to her, one that she wasn't sure if she should vocalize. Hadn't he said that he'd started repairing the church every winter to try and see her come back and sing in the choir? But the miracle had been occurring for about a hundred years. There was very little chance that the girl was still alive, but since he apparently didn't age, maybe he didn't know that.
"Well, she might be at the-" Realizing what she was about to say, Susan clamped her mouth shut.
But the boy had already heard the few words she'd uttered, and he didn't seem satisfied with just those. "She might be where?"
Susan waved her hands and shook her head. "It's nothing. Forget I said it."
The boy gave her a hard gaze, the first she'd ever seen grace his face. She shivered. "You know something. Spill it."
She dropped her face into her hands, sighed, then ran her fingers through her hair as she thought about how to say this without upsetting him too much. There probably was no easy way out of this. Maybe it was just better to get it over with. "I-It's been at least a hundred years since you last saw her, you know? She's probably at the cemetery."
His eyes went wide at the thought, and he said, "She?" but seemed unable to utter anything else after that. Susan still understood, and nodded. Then the boy pointed out of the church, Susan assumed in the direction of the cemetery, and repeated, "She?" Susan once again nodded. The boy then dropped his head into his hands, shaking his head violently back and forth. "How-How could I not have known? Of course she couldn't have lived this long. Of course she couldn't!"
Susan didn't know what to do, and so she did nothing as she railed on herself for not acting in a situation that clearly needed her to do something. But what was she to do? She barely knew this guy. She didn't even know what he was, let alone what he was going through. Was it easy to lose track of time after a hundred or so years? She guessed it probably was.
He finally took a few deep breaths and sat up again, looking for all the world like he was trying to hold himself together after that sudden realization. He ran his fingers through that strangely angelic white hair of his. "Thank you," he said, as he gulped a bit on his words. "No one has ever tried to explain that to me before."
"I'm sorry," said Susan.
He shook his head. "Don't be. Thank you for being honest. I've never met a person as honest as you." He stopped talking for a moment and gave her a meaningful look. "That was why I was willing to talk to you in the first place. You didn't just think of me as a pretty Christmas decoration the way the rest of them did. Whether I appeared to you incognito or as myself, you still talked to me just as openly. I really appreciated that."
That explained why he kept giving her such special attention. It hadn't made sense until he'd explained all that, but she supposed that she'd have issues with approaching people too if they just thought of her as something pretty and spooky all at the same time. She wanted to be treated like a person, and therefore she tried to treat other people that way.
"I'm sorry people have treated you like that," she said. Was there any way she could help him? She licked her lips as she thought. "You know, I'm going to move out on my own soon. You're always welcome around my family. My parents wouldn't understand of course, but I'll make sure my kids do."
He nodded, and a small smile played on his face. "You're a dear. But you'll probably have a hard time seeing me once you leave this place."
She sighed. "That's a pity. I'd like to see you again."
He smiled, but said nothing more.
Time passed. A lot of time passed, in fact. Storms of this nature don't blow out in an instant, and it wasn't until some time in the middle of the night when the boy finally came and announced that it would be safe to let everyone go. He instructed everyone to stand back, and then he held up his staff, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The ice began to fracture, and then it began to fall, piece by piece. The structure groaned around everyone, and the people started getting nervous, but their faith in their local angel remained strong despite it.
Finally, one wall collapsed, revealing a burst of chilly outdoor air. Once the snow settled from the burst, people began making out the forms of the tops of their cars just barely peeking out of the snow. That blizzard had been intense, and they were going to have a challenge getting all their cars dug out of the snow so they could get home, but at least they were all safe. Susan thought that she might just walk back to her motel. Burgess wasn't that big anyway.
"Well, Miss Shepard," said the boy, turning to look at her briefly while still trying to concentrate on his staff. "I guess this is goodbye."
Susan did not want to say goodbye to the boy at all. Not now that she had started to get to know him and see how amazing of a person he was. But what choice did she have? People were already starting to leave for their homes, and without the congregation here, she was going to have trouble having enough belief to see him. She would probably never see him again.
Without warning, she threw her arms around him and said, "I wish I didn't have to go." The boy flinched, but he recovered soon enough. It seemed he wasn't used to being touched. Granted, it had been at least a hundred years.
"I know," he said, "but I'll be around... somewhere. Even if you can't see me. I'll be there."
She held him tighter, afraid if she let him go for a second, that he would disappear. She wasn't quite sure why, but his presence here gave her a strange sense of hope. Like there was something more to life than what one could see with the naked eye. That there were parts of life only the heart could see. She didn't want to leave that behind once she left the church. "I just wish I could see you after I left here."
"Well," he said, as he awkwardly began to return her hug. "Maybe you can. If you believe enough."
"I'll try," she said. "I'll try really, really hard. So you make sure to come and visit me, okay?"
He chuckled and said, "Okay," and then the shepherd and the Shepard held each other tightly one last time. "Thanks for opening up my eyes to reality," he said. "I think I can move on from this church now."
Susan laughed. "It's a good thing, since it's about to fall down."
He reciprocated with a laugh of his own. "True that." He then let go of her and pointed toward the door. "You should go now. The church is only holding itself up by the sheer force of my will now. If I break my concentration at all, it'll collapse, and I don't want that to happen while you're still inside."
She looked at the boy with concern. "But will you be okay?"
"I'll be fine." He smiled at her and gave her a wink. "I've lasted three hundred years already. I've dealt with worse."
Susan couldn't argue with that, so she reluctantly released him and began heading for the door. Just when she was about to step outside, however, she remembered something that she hadn't thought to ask yet, and she spun back around and eyed the boy. "Wait a minute," she said, "what can I call you?"
He smiled once again and nodded toward her. "My name is Jack."
Now there was no more reason to stall, and Susan didn't want to trouble the poor boy any further by lingering in an unstable building, so she said goodbye once again and then ran off back to her motel.
Sure enough, in the newspapers the next day, the destruction of the old church was written all over, but so was the remarkable experience everyone had had where they finally got to "meet" the Angel of St. Mary's. This was going to be an event spoken about in Burgess for a long time. It had no doubt changed the town. It had certainly changed Susan. She bought several copies of that day's newspaper, just to ensure that she never lost that article, or the proof that what she'd thought had happened actually happened.
Once the roads cleared up enough to drive on, she traveled back to her parents' town. But she no longer felt she could call that place home, and she didn't stay there long. As soon as she was able to land herself a job in Burgess, she moved down to the little town that the mysterious Jack had taught her how to love. She got to know Patrick better too, and within a couple years, the two of them were married.
Then came the happy day that Susan found she was pregnant, and she waited in eager anticipation until she finally had her first child: a boy that she and Patrick named Jamie. A few years later came a little girl: Sophie.
Susan's life was sweet, but the pang of leaving that day and never seeing Jack again after that weighed on her heavily. She wished she could see him again. He'd said he would visit her, and she had told her kids all about that day and the mysterious boy behind it all, but she still saw neither hyde nor hair of him. Jamie became determined to solve all things supernatural, however, and she left him to it. For all she knew, he very well might solve the Jack mystery for her one of these days.
Then one day, something shifted once again. It was subtle, and in any other circumstance, she would have brushed it off as nothing. But that casual mention of that one particular name wouldn't get out of her head. Jack Frost. She had told Jamie that Jack Frost wasn't actually anybody, but he apparently hadn't believed her because the next thing she knew, he was chatting it up with Jack Frost who had apparently invaded her child's bedroom. She wasn't sure whether to be concerned or amused. Supposing Jack Frost actually existed, of course, which he didn't. Or did he?
Jack Frost was a being of snow, wasn't he? So was the Jack she had met at the old church. But his name was Jack Overland, right? Well, he hadn't actually revealed his last name to her. Maybe even he didn't know. It had sounded like he was looking for his sister and couldn't quite remember her. Maybe being three hundred years old did that to a person.
But a Jack who didn't know his last name was likely to either make up a name for himself or be given a nickname. And this Jack was a being of snow. She had seen it herself. What was so unreasonable about believing that he might indeed call himself Jack Frost? Could that be who Jamie was talking to? Her Jack?
"Jack" didn't show up for a while after that, but she kept her eyes open, just in case he did. Jamie didn't seem to have a problem with seeing him, whoever he was. It shouldn't be a problem for her to notice when he finally turned up in their lives again.
It wasn't until the following winter when the snow was finally thick enough to attract any Jack-type persons that she finally caught sight of a figure kneeling out in the snow next to Jamie. She approached the window to get a better look, trying not to get her hopes up too high. Still, her heart started to flutter. Jamie and the figure were both talking and laughing about something. The older boy was clad in blue and brown, which she could see even from this distance. Jamie said something that made the older boy laugh and shake his head, ruffling his hair in the breeze and making it easy for Susan to distinctly tell the color of the boy's locks: white. His hair was white. Could it be?
The boy then pushed himself to stand up, but before straightening up, he reached down and grabbed something and then smacked it into the ground next to him. Susan's eyes slowly widened as she took in what that was. It was that distinctive staff. The one that only her Jack could possess.
He came back. She could see him. He was here.
Without taking the time to put on her coat or shoes, she bolted out the door and ran up to the boy shouting, "Jaaaaack!" She waved her hands around like a crazy person, but she didn't care who saw her. She was just so excited to finally see her friend again who she feared she'd never see again.
The reaction on his face was priceless as he first saw this crazy lady running in his direction, then realized she was running at him, and then allowed his eyes to slowly widened as it dawned on him that an actual adult had figured out how to see him.
"Miss Shepard?" he said, taking a step toward her and leaving a very confused Jamie looking between his friend and his very strange mom. Jack then laughed and said, "You can see me?"
Susan nodded enthusiastically, perhaps more than was necessary, but she couldn't contain her excitement. She had thought she'd lost this friend forever, and now she'd finally found him again. Once she caught her breath again, she said, "But it's Mrs. Bennett now. Or Susan. It's probably less awkward if you just call me Susan."
Jack then laughed and slapped her on the shoulder. "Susan then. Alright. Good to know."
Without missing a beat, Susan pointed her thumb back toward the house. "Would you boys like a cup of hot chocolate? I make an amazing cup of hot chocolate these days. Patrick says I rival the famous holiday spice hot chocolate around here."
Jamie didn't need a second invite and went tearing toward the house, screaming one long note of, "Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhh!"
Jack took a moment to blink and think on it, then he shrugged and said, "Well, if it rivals the famous holiday spice, then I guess I have to try it."
The two then strolled back toward the house, sharing stories about old times and fond memories, talking almost like they were old friends even though they still had so much to learn about each other. Getting to know each other properly would take a while, but Susan was happy to take as long as was necessary. Now she had her friend back. And she could actually see him.
Her angel had finally found his way back home.
So, what did you all think? Let me know in a comment, especially if you want to see more of these sorts of stories. (I frequently have ideas pop into my head that I think don't make enough sense to write, so I try to shove them aside. This was one of those stories, but it magically got written anyway.) I welcome any kind of feedback, as it helps me to improve my writing.
Also, to any of you artists out there, does anyone have inspiration for a cover for this story? If you draw me a cover that I like, I'll post it and give you full credit for the art. :)
Thanks for reading! Hopefully I'll see you again on one of my other stories!