They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

Itzy had just finished writing when she got the phone call. She sat at her desk, caught in that ephemeral state between waking and dreaming, lost in a haze of grey. Shots of black sparked around her head and fingers, like dark electricity.

The phone, beside the notebook, continued to cry out for attention. She snapped out of her trance and picked up her mobile. She read the name on the screen. It was her aunt Gwen, in Toronto. Normally her heart did somersaults when she got a call from her favourite family member. But now, her chest swelled with heavy foreboding.

She was about to answer the call, when she noticed the time on the screen. Two hours had passed – yet she couldn’t remember them. It had happened again.

The phone stopped ringing, and she set it down on the desk. She glanced back at the notebook. The words staring up at her from the pages looked unfamiliar, as if she hadn’t written them. It was definitely her handwriting – but she had no memory of the composition.

A moment later, the phone rang again. Her eyes darted from the phone to her notebook and back to her phone.

Then again to the notebook, with its foreign sentences, as if someone had taken possession of her writing hand.

She quickly flicked through the pages with her fingertips, frightened of touching the paper. Certain lines leapt out at her, and she drew back in fear. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself it didn’t mean anything, she couldn’t shake the idea that something was very wrong.

As if moving through molasses, she finally took the call. ‘Hiya, Gwen,’ she answered. She hoped she didn’t sound as rattled as she felt.

Gwen’s response did nothing to allay her anxieties. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she broke out through tears.

Itzy sat up straight in her desk chair. It swivelled a little, on its wheels. ‘Gwen, what’s wrong?’ A chill shot through her body, and she shuddered. There was only one possible reason her aunt would ring in such a state.

‘Your father….’

Itzy slumped back in her chair like she’d been shot. Somehow, she knew what her aunt was about to tell her.

Gwen choked back a sob. ‘He’s dead,’ she blurted before a fresh wave of tears drowned her voice. Her voice was so clear in Itzy’s ear that she could have been fooled into thinking they were only down the road from each other, rather than separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

Again, Itzy’s eyes darted to her notebook. ‘…how?’

‘Suicide. He…they found an empty bottle of pills….’

All the air went out of Itzy. The room spun around her until she forgot where she was. Who knew how long she sat like that, listening but not really hearing her aunt cry.

Some time later, Gwen cleared her throat and said, ‘I’m sorry. I know you said you never wanted to talk about him again, but…I thought you ought to….’ She broke off again in a dreadful sob.

‘N-no,’ Itzy said. ‘It’s okay. I know what I said, but…thank you,’ she whispered. She felt like she was on autopilot.

But this wasn’t one of her mysterious, uncontrollable trances. This was life.

Without warning, Gwen launched into the details. As Itzy listened, it was as if she had been transported into her father’s house in Kent. She’d never visited it, so she had no idea what it looked like, and yet the vision was so vivid, she could almost believe it was real.

He sat at his desk, in a corner of the living room. He wore a beige long-sleeved t-shirt covered in some esoteric Matrix-esque pattern that could have been stamped into a field in Somerset. His hair was thick and black, like Itzy’s. He held his head in his hands, the rough fingers pressed against his scalp, his dark eyes closed in thought. He looked lost, suffocating from repression.

Maybe he was thinking of her, or of her mother. Perhaps he could no longer live with what he’d done to them.

The mantras repeated in his head:

It’s my fault they hate me.

I don’t deserve to be alive.

He stared at the empty pill bottle on the desk. He had swallowed its entire contents, not ten minutes ago. It had been so frighteningly easy to swallow pill after pill after pill…to start the process. Now it was too late to change his mind.

When he finally dropped from the desk and slumped onto the floor, the pen slipped from his hands, and he thought something disappointingly inane, like, Why did I never get this desk varnished? When his wife Evelyn finally found him, Stephen Loveguard was gone.

There, Itzy’s imagination stalled. She’d never known his second family; she had no idea how they would have reacted.

Gwen finished her story and took a breath. Then she said those four fateful words: ‘There was a note.’ When Itzy didn’t reply, Gwen asked, ‘Do you want to know what it said?’

Itzy couldn’t decide if she wanted this or not.

Gwen made the decision for her. ‘It said, Don’t let them get my children.’

Itzy didn’t respond. She couldn’t think what to say. Except maybe, I always knew my father was mad.

Perhaps sensing her niece’s discomfort, Gwen moved on. ‘Itzy. Maybe…maybe don’t tell your mother.’

Itzy shook her head, and then remembered Gwen couldn’t see what she was doing. ‘I have to. How can I keep this secret?’

Gwen sighed down the line so heavily, Itzy could almost feel her breath tickling her ear. ‘I know, I know. I just wish….’

‘I wish a lot of things,’ Itzy said. Before she knew what she was doing, she pressed a button and ended the call.

She’d never hung up on Gwen, before – but things had changed. The moment consumed her like a voracious beast with vicious fangs.

Itzy sat at her desk in shock, oblivious to the strange black lines that continued to dance in the air around her like crow’s feathers. She had worried about this day for seven years. Now, it had finally arrived.