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

Itzy tossed her phone on the floor. It made an unhealthy cracking sound, bounced once and landed face down in resignation.

She stared blankly at her bedroom. It was what estate agents would have called a ‘good-sized room’, which meant it wasn’t exactly a cupboard, but it wasn’t very big either, and all the posters only made it feel smaller. Itzy didn’t like empty space – it felt lonely.

On the walls were arty black and white band photographs; quotations from famous writers that Itzy had printed in oversized coloured fonts; a large poster board covered in photographs of Itzy and her best friend Devon posing in a variety of outfits and fancy dress costumes, their faces moulded into faux-model expressions; drawings Devon’s boyfriend Ash had done of manga-style monsters opening their jaws and gaping stupidly out of the paper.

When she’d run out of walls, Itzy had turned to the ceiling. Up there were glow-in-the-dark stars and posters of planets, nebulae, places she often went in her fantasies. All this was bordered with multi-coloured fairy lights that, each night, washed the room in shifting colours: pink, blue, green and white.

Against one of the side walls stood a tall wardrobe – her old childhood hiding place. At the opposite wall was her worn wooden desk, where her notebook still lay accusingly, waiting for her to read what had been written – but she was afraid to look.

Dizzy, she staggered to her bed, below the window. For a long time, she just lay there. One of her sand-coloured arms dangled over the side, and her long ebony hair splayed out in a halo. In her mind, stars danced like the constellations printed on the indigo t-shirt she wore. After a while, she no longer felt connected to her body. Now she saw the black that streaked the air, and she wondered what it meant. She often saw it when she slipped into one of her trances.

She trained her eyes on the lines, thinking maybe she could bend them with her mind. But they only grew fatter, until they filled her vision and she was breathless with fear. She wanted to return to her body and run from the shadowy monster forming before her. But try as she might, she remained untethered from her body, trapped in a waking nightmare.

Help, she thought, unable to work her vocal chords. Someone help me!

Out of the black, two faint lights shone through. They gained intensity, breaking apart the darkness and forcing themselves into her view. A pair of grey eyes watched her, familiar and somehow comforting in their steel.

She plummeted back into her body at the sound of the front door opening downstairs. Her heart kicked into angry palpitations, as if she’d been on the verge of an important revelation and then cruelly yanked away from it.

‘Itzy?’ her mother called up the stairs a moment later. ‘You home?’

She couldn’t move. She felt like her whole body had been soaked in glue, holding her to the bed. The sound of her mother’s footsteps climbing up the brief staircase was amplified, like the slow, drawn out pounding of feet in the Godzilla films Ash had made her watch.

Myra Loveguard finally reached the landing and nudged open her daughter’s bedroom door. ‘Itz?’ she tried again.

She looked tired. She always looked tired. The divorce had happened seven years ago, but she’d never really moved on. It was so hard, looking at her and remembering how vibrant she had once been.

Myra came into the room and sat on the bed beside her only child. She outstretched one of her long arms and ran her fingers through her daughter’s black hair. ‘Itzy, what’s wrong?’

Itzy forced herself to sit up. She lifted her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, like a little girl.

‘I don’t know how to say this,’ she whispered.

Her mother’s body stiffened in anticipation. ‘Whatever it is…just tell me.’

Itzy swallowed. She didn’t know how to begin.

‘Itzy,’ Myra said. She touched her palm to her daughter’s cheek in a rare display of mothering – real mothering that meant she hadn’t had time to go into the kitchen.

It encouraged Itzy. Maybe this would be the turning point, the event that would shake her mother into finally moving forward with her life.

Itzy bit her lip and took the plunge. ‘He’s dead,’ she announced. The words felt like bile in her mouth, and she was suddenly very worried she would be sick.

Despite everything that had happened, all Stephen had done to them, Myra’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. Her head quivered and she said, ‘No.’

Itzy inclined her head in dreadful affirmation.

‘He – he can’t – how?’

Itzy stared down at her hands, the fingers long like her father’s.

‘No, don’t tell me,’ Myra decided. She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder to steady herself. ‘I’m sorry. I know you…you need…I need….’

Itzy didn’t move. How had she been stupid enough to delude herself into thinking anything would change? She knew what her mother needed: a drink.

That had become her staple answer to all of life’s problems. Sometimes it felt like alcohol had replaced Stephen as Itzy’s second parent. Each day, Myra held it together just long enough to get through work, and then swiftly unravelled once she was home, with an eagerness that revealed the desperation she felt for that oblivion.

Myra staggered to her feet and exited the room without another word. Soon, Itzy heard clattering in the kitchen, bottles being taken out, a glass being filled. Then, a glass breaking, followed by hysterical crying.

The sounds brought Itzy back to one of the few solid memories she had from childhood. She had been nine. She’d been sleeping, when she’d been woken by the sound of shrill screaming.

She’d heard a smashing sound, and then the night had gone ominously silent. Itzy had drawn the covers over her head, as children do to hide from monsters. But the monsters hadn’t been under her bed – they had been in the room down the hall and answered to the name of Stephen Loveguard.

Footsteps pounded down their staircase and then out the front door. The door was flung open, and then slammed shut so heavily that it made the house shake. Stephen had left.

But what had happened to her mother?

Trembling, Itzy climbed out of bed, out of the safety of her room, and crept down the darkened hallway. The door had been left open, as if Stephen had wanted her to see. Myra lay on the floor, a shattered lamp beside her and pieces of it embedded in her temple. Her eyes were closed, like she was sleeping.

The air flew out of Itzy’s lungs. It felt like shadowy hands were reaching out to grab her. She spun in a circle, trying to catch them. If she faced them, they couldn’t get her, she reasoned.

Then, miraculously, she saw Myra was breathing – and Itzy rang 999, just like she’d learned in school.

By the time Stephen returned, the police had arrived, and Myra was taken to Accident & Emergency. She would be alright, they said. Physically, at least.

Stephen feigned ignorance of what had happened.

‘I was out on a walk,’ he excused himself with frightening sincerity, as though he’d forgotten what he’d done. ‘I’m not a very good sleeper. She must have had an accident.’

Itzy wanted to scream – to throw herself at the feet of the policemen and say, Can’t you see what a liar he is? Can’t you see what he’s done? But something stopped her.

Because Stephen was still her father, and that carried the sort of weight that makes children keep such secrets, even while they’re losing themselves inside.

Later, it had just been Itzy and her father, sitting in her room. Neither of them bothered to switch on the lights. Itzy tucked her knees against her chest and held herself closely. She pressed herself against the wall that bordered her bed in an effort to get as far away from her father as she could.

And yet, hadn’t some part of her wanted him to hug her and tell her everything would be alright, too? Hadn’t she wanted him to say how much he loved her, and that he was proud of her for saving her mother?

But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and let his head droop so he was staring down at his fidgeting hands. The darkness made his hair – grown out in those days – look even blacker than it was, like he was hooded in shadow.

Then he said it.

‘I’m sorry, Itzy. I just…I don’t love your mother anymore.’

Her heart stopped beating. Why was he saying this? And why was he telling her, of all people? Was this how divorces happened? She’d always entertained the mad notion that somehow her parents would work out their problems one day and things would get better. The idea of severance had never crossed her young mind.

They remained that way a long time. Itzy didn’t know where the time went or how it managed to pass so swiftly. She disappeared into the silence, escaping inside herself like she often did.

An hour later, he got up to go. He looked like he couldn’t remember what he’d come to see her about. Outside, the birds had started to sing.

Myra returned home the following day. Stephen drove to the hospital to pick her up, as if she’d been away for a routine operation. By the time they got back, they were laughing together like friends. Stephen was especially affectionate, touching her hair with a look of longing and adoration on his face. Itzy wondered how her father could carry on the way he was, after what he’d confessed to her the night before. And she couldn’t ignore the bandages on Myra’s head.

Their marriage went on for another year, in that manner. A month would go by without incident, and Itzy would think perhaps Stephen really had changed.

Then she would wake to the screaming again and know that, in a way, she was just like her mother. They were both fooling themselves if they thought the violence would ever stop.

That was when she wrote the story.

* * *

Itzy shook herself before she could go back down that path. It never led anywhere good.

She peeled herself off the bed and hunched down on the rug. Its pattern was a mandala, like those the Tibetan monks spent months creating out of coloured sand. Once completed, the monks swept their hands through the pictures and destroyed them. It was meant to teach them nothing was forever, so there was no point in getting attached; you would only hurt for it later.

She’d never understood the point of it, until now.

Itzy picked up her much-abused mobile phone and inspected it for damage. It had survived, this time. Thin lines spidered across the screen from all the other times she had thrown the phone in anger. It was then she most felt like her father’s daughter.

The phone blinked with a message. It was from Gwen. She read it and started shaking again. She needed someone – not her mother, but someone who would comfort her.

Itzy pressed a button on the touch-screen and put the phone to her ear. It rang once, twice, three times, before a cheerful voice answered.

‘Hey, Itzy, you alright?’

‘…Devon….’ The words jumbled up in her head. She could see the letters swarming in front of her like a plague of wasps, but she couldn’t make sense of them. They refused to connect, to make a sentence.

‘Itz, what is it?’ Devon asked. The cheer had faded from her voice.

‘My dad….’

That was all she needed to say.

‘I’ll be right round,’ Devon said, and she hung up without saying goodbye.