A Deafening Silence In Heaven by Thomas E. Sniegoski Page A

heart to see the dog so distraught.
    But there was no use fretting over something that she could do little about. She had to keep things positive. Right now, Remy seemed to be holding on. She only hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Francis returned with the physician, and then they would know.
    Good or bad, at least they would know something.
    She returned to the living room, staring at Remy’s prone form. If she didn’t know better she would say that he was just catching a little nap.
    Do angels even sleep?
She tried to recall if she’d ever actually seen Remy sleeping, but her memories drifted back to the last time they’d made love. She couldn’t help but smile. How loved she’d felt since he’d come into her life.
    The tears came again in scalding torrents, and Linda rushed down the hallway to the first-floor bathroom.
    She turned the water on full blast, then caught her reflection in the mirror above the sink, horrified by the puffiness of her eyes and the blotchiness of her complexion. If Remy should awaken now and see her, she thought, he’d probably scream and crawl back into his coma.
    Marlowe joined her, sitting down on the bath mat outside the shower stall.
    “I wouldn’t want to be alone, either,” she told him. “Let me wash my face, and we’ll go back to him together.”
    The dog’s tail thumped twice in response, and Linda bent forward over the sink, splashing cool water onto her face in the hopes of somewhat rejuvenating herself.
    Then a sudden sound made Marlowe bark, startling her. Standing upright, face dripping, she listened. Marlowe stood in the bathroom doorway at attention, growling softly.
    She wasn’t sure what the sound was, but thought she heard the creaking of a door hinge.
    “Francis?” she called out, grabbing a hand towel and drying her face as she cautiously left the bathroom. “Francis, is that you?” she asked.
    Marlowe was ahead of her, growling, the bristled fur on his back somehow darker than his normally black coat. He stopped outside the living room entryway, barked once, and then rushed into the room.
    “Marlowe!” she cried, running to the doorway and stopping short. A man stood over Remy, and the Labrador sat next to him, staring balefully up at him.
    “Hello?” Linda said tentatively.
    The man slowly turned toward her voice, his face scratched and bruised as if he’d recently been in a fight, his eyes filled with emotion.
    “I’m too late,” Stephen Mulvehill said, his voice quivering as he dropped to his knees beside the body of his friend.
    “God forgive me. . . . I’m too late.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    F rancis stepped onto a street that looked like something out of a postapocalyptic nightmare.
    It took him a minute or so to remember that he was in Detroit.
    “What a shit hole,” he muttered as he began to walk the blighted city neighborhood. Miles of abandoned city blocks, the only apparent life being weeds that pushed up through the broken blacktop and swarms of rats and roaches that skittered about in the darkness of the empty buildings.
    In a way an apocalypse had happened here; it was just of an economic kind.
    He wasn’t sure exactly why places like this, abandoned places, places that had once pulsed with life but were now dead, drew the fallen angels of Heaven. The Denizens, as they were called, having served their time in the Hell prison of Tartarus and now completing their penance here on Earth, seemed drawn to these desolate, hopeless places like lice to a healthy scalp.
    The Denizen known in certain circles as the Physician was no different from his penitent brethren.
    A ragged dog emerged from an alley, its snout pressed to the ground as it tracked what it probably hoped would be its next meal. It stopped when it saw Francis and studied him with dark, bottomless eyes. It looked as though it would turn tail and run when he spoke.
    “I’m looking for Darnell,” Francis said in a language the animal could understand. “I’m looking for