Fareed Abdul Aly didn’t want to die. His body was shaking uncontrollably and his clothes were clinging to his skin from a cold sweat seeping from every pore. His teeth were chattering so hard that he was sure they would crack. Even Katrina hadn’t frightened him as much as this. Katrina was just a hurricane, but this was a frontal assault on his soul, and there was no high ground, no shelter, and no salvation.
There was only Devlin’s voice in his head.
What Fareed was doing at this moment, and what he had been going through for the last ten minutes, was scaring the living Hell out of him. But as bewildered as he was, he knew that no matter how unreal this seemed it was all completely and utterly real. Every last bit of it.
There was one more thing he knew. He knew that there was no way out for him. Fareed Aly knew he was doomed. He had never had a suicidal thought in his life, and yet here he was, standing outside his own balcony railing twelve stories up, about to jump to his death. And even though he was about to actually do it, it was the absolute last thing he wanted to do.
Staring at the concrete sidewalk below, he realized with an electric shock of cold certainty that all he really wanted out of life was to just go on living. But Devlin wasn’t going to allow that to happen. His grip on Fareed was much too strong.
Fareed clung to his balcony railing with one hand; his other was balled into a tight fist against his heaving chest. He prayed hard, his lips quivering as he tried to form the proper words, any words, to beseech the Almighty. Now that he had finally given his life to God, now that he had even brought his own siblings back into God’s loving embrace, where was his Savior? Or was this to be his penance for a life of sin?
God, Devlin told Fareed soundlessly, has nothing to do with this.
Fareed’s eyes snapped back to Devlin down below. He didn’t want to die. Sweet Jesus, after all the darkness he had been through, he didn’t want to die! Not yet. Oh, Lord, not yet...
A swarm of city vehicles clogged the street below, their lights flashing as the response teams piled out, looking up to him and pointing, and deploying their equipment while the cops set up a roadblock. Everyone and his brother were turning out to save him. Everyone except The One he had finally turned to for salvation, with the help of the Bishop just a short month ago.
The cops were already scrambling through his building lobby, and were coming up the elevator with the super and his master key. They had everything under control down below. For a city strained to the breaking point and beyond, they still performed daily miracles, but where was the real miracle worker when you needed him?
The balcony railing was cold and moist from a long, damp winter night. Dawn had crept in muggy and overcast, with a light fog drifting in from Lake Pontchartrain north of the city and from the Mississippi River to the south. The sun would soon rise over the Lower Ninth Ward and the cloudy grey November skies would melt away, but Fareed knew that he wouldn’t be around to welcome the clear blue morning sky. Not this time.
Devlin was down there in the gathering crowd, and he wanted Fareed to come to him. To fall into his arms, into his loving embrace, and his name wasn’t Jesus.
Fareed gripped the railing so tightly that his fingernails were bleeding. He now knew precisely what it meant to be hanging on for dear life. The phrase made perfect sense to him now, because it was all he could do at this point. Stark terror had risen inside of him, so powerful that it numbed his spine and constricted his throat. Spasms were firing in his legs and biceps, and a primal fear engulfed him as Devlin’s grip became ever stronger. It was an actual physical sensation, as if a clenched fist were squeezing his heart. Devlin had somehow reached inside of him and grabbed hold, and Fareed could tell that he wasn’t going to let go.
With each passing moment of precious life, Fareed begged Jesus to save him, but nothing changed. Devlin was still laughing, still whispering in his ear, and he still felt an overwhelming compulsion to jump to his death. He tightened the shaking fist that he held against his breastbone and glanced down.
He could see Devlin in the crowd below smiling up to him, a handsome face surrounded by a cluster of Fareed’s worried neighbors, the familiar strangers who lived next door or across the street, the people he saw every day whose names he didn’t know. Like most anonymous neighbors, they just smiled or avoided eye contact. But now they were all aiming their cell phones at him, or texting their friends. Before, Fareed was just a part of the scenery, but now he was the center of attention. He would be on YouTube by dinnertime.
The cops at the roadblock let two trucks in from the local TV channels. They ran up on the curb, inventing parking spaces on the front lawn of the building. The crews piled out, and in seconds they had their cameras locked down on tripods and trained up at him.
The reporters were running sound checks on their mics and ear-pieces, and fussing with their clothes while the make-up elves touched up their faces. They tilted their heads back, squinting up at the jumper as the November overcast gradually brightened above. The world was going to Hell in a hand basket, and it was their job to make sure that the coverage was compelling and the footage was awesome.
Fareed heard the entry door of his condo being unlocked, and glanced through his open slider into the living room. The super in the hallway let two cops in, and stayed behind in the hall as the cops quietly approached across the living room carpet.
Their attention was riveted on the jumper, a young male with dark olive skin, an Arab-sounding name and short black hair, approximately five feet ten, one hundred sixty pounds, standing on his tiptoes outside his balcony railing and hanging on with one hand, his other one balled into a tight fist and pressed against his chest.
One of the cops almost stepped on Fareed’s cordless phone, lying on the carpet. It was giving off an annoying beep, hounding whoever was in earshot to hang it up. By force of habit, the younger of the two cops paused to bend down and get it. But his partner waved that off, his eyes still on Fareed. He dropped it less than ten minutes ago, when Devlin finally enticed him out to the balcony. When he could no longer resist him.
Henry stood at the threshold of Fareed’s balcony slider, gently appealing to him with the kindest eyes. His rookie partner stood beside him, watching and learning, wondering how this would turn out. He privately suspected that it wouldn’t go well.
“Sir! Please go to the officer behind you!”
The megaphone momentarily broke Fareed’s fixation on Devlin. It was pointing up at him, held by an officer standing by the open door of one of the police cars. The first rays of sunlight glinted off the brass stars on the officer’s shoulder boards.
Fareed looked back to Henry, who smiled and offered his hand. But Henry kept his distance, not wanting to spook him.
He wanted to take Henry’s hand in the worst way, but Devlin was down there, and he wanted Fareed to come to him. Now. Fareed looked back down to find him in the crowd.
Devlin was looking up to him along with everyone else. In over thirty years, he hadn’t aged a single day, but no one around him knew that. In fact, they didn’t even know he was amongst them. And even if they had glanced his way, he would have been invisible to them. Right now, for Devlin’s purposes, Fareed was the only person who had any inkling he was there.
Devlin held an unlit cigarette between his fingers, but it didn’t hold tobacco. It was his own special brand, something he had conjured up for his private pleasure. Devlin’s cigarettes were crafted from the slow-cured leaves of the Tree of Knowledge, picked by his own hand and carefully aged over countless centuries, delicately toasted to perfection in a special place that he called his own.
He was smoking more often now, and when he did, he inhaled deeply and the smoke coiled like a serpent around the memories it evoked, especially the moment in the Garden of Eden when Eve paused to consider his fateful offer. That perfect, singular moment when the entire delicate balance of creation began to shift in his favor...
When his work was done here today, he intended to celebrate by having a smoke. After so many years of frustration and failure, the urge to finally taste success was palpable. Time was running short and he was growing nervous and impatient. Lately, only his cigarettes soothed him, and that in itself was maddening.
Knowledge had always been his by divine right, but the longer this game played out, the greater the odds became that knowledge might be something he would have to surrender, and the consequences of that were too awful to contemplate.
“Come to me,” he whispered to Fareed, gesturing with the unlit cigarette held between his fingers. And yet at the same time, Devlin was thinking to himself, Don’t do it! Shun me! Get me behind thee!
Fareed didn’t know what Devlin was really thinking; all he knew was that Devlin was enticing him to jump. Fareed had no clue that that was precisely what Devlin did not want him to do.
Devlin actually wanted Fareed to resist him. Because if Fareed did, then Devlin would have finally found The One he was looking for. Only then could he lead The One into temptation, and when he did that, Devlin would certainly win.
Devlin wasn’t tempting him, he was testing him.
The temptations would come later, after he proved who Fareed really was. After he resisted the Devil himself.
“Come to me...” Devlin thought aloud, and Fareed heard it as a beguiling whisper in his head.
Don’t do it! Devlin privately prayed, and then something under his skin uncoiled like a serpent as he underwent a subtle transformation.
“Shun me,” he whispered in another silent voice.
Fareed stared down at him, shivering as this new command enveloped his mind like a cloud of smoke. He suddenly jolted in horror as Devlin’s true nature appeared. Lucifer was a magnificent, angry archangel, the first among many who had fallen from grace so long ago. Once fallen, he had never regained his balance.
The horrific sight squeezed Fareed’s breath out of him, and he shot a desperate glance at Henry, who had imperceptibly moved closer. The officer was only a few feet away now, but he froze in place. His partner stayed behind at the threshold, motionless as well.
“Please, sir,” Henry pleaded with Fareed. “Let us help you.”
“I want to!” Fareed cried out. “Believe me, I do! But I can’t! He won’t let me! He won’t let me!”
Henry was baffled, but he persisted, holding out his hand and taking another cautious step forward.
“Sir, please...”
Henry stopped, noticing something in Fareed’s clutched fist. If it was a detonator, it sure was a tiny one. But these days, even a car remote was suspect.
What a fiendishly clever ruse, Henry thought, his mind suddenly racing at fever pitch. A new twist in the suicide bombing trade – get out on a ledge and draw a big crowd down below, jump into their midst and BOOM! Everybody goes home to Allah.
Henry suddenly wasn’t sure what to do. If this Arab guy did reach out to him, it would be with the hand that was holding the detonator. Then what?
Anguished tears streamed down Fareed’s cheeks, his desperate gaze locked on the policeman. Henry and his partner had no idea what was happening, and they wouldn’t believe it if Fareed told him. Fareed scarcely believed it himself, but it was as real as the air they breathed – completely invisible, and yet absolutely essential to what was transpiring.
Henry kept his eyes on Fareed and leaned back to his partner behind him. “Is that a detonator?” he whispered.
His partner gulped, and leaned into his shoulder mic.
“Captain!” he whispered. “The jumper might be wearing an explosive vest.”
Down below, Captain Thorrington looked up to the balcony in alarm, and glanced at the crowd. Although his men were holding them back, they were still just a few yards away from where the jumper would land.
“Come to me,” Devlin whispered in Fareed’s head, and Fareed looked down to him once again. Devlin’s grip was burrowing ever deeper, opening pathways that led down to into the young man’s darkest corners. And yet, Devlin was hoping and praying that Fareed would cast him off, because only then would Devlin know who Fareed really was. Devlin had been looking for The One for nearly thirty-three years now, as determined as a man looking for gold or true love, and nothing less would satisfy him.
“No! Shun me!” was the whisper that Fareed heard now. It was Lucifer’s voice this time, Devlin’s true essence, and the friction generated by his inner conflict sparked a sudden fever inside of Fareed.
“Jesus, where are you when I need you?” Fareed wailed. His entire body tensed in a final, futile effort to resist, but he was unable to tear his gaze from Devlin down below. He squeezed his swollen eyes shut to block him out, and shuddered as the fever took hold.
He turned away from his rescuers. Henry and his partner sensed that from this point forward, there was nothing they could do to save the jumper. Or the people below, if their suspicions were correct.
Fareed’s tears turned to blood. He opened his eyes a final time, gazing at Devlin twelve stories down. The black-coated figure slowly beckoned with the two fingers that held his unlit cigarette.
“Come to me.”
It was the only sound Fareed heard. The universe stood mute and waiting, and Fareed let his hand slip from the railing.
Henry lunged to save him, but the moment he did he felt a sudden constriction in his chest. He grabbed at his shirtfront and his partner glanced at him in alarm. But as suddenly as it came on, the pain vanished.
Henry was fine, but Fareed was gone, and all they could do was watch him fall. Henry had heard from other cops that jumpers sometimes scream their heads off when they fall, but this one didn’t make a sound.
The crowd below, however, did. Several of them screamed, and those that didn’t gasped. Behind them, Thorrington was shouting into his megaphone.
“CLEAR THE AREA!”
But it was too late.
Fareed saw the ground rushing up to meet him. The shocking realization of what he was doing stopped his ability to catch a final breath. The wind flapped at his clothes and tossed his hair around, tugging at his skull. His mouth filled with air, but he couldn’t take any into his lungs. His bloody tears blurred his vision as he accelerated, faster and faster, closer and closer.
It was a long fall, and the crowd’s reaction had dwindled to a quiet, awful dread. They watched in silence, ignoring Thorrington’s order, their cameras tracking Fareed.
He slammed onto the concrete driveway with a sickening thud and bounced once, before silently coming to rest in a sad huddle of broken flesh.
There was no explosion.
Fareed drew one final, incredibly painful breath, and then lay still in a spreading pool of blood, with something still clenched in his fist.
Standing unnoticed in the murmuring crowd, Devlin’s cigarette spontaneously flared to life. He was deeply disappointed, and suddenly needed a smoke. He took a drag, exhaling through his nose as his face contorted into a dark, brooding scowl. Today had not gone well, and there was only a few short months left.
He turned and walked away in a foul mood, passing directly through several bystanders. They shuddered, feeling a sudden chill, but they attributed it to the tragedy they just witnessed.
Thorrington’s voice boomed over the crowd. “Stay back from the body!”
But the paramedics rushed to Fareed’s side, thinking that Thorrington was helping them with crowd control. They deployed their equipment even though they already knew Fareed was dead, or that he would be within seconds. They knew there was nothing they could do. Their efforts were to keep themselves going, not Fareed, in the same way that a funeral was for the survivors and not for the deceased. Fareed’s time had come and gone, but theirs had not.
Thorrington’s men were standing back and shouting warnings to the paramedics, but all it did was generate confusion. Particularly since the paramedics already had their hands all over Fareed’s body and knew there wasn’t a bomb. They sat back on their heels and looked at the cops, puzzled.
Fareed’s tortured soul slipped free and rose above his corpse, looking back on the person he had just been. His body’s heart remained motionless. Despite the valiant efforts of the paramedics, blood no longer pumped in the veins. It leaked instead, as dead bodies do, from a multitude of orifices and ruptures.
Devlin’s grip on the immortal soul that had been briefly known to the world as Fareed Abdul Aly was suddenly gone. Knowledge was gradually returning like a long-lost memory, and as it did a feeling came over him, an awareness of love.
It was good to be free of the pain.