eBook
About This Book
Netoniel, a not very good angel, had created disaster on Earth. At death, spirits could no longer leave, and living no one remembered who or what they truly were. All to prove that you could kill the spirit (which no one can, of course.)
But Netoniel was hiding somewhere else in the universe, and it was now up to his three siblings to save the Earth.
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Once upon a time there were three children who meant to save the world.
The first, and the oldest of the threeâ€"and whose name was Flanneryâ€"knew this on arrival: the world was in terrible trouble. The Great War, still less than seven years past, had left the world in a darkness that for all the optimistic political rhetoricâ€"and the noble aims of the League of Nationsâ€"never quite lifted and which was soon to return fully fledged with a small mustache and renewed violence.
The second childâ€"whose name was Heather, and who was the youngest of the threeâ€"arrived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in December of 1950, just a little over five years after the Second World War finally ended, and on the very day that her sister Flannery left Ridgefield for her painful and prolonged audience with death. When in her seventh year, Heather’s Irish Catholic father beat her younger brother senseless with his fists, and then killed him by tossing the lifeless five-year-old boy down a set of stairsâ€"deemed an accident by the local Irish Catholic investigator, and grandly forgiven by the local Irish Catholic priestâ€"Heather knew that evil roamed freely in this world and that God seemed to turn a blind eye. She did, however, not remember that she was meant to give God a hand.
The third child, Gabriel, was born on the 9th of August, 1945. He took his first breath the very instant that the atom bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, detonated. He was later to muse that his first lungful of air contained the souls of 40,000 Japanese children. He (like Heather) had no notion about his purpose on this Earth until one summer morning when 40,000 dust motes, shimmering in the slotted sunshine of an abandoned attic (where a man recently had hanged himself), suddenly began to sing.
Then there was the fourth child: Netoniel.
Siblings all.
:
Gabriel was half-way up the dilapidated ladder. The day was Saturday and the date was July 23rd, 1960. The time was a little after ten in the morning. The rungs showed evidence of age or rot or both so he proceeded up them slowly, taking care to place his feet close to the sides where they would be the strongest. The ladder groaned softly under his weight, but didn’t seem to mind him.
A perverse curiosity had brought him here. A few years agoâ€"no one had been very specific about exactly whenâ€"a man had hanged himself in this very attic. If the truth be told, Gabriel didn’t know that for a fact, he hadn’t even asked his parents or other such authority to confirm it, but it was rumored, and quite widelyâ€"common knowledge, as it wereâ€"especially among the kids (and as yet he was not much more than one himself).
So, in essence, a fact.
But Netoniel was hiding somewhere else in the universe, and it was now up to his three siblings to save the Earth.
====
Once upon a time there were three children who meant to save the world.
The first, and the oldest of the threeâ€"and whose name was Flanneryâ€"knew this on arrival: the world was in terrible trouble. The Great War, still less than seven years past, had left the world in a darkness that for all the optimistic political rhetoricâ€"and the noble aims of the League of Nationsâ€"never quite lifted and which was soon to return fully fledged with a small mustache and renewed violence.
The second childâ€"whose name was Heather, and who was the youngest of the threeâ€"arrived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in December of 1950, just a little over five years after the Second World War finally ended, and on the very day that her sister Flannery left Ridgefield for her painful and prolonged audience with death. When in her seventh year, Heather’s Irish Catholic father beat her younger brother senseless with his fists, and then killed him by tossing the lifeless five-year-old boy down a set of stairsâ€"deemed an accident by the local Irish Catholic investigator, and grandly forgiven by the local Irish Catholic priestâ€"Heather knew that evil roamed freely in this world and that God seemed to turn a blind eye. She did, however, not remember that she was meant to give God a hand.
The third child, Gabriel, was born on the 9th of August, 1945. He took his first breath the very instant that the atom bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, detonated. He was later to muse that his first lungful of air contained the souls of 40,000 Japanese children. He (like Heather) had no notion about his purpose on this Earth until one summer morning when 40,000 dust motes, shimmering in the slotted sunshine of an abandoned attic (where a man recently had hanged himself), suddenly began to sing.
Then there was the fourth child: Netoniel.
Siblings all.
:
Gabriel was half-way up the dilapidated ladder. The day was Saturday and the date was July 23rd, 1960. The time was a little after ten in the morning. The rungs showed evidence of age or rot or both so he proceeded up them slowly, taking care to place his feet close to the sides where they would be the strongest. The ladder groaned softly under his weight, but didn’t seem to mind him.
A perverse curiosity had brought him here. A few years agoâ€"no one had been very specific about exactly whenâ€"a man had hanged himself in this very attic. If the truth be told, Gabriel didn’t know that for a fact, he hadn’t even asked his parents or other such authority to confirm it, but it was rumored, and quite widelyâ€"common knowledge, as it wereâ€"especially among the kids (and as yet he was not much more than one himself).
So, in essence, a fact.