Lollipop Lil

Lily loved her job. She loved children. “Her” kids loved her.

They were not her biological offspring, but they were “hers” nonetheless.

Lily had a son once. He had perished in horrific circumstances 30 years earlier.

      “Can we cross now, Miss? Please!”

Lily concealed a smile. Sharon was always impatient. She could never stand still. Her pictogram in Lily’s brain was “ants in the pants.” Lily’s memory for names, never that good, had been deteriorating recently, hence her use of pictograms.

Checking right, left, then right again Lily strode deliberately out into the middle of the road, planting her bulky frame and her pole with the “STOP” instruction contained within the circular yellow frame at the top. Before Lily could give the official command, Sharon was skipping over the zebra crossing pursued by a giggling, squealing, chattering bunch of ill-assorted juniors. It was home time, and they could not have been more excited had they been prisoners released from lengthy captivity. An equally varied group of parents were waiting to receive their charges on the far side of the crossing.

Lily’s eye, as often before, was drawn to a thin fair-haired boy who seemed to keep himself aloof from the throng. Head in the air, looking to the front, he paced with measured steps. Lily didn’t know his name, but his pictogram was a black cat, with a white face, who kept on walking, so she thought of him as Felix. He intrigued the Lollipop lady. There was something about him. Lily couldn’t put her finger on it. She had never noticed Felix being welcomed by an adult. He tended to hover for a while, after the others had left, as if expecting, or hoping, to be greeted by…someone, anyone, then marching up the incline with those metronomic steps, disappearing out of her sight at the top of the hill. Vanishing into…?

Lily tried to get inside his head. She could read nothing in his impassive expression. Did he feel alone, abandoned, frightened? Perhaps he was registering the dissociative emptiness of repeated psychological trauma. Felix was about to start walking again, after his usual brief pause.

      “Are you alright? Can I help?” she ventured, immediately regretting her clumsy intrusion.

The boy turned and held Lily’s gaze. Blank, bottomless eyes. A lost soul, she mused.

She felt the tug inside. The twist. The developing transformation. Unexpected. After all these years. Her heart was turning to stone. Her feelings cauterised like an inconvenient wound. Her thoughts, her will, surrendering control to the soul worm eating into the core of her being. No! He had returned. IT had returned. Lily had become the involuntary accomplice to the evil entity once more. She knew, and dreaded, what would be required of her.

      “Do you like the circus?” The words emerged unwillingly from her mouth. “Everyone likes the circus.”

The boy nodded slowly.

      “Clowns? Everyone loves a clown. Don’t you?”

Another nod, even more cautious.

Lily took the boy’s hand and walked him away from the school crossing, her warning sign now held horizontal in her other hand. She stopped at a sewer access point beneath the roadside curb a few metres further on. Lily peered at the open space but could see nothing. But she knew IT was there. She could sense the rancid, putrid, corrupting presence over and above the stink of the sewer. Felix, however, with the special visual acuity of a child, could see the malevolent clown. Lily felt him stiffen, draw closer to her. She heard him gasp then breathe more quickly. Lily was powerless to intervene. She had become a monster’s purveyor of prey. A monster herself.

Suddenly, something extraordinary and unexpected took place. Felix rapidly changed size and shape, no longer holding Lily’s hand. It was her turn to gasp. Beside her stood a tall male angel clad in shining white robes, with long flowing golden hair. The angel pointed both hands at the sewer and thunderously intoned, “Begone marauding spawn of Satan. Quit this realm and return to your hellish haunt, never again to feed on human children.”

Incandescent sparks flowed from each of the angel’s fingers, coalescing into a fireball just inside the entrance to the sewer. No sound came from the clown, but Lily felt a visceral convulsion contorting her innards. And she was free. No longer bound to IT’s will. Her head spinning, Lily tried unsuccessfully to hold onto consciousness. She sank, insensible, to the ground.

***

Lily couldn’t remember what had happened after she fainted. At least she presumed it was a faint. That’s what the doctor had called it when it had happened before. Something to do with low blood sugar? Nothing to worry about. Go home, rest, have a cup of hot sweet tea. If it happened again, get in touch and he would organise some investigations.

But Lily remembered clearly what had happened before the faint. She shivered at the vivid recollection. The sweet tea was hitting the spot, recovery was underway. But she had so many questions.

      “You must have so many questions.” The calm voice seemed to echo her thoughts.

Lily jolted upright, spilling some of her tea. The angel – that same angel – stood before her.

She couldn’t speak. Lily goggled at the apparition which had materialised in her living room.

      “Maybe this will help to make it a bit easier,” said the angel, shapeshifting before Lily’s wide eyes into a nondescript young boy.

      “Felix,” breathed Lily. “What…?”

      “Not Felix, but Frederick,” said the boy. “Can you remember?”

Lily was silent, internally processing the disparate fragments of reality, contemporary and historical, which were jostling with each other to produce a matrix of understanding.

      “Frederick was the name given to me by my parents. A father I never knew, and…”

      “Your mother,” gasped Lily. “Me. You. Fred. No!” Tears coursed down Lily’s trembling cheeks.

      “You were four. I killed you. Can you ever forgive me?”

      “You didn’t kill me. You delivered me to Pennywise. He had taken control of your will. You were paralysed, unable to resist. That’s what he does. It’s how he exists.”

      “Why me? I must have been evil, or a bad mother.”

      “On the contrary. The clown preyed on innocent, open-minded, warm-hearted trusting mothers. Their goodness was his entry portal. He exploited their well-meaning naivety.”

      “What happened today?”

      “You brought me up so well, had me baptised. I was a Saint as soon as I entered Heaven. I loved and quickly embraced the Divine Kingdom and its ways and mores. After the mandatory qualifying period I was chosen by Saint Peter to be an angel. After a further period I was assigned a Mission, like all angel militants. To revisit Earth, right a wrong and destroy a malevolent spirit. I begged to be assigned to Pennywise. St. Peter assented. Knowing IT reappears every thirty years, we calculated the likely time to target. Peter was convinced IT would seek you out again, given your previous vulnerability. I assumed the human form you called Felix, believing your kind heart would be attracted to my forlorn persona. Then it was just a matter of waiting. This time you didn’t deliver me to the clown, you delivered IT to me, to divine vengeance and retribution.”

      “So, is IT gone for good?”

      “I hope so. That evil spirit is so resilient, resourceful and adaptable that I cannot guarantee eternal banishment. However, should IT reappear at any time I will be on his case, pronto.”

      “What happens next?” asked Lily, her mind still in a whirl.

      “Ah,” murmured Fred. “All of this,” sweeping his arms wide, “ is an illusion, created to facilitate my explanation of everything that went before. When you lost consciousness as I was destroying IT you died, passing from the corporeal state to the state of spiritual being. You are now my fellow resident in God’s domain. Welcome to Heaven, mum. Welcome, St. Lily.”