The site appeared to be a who’s who of people, places, and things from the Bible, and the first thing he saw was a definition that he eagerly read.
The biblical term Nephilim, which in Hebrew means “the fallen ones” or “those who fell,” refers to the offspring of angels and mortal women mentioned in Genesis 6: 1–4. A fuller account is preserved in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which recounts how a group of angels left heaven to mate with women, and taught humanity such heinous skills as the art of war.
Aaron sat back in his chair, stunned. Offspring of angels and mortal women, he read again. “What the hell does that have to do with me?” he muttered, moving closer to the computer screen.
Somebody coughed behind him, and he turned to see four people waiting in the doorway of the computer room. A heavyset kid with a bad case of acne, wearing an X-Men T-shirt, tapped the face of his Timex watch and glared at him.
Aaron looked back to the screen and quickly read a bit more before closing the site and signing out. He removed his pen from his pocket and on the wrinkled piece of paper where he had written his various attempts at the mystery word, he crossed out the incorrect spellings leaving only the correct one.
Nephilim.
Sighing heavily, he returned to his seat and his books in the other room. He sat down with every intention of working on his paper, but found that he could not concentrate, his thoughts stalled on the story of human women having babies with angels. A shiver of unease ran up and down his spine as he chillingly recalled the subject of his recurring dream. Again he saw the boy attacked by the winged creatures dressed in golden armor. It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
He got to his feet and snatched up the notepad from the table. He had to find out more. It was as if something was compelling him to dig deeper. Maybe there’s some way I can maneuver this into a research subject, he mused.
Aaron used another computer in the lobby of the building to search the library’s inventory, and found that most of what he was looking for was kept in a separate room off the reference area.
He wrote the titles down on his notepad and began his search. In a book called The Lost Books of Eden, Aaron learned more about the Book of Enoch. It was an apocryphal book of the Old Testament, written in Hebrew about a century before the birth of Christ. The original version was lost near the end of the fourth century, and only fragments remained until Bruce the Traveler brought back a copy from Abyssinia in 1773, probably made from a version known to the early Greek fathers.
What followed were some passages from the ancient text of Enoch, and what Aaron read summed up all that he had learned so far:
…that there were angels who consented to fall from heaven that they might have intercourse with the daughters of the earth. For in those days the sons of men having multiplied, there were born to them daughters of great beauty. And when the angels, or sons of heaven, beheld them, they were filled with desire; wherefore they said to one another: “Come let us choose wives from among the race of man, and let us beget children.”
Aaron was amazed. He’d never heard of such a thing. His knowledge of angels was limited to what was often found on holiday cards or at the tops of Christmas trees—beautiful women in flowing, white gowns, or children with tiny wings, and halos perched on their heads.
Fascinated, he was reaching for the list of books he’d yet to examine when again he was overcome with the feeling of being observed. He quickly turned in his chair, half expecting to see the crazy old man pointing his gnarly finger and calling him Nephilim over and over again—but was shocked to see Vilma Santiago.
The girl gave him the sweetest of smiles and meekly came into the room. “I thought that was you,” she said with only the slightest hint of an accent.
“Yep, it’s me,” he said nervously as he stood up from his chair. “I’m just doing some, y’know, research and stuff for Ms. Mulholland’s research paper and…”
Vilma looked at him strangely and he stopped talking, afraid that his nose had started to run, or something equally gross and embarrassing had happened.
“Is…is something wrong?” he asked, tempted to reach up and quickly rub his nose.
The girl shook her head and grinned from ear to ear. “No, nothing is wrong,” she said happily. “I just didn’t know that you could speak Portuguese.”
He was confused at first, wondering how she could have known about his sudden power, when he realized what he had done.
“Was I…was I just speaking to you in Portuguese?”
She giggled and covered her mouth with a delicate hand. “Yes, yes, you were, and quite well, I might add. Where did you learn it?”
He had no idea how to answer. Aaron shrugged his shoulders. “Just picked it up, I guess. I’m pretty good with languages.”
Vilma nodded. “Yes, you are.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then she looked down at the table and the books he was reading.
“That’s just some stuff I’m looking through to get ideas. I haven’t decided yet, but I might…”
She picked up a book called Angels: From A to Z and began to thumb through it. “I love this one,” she said as she flipped the pages. “Everything you could want to know about angels and even a section at the back of the book that lists movies about angels.” She looked up from the open book in her hands and squinted her eyes in deep thought. “I really think this one might be my favorite.”
Vilma placed the book back onto the table and began to rummage through the other volumes. “I love anything to do with angels.” She reached into her shirt and removed something delicate on the end of a gold chain. “Look at this.”
Aaron looked closer to see that it was an angel. “That’s really pretty,” he said, looking from the golden angel to her. At the moment, the necklace wasn’t the only thing he found pretty.
“Thanks,” she said, putting the jewelry back inside her shirt. “I just love them, they make me feel safe—y’know?”
Aaron could have been knocked over with a feather—angel or otherwise. He just stood there and smiled as he watched the girl go through the books he had pulled from the shelves. It must have been some weird form of synchronicity, he imagined. What are the odds? It boggled his already addled brain.
“Is this what you are planning to do your paper on?” Vilma asked excitedly, interrupting his thoughts.
“I don’t know…yeah, maybe,” he stammered, unsure of his answer. “Yeah, maybe I will. Seems like it might be really interesting.”
She beamed as she began to talk about the topic. “It’s fascinating. When I was little and lived in Brazil, my auntie would tell me stories of how the angels would visit the villages in the jungles disguised as travelers and…”
Vilma suddenly stopped her story and looked away from him. “I’m sorry for babbling, it’s just that I find it so very interesting, and to get a chance to talk about it with somebody else, well, I really enjoy it is all.”
She seemed embarrassed, going suddenly quiet as she pulled at the sleeves of her denim jacket.
“It’s all right, really,” Aaron said with a smile that he hoped wasn’t too goofy. He snatched his notepad off the table. “Maybe, if you’re not too busy, you could help me with my research.”
Her eyes grew wide in excitement.
“The stories from Brazil, the ones your aunt told you? They would probably be really cool to talk about in the paper, if you didn’t mind helping me.”
He couldn’t believe what he was doing. Vilma Santiago, the hottest girl in the Lynn public schools, and he was asking her to help him with his research paper. What an absolute idiot, he berated himself.