A sleeping angel statue was in the cornfield next to my house.

There was not only one but many, at least four others lain out in different surrounding farmlands. They had all appeared after the last tornado had dissipated. I had seen such things in churches and cemeteries, but never in our rural plains.

Places flattened after the disaster. The pharmacy and hardware store ended up as rubble.

The stone figures had intricate wings spread and their eyes closed in deep slumber. They seemed to be in pristine condition as if they had camped out and found a new place to call home. Their granite flesh did not have any smudge marks from the swirling detritus of days prior.

No one seemed to bother in wanting to know why they had shown up.

The only other person who seemed to care except for me was a girl who sat one desk removed in the same row in history class. Her name was Shauna Nolan.

Her red hair seemed to change different shades daily. I always wondered if she liked me, but I could never summon the bravery to ask.

All I knew about her were family details. Her Dad was an Alaskan fisherman. Her mother was a retired paralegal who had become a full-time housewife. Everything else about her was a grand mystery in my psyche, which made me even more interested in her.

“I don’t know why they’re here,” Shauna said. "Nobody's thinking about them. How is it not in the news? No one else finds it weird?”

The girl she spoke to seemed far more interested in filing her nails than the discussion.

“I do,” I said as she turned around to face me. “One is only a few hundred feet from my front door.”

“Have you touched them?” Shauna asked. “They’re warm. Mr. Shea, who runs the flea market, found one among his horses. I’ve heard rumors he tried to have it removed. Even with as wealthy as he is, he hasn’t had any luck getting it off his property.”

The teacher shushed us with a smack of his ruler on the board. We pretended to pay attention.

I caught up with her in the hallway after the bell rang.

“We should try to figure out how many there are around town,“ I said. “It might be good to find out if any are different from the others, or to see if there’s anything they have in common.”

“It could be an artist trying to show off their work,” she said with a shrug.

“As you said, no one else seems to find it strange how this happened besides us. Let’s check them out. Together.”

She stared at me with a blank expression for a second before she gave me a wry smile.

“Fine,” she said she turned around and proceeded to head past a row of lockers. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken a long walk anyways. Meet me outside of the machine factory at four tomorrow.”

*

Our dinner table was silent. My father cut into his steak. His grubby, diesel-stained fingers clutched the silverware. He had taken his uniform off. His undershirt still carried the smell of Armor All, mixed with his first lager of the evening.

Mother kept her head down as she ate. I picked the potato salad on the side of my plate without much of an appetite.

The TV was on in the living room with the volume turned down. The local news anchor reported on a robbery homicide. The crime had occurred at a Walgreens in Waterloo. It flashed to a local used car commercial. The salesman was a well-known con artist by the name of Hollohan. He looked like Abraham Lincoln if he had a flat-top haircut and wider eyes.

“Did anyone see the angels?” I asked.

“Agent provocateurs placed those damn religious pieces,“ my father said. He downed his piece of meat with a long swig of beer. “Damn government using diversion tactics to keep our eyes off of where they should be. Their eyes have to be cameras. Surveillance equipment is put there to see how many guns the locals are buying downtown. The fat cats at the top are more afraid of an uprising than we are of gas prices. Or it's all China."

He shook his head and closed his eyes before he took another sip: “I scare myself with how right I am sometimes.”

“It could be a college art show,” Mom said with a soft voice. “Young ones trying to get a bit of attention with their creativity. I’ve read about how those 3D printers are getting better all the time. Or he or she's an aspiring sculptor trying to get their name out there.”

“I didn’t ask for a differing opinion,” Dad said with a leering stare.

“I’m going to check all of them out tomorrow,” I said.

Silence ensued and the air grew thick. My old man looked at me with an impetuous glance. It was the type of expression I had seen countless times.

“You will not do that,” he said. “No son of mine is going to have a mark of the beast placed under his skin because he went too close to an enemy spy drone. That’s what they want, and I refuse to give our freedom to them. Do you understand, boy?”

“Fine,” I lied as I finished my meal.

Later in the night, he passed out on his recliner.

I stole a bag of screwdrivers and a multi-tool off of his work belt and buried them in the backyard out of spite. I did steal his Smith & Wesson blade. I placed it in my pocket with a sense of triumph.

*

Shauna and I met each other in the parking lot of the decrepit factory. The place had been a source of economic survival and despair in equal measures since the dust bowl.

She retrieved the tablet from her backpack, turned it on, and showed me the screen. It was a map of our region. The image had four different photo-shopped pinpoints at various sections of town.

“Have you eaten?” Shauna asked me with a serious gaze. “You should have something on your stomach before we begin. I have a feeling there are many more of them if the rumors of their whereabouts are true.”

“I’m good,” I said.

“Perfect. I also have electrolyte packets and crackers if you start to feel weak. Not a lot of boys around here who eat fast food every day can keep up with me on hikes like this.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

“You’re not, only that you’re far from my level. Let’s go.”

Throughout the rest of the evening, we found five more angel statues.

One was by a fountain that sat across from the hospital.

The second was behind the eye doctor’s office hidden by red oaks.

The third was near a blood donation center on the outskirts.

The fourth was two miles adjacent to the truck stop.

We ran our hands along each one and tried to determine if there were any anomalies within the build of each bust. We could not find any.

“We didn’t check by the railroad,” Shauna said.

We went there along a bike path covered in pollen. We came to another cornfield.

We strolled alongside it until we noticed a carved-out pathway. I suspected hoaxers of having attached boards to their feet to design it. Forming artificial crop circles was their favorite way to laugh at the media.

We came to an unspoken agreement to follow it. The width of the man-made trail was proportionate in its dimensions to the angels. By then the sun was lowering and the stars were making themselves known in the wide sky.

The maze zig-zagged. The rustling noises we made echoed in the stillness. We came to the end of the trail.

It led to a greater opening. A propped-up torch on a stone pillar illuminated everything within the clearing.

There were also a dozen or so people there, and they all wore brown cloaks. We were so silent that none of them noticed us. Shauna grabbed me by the arm and pushed me backward. We ducked for cover between stovers.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

I shook my head and she told me to get a better look. I inched out and gazed at the center of the space where the fire blazed. I could not believe what was happening as my body became paralyzed with fear.

The fifth angel statue was there, but its head was beneath an old Medieval-style guillotine. Its blade shimmered.

I recognized the man who held the raising rope.

It was Hollohan, the dullest used car salesman in the entire county, or so I thought. Pinned to the chest of his robe was a silver piece, and it glinted under the moonlight with the maiden. I squinted at it to make sure it was not a skull and crossbones. It was a clock with a hand at the top center. I still had an uneasy sensation in my stomach.

He let go of the cord and the blade dropped. The angel’s head tumbled.

Shauna muffled a scream at what she saw. A pool of black blood oozed from the opened neck.

Someone grabbed my hands and yanked them behind my back. I struggled and attempted to flee, but they threw me to the ground. I looked over and watched as Shauna yelled in terror.

Burly men placed zip ties on both of us and paraded us to the center of their gathering’s strange spectacle. Their uniforms reeked up close of sawdust, sweat, and fresh dewy grass.

Hollohan walked up to Shauna and kept his face only a millimeter away from her eyes. “Do you know who we are?” He stood and approached me after. “Did you two know whose ceremony you were interrupting?”

“No,” I said. “We didn’t do it on purpose, I swear.”

“My children were busy tending to a most significant ritual,” he said.

I wanted to tell him his followers did not look like anything but grown adults to me, but I chose to bite my tongue.

“We are the Ten Midnights. See, plebeians like you don’t know what we do. There are ten heavenly bodies. They look to the average person like a planet, within your sphere of existence. The tenth is not visible. In sacred cosmology, this is often labeled the Counter-earth. The average human eye cannot perceive it. It is full of monsters that we must kill at any cost. You two can be recruits, but only in return for a promise of silence. What you have seen here today must remain secret. We meet with one another ten times every month. We do this to control the beasts. Are you interested in helping us?”

I looked over at Shauna again. It was an effort to see if we should play along with such absurdity for the sake of survival.

“Yes,” Shauna answered. “We will, but please don’t hurt us.”

“Great,” he said with a cackle. “There are ten steps to killing the evil ones sent here from the different reality."

“So the angels are monsters?” I asked.

“Definitely. Though they have not done anything to harm us, they require killing. Our slayings must happen at midnight.”

“Okay,” I said, even though I contemplated how high he may have been at that moment. “Now that we’re briefed, can you take us out of these zip-ties?”

“Not yet,” he said as he walked over to Shauna and grabbed her hair. “First we need to make both of you a part of our group. The only way to do that is to make you feel the same pain we did when we joined.”

I plucked my fingers with the limited mobility I had into my back pocket and retrieved a knife.

I cut the ties and lunged at Hollohan. I grabbed him by the lapels and took him down with a foot sweep. As the men behind me rushed towards me, I cut Hollohan’s left cheek and stood with the blade at the ready.

They cowered. Due to the lack of pockets on their cloaks, it occurred to me they had only one weapon. It was the French beheading device.

“Anyone close to me will get it,” I said, feeling for a second like my Uncle who used to tell me about his time in the military.

I crouched and cut Shauna’s binding.

“Get them you damn weaklings,” Hollohan yelled as he stood.

Shauna kicked Hollohan’s knee and then landed another flat foot against the stone pillar. It moved and the torch collapsed.

The fallen dried cornstalks laid out by the wind all over the perimeter of the dirt circle went up in flames. I grabbed Shauna’s hand and we sprinted as one of the cult members yelled an agonized cry as the fire engulfed him.

We never returned to that area again.

*

A few weeks later, Shauna and I went to her room and played video games.

“You haven’t told anyone about what we went through,” Shauna said. “Right?”

“No,” I said.

I always heard about politicians within the community being in nefarious groups. We did not want to ruffle the feathers of anyone who could control the narrative.

“Do you think the angel got destroyed in the blaze?” I asked. “The fire spread fast. If the blood we saw draining from it could have been gasoline. Hollohan planned on killing everyone there that night. Crazy as he was, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“The angels vanished,” she said. “No one's seen them since we left that field.”