The number she needed was in the phone book. She knew because Greg had pointed it out to her when she’d first told him the good news. She dug out the phone book from where it was buried under a stack of old magazines and ran her finger down the first column of names under A. There it was: Abortion Central Information. 555-6116.
She dialed the number, and after five rings, a man’s voice said, “This is Abortion Central Information. Can I help you?”
Alison sighed and said, “I hope so.”
8
The following is excerpted from chapter eight of A Prolegomenon to Receptivist Science, by A.D. Boscage (Exegete Press, 1984):
The explanation for the problems I’d been having—the lapses of memory, the motor control difficulties, the phone calls, and the increasing tension between me and Lorraine—became clear to me at the very moment when it might have seemed to an outside observer that I’d finally become certifiably insane. This was in July of 1981, when I’d gone to be Guest of Honor at the annual UFO-Con gathering in Rodez, a city in the south of France that reminded me very much of Poughkeepsie, where I grew up, though it is only half the size. Ever since the famous “Alphane” photographs of 1963, Rodez has been a mecca for UFO investigators hoping for their own close encounter. Because of my long-standing fear of air travel, I had not been to Rodez before; but because I was to be Guest of Honor, the convention committee had kindly undertaken to pay my way aboard the Polish ocean liner Stefan Batory. They also paid for Lorraine, on the understanding that she was my secretary. I found the voyage invigorating and provocative, but poor Lorraine was ill the entire six days from New York to Le Havre, partly because of the motion of the boat but also because she was again withdrawing from the amphetamines.
I find there is nothing in my journals about how we made our way to Rodez from Le Havre. I know that neither Lorraine nor myself was in shape to drive a car, especially where we would have had to look up the words on the road signs in our dictionary, a paperback Larousse that I had retained from my days in college in 1964, and which had cost only sixty cents at that time, when it was in its fifty-sixth printing! I still have that same book within easy reach of my desk as I write these pages, and it still contains, as a page marker, a receipt from the pharmacy near our hotel in Rodez, Le Comte d’Aveyron, where Lorraine was finally able to fill the phony prescription written out for her by the homeopathic healer we met on the Batory. Lorraine has an incredible ability to meet exactly the people she needs to meet at any given time.
The actual panels at the convention were without surprises. I had difficulty slowing down my speech to allow time for my simultaneous translator to keep up with me. Her name was Héloïse (I cannot remember her last name, which began with either a V or an F), and she had the most extraordinary jet-black hair, which she wore in a kind of loose chignon that was very becoming. I showed the slides of the Boulder anomalies, which Alyx West had lent me for the occasion, and I told about my own experiences in writing The Transmentated Man, more or less as they are set down in chapter four of this book. Interestingly, there were three or four gentlemen in the audience who had had similar experiences. This is no longer surprising to me, though at that time I had not known whether to expect to find others like myself on the far side of the ocean. Though what is the distance of a mere ocean to Beings who have bridged the abysses of Space?
The real significance of my trip to this area of France did not become apparent until after the convention, when my hosts as a special courtesy took me to visit the ruined abbey church at Montpellier-le-Vieux. It was here, Alyx West had told me, that a second series of Alphane sightings had taken place in the early seventies, almost a decade after the original event. Although there is no photographic record of these later sightings, Alyx had been able to examine two of the witnesses under hypnosis and discovered clear evidence of memory alteration.
I realize that some of my readers may not be familiar with—or may not credit—Alyx West’s theory of the mnemocyte. For those readers, let me offer a brief explanation here, since I can think of no better explanation for my experiences at Montpellier-le-Vieux and afterward than to suppose that I had been infected many years earlier with a virulent strain of mnemocyte that had blocked all my teenage memories of abduction and replaced them with images of what I believed to be horror movies. When in adult life I tried to rent VCR tapes of these movies, I discovered that none of them existed! Apparently, none had ever been made! Then what, I had to ask myself, had I been watching during those evenings when I had been an usher at the Rialto Theater in downtown Poughkeepsie? Whence came these images of skin being flayed from the breasts of living women, both Negroes and Caucasians? These mutilations, decapitations, eviscerations?
A Freudian would say that these false memories were in fact the diseased by-products of my own bubbling id. A Jungian would say that I achieved some kind of psychic rapport with archetypes of the collective unconscious. And I had thought that I was remembering old Hollywood horror movies. What had really happened? Until my visit to Montpellier-le-Vieux—when I entered the crypt of the ruined abbey church and found myself hurled back through the centuries to the time when that church was being built—I could not know that those recollections of “horror movies” were not really false memories, nor fantasies from my id, nor Jungian archetypes, but actual events that I had been forced to witness and take part in!
What a profound relief it has been to realize that I did not “make up” these dreadful images that have haunted me throughout my life and which I have often represented, in modified form, in my fictional writings—to the distress of so many would-be censors and indignant school librarians. No, Mrs. Stevenson, of Champaign, Illinois, I have not escaped from a lunatic asylum, and I am not a serial killer. In point of fact, I so much detest the sight of blood that I have been a strict vegetarian since the age of twenty-four (excepting for the period, noted in chapter five above, when I was living in the Vancouver commune with Valerie Hoover).
It should be noted at this point, in terms of an understanding of the origins of Receptivist Science, that I had been fasting for three days before my visit to Montpellier-le-Vieux. In addition, I had taken a megadose of vitamin C. There is no television transmitting station nor any power station within several miles of Montpellier-le-Vieux; the ether is, therefore, exceptional clear, especially in the infrared area of the spectrum. So, as a result of my own internal condition and my external physical circumstances, I was in a state of exceptional receptivity. My nervous system was like a satellite dish newly installed on an Andean peak.
Poets have tried to describe the beauty of Montpellier-le-Vieux, and all have failed. I will make no attempt. It is a scene of uncanny beauty. The ruined blocks of limestone, eroded by the savage weather of the Cévennes, writhe and twist like the souls of the damned, assuming shapes that defy the imagination. Towering above them all are the massive truncated pillars that once supported the lead tiles of the roof of Notre Dame de Gevaudon, their capitals embellished with the curious carvings of Lombard workmen dead now for almost a millennium. Upon one column may be discerned the spread wings of an eagle—or of some creature that antiquarians have called an eagle for want of a more precise term. And the figure on this column? A dragon of some sort? One would really have to ask the mason whose chisel did the work what he had in his mind, and whether his is a work of imagination unassisted by any model.
And you can ask that mason—for I am he! I am, or I have been, Bonamico of Lombardy.
It is difficult to believe, I know. It would be months after that first visit to Notre Dame de Gevaudon before I could admit to myself that what I had witnessed that afternoon had not been some trance-induced shamanic vision but rather, a direct apprehension of tragic historical events. But at last it could not be denied, for I came into possession of incontrovertible physical evidence of a sort that simply could not be explained away by any other hypothesis.
It is a book. Written on crumbling parchment, the ink on its first
pages faded almost to invisibility. A book of only ninety-six pages, but oh, the implications of what is written on those pages! For it was not written by any human agency, and the message it conveys was never intended for human eyes.
Was it, then, the work of aliens visiting this planet at the dawn of our Western Civilization? I cannot surely say, for it seems to me equally plausible that the book was written by a being of supernatural rather than extraterrestrial origin.
All I can say with certainty is that I have read that book, and what I have read therein fills me to this day with a strange dread, which is also (this is its strangeness) a sense of longing that is inexpressibly sweet.
9
“Well, then, cheers,” said Peter Bryce, lifting his glass of Diet Pepsi in a halfhearted toast to clink against the glass in his twin brother’s hand.
“Cheers,” Patrick agreed. He took a sip of the soda and shook his head in a pantomime of wry resignation. “I’m sorry we can’t order wine. It didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t have a liquor license here. But I’ve been told it’s a good restaurant. If you like Italian food.”
“Not to worry,” said Peter. “I’ll survive.” He felt that he was being punished for the table talk at their last two-man family reunion in March, which had got somewhat out of hand as the bar tab had mounted, though at the time Patrick seemed to have no difficulty entering into the spirit of the occasion. With his Roman collar off, Patrick had frisked about like a puppy off its leash, sniffing at all sorts of forbidden ideas and even producing a few of his own. No one eavesdropping on that conversation would have believed one of them was a priest—or if they had, they’d have believed it of Peter. Afterward Peter figured that that evening’s heresies were a by-product of their lifelong contest as twins. Patrick couldn’t stand to be outshone by his brother, even in a contest to see which of them could be the more complete cynic. Later, Patrick had probably regretted some of his opinions—regretted, at least, the fact that he’d expressed them.
Peter studied his menu with growing discouragement: veal parmesan, chicken cacciatore, spaghetti with Italian sausage, spaghetti with meatballs, spaghetti with Italian tomato sauce. Imagination and novelty were not top priorities at The Blue Grotto. Rather, to judge by the size of the portions he’d seen being delivered to other tables, the place prided itself on offering an optimum pig-out for the dollar.
Fat people had to expect to be treated like fat people. Lots of fruitcakes at Christmas, and invitations to smorgasbord-type restaurants. Usually, Peter didn’t let it get to him, but when it came from a brother who was his identical twin, and who had managed to keep reasonably trim despite the same genetic inheritance, it was hard to maintain his usual pose as the jolly fatso. They say that inside every fat man there’s a thin man crying to get out; in this case, Peter could see, sitting across the dining table from him, what that thin man looked like.
The waitress came and Patrick ordered first: spaghetti and meatballs. Was he mortifying his flesh? Peter wondered. The waitress turned to Peter, and he said, “I’ll have the same.” She asked them if they wanted garlic bread, and his brother nodded yes. She offered a choice of dressings for their salads, French, blue cheese, ranch, and spicy Italian. Patrick said, “Blue cheese,” and Peter said, “The same.”
“I saw you on TV,” Peter remarked when the waitress had left the table.
Patrick grimaced. “That seems to have become part of the job description.”
“The next day three different people at work mentioned it. They know you’re my brother.”
“Did I get good reviews?”
“You got good marks for style. Content’s another matter. You’d need more than a ten-second sound bite to convince any of the women at our office that abortion should be made illegal.”
“Well, that isn’t the purpose of the protests.”
“What is, if you don’t mind my asking? It’s been two years now, and you haven’t closed down the clinic, so that can’t be your purpose either. Why keep beating a dead horse?”
“Martyrdom. There’s nothing like martyrdom for bringing people together. It’s an exalted feeling to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. As Christ remarks, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It’s how the Church came into being originally. Without Rome’s inspired persecution, Christianity would have been just another cult from the East. But Rome fed us to the lions, and made saints of us. People want to be saints, if it can be done without dieting.”
Peter at once retaliated with his own pointed observation. “It’s a nice theory, but I don’t notice that you ever put yourself in jeopardy of arrest. You don’t lie down in front of the police cars. You don’t handcuff yourself to the clinic’s front door. Is martyrdom a privilege reserved for the laity these days?”
“The Bishop hasn’t required such a sacrifice of me yet.”
“And you just follow orders?”
“That’s how hierarchy works. To do him credit, I expect the Bishop would see to it that he got arrested before any of us. There is a certain amount of prearrangement in these manners. The police don’t like surprises, and neither does the Bishop. So he may opt to be arrested at some point, and not just because he has a taste for the limelight. Though of course it’s all theater. We want to dramatize our moral position, which is that abortion is tantamount to murder. I shouldn’t say ‘tantamount’: It is murder. If indigent parents could take their children under age sixteen to a clinic to have them put to sleep like unwanted pets, most people would allow that that was morally objectionable. Would it seem fanatical to try to save those children by acts of civil disobedience?”
“Yes, I remember—that was your sound bite. And it’s a good one. In fact, when you put it that way, the Church’s actions don’t seem sufficiently drastic.”
“Peter, you take the words out of my mouth. And just in time. Here come our salads.”
The salads came in large bowls of simulated teak and were just such salads—iceberg lettuce, tomato wedges, slices of cucumber and radish—as most of the customers would have made for themselves at home. The only difference was that the waitress offered to grind some pepper over them.
“How are things at your job?” asked Patrick, who tried to allow his brother equal time conversationally.
“The same as ever,” Peter grumped. He didn’t much like his job as the head of the amortization division of North Central Insurance and much preferred, with his brother, to talk about Church matters, even though he was no longer a Catholic. He was, instead, a fervent ex-Catholic of the sort that keeps tabs on every scandal concerning the Church and has to comment on all of them. “It’s a dull job, you wouldn’t want to hear about it.”
“Most people say that about their jobs when they’re away from them. Then at their offices they become obsessed.”
“You want to know what we’ve been obsessing about at my office this week? Tetris.”
“What’s Tetris?” Patrick asked politely, with a tomato wedge poised before his lips.
“A computer game we all play when we think no one is looking. I used to be the office champion. I was getting scores over twenty-two thousand. But now there’s this secretary in personnel who is a pinball wizard. Twenty-five thousand is nothing to her. I swear she has a five-nanosecond reaction time. It’s not like I’m even competition for her. And that’s the news from North Central. All of it.” Before Patrick could change the subject again, Peter went on, “You were saying about the abortion thing—how I took the words out of your mouth.”
“Mm.” Patrick pantomimed that his mouth was full. “Yes, when you said the Church isn’t zealous enough. The Bishop agrees. So, we intend to initiate a more aggressive program of intervention. However, that’s something I’m not free to talk about until the formal announcement has been made.”
“What a tease you are, Patrick.”
“You’ll twist my arm? Okay, I’ll tell you. We are going to open up a facility for reluctant teenage mothers whose parents can be persuaded to
commit them to our care. We’ve had the lawyers going over the details for a couple years, and with the changes that have just been made in the state laws requiring parental consent for girls under eighteen, we think it’ll pass muster in the courts. There have been similar ‘tough love’ detention centers for teenage drug abusers, but it’s never been applied to the abortion situation.”
“You mean to say, you’re going to put pregnant teenage girls in prison and force them to come to term?”
“You’ve got to admit that’s a more effective way to save fetuses than chanting outside abortion clinics.”
“Jesus. That could be a major felony. Not to mention what you could be sued for.”
“That’s why it will have to be undertaken, initially, by lay groups without the official sanction of the Church.”
“More martyrs?”
“We have enough volunteers to fill one or two federal prisons, if it comes to that.”
“And will you be building prisons of your own for the lucky mothers-to-be?”
“The Church already has a lot of underutilized real estate.”
“Empty convents, that sort of thing?”
“There would be an irony in that, wouldn’t there? In terms of the old anti-Catholic canard of convents being filled with the graves of the nuns’ illegitimate offspring. Now those imaginary bones can actually be given life. Poetically speaking. But in fact, the first site that’s been selected is my old stomping grounds at Étoile du Nord.”
“The seminary you went to.”
“It hasn’t been a seminary for quite a while now. Vocations have fallen off, as you may have heard, and Étoile du Nord has never been considered top of the line. It’s my alma mater and all that, but even so. I think my most vivid memories of Étoile du Nord is the mosquitoes. I can still remember how they…”
THE PRIEST A Gothic Romance Page 7
