by Ted Thackrey
“Blessed be!” a melodious baritone voice proclaimed. “Welcome to hell, Preacher . . . ”
It was a good effect, and thoroughly professional: Concentrate light and you concentrate interest.
Not that Gideon needed help.
Time had treated him well.
The image I had carried in my mind—logic and secondhand descriptions notwithstanding—was that of a curly-haired little boy. He was about six years old, smiling brightly out at the world from newspaper and television advertisements that challenged sinners one and all to “Come and Be Saved” by the power of the child evangelist who spoke “with the Voice of the Ages.”
The charlatans who exploited him had made a fortune.
Their money machine stopped producing, of course, about the time the Voice of the Ages cracked at puberty. But by that time the coffers of the Kingdom were full, and the loot safely deposited in offshore banks whose legally protected anonymity ensured comfortable and extradition-proof exile for one and all. Except the little boy.
None of the accounts was in his name and no one—not even his parents, who departed with the rest—seemed to care much about what became of him.
The show was over.
Newspaper feature writers had dripped an occasional circulation-building tear over the direction his life had taken during adolescence, and there had been a brief upsurge of well-illustrated media horror when he finally went to prison: “Bible-Baby Behind Bars!” and “ ‘False Prophets Have Done This!’ Cries Child Evangelist.”
Worth one week on the supermarket tabloid racks.
And then nothing.
But the man whose head and shoulders rode shining in the darkness before me needed no tears.
At first glance, he seemed frail: The face was thin almost to the point of emaciation, good bones highly visible under a tautness of skin so clear as to be almost translucent, the white-blond hair I remembered from childhood advertisements still curly and fitting closely, a dramatic helmet of sculptured metal, over the long skull. But there was no fragility in the body.
The preacher-black suit so well remembered by Angela and the people of Glen Ellen had given way to something tuxedo like in ice cream white silk that was tailored to an impressive bulk of sloping shoulders, and the hands folded beneath the chin were powerful, with heavy knuckles and wrists arranged—with much practice, I decided—to draw attention to the slim, silver elegance of the outsize pectoral ankh that dangled and glittered just below.
He looked cool and serene, and the almost colorless eyes never seemed to leave my face as he said, “Jack, if you’d be good enough to wait outside the door, I’ll call if there’s any problem in here. I don’t think there will be.”
Soames didn’t like it.
“This guy’s tricky,” he demurred. “Flax said he . . . ”
The eyes switched targets momentarily, and the voice behind me stopped in midsentence. The metallic-sounding door opened. And closed.
“You know who I am.”
It could have been a question, but it wasn’t and I didn’t see any reason to reply.
“Preacher.” He said the word quietly, musingly, as if testing it for inclusion in a poem. “Preacher. Curious name for a poker player—but then, you’re not exactly the average gambler, are you?”
He smiled gently, sadly, and suddenly I could feel a contact. A presence. Gideon had reached out to contact my wa—to explore the essence of my self.
“No,” he said softly. “Not average at all.”
The smile continued and eye contact never wavered. This one had mana. Power. Utter sureness of personal magnetism, combined with a sense of destiny. I shut it out with difficulty.
And got a laugh.
“No matter,” he said. “It will all come in time. Believe me, it will! Even to you. One way or another.”
The good humor lingered for a moment. And then was gone.
The strong body leaned forward an inch or two, resting the chin on the interlaced fingers. “Dr. Flax informs me that you are intelligent, and I am prepared to believe it. Now. But I must say you haven’t made it easy, sir.”
“Everyone does what he can.”
The smile returned briefly. But the warmth was gone.
“Flippancy,” he said, “has its uses. And its place. But it is a cumbersome thing, and easily misinterpreted. I meant what I said, and I commend it to your most sober consideration, Preacher. A wise man, a man of perception and intelligence, would not be sitting where you are sitting now, because he would have stopped while he was ahead.”
He paused, peering at me with something that might have been curiosity.
“You had it all,” he said. “All laid out for you. On a platter. The sexually provocative woman—just how provocative and responsive I have good reason to know—and the money. The diamonds. The fantasy happy-land that most men only dream of. All yours, and no one to interfere.”
I laughed. “If you don’t count the U.S. Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Gideon shrugged. “Minor considerations, surely,” he said. “For a man of your capabilities. And history.”
He seemed to expect a response to that. Especially the final phrase. And when I didn’t give him one, he decided to embroider the theme.
“Oh, yes,” he said, the voice subsiding to a silkiness just above the level of a whisper. “Yes, indeed! Your fame precedes you, sir. A true original—unique and fascinating. We have much in common, you know.”
I thought, fleetingly, of Angela’s words on the same subject, and made a note to mention the corroborating opinion. If I ever saw her again.
“The war hero,” he said, with only the tiniest hint of mockery in the tone. “The valiant priest, constant and determined in the service of his country and his God, betrayed by his own countrymen. Returning from the wars to find his beautiful young wife cruelly done to death by a pack of draft-dodging vermin led by clods. Tragic.”
The colorless eyes were intent, ready to seize upon any reaction.
“And stupid! The lesson was plain, the inference obvious. If I can learn from such things, why not you?” Gideon’s face moved a fraction of an inch closer to mine. “You know the truth. You see it day and night, all around you, and the message is clear: Follow God to pain and misery and death. Follow Lucifer to life! And joy . . . such joy as humans have not known since the days of antiquity when reason was enthroned!”
His face was shining now, luminous with conviction.
“You see our beginnings, here beside the sea in Los Angeles. But this is only the visible world—the tiny portion of the promise made tangible to us thus far. And that is loss. Your own loss! For the future spreads itself ahead, bright and perfect and shining. From these first few halting steps we progress by strides ever longer and more resounding to that pinnacle of dominance and honor covenanted to us by the One we serve.
“You are singularly blessed—more fortunate than you know—to be privileged to become a part of all that. To contribute to its accomplishment. To serve the one who rules the world.”
He paused again, the compassionate teacher, confident of his pupil.
“And you will not refuse,” he insisted. “Consider: These beginnings are as nothing to what we shall be able to do once our message is able to break the bonds of time and space that encumber us now. Our message is for all mankind—and to all it will be offered. A revolution is here, waiting to take place, and I tell you it will not be denied for want of a few dollars!”
I wondered if I had missed a paragraph somewhere; he seemed to be worried about something more than the diamonds he thought I was hiding.
But what?
“Our finances,” he said, “have been straited; I suppose I must congratulate you on having ferreted out our single weak point. And your move against our chief ongoing source of funds is, I confess, a brilliant one”—what the hell was he talking about?—“capitalizing on your own specialized knowledge and on
the basic impatience of my own nature that led us, I confess, to overreach in this one isolated respect.
“But do not overestimate your position. Do not imagine that we will be unable to deal with this challenge without your help!
“And do not, I beg you, underestimate the advantages to you of cooperation, not only in calling off this little vendetta against the casino”—thanks, you miserable son of a bitch!—“but also in measuring its limit and in offering redress. Make a free gift of the Palermo gems to our ministry. We are not without gratitude. You will be honored; you will become again the man you were born to be—the minister, or the priest, if that style suits you better, leading his flock to the uplands of truth and abundance.”
Some trace of what I was feeling must have been visible in my face.
The flow of words stopped abruptly.
“I see.”
The timbre of the voice did not change, but its temperature declined.
“Very well, then . . . ”
The hands unclasped abruptly and dropped outside the circle of light. “I had hoped to obtain your voluntary consent,” the icy voice continued, “and even expected it. You are not a fool, and my offer was made in good faith. Acceptance would have been best from every possible point of view. Perhaps with more time—but, no matter. We have other means at our disposal.”
Controls must have been fitted into the arms of his chair, for his gaze remained fixed on my face but the eyes knew what was happening in the dark spaces behind him.
Two more chairs slowly became visible, one in either corner of the room. Both were occupied by women who sat bolt upright, posture alert but entirely immobile, hands at rest on knees. The single-beam lights that showed them to me were placed slightly behind the chairs to keep the faces in shadow.
But the rest of the view was incredible high camp, the ultimate sadomasochistic scene: two women in full dominatrix costume, from domino mask to steel-studded leather underwear and spike-heeled boots. One in black. One in red. Complete with whips.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Did I really look like one of those?
“I began our interview by welcoming you to hell,” he said, apparently prepared to overlook my lack of reaction. “Allow me now to repeat the salutation. Lust is, as I recall, one of the seven deadly sins in the lexicon of the God-worshipers—and therefore one of the cardinal virtues in our own.”
He gave me a moment to think about that, and then went on.
“Look at them,” he said. “Look closely—see how still they sit. And wait. For any command I might choose to give. Remarkable, yes? But, no. You do not see; your feeble intellect cannot as yet conceive the power whose source I have tapped. Drugs? Hypnosis? Yes, we have used both in moments of necessity, when immediate cooperation and consent were required. Jack Soames’s instincts and orientation were altered in such a way, and despite what Dr. Flax tells me was a remarkably stubborn resistance, you would not have been able to hold out forever. You would have joined our choir. Blessed be!”
He was angry, and the voice had risen on the last few words. But there was no lack of sincerity; he really believed what he was saying.
I couldn’t let it pass.
“And that’s your source of power?” I scoffed. “Your new juju? The Gospel according to Pharmacopoeia, as translated by a second-rate street pusher like Flax?”
“Fool!” There was new heat in the eyes now and color in the face. “How can you have come so far, seen so much, and understood so little? Soames, yes. And you. And one or two other especially resistant subjects. Oh, yes! But you are the exceptions, the oddities. Listen! And think! Each great religious movement, each new vision that has swept this little earth in its time, has possessed one single element in common with all the others. Not monotheism. Not inspiration, nor yet revealed wisdom. And certainly not logic.
“The secret? Magic! Real magic, not illusion and not the mere promise of miracles to come. What the great religions of the world have in common is that they all began with magic. And the magic was real and the magic worked!
“Try to imagine Moses without the miracle at the Red Sea.
“Or a Christ who couldn’t raise the dead.
“The Temple of the Eternal Flame will live and triumph, and its dominion over earth will have no end because the one we worship gives us the power of miracles. Of true magic. How else have you been delivered into my hand now, at the time when you are most needed? And how else would I have here beside me the power to move you to act, whether you will or no?”
He must have moved his hand, or at least his fingers. But I didn’t notice that. What I did see, and it commanded my whole attention, was a sudden increase in the intensity and position of the light focused on the two female figures behind him; a second set of tight-beam spots had come into play, aimed more directly at the faces. I recognized them both, though one only from pictures.
The leather-kitten on the left, hollow-eyed and unreal in her black whip getup, was Angela.
My Angela.
The other woman, in red, was the explanation of why and how she had come there. The similarity of feature was unmistakable, the high-bridged nose and fathomless black eyes.
Angela had found her daughter.
Gideon gave me a moment or two to take it all in. And then he laughed. “Marvelous,” he exulted. “Oh, marvelous! If you could see your face . . . ”
I turned my attention back to him. And decided he was dead.
Never mind when and never mind how; this son of a bitch was a dead man and that was a fact, like the almanac timing of sunrise or the reappearance of Halley’s Comet.
Dead.
“Would you care to see them perform?” he inquired. “It’s a real experience—something that would do well in the kind of depraved circuses the politicos of Central America seem to enjoy so greatly. I may tell you I’ve already had offers, taped some of their earlier efforts and sent them off as salesmen’s samples. Perhaps I should send the ladies down that slot—the one that leads, ultimately, to the crib houses of Panama City.”
He waited for me to react to that. And then gave it a little backspin.
“For whatever comfort it may afford,” he said, “I suppose I might mention that only one of the ladies—the younger, as it happens—is what might be called a willing and conscious performer in our little comedy of the perverse. She came to me originally of her own volition, back in Glen Ellen, and accepts her role now in order to please me and the One we serve.
“Her mother, however, is another proposition entirely, a true surprise, and one for which I hope you will accept my most sincere compliments. And admiration. The orientation, sexual and spiritual, of the woman I left behind in Glen Ellen was that of the eternal victim, searching the world over for just the right torturer. She would never have been able to resist an order of mine. But now there is a difference.
“A sense of self, of personal worth. Of human dignity.
“Bringing her to the state you see now has required the best and most concentrated efforts of the good Dr. Flax . . . but no matter. Full retraining can wait; we have all the time in the world, do we not? Yes. For now, it is enough for you to understand that I can and will, if necessary, send them both to the place I spoke of and for the purpose specified. But I am a reasonable man, and not without compassion.”
The rest of what he said was lost on me, the sound of the words drowned in the roar of blood as it pounded on my eardrums. Somewhere in the horror hole of imagination two women—one in red, one in black—performed endlessly, tying themselves in lewd knots for the edification of those who could pay to see the fun. Their faces were empty and their bodies stank from the effort.
“God . . . damn . . . you.”
The lights behind Gideon’s chair had vanished and we were alone in the world of darkness again, facing each other from twin islands of luminescence. The leather strap restraining my left arm had broken under a strain I didn’t remember having exerted; the rig
ht was still intact, but I would have it soon . . .
“Amazing,” Gideon said. “Absolutely astounding!”
His own left arm moved convulsively and I heard the metal door spring open behind me, heard the sudden rush of footsteps. But my right was free now, and I came to my feet, ready to launch myself at the mildly amused face floating before me, regardless of the straps that still encircled both ankles. At full strike-extension, the range should be just possible. Maybe not the head, but perhaps a closer and more vulnerable part of the body. A broken sternum. Or even a major leg bone, to rend the femoral artery . . .
The first blow to the side of my head didn’t stop me.
Nor did the second.
But the third was better aimed and there was an instant of exploding pain in my temple, followed by a brief spell of true unconsciousness, before I found myself back in the chair. The arms were still unfettered, but not responsive, and I found myself a passive auditor—aware but curiously uninvolved—in the conversation going on above my lolling head.
“I told you,” Jack Soames’s voice said. “I warned you he was a fucking maniac.”
“So, you did,” Gideon replied. “So you did indeed. Very well, then; we handle it your way. Take him to the cellar and try the seawater.”
“And if that doesn’t do the job?”
“If that doesn’t do it . . . kill him.”
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
This new truth that is offered to you: Does it set you free?
TWENTY-FIVE
By the time the angels got me to the elevator I could move parts of my body again, but for the moment I couldn’t imagine what use any of it was likely to be. My tearing the leather restraining straps off the chair in Gideon’s theater of the insane appeared to have impressed them no end. The manacles now clamped to my wrists were of steel, and Jack Soames had made it clear that any unauthorized activity on my part would earn his immediate displeasure.
“He gets loose again—I kick your asses till your noses bleed.”
The angels seemed to take it to heart.
The cellar of the old hotel was just that. A hotel cellar. Dirty, cluttered, and dark. But every boy needs a hobby and Jack’s angels had evidently cleared and equipped their own little recreation area near the furnace: heavy ring bolts driven into the floor and wall for arm and leg manacles, bastinado equipment neatly displayed, forge and branding irons ready to hand.
