by 19
A woman beside Rachel–her mother probably–put a stone in the girl's hand. Rachel looked up at her, bewildered, and the woman whispered something fiercely, frowning. Rachel began to cry, and tried to hand the stone back to her mother, shaking her head. The woman pinched her, hard, left an angry red mark like a comma on her skinny arm, and darted a terrified glance behind her to see if anyone had noticed her daughter's obscene display of compassion.
He looked at Mary, then. She put her empty hand on her stomach, her eyes liquid and suffering. At least she still had the courage to meet his eyes.
He spread his arms, wide, the crosses behind him, and went down on his knees. He tore at the collar of his shirt, ripped open the cloth to expose the latticework of scars across his chest.
His mouth was dry. He tasted orange juice, dust, and tears.
He threw back his head, and stared into the sky.
His last thought was, I will not scream.
It took so much longer than he'd expected.
BOOK FOUR:
ECLIPSE
(45)
Mary went to him when it was over, fighting her way through angry hands to reach him. She cradled him close, no longer crying, only rocking him, endlessly, and whispering no, no, no, until two men she vaguely remembered from the Halloween party took her away, very gently, whispering something in an alien tongue that made her able to breathe again.
She looked up at these strangers, and saw two faces that might have been the same face, drawn by two different artists. –I know you. You were at Spectre's party. Except it wasn't his party. Just at his house. Because he's dead. Everyone I love is dead, she said, her voice flat, emotionless.
–Mary, you have to have hope, said the one painted in blue.
–And you have to remember that just because he is gone, your love for him is not. You have to go on. Do you remember what he said to you, about Spectre? How many people have to die at one execution?
She shook her head, unable to comprehend that. She was seeing something strange, like a bluewhite light surrounding these two strangers. –Is he with Spectre?
–Yes. For now, said one, or both. –Come with us. You need to go home.
–No! She pulled away from their friendly hands, clinging to the corpse of her lover. –I can't leave him here! He'll be all alone, and it will be night soon! It will be night soon!
–Yes. And after that, it will be dawn, they said, drawing her away.
Jordan left with the others, but he slipped away from the crowd and went back to the Golgotha. He didn't dare to touch the body. He sat as close to it as he could, crying like a lost soul. –We didn't find the Sanctuary. You promised, he sobbed. –I can't find it by myself. I'm not any good at stuff like you are. You're good at stuff. Please don't be dead. You remember that book you read me? The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? And they do that to Aslan, they kill him and because he did it and he was innocent he came right back? Deeper magic from before the dawn of time?
He was rocking, and he sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. –Can't it be like that? Can't you come back tomorrow? Can't you? Please? Can't you?
–I want to die without you here. I want to die.
There was no answer.
After a while, he leaned his head back, and began to howl.
Zillah listened to his lover’s grief, crouching behind rocks. Something was wrong with this perfect body he wore. He was cold, and shaking, and something wasn’t right about his breathing, and he couldn't see. He couldn't see.
He raised his hands to his eyes, and tried to heal them, and it didn't help. When he took his hands away they were wet with tears.
Human tears.
–Oh, God, what have I done? he whispered, and he stumbled away, back towards Calvary, hiding his face from the sky.
(46)
Nila answered the door after about five minutes of Zillah's persistent knocking. –It's you, she said, coldly, standing with the door only partially open to make it obvious that he would not be invited inside. –We've given you all the money we're going to give you. Now go away.
He was holding the money in his hand, silver coins, and he threw them at her and pulled out the .45 and put two bullets in her, one in her throat, one in her skull.
Her hands groped at the missing space of her forehead, finding soft weeping tissue, and she coughed up a splurt of blood and toppled, her legs askew so that he could see her underwear.
He stepped over her corpse. Aaron was wheeling himself down the hallway. Above his head there was a picture of Jesus, the one they always had with the Messiah looking kind and benevolent and sad, his hands outstretched in welcome and forgiveness.
–This is from Him, Zillah said, and emptied the gun into Aaron. One of the bullets ricocheted off the wheelchair, slammed into the wall, spraying chips of plaster.
He dropped the gun, and stepped over Nila again, left her there with her underwear still showing and the door open, swinging vaguely in the wind. He looked up. There were fierce and furious clouds, and it seemed that there might be a storm.
Jordan cried and screamed himself to sleep. The sunlight woke him up. He had curled up beside the body, the way they had slept together in scary places, only today he wouldn't poke his friend awake, pry open his eyelids and blow into his eyes, laugh and laugh. No more of that.
He cried a little again, and took up the body's broken hands and kissed them. He was thirsty. He still wanted to die.
He got up, and wandered towards Spectre's house, looking back often, still crying. –I love you, he called back, and waved.
–Deeper magic from before the dawn of time, he muttered to himself, saying it over and over, thinking of mice chewing at cords binding a dead, beautiful lion.
Zillah found the rope in Spectre's tool shed. He stood under the oak tree, and looked at the marijuana plant, still growing over the grave. He set the rope down, went inside the house, filled the dinosaur glass with water and came back outside. He poured it on the plant, refilled twice more, and then rinsed the glass and put it away. He picked up a butcher knife, and went back outside.
He stripped down to his pants, and cut FORGIVE ME into his chest. It was hard to do right, upside down. The pain was liquid and fierce, and he cried out once, and dropped the knife, his hands bloody and shaking.
The noose was hard to tie, with his hands so slippery and clumsy. He managed it, finally, and threw it over a branch that jutted out horizontally, about nine feet high. Then he realized he had no way to manage this, cursed, tied the loose end of the rope to a lower branch. The noose swayed in the wind, looking like paradise. He stared at it, mesmerized, for a long time, before he went back inside for a chair from the dining room.
He climbed up there, and the noose was just low enough if he stood on tiptoe. He pulled it over his head, crying human tears, and tightened it, the rope rough against his throat.
–I knew not what I did, he said, to no one at all. –God help me. I know now.
He kicked the back of the chair so that it fell out from under him.
It wasn't enough of a drop to break his neck. He died slowly, in agony, and when it was over it was like falling into deep, cold water, and the soulless thing he had sold himself to was waiting for him there, in the deep.
Jordan found him that way, swaying, his feet just over the marijuana plant. He stared and stared, no longer able to cry, his hands smashed against his mouth, and turned and wandered back into the desert.
(47)
Mary had done one thing when she went home. She had gone into the bathroom, used his razor and his shaving cream, and shaved off her eyebrows. It made her face a little like his, so she painted on his makeup, crying a little, without knowing why the eyeliner wouldn't stay.
After that she lay in their bed, on his side, on her back, her hands over her stomach, staring up at the ceiling, at the nothing beyond. Every now and then she would turn her face into his pillow, and breathe in the scent of him. She was trying to ration herself, do
ing that, not sure if the smell was finite, wanting to keep it for as long as she could.
When she was hungry she got up, moving like a marionette, and went to the kitchen and opened a can of something. She didn't know what it was, spaghetti, chicken soup, peas, she didn't care, it didn't matter. She ate it cold, out of the can, and when the hunger stopped she dropped the can and the spoon into the sink and went back to the bed.
There was nothing.
interlude:Outside
WELL DONE
MY GOOD
AND FAITHFUL
SERVANT
Fuck you.
I am no one's servant.
(48)
Jordan was walking, vaguely back towards the Golgotha, when it happened. A shadow moved over the desert, in a smooth even plane.
He looked up. The edge of the sun was vanishing, as though someone had bitten a piece out of it. It was going black.
Maybe it was the end of the world.
–Good, you deserve it, he told the world, and kept walking.
He reached the Golgotha at twilight. Or, whatever. The sun had stayed black until it had set. The moon was almost clear of the horizon, huge and bloated and the wrong color.
The body was gone.
He ran towards the shallow space where it had been, hysterical. At least they could have left that alone.
In the bloodsoaked sand in the middle of the half-circle, the stones had been carefully arranged to spell four words:
I FOUND THE SANCTUARY
He looked, and then he laughed, and then he yelled and laughed and danced a strange awkward child dance in a circle, staring up at the rising atrocity-colored moon.
(49)
Elijah sat in his warm house, freezing. Something was wrong. He had never experienced intuition before, and he did not recognize it. He wrapped himself in a quilt and sat shivering, a Bible by his hand. His living room was a gleaming haven of electricity and expensive fabric. He didn't see any of it. His eyes were pulled, over and over again, to the dark space beyond the windows.
–Oh God, protect me, he whispered, staring out into the dark.
The lights flickered. He froze, fingers digging hard into the arms of the chair. They brightened again. He sighed, relieved, and they all went out at once, with a faint click.
He knew.
–No, no, no….he began, a prayer with God and Jesus edited to save time.
His front door opened.
He screamed, once, clinging to the quilt, and his visitor was preceded by something like wind that was not wind, something that had two pairs of hands, something that picked him up and dropped him on the floor ten feet in front of his chair.
He cowered, on his hands and knees, shaking. There were no more words. Elijah could see his feet. His bare, colorless feet. He dared not look up.
A stone dropped onto the carpet, beside his hand, clotted with blood and sand. The words came from everywhere, soft and almost amused.
–At the count of three, I'm going to tell you a story, Elijah.
–NO, he said, begging, trying to crawl backwards. Even in the darkness the room was in crystal clear focus, suddenly, so vivid that it hurt his head to see it. The stone was in his hand, now, without him knowing how it had gotten there.
–One.
–Don't do this! he screamed, the stone up, held in front of his face as though he wanted to look closer.
–Two.
–I don't want to hear! GOD! Don't, don't, I don't want to hear, he said, sobbing, his hand drawn back, his eyes locked on the stone.
–Three.
Only the one time. That was all it took.
The stone sent bone fragments from his eye socket slamming into his brain.
If the story was told, he did not hear it.
Something woke her.
A heavy snapping wind was shaking the trailer. The baby squirmed inside her, kicking fitfully.
She sat up, her hands pressed to her stomach, muttering shush, shush. And something drew her to her feet, pulled her to the door, and she stood there with one hand on the doorknob and one hand on her stomach, and then she heard it.
–Mary...
She was going crazy.
She couldn't go crazy. She had to have the baby.
She could go crazy after that.
Not now.
She opened the door, and stared out into the night. The wind was furious, sending stinging sheets of sand into her face, her eyes. She raised her hand to shield her eyes, and called out, –Who's there?.
–Mary, the voice said again, like a sigh, like joy.
She ran outside, into the yard, and stood panting.
Silence.
She screamed out into the wind, –Who's there? Who the fuck is there?
She spun in a slow, scared circle, sobbing, holding her stomach.
The baby kicked her hard enough to hurt her.
And then she felt it. Hands, running up her arms, and down again, loving and gentle, just like he had touched her, that first time in Spectre's kitchen, just like he had touched her, that first time.
–I'm dreaming, she said, the words snagging on a sob. She closed her eyes, afraid to breathe, afraid to end it.
–No dream, he said in her ear.
–Dreaming, she insisted, crying without sound.
He put his arms around her, and she saw his skin, silver and smooth and without the tattoos, absolutely hairless, the nails like little chips of chrome, his flesh gleaming phosphorescent, as though it were illuminated from the inside.
She looked up into the sky, crying, and mouthed oh God. The moon was full. It had been waning yesterday. And it was the color of blood.
–And there will be no more death, and no more suffering, for all the former things have passed away, he said in her ear. And it was no dream.
The war had begun. The war to end all wars.
She moved to turn into his embrace, sobbing, and his hands caught her shoulders and stopped her, and his hair blew in front of her face, as white as snow. –Wait, he whispered.
–Why? Please.
–I have to warn you first, before you see me, he said, kissing her neck with lips like mercury. –I have a name now, Mary. And I don't look like I used to.
She turned to him anyway, to look into his eyes. His red, red eyes.
He stroked her face, erasing the tears like the memory of a nightmare.
She reached up, in wonder, and took his hand.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following amazing beings:
SM Johnson, the best editor and selector of birthday presents in the known universe. There’s a special place in Hell for you, one with a gorgeous and impractical chair and an amazing view of the festivities.
Sean, who never stopped supporting this book. You’re why I kept formatting even when I wanted to gouge my own eyes out.
RM, for unending support and ferocity. DF, best zombie ever, for saving me again from the horrifying beast Page Styles, knowing when to provide tea and backrubs and when to get the Hell out of my splash zone. RW, for making me reconsider what hallowed ground might entail. Pietro, for your knowing grin when I waxed philosophical about metaphysics. Usually while stoned.
Someone who will remain nameless, for taking my midnight calls when I was sobbing, “I don’t want to DO this to them, I love them!”
Vincent, who made me curious about the Judeo-Christian mythos and what it might mean in a (post?) modern context, and who taught me it was not only okay but a desirable thing to question EVERYTHING.
Marilyn Manson, because the dedication is not enough. Without you this book would not exist. It’s entirely possible that I wouldn’t either.
The world is much more to my liking with each of you in it.
I love you all.
19 is an Aries who likes old machinery, horror movies, sushi, spaceships, goth and industrial music, shiny things, pointy things, dinosaurs, classic cars, and poisonous plants. He is also the author of Schaden
freude, and is fond of interacting with readers.
www.thenineteen.net
