Dead-Bang

by Richard S. Prather

  A great voice boomed out, from up above me and over my left shoulder, and I don’t mind telling you I got a terrible chill.

  “YOU WILL TURN TO …”

  What? I thought. Turn to what?—Salt? Sodom and Gomorrah? What? A pillar? A pillar of what?

  “…”

  Come on. I can take it. Just don’t play with me. That’s inhuman!

  “EIGHTY-NINE.”

  Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine? Eighty-nine what? You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? Look, damnit—

  “AND AFTER THAT IT WOULD BE MOST APPROPRIATE, I THINK, ON THIS EVENING, THE FOURTEENTH OF AUGUST—”

  “Lemming,” I said aloud. “Lemming.”

  “What?” Regina asked me curiously.

  “Lemming. Just old Festus. See, didn’t I tell you—”

  “—TO CONCLUDE BY SINGING NINETY-EIGHT,” Pastor Lemming concluded.

  “Regina,” I said, “something just reminded me, I do indeed have work to do, serious work, in fact, that’s why I came up and tapped you, my name is Sheldon Scott, and it is of the utmost importance that I speak, as soon as possible, with Pastor Lemming, and because I wasn’t certain he’d talk to me, I thought perhaps you could sort of act as an intermediary, get him to agree to see me—”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. Why do you ask?”

  “You look yellow.”

  “It’s just the reflection. I’m serious about talking to Pastor Lemming, Regina. Do you think you might get him to come down here and give me a bit of his valuable time?” I looked up and over my left shoulder at him. “If he stays where he is, I don’t know how in the world I’d get up to him.”

  She pointed toward the heavy gray curtains hanging from ceiling to floor behind the elevated podium where Lemming stood. “There’s a little circular staircase back there, behind the draperies. You just walk up and down. It’s easy.”

  “It’s easy when you know how it’s done,” I said sourly. “Do you think you could help—”

  “Of course. I’ll be glad to. I’ll ask him after the start of the Chorale, but before I accept the offerings, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  I was just standing there, minding my own business, when suddenly there was one—or, rather, several—of the most excruciatingly horrible sounds I’d ever heard. It was even worse than the last horrible sound I’d heard. Well, almost. This was a thumping and piercing and jangling and wailing and twanging and booming—and loud?

  “What’s that?” I cried.

  Regina looked at me smiling joyously. Her lips moved. I couldn’t hear her. So I made her repeat it and read her lips. They said, “It’s the start of the Chorale.”

  “No wonder it’s capitalized,” I said. “You mean the Chorale is … What is it? Where does it come from? How does it happen?”

  I figured it out from the movements of her lips and her pointing fingers and finally saw it, way down below Lemming, before those draperies behind which was the little staircase you walk up and down. It was a group of musicians—using the word as loosely as it is possible to use it—banging away and playing on their instruments. They were, allegedly, playing music, amplified more than seemed necessary. It wasn’t exactly rock and roll, or anything previously known to mankind. It was more like rack and ruin, or Christians on racks getting ruined by infidel lions. I suppose if I had to give it a name I’d call it Plymouth Rock, but it didn’t deserve a name as much as a description, like—well, it was what you might hear if you had magic ears and could listen to twelve guitars, two Salvation Army drums, and four tambourines being burned alive.

  So this was the Chorale—or the start of the Chorale, as Regina had said. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t read them. The music had wrecked my eyes, too. Then I felt her take my hand and start leading me away somewhere. That was O.K. with me. Anywhere, just so we got farther—no, we were getting nearer the source of that melodic cataclysm, she was leading me not out and away but nearer the noise, then through ah opening in the draperies into dimness where was the staircase you walk up and down. I knew she must have a reason, but it was difficult to think, the crash and violence of the assault of that sound literally interfered with sparks of thought in the brain, short-circuited synapses, and wrenched neurons from dendrites—

  As suddenly as it had begun, the entertainment stopped.

  For a very small moment that last interrupted thought going out of my mind met and blended with another coming in. Not only Lemming’s preaching—his carrot of the Second Coming and stick of damnation-and-foreverburning, his technique of stretching a warning or revelation until suspense and anxiety were at their peak and then snapping it off like a man breaking twigs, his repetition, repetition, repetition of a word or a phrase—but also that sound, that noise, that astonishing assault on the senses, could not have been more perfectly designed to disorient the brain, befuddle thought, produce a state of what has been called “disinhibition” in the integrity of the mind. Disinhibition so often followed, if the new idea or morality or instruction is skillfully presented, by an almost instantaneous change of mind or heart, sudden switching of loyalty, change in belief so drastic and sudden as to be designated rebirth—as in that well-known rebirth described reverently as “religious conversion.”

  It was the then-embryo but now-full-grown technique used deliberately or unconsciously, and so effectively in the past, by Calvin and Wesley and others equally righteous, by revivalists and torturers and brainwashers, by Hitler and Stalin and fire-and-brimstone preachers. And, it would surely seem, by Festus Lemming. Add communal singing and chanting and clapping of hands, and maybe a little more Plymouth Rock and perhaps holy dancing, and half the flock might fall down in a frenzy.

  I pushed that out of my mind and let my thoughts wander—or, rather, forced them to wander—and was able to detect either physically or telepathically the hot thump-thump-thump of Regina’s pulse at the spot where her hand held mine.

  First Dru, now Regina, in many ways as different as day and night, but each with the hot thump-thump-thump of a woman’s heart stirring the warm Red Sea in everyman, whether or not they willed it, a thing not contained in books or churches or even Bibles, a truth and law of nature and of nature’s God that no hope or fear or faith can deny, not while the blood moves and burns. But some, like Festus Lemming, try—and keep on trying—to deny it.

  And then, there he was. Festus Lemming in the flesh.

  I guess it was flesh.

  5

  We were at the rear of the church in what was Essentially a large and dimly illumined room with its fourth wall formed by those heavy draperies behind us, and with an enormously high ceiling and another four or five thousand square feet of floor space. Space for future expansion, I supposed; but right now, except for what were probably offices all the way back, it was apparently a kind of pastoral warehouse, jumbled and cluttered.

  Regina had led me to a point near that circular staircase she’d mentioned, and I could see the steel treads curving upward above us. Festus Lemming had just descended them and was now stepping toward us. It seemed almost fated that Regina would remove her hand from mine the instant he lamped us, so in the same split second when I found Festus I lost her pulse. It wasn’t an equal exchange. It was more as though something had died—and, oddly, at that moment a long-forgotten memory came back to me.

  It was a boyhood memory, sharp and so fresh I could feel again that morning’s unusual chill. I had rescued, from an ancient but not diabolical cat, a bird too young to fly, warmed it in my palm, and felt the wild beat of its heart for long seconds until, suddenly, it stopped.

  Now, why, I wondered, would I think of a dumb thing like that at the very moment when I gazed upon the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor? And why would I be reminded that there are some people alive who, simply by their presence, crush life in others? Maybe it was that horrendous music or Regina’s pulse or the unique experience of being in church on a Saturday night. And maybe it was none of t
hose things. All I know for sure is that when I saw Festus Lemming I remembered, and felt again, that long-ago morning’s unusual chill.

  Regina was saying, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, beloved Pastor, that I was so late this evening. I was so tired, and took a nap and … overslept. But I’ve never missed the opening hymn before. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  I shook my head. Could I have heard what I thought I’d heard? Probably not.

  “I trust, Miss Winsome,” Lemming said coldly, “you will not oversleep again tomorrow night.”

  He gave “tomorrow” a marvelous emphasis, making of it a thing apart, illumined by Roman candles and rockets and bombs bursting in air. Ah, yes, tomorrow—tomorrow was to be the night of nights.

  On he went, each word a dry leaf blown by wintry winds, “The Lord’s work … will not wait … on weakness and infirmity. If the cross of duty is too burdensome … lay it down—yes!—lay it down. If this happens again, Miss Winsome … there will be no room for you here. There will be no room.”

  I had wandered unaware into Funland at Disneychurch. They’d heard I was coming and half-baked a kook: they were putting me on. But, no, I saw Regina’s smooth cheek pale. It became whiter, and I heard her suck in her breath once again with that odd little wheeuk, but I heard it without even slight amusement this time.

  “I’m terribly sorry, beloved Pastor. Please—”

  “Have you no work to do for the Lord, Miss Winsome?”

  She glanced quickly, nervously at me. There was something almost like terror in her eyes. It was undoubtedly an emotion close to terror, for I assumed she had just been threatened with the Second Coming version of excommunication. If so, and if she did not humble herself sufficiently to avert the horrible fate, it would mean she could no longer talk to God; and, even worse, that God could no longer talk to her either. No wonder she was terrified.

  But right then Regina won me. She got all the good marks I can give. Because she started to turn, then stopped. And did what she’d told me she would do.

  “Beloved Pastor … this is Mr. Scott, Sheldon Scott.” Her voice was small and soft. “I said I would ask you if—you would give him a few, a minute or two of your time.” She swallowed. “He said it was very, extremely urgent.”

  Lemming said nothing. And he managed to say it coldly. Regina turned and left. The Pastor stared at me, silently. Unmoving, unsmiling, and apparently—if given only casual inspection—unconscious. I looked down at the narrow face and shoestring lips and burning eyes. Those eyes surprised me. I had expected eyes of ice, but Lemming’s were warm, large, bright. Some kind of fire burned in him, somewhere.

  Thirty or forty feet beyond him was a wall broken by half a dozen heavy-looking doors. Nearer, on my left, a roughhewn wooden table flanked by a pair of backless benches, all the comforts of camp. On my right, another table, piles of black books, perhaps Bibles, piled upon it; boxes of candles and candlesticks; a rolltop desk.

  And nearer still, against the wall, a ten-foot-high wooden cross with its base a sharpened spike of steel, thus fashioned, perhaps, so it could be driven into earth or clay; and, upon the cross, carved from wood and painted—garishly painted, it must be confessed—the near-naked figure of Jesus the man and Christ the god, the flesh and spirit, one in the Jew of Nazareth, crucified on the Christian cross.

  I looked at Festus Lemming’s burning eyes and said, “Pastor, I’m here to ask your help.”

  And then I stopped. On coming here there’d been at least hope the Pastor might prove agreeable and speak a few words to his assembled flock—for only he could enlist the cooperation of all the flock, including one or more individuals who might earlier have seen Bruno. But right then I knew no words of mine, not even a million dollars of mine—if I had a million—would get me any help from this jolly chap.

  However, even when facing impossible odds you give it your best shot, if not from reason then from habit, so I went on, “It is important, essential that I get in touch with Emmanuel Bruno. It’s my understanding he was here, or at least near the church, not very long after sunset. I …”

  No word, no motion, no twitch of brow or change of expression. No sign of life at all except the brightness in those eyes.

  “I know you’ve had your, ah, disagreements with him, shall we say?” I laughed lightly. “Even—stupendous, almost infinite disagreements? But Doctor Bruno may need my assistance in a matter …” I hesitated, then plunged on, “To put it bluntly, Pastor Lemming, it is possible Doctor Bruno is in some danger. That he may come to harm unless I get in touch with him as soon as possible. I’ll be greatly indebted to you if you will take, say, ten seconds to ask the members of your congregation if one or more of them happened to see Doctor Bruno here, or near—”

  “No.”

  “You may not completely understand the possible gravity—”

  “I do understand. Completely. Emmanuel Bruno, he who is the name and form and face of evil … may be harmed, may be killed, if you do not find and help him. May be dying, may be dead.”

  He had a queer, almost freakish way of falling into a kind of chant when worked up about something and speaking—as he had to Regina, as he had in some of the thunderous passages I’d heard earlier while he preached. It was unusual, on the edge of being totally buggy, but it did grab the attention, grabbed it and held it.

  “If he is harmed or killed, if he should now be dead or dying, it is the will of God. I am a man of God. Can you suggest or think that I … that I would place my will against the will of Almighty God?”

  “Oh, come off it—” I stopped, started over. “We must be discussing two different guys. I’m talking about a man, a human being not entirely evil, and if I retain faint memory of Christian doctrine and alleged practice—”

  “Emmanuel Bruno has sinned against the Holy Ghost, sinned against both man and God!” His voice was rising eerily. “He has sinned, sinned, he has sinned … and he is doomed … damned and doomed … and God will strike him dead! Yes! That is the will of God!”

  “How would you know?” It slipped out, but I know my own symptoms and suspected it was not all that was going to slip out.

  “Leave, leave this holy house. You defile the house of God with your stink of flesh and stench of lust.”

  “Can it, Lemming. It’s a great act, but since I am not included among your admirers, the performance is wasted—”

  His voice became softer, changed a little. “I will not help Emmanuel Bruno—or you, his agent—in any way. I will continue to oppose him in every way—him, and you, his agent. Yes! Now you, as well!”

  I grinned. “Is that a threat? You phrase things so quaintly it’s hard to tell, but I kind of hope it is. I’d hate to think I wet my pants for nothing.”

  His voice became even softer. The next words were probably the quietest sounds he’d made all month. “One without power can make no threats. I have no power. Of myself I am weak … and humble … and of puny strength. But the Holy Ghost has lifted me up, God has given me strength. I claim no power except the power of God in me, and I have no will except the will of God.” It was a trick of light, surely, but it seemed his eyes burned brighter as he finished. “But I do know the will of God … and I shall work the will of God … so help me God!”

  He turned abruptly to leave, now that he’d put me in my place. But I said, “Hold it, Pastor,” and he jerked, then turned slowly and looked at me.

  I should have kept my mouth shut then, I suppose. In fact, I know I should have. But I said, “Before you leave to join the angels, I’ve a couple of questions. One, since you know the will of God, if it’s God’s will that Emmanuel Bruno be damned and doomed and maybe run over by a truck, might your working the will of God require you to drive the truck? Answer yes or no, so help you God.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Just in case such an idea should enter your mind—if, that is, it has not already done so—it might be helpful for you to realize I would then, ve
ry personally, consider it God’s will that your arms and legs and neck be broken, each in at least one place, if not several. Two—”

  That was as far as I got.

  Later I would realize there had been a lull lasting this long only so those bushel baskets could be carried around and filled with the necessary; and that once those baskets were at least beginning to be pressed down and overflowing with bushels of love, the Chorale—which most likely had barely begun when suspended for the giving that is better than receiving—could continue. And, therefore, would continue. Later I would realize it.

  But that was not yet. So, first thing, I decided my ears were going to give up their ghosts. They were hit again by that now-familiar clash of dueling decibels, but this time something new had been added—new and at least equally injurious, perhaps even fatal when combined with the old—and it went:

  We are soldiers … Armed with love …

  In the sacred Army of

  He Whom has His arms about us …

  He Whom would shed tears without us …

  What’s this? I thought. Are they singing? Why? Haven’t I—haven’t we all—suffered enough? I turned my head to give Festus a dirty look, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was just as well; my business was done and all I wanted now was to get far away, maybe to some place where I could hear a distant cricket.

  I left the dimness and headed into the dumbness, walked into the brightness, started up the aisle down which I’d come a few minutes ago. And stopped and looked. I had to stop and look. It was a sight, as well as a sound, to lock up in your memory bank. Everybody in the house was standing, holding little books, mouths so wide there appeared to be many bodies with no heads, only mouths. I deduced that they were all either screaming or contracting lockjaw or getting goosed. Whatever they were doing—it sounded a bit like that first verse over again, but probably anything would have—it was done with a kind of jerky bounce not remotely related to rhythm, reminiscent of a diesel locomotive starting to move and pulling a long train of empty freight cars behind it. You know how the at-first-slow forward movement takes up the slack and jerks the first empty car, then the second, and in increasing tempo the next and the next and so on, with a sound shattering to peace and joy?