The Real

by James Cole

  “Claire, help!” the child screamed.

  There was no response except for the crackling and groaning of the house being consumed by the fire.

  “Help me Claire!” he screamed again, but still, no human response.

  The flames chased him toward the only escape route left, the window over his bed. Frantically he unlatched the lock but the window wouldn’t budge. By standing on the bed, the boy had unknowingly thrust his head into the thickest layer of smoke nearest the ceiling. Quickly he became disoriented as the fumes did their duty. In a last ditch effort of coherent thought, he shoved his body into the window and through it, landing in a shower of glass on the ground outside. Bleeding and coughing, he crawled away from the burning structure and collapsed in the underbrush.

  Get up! His mind screamed at his body but it refused to move. He must warn the others before it was too late but the toxicity of the smoke rendered him dizzy and weak. Try as he might, he could not muster the strength.

  Please God, save the others, he prayed.

  As he lay in the bushes, unable to move and barely able to see, a shadowy figure slid in between the boy’s line of sight and the window through which he had escaped. For a moment he thought that it might be God manifest, that the Creator had answered his prayers and had come to save him and the others from the burning hell. The figure stood very still and very close to the flames that flapped wildly from the broken window. The boy’s tunnel vision squeezed down to a pinhole and still this person only stood calmly by. The final thought that meandered lazily across the synapses as he blacked out was that maybe this person was the furthest thing from God.

  When the boy came woozily to, all was dark and quiet. Shakily he rose to his feet. With a double-fisted death grip, he clung to a sapling until his dizziness eased and his vision cleared. What had been his home away from home had been reduced to a skeleton of blackened bones. In shock, he walked the perimeter of the ruins. Red embers like the eyes of demons winked with the whims of a noncommittal wind.

  Where is everyone? Grady asked himself. Are they all dead? Where is Claire?

  Dead?

  Chapter 46

  Sunday, December 21

  I've got something you want.”

  Monika appeared at Jeremy’s doorstep in the waning moments of Saturday, the eve of the winter solstice, after having been missing in action since Tuesday. She did not offer any explanation or apology for her absence, as was typical for his new so-called girlfriend. Jeremy had no choice but to take it – and her – in stride.

  “Interested?” She presented her closed hand but did not reveal what it held.

  “Have I ever turned you down before?” he asked.

  “If it makes you feel any better, nobody ever turns me down.” She handed over two lavender-tinged capsules.

  “Two?” he asked. “Did you mean to give me two?”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  “Whatever.” Jeremy’s flippant façade belied the unease he felt. He had never taken two hits of the Unreal simultaneously.

  On nights like this, time flew by in elated leaps and bounds, and even though he was pretty sure he had never felt better than he did right now, Jeremy began to dread the inevitable comedown. He hated that the thought crossed his mind, but there was no denying the brutal dichotomy of it all. The pure joy of any moment must be coupled with the despair of knowing that the moment will pass. The bitter end always comes, even for life itself.

  “Are you up for a walk?”

  The question seeped in from some faraway place, so Jeremy thought, until he realized that Monika was sitting right beside him on the couch.

  “Hello,” he said reflexively.

  Monika laughed and asked, “Is there anybody in there?”

  Jeremy gathered his wits as best he could.

  “A walk, you say?”

  *****

  They took the sidewalk that led from the front of Jeremy’s condominium to the downtown area. An eerie fog had descended on the town, wrapping halos around the gothic-styled street lamps. As they approached the backside of City Hall, the sound of splattering water beckoned.

  “Let’s stop and say hello to the mermaid,” suggested Jeremy.

  “Okay, but we can’t stay long.”

  Monika stepped up onto the rim of the fountain. “Do you have any change?” She accepted a penny and tossed it in.

  “What did you wish for?” he asked.

  For a moment, Monika’s face was obscured by the steam that drifted up from the fountain like a phantom. “To never die,” she said.

  “Good one, ditto for me.” Jeremy threw in a penny of his own.

  Monika checked her watch. It required several tries at different angles before she got the right light. “We need to go,” she said.

  “Why?” asked Jeremy. He couldn’t think of a better place to be than right here.

  Monika smiled. “The time has come.”

  They moved on from the fountain, past the Square shops, restaurants, bars and banks, talking and laughing all the way to the alleyway that housed Bar Nowhere.

  “The bar is closed, you know.” Jeremy spoke as if this thought had been simmering in his mind all along, as one who was with it. In reality, he was so tripped out on the drug that, despite its proximity, no thought of the nightclub had crossed his mind before they arrived at the deserted alley.

  “I know,” she replied.

  “So what are we doing here?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Monika stopped in front of the old boarded up church next door to Bar Nowhere. “Wait here,” she instructed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Inside,” she replied. “I’ll be right back.” Monika stepped through the darkened entrance to the nightclub.

  Jeremy trotted up the steep grass bank and onto the small courtyard of the old church. He discovered a bench beneath a hickory tree with U-shaped branches hung low. Jeremy envisioned young children, climbing and swinging, bending the branches as they waited for church on a thousand Sundays past.

  Why, he wondered, had the church been abandoned? Where had all the children gone?

  On a whim, Jeremy, who as a child had been quite an accomplished tree climber, started up the tree. The branches were numerous and closely spaced and he rocketed upwards with an almost superhuman strength and agility. Jeremy stopped when he heard a voice filter up from the street below. When he looked down, he was surprised to see the height he had attained.

  For a moment or two after Monika exited the nightclub, Jeremy simply watched her from his position in the tree. Monika looked up and down the alleyway several times before calling for him again.

  “Jeremy?”

  Instead of answering he gave a little birdcall, “Ca-cooooo!”

  “Jeremy, where are you?” she asked snappily.

  Louder this time: “Ca-coo! Ca-coo!”

  “Quit fooling around Jeremy. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  “Yeah I know, it’s a surprise,” he stated in a conversational tone that somehow allowed her to pinpoint his position high above the street.

  “You are crazy!” she cried. “Come down before someone sees us.”

  “Come and get me,” he kidded.

  “Are you a man or a monkey?”

  Jeremy humored her by hanging from one arm and scratching his armpit with the other when he reached the lowest branch. From there he dropped safely to the ground. Ironically, he slipped on the steep grass bank at the border of the church lawn and the alleyway, arriving at street level with a scraped elbow that bled but didn’t hurt at all.

  Inside, the nightclub was void of people and strange in its silence. The scant light provided by a string of haphazardly-placed light bulbs could not overcome the reign of shadows in this dark place.

  “Is it okay to be in here?” Jeremy quizzed.

  “Shhhh,” Monika hissed softly through puckered lips.

  Like an obedient puppy he followed her across
the basement portion of the bar, up the spiral staircase to the upper level, around the periphery of the balcony which overlooked the dance floor, and finally up several more steps which led into the DJ’s booth, a small glassed-in perch from which the sound and light systems were operated. Jeremy, his Unreal-racked mind working furiously, thought perhaps Monika intended to crank the music and the lights for their own private dance party, but she bypassed the stacks of compact disks and electronic equipment. Her hands settled on an area along the back wall of the booth.

  With a nerve-grating wood-on-wood squeak, she slid back a section of the wood paneling to reveal a dark crawl space. Jeremy knew at this point he probably should be asking questions but, not wanting to spoil the intrigue of the moment, chose instead to let Monika play out her surprise. Using a small penlight that she produced from who-knows-where, she squatted and shuffled duck-like through the diminutive passageway, leaving Jeremy alone to ponder this girl and the ultimate destination toward which she strived and to wonder at the depth of his desire to follow.

  “Come on,” she urged from somewhere within the wall.

  Jeremy obliged and, on hands and knees, crawled into the void.

  The first thing he noticed as he negotiated the tunnel-like passageway was the smell: The smell of stale cigarette smoke and beer gave way to a musty aroma like that of an old house, rank with the odor of wet and decomposing wood.

  He called out for his dark angel. “Monika?”

  “You can stand up now.”

  Jeremy’s acute disorientation was gradually replaced with awe as his eyes took in, and his mind digested, the abrupt and unanticipated change in surroundings. He found himself in a large, cavern-like area – the sanctuary, he realized, of the old church next door to Bar Nowhere. The light that filtered in through the huge, stained glass windows, though dim, was bright compared to the pitch black of the crawl space. Besides the inevitable decay that accompanies the neglect of disuse, the interior of the church appeared largely intact. They had emerged in the choir loft in the front of the sanctuary, directly behind the altar. Even the organ and piano remained, silent in their cubbyholes on either side of the choir loft.

  “How did you find out about this place?”

  “I have my ways,” she replied hazily. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  Jeremy’s attention had been directed outward, toward the back of the sanctuary. With a start he discovered the huge crucifix that loomed over them from behind the choir loft. Jesus hung on a cross of wood, his face a portrait of silent agony. Blood tears streamed from his rolling eyes.

  Jeremy became uneasy and forced his gaze and thoughts away from the crucifix.

  “Come on, there’s more.” Monika lit the wick of a long, slender candle, and used it to light more candles, prepositioned in holders around the stage, altar, and front pews.

  They walked up the carpeted aisle, through the heavy wooden doors at the back of the sanctuary, and up a dark stairwell that led to the balcony. Monika paused periodically to light additional candles, illuminating their pathway as they progressed. As Jeremy paused to take in the sanctuary from the upper seats of the church, his attention once again focused on the crucifix. Strangely, but certainly an aberration of either the lighting or of his mind, the Christ appeared to have taken on a translucent quality. Jeremy blinked twice, shook his head in incredulity, and turned his back. He followed Monika to a creaky door in the back of the balcony and beyond, where pigeons cooed and a cool draft blew. The box-shaped stairwell culminated in the open air of the bell tower.

  Jeremy ducked his head as he passed through the small door that led outside. The balcony platform was narrow, with no more than two feet of clearance between the bell housing and the rail. They were high, above the upper-most boughs of the tree that Jeremy had just scaled. In the distance he could make out the lights of his hilltop condominium. His top-floor unit, like the belfry, stood head and shoulders above most of the other downtown buildings laid out in between.

  More and more, Jeremy got the feeling that Monika left nothing to chance, that she manipulated every circumstance to some preconceived end. Through that lens, even the first night they met warranted a more close-up examination.

  “Do you remember the night we first met?” he asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Why did you kiss me, a total stranger, like you did?”

  “Was it so bad?”

  “No, no, it was well received on my part. I don’t know why but, looking back, it all seems a little premeditated. Are you sure you didn’t target me?”

  Monika laughed. “Target you? No, not hardly. I checked you out and liked what I saw – spur of the moment, as they say.”

  “Spur of the moment?” Jeremy remembered their rendezvous one week later at Bar Nowhere. “How was it you knew my name before I told you?”

  “I made it my business to know.”

  Though Monika continued to dole out answers, her responses were tepid and vague. She seemed pre-occupied, distant; a world away.

  “Are you okay?” Jeremy asked.

  “Never been better,” she replied, but Jeremy thought he saw a truer answer stated by her expression of melancholy, a look her face carried often.

  Jeremy felt an overriding affection for Monika, but instead of a hug, he ventured an intimate question.

  “Do you believe in God?” he asked.

  It seemed a relevant query, considering the setting.

  “No.” Monika answered swiftly, as if she were ready for the question. “I think God is a figment of man’s imagination, a fairy tale made up by people afraid to face their own mortality.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe in heaven either?”

  “No, I don’t,” she replied, “at least not in the traditional sense. I believe we can make our existence on earth to be just like heaven.”

  She turned from him deliberately as if to say, “Subject closed.” With glazed eyes, she stared out over the quiet town, lost again in her secret thoughts.

  Movement in the alleyway below caught Jeremy’s eye. A group of dark figures had congregated near the door of the bar. They stood still and quiet, in an ethereal hush. The first thought that came to his mind was that the children from Reefers Woods had shown up here. Jeremy poked Monika to alert her to their late night company.

  “Good,” she said. “They’re here.”

  “Who?” whispered Jeremy, but Monika did not respond as she passed through the doorway that led downstairs.

  The ten or so individuals below stood still and compliant, like lambs to the slaughter. One, Jeremy recognized: Trey, the lab student with the rock star good looks, was here. These must be the constituents of Monika’s group, and tonight must be the night of the purported ceremony. After Monika let them in, Jeremy had nowhere to go but down. As he descended the candle-lit stairwell, his feelings flickered between giddy anticipation and apprehension.

  *****

  Jeremy stood off to the side as, one by one, the members of Monika’s group popped out of the crawl space that connected Bar Nowhere to the church. He was surprised to recognize the two faces belonging to the singer and bass player for Singe, but the only person who really acknowledged Jeremy at all was Trey.

  “Word,” Trey said, pausing just long enough to offer his trademark fist bump.

  Not knowing exactly what the greeting meant, Jeremy nodded his hello.

  Jeremy sat at the far right side of the second pew. A significant space separated him from the others, who were clustered together closer to the center. Jeremy felt like an outsider; a man apart. So quiet was the church that he heard the sound of the candle flames fluttering in Monika’s wake as she passed by.

  Monika appeared small, almost childlike, standing beside the massive altar. She placed her hands over an unidentified article covered with a white cloth and set upon the altar.

  “It is good news that brings us together tonight.” She paused theatrically as she looked out over her querulous flock. “Th
is is the time you’ve waited for.”

  As Jeremy scrutinized the profiles of the other faces, he could see that they were completely taken by her. Monika owned them, much like she owned him. From the instant Monika applied that fateful kiss to his unsuspecting lips, she had him. He wondered if tonight would mark another sea change in his life.

  “Tonight you shall become more than you are, more than you ever dreamed you could be. Tonight you will be changed, and together we will embark on the path of Claire’s Alternative Way.”

  Monika was perfectly at ease as a public speaker and, if anything, her charisma multiplied in the group setting. There were twelve in her audience, but Jeremy suspected that she would have been equally at ease speaking to twelve thousand.

  “You will become one with this world; indeed, you will become gods of this world, for I have finally found the Source. Tonight, we shall all become one with it.”

  Monika’s reference to the Source made Jeremy realize, with a jolt, that all of this – the dark church, the ceremony, and Monika at the altar – was eerily similar to the wedding dream he experienced last Saturday night.

  Monika continued: “However, I have decided not to betray the nature of the change until after the ceremony. You must, therefore, submit to me and to Claire’s Way as an exercise of faith. But don’t worry. It is more awesome than you could ever imagine, and I’m so excited that we have all finally arrived at this moment in time.”

  The substantial mental overhang of the Unreal made it difficult for Jeremy to process all the incoming information. Grady had once warned Jeremy to beware the point of no return, and though Jeremy had not known before what that meant or if it meant anything at all, he was pretty sure the point of no return was fast approaching.