God Told Me To

by C. K. Chandler

  Not long after his conversation with the purple-haired hooker, there was a midnight knock at Nicholas’s door.

  Nicholas went to the dresser. The cracked mirror warped his tense features as he reached into the drawer where he’d been keeping his gun. He put the gun where it was out of sight but easily reachable. He snapped off the lights. He placed his chair so that it was in darkness, away from the neon which spilled through the window.

  He felt the same little electric charge he had experienced with the hooker.

  He waited for a second knock.

  “It’s open.”

  The yellow hall lights back-lit the black shape of a man framed in the rectangle of the open door. The shape stood motionless and quiet, and Nicholas knew the shape was trying to see through the darkness of the room. Then the shape raised an arm. The arm pushed hesitantly forward. It moved back and forth, as if the shape were a blind man feeling his way.

  A voice, plaintive and quivering, almost a whisper, said, “Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  “Come in. Shut the door.”

  The shape jerked back with a nervous start at the sound of Nicholas.

  “I told you to come in.”

  The door closed as the man stepped timidly into the room.

  “I asked you . . .”

  Nicholas snapped, “I know what you asked.”

  Over the weeks Nicholas’s eyes had become accustomed to the neon dimness. He could clearly see the man.

  The man wore one of those dull no-style suits of the wealthy. There were muted stripes on his tie. Draped around his neck was a dark scarf. The weather was still warm for a scarf, but Nicholas saw that the man shivered as if from fever. He also saw shiny beads of perspiration on the man’s forehead and totally bald head.

  “Welcome, Mr. Hirsch. I don’t often get visits from chairmen of the boards of brokerage houses.”

  The man stepped away from the sound of Nicholas’s voice and bumped into the dresser.

  “How . . . ? How do you know who I am?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I was sent.”

  “I’ve been reading the financial pages. Your picture appears there nearly as often as mine has on the front pages recently. Does he give you tips on the market?”

  “You must leave . . . must leave him alone.”

  “You look chilled, Mr. Hirsch. There’s brandy behind you. You’ll also find a glass. Not long ago someone left their toothbrush and tumbler in that elegant bathroom down the hall. I threw away the toothbrush. My search for him has led me to these roach-ridden quarters.”

  “You’ve taken his name.”

  “Temporarily, Mr. Hirsch. In my line, it’s what is called a cover. But you had no trouble finding me.”

  Hirsch’s mouth opened and closed but no words came out.

  “Relax, Mr. Hirsch. I won’t hurt you.”

  “This is, this is partially a test for me.”

  “Of loyalty?”

  “How can you treat—treat this so lightly. You are one of the privileged even to be aware of the greatest man ever born. One of the few privileged.”

  “I’ve noticed that he reveals himself to only a select few.”

  “You came upon his existence accidentally. We were chosen.”

  “Disciples?”

  Hirsch raised a trembling fist. “Don’t . . . do not mock.”

  Nicholas waited for Hirsch to continue. Nearly two minutes passed.

  “Could we have more light, please?”

  “You look good with those red and blue reflections bouncing off you. Brightens up your Wall Street attire.”

  “I can barely see you. I’m . . . I’m . . . I . . .”

  Nicholas left his place in the darkness. He took the unresisting Hirsch by the arm and sat him down on the bed. He splashed a couple fingers of brandy into the tumbler and ordered Hirsch to drink it.

  Hirsch pleaded, “I can’t. My heart.”

  “I can smell the sweat and fear coming out of you. I don’t know if you’re in a fever or just scared. But you drink that and maybe you’ll relax enough for me to make some sense of you.”

  “My heart’s too weak.”

  “Then get out. Go report to him your mission was a failure.”

  Hirsch took the brandy and gasped it down. Nicholas placed the empty tumbler on the dresser. When he turned back to Hirsch, the man had his head in his hands and was rocking himself.

  “Please. You must leave him alone.”

  “Not until I know who or what he is. And why he is.”

  The man looked up, his eyes wet and begging. “You must realize. He could have disposed of you simply by willing it to be.”

  The electricity ran through Nicholas in a steady current. He laughed and challenged, “So why hasn’t he disposed of me?”

  Hirsch stuttered and couldn’t find an answer.

  “Think maybe he has a reason for keeping me around?”

  “Perhaps he believes that if he can convince a man such as yourself . . .”

  “If he can convince me, he can convince the world. Right? Am I his testing ground? His trial run?”

  Hirsch began to sob. In the neon glow his tears looked like blue rain streaking his cheeks.

  Nicholas continued his challenge. “I thought he convinced people by forcing them to commit atrocities. Senseless acts of murder and mutilation. If he’s who he’s supposed to be, why doesn’t he come forward? Why doesn’t he pull a few triggers himself? Or strike down Boulder Dam with a lightning bolt? He could knock off a million or so with a single stroke. That would impress me a hell of a lot more than a crybaby disciple.”

  “The last time God put His son on this earth . . .”

  “Don’t start telling me about God’s revenge. When this first began I thought that way myself.”

  “In the Old Testament. ‘The Lord our God is a vengeful God!’ ”

  “I know my Bible. How well do you know him. Has he told you about his mother?”

  Hirsch shook his head and flapped his hands. He made wailing sounds and used the ends of his scarf to wipe his tearful face and sweating forehead.

  Nicholas told the story of Judith Phillips’ abduction and rape.

  “Please,” Hirsch pleaded. “No more!”

  “Take me to him.”

  “I can’t. You don’t understand.”

  “Let me meet him. Perhaps I’ll understand.”

  Hirsch wailed and shook, he babbled incoherently, his arms flapped bonelessly in the neon gloom. Soft red and blue tones splashed an eerie pattern over him. And at once strength seemed to enter him. He bolted from the bed. His chest swelled and he made a high, loud scream. It was a terrible sound. For the moment it lasted it was like something from the forest had entered the seedy room. Nicholas was too stunned by the outburst to react immediately, and he imagined feeling the floor shake beneath his feet and hearing the old mirror rattle above the dresser. Quickly as it had begun, the scream ended. Hirsch clutched his chest and fell back upon the bed.

  His features twisted, became drawn with pain. He had fallen into a pool of blue reflection that gave his skin a liverish tone. He held his chest and managed to gasp, “Pills . . . help . . .”

  Nicholas quickly went through Hirsch’s pockets and found a vial of pills. He pulled off the cap and tried pushing a pill into the man’s mouth.

  “Can’t . . . swallow. Wa . . . wa . . . ter.”

  Nicholas threw open the window to let fresh air into the room. A strong breeze rushed in, and jattering noise from the street.

  Nicholas hurried to the bathroom for a tumbler of water.

  He was gone less than a minute. In his absence the room had become a mess of wind-flung objects. The street noise was too loud, a clanging, whanging honking that sounded amplified.

  He pushed the tumbler to Hirsch’s mouth.

  “Can’t. Can’t swal . . .”

  Nicholas forced open the man’s mouth, grasped his jaw, and by applying all his strength man
aged to open the mouth wide enough to dump in both pill and water.

  Hirsch gagged. His body bucked spastically. The vial of pills Nicholas had unconsciously held onto were knocked from his hand.

  The springs and headboard of the bed squeaked, scraped. An old newspaper Nicholas had left lying around was picked up by the wind. The paper slapped against the dresser. Street noise screamed through the window. The mirror rattled, suddenly crashed to the floor. Shards of glass sparkled. A whinning siren wind stabbed his ears.

  Hirsch rolled to his side, spewed out the pill. Vomit splashed Nicholas. It soiled his hands with a yellowish, foul slime. Hirsch let go of his chest. Frantically clawed the neon air.

  “Can’t swalllll . . .”

  Nicholas dropped to the floor, ran his hands through the sparkling pieces of mirror searching for a spilled pill, and it didn’t occur to him to turn on a light. Bits of glass clung to his vomit-coated hands, needled his palms. He found a pill and it melted between his fingers, became soft wax, glowed gold, and the wind howled and he heard Hirsch gasp:

  “Him!”

  And the wind died. The street noise sounded as it normally should.

  He straddled the body on his bed. Raised a fist and hammered it down hard against Hirsch’s chest. He bent over and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The man’s lips were as cold as anything he’d ever felt.

  “Damn you!” he shouted.

  Again he smashed a fist into the dead man’s chest.

  “You could have held on!”

  He was about to strike the body again when he heard a sound behind him. A harsh, grating sound. He turned. What he saw caused him to leap from the bed, as far back as the window where he gripped the sill for support and found himself wrapped in a splash of neon gaud.

  Standing at the door, lit from behind by yellow hall lights, was a grotesque dark shape.

  SIXTEEN

  They stared at one another.

  Neither moved nor spoke.

  Nicholas in neon splash. The shape grotesque and like nothing he had ever seen, ever imagined.

  Seconds passed.

  Nicholas said, “You’re not him.”

  Nicholas’s stomach went hollow as he realized he had moved out of reach of his gun. He determined that if the shape made a forward step he would lunge for the gun. But the shape turned and ran.

  Nicholas grabbed his gun and gave chase.

  The shape was rounding the corner of the L-shaped hall as Nicholas rushed through his door. Nicholas made it around the corner in time to see the shape pull open the door to the stairwell. He then recognized the shape for what it was.

  A chauffeur. Dressed in old-fashioned livery. The type of uniform that would appeal to the conservative tastes of a man like Hirsch. Tight knee-high boots, trousers puffed at the thighs, stiff shoulder padding, and a fluffy cap had combined to give the chauffeur his grotesque shape.

  The chauffeur fell in his charge down the stairs and Nicholas caught up with him at the first landing. The chauffeur tried getting to his feet, but Nicholas kept him on his knees by pushing a gun into the man’s ear.

  “I saw nothing,” the chauffeur said. “I swear I’ll never say a word.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I only worked for him.”

  Nicholas pressed the gun hard against the chauffeur’s ear.

  “Told you to shut up. I didn’t kill him. I don’t want to hurt you. Just before you brought him here? Where did you come from?”

  The chauffeur took too long in answering.

  “Riverdale.”

  The electricity again charged through Nicholas.

  “You’re lying.”

  “His home’s in Riverdale.”

  Nicholas put more pressure on the gun.

  “I didn’t ask where he lived.”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “Where in Brooklyn?”

  “I never know where I’m at out there. Streets confuse me.”

  Nicholas applied more pressure.

  “This is a police .38 special. If I squeeze the trigger your brains will splatter like a pizza on that wall.”

  “Epiphany Street. Old building. Condemned and all boarded up.”

  “Ever take him there before?”

  “Three, four times a week.”

  “How long’s this been going on?”

  “Little over a month. Always at night.”

  “Ever go inside with Hirsch? Or see anybody else?”

  “I just parked and waited. Hour or so. I saw some others come and go.”

  “Who?”

  “Mister! I couldn’t see their faces. There aren’t hardly any street lamps left out there. It has something to do with religion. They all of them carried Bibles.”

  Nicholas pulled back his gun.

  The chauffeur stood, rubbing his ear as if he’d been burned.

  “Okay,” Nicholas said. “We’re going back to my room and pick up a few things. Then we’ll take a ride.”

  “I swear to Jesus, mister. I won’t say a word.”

  “You can say anything you want. So long as you wait two hours after dropping me off in Brooklyn.”

  “You don’t want to go there. That neighborhood’s scary.”

  The gray limousine glided through the river mist of the Brooklyn night. It wheeled smoothly over damp streets, neglected streets with loose cobblestones and deep potholes, and entered a part of the borough that had begun to be abandoned thirty years ago. An area the city had forgotten. A few street lamps that burned stood like pale sentries in the dark. Hollow, brick-strewn lots alternated with boarded-up buildings that appeared to lean upon one another for support. A few warehouses did business here during the day. At night the area was deserted but for the cats and rats that survived on each other.

  The limousine slid to a halt.

  The chauffeur pointed to a building.

  Nicholas left the car. The chauffeur stepped on the gas and was gone.

  Mist, thick as the cold fumes from dry ice, swirled around Nicholas and carried a pollution smell from the nearby river.

  He looked over the building to which the chauffeur had pointed. Once it had been an apartment house. Age had put a crust on it, and a corner street lamp cast thin, blue shadow over it. Nicholas saw nothing to indicate recent activity here.

  The front entrance was boarded over. He climbed the stoop steps and tested the boards. They were tightly nailed. On one board was tacked the remains of an official notice of condemnation. Nicholas tried the windows within his reach. They too were tightly boarded.

  At the side of the building was an alley blocked by crates and battered metal garbage cans. He pulled aside one of the cans. It was full and heavy and scraped against the cobblestones. A nesting cat yowled and ran up the alley.

  Nicholas took a small pen flashlight from his pocket.

  The alley slanted steeply toward its center and held a dark stream of slime which probably never dried. The pen light bounced a dull, oval beam against the wet cobblestones. The stones were slippery with mud.

  All of the basement windows were broken but too small for a man to crawl through. His light momentarily shined the green eyes of the cat. Again the cat yowled, then darted through one of the windows.

  He reached the back of the building. A passage between it and the next building had been partially blocked by boards leaning diagonally between the separate structures. Nicholas pushed and the boards clattered to the ground.

  He walked over the boards and through the passage.

  He found himself in the ghost of a courtyard. The mist was trapped here and heavier. It stung his eyes. The silhouettes of tall, leafless trees stood outlined against the night sky. A shredded curtain, or perhaps it was a long-discarded gown, had caught in one of the trees. The shreds drifted like strips of flowing gauze. Cracked flagstones, weeds sprouting through the cracks, led past bare concrete benches and empty gardens to a barren fountain. Dry leaves scratched along the flagstones and brushed over his feet.


  He discovered the rear entrance. It opened easily.

  The corridor was narrow and black. He went only a few steps, then stopped long enough for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He flashed his light. The footprints of Hirsch and the others had marked a clear path over a floor covered with plaster and debris.

  He came to a large, square lobby. It held the dry odor of slow decay. Nearly half the ceiling had collapsed and the remainder sagged dangerously. Nicholas’s path wound around high mounds of rubble. A rat skittered somewhere in the rubble. The noise startled him and he reached out and grasped a supporting beam. A section of the beam splintered like straws of a broom in his hands.

  He reached the stairs. The footprint path continued straight up the steps but Nicholas didn’t follow it. He moved until he stood in the center of the old-fashioned square stairwell. He raised his light and looked upward. The pen flash did not have a powerful beam and he could see nothing beyond the first floor. He saw places where the bannister had broken away. High up in the black he thought he saw a faint streak of light. It was so far above he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an illusion. Suddenly something dark fell into the beam of his flash. He leaped back.

  The body of a cat landed at his feet. He shined his light on the dead animal. Rolled it over with his feet and examined it. Its neck had been broken.

  He moved to where he was out of view from above. He switched the flash to his left hand and took out his gun. He started up the stairs. The cat had been a warning. Whoever threw it had been higher than the first floor and he didn’t stop there.

  He paused at the landing between the first and second floors. He shined his flash on the next flight of steps until he had a mental picture of them. Then he snapped off the light and began a slow ascent. To keep the noise of his approach quiet as possible, he climbed on tiptoe, testing each step before putting full weight on it.

  He stood silently in the darkness of the second floor until he was sure he was alone. He flashed the light along the hall. To his left, a large hole in the floor prevented any passage. To his right, the dust on the floor was thick and undisturbed. He formed a mental picture of the next steps and continued.

  Each flight of stairs was long. The pace of his ascent was difficult to maintain. His legs quickly tired from the strain. His leg muscles began to twitch. With each step he seemed to sink a bit, as if the stairs were sodden, and his shoes felt like resisting weights. He kept away from the dangerous bannisters. Once, he touched his hand to the wall for support and chips of paint stuck to his skin like moist scales.