God Told Me To

by C. K. Chandler

  “Speak up.”

  “In October of 1938.”

  “I won’t tell about if again. Nobody believes me.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you a new doctor?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “You want to hear about it so you can laugh at me. Like all the others.”

  “I won’t laugh, Miss Mullen.”

  “I’m cold. Will you send more heat if I tell?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you won’t,” she cackled. “Nobody’s ever believed me. I told it when it happened. Told it over again and over. Police, doctors, my priest. They all laughed. They said it never happened. I got to thinking it never happened. Only it did and I was right. My parents didn’t believe. I lived with them. My father. He used to tease me about becoming a spinster. This time he struck me and called me worse. They sent me to an aunt in Pennsylvania. So the neighbors wouldn’t see me. Only I came back and had the baby. Queens Hospital. Nineteen and thirty-nine. I wanted to take the baby and show all them who laughed. They still wouldn’t have believed me.”

  She lapsed into silence. Her head lolled to the side.

  Nicholas prodded, “Miss Mullen, how did it happen.”

  She snapped up her head, wiped her chin.

  “My father called me a whore. He wouldn’t let me come home. I was never a whore.”

  “Yes, Miss Mullen. How did it happen?”

  “We lived way out in Flushing. I worked a night shift. I was a long-distance operator for the phone company. When I got off the bus I had to walk a long ways. Things weren’t so built up like now. Ohhh. It was a terrible light. Yellow and all over me. I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t move. They carried me somewhere. It was a thing. A shiny metal thing. My legs were held apart and I lost all my clothes and the thing came at me from a big ball of light. It went up inside me and wasn’t cold.”

  Her skinny body began to shiver. Nicholas thought to comfort her, but she shrunk from his touch.

  “The thing made me have the baby. I swore to my father in Jesus’ name I hadn’t been with a man. I never have done that, never. I was always good, and after I had the baby no man wanted me. The Church took the baby and told me they would find it a good home.”

  “They did, Miss Mullen.”

  “The priests wouldn’t believe me. Nobody. I have nightmares still. The terrible light and the thing going inside me. I still get so scared sometimes.”

  The rug across her lap became wet with a large stain. Urine spilled down her legs and puddled the floor. She seemed unaware of what she’d done.

  “You’re not a priest. A priest would get me more heat. You just want to laugh like the rest of them.”

  He could not bear to spend another moment with her.

  That night, fear dragged him down, washed over him, swallowed him. He saw a woman swept by blinding yellow light. A swirl of copper and gold. High-pitched laughter. The rats swarmed over him. The woman naked. Her legs spread apart. A metal tube violated her. Cackling laughter. Crazed. Icy. A baby cried. Huge panes of stained glass shattered. Rats shrieked. A child rolled from the arms of a woman of stone. The metal dripping red pulled from the woman. The smell of dust, lavender, burning wax. He felt his skin turn blue.

  NINETEEN

  He was living in the subways now. A fine hiding place for a man on the run with no place to go. He rode the trains to the ends of the lines and back again, from White Plains Road in the Bronx to Brooklyn’s Far Rockaway to Queens’ Hillside Avenue. He changed trains often. The lunch counters and shops in the underground malls of the larger terminals provided him what he needed in food and clothing.

  He knew it would all be over soon. But before he again confronted him, he wanted the man named Zero.

  He would emerge from the subway tunnels at midnight to walk those midtown blocks of Eighth Avenue known as the Minnesota Strip. Blocks which Dante would have assigned a special place in Hell; blocks populated by pushers, junkies, teenaged prostitutes, motorcycle gangs, pimps, panhandlers, where glaring flickering marquees announced pornographic movies and flanked adult book stores, massage parlors, the steamed windows of pizza parlors and sandwich shops, the curtained windows of gypsy fortune tellers, saloon windows framed in plastic wood, barred windows of pawnshops. He would walk here. Noise pounded him. Barkers hawking the theaters, hookers fighting with one another for a particular doorway, cars, buses, jukeboxes blasting through saloon entrances, panhandlers pleading for the price of a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, a fix of heroin. He walked and passed the word that he wanted Zero.

  And one night two men stepped out of a doorway, and without a word he nodded and went with them, rode with them to a pool hall in Harlem.

  The tall black man playing a private game of pool glanced up from the table as his men led Nicholas through the door. He completed his shot. Cursed when not all the balls ran into their pockets. He threw his cue on the green felt.

  “Heard a whitey was seekin’ me. No way thought it Mr. Peter Nicholas. Such a surprise caused me to miss my shot.”

  Nicholas stared at the black man.

  “What’s the why, Nicholas?”

  “You killed Jordan.”

  The inverted V of Zero’s mustache flattened into a dark scar above his lip as he smiled. “That homicide was the work of the ‘Voice of God.’ ”

  “You used the name of God. I can’t allow that.”

  “And what do you propose to do about it?”

  The now familiar electricity charged Nicholas. He stared at Zero and said, “You’re going to do it.”

  Zero pulled a knife from his pocket. He pressed the spring release. The blade snapped out and reflected light. Zero removed his glasses. Twisted the knife so that it bounced reflections and said, “Pretty, ain’t it.”

  “Look at me, Zero.”

  The two henchmen each took hold of Nicholas.

  “Lot of folks will be right happy to learn you are dead and gone, Mr. Nicholas.”

  “Look at me.”

  Reflections bounced from the knife.

  “I always look at who I’m about to carve.”

  “Do what you have to do, Zero.”

  The black man stood directly in front of Nicholas. He raised his knife. The inverted V returned to his upper lip as his smile vanished. There was a slight hesitation. Then he plunged the knife into the heart of one of those holding Nicholas. The stabbed man was gasping his final breath as Zero plunged the knife into the other.

  Zero stood back. He examined his bloody knife. He wiped the blade with his fingers until the light bounced off it again. He looked at Nicholas, his eyes seeking approval. Once more he raised his knife. Smiled, but this smile didn’t make a scar appear. Instead, it gave an innocence to his features. Then, he sliced his throat.

  TWENTY

  The dial tone hummed. He dropped the dime into the coin slot. Seven times the dial whirred as he spun the digits of her number.

  “Hello?”

  “Casey. It’s me.”

  “Peter! Where . . .?”

  “We can’t talk long. I know your phone must be tapped.”

  “Are you all right? Where are . . .?”

  “I’ve found out who I am. Better this way than if we had stayed together. I’m sorry. Sorry about Martha, too. I’m a stranger. Like him, I’m a stranger.”

  “Please tell me where you are.”

  “I’m the only one who can stop him. He’ll come to me because he knows I’m his only threat. He’ll send someone and I’ll win, Casey. But I’ll always be a stranger.”

  “Peter, you’re not making sense.”

  “You know how I said I felt close to God, closer than to people? Well, it wasn’t God, wasn’t Jesus.”

  “I want to help you. Where can I find . . . ?”

  “It was something else, Casey. Something I’m part of. That something has to die.”

  “Stop it! You’re talking like you’re not human.”

  “It’s why I was rep
elled by the idea of having kids. Why I’ve never been able to love you the way you deserve.”

  Her voice shook with sobs as she said his name.

  She had been sobbing for most of their brief conversation.

  “I wish it was different, Casey. Good-bye.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  8:15 A.M. Grand Central Station. The underground tracks that handle the shuttle runs between Grand Central and Times Square. The morning rush hour. Crowded with those who must reach the other side of Manhattan for their jobs, their schools. A jammed, crushing, impatient crowd.

  Nicholas stood at the edge of the platform, leaned out over the track, and pretended to scan the dark tunnel for an approaching train. He felt the presence of the man behind him. The roar of a train came from the tunnel. Nicholas leaned farther out from the platform. Just as the man pushed at his back, Nicholas moved and the man fell forward onto the tracks.

  Screams and shouts rose from those near enough to see the man fall. The brakes of the train screeched as it pulled into the station. White light from the headlight bleached the man. He raised his arms, as if surrendering to the death bearing down upon him. Nicholas grabbed an arm and pulled the man to safety.

  The man had been so near death that the screeching train caught one of his shoes by the heel and took the shoe as it rolled past and braked to a halt.

  The crowd saw that the man was rescued and unhurt. The doors of the train slid open and the crowd pushed in, while those passengers who had ridden from the West Side pushed out.

  Nicholas carried the limp weight that was the body of the man who had tried to kill him. Carried it to a place of relative quiet.

  Nicholas said, “Who are you?”

  The man’s eyes blinked like they were full of cinders, and he made the gurgling sounds of a baby. He wasn’t young, but he wore the face of a boy about to be punished.

  “Are you one of the twelve?” Nicholas asked.

  The man bobbed his head up and down, up and down.

  “I tried. Tried my best. But Hirsch did no better, did he?”

  Nicholas reached inside the man’s jacket and found a wallet. He looked at the identification.

  “Logan. Is that your name?”

  He bobbed and blinked, and brought his hands together over his chest.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

  Nicholas slapped him, and ground his heel into the foot that had lost a shoe.

  “Where is he, Mr. Logan?”

  “My home.”

  “Take me there.”

  “I can’t tell him I’ve failed. It’s all he’s ever asked of me.”

  “He already knows you’ve failed, Mr. Logan. Now you’re serving me.”

  Logan’s elegant brownstone home was located in a wealthy and exclusive part of the city, exactly the reverse of the last place Nicholas had confronted him.

  Logan was babbling hysterically by the time they entered his front door. He had cut his shoeless foot on both broken glass and lit cigarette ends. The injured foot left a trail of blood on the thick carpet which he led Nicholas across. They came to the kitchen. Logan pointed a wavering arm at another door.

  “Downstairs. The furnace room. He likes it there. He never comes upstairs.”

  “He stays in hiding?”

  “He doesn’t have to come out. He doesn’t have to speak to us anymore. He can make us know his wishes. Every day he becomes more powerful, stronger.”

  “Why the furnace room?”

  “Ever since you and he met, cold bothers him.”

  “Your work is over, Mr. Logan.”

  Logan blinked and bobbed, bobbed and blinked. He waited until Nicholas left the kitchen. He limped to a cabinet which was beneath the sink and found a can of Drano. He pried off the lid with a coffee spoon. He ate half of the can before dying.

  TWENTY-TWO

  He was sitting on a stool in front of the open door of the furnace. The flames licked him with shadows, flickering shadows that appeared to add color to his pale skin.

  “You’ve tested yourself since we last met, Peter.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is terrifying at first. That sharp, tingling burst of energy. But then I had longer to become used to the feeling.”

  “I won’t be using it after today.” Nicholas looked steadily and without fear into his deep, blue eyes. “Zero had to be stopped, but I didn’t enjoy doing it.”

  “Oh, I felt guilty at the beginning. I wished I could learn to love humans. I wanted to love my mother and her husband. It simply wouldn’t happen.”

  “So you had them killed.”

  “I came to realize humans are only here to serve us. It is actually cruel to allow them their petty, unrewarding existence after they have served their function. You’ll come to understand that, Peter.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “We’re not the same, you and I.”

  “Of course not. In all living beings, one set of genes is dominant. In my case all that is human became recessive. And you, my brother, are the reverse.”

  “I am not your brother.”

  “The human factor is dominant in you, Peter. That is why it took you so much longer to realize what you actually are. You’ve much to learn yet, but I shall show and train you.”

  “Why? Why would they put both of us on earth?”

  “You were the experiment that failed. So they tried again. I believe I proved satisfactory. If there are others, they will be like me.”

  “There won’t be others.”

  “You and I can go forward.”

  “Whoever they are, this sick experiment has to end.”

  “Oh, Peter, what makes you think we were the first? Consider the Michelangelos, the da Vincis, the Einsteins, all those men who were centuries ahead of their time. Who knows who fertilized their mothers’ wombs? Who was the inventor of the wheel? Who was the architect for the pyramids? Is it not possible that Moses and Jesus are our ancestors?”

  “Those men were put on this earth to do good.”

  He laughed. Moved from his stool and went closer to the furnace. He brought his hands out from the folds of his robe and held them near the flames. A copper sheen glowed over him.

  “Peter, my brother, let us not argue the old singsongs of Good and Evil. The men I mentioned did what their times required of them. Today, with this pitiful planet so overpopulated, it may be necessary to have a leader whose talents lie in mass annihilation.”

  Nicholas had become accustomed to the flow of electricity and didn’t notice it as it charged through him. He raised his hands, looked at them, flexed his fingers.

  “I must stop you. Must put an end to their experiment.”

  “Peter, you must join me, and let me teach you.”

  “I’ll go to prison for the murder of Bernard Phillips. There the inhuman part of me won’t be able to harm people, and my human part will be able to live its life.”

  Nicholas started slowly toward him.

  “I had hoped, Peter, to delay showing you what I now must. I only recently realized why you and I have been drawn together. I wanted you to grow more before showing you.”

  He threw off his robe.

  Nicholas halted.

  The flames cast a shimmering copper shadow over his nudity. His chest was smooth and hairless. His breasts were rounded and small like those of a pubescent girl, but had the elongated nipples of a grown woman. His lower torso was nearer the flames and there was an orange sheen over his flesh. His hips were somewhat wider than those of a normal man. His pubic hair was thin and transparent. Approximately an inch and a half of flesh separated a penis from a vagina.

  He stepped from the flickering shadows of the fire and slowly went to Nicholas.

  “Now do you understand, Peter. Do you see how beautifully it had been planned. It is meant for the dominant and recessive to join. Together we shall begin a new species.”

  He stood quite close to Nicholas, smiling, and he moved to place his ar
ms around Nicholas.

  Nicholas took hold of his throat.

  “Don’t, Peter. You can’t.”

  He continued to try to embrace Nicholas.

  Nicholas squeezed, increasing the pressure of his hands.

  Fear entered the soft blue of his eyes, but he didn’t attempt to break away.

  Nicholas gripped the throat tighter, pushing his thumbs into the windpipe. Something was fighting him. Hands he couldn’t see scratched at his eyes, tore his clothing. He squeezed with all his strength. His face was ripped open, blood poured from his nostrils, splashed over his hands, over him. He refused to give in. The blows continued to hammer him and he twisted his red hands about the throat, pushed his thumbs deep, forced himself not to give in to the blows.

  His eyes bulged in their deep sockets. His lips opened and a swollen tongue emerged from his mouth.

  Nicholas wouldn’t, couldn’t give up. He wasn’t immediately aware that the blows had stopped, and he continued to squeeze the body long after life had left it.

  Finally, Nicholas released his hands and the body dropped to the floor.

  He shoved pieces of torn shirt into his nostrils and stopped his nosebleed. He gave himself time to regain strength. He picked up the corpse from the floor, carried it to the furnace, threw it into the flames.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The eighteen-year-old girl led her horse from its stable, climbed into the saddle, and galloped across a large grassy meadow of her family’s Connecticut estate. It was a lovely spring day, and the meadow smelled of new grass and blooming wildflowers.

  A bright shaft of yellow light beamed down from the sky and surrounded the girl. Her horse reared, and she felt herself being lifted. She seemed to float. Then, vaguely, she became aware that her legs were being held apart. She became frightened. The light was so blindingly bright that she could barely see. She thought she saw a metal tube come at her. She screamed as the tube entered her.

  A moment later, she realized that she was walking barefoot on a gravel road. She had no idea where she was, and she was naked.