Richard quietly continued putting out chairs. Finally he replied, “I think religion gives me a headache.”
Jacob guffawed. “Perhaps it was simply my pomposity.”
“No, of course not, I –”
“You were providing me with an honest reaction, which I appreciated. This is a conversation I would like to continue later. For now, could you meet me upstairs in ten minutes? They will be having dinner soon – they have brought their own cooks, of course. There are a few things I would like to get done before they return to their rooms.”
“WE WILL NEED to move this furniture somewhere,” Jacob said as they rounded the corner. “It might cause a serious problem if someone sets off a, well – sorry – if there were a fire.”
“No problem.” Richard surveyed the hallway, not quite understanding what he was seeing. Furniture had been dragged out of the rooms and stacked against the walls: ornately-columned four-poster beds with fanciful brocade canopies, the dark silhouettes of high-backed Queen Anne chairs like birds hunkering down for a long rest, assorted Victorian settees and stools appearing too delicate for actual use, a variety of highboys and lowboys with dark, atmospheric stains, arranged with their backs to a constricted meander of exposed Persian carpet which was all that was left to allow passage through the corridor. “Are they cleaning, fumigating?”
“Exorcising is perhaps the better word. Although I suspect cleansing and pest destruction are some small part of the process. Their religion is suspicious of other people’s possessions. They never purchase items at yard sales, or thrift stores, for example, for fear a devil worshipper might once have owned them.”
Richard helped Jacob move a number of pieces into a vacant room. Although he found himself annoyed by the group’s general wariness, he thought that, at least in terms of their beliefs, refusing to use the furniture probably made sense. “So what would these people do,” he asked, “if they ran into one of our more… different residents?”
“Try to kill it, him or her, I suppose. The same thing you or I might do, perhaps, if we woke up with a snake in the bed. Of course we can’t let that happen. Happily, those who come here to stay are usually quite skilled at avoidance.”
“Life is a difficult proposition. We have no business making it more difficult for each other. At least, that’s what I believe.”
“Certainly. What other point is there, don’t you agree? Most tend to view their time spent here in the hotel as a kind of vacation, a retreat, you might say, from the daily assault of contemporary life. The Deadfall is a dark place, of course, one of a hundred or so locations about the globe where darkness, in fact, concentrates, where it is distilled into, say, a few shambling forms. But the darkness here is of an ancient variety, familiar somehow, a part of the very blood feeding our tissue. It is the darkness human beings have always faced, and survived. This contemporary variety, so skillfully exploited by the modern media, is no different in kind, certainly, but its implications seem rather more anxiety-producing, I would think. For it would seem that the horrors of the modern world threaten the whole human enterprise. It’s a point of commonality for most of us, I like to think.”
Many of the pieces were incredibly heavy, and by the time they’d finished moving all the furniture out of the hall, both men were exhausted. They slumped together onto a long Victorian settee, eyes half-closed and sleepy. “So these are probably nice people,” Richard offered. “For the most part.”
“Certainly. For the most part. But there are always a few –”
“Bad apples. I know. But most of them are just ordinary people, aren’t they? Like most of us, they’re just looking for something.”
“Appealing, isn’t it? One decision and all the rest is taken care of for you. You become their possession, but it is a comfortable life. All for the simple price of belief.”
“You’ve never really told me what you believe, Jacob. You don’t believe much; of what they believe, I mean. Am I correct?”
“Belief is a wonderful thing and a terrible thing. And a frightening thing – because you cannot see into another person’s head and know with any assurance what he or she truly believes.
“To be perfectly honest, I have been a crusty old nonbeliever who still had, hypocritically, certainly, some hopes of Heaven. A place of peace and solace, somewhere I might lay my burden down, as the old hymns suggest. But what I have seen among the world’s great religions has spoiled that illusion for me. They have convinced me that I will not be seeing any of my favorite people there, but simply more of those” – he gestured – “lifeless, judgmental types. Now I will just have to say, ‘No, thank you,’ if the invitation ever comes.”
“Love the individual. Fear the group,” Richard said lazily, raising his fist in a tired, mocking imitation of a defiant gesture.
Jacob chuckled. “Indeed. Fear the group.” And raised his own fist to match.
THE FIRST SESSION of the sermons was scheduled for mid-morning of the following day. Richard had had no intentions of attending, but Serena had wanted to go and sit with Annabelle, and he still didn’t feel comfortable with her spending large amounts of time with the Gathering where he couldn’t see her. Jacob suggested he might want to be available in any case, for ‘emergencies.’
The hotel wasn’t providing anything for these sermons, except a location, the shore of the Deadfall Lake, in a natural amphitheater down the hill below the cliffs behind the hotel. The Gathering had their own portable sound system they could carry down, powered by two car batteries. Having spent very little time by the lake, Richard was curious about what it would be like to sit there, to take it all in, even though he expected it to be an uncomfortable experience with all the sermonizing.
The morning was unseasonably warm, burning off the typical resident fog in the hour after dawn. Around ten o’clock the entire membership of the Gathering left the hotel and walked around back, beginning a slow descent that wound through low scrub trees and ugly outcroppings of a mottled, white and gray stone. Richard trailed the group, Serena and Annabelle walking a few yards ahead of him, holding hands.
The congregation was focused, murmuring some sort of song, so softly he couldn’t make out the words. Their eyes were locked on the trail, the yellowed seam it made in the hillside as it led them down, and on the distant lake below, huge and gray, depthless, looking more like a rainy sky than a body of water, as if the universe had flipped, and they were in ascension.
He was distracted. He kept looking back over his shoulder at the shabby backside of the hotel – the weathered boards, the beaten paint – embarrassed, relieved they didn’t appear to notice, and wondering what they would think of the place when they came back up the hill. Once he was comfortably in charge, he would have to make an upgrade a priority.
On either side of the trail, a border of thick brush some six or seven feet high stitched the hill. Now and then, inside or behind it, he heard and caught glimpses of fellow travelers: eyes too large, legs too many, fingers too crooked. Residents, he was sure, curious about the proceedings. He wondered if any of the congregation had noticed, if there would be a panic, if they would hold him personally responsible.
The trail spilled out at the bottom, onto a wide expanse of rocky beach, stones growing in number as they walked toward the amphitheater, where random rock became a deliberate placement of tiers and seats and rows, with a capacity in the hundreds. On the lakeside, a stage of a sort consisting of interlocking slabs rose several feet above the bottom tier. Jacob had told him plays had been mounted here in the old days; Shakespeare mostly, The Tempest an apparent favorite. Richard wondered about the labor involved, and who the actors might have been, who the attentive audience.
The lake stretched behind the stage in all directions, filling the eyes and filling the mind. He found himself looking away, agitated by the sense that the gray water might suddenly rise and consume them.
A group of dark-suited aides had already put up a white canopy over a speaker’s stan
d, with a row of chairs on either side. Mrs. Johnson was led to the front row, seated on the left side with two identically-suited young men. Her handler from the day before wasn’t among them. Annabelle led Serena also to the front row, but chose to sit on the far right, away from her mother. The remainder of the Gathering quickly sat themselves, rushing about with deliberation, filling the spaces just so, as if in a drill. Although Richard could discern no real difference in clothing among the group – no sense of ‘uniform’ – a kind of sorting was taking place, he was sure of it. People somehow resembled the ones they chose to sit next to, whether by philosophy or emotional state or attitude he could not tell.
The program consisted of a series of sermons, each delivered by a different speaker. After a couple of rabble-rousing performances by younger talents that had the crowd on their feet, it settled into a series of boring treatises on fine points of dogma, delivered by elderly academic types. The crowd was quietly attentive, postures frozen, eyes glazed.
When the Reverend Tim Johnson came to the podium, however, everything changed.
“We are the Gathering,” he began. The crowd sat up, leaned forward. Here and there, people put their hands up to their faces. Some of them were already weeping. “We are the Gathering, but we are nothing without the Vessel. The Vessel is where we have gathered ourselves, as a drink for the Lord. We will not contaminate that drink with the voices and the ideas from those on the outside. Our vessel is also a ship, which will take us on a marvelous voyage into God’s kingdom. Like the pilgrims of old, we simply seek peace and comfort in the embrace of our Lord. Some place away from the plagues of AIDS and venereal disease, the dangerous desires of others, the sexual madness of society.”
Scattered “Amens” floated up from the crowd, not like cheers or exclamations, but more languorous, soft and soulful.
The crowd was intent. They sat motionless, locked in place. Richard imagined if he touched one on the shoulder they’d fall over. The notable exception was the small cadre of young men in dark business suits, walking up and down the aisles, smiling, nodding, watching, as the reverend gently laid it all out: the Gathering, the Vessel.
“Our lives are incomplete, disorganized. But now we may pour ourselves into a vessel that will give us form. Then God will take care of us. We will be His angels. And who would not desire such a thing? Who would not care to be an angel?”
And the crowd smiled. And the crowd laughed. But no grins, and no belly laughs. Gentle smiles, soft chuckles, a chorus of good-humored sighs. And the young men in the aisles provided the cues and guided the rest.
“We dedicate ourselves to His service, and in return He gives us the answers we seek. It is our solace for having endured our lives. Not that we should deny the pain and fear of the world. Instead we should take showers in our pain, we should submerge ourselves in fear, so that fear and that pain becomes a catalyst for our transcendence.”
Now there were shouts from the crowd which sounded much like anger, but were something different: excitement, perhaps, or a spontaneous expression of the fear the reverend had been talking about.
“When the soul of the Lord animates you, all your worries are taken care of. When the soul of the Lord animates you, all confusion and ambivalence will be resolved.”
Scattered through the crowd, many people were weeping. The ones sitting next to them seemed to take no notice, but the young men brought them tissues, brought them pats and whispers.
“Sometimes Heaven is so close, it feels like if you took your hand and rubbed at the air Heaven would appear.”
One of the young men raised his hand and said, “Yes!” A cascade of answering yeses rose from all parts of the amphitheater.
“This is a world of trouble and hurt. Once you enter the Vessel your trouble is eased, your hurt is salved, but even among the Gathering, trouble and hurt do not disappear, because we are living human beings, and trouble and hurt just go naturally with being human.”
“Amen, brother,” from another of the cadre of suits. Amens rose and fell, punctuated by brother, punctuated by yes.
“But if you follow the ways of the Gathering, and you allow the Lord to enter you, when you die you become as an angel, and the world of the angels is a finer world than this one, a world transformed and made perfect. You know you belong to that other world, otherwise you would not have been so confused all your life.”
And all the time the Reverend Tim spoke, the young men in their crisp dark suits strolled through the crowd, jostling those who had fallen asleep, shaking hands and slapping backs, saying “How are you?” Stroking, patting, massaging the congregation, with smiles spreading broadly across their faces.
“And to follow the ways of the Gathering, I do not mean simply to say the words, but you must mean the words. You must commit to the Gathering your undivided attention, all your goods and all your time, and not distract yourself with the words and doings of the unbeliever, whether they be outside the family or inside the family. For those who enter the Vessel are your family now, and all others will damage that family if you are not vigilant, and will spoil your chances to enter into that eternal and perfect kingdom of God.”
Isolated in their own section was a handful of people ear-marked as ‘visitors.’ Richard had become aware of them the day before – they’d been brought in, recruited by members of the congregation, treated with the kind of kindness one might show a poor relation, or someone who was seriously ill. Today, these were the ones Richard found most interesting to watch – many of them appeared obviously saddened to be so left out, faces yearning like children with no presents at Christmastime. For much of the sermon, the young men had ignored them, had spared them not even a glance, but now, toward the end of the Reverend’s sermon, the cadre had started talking to them. “I am so sorry for you,” he heard one young man say, and, “I wish you did not suffer so much.”
“Believe me when I say there is a hidden meaning in human history and if we stay in the Vessel together, we will voyage to its interpretation. We will become angels, and fly away out of this world of torment and strife.”
At the end of this sermon, the last of the morning, the young men served as ushers, guiding the congregation up the hill. Now the visitors were surrounded by people talking to them, embracing them, holding their hands.
Richard could hear a scurrying in the brush, but he was too busy looking for Serena to worry that one of the Deadfall’s residents might inadvertently be seen. Finally he found her, being talked to by one of the young men, Annabelle nowhere in sight. Richard pulled her away, apologetic but deliberate. She did not protest, but clutched his hand.
Near the front of the line, a young woman screamed. People ran to her side. “She saw the Devil!” someone cried. Someone else demanded a search through the brush for demons.
The well-suited young men, with the assistance of some of the speakers from the day’s sermons, maneuvered the crowd around with impressive efficiency. The woman who had screamed was comforted, then isolated, taken up the hillside separately.
When they reached the top of the hill, Richard veered off to a back entrance by the kitchens, Serena in tow.
“Mommy, no!”
The commotion came from the vicinity of a small cluster of Mulberry bushes near the back entrance. “Wait here,” he cautioned Serena, leaving her by the steps while he trotted into the shaded area.
One of the dark-suited young men lay on the ground. Mrs. Johnson crouched over him, her hands around his throat. Annabelle stood by the wall of the hotel, her face a pale mask.
Richard ran over and put his hands on the woman’s shoulders, pulled. She rolled her head back, her eyes unfocused, jaws slack. Her shoulders were like stone. His gaze followed her arms down to the young man’s terrified face, where her fingers were sunk deep into his throat. Richard felt panicky – obviously he wasn’t going to be able to stop her.
A mass of dark forms rushed around him. Hands pushed him aside. “Sir! Sir, we’ll handle this!” The
young men swarmed over Mrs. Johnson, slipping a kind of leather harness over her head, wedged her mouth open, tossing something down her throat. Foam dribbled out over her chin. Richard pulled the sobbing Annabelle out of there.
RICHARD FOUND JACOB in the little room behind the registration counter, sitting at an old school desk, paying bills. “I need a better answer about why the Gathering is here.”
Jacob looked up, a hint of amusement on his face. “Very well. I do not believe I know anything more than I’ve already told you, however. What sort of questions do you have?”
“Well, in the first place, how much does the congregation know about our clientele? I assume the Reverend Tim, or his father, know something about what happens here, am I correct? I mean, we certainly don’t advertise, and no one stumbles on the hotel accidentally.”
“As I believe I said before, the Gathering first started coming here in the early ’sixties, during my predecessor’s time. During my tenure, arrangements usually were made through the Reverend Senior Emeritus. What arrangements there were; normally he just called to say when they were coming. One must presume he knew of our particular… mission. There has always been a kind of unspoken understanding among all parties that, at least while their group is here, ‘discretion’ is the word of the day.”
“So the members of the congregation, they probably haven’t a clue?”
“We do not provide a ‘Guide to Flora and Fauna of the Deadfall,’ so I would say no, not at all.”
“Then the Reverends Senior or whatever must not mind if their followers become frightened of devils, or whatever?”
“Oh! Yes, I heard about that. It must have been Clarence, don’t you think? In 302? I always thought he looked a bit like Satan. And he does get lonely – I imagine he just wanted to be near people.
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