Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  “Thank you,” she sobbed, tears running races down her face. “Praise the Lord, thank you.”

  Sister Barbara was still holding her hands, but lower now in a tender grasp. “You know what you must do, don’t you? You know what you must do if your son is ever to return.”

  “I have seen it.”

  “Don’t let go of the sight, sister. Don’t let go of it as you have let go of hope in the past, because the sight represents hope; the sight is hope!”

  The woman slumped against her, and Sister Barbara eased her frame to the floor.

  “This woman’s spirit has been slain, her demons excised,” she told the crowd. “Some of our demons are stronger. The demons of disease, of failure, of guilt, of missed opportunities. But they are demons all the same, and with the acceptance of hope comes the strongest weapon of all to banish them forever.”

  With that, Sister Barbara descended the narrow set of stairs to the floor. Thousands of eyes strained to follow her as she started down the aisle, reaching her hands outward to close upon random foreheads as she passed. Without fail or exception, those she touched crumpled to the ground and lay there. Some pushed into the aisle, waving to get her attention.

  “Don’t let anyone tell you there is no hope,” she spoke on her way down the aisle, fallen bodies left in her wake. “Don’t believe the doomsayers who have given up on the world and believe it cannot be salvaged. Don’t believe them when they speak of a time coming soon that will see a new dawn of man with only those worthy to be saved in the populace. Don’t believe them, brothers and sisters, because we are all worthy to be saved, each and every one of us. And your faith in that simple belief is what will stop their Judgment Day from sweeping us aside into a netherworld where hope lies suspended. You can find it,” Sister Barbara said into the eyes of a man who folded up before her and dropped under her touch. “We can all find it, brothers and sisters. We—”

  She cut her words off when she caught sight of the pair of well-dressed men standing near the aisle. Their smiles were wooden. They made no effort to draw closer to her healing hands. And she knew who they were, she knew even before she saw that each was missing the lobe of his left ear.

  “They are among us even now, brothers and sisters,” Sister Barbara started again, afraid to take her eyes from the pair of men. “We cannot escape them, no, but we can defeat them. We can, indeed.”

  She hoped.

  Sister Barbara unlocked the door to her trailer and stepped into its welcome darkness. She was not surprised to see her small desk lamp on, even though she remembered turning it off. Nor was she surprised to see the two well-dressed figures she recalled from inside the tent sitting in the pair of matching chairs.

  “Good evening, Sister Barbara,” the one with dark hair greeted. “It is time to come home.”

  “Return to the kingdom,” the light-haired one followed instantly. “Return to the Seven.”

  Sister Barbara didn’t know where the gift that had made her what she was had come from, or when she realized she possessed it. She remembered playing guessing games as a child that she always won. Back then she learned to dissemble, to hold back her answers, so her friends would continue to play with her. She had never been able to foretell the future; in fact, she couldn’t even have told the woman in the tent tonight where her son actually was. She had only heard the familiar voice in her head describe her wretched plight.

  Thanks to that same voice, Sister Barbara could look at people and know what was in their thoughts, what was troubling them. Things came into her head when she opened up her mind, whether she liked it or not. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to help people; anyone, everyone.

  With that in mind, after college she had become a teacher. But her inclination to get personally involved in the lives and problems of her students cost her job after job in both private and public schools. She was always told she made people uncomfortable: parents, students, other teachers, everyone.

  Only out of that series of disappointments had she found her true calling. She began speaking to small groups in clubrooms and libraries, focusing on how people could help themselves. The self-help craze was just catching on, and she rode the wave of it into publication and talk radio. Her appearances grew from kaffeeklatsches to capacity crowds in large auditoriums. Her early reviewers likened her talks to old-fashioned revivalist sermons. There had been a lot of publicity, and she supposed that, more than anything, had eased her into the evangelical field, where her beliefs and teachings fit quite nicely. She became one of the most sought-after guest speakers in the entire country. Her following grew as vast as it was devoted.

  And then suddenly and inexplicably, it was gone. Her Sunday television show, her million-name-strong mailing list, and at least that many regular donors had all been forsaken, replaced by an eight-truck traveling revival troop that set up shop quickly for one- or two-night stands in any town that would have it. Spreading the word to ever fewer, hoping it would pay off in a way only she understood. The media had for a time demanded to know why. But she never told them, because she was convinced they’d never have believed her and could have no role in this anyway.

  The battle she was fighting was hers to wage, without the aid of the very implements that had necessitated it. No television, no share points and huge big-ticket donors. To preserve the future, Sister Barbara returned to the methods of the past, her endless tour undertaken toward preventing something she had nearly been a party to formulating:

  Judgment Day.

  It was a race between her and the other members of the Seven she had abandoned. As for the Seven, they would leave her alone. They had no choice. She had them, and they knew it. Taking out a little insurance policy before she had departed their kingdom had seen to that. Because of that insurance, the presence of the men in the tent and now in her trailer astonished her.

  “Return to the Seven,” the dark-haired one repeated.

  “There is still a place for you in the kingdom,” added the light-haired one.

  “We have come to escort you.”

  “One final chance.”

  “I made it plain I had no intention of returning,” Sister Barbara told them, “when I made my departure.”

  “The situation has changed,” the brown-haired one retorted, “and the Reverend desires the return of your company.”

  “Sacrificing yourself would be a waste,” added the blond.

  Sister Barbara wasn’t frightened. “Perhaps the Reverend is forgetting that I hold something very near and dear to him.”

  “A man entered your employ some months back,” said brown hair.

  “A computer wizard named Ratansky,” picked up blond. “He was planted by Turgewell. When he left, he took your insurance with him.”

  “Turgewell is dead.”

  “We thought so, too,” said the blond. “We were both wrong.”

  “And now all of us must pay the price for our mistaken judgment,” elaborated the brown-haired one. “But for you that price is a blessing. You may return to the kingdom, Sister.”

  “And the Seven,” from blond hair. “The Reverend will still have you. He still wants you to stand by his side.”

  Sister Barbara tried not to show the fear she now felt. Yet the revelation sent a numbness surging up her spine. Her mouth and throat felt as if she were trying to swallow cotton. She remembered the strange circumstances surrounding Benjamin Ratansky’s abrupt, unannounced departure. Now she understood what accounted for them.

  He had been planted by Turgewell, the other member of the Seven who had fled the kingdom even before her, whose overtures to join him in waging war against them, she had continually ignored right up until his supposed death a year before. Obviously he had faked that death to better enable him to strike back at the Seven, the list of names that had kept them from striking at her no doubt paramount in his plans. In Turgewell’s hands that list would end up being put to violent use indeed, rendering it useless to her as a guarantee of her own
safety against the mere threat of exposure.

  “The time grows near,” the blond one was saying.

  “To what?” Sister Barbara asked him.

  He looked at her calmly. “To accomplish our purpose.”

  “Judgment Day is upon us,” the other one followed.

  Sister Barbara went cold, a numbness slipping over her. Could it be? Could the Reverend actually have found a means to fulfill the mad dream that had led her to break with the Seven?

  “We are waiting for your decision,” the blond one said, interrupting her line of thought.

  “Leave me,” Sister Barbara ordered them both.

  “As you wish.” The brown-haired one nodded.

  The two men climbed to their feet, hands rigid at their sides. When they reached the door to the trailer, the blond one turned back.

  “Hell awaits you, Sister Barbara.”

  “No, I already left it once,” she told the two of them from her desk. “And I don’t plan on going back.”

  CHAPTER 12

  It was a four-hour drive to the Sheridan Correctional Center, where Benjamin Ratansky spent his only three years of incarceration. McCracken would be arriving late into the night, but the gravity of the situation led prison officials to skirt the rules. In this case that meant setting up a meeting for Blaine with Arthur Deek, the inmate in charge of the Fifth Generation chapter Ratansky had been linked to.

  The missing-earlobe trademark had drawn an obvious connection between the religious group founded in prison by Preston Turgewell and the two dead gunmen who had disappeared from the New York City medical examiner’s office. Benjamin Ratansky’s place in all this remained a mystery, though Blaine hoped his visit to the penitentiary would shed some light on it.

  “Nothing unusual about them,” noted the guard captain named Neal in reference to the Fifth Generation as he escorted Blaine to a private consultation room in the visitors’ area. “Place like this, you gotta be part of something to survive.”

  “Do all the groups cut off pieces of themselves?” McCracken asked him.

  “No, some wear tattoos, rings, bandannas, colors—anything to advertise that there are others who will fuck with you if you fuck with them.”

  “Does it work for the Fifth Generation?”

  “They keep to themselves.”

  “How do you join?”

  “You don’t; you set selected. Criteria vary. Usually it’s the most violent types, the most unsalvageable. Fifth Generation picks who they want. Only thing, candidates got to really want to be saved.”

  “From who?”

  “Themselves mostly.”

  “And their leader here, the one I’m about to meet?”

  “Par for the course,” Captain Neal told him. “Maybe a little worse.”

  Arthur Deek had been imprisoned for life after the kidnapping and subsequent sodomizing of three junior high school students. Deek tempted them into his car at a bus stop with a simple promise of a ride home from school on the rainiest day in months. It was another month before the police tracked him and his prey to an isolated mountain cabin. One of the boys hadn’t spoken a word since. Another would likely be institutionalized for years to come. A third had not yet started sleeping again.

  Meanwhile, Arthur Deek found God as the penitentiary’s latest leader of the Fifth Generation. He was six-foot-one, same height as Blaine, and just as powerfully built, although it was impossible to tell from his seated, slumped frame. His head was shaven and his face carried a smirk worn whenever out of the presence of his devoted followers. He had been awakened from a sound sleep and resented it. He didn’t so much as turn Blaine’s way when Captain Neal escorted McCracken into the private visitor’s room. The room was a simple, windowless square dominated by gray, peeling walls. A table and four chairs made up the only furniture. Blaine could see the unused fittings where a water fountain had once rested.

  “You can leave us alone,” McCracken said when Neal started to back himself against the wall.

  Neal gestured Deek’s way. “He ain’t wearing cuffs, mister.”

  “Neither am I, Captain.”

  Neal looked Blaine over once and then reluctantly took his leave. Only then did Arthur Deek turn his way. McCracken had never seen a stare any colder.

  “Bad idea,” Deek said, glowering.

  “Thinking about saving my soul, Deek?”

  “Killing you, actually.”

  Blaine frowned at him. “Both difficult tasks. I doubt you’re up to either. You’re welcome to try the latter anytime you want. Careful, though: I’m likely to put up more of a fight than those thirteen-year-old boys.”

  Deek’s milk white face reddened slightly. “Another man’s crimes, not mine.”

  “Too bad you were the one they put away.”

  “They put away my body, not my spirit. My soul lives. My soul runs free. Into the universe. Into infinity. My consciousness roams. My body means nothing.”

  “Tell that to all the people who are scared shitless of you.”

  Deek gripped the edge of the table with his hands. “Heathen swine who will not be saved come Judgment Day.”

  McCracken bristled at mention of the phrase. “What do you know about Judgment Day, Deek?”

  “Nothing, other than it’s coming. Soon.”

  “Based on reliable information, I presume.”

  “Most reliable,” Deek responded, and turned his eyes upward.

  “Sorry, Arthur, wrong direction.”

  “Only those who possess the key will be saved …”

  “Like the one that got thrown away when the feds stowed you here?”

  “ … the key to the better life that lies ahead.”

  “Which you, of course, have.”

  “All who seek the one real truth may possess it if they are worthy.”

  “And just what is that real truth?”

  “The pursuit of rebirth and salvation above all else. A new beginning etched over a merciful end that will overcome the world as it lays dying. Then we will rise from this hell to claim it.”

  “Need a different key to manage that, Arthur.”

  “No,” Deek answered, with chilling menace lacing his voice. “Only one.”

  “And where does Benjamin Ratansky fit into all this?”

  “The former names of those who seek the truth hold no meaning for me.”

  “Let me jog your memory. This was an average, nondescript guy. Early fifties, heartbroken family waiting for him at home, probably.” When that failed to bring a response, Blaine continued, “Anyone waiting for you, Deek?”

  The flush of anger returned to the Fifth Generation leader’s face, and Blaine sat down in the chair across from Deek before seizing the advantage.

  “Computers were his specialty. You have a need for computers?”

  “I have need only for God.”

  “The need I suggested better explains why you decided to make sure he was protected. A man came to see him a couple times in the month before you made contact. That same man came to see you.”

  Deek wet his lips with his tongue. “Interesting conclusion.”

  “Obvious is a better way to describe it: The handwriting on the sign-in diaries matched.”

  Blaine watched Deek’s heavy hands creep over the top of the table.

  “Here’s how I figure it,” he continued. “Someone in your movement on the outside decided they could make use of Ratansky’s skills. Contact got made and all of a sudden you put out the word that this man is off limits. Not only that, the man needs a few able bodies to help him walk out of here. Logistical stuff, access to the right room containing the right computer maybe. Then, not too long after, he checks himself out of Sheridan and into a nonexistent cell in Taylorville. How’m I doing?”

  Deek looked away from him.

  “Only you got fooled, Deek. You thought it was your own people on the outside who wanted Ratansky walking free. Turned out it was somebody else, one of your many sworn enemies,” Blaine said
, filling in the gaps as he figured them in an attempt to draw a rise from Deek. “You find out and dispatch a couple goons who graduated from your school of madness to send Ratansky to his Maker, only they don’t catch up with him until he’s figured out what whoever’s backing you is really up to.”

  Deek still wasn’t looking.

  “Thing is, though, Ratansky came away with evidence. I’ve got it now, Arthur.”

  Deek turned his head and met Blaine’s stare.

  “Maybe has something to do with Judgment Day. Maybe will tell me what I need to stop it.”

  Deek’s smirk stretched into a smile. “You can’t stop it. No one can stop it.”

  “You help me, maybe I can do you a favor God can’t: reduce your sentence.”

  The smirk returned. “My sentence here matters not at all, not in the face of what is coming.”

  “Then why not tell me where Ratansky got those names I’ve got now? Tell me what they mean, what connects them. The computer fraud he pulled off that landed him here was called the most brilliant crime of the decade, and then he follows that up by having himself transferred to a nonexistent cell in another prison. Even a heathen like me can tell he’s special. Man like that can make a lot of things happen.” He hesitated. “And the man who got duped could be in some deep shit.”

  Deek rose with his fists clenched by his sides. “Might even prevent you from being saved come Judgment Day,” Blaine taunted.

  Deek was sweating now, big rivulets crawling down his face on a collision course with each other. Blaine joined him on his feet. For a few long moments neither spoke or moved.

  “Tell me who’s behind whatever Ratansky uncovered,” Blaine said finally. “Help me and I help you—believe me, it won’t be easy.”

  Deek was starting to show his teeth now, like a dog on the verge of a pounce.