by J. R. Mabry
“They’re not that clueless; they’ve probably had some training, just no experience. But you’re right, same principle,” Terry agreed.
“So, what do we do?” Brian asked.
All eyes turned to Dylan. He began to sweat. “Holy Christ on a stick, don’t look at me!” Dylan shouted at them. “Ah have no clue what to do here! Ah’m not Dicky, and Ah’m never gonna be Dicky!”
“Honey, this is no time for a tantrum,” Susan scolded.
Doobie, Dylan thought, and the compulsion cut through every other concern. I needs me a doobie fucking NOW. He fumbled at his cassock and pulled out a battered fattie. Shielding his lighter from the wind, he lit it. The ritual action of it steadied him, and by the time he had it well lit, a season of calm rested on him. “What can we do?” he asked, mostly in Terry’s direction.
“Until we get a bishop, there’s nothing we can do,” Terry said. “And someone knows it because I’ve never seen that many possessed people in one place in my life. And there’s more of them every minute—look!” He pointed down the street, where two more people—a woman in a muumuu and floppy hat, and a man in an electrician’s uniform—were walking toward them, their faces twisting with rage, their steps uncertain and plodding.
Dylan took another long drag, feeling every moment calmer and more in control. But he still didn’t have a clue what to do.
“Even if Susan’s Lutheran method of exorcism is successful,” Terry went on, “it’s too slow to handle all of these. We have got to find a bishop, and I mean yesterday. Because unless I miss my guess, this”—he gestured at the loitering assembly of the damned—“is just the tip of the iceberg.”
34
MADIHAH RAN TOWARD THE SANDBOX, squealing.
“That’s far enough, Habibi,” her mother called. Fadilah Zaman pulled her hijab away from her face. It was early summer, but the heat was already beginning to get to her.
Sitting on the park bench where she could watch her daughter playing, she chewed at a fingernail. Looking to the west, she saw her neighbor Eshal coming up the street, pushing a stroller. Fadilah waved and smiled despite the nerves that caused her stomach to tighten into a dense, hard ball of fear. “Assalamu ’alaykum,” she said, when Eshal was close enough to hear—“Peace be upon you.”
“Wa alaykum us salaam,” Eshal responded with a weary smile—“And peace be upon you, too.”
Eshal was her mirror opposite. Where Fadilah was bone thin, Eshal was a large and fleshy woman. Fadilah was reserved, while Eshal gushed about everything. Fadilah’s family went to the progressive Sufi mosque, while Eshal’s family were of the conservative Wahhabi sect.
“My feet are like barking dogs,” Eshal said, dumping herself with a huff onto the park bench next to Fadilah.
Fadilah knew that Eshal’s husband would not approve of their friendship, but it wasn’t like she was asking them over for supper. She thought of Eshal as her playground friend, and she figured that Eshal thought of her in the same way. She was fond of Eshal, certainly, but never thought of deepening the friendship. Things simply were the way they were, and Fadilah was content.
But there were plenty of things about which she was not content. The conflict in the newspapers regarding their community scared her. She eyed Madihah nervously and forced herself to smile when her daughter looked over at her and waved.
“Did you see the papers?” Eshal asked.
“How could I not?” answered Fadilah. They spoke, imperfectly, in English, since their families were from different countries. They shared some Arabic phrases, but Arabic was not Fadilah’s first language, and she barely understood it when it was read aloud at the mosque.
“Samir calls it a crusade,” Eshal said, shaking her head.
That sounds exactly like something Samir would say, Fadilah thought, even though she had never met Eshal’s husband. She knew the type.
“I think it’s just political grandstanding,” Fadilah said.
“What does your husband say?” Eshal asked.
Fadilah wanted to snap at her and say something like, Who cares what my husband says? but she held her tongue. She cared what her husband thought, and she agreed with him. She was just jumpy today. No need to take it out on poor Eshal. “He thinks the same.”
“My husband thinks we should go away,” Eshal said.
“Back to Saudi?”
“No, silly, just to Canada for a couple of weeks. He has some vacation coming, and we have cousins in Toronto.”
“That sounds nice,” Fadilah said, feeling herself relax a bit at the fantasy of going to Canada. She liked Canada. It was clean and bright. It was certainly less…bleak. Michigan was rich, compared with Iran, but—having acclimatized herself to America—she had begun to see how it was also…dumpy, struggling—ugly, in some ways.
Eshal fussed in the stroller. Leaning over, Fadilah saw her baby looking around, his dark eyes filled with wonder. For a moment, she forgot about everything and was filled with wonder herself.
In the distance, she heard a whine she couldn’t place. Looking up, she saw a streak of light in the sky. “Ya Allah ehfadnaa,” she breathed—“God save us.” Jumping up, Fadilah rushed to where Madihah was playing and snatched her up in her arms. She dropped to the ground and covered her daughter with her own body. The flash of light came first, so powerful that she never felt the earth heave beneath her.
35
TERRY OPENED the door to the bathroom and smiled at Susan, at work at her desk. “Is the phone still off the hook?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’m writing down the voice mails.” Susan looked at a clipboard behind her. “Seventy-two calls in the past two days,” she said, looking back at him grimly. “That’s a record, several times over.”
Terry whistled. “And I’m guessing every Roman Catholic and Episcopal diocese in the state is represented.”
“At least twice,” she said, “plus seven Independent Catholic jurisdictions and the Lutheran Missouri Synod.”
“You’re shitting me,” he said. “You should tell them about working Luther’s method.”
“They won’t talk to me,” she said, “I’m ELCA. I’m with the Devil.”
“Bastards,” Terry smirked. “Let’s pray Richard has some luck. In the meantime…”
“You have students waiting,” Susan smiled at him. “Relax, Honey, we’ll get through this. We always do.”
KAT SAW Terry step into the chapel, and she grinned broadly, excited about their next lesson. She felt bad about Charlie’s mishap last time—but not that bad. After all, he had done it to himself by not following directions.
She saw Charlie scowl at Terry, but he said nothing. Terry grabbed a zafu and sat in front of them, making himself comfortable.
“Okay, peeples, this morning I’m going to introduce you to the Abyss.”
“That sounds scary,” Kat said.
“That’s baby stuff,” Charlie said.
Terry pointed at him and squinted dangerously. “That’s enough of that. Unless you want to fry your nervous system again, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you, exactly when I tell you, exactly how I tell you. Am I clear?”
“Yeah…” Charlie said sullenly.
“Yes what?” Terry asked.
“Yes…ma’am?” Charlie raised an eyebrow.
“Close enough,” Terry conceded. “Okay, we’re going to go into vision again, but instead of climbing the Tree of Life, we’re going to enter the Void. This is going to take us to a desert, which we’ll have to cross on foot.”
“Why don’t we just imagine us up a couple of ATVs?” Charlie asked.
“Are you through?” Terry said impatiently.
“I’m just asking,” Charlie said. “As long as we’re doing imaginal work, why not save us the trouble walking?”
“Because, strange as it might seem to you, there is value in the walking,” Terry said. “Plus, you’re going to encounter beings. You’re going to talk to the beings while we walk.”
“Beings,” Charlie said skeptically. “What sort of beings? Demons?”
“No, not in the desert. Not usually, that is,” Terry said. “But you never know. The desert is kind of like a hotel lobby. It’s a waiting place and a going-through place. Are you ready?”
Kat felt a little tug of fear, but she mastered it. “Ready,” she said.
“Then close your eyes,” Terry said, “and picture before you a black window into nothingness. Can you see it?”
Kat sensed that no one was looking at her, but she nodded anyway. What she saw was like an enormous cat’s eye staring at her, unblinking and oddly voracious.
“Okay, I didn’t tell you exactly what it looks like, so if you’re really seeing it, you’ll notice some things about it,” Terry said. “Like how it’s narrow at the top and bottom but wider in the middle. It’s shimmering all around the edges. You’ll also see little ripples in it as if you’re looking at the surface of a pond.”
Kat leaned in and examined it in her mind’s eye. She definitely saw the shimmering. She also saw the ripples, although they were faint.
“Okay, being careful not to touch the edges of it, step into it, one foot at a time,” Terry said. “I’m going to go first. Watch how I do it in your mind’s eye. I’ll see you on the other side. It will seem less imaginal once you go through.”
She watched as Terry lifted one foot and placed it inside the black slit of the cat’s eye. He balanced carefully, and once his foot was firmly planted on the other side, he carefully drew up the other leg. Then he disappeared.
She looked at Charlie. “Do you want to go next?” she asked.
She saw him scowl, and it seemed to her that he seemed frightened. She stepped over to him and reached for his hand. “It’s okay, Charlie. We’re doing this together.”
He snatched his hand away. “I’m not afraid! Bitch…” She recoiled as if he had struck her.
She breathed deeply to regain her center. When she spoke, her voice was measured and calm. “Charlie, I’m on your side here. I don’t know if you’ve really noticed yet, but if you’re here, you’re loved.”
He cocked his head as if he did not understand the word. She sighed. “Well, I hope you’ll find that out sometime.” She motioned toward the Void. “After you.”
He grunted and stepped toward the black wedge shimmering before them. Just as Terry had done, he placed one foot over, then drew up the other. Then he winked out of sight.
“Hoo, boy,” Kat said, drawing in a huge breath and then letting it out. In two short steps, she covered the distance to the Void and lifted her left leg inside. It was like stepping into a warm bath. She felt a breeze on her ankle, but it was not a cool one. She found a firm footing and, feeling like the Karate Kid, she placed all her weight on one leg and lifted up her right leg, pivoting it up, drawing it in, and turning slightly. “Form of the Drunken Crane,” she said to herself.
She turned and gasped. A hot wind brushed at her face, and the vision before her looked like the surface of Mars—a vast desert, vaguely red in color, with distant mountains looming over a dry, parched plain. Terry took off his sweater and motioned for them to do the same. “You’re not going to need these here,” he said. He took their sweaters from them and threw them into the Void, which looked the same from this side as it did from the other.
“Let’s go,” Terry said. “This way.” His short legs began to work quickly, and she had to run briefly to catch up with him.
Terry was right, she noted. The sense that she was watching something on the screen of her mind’s eye was gone, replaced by a dreamlike physicality. She had the sense that she was really here. She punched at her leg. It hurt.
Terry didn’t even look back at her when he said, “If you keep that up, you will have a bruise when we get back.”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“I’ve tried it,” he said. “It’s uncanny, I know.” Terry seemed to notice that Charlie was lagging. “Hup! Catch up, and stay up, Charlie!”
Charlie jogged to match him, but Kat could see that he was struggling to match Terry’s pace.
Frankly, she thought, so am I.
She looked around. Every few hundred feet, she saw what looked like a large tumbleweed, or a cocoon or something. She pointed at one of them. “Terry, what are those things?”
“Some of them are angels. Some of them are demons. Some of them are…something in between. Whatever you do, don’t touch them.”
“Why not?” Charlie asked.
“Because they’re safe right where they are. And we’re safe if they’re right where they are. They’ll be released eventually. When their time is right.”
“Who will release them?” Kat asked. Just then, she had the vague, creepy feeling that someone was standing just over her shoulder. Terry stopped and pointed behind her. “They will.”
Kat froze and turned around. She found herself staring into a wall of hair. Or fur. The wall came to an end about a yard on either side of her gaze. So she looked up. Hovering over her was a creature about twelve feet tall covered tip to tail in white fur. Its legs were large and powerful, and longer than she was tall. Its body arched like a banana, ending in a face with large eyes, sad and wise. It possessed no mouth, however—nor, it seemed, arms. Looking around, she discovered there were about four of them, all looking very much alike to her.
“Kat, Charlie, I’d like to introduce you to the Sandalphon,” Terry said.
The creatures bowed slightly in greeting.
“Holy shit, how did you sneak up on me?” Charlie asked, his voice quaking.
The creatures did not answer.
“They don’t really talk,” Terry said. “They might place a thought or an image in your mind if it’s really important. Otherwise, they’re just here to see us safely to the Abyss.”
“Um…hello, Mr. Sandalphon,” Kat said. She stuck out her hand to shake, then, remembering that the being in front of her didn’t actually have hands, she placed hers in her back pocket, feeling stupid.
“Okay, let’s go,” Terry said, trudging off in the same direction they’d been travelling, straight between two mountain ranges. The Sandalphon lumbered after him.
“Uh, Terry,” Kat said, following. “What are they?”
“They started out as the archangels assigned to Malkuth, and some of them still work that gig,” Terry said. “But they’re all from archangelic stock, as you can tell by the way that they communicate.”
“Oh. Of course.” She looked at Charlie and shrugged.
“But the ones that work here are kind of caretakers of the desert. They also protect travelers, like us. Their name comes from the Greek synadelphos, which means ‘coworker,’ or more literally, ‘brother with me.’ You can call them anytime, anywhere in the phenomenal universe—anywhere in Malkuth, that is. They’ll come running. They don’t say much, but they’re fiercely protective. And they are good guys. You can trust them with your life. In fact”—he flashed a smile over his shoulder—“you’re doing that now.”
Just then, right in front of them, a wolf leaped into view, seeming to drop out of the sky. It seemed disoriented and unsteady on its legs. Terry stopped short, and the Sandalphon, moving more quickly than Kat would have thought possible, placed themselves between the wolf and the three human travelers. The wolf looked down at its own legs, seemingly beholding its own body for the first time.
For some reason, Kat wasn’t scared. Instead, she was certain that what she was viewing was an expression of abject sorrow. And horror. The wolf curled up in a ball and began to whimper.
From the corner of her eye, Kat saw a fifth Sandalphon move quickly toward the wolf. She watched in wonder as the long body bent down, nearly to the earth, like an enormous, animated bass clef. The fur of its face touched the fur of the wolf’s face. The wolf looked up, and Kat was sure she saw fear in its wide eyes. But then she saw it soften, and she imagined that the Sandalphon was communicating something comforting to it.
Hesit
antly, the wolf got to its feet, and tail between its legs, it followed after the Sandalphon in the direction of the mountains.
“Okay, what did we just see?” Kat asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Terry said. “I’ve seen something like that before, but only once, and years ago. I have no explanation.” He turned to the Sandalphon nearest him. “Can you tell me what just happened?”
Terry must have received an answer because his brows knit together in confusion.
“What did he say? She say? Wait, what are they, male or female?” Kat asked.
“Neither one. They’re androgynous. But I usually default to he. Anyway, he said something like, ‘The Children of the Prophet await judgment.’”
“That’s all he said?”
“That’s it.”
“Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Nope.” He turned back to where the valley split the two mountain ranges. “Let’s keep going.”
They hadn’t gone ten steps before a pig fell out of the sky, squealing like it was running from death itself. It hit the ground, rolled, and took off running.
Before they could even process what was happening, a horse fell out of the sky, screaming with terror. Its legs kicked and flailed, until it was able to roll upright. Hesitantly, it got to its feet, and another Sandalphon moved toward it. It took off running, the Sandalphon following at a respectful distance.
Suddenly, the four Sandalphon traveling with them surrounded them and leaned their heads in together to form a kind of tent over them. Then the black desert sky began raining terrified animals. Frogs, coyotes, lemurs, dogs, gerbils, elephants, sparrows, pandas, butterflies, giraffes—animals in greater variety and number than Kat could take in, all at once began to pepper the desert plain, all screaming in terror—a wild and deafening cacophony.
36
SUSAN SIGHED, watching Terry, Kat, and Charlie in still repose on their zafus. As much as they looked like they were meditating, she knew they weren’t. She knew they were elsewhere, and she took pains to be quiet so as not to intrude on the reality they were experiencing.
