GODWALKER

by Unknown

  “What are you doing?” Kate asked, toweling. “I thought we were going for the big score, not the little nickel and dime stuff.”

  He shrugged, got off the bed and went towards the shower, setting the slightly bloody knife on the edge of the sink. “You don’t want to do it here, do you?”

  “Where else?”

  And with that, although they hadn’t really discussed it, they decided to gamble with their lives. They’d both spent years risking humiliation, poverty, imprisonment and abuse. When they were really desperate for power, they’d risked their lives—driving blind, dancing with traffic, playing Russian Roulette. But there was a higher level still. The major charge.

  To gain it, Fred would have to risk not only his own life, but the life of someone he loved. In this case, Kate. She would be taking the same risk, of course, receiving the same payoff.

  If either one survived.

  Major charges were rare and powerful. Few chaos magi ever laid hold of one. The foolish or impetuous (for whom the simplicity of chaos magick was especially attractive) usually died misjudging the risk of a lesser charge. Some were canny enough to survive and greedy enough for the big risk—but those with such a strong power jones often didn’t love anyone enough for the risk to exist. Those adepts who did have that kind of love were rarely willing to gamble it, even for a massive influx of power.

  “You want to shower first?”

  “Don’t see much point,” Fred said. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Kate nodded and took her pistol out of her purse. She opened it, loaded a single bullet and spun the cylinder.

  “Ladies first?” she asked. Fred shrugged.

  They pulled two chairs together, awkwardly, in the little space between the windows and the bed. Kate had the gun pointing toward the ceiling, her finger resting on the trigger guard.

  “Wait,” Fred said. He leaned in, closed his eyes, and gently kissed his wife.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love you too, Fred.”

  He leaned forward a little more and leaned in so that his left temple pressed against hers. He put his arms around her. Her left arm went behind his neck. His eyes were closed. Hers were open, but only so that she could take the safety off and cock the weapon. She closed them when she put the barrel to her temple.

  Neither one could pray as she pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  If wishes were

  Fishes

  We’d all have some to fry

  CHAPTER TEN

  Fred’s eyes shot open when he heard the click. He jerked back. Kate was slumped in her chair, breathing heavily.

  “What the fuck?” he said. “Did you feel anything?”

  Kate shook her head. “Maybe you don’t feel the big ones?”

  “That doesn’t sound right. I mean, you hear about major charges… you hear about fugues, unexplained ball lightning, sourceless screams for miles around… unnatural phenomena as far as the eye can see. We should have each gotten one. We should have felt something.”

  “Well, the gun was loaded, the risk was real…” Kate said. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked closely at the pistol.

  “Motherfucker,” she muttered.

  “What?” Fred leaned in.

  “Look at the hammer. See how shiny it is at the tip?”

  “It’s been filed?”

  “That fucking cop! That asshole filed my hammer down!”

  “Shit.” Fred leaned back.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “Well, I guess we have to get a new gun.”

  They left the Super 8, tailed by Phil King in plainclothes, a few minutes before the Freak pulled into the parking lot, checking on the charges it had felt from Fred Mundy.

  * * *

  In his hotel room, Leslie sobbed and sniffled. He was curled up in a ball on the bed, curled in the fetal position, both hands cupped around his groin.

  His scrotum was empty.

  The Freak had reached down into him like he was a jar of olives, and it had bloodlessly plucked out his testicles. The pain had been intense, but worse was the sense of violation. He’d only felt that helpless and degraded once before… in Des Moines…

  That was when he’d curled up, started crying. He felt the Freak rise, heard the toilet flush and the sink run. He’d heard its footsteps as it came back. There was a pause. He thought it might speak, but he couldn’t stop crying.

  Saying nothing, the Freak had opened the door and gone. And still Leslie had cried.

  It made sense, of course. A eunuch was no man. It couldn’t be a real man or a false woman. To be a Mystic Hermaphrodite, he had to be both, and now he was neither.

  In time, he got the hiccups and his chest hurt from sobbing, so he got up and took a hot shower.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Does this mean I’m going to get fat? High voice? I can kiss sex goodbye, that’s for sure. Shit.”

  As he toweled off, he pinched his empty sac. It fascinated him, the absence. It gave him goosebumps, but it was him. When he couldn’t take any more, he put on pants and sat on the bed.

  Rummaging through his suitcase, he found his dad’s copy of “The Marriage of Venus and Mercury.” He snorted.

  “Guess what Dad,” he thought. “I am now, absolutely, completely absolved of godwalking on your behalf. You’re going to have to do your own dirty work. Maybe you can ascend as The Inadequate Parent.”

  He felt a moment of lightness and possibility, and then he figured something out.

  It made him feel cold and it made him hate himself.

  * * *

  The Freak didn’t see anything suspicious at the Super 8, so it decided to swing by Joe Kimble’s house. It had changed, becoming female, redheaded and pretty. It knew from experience that was a recipe for attention, but it wanted to be different. It had washed its hands after Leslie, but that hadn’t been enough. It had felt dirty, it had wanted to be a different person, someone who flirted and got smiled at, so it had shrunk and taken innocent features. It wasn’t a smart move, but the Freak did it.

  The phone book had given it the only Kimble address in town. The Freak hadn’t been expecting a police line and a sheriff’s cruiser parked out front, but it wasn’t terribly surprised, either. In the Freak’s experience, people who got involved with mysticism were often deficient in social skills. At least, the ones who got into the real thing were—the ones in the occult underground, with possession, and conjured rains of spiders, and making TVs defecate. (As opposed to the more appealing occult society of New Age bookstores and crystals and cleansing meditations that didn’t do jack except make you calm and serene.)

  They had poor social skills, so they got frustrated with people easily. Considering that the strongest of them were able to bend reality with their obsessions, the results of that frustration were often dangerous.

  Even lethal.

  “What happened here?” it asked, batting its eyes at the deputy on duty.

  “Ain’t you read the papers?” he replied, straightening his posture and trying to reconcile the luscious vision with the grating voice.

  The Freak shook its pretty head, eyes wide.

  The deputy looked away, holding his face in a reasonable facsimile of Clint Eastwood’s resigned tough-guy face. “The resident here was murdered,” he said, grim but determined.

  “Not Joe!” the Freak said.

  “Do you know Joe Kimble, ma’am?”

  “Well, we went out a couple times. I didn’t hear anything about… murder.” It thought about using a tiny taste of power to open the tear ducts but decided it wasn’t necessary. He was looking at her tits more than her face. “Poor Joey…”

  “It wasn’t him, Mrs…?”

  “Frank. And it’s Miss,” she said. “Who died?”

  “It was his father.”

  “Oh no! Do you have any idea who did it?”

  “The police are making inquiries.” He narrowed his eyes and gave her a t
ough, but disarming half-smile that he’d seen on Bruce Willis. “Can I get you to give me a statement?”

  “Well, I don’t know anything,” she said coyly. “But if you want. Should we go inside?”

  “We have to preserve the integrity of the crime scene.”

  “Oh. Is Joe in there now?”

  “I believe he’s in custody, ma’am.”

  “Call me Chris,” the Freak rasped. “Where exactly is he being held?”

  * * *

  Andy Brault worked his tired smile as Leslie Mundy walked into the police station.

  “Good morning, Mr. Mundy. Or is it Miss?”

  “Mr. today, officer. Why? You like me better as a lady?”

  “I’m sure I like you the same amount either way. What brings you down to the station? Yesterday you couldn’t leave fast enough.”

  “I’d like to see Joe.”

  “Joe Kimble?”

  “No, Joe Mama,” Leslie said, amazed at himself. But what did he have to lose? What was possibly going to happen that was worse?

  Andy’s smile widened. “He’s on the phone right now, but I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Leslie waited, and then got searched with a metal detector, and eventually found himself face to face with Joe.

  “I can’t believe they use the same room for interrogation and for prisoner visits,” Leslie said, looking around.

  “Yeah, well, it’s a cheap little town,” Joe replied, slouched in his seat. In his jailhouse coveralls, he looked more like a bad actor in costume than an actual prisoner.

  The were silent.

  “So, how’s it going?” Leslie asked.

  “I’m in jail, numbnuts. How do you think it’s going?”

  “Hey, I just got my…” Leslie bit his cheek and looked away. “Never mind. Sorry I asked.”

  “I’m just glad I ain’t been ass-raped yet.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be out of here soon.”

  “If you were my lawyer I’d feel a lot better ‘bout hearing that.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and then Leslie sighed and spoke again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “About your dad. I mean… you have my condolences.”

  Joe’s face made a minute shift, and instead of being defensive and sullen he was suddenly washed out and sad.

  “Hell, he was probably your dad, after all.”

  Leslie sighed. “Well, if you want to look on the bright side…”

  “Sorry,” Joe said. “I’m just… I’m really, really… you know, on edge.”

  Again, Leslie almost told Joe about his morning, but he didn’t. He wasn’t ready. Didn’t even want to think about it.

  After another pause Joe asked “So, Fred. Is he, you know, a pretty good dad?”

  Leslie leaned back and looked up at the caged ceiling light. “I really don’t know,” he said, and suddenly he felt like crying—actually felt the tears welling up and heard his voice getting cracked.

  Joe looked embarrassed. “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “He made sure I had a roof over my head and food, I guess. When he was able, that is,” Leslie said. “He… I don’t know, he taught me a lot of stuff.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “Though a lot of it I didn’t want to know.”

  Joe was hooked by the spite he heard, in a voice that had previously only been patient and kind. Warily he asked “Like what?”

  “He taught me that my whole purpose in life was to become godwalker, then to unseat an immaterial being of incalculable power, in order to benefit all mankind. To do that, I had to learn to be a faggot and, eventually, a woman. He taught me to surrender. To sacrifice.”

  Joe’s skin crawled. “When you say… learn to be a…”

  “It means exactly what you think it means.”

  Joe sat back, his eyes downcast, face red with embarrassment on Leslie’s behalf. “That’s… Jesus Christ, that is so fucked up.”

  Leslie shrugged. “If he’d had you instead of me, it all might have worked.”

  “Shit, don’t say that. I don’t even want to think about that.”

  “I’m sorry. If I keep complaining you’ll probably ask to go back to your cell.”

  “You got no idea how boring it is in there.”

  “‘The only thing worse than the boredom of prison is the excitement of prison.’ Something else dad taught me.”

  The two men sat in quiet again.

  “So what about your father?” Leslie asked. “What was he like?”

  Joe shrugged. “I dunno,” he said irritably. “He was just my dad, you know? I mean… he punished me when I did something wrong or stupid, and he taught me a trade, I guess. Gave me a place to stay when I left the army. Clothes on my back and all that.” Joe shifted in his seat. “I remember when I was sixteen, this guy up the street was selling his old motorbike. It was this ancient, piece of crap Honda, really just beat to hell, but I wanted to buy it. So I saved up all my allowance and all my, like, lawn mowing money and I took this job pumping gas that my dad didn’t know about, and I still didn’t have enough. Dad told me he thought it was stupid to buy a machine to break my neck when we had a perfectly good flight of stairs in the house, but he lent me the rest of the dough. He helped me take the bike apart and clean all the parts, and there were so many fucked up pieces that we had to replace… I was spending all the money I made that summer on that bike, but it was okay, it was cool. Then, when my mom got sick… a lot of nights when she was in the hospital we’d just go out and work on the bike.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Eh. I guess he was a good dad.”

  “Sounds like you loved him.”

  “He was my dad,” Joe said, like that was the obvious answer to the question. “What, don’t you love your old man?”

  Leslie sighed. “I guess I do. I mean, I complain, but he taught me to be a good person too. He always concentrated on that, always, always always. All the philosophy and morals and ethics, over and over. Tolerance, forgiveness, kindness, charity. Christian, Buddhist, Taoist… whatever. And looking back, I can see how much of it he ignored himself, but still… I guess I wouldn’t trade him. I’ve met some people whose parents just plopped them in front of the TV for most of their childhoods, and they don’t have a clue. Sometimes I think those poor fools without even a rudimentary moral compass are a hundred times more miserable than I am, even with a childhood warped and distorted by my parents’ ambitions. I mean, at least they were good ambitions.” He chuckled a little. “At least they took an interest.”

  “All I’m gonna say is, I’m glad we got switched.”

  “Yeah, that,” Leslie said. He sighed. “Joe, I’ve got some more bad news for you.”

  “Fuck, what now? You gonna hand in proof I did it?”

  “No, but this morning I got a visit from someone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember me telling you about the statosphere? The Invisible Clergy?”

  “Uh… I ain’t sure you did.”

  “At breakfast?”

  “Oh boy…”

  “Listen, Joe.” Leslie ran his hands through his hair, chewing his lips, trying to find the words to convince Joe, to make him believe implausibilities that could kill him.

  “The shape of the universe, of the lives we lead, is mapped out on the statosphere. The statosphere, in turn, is shaped by the archetypes—by people who embodied something so important to humankind that they were transformed into pure Idea, like Motherhood, or Scholarship, or Kingship.”

  “Leslie, man…”

  “Just fucking listen!”

  Joe raised his hands, palms up. “Okay, okay, I’m listening. Shit, probably more interesting than what’s on the TV in my cell…”

  “The archetypes shape the statosphere, which means they influence our lives. Someone who matches a given archetype is called an avatar. That’s what I am—what Fred and Kate made me, and whatever you think of what they did it worked.
I can sense things you can’t because I’m in touch with something outside the world, in touch with the archetype. The best avatar—the one closest to the archetype—is the godwalker, the physical embodiment of the principle on earth. Their power is immense, Joe. It goes far beyond just sensing things or minor influence. There are godwalkers who can fly, who can read minds, who can cheat death…” He took a deep breath and looked away. “…and this morning, one of them… cut my balls off.”

  “What?”

  “It’s called the Freak—no one knows its real name, but it’s come here looking for you…”

  “Wait, no, back up. It cut your balls off?”

  Leslie nodded.

  “Jesus Christ! How come you’re not in the hospital?”

  “It did it bloodlessly. Ever heard of psychic surgery?” Seeing Joe’s blank look, Leslie shook his head. “Never… look, it just did it, no blood, poof, bang, I’m castrated. Can we move on? It found me instead of you and I only survived because I convinced it I’m no competition.”

  “Then why would he come after me? I don’t even believe in this shit.”

  “Because you’re born right, Joe. I… I don’t know what Fred and Kate did, but somehow you’re better suited than I am. Or at least that’s what the Freak thinks, and if it gets hold of you you’re going to die.”

  “Why you keep saying ‘it’?”

  “The Freak doesn’t have a fixed gender. That’s what I’m trying to tell you about, Joe. Where I’m… I was… Where I had to make do with cross-dressing, screwing around with gender roles, this… thing, this godwalker, can just change, literally change from a man to a woman the way you’d change your pants. Its appearance changes too—it could be black, white, woman, man, tall, short—it could be anyone.”

  Joe lowered his head.