Lightfall

by Paul Monette

  He clearly connected them both with who they used to be—as if they looked no different now and no time stood between them. What was worse, he’d suffered no memory loss of his own. He wasn’t, like her and Michael, tied to a blind unconscious will, gray as the tides below. Who was he, anyway? All she saw was a grizzled, crew-cut fisherman, lonely and daft and slightly fanatic. He had not shed his years for her, the way he had for Michael.

  Since when did a destiny sure as theirs require a third party? Why could she not have a confidant, too? In her eyes, Michael trod the field ahead with a wise man at his side. Her brazenness fell away. She had learned her first crude lesson in class: she would ferret out all the facts, while he would be entrusted with the meaning. It made her ache with jealousy.

  When she saw they were bound for the church, she stopped. She watched them unlock the double door, slip through, and shut her out. She wouldn’t have followed inside, no matter if all the doors and windows had been flung wide. Except what little she knew about Michael and his cult—two minutes’ glance at her article, and nothing to put it in context with—she had no opinion of God, one way or the other. She’d taken the opposite route the moment she entered the village hall of records. Research was her only method.

  She would not join with Michael on the runic ground of Higher Being. She knew they would never have chosen her for that. She didn’t have the skills for what she couldn’t prove. So she stood in the field at the stroke of noon, in a fountain of light, with the sea gone sapphire, and tried to picture the spring of 1588. As if she could will away the fact that he’d abandoned her.

  Inside the church, Michael stood at the amber window, peering out at a world that gleamed like gold. He watched her survey the land, looking off across the water like a widow. Behind him, Joey worked to free a loose slab in the floor. He chipped at the mortar with a garden trowel and dug it out with his fish knife. He strained and groaned as he heaved the stone from its place. He was just lifting out an ironclad chest wreathed in cobwebs, about a foot square, when the prophet finally turned. Michael hardly glanced at the treasure as he padded, lost in thought, to the last pew. He sat heavily, propped his chin in his hands, and began to sort it out.

  “Should I kill her, Joey?”

  “You didn’t before,” the other said vaguely. He bent down close to jimmy away the rusted lock. He wedged his knife and worked it like a lever. The rotted screws gave with a ripping sound. He creaked the lid back on its hinges.

  “How long do I have?” asked Michael.

  “Five days,” Joey said, wiping the dust from two or three objects he took from the box.

  “What do I do?”

  “It’ll come to you, Michael. Don’t force it. Here.”

  Joey handed across what looked to be a compass. Then a sealing ring with a coat of arms. Then a snuffbox made of tortoise shell. Michael received them one by one, without any special interest. They would have no meaning till Joey told him. But the fourth and final thing drew him up short: a monogrammed silver box, about the right size for cigarettes. The name it bore was Edward Dale, with a ship above and a motto below: To the end of the world. Instinctively, Michael put a hand to his jacket pocket, but there was nothing there.

  “Your papers,” Joey explained with a gesture toward the silver box. Not a fleck of tarnish anywhere. But when Michael moved to flick the catch, the boy leaped forward to stop him. “Not now,” he said. “We have to go down to the light so I can show you something.”

  “Can’t we just be alone?”

  “Soon—very soon. Hurry.”

  When they got outside they discovered that Iris had gone. Joey locked the door and held the key out to Michael, who begged off shyly. His hands were full. He didn’t want it anyway—wished Joey would take charge of the keeping of symbols. Michael had no use for them. He made no protest, even so, when Joey slipped a hand in his pocket and left the key like a secret. They walked through the one paved street of the village, immune as before from curious stares. The townsmen who just an hour before had fawned on Michael and greeted him now busied themselves with close work, leaving them both alone.

  If Joey had been some other sort than what he was, he might have gloated here, to think they now held him in awe. He had been the object of ridicule for as long as anyone in the village could remember. But he seemed too busy being Michael’s guide to waste his time returning their contempt. On the contrary: as they strolled along he pointed out who lived where, with a warm and affectionate thumbnail sketch that brought each one alive. He might have been welcoming Michael into a family. Perhaps, thought the prophet, they didn’t need to run away to the lonely valley after all. The people of Pitt’s Landing might accept them just the way they were.

  By the time they reached the lighthouse, Michael had managed to distribute his possessions in his pockets, so he clinked and sagged like a wandering tradesman. The park was noisy with villagers out to take the winter sun at its height. For one hour now, it was sweet as spring. A gang of rangers lounged on the lawn and picnicked, half an ear cocked to the radio calls that crackled in the Jeep they’d tumbled out of. Two mothers strolled their toddlers. Somebody flew a russet kite. Michael floated through, overflowing with the certainty that he’d stumbled into paradise. Just then he would have done anything to keep them safe. For all the hate he harbored toward the world at large, it had purified his heart, somehow, and made him ripe for love.

  Right about now, he thought it could stay like this forever.

  They came around the cylindrical tower and went up a short flight of steps to a kind of balcony. They stood at a fluted balustrade, with the drop sheer to the rocks below, a hundred and thirty feet. They stood together with the land behind them—a whole continent’s worth—and took in the roaming ocean, roughshod with the sun. It did not matter to Michael what was past. He laid no claim on it. Far too much attention seemed to be on him. Wasn’t it time to hear Joey’s side? How long had he been waiting?

  They stood like heroes—captain and mate. Michael gave no credence to the cost. He had never lived the life of a moralist, making choices left and right. Wanting nothing, he’d never wanted two things both at once, and thus had no experience of having second thoughts. Except for certain small gold objects sifted from the day’s collection, he hardly knew what it meant to acquire and keep. But he wanted to possess this boy forever. So much so, it seemed to him that everything else would have to realign itself, to accommodate his first desire. “We ought to have a ship,” he said.

  “Now listen, Michael,” the boy replied, unhearing. “This is where it happened.” He made a gesture, hands outstretched as if to flare a cape, that took in the whole of the cliff that edged the park.

  How funny, thought Michael, lazily peering over the brink. The boy was intent on the land, while he was mad to sail. Between them, they took in everything. Though he could not even fathom what he meant by wanting Joey—it was something unearthly bright and pure, and it straddled day and night—he knew the world would ever after run to the motions of what they dreamed.

  He looked over happily, even as Joey climbed up onto the balustrade. It was barely half a foot wide. The wind did capers, billowing out his shirt so he teetered backward. Michael had no fear. If the larger rule of Fate had brought them back together, no mere freak like an accident could touch them on the heights. He probably ought to jump up there himself. They could dance on the razor’s edge till the sun went down.

  As if to beckon him, Joey turned with a perfect smile. He held up his hands like someone about to cup a butterfly.

  “Michael,” he said, as soft as a brother, “it’s all so easy. You’ll see—they want to go this way.”

  And he clapped his hands and stepped out into the noonday air. There was one last glint of his frozen smile as he dropped out of sight like a stone. A cry ballooned in Michael’s mouth. It spilled like blood, in a rising wall, as he leaned far over the parapet and watched. About halfway down, the sea wind blew the falling boy against the clif
f, where he dangled on a jagged point for the space of a breath, then hurtled and bounced through a string of vaulting somersaults. The splash when he hit the water was so small, the harbor barely shrugged.

  Michael’s was the only scream. The whole way down, the boy was silent as the ripples that briefly ringed his landing. In a moment there was nothing there at all. Bent double and half in the air himself, roaring with all he’d lost, Michael staggered back and down the steps, lunging away from the lighthouse tower. He wept to feel the ground beneath his feet. He did not stop till he’d gained the circle of grave and weathered stones, where he fell to his knees and shook with grief.

  It was several minutes before he realized: they all went about their business as if nothing had transpired. Ten feet away, the rangers joked in their boots and khakis, strung in a circle all their own. Children seemed to be everywhere—whole teams of them, sides all chosen, as if the school in Orick had declared a sudden holiday. The oaf with the kite, showing off for his girl, did a pratfall over one of the sacred stones, missing Michael by an inch. A carnival air was on the place. Deliberately, it almost seemed, they made a point of acting happy. One notch higher and they would have sung a chorus.

  Death wasn’t good enough for them, Michael thought in a sudden twist of fury. He wanted them debased. The tears streamed down his face, but no one saw. He’d never cared for anyone before—never given himself away the way he had this morning. The rest of the village would pay for that. They’d die when he was ready. Beg for it, even.

  Killing had always been a purely casual thing, like flicking away a speck of lint. Now it came like a true vocation. He went on sobbing freely, loud enough to drown out all the laughing. He seemed to understand that these were the first and last tears he would ever need. He dug his nails in his cheeks and moaned. He knew he should have killed Joey right at the start. Somehow, the killing he had not bothered with had set his heart to ticking. Just to make it stop again, he would have to drown the world.

  IV

  IT WAS Thursday afternoon in Houston. The sky was yellow-gray as it mulled over whether or not to fling a storm. From the swaybacked mansion on Montrose Avenue, once an oilman’s dream of baronial splendor, the air was alive with chanting. It was the holiest time in the Covenant’s day. The morning’s work of selling flowers was all tallied up. The afternoon dose of Thorazine had taken. About forty of them sat in a double circle in the gilt-and-paneled parlor. They sent up a constant babble, each with a rosy grin in place.

  The anxious calls between their warden and twelve other Houston units reflected nothing troublesome within the rank and file. At five they would have their cocoa and sponge cake. Then they would do the housework. Then the stuffing of envelopes, to bid for contributions. Then their supper, such as it was—beans and rice and ice cream, more than likely. They didn’t have to think about a thing.

  Slurred and flushed though they were, they thrilled with expectation when the warden entered the circle at prayer’s end. They’d been in full lotus for two hours straight, but now they shifted and slouched like schoolkids. It could only be a new rule about to be announced. They braced for the challenge as he cleared his throat and held up a paper to read from. Rules were the source of earthly joy. They filled the heads of the faithful like a roll of the blessed saints.

  “I have a special message for you,” he said with unctuous smoothness, “direct from Father Paradise himself.” A low buzz went around the group, and they rubbed their hands together like a band of insects zinging. “He has gone away on a long retreat,” said the thin and mottled warden, hair in a freak like a mad chemist. “His enemies have already started spreading the usual lies. If we let down our guard for a moment, they will steal in here and shroud us all in sin.”

  Around him, the murmur grew into a whine. Despite the rounded corners of the drug, they never seemed to lose the anxious edge. It lay concealed in their praying hands like a prisoner’s spoon, honed to a needle point.

  “He has left one last commandment. Listen now: you must go into the wilderness.”

  On the instant, three of them rose to their feet. The warden meant to let the prophet’s words sink in, then use them as text for a sermon. He wasn’t a preacher himself. He was a druggist from Nueva Laredo who’d lost his license peddling ups and downs across the border. He bubbled up most of the Covenant’s Pharmaceuticals right in the kitchen beside the rice and beans. He saved the organization thousands of dollars a year, keeping things in the family. But he had a theatrical streak as well, and so drew breath to give them fire and brimstone. His charges, clustered about him, were so tame and baby-faced that he thought the three who came toward him now were only trying to get a little closer.

  They grabbed him like an animal, pinning his arms and legs. They drove him back against the Carrère mantel, where one of them reached down a Tudor candlestick and brained him. He slumped to the hearth. Two of the robed, bald cultists stood at his head and feet like acolytes. The third smashed a Celadon vase and slit his throat with a sharp-edged piece. As he bled him like a chicken, the rest of the crowd got up and shuffled off to fetch their cocoa. Only these three men were in the forefront.

  And when they were done with the ritual, they left the house in a band. They had no plan. They lumbered down the sidewalk three abreast, like the backfield of a football team. They looked so out of place in their dun-colored, belted caftans that they might have been playing out some half-wit fraternity prank. In any case, the ordinary residents—students mostly, in boots and jeans and the random Stetson—scarcely seemed to notice them. The neighborhood hewed to a live-and-let-live dispensation. The Revelation cultists were considered a fairly harmless lot. No one thought to look twice when each of the three reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches.

  They stood at the wide intersection at Fannin and Montrose, seeming to cast a votive eye on the rush-hour chaos before them. It almost seemed they meant to light a candle, as if they could fashion an instant curbside shrine, or say an impromptu mass. They split up as if by prior arrangement. One walked across the street when the light went green. One stepped down into the gutter and trailed past a row of parked cars. The third stood and waited, as if on watch. Each appeared to discover what it was he had to do by doing it. Time was not an issue. They didn’t seem to care that people were going to stop them.

  The one in the gutter sidled up beside a Chrysler, hunkered down behind, and screwed off the gas cap. He was so nimble, lighting the match and slipping it in as he leapt away to the curb, that the explosion only seemed to blow him safely out of the ball of fire. The car burned high and bright like a heifer on an altar. The man skipped the next three cars and approached a rusty pickup. The half a hundred who gaped from windows and screeched to a halt in traffic were so mesmerized by the conflagration that they didn’t even see him as he bent to start the second fire.

  Meanwhile, his fellow across the street had entered the neon pancake house. His dark eyes round as saucers, he swept by the startled hostess and entered the dining room proper. He went up to the heavy draperies that shut out the noisy street. Lighting his pack of matches like a flare, he held it close against the fabric, not knowing it had to be treated—by law—to resist the heat of a blowtorch. Unhappily, the pancake people had struck a deal with the draper, as well as one with the fire inspector. The material went up like a pile of oil-soaked rags.

  It wasn’t that anyone had to die. The busboys wrestled him to the floor as the choking patrons thundered out. The most that was going to be lost was the building. Similarly out in the street, where four different cars had been set ablaze, there was no one in any danger. A fire alarm had now gone through, and a squad car tore around a corner and blocked the intersection north and west. They’d been through worse, just covering crack-ups. The culprits were not even armed.

  Except it was so weird. The sentry, who stood on the curb in a kind of trance, holding up his book of matches like a sacramental wafer, reached again into the kangaroo pocket
of his robe. He drew out a cork-stoppered bottle full to the brim with a clear liquid. Why it was there was, like the matches, inexplicable. Perhaps it had always been there, pregnant as a seed, from the day the robe was issued to him. He inched out the cork and tossed it away. It seemed he would lift the bottle and drink, and thus be changed before their eyes to something vast and mythic. But he simply poured the liquid on the robe, sprinkling it all over him.

  The cop who was coming across to arrest him—what for, loitering?—caught the whiff of ether in the wind from twenty feet away. He shouted an automatic word of caution, even as the grinning monk struck the fatal match. There was a whoosh of flame. The cop reeled back and drew his gun. He shot twice into the pyre. If he could not stop the nightmare of it, at least he could stop the suffering. But though the second shot went right to the burning heart, the monk did not fall over. He began to dance.

  He twirled in a circle and floated into the street, as if to fan the flames to a white-hot shine. He seemed to be singing an ancient one-note song. By now the police had captured the other two. One was flung spread-eagle in the road, with people standing on his wrists and ankles while a sergeant tried to shriek him into confessing. Across the street, the third was out cold, bleeding deep inside from being roughed up by the busboys.

  The spectators didn’t know any of this. They collected three-deep on the sidewalks, riveting their attention on the fire dance. They fought to get the view before it died. Already the monk was tottering, and his skin hung black and threadbare like the ashes of his cloak. In a moment there would be nothing to see but a body, and that was not enough to hold a crowd.

  The minicam unit from Channel 4 took a corner on two wheels, filming out their windows as they sped to the action. But it made no sense, and it wasn’t going to. All the footage and brute interrogation missed the mark. It had nothing to do with Houston, or cults, or the general loss of reverence for property. Before the day was out they would appoint a most impeccable commission. Hints of a broad conspiracy would surface. Things would go back to normal, as neatly as the street was cleared of the burned-out hulks and the charred corpse.