by Richard Long
“For one thing, most of these books are written in the first person, and the handwriting is different in each one. I don’t know how you did it, but some of the writing in here,” I said, pointing at the Book of William, “it matches my own perfectly.”
“Hhmmph! That is quite odd, now that you mention it. What do you make of that?”
“Well…maybe you imagine what it’s like to be in our heads, then you forge our handwriting. Either that or…” I tried to think of a tactful way to say it. Nothing came out for a few seconds and then, like I wasn’t even in control of my lips and tongue I said, “Or you’re totally fucking crazy.”
I fully expected him to go ballistic, which he did, but not with rage as I expected. With laughter. It took him almost a minute to settle down enough to speak again.
“You’re a real pisser, Billy Boy! So I’m a madman, eh? Delusional psychosis, is that your diagnosis? Well maybe so…that would explain the trouble I have falling asleep at night. But what about you, then? Same problem? Is that why you can see and hear things that aren’t humanly possible? Are you crazy too, lad?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, avoiding his eyes.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he said, cold and deadly. “I’ve seen you use the gift, both in my dreams and my own wakeful visions.”
I said nothing, wishing he would stop.
“Close your eyes,” he suddenly commanded. I hesitated, looking at the pitch-black hallway beyond the candles, wondering how far I could run before he stopped me. Then, accepting the futility of my situation, I slowly closed my eyes, praying the images wouldn’t come. They didn’t. I saw nothing but the flicker of candlelight darting across my sealed eyelids. “Keep them closed,” I heard Paul say. But his voice sounded different, like it was coming from somewhere else in the room. “Now open them.”
I grabbed my chest in shock. I was looking at me, from where Paul was standing. From inside his head. My eyes looked back at me. I saw an almost indescribable intensity in them and I said…I mean my body said, in a voice that will haunt me forever: “Look in my left eye with your left eye.”
I did what the voice told me, even though I didn’t have a clue who I was or where I was. It felt like a rope was being pulled inside my gut (whose gut?) and…
Wham! I was back inside my body, looking at Paul. I hadn’t moved. Nothing had changed, except my perspective. And that was everything. The sensation was beyond amazing. I’d been seeing my visions for so long they didn’t seem strange to me anymore. But this was something else. If something like this was possible…
“What isn’t?” Paul said, finishing my thought.
“So if you’re not crazy, and I’m not crazy…”
“Then everything you’ve ever known, everything you’ve ever believed about yourself…about the description of reality you’ve clung to so stubbornly all your life…all of it…every bit of it…is an illusion. Yes, Billy, you’ll be looking at life through a new pair of glasses now. A nice, red, rosy pair.”
I swallowed hard. There were a million more questions I wanted to ask, but one burned far brighter than the rest.
“Do the others…can they see things too?”
“Better finish your reading. They, or most of ’em, are long in the grave.”
“Not Martin,” I argued.
“Ah yes,” Paul sighed. “Actually, I’ve been wondering the same thing meself. I’ve seen the power in him, glowing like a dormant ember, but never have I witnessed him use it. Since your talents are so…expansive, perhaps you can answer that riddle even better than I.”
Was he being serious? Did he mean my “gift” was stronger than his? I wasn’t sure what to say or do next, but I didn’t have to worry about that. He’d already made plans.
“Let’s take a stroll. We have an appointment and we’re runnin’ late.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, happy to get some fresh air.
“Church. I’m going to show you how not to run a religion.”
Here’s a fun fact: Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mulberry Street is the oldest Catholic church in New York. It was razed by a fire in 1866, but was restored two years later, much as it had been before: simple and unpretentious. I read about it on a flyer in the vestibule. The mass was already in progress. He didn’t seem to care, clomping ahead, sitting in the back row of pews.
I slid in next to him and whispered, “What’s up?”
“It’s Ash Wednesday,” he said, pointing to the priest kneeling in front of the altar. God, I hate church.
When it came time for the “ashing”, Paul stood up and I followed him into the aisle. What the hell. When it was my turn, I knelt down in front of the priest and watched him dip his thumb in a bowl full of gray ashes. Then he rubbed it on my forehead, making the sign of the cross. While he was doing it, he mumbled something incoherently.
Instead of going back to our pew, Paul stormed out of the church, clearly furious. “What was all that about?” I asked him, after we exited into the drab morning light.
“It was bad enough when they stopped using Latin,” he fumed. “But now you can’t even understand what they’re saying in English!”
I asked him if he was talking about the ash prayer and he shouted, “Yes, Goddammit!”
When I asked him what the priest had said, he told me, “Never mind, it’s all ruined now.”
Okaaaaay. Paul grumbled and waved for me to follow him home.
We sat on the couch, saying nothing. I guess that was the point. I tried to probe inside him, making sure to keep my eyes open—so he couldn’t do that switcheroo thing again. I could feel him blocking me. He took a sip from his flask and walked into the dark hallway without another word.
I twiddled my thumbs for a few minutes, getting pissy, when I was suddenly slammed with an image of Paul inside the chapel, sitting in a huge oak chair. He was inviting me to join him. I resented the sudden intrusion and tried to shut him out. I wasn’t sure how to do it and made the initial mistake of closing my eyes to concentrate on pushing him away. Instead, the image became even more vivid, to the point where I could see that he had a golden chalice in his hands. I opened my eyes and I could still see him. I was about to surrender and join him in there, when some part of me, some physical part took over. It started with a tingle in a spot directly below my navel. Then a long grunting pussssssshhhh! The only physical sensation I could compare it to is taking a shit. A really difficult shit. I wondered if this was the kind of push that mothers felt in childbirth.
I saw Paul’s face begin to fade. Pussshhh! And fade. Pusssssshhhhhhh! Then he was gone. In a few more seconds the image of him came back and I pushed again. It worked! When he came back a third time, I left to join him in the chapel. I wasn’t sure if he knew what I’d been doing, but I didn’t want to “push” it any more, until I found out.
When I walked into the chapel, it looked exactly as it had in my vision. Lots of candles. Incense too. And the smell of something else. I looked at the altar and saw a large stone bowl filled with ashes. The chalice Paul was holding was filled with ashes too. There was an empty oak chair about five feet in front of him. I sat down and noticed the kneeling pad in front. When he spoke, he made no reference to the game of tug-of-war we’d been playing. Maybe he couldn’t tell what I’d done. He gave me a sermon instead. He even stood for it. I can still remember every word.
“DUST!” he shouted so loudly I thought the ceiling might crack.
“The Bible says God made Adam out of dust and breathed His life inside him. He made him born to die. All things turn to dust in time, they say. All except a few. My children died so I could live, and earn the wisdom of their sacrifice. Now I’ll pass it on to you. All of us are killers. Each and every one. We live by eating life. Time has robbed us of this knowing. Time and our shame of the truth. We let others do our killing. We pretend goodness is better than hunger. We fear death and the pain that accompanies it. We pretend they don’t exist.”
He paused and looked at me. “There once was a spiritual seeker who found a guru on the mountaintop. He couldn’t believe his good fortune and so he asked the question that had been burning in his heart: ‘Master,’ he asked, ‘What is the greatest mystery in life?’
“The wise man said, ‘The greatest mystery in life is that we see death all around us and we still can’t believe it will ever happen to us.’”
“I can see you found that amusing,” Paul said, smiling back at me, “but here’s a little twist. The wise man wasn’t so wise after all. It’s no mystery why we hide from death. We hide because we fear it. The greatest mystery of life is death. What force engineered this necessity? What is this thing we call ‘food’? We eat life, William. We eat life! And we eat it every single day!”
He stopped for a moment, then walked to the lectern and put his hands on a giant codex. It looked like it might have been made in the fifth century or even earlier. “When this book was made, people didn’t pretend they were above the occasional murder,” he intoned, rubbing the thick leather binding like Aladdin rubbing the genie’s lamp. “They didn’t put their noses up in the air each time someone lost their head. It was all out in the open. People would fill the public squares for a beheading. Torture was a science. An art! The bravest saints would know the rapture that awaited them when their final breath was torn away. There wasn’t the slightest pretense we were any better than that. Now we have marches and rock concerts, and petitions to stop it. And slaughterhouses and food factories that hide it. Wrap it up on a Styrofoam dish. Microwave it. We pretend death is everywhere except here.” Then he got very quiet. I had to strain my ears to listen. “But death is here. Now. In this very room, watching us. And death has many secrets to share.”
I felt the hairs on my neck tickle at my shirt collar. “What secrets?”
Paul looked at me with his head tilted. Probing me. “There are three ways to learn about death. The first is by talking about it, which leads to no real comprehension. The second is by watching it…and I can see by the look on your face you know exactly what I mean. The third and by far most effective route…is…?”
“By causing it,” I answered, despair filling me up like a giant test tube.
“Still squeamish, eh? It’s hard for me to remember now, but I had misgivings too when I was just a lad. Then I learned the folly of my ways and by hook and crook, I claimed my destiny.”
Paul paced around the room, squinting hard at me. “Tsky, tsk. Still wringing your hands, eh? Since I’ve once again failed to boil your bloodlust, I’ll appeal to your spirit of analytic inquiry. Stimulate that big useless gourd on your neck. I’m a scientist, like yerself, Billy, and my particular area of interest is pain…and death. Why does pain exist? Why are we killers? Why does life require life to feed it? What are we making when we reproduce? What story is the DNA telling? What are we struggling to become?”
“And you claim to have the answers?” I asked, a cough hiding my scoff.
“I don’t make claims. I make widows and orphans. But if you don’t think I have the knowledge you seek, why are you listening so raptly?”
“You are a fucking lunatic,” I said, rising from the chair.
He slammed me down again. “I like you, son, a lot more than you like yourself. But you’re full of shit. You say you want to know, but you don’t. You pretend not to know things you already do, because you’re so afraid of losing your most useless character trait!”
He waited for my question. When I refused to ask, he shouted, “Your compassion! You still want to be good. And what good has ever come from it? Has it made you strong? Happy? Has it brought you recognition? Wealth? Love? It isn’t you, Billy. Stop trying so hard. There are plenty of people who love life, but yer not one of ‘em. You love death. If you still have any doubts about what I’m saying, just look in your feckin’ suitcase.”
I wanted to defend myself. What could I say? He filled my silence easily.
“We all have to eat, Billy. Just try stopping. And that means we all have to kill—even those goddamn vegetarians. The only difference between killing an animal and a plant is that you can’t hear an eggplant scream. And the only difference between killing an animal and a human is the conversation you can have while you’re doing it. Everything you eat is alive. It’s all a sacrifice…and a sacrament. Even if you follow the path of the meek, one day you’ll be sacrificed too. To the worms…and to the Maelstrom.”
I’d heard that word before. “What’s the ‘Maelstrom’?”
Paul shook his head like he cursed himself for saying it. “Never mind, boy, the point I’m trying to make is still a simple one. Your compassion is useless. It’s in the way. Let it go! It’s the only thing that stands between you and true glory!”
“Glory? What the fuck are you talking about? Just tell me!”
“No. Bury your compassion and you will awaken to your true self.”
“I won’t kill her.”
Paul didn’t flinch. “Then you will die.”
“I’ll die anyway,” I said with surprisingly little fear.
“There are different ways to die, son,” Paul gladly pointed out. “You can go like all the other lemmings we sat with in the pews—robbed of the knowledge of their own divinity by the very church they swear allegiance to, completely ignorant of the buried truth their beloved Christ sacrificed himself to teach them, marked with the cross of mortal slavery on their foreheads. Or you can find another way. With me.”
I rose up and he pushed me to my knees on the pad in front of my chair. He held my shoulders down until I stopped struggling, staring up at him with absolute hatred.
“Too bad that worthless priest was mumbling today,” he said, sticking his thumb in the chalice and poising it over my forehead. “You would have heard the saddest words in all the liturgy…the prayer of the sheep. Hear it clearly now and ask yourself if you want to be like the rest of them, doomed to a fate you can never escape.”
He made a fresh cross on my forehead and shouted, “Remember, man, that thou art dust! And unto dust thou shall return!”
He let out another thunderous peal of laughter. I was so full of rage I couldn’t speak. “Get up and get moving. Think very hard about what I’ve said today. There’s nothing more I can do to aid you if you won’t help yourself. Don’t dirty my doorstep again, until you’re the one with the answers.”
I stood up, wiped the ashes from my brow and stomped to the doorway. “Do you know what your problem is?” I asked, turning around.
“Besides being crazy? Oh, what, pray tell? Enlighten me!”
“You wish you were the Devil.”
Paul laughed so hard he had to hold his knees to keep from falling over. I was almost out the door when he stopped laughing and called after me, “It’s really been a lovely time, Billy. But I’m afraid you’ve got it backwards. The Devil is jealous of me!”
Paul was impressed. “You know, dear, you’d give Martin a run for his money,” he said, patting her head. “Maybe even me.”
Rose kept her eyes open. She always did when she was being pierced. It kept her connected to the movement, and the pain. She could travel with it, anticipate it, sometimes even change it. The best she could do now was endure it.
“I can see why he’s so taken with you. You’re a tough little nut to crack,” he chuckled, and began pushing again.
Rose didn’t make a sound. Not even a muffled gurgle. All her attention was focused on the pain. I can do this, she thought stubbornly. When she began to succeed, she felt a fresh bolt of fear.
What if this only makes him try harder?
“Hhmmph!” Paul snorted, reading her mind. He picked up the pliers. “It’s kids like you who take all the fun out of torture. If I’m to get a rise out of you and provide some decent entertainment for your dear papa…I suppose I’ll have to do something really vile, won’t I?”
“Mmmph,” she grunted, choking again, trying to recover from the first onslaught, desperately wishing she cou
ld voice the words her eyes were begging: “Have mercy?”
“Sorry,” said the dead mask, reading her terrified expression perfectly. “Fresh out.”
Martin wasted another sixteen seconds before he abandoned his attempt to determine Paul’s location using his queasy gut instincts. He squandered eight additional seconds trying to access his even more unreliable memory.
“The porter,” he said finally, bolting to the lobby to wring his toothpick neck. Unfortunately, the porter had already left for the day. Fortunately, an even more practical search tactic popped into his brain. He picked up the house phone and asked in the most civilized voice he could muster, “What’s the most expensive room in the hotel?”
“That would be the Ambassador Suite,” the snotty receptionist replied.
Martin only hit the elevator button two dozen times on his way up to the penthouse. No one was inside with him to complain this time. When the elevator opened, he saw the big double doors of the Ambassador Suite at the end of a very long hallway. He crept down the hall and waited outside the doors longer than he wanted, listening. Not a sound.
Were they in there? If they were, how was he going to get inside without making a big racket? No one had seen him on the way up, he was sure of it. But he didn’t want to take any chances on what might happen to Rose if he suddenly burst in on them by shooting the door handle off, for example.
Where was the maid? He found her in a room at the other end of the long hallway. She had her back turned to him as she changed the bed sheets. He pinched the back of her neck in the way he’d practiced so many times before. “Ouch!” she yelled, whirling around.
Martin clocked her and took the key. He never got the hang of that Mr. Spock thing.
“No, that’s not it…down a little farther…now over to the left…there!” Paul would shout at him until their subject collapsed. No matter how often they practiced, it would always take Martin three or four tries to get it right. He didn’t have time for that now.
He flew back to Paul’s suite, his gun drawn. He put his ear to the door one more time. Not hearing anything, he slipped in the key card and slowly turned the handle. Oh, no. Rose was handcuffed to a chair twenty feet away, her eyes like a raccoon’s from her tears and mascara. Her head was down and her eyes were closed. He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead.
