The Footprints of God: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  “Take it slow,” Rachel advised. “You’re getting agitated.”

  “How could I be seeing all that?”

  “You know the answer. Your mind can create any conceivable image and make it real. That photograph of the earth from space is an icon of modern culture. It moves everyone who sees it, and you must have seen it fifty times since childhood.”

  “My mind can create animals I’ve never seen? Realistic-looking animals?”

  “Of course. You’ve seen Hieronymus Bosch paintings. And I’ve seen the kind of time-lapse images you’re describing on television. In the old days, Life magazine did things like that in print. ‘The Ascent of Man,’ like that. The question is, why are you seeing these things?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  “Are you present in this surreal landscape?”

  “No.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “I’m still looking for something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I’m like a bird scanning the earth and sea for…something.”

  “Are you a bird in the dream?”

  She sounded hopeful. Birds must mean something in the lexicon of dream interpretation. “No.”

  “What are you?”

  “Nothing, really. A pair of eyes.”

  “An observer.”

  “Yes. A disembodied observer. T. J. Eckleburg.”

  “Who?”

  “Nothing. Something from Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Oh. I remember.” She put the end of her pen in her mouth and bit it. An unusual gesture for her. “Do you have an opinion about why you’re seeing all this?”

  “Yes.” I knew my next words would surprise her. “I believe someone is showing it to me.”

  Her eyes widened, practically histrionics from Rachel Weiss. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is showing this to you?”

  “I have no idea. Why do you think I’m seeing it?”

  She moved her head from side to side. I could almost see her neurons firing, processing my words through the filters that education and experience had embedded in her brain. “Evolution is change,” she said. “You’re seeing change sped up to unnatural velocity. Uncontrollable change. I sense this may have something to do with your work.”

  You could be right, I thought, but I didn’t say that. I simply moved on. My silence was her only protection. In the end, it didn’t matter, because the theme of evolution died, and what came to dominate my sleeping mind shook me to the core.

  There were people in my new dreams. They couldn’t see me, and I only saw flashes of them. It was as though I were watching damaged strips of film cobbled together out of order. A woman walking with a baby on her hip. A man drawing water from a well. A soldier in uniform, carrying a short sword, the gladius I had learned about in Mrs. Whaley’s eighth-grade Latin class. A Roman soldier. That was my first real clue that this was no random series of images, but scenes from a particular era. I saw oxen pulling plows. A young woman selling herself on the street. Men exchanging money. Gold and copper coins with the imperious profile of an emperor upon them. And a name. Tiberius. The name triggered something in my mind, so I checked the Internet. The successor of Augustus, Tiberius was a former commander of legions who spent much of his reign leading military campaigns in Germania. One of the few important events of his rule—seen through the lens of hindsight—was the execution of a Jewish peasant said to have claimed to be king of the Jews.

  “Was your father deeply religious?” Rachel asked, upon hearing about these new images.

  “No. He was…he looked at the world in a more fundamental way.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s not relevant.”

  An exasperated sigh. “Your mother, then?”

  “She had faith in something greater than humanity, but she wasn’t big on organized religion.”

  “You had no religious indoctrination as a child?”

  “Sunday school for a couple of years. It didn’t take.”

  “What denomination?”

  “Methodist. It was the closest church to our house.”

  “Did they show films about Jesus’ life?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t remember.”

  “You grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, right? It’s more probable than not. And of course we’ve all seen the grand biblical epics from the fifties. The Ten Commandments. Ben-Hur. Those things.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Only that the accoutrements of these hallucinations have been sitting in your subconscious for years. They’re in all of us. But your dreams seem to be moving toward something. And that something may be Jesus of Nazareth.”

  “Have you heard of dreams like this before?” I asked.

  “Of course. Many people dream of Jesus. Of personal interactions with him, receiving messages from him. But your dream progression has a certain logic to it, and a naturalistic tone rather than the wildness of obsessive fantasy. Also, you claim to be an atheist. Or at least agnostic. I’m very interested to see where this goes.”

  I appreciated her interest, but I was tired of waiting for answers. “But what do you think it means?”

  She pursed her lips, then shook her head. “I’m no longer convinced that this has to do with the loss of your wife and daughter. But the truth is, I simply don’t know enough about your life to make an informed evaluation.”

  We were at a stalemate. I still didn’t believe that my past had anything to do with my dreams. Yet as the days passed, the scarred strips of film in my head began to clear, and certain dream characters to reappear. The faces I saw became familiar, like friends. Then more familiar than friends. A feeling was growing in me that I remembered these faces, and not merely from previous dreams. I described them for Rachel as accurately as I could.

  I’m sitting in the midst of a circle, rapt bearded faces watching me. I know I’m speaking, because they’re obviously listening to me, yet I can’t hear my own words.

  I see a woman’s face, angelic yet common, and a pair of eyes I know like those of my mother. They don’t belong to my mother, though, not the mother who raised me in Oak Ridge. Yet they watch me with pure love. A bearded man stands behind her, watching me with a father’s pride. But my father was clean shaven all his life….

  I see donkeys…a date palm. Naked children. A brown river. I feel the cold, jarring shock of immersion, the beat of my feet on sand. I see a young girl, beautiful and dark-haired, leaning toward my face for a kiss, then blushing and running away. I’m walking among adults. Their faces say, This child is not like other children. A wildeyed man stands waist deep in water, a line of men and women awaiting their turn to be submerged, while others come up from the water coughing and sputtering, their eyes wide.

  Sometimes the dreams had no logic, but were only disjointed fragments. When logic finally returned, it frightened me.

  I’m sitting beside the bed of a small boy. He can’t move. His eyes are closed. He’s been paralyzed for two days. His mother and aunt sit with me. They bring food, cool water, oil to anoint the boy. I speak softly in his ear. I tell the women to hold his hands. Then I lean down and speak his name. His eyes squeeze tight, expressing mucus. Then they open and light up with recognition of his mother. His mother gasps, then screams that his hand moved. She lifts him up, and he hugs her. The women weep with happiness….

  I’m eating with a group of women. Olives and flat bread. Some women won’t meet my eyes. After the meal, they take me into a bedroom, where a pregnant girl lies on the bed. They tell me the baby has been inside her too long. Labor will not begin. They fear the child is dead. I ask the women to leave. The young mother fears me. I calm her with soft words, then lift the blanket and lay my hands on her belly. It’s distended, tight as a drum. I leave my hands there for a long time, gently urging, speaking softly to her. I can’t understand what I’m saying. It’s like a soft chant. After a time, her m
outh opens. She’s felt a kick. She cries out for the other women. “My baby is alive!” The women lay their hands on me, trying to touch me as if I possess some invisible power. “Surely he is the one,” they say.

  “These are stories from the Bible,” Rachel said, “known by millions of schoolchildren. There’s nothing unique about them.”

  “I’ve been reading the New Testament,” I told her. “There’s no record of Jesus healing a little boy of paralysis. No description of him eating a meal with only women, then inducing labor.”

  “But those are both healing images. “And you’re a physician. Your subconscious seems to be casting Jesus in your image. Or vice versa. Perhaps the problem really is your work. Have you moved further away from pure medicine? I’ve known doctors who fell into depression after giving up hands-on patient care for pure research. Perhaps this is something like that?”

  She’d guessed correctly about my moving away from patient care, but my lucid dreams weren’t some strange expression of nostalgia for my days in the white coat.

  “There’s another possibility,” she suggested. “One more in line with my original interpretation. These images of divine healing could be subconscious wishes that you could bring Karen and Zooey back. Think about it. What were two of Jesus’ most notable miracles?”

  I nodded reluctantly. “Raising Lazarus from the dead.”

  “Yes. And he also resurrected a little girl, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yes. But I don’t think that’s the significance of these dreams.”

  Rachel smiled with infinite patience. “Well, one thing is certain. Eventually, your subconscious will make its message clear.”

  That turned out to be our last session. Because that night, my dreams changed again, and I had no intention of telling Rachel how.

  The new dream was clearer than any that had come before, and though I was speaking in a foreign language, I could understand my words. I was walking down a sandy road. I came to a well. The water was low in the well, and I had nothing to draw it with. After a time, a woman came with an urn on a rope. I asked if she would draw me some water. She appeared surprised that I would speak to her, and I sensed that we were of different tribes. I told her the water in the well would not cure her thirst. We talked for a time, and she began to look at me with appraising eyes.

  “I can see you are a prophet,” she said. “You see many things that are hidden.”

  “I’m no prophet,” I told her.

  She watched me in silence for a while. Then she said, “They speak of a Messiah who will come someday to tell us things. What do you think of that?”

  I looked at the ground, but words of profound conviction rose unbidden into my throat. I looked at the woman and said, “I that speak to you am he.”

  The woman did not laugh. She knelt and touched my knee, then walked away, looking back over her shoulder again and again.

  When I snapped out of that dream, I was soaked in sweat. I didn’t lift the phone and call Rachel for an emergency appointment. I saw no point. I no longer believed any dream interpretation could help me, because I was not dreaming. I was remembering.

  “What are you thinking about?” Rachel asked from the passenger seat.

  We were nearing the UNC campus. “How you got here.”

  She shifted in her seat and gave me a concerned look. “I’m here because you missed three sessions, and you wouldn’t have done that unless things had taken a turn for the worse. I think your hallucinations have changed again, and they’ve scared the hell out of you.”

  I gripped the wheel tighter but didn’t speak. Somewhere, the NSA was listening.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” she said. “What could be the harm?”

  “This isn’t the time. Or the place.”

  The UNC theater was up ahead on the left. To our right the Forest Amphitheater lay in the trees below the road. I made a hard right and coasted down a dark hill on a street that ran between two rows of stately homes, a single-entrance neighborhood that housed tenured professors and affluent young professionals. Fielding had lived in a small, two-story house set well back from the street. Perfect for him and the Chinese wife he hoped to bring to America.

  “Where are we?” Rachel asked.

  “Fielding’s house is right up here.”

  I looked in the direction of the house but saw only darkness. I’d expected to find the place ablaze with light, as my own had been after I lost Karen and Zooey. I had a moment of panic, a premonition that I’d driven into one of those 1970s conspiracy films where you walk up to a familiar house and find it vacant. Or worse, with an entirely new family living there.

  A porch light clicked on thirty yards from the street. Lu Li must have been watching from a darkened window. I turned my head and scanned the street for suspicious vehicles. I frequently spotted the NSA surveillance cars assigned to tail me. Either the security teams didn’t care if we saw them or, more likely, they wanted us to know we were being watched. Tonight I saw nothing suspicious, but I did sense that something wasn’t as it should be. Perhaps there were watchers who did not want to be seen. I turned into Fielding’s driveway and pulled up to the closed garage door.

  “A Nobel laureate lives here?” Rachel asked, gesturing at the modest house.

  “Lived,” I corrected. “Stay here. I’m going to the door alone.”

  “For God’s sake,” she snapped. “This is ridiculous. Just admit this is all a charade, and let’s go get some coffee and talk about it.”

  I grabbed her arm and looked hard into her eyes. “Listen to me, damn it. It’s probably okay, but this is the way we’re going to do it. I’ll whistle when it’s all right for you to come up.”

  I walked up to the front door of my dead friend’s house, my hands in plain sight, my mind on the .38 in my pocket.

  Chapter

  5

  Geli Bauer listened intently as Corelli reported from the Fielding house.

  “They’re going inside now. Tennant went up first. The shrink is hanging back. Now she’s going up. Wait…I think the doc is carrying.”

  “Which doc?”

  “Oh. Tennant. He’s got a gun in his pocket. Right front.”

  “You see the butt?”

  “No, but it looks like a revolver.”

  What the hell does Tennant think he’s up to? The cell connection crackled.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Corelli.

  “Sit tight and make sure the mikes are working.”

  “The widow just answered the door. She’s pulling them inside.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  Geli killed the connection to Corelli. If Tennant was carrying a gun, he was afraid for his life. He must believe Fielding had been murdered. But why? The drug that had killed Fielding caused a fatal bleed in the brain—a true stroke. Without an autopsy, murder couldn’t be proved. And there would be no autopsy. Tennant must know more than Godin thought he did. If the FedEx letter he’d received had been sent by Fielding, it might have contained some sort of evidence.

  She touched her headset mike and said, “Skow. Home.” Her computer dialed John Skow’s house in Raleigh.

  “What is it now?” Skow said after two rings.

  “Tennant and Weiss hardly spoke on the way to Fielding’s house.”

  “So?”

  “It wasn’t natural. They’re avoiding conversation.”

  “Tennant knows he’s under surveillance. You’ve always wanted them all to know that.”

  “Yes, but Tennant’s never been evasive like this. He’s up to something.”

  “He’s a little freaked-out. It’s natural.”

  “He’s carrying a gun.”

  A pause. “Okay, he’s a lot freaked-out. We knew he had one in his house.”

  “That’s different than carrying the damn thing.”

  Skow chuckled. “That’s the kind of reaction you inspire in people, Geli. Seriously, you need to calm down. Everything is context. We know Tennant was
suspicious already. His best friend died today. He’s naturally paranoid. What we don’t want to do is make him more suspicious.”

  She wished she could talk to Godin. She’d tried his private cell number, but he hadn’t answered or called back. It was the first time that had ever happened. “Look, I think—”