Risen

by Strnad, Jan

  He described the crushing void and the monstrous sounds, the terrible wails of lost souls. He told them about wandering, hands stretched before him, feeling his way step by step through the relentless dark. He told them about kneeling down to touch the earth beneath his feet, and how it was coarse and sharp and left splinters like glass in his fingertips. He told about stepping into nothingness and falling, about sliding and tumbling down the lacerating rock until it seemed no shred of skin remained, yet how the wounds refused to bleed. Somehow he knew they would just as stubbornly refuse to heal.

  Galen's eyes went blank as if again confronting that limitless night, and he told about staggering along after his fall, his exposed flesh screaming from a thousand cuts, pain shooting through a battered ankle. Tears burned their way down his ravaged cheeks and his cries joined those of the invisible damned he could sense but never find, hear but never touch.

  He told of the stirring of a hot wind that parched his lips and cracked his skin and carried no scent of life. He talked of despair, of collapsing and writhing on the harsh, hot surface, consumed by pain and terror.

  "I couldn't take it," he said. "I lost it completely. This was my future and it wasn't going to last for a year or even a hundred years. This was forever.

  "And I knew that good and evil didn't have a fucking thing to do with it. I wasn't in Hell. There isn't any Hell, or Heaven either. There's just the void, and it's the same for everybody. Death is nothingness and pain and loneliness, and it's eternity. Once you die, that's where you go."

  "How do you know?" Kent asked.

  Galen paused. "Because," he said, "that's what Seth teaches us."

  Seth, Galen explained, was a rebel. "He rebelled against death and the eternal void by restoring life to those who had died. For this sin he was cast out and made to wander the earth. He lives in two worlds, on earth and in the void, and with each soul he rescues he becomes stronger. He is our life and we are his!"

  "Where was he cast out from?" Buzzy asked.

  "What?" Galen said irritably.

  "You said he was cast out, but you said there wasn't any Heaven, so where was he cast out from?"

  "How the fuck should I know? Listen...I've been there! I've seen this place! It is not where you want to spend eternity, right? I've met Seth. He gave me my life back! He took a fucking pile of ashes and...!" Galen thumped his chest. "Look! Believe the evidence of your own fucking eyes!"

  Buzzy persevered.

  "So everything they taught us is wrong," he said. "Everything about God and Jesus and Heaven and Hell and all that, it's all wrong."

  Galen paced.

  "Look," he said, trying to keep the anger and impatience out of his voice and coming up instead with an ominous monotone, "I'm telling you what happened. This isn't out of some book written by some guy a million years ago and handed down and translated and fucked up and sold to the masses to pump the plastic Jesus business. This is real!"

  He closed on Buzzy, backing him against the fender of his Vega.

  "Have I tried to sell you anything?" Galen asked. "Have I asked you for money? Am I getting something out of this? I'm trying to bring you the fucking truth and you're standing here telling me I'm full of shit! I came back from the dead, motherfucker!"

  "I know! I was there!" Buzzy said. "It was freakin' weird, man, and I'm having a little trouble getting my head around it, okay? I'm just trying to understand!"

  "What is there to understand? I told you everything you need to know! Beyond that...." Galen shrugged. "Beyond that, all you can do is experience it."

  Darren and Kent exchanged looks that said He can't mean... and I think he does... and Holy shit, we're ass-deep in it this time.

  Buzzy looked to Darren and Kent for assurance that Galen didn't mean what they all knew he meant.

  "Yeah, you got it," Galen said, looking from one downturned face to the next. "You've got to make the journey, my friends. You've got to make the farthest journey." He opened his arms and said, "It's the only way to fly."

  "Forget it," Buzzy said, extricating himself from between Galen and the fender. He took a long draw on his beer and turned his back to the group.

  "Fine," Galen said. "No skin off my ass. Enjoy the void, pal." And he went to work on Darren and Kent.

  Twenty

  Maybe it was the beers. Maybe it was as simple as that.

  The beers, and the flask of Jim Beam that had mysteriously appeared from Galen's back pocket after they'd polished off the twelve-pack.

  They were plastered, for sure, and the needle on the Vega's speedometer blurred in and out of focus as Buzzy stared at it. Buzzy couldn't make out the numbers clearly but the needle was way over to the right and he could feel the wheel shake in his hands as the car barreled down the highway.

  He looked over at Galen and Galen grinned back at him. How'd he let Galen talk him into this?

  "Immortality," Galen had said to Darren and Kent. Buzzy stood apart from the group but he stayed within earshot. "Immortality, not just of the spirit, but of the body as well. That's what Seth offers, pure and simple. I am the living, walking, talking, drinking, belching, farting proof. I have cheated Death.

  "All of those people out there," he'd said, gesturing toward town, "living their little lives, working their work...they're doomed. Doomed to the void. God won't save them. Jesus won't save them. Buddha and Mohammed won't save them. Only one person can save them from an eternity of night. Seth.

  "Seth walks among us, right here in little ol' Anderson U.S.A. He is here and he will save us from death, but we have to meet him halfway. He can't do it all. We have to show him that we believe in him and trust him to help us."

  "How do we do that?" Darren had asked, and Galen had said, "Die." He opened his hands and strutted in front of the boys like a prosecuting attorney. "That's all. Just die. Doesn't matter how."

  "How about old age?" Buzzy had said, wandering back to the others.

  Galen glared at him. "Go ahead, make jokes about it. Laugh it off. Wuss out any way you want to. Be like Culler and run out of town with your tail between your legs."

  The boys started, and Galen smiled at them. "Did you think I didn't notice? He wasn't at the service, he wasn't in school. I called his house, there was nobody there. It's okay. Some people can't handle it. They'll miss out. Too bad for them."

  Galen wrapped an arm around Darren and another around Buzzy, drawing them close. It was more like a wrestling hold than an embrace.

  "But you're my buds. I'm not going to let you miss it. We're all for one, right? Right?"

  "I don't know," Buzzy said, extricating himself. "Suppose it doesn't work."

  Galen looked at him in disbelief.

  "Look at me," Galen commanded. He held up his arms, turned around in a full circle. "I was dead. Hell, I was fucking cremated, and I came back!" He leaned in close to Buzzy, intimidating. "Impossible, isn't it? Can't happen. But here I am. It fucking works!"

  Galen calmed down and spoke confidentially, drawing the boys in. "Let me tell you something. There are forces in this world so powerful, we can't even comprehend. We're like an ant standing on the railroad track. Along comes a train and wham! He never knows what hit him. That train is so much more powerful, it isn't even funny.

  "Seth is that train. And either you're on board, or you're that ant."

  And that's how it had gone for the next hour. Galen had orated and proclaimed, he'd brow-beaten them, he'd pulled out the whiskey and gotten them drunk, and somehow he'd convinced them all, even Buzzy, that the best thing in the world they could do on that particular, deepening afternoon was to kill themselves.

  Bringing them to this moment, in two cars racing down the highway with the pedal mashed to the floor, straddling the center line.

  Galen was all smiles. Buzzy looked at him but couldn't bring him into focus. Galen reached over and steadied the wheel, keeping Buzzy on course. Darren and Kent hadn't come into view yet. Maybe they never would. Maybe, once they were away from Galen'
s spell, they'd drive off and just keep going.

  No. There they were, coming over the rise. Darren's Satellite crested the hill, wheels on either side of the center line. It looked like a slot car, and Buzzy remembered how he and Darren had played with Buzzy's slot car set when they were kids, sticking two cars in the same slot, rear bumpers touching, and then they'd squeeze the throttle and watch the cars race around the track doomed to the inevitable collision.

  They'd blown up a lot of stuff together. Half the fun of building a model airplane was the M80 they'd pack inside, fuse sticking out. Then they'd hang the airplane in a tree, dangling on strings, and light the fuse and run backwards so they'd be sure to see it when it blew. Model planes, model ships, model cars...all met the same fate through one means or another. Buzzy figured it was some kind of gene that the male of the species possessed, the "pyrotechnic gene" that gave them such delight in anything explosive. So common was that gene, it's a wonder every boy in America didn't grow up to be a demolition expert.

  Now the game had become real. The cars sped along a real highway with real people inside who would die real deaths. So why did this veil of unreality hang over every moment? Why did the whole thing feel like a dream? Denial, probably, or Jim Beam.

  I can always pull out, Buzzy thought. It was the comforting lie that kept his foot on the accelerator and the wheel pointed straight ahead. I can chicken out, swerve and miss, and they'll call me a coward all the time they're thanking their lucky stars that I did it. And I won't give a shit. Six months from now, this'll all be a memory, a story I'll tell my college friends.

  Darren was flashing his lights at him. Buzzy fumbled for the switch and gave it a couple of yanks.

  In the other car, Darren saw Buzzy's Vega toeing the line a half mile ahead. He flashed his lights and Buzzy flashed back. He'll wimp out, Darren thought. It wasn't like Buzzy to go through with something like this. Especially now, when he was going away and everything.

  Darren glanced over at Kent. It looked like Kent was ready to climb out the window, he was so scared. They were all pretty fucked up but not so much that they didn't know what they were doing.

  Darren was intrigued by Galen's story about death and the void and the man who promised them eternal life, but he didn't know if he believed it. Galen was living proof, but proof of what? That something incredible had happened. The rest could've been a dream or a hallucination, or maybe Galen wasn't Galen at all but some demon from Hell come back to lure them all to their deaths. Shit! That was a new thought!

  He eased back on the accelerator to give himself a few seconds to consider this. Problem was, his brain wasn't working too good right now. Neither were his eyes or his hands or his feet. He slowed down more than he meant to and the car lurched and Kent looked over and asked him what was wrong.

  "Nothing," Darren said, and he mashed the pedal to the floor. Buzzy wouldn't go through with it. If Tom had been here, it never would've gotten this far. He'd have stood up to Galen and not been talked into anything. Where the hell was Tom, anyway?

  The Vega was getting close. Darren's hands were slick with sweat. The wheel vibrated like crazy but Darren slipped one hand off and rubbed it on his jeans. Then he dried the other one. He wondered if Kent noticed his nervousness and looked over, but Kent wasn't noticing anything except the floor. He held his head in his hands.

  Darren said, "Hey, if you're going to—" but the warning came too late. Vomit gushed out of Kent's mouth and soaked the floor mats.

  "Shit!" Darren said as Kent continued to heave. He started to yell at Kent that he was the one who'd clean that mess up, and then he thought, Nobody's cleaning it up, not unless Buzzy comes through. Puke on the floor mats would be the least of Darren's worries if Buzzy didn't pull out. Still, he hated to die with the stink of Kent's vomit in his nose.

  The front seat drama had distracted Darren for a few seconds and he'd let the Satellite wander. He looked up and was amazed at how close the Vega was, how the gap between them had narrowed so quickly. He made a fast course correction and was once more bound for glory. Or whatever.

  Buzzy watched Darren's Satellite get closer and closer. The dreamlike veil disappeared and Buzzy's mind screamed at him, This is real! The onrushing car meant the end of everything, absolutely everything. No school, no girls, no cars. Images flashed through his mind of corpses and stainless steel tables and trocars and formaldehyde pumped through tubes, and he saw himself on the that table, slit open, organs scooped out, and Jed Grimm bending over him, applying rouge to his cheeks and paint to his lips, his parents looking down on his body in the coffin, his mother crying, and him lying there with barbed wire in his mouth and rubber forms under his skin, eyelids sewn shut, a look molded on his face of sweet repose, as if he were dreaming of angels.

  You should be so lucky, his mind said. They'll wash you out of this wreck with a hose.

  Darren watched Buzzy's Vega close in fast and couldn't believe that Buzzy hadn't pulled over. Kent watched out the windshield in helpless fascination, like a mouse hypnotized by a snake. He watched death bear down on him and he was as sure as he'd ever been about anything that he'd made the stupidest mistake of his life. How did he let himself get talked into this? His dad was right, he did have shit for brains. As the Vega ate up the road between them, all Kent could think was shit!

  Buzzy glanced over at Galen. Galen knew what he was thinking, that he was thinking about swerving. Galen glared at him as if beaming strength of will into Buzzy's brain, freezing Buzzy's hands on the wheel, his foot to the floor. There was no way Buzzy was turning that wheel. He was in it to the end, to the ever-loving, ass-kicking end. He pulled his eyes away from Galen and focused on the Satellite, on the headlights Darren had left on, and he watched them get bigger and bigger as the highway between the two cars vanished.

  Darren's mind screamed at Buzzy's to swerve. He was cutting it too close! Turn, damn it, turn! What in the fuck are you waiting for?

  Kent couldn't take it anymore. He lunged at the wheel and yanked it hard and it slid under Darren's sweaty fingers. The Satellite swerved hard to the right and there was the crying of tires and then the car was perpendicular to the road and going too fast and suddenly it was rolling, rolling, still on course, hugging the center line as metal crunched and glass shattered and it rolled toward the oncoming Vega.

  Buzzy stared at the car rolling at him along the highway like the blades of a combine. The Satellite bounced and for one crazy instant Buzzy thought it might bounce right over the Vega's roof and on down the highway like a tumbleweed. Then the cars crashed in a terrible cry of metal and an explosion of glass, and death came so quickly that no one knew it.

  And no one in either car saw the fireball shoot into the sky so gloriously and so vividly orange against the blue sky, roaring and tumbling, soaring into the heavens, rising on a column of black smoke that was visible for miles.

  ***

  "Old Donny won't give you any trouble, Doctor," the orderly said. "The state cut him up pretty good before they sent him here."

  "When was that?" Brant asked, amazed as always at how easy it was to claim credentials you didn't have. He and Tom and the orderly walked through the minimum security ward of the Greenhaven Convalescent Center. Few of the residents of Greenhaven were "convalescing" in the sense that they were getting better. "Greenhaven Storage Facility" would have been more accurate.

  "Fifty years, give or take," replied the orderly. "Electric shock, lobotomy, drug therapy...Donny's been through it all. Every fad, every cure-all, Donny's been there. In the sixties they had him tripping out on LSD, can you believe that?"

  Tom kept a wary eye on the inmates who stared at him as he passed. One woman approached him and grabbed his arm and stroked it. "My boy," she said. She said it over and over while looking up at Tom's face. "My boy, my boy." At first glance Tom had thought she was a much older woman, but when he looked her in the eyes he realized that she was not much, if any, older than his own mother.

  The ord
erly pulled her away gently but firmly.

  "He's not your boy, Grace," he told her.

  "My boy," Grace insisted forlornly, and Tom almost wished he was her son who, the orderly explained, had died in infancy fifteen years earlier.

  "Grace is something else," the orderly said as they continued without incident down the corridor. "Usually if they've lost a child like that, they won't think about them getting older. If they lost, say, a three-year-old, they might develop a fascination with three-year-olds. Not Grace, though. She follows the years. Her boy keeps getting older. He really is alive in her mind. Here we are."

  The orderly knocked on a closed door but didn't wait for a response. He opened the door without a key, revealing an old man inside on a hard wooden chair, rocking his body and humming a tune that neither Brant nor Tom could quite make out.

  "Donald? You have visitors." The orderly turned to Brant and said, "Give him a little while to get used to you. Nobody visits old Donny much anymore. He doesn't have any family. Well, a sister, but she ought to be here, too, from what I hear. I guess it runs in the family. He's okay, though. Like I said, they messed him up pretty good."

  Brant noticed the scar left from a frontal lobotomy performed circa 1936.

  "Donald?" Brant said. Donald Pritchett didn't respond. Brant and Tom moved closer. "My name is Brant Kettering. This is Tom Culler. We'd like to talk with you for a few minutes."

  Donald Pritchett continued rocking and humming softly. Brant looked at the orderly standing in the doorway. "Can he answer questions?"

  The orderly shrugged. "In his way. I think he understands more than he lets on."

  Brant moved around to face Pritchett directly, bending down to try to make eye contact with the old man.

  "Donald, this is very important to us. I need to ask you some questions. Do you understand me?"

  There was no response. Brant put one knee on the floor to kneel in front of Pritchett and look into his eyes. They seemed to stare at some point miles, or perhaps decades, away. He hummed quietly, a tune that faded in and out.