But now I stood in the center of people’s frames of vision in the sanctuary of this splendid church in which, through my twilight years, I have been able to serve. I stood before perhaps eighty frightened people, the largest Sabbath morning crowd that my congregation had been able to muster in years. Now they were all here because of the dread events of the past days, and this was the only place they had to turn. And now instead of the comfort for which they had come, I was spouting forth what I had long believed to be words from a dying fever dream of Saint John the Divine. In those days the apostle had lain hallucinating through the last days of his life, banished to a desert island by a frightened king, scribbling or dictating these words of the most horrifying unfulfilled prophecy in the Scriptures.
I had no time to think, as my mouth dribbled on, that perhaps I should reevaluate my regard for Saint John. Because if Saint John was mad, then Wesley had probably been mad as well. And if Wesley was mad, then certainly I, his successor, was also mad. I had no time to think this until my dismayed flock in the sanctuary thinned. I was too busy trying to get my mouth to stop.
“And the third angel sounded,” I continued against my will, “and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.”
Mrs. Watters in the third row started to weep. Her son, I knew, was an agronomist who lived with his family in southern Nebraska. Surely she had been unable to communicate with him since the disaster. It was altogether likely that he, so far from Ground Zero, was fine, but Mrs. Watters did not know that for sure. Church was where she came to seek—in vain—the comfort she required until she did know. I was ashamed, and it was my shame that finally stanched the intemperate words of the inconsolable Saint John.
“I spoke of metaphors some weeks ago,” were the first words I dragged, kicking and screaming, from my conscious will. I tried to change the tone of my voice to convince my congregants that the whole unsettling episode was my effort to make a point. “The metaphors of John the Apostle in the book of Revelation concern events similar to the trial we and our families experience today.”
Murmuring. I was losing my congregation. My blathering had lasted too long. I needed to pull them back with rationality before I could offer them the comfort for which they were here.
“In Revelation,” I continued gamely, “Saint John describes a dream of grasslands turned to desert and stars raining fire on the Earth and rivers and oceans turning to blood. It is a greater hardship, in its way, than even we have suffered these past few days.”
They were starting to look at me again. I had eye contact with seven or eight of the people in the pews. Mrs. Watters quieted down. Slowly, they were coming around.
“Revelation, from which I quoted when we began, is a vivid dream that its author left to posterity. To us. And what have we learned is the purpose of dreams? Dreams are our rehearsal for adversity. They are our self-education, a way for us to face our fears before we have anything to fear. We do not have to have degrees in psychology to know that it is our dreams that keep us sane. And literature, storytelling, is our collective dream.”
Nodding. I saw nodding. It was slight scattered nodding, but nodding nonetheless, with open eyes. The members of my flock were with me again, I was sure.
“In His wisdom, two thousand years ago the Lord sent Saint John a dream to keep us sane. A time capsule that foresaw nuclear power and metahuman frailty. In the book of The Revelation of Saint John the Divine we have a precedent to follow even in the case of what seems to be a devastating apocalypse.”
Yes! I recovered it. Mrs. Watters smiled up at me through red eyes. I found a point to make, and I made it. I brought it full circle. I was ad-libbing the most delicate sermon of my career and making it work. I could do anything. I could prophesy, for Heaven’s sake.
“The most apocalyptic tale of the Scriptures recommends that in answer to our ordeal we do this: We must say, loudly and clearly, ‘Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made Heaven, and Earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.’ ”
Now I was declaiming like the pipe organ that rattled the walls of this room, the way Isaiah once must have caused the walls of the court of King Hezekiah to clatter. And finally I was saying what I wanted to say at the same time as I was letting words that wanted to be said fall from my mouth.
“His judgment is come,” I said, and meant to pause. But instead I said, “And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”
Oh for Heaven’s sake, what was I talking about?
“And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand…”
Mrs. Watters had her forehead down in her hand again. Mr. Steeplegarde crinkled his brow in a way I had never seen him do before. Several lucky folks toward the back were eyeing the doors and clearly wondering how to slip between them without making them swing open and shut. My congregants dropped their faces into prayerbooks or the weekly church bulletin or counted the number of pipes on the organ. And again I could not stop and certainly could not explain.
“… The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.”
Mr. Tarlow, toward the rear pews, found a way. He looked at his watch, feigned alarm, and, smiling apologetically at nowhere in particular, padded out the door appearing for all the world to have someplace terribly important he realized he had to be.
“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night.”
Then finally, my witness exhausted, my voice was mine again. I let go of whatever was in my hands, pages of Scripture I must have torn from my prayerbook in a preaching frenzy. “Forgive me,” I said. “This isn’t what I wanted to … Forgive me.”
And so it went.
*
As I always did, I greeted my people—those who politely stayed through my uncertain benediction—as they left the church. I did not get much eye contact even then. A minister measures the value of his day by eye contact. What few eyes I did see were angry or sullen or blank, shying from my gaze.
My congregation had trusted me for years, and this day I betrayed them. In mourning, unable even to fathom the news that stopped the world, they came to me seeking encouragement that I could not offer.
*
I went through the empty church looking for discarded papers and the prayerbooks that remained on the seats, but by the third row I could not stand any more. Holding a retrieved prayerbook, I folded myself into a seat and slowly tumbled sideways until my head rested on the pew and my eyes gently closed, seeking a dreamless sleep. All I could do was clutch my hands open and shut, tense my muscles, and deny myself a succor I surely did not deserve.
There was a rustling of the air. I wondered where I might have left a window open. I ignored this sound that sought to shorten my brief rest. Who knew, if I allowed myself to sleep, when some dream would presage an even bleaker future? Who knew, if I kept my eyes open, when some vision would tease my wits with symbols of a catastrophe that I was neither smart nor creative enough to decode? Let the phantom wind rustle the currents of this big airtight room. Let the ghosts of the million gone in Kansas come and carry me away with them, too.
Then I had to open my eyes. My body made me. I opened them in time to see a big stained-glass representation of a lion lying down beside a lamb, fluttering as though it were cloth. I did not believe this was happening. I had been prepared by the dire visions of these past days and weeks—both Wesley’s and mine—to greet the unlikely and the unwieldy with skepticism and disdain. When the fluttering
began to take the form of the sort of robe that might wrap a monk and began to flow through the stained glass as though emerging from a pool, I rose from my pew and turned my back to leave this vision. But there arose in my pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.
“What do you want from me?” I asked this spectre, and, to my surprise but not delight, it answered me.
“The visions you have seen,” the figure said, “the witness you have borne, they are real, Norman McCay. I am real. Are you somehow not yet convinced of that?”
“I am convinced of it,” I replied. He was an enormous man in a green robe that constantly flapped around him as if with the wind. His face seemed bleach-white, but I could not for the soul of me make out his features or find even his eyes. And quietly, without resistance, I added, “I am not convinced, however, that you and the other visions are worth paying attention to.”
“I have need of you, Norman McCay.”
I have gone mad, I told myself. Now my visions talked to me. They addressed me by name.
“You are not mad, Norman McCay,” the figure said, and I did not even realize he was addressing my thoughts rather than my words before I answered.
“I would far rather go mad than continue to walk through the tribulation I have lived and witnessed already.” Now I knew why so many prophets die insane. It is a welcome respite from the certainty that afflicts them. I turned my back on the figure again and walked toward the side entrance…
… where he greeted me, materializing in a moment out of a ruffle of rolling air that turned green, then white, and collected into the massive figure.
“It is your sanity that I count on, Norman McCay.”
“What are you? A vision that talks back?”
“I am the spiritual continuation of one that has been of your kind. And yes, a vision of sorts. Those of your plane who know me, call me the Spectre.”
Could this really be a supernatural figure standing before me? I wondered. Did I have a better explanation? A rational explanation?
And was rationality an option for me right now? I had to think. I turned away again.
“Even as I stand before you,” he said, suddenly standing before me again, “an act of unspeakable evil has begun to manifest. Armageddon is fast approaching.”
This was too much for me to consider all at once. I just stood there, feeling the skepticism melting off my face to make way for realization and wonder. The apparition shot out a hand that first touched my forehead and then touched nothing at all as it moved into my head and rested there as if I were thin air.
“But you know this, Norman McCay, do you not? After all, you have the dreams.”
“You … what?” I said, fumbling over the words. “You see into my mind? In my soul?”
“Yes.”
“What are you? An angel?”
“Of a sort. A higher power has charged me with the duty of punishing those responsible for this coming evil.”
“Coming evil?” I wanted to know. “What coming evil? What do we do to stop it?”
“That is not my mission.”
“Not your mission?”
“I need you, Norman McCay.”
“For what?” I suspected we had a divergence of missions. “If you want me to do some good, then I will. Who is responsible for the Kansas Holocaust?”
“Long ago I would have judged swiftly, with clarity,” this angel in green said, “but my faculties with regard to temporal affairs are not what they once were.”
“You were human, you said?”
“Once I wore the name James Corrigan and reveled in the deliverance of justice. That was lifetimes ago, and what humanity remains in my nature is inadequate. Now I must anchor myself to the soul of a mortal who seeks justice.”
“But I don’t—”
“You will.”
“My business is redemption, Ghost. Justice has always been a mystery to me.”
“You will come to understand many mysteries,” he said.
He drew his face close to mine when he said that. It was all I saw: not really even a face but a pasty haze of white. The rest of the world seemed to melt into darkness for a moment. His aspect shifted, as though he could not determine himself into a space where he fit.
“Then, these delusions I have been suffering—”
“Visions,” he said.
“They’re … what? Real?”
“The limits of human language do not allow me to characterize them adequately,” he said, “but their validity is the reason I have sought you out.”
“You didn’t send them?”
“Certainly not.”
I realized that if ever I really believed in angels—and I supposed that I did—then it was curious that I experienced none of the terrible swift ecstasy of which my forebears incessantly preached. Nor was there fear or terror; what I perceived to be my encroaching madness accounted for far more horror than the mere arrival of an angel could effect.
Then he said, “I came too late in search of the dreamer Wesley Dodds. He saw tomorrow with a power he did not understand, but passed to you nonetheless.”
“Wait a minute.” I strained my intellect to grasp the concept. “What you’re saying is that this … this capacity of mine is the product of our own will? Wesley’s and mine?”
“Do not yet dismiss the concept of human achievement.”
And thus I knew he had been watching both Wesley and me for some time.
“Now your dreams will guide us both. In order for me to fulfill my mission we must both witness the events that will lead to Armageddon.”
“If you are truly a being of great power,” I insisted, “how can it be that you have no way to avert this catastrophe?”
“That is not my task.”
“Then, whose task is it?”
“Among your kind, there are those of great power. Once these souls might have stemmed the tide of destruction. But as you will see, they are no longer the solution. They are, in many ways, the problem.”
I did not want to hear that. I did not want to hear much of this, not even the fact that my visions were an extension of reality. I had hoped lately to spend my twilight growing comfortably senseless.
He reached a hand toward mine and said, “Come with me.”
“No,” I said. “I cannot simply leave. My congregation depends on me. They look to me for—”
And he directed my sight to a Book of Common Prayer, lying on the floor between two pews. It was the book that I clutched in my hand when I had tried to sleep on the pew, a handful of pages ripped from it as if not by a distracted elderly pastor but by teenage hoodlums who had ransacked the sanctuary. “Need you?” he gently challenged. “For what?”
Vulnerable enough for the moment at the sight, I dropped my hand into his and the air began to swirl slowly around me and my lovely church faded. If I had thought about his proposition for another moment, I surely would have turned him down.
CHAPTER 5
Cincinnatus
When I saw the endless fields of wheat and alfalfa waving in the breeze, the first thing I did was cry. My initial reaction to news of the Holocaust in the Heartland had been simply to try integrating it into what I was already doing: helping my congregants to deal with the world as it was. When I finally walked out among the people abroad in the city of Metropolis, fully a day after the disaster, there seemed to be two populations: the terribly sorrowful on the one hand, and on the other hand the numb, like ghosts. These were the extremes, and there was no middle ground. Here in the wheatfields, wherever it was that this apparition—this Spectre—had carried me, I finally joined the ranks of the sorrowful.
What I saw when the world re-formed from haze into firmament were amber waves of grain stretched over the countryside as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance a sturdy post-and-beam barn rose over the rich healthy loam; outside the b
arn, unbound by corral or fencing of any sort, horses and goats and dogs—and a monkey, I thought I saw—bounded and leapt through a clearing. A colt grazed under the watchful eye of a mare who stood between it and her spirited stallion. A little white terrier yipped and howled at the enormous old pig that ignored the dog to chew on a rawhide bone.
I imagined the fronds of wheat brushing the tears from my cheeks as I walked like a spirit toward the barn. In the distance was a mesh corncrib and, beyond it, a field of corn as high as an elephant’s eye. I mourned for the Heartland of America and wished for the answer I wanted to hear as I asked my impassive keeper:
“Have you taken me to the past? Or can such a thing as this be in our world’s future?”
The Spectre actually hesitated a moment and reached to place a chill hand on my head before he said, “We have not broached the barriers of time, Norman McCay. Time passes here as it always has in your experience.”
“Then how is a place like this possible? I thought—”
“It is gone, make no mistake. The place whose grain has been the staff of the lives of billions and whose corn has fattened mountains of livestock is lost. Its earth is irradiated. Its productivity is truncated. But this is another place. Look farther.”
That I did. From the direction of the barn I heard the tapping of a hammer. I walked the distance—it seemed about a quarter-mile, but I covered it in little time—and looked in the wide door. Inside, a man was inspecting the new shoes that evidently he just had affixed to the hooves of an enormous dray horse. He cleaned the dirt from the bottom of the horse’s feet with a metal hook he held by a handle between two fisted fingers, and put the animal’s leg down. It was not until the horse walked by me, mane flowing, the fur of its fetlocks blowing like flags, that I saw that this animal’s withers were quite higher than my head, and I realized how enormous a man the animal’s master must be. The man was of human proportion, no doubt—not like the form my ghostly guide affected—but nonetheless huge and imposing. His arms were thicker than my thighs. He was shirtless, in a bibbed denim coverall whose cross-straps strained against his back as he bent over to lift an arm-wrenching anvil from the ground and carry it out after the horse as though it were a hammer or a screwdriver. Then I realized I saw no hammer here, though I had heard the tapping of one. There were no tools here at all other than anvils of various shapes on a few workbenches, and a large bucket of silver horseshoes and nails. A tractor perched against a wall alongside the open doorway.
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