by Alan Rodgers
“Come,” she said, grabbing the Devil’s severed head and hurling it through the window. “There is no time. Find your song before it fades again.” As she spoke she gestured at Lisa’s kazoo, which rested on the floor just inches from the Devil’s leaking carcass. She didn’t wait for Lisa to respond before she turned, sheathed her sword, and crossed the room, returning to her place before the fire.
She didn’t have to, either. Even as the Lady spoke Lisa scrambled to her feet, no matter how her aching stomach made her want to curl up into a ball and die. Scrambled to her feet, found her instrument, and found her song.
When she looked up she saw the Santa beginning to weave the Eye into the music with her tongs.
As she wove it the ghosts of the old Kings came to walk among them.
Vaporous old men and Ma Rainey condensing into people as touchable and real as you and I.
As the old Kings joined the song to hammer the Eye in the forge that fell from Heaven.
As the Kings sang, as the deadmen sang, as the bluesmen sang, as Huddie Ledbetter testified his sins, the Legions of the Damned found a desperate new strength, and in their desperation they found the courage that let them overrun the Louisiana National Guard and storm the revival compass.
But by then it was no use.
For as they approached the compass the whole revival took up in song, singing “Jesu,” and the joy and the melody and the deliverance that rose up from that song and the penitence of the revival were so intense that they called the Pearly Gates of Heaven down into the Hell that was New Orleans.
The Right and Left Hands of the Lord stepped out of the revival crowd, and opened the gates so beautiful and wide, and what Legion of the Damned can abide the clear pure sight of Heaven?
None can, and that’s a natural fact. The damned ran, screaming in agony for Mercy, never knowing that Mercy itself was what they ran from.
As the Saints went Marching In.
When they were gone the Damned too were gone from the City of New Orleans, and Hell itself had peeled away from our mortal plane, for neither that damnable place nor its denizens can abide the Gates of Heaven, which stand always by their nature in a state of Profound Grace.
When “Jesu” reached its seventh chorus at the forge-hearth the Eye took shape inside the song, and the Tower began to dissolve around Lisa, the Santa, the deadmen, and the bluesman.
When the Tower was gone they stood atop the old ruined tower down in Hell, still singing; and now the Eye rose up into the infernal sky, where to this day it watches the damned and reminds them of their last hope for salvation.
As the song faded away, the Santa pointed at the Sea of Fire and Ice. There was a boat beached along its shore — an ancient Roman galley, waiting for them.
Lisa said, “She means that it’s for us,” and she started down the weathered Tower stairs. After a while the others followed her.
They went to the boat and sailed it out across the Sea of Fire and Ice — all of them but the Santa, who disappeared somewhere in the ruins of the Fallen City.
That galley carried them in a state of Grace through all the worst parts of Hell. Through the Sea of Fire and Ice, that great flaming arm of the Lake of Fire where shards of ice (and even icebergs) float among the embers, promising the fire and ice that will someday end the world; past the Infernal Hellespont and beyond that the fiery Bay of Ages, and out among the abysmal islands that speckle that arm of the Lake of Fire. Nestled among them lies the Damned Peloponesis, and there the galley grounded on the shore of the Lake of Fire where it looks upon the Mansion called Defiance.
Dead Elvis led them through the Mansion, and up the endless winding stair that leads to the Devil’s Mansion in New Orleans.
That Mansion was an ashen ruin, and the entrance to it from the stair lay blocked with ash and hot debris. It took them hours to clear the way, and they might never have cleared it at all if Lisa’s mother and the new Kings hadn’t stood on the far side of the ruin, digging down toward them from the world.
When they finally broke through to see the light of day, Lisa and her mother cried for joy at the sight of one another, and the Kings faced one another and the place the world had made for them.
Some say they went upriver from there, to the old Kings’ forgotten Mansion on the Mountain. But that’s speculation, like as not; no living person knows the ways of those who really rule the Delta.
About the Author
Bram Stoker Award-winning author and editor Alan Rodgers (1959-2014) was a horror writer, he loved sci-fi, and was an extraordinarily gifted editor and poet.
Alan is remembered by many for his work in the early eighties as Associate Editor for Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine(1984-1987). Soon after he initiated another project as the Editor of the spin-off horror digest Night Cry(1985-1987). His stories have been published in a number of venues including Weird Tales, Twilight Zone and a number of anthologies such as Darker Masques, Prom Night and Vengeance Fantastic.
He began publishing fantasy with Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Form Fiction winner and World Fantasy Award nominee the novelette “The Boy Who Came Back From the Dead”(1987). His debut horror novel “Blood of the Children”(1989) was a Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best First Horror Novel. Other novels to follow were “Fire”(1990), “Night”(1991), “Pandora”(1995), Stoker Award nominee “Bone Music”(1995), “The Bear Who Found Christmas”(2000) and “Her Misbegotten Son”(2000).
Alan spent the last ten years of his life working 12-14 hours a day, every day, bringing classic works of literature back to life as the publisher of Alan Rodgers Books. Today, there are over 4,000 titles in the Ingram Catalog which have been edited, typeset, and put out in lovingly-prepared legacy editions as trade paperbacks, jacketed hardcovers, and library hardcovers.
Alan’s family continues this tradition as part of Chameleon Publishing. Laurie DeGange, Alan’s sister, is Chameleon Vice President, and his brother Scott Rodgers is an editor and book designer with Chameleon. More Alan Rodgers Books, including new editions of his bestselling horror novels of the 90s, an expanded edition of “The Boy Who Came Back From the Dead,” children’s novels written before his death, and never-before published adult horror novels, including Smoke, are forthcoming.
About the Publisher
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