The Glory

by J. R. Mabry

  “What changed?”

  “We used to be once to twice-a-weekers,” Terry said. “And then, suddenly, we became twice-a-monthers. And I’ve…I’ve got a crazy libido.”

  Richard saw Dylan look at the ceiling, stuffing his hands through the slits in his cassock into his pockets.

  Terry started to cry again. “And the Ryde driver was so…cute. Animalistically cute. I…I felt like I couldn’t stop myself. It was like I was watching myself from a distance.” He buried his face in Richard’s shoulder again. “Ihmah terr’ble pahsahn,” his muffled voice insisted.

  “You’re not a terrible person,” Richard said, holding him again. “You’re a weak person, just like we all are. You’re a fuckup, just like we all are. You’re a sinner, just like we all are.”

  “Dude, yer supposed to make him feel better,” Dylan corrected.

  “This is going to kill him,” Terry said.

  “Terry, I think you learned your lesson here,” Richard said. “Wouldn’t it do more harm than good to tell Brian about it?”

  Terry drew back, surprised. Then he looked down. “I can’t live with myself. I can’t live with…this…between us. I have to tell him.”

  “Then you have to tell him,” Richard shrugged.

  “But it’s going to kill him,” Terry repeated. Just then his phone pinged. Terry looked down at it.

  “It’s a message…from Brian. The sigil belongs to a wrath demon named Tispis.”

  “Where is he on the lowerarchy?”

  “4th circle,” Terry said. “Part of Nuudjal’s host.”

  “Nuudjal…Nuudjal. Why does that ring a bell?”

  “Brian’s typing something now,” Terry said, sniffling. “Here it is: Nuudjal is also known as the Duke of Crows.”

  “That explains the bird thing,” Richard said.

  “An’ the ready access to elementals,” Dylan added.

  “So bad, but these boys are not the worst of the worst,” Richard said, chewing on his finger.

  “Bad enough,” Dylan noted.

  “Bad enough,” Terry agreed.

  Richard put his hand on Terry’s shoulder. “I think if you tell Brian…and I’m not saying you should…but if you do, yeah, he’s going to be hurt.”

  “Betrayed,” Dylan interjected.

  “Thank you,” Richard said, slightly irritated. “But he loves you. And you love him. You’ve got more than ten years of building a life together. He’s not going to throw that away, not if you’re really contrite.”

  “Do you think…could he really forgive me?” Terry bit his lip as he looked up into Richard’s face. It struck Richard that he looked like a forlorn puppy.

  “I think he will,” Richard assured him. “You’re family. He’s going to be hurt. He’s going to be angry. He may even need some space. But…he’ll come around. I know it.”

  Terry nodded, as if trying to convince himself of it.

  “Uh…about the demon?” Dylan suggested.

  “Are you good, Ter?” Richard asked.

  “No. I have a feeling I’m not going to be good for a while. But…let’s move on.”

  “That’s my bean-sprout,” Richard said, mussing his hair. “C’mere, I want to show you both something.”

  He waved them over to the door and pointed out the broken lock.

  “So…not an inside job, then,” Dylan breathed.

  “Nope,” Richard said. “My money says that whoever broke in here painted the sigil and summoned Tispis.”

  “A truly terrible name,” Dylan noted.

  “For an apparently terrible demon,” Richard agreed.

  “But why kill a convent full o’ nuns?” Dylan asked.

  “What do these nuns do again?” Terry asked.

  “They run a food pantry,” Dylan said. “An’ they organize a soup kitchen at St. Denis’ a few blocks away, if Ah’m rememb’rin correctly.”

  “These folks served the poorest of the poor, in the roughest part of Oakland,” Richard said.

  “Yeah, but they’re prob’ly mostly white,” Dylan said. “Folks don’t take kindly to the white-savior thing anymore.”

  “True, but they’re also mostly elderly and they’ve been in the neighborhood for years and years. They’ve built up some cred in this neighborhood.”

  “The sister here is Filipino,” Dylan pointed out.

  “She’s assisting the monsignor—she’s not of the same order as the nuns who lived here.”

  “How do ya know that?”

  “She’s habited. The Sisters of St. Joseph dress like regular people.”

  “They just wear crosses,” Terry added.

  Richard shut the door again. He crossed to a dilapidated workbench and started rummaging through jars filled with what looked like mostly rusty screws. A minute later, he pulled forth a latch and eye-hook. “Found it!” He snatched up a screwdriver and returned to the door. He started screwing in the hook.

  “That’s not really gonna keep anyone out,” Dylan said.

  “Not if they really want in, but it’ll keep the wind from blowing the door open,” Richard said.

  “This was the work of a pro,” Terry noted. “A serious, experienced magickian. There are a hundred ways this kind of working could have gone sideways.”

  “Mebbe it did,” Dylan said.

  “No,” Terry said. “I think what went down was exactly what was supposed to go down.”

  “Agreed,” Richard said, turning the eye-hook one final time. He fastened the door closed and stepped back with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Why would a magickian want a convent full o’ nuns in West Oakland dead?” Dylan asked.

  “I can think of two tracks to trace,” Richard said, putting the screwdriver back on the workbench. “We look into the nitty-gritty of what these nuns were up to, and we start canvassing all the magickians we know.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Dylan said.

  “You know what bothers me?” Terry asked.

  “What’s that, li’l buddy?”

  “We don’t know if the magickian is done here…” Terry began.

  “Or if he’s just getting started,” Richard finished.

  Sunday

  Your light shall break forth like the dawn,

  and your healing shall spring up quickly;

  your vindicator shall go before you,

  the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

  Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

  you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

  —Isaiah 58:8-9

  11

  The day’s first sliver of light intruded upon the cottage, but Terry was already wide awake. He could hear Brian’s breathing beside him, but mostly he just heard the pounding of his own heart. He found the waiting excruciating. He kept hoping to find an opening, a good time to bring up his “fling,” but there didn’t seem to be any “good times.” He moved to get out of bed but felt Brian’s hand circle his waist and pull him close.

  “Hey, baby,” his partner’s voice sounded groggy. “When are you going to tell me what’s eating you?”

  Terry buried his head in the pillow and started to cry. “Oh, daddy.” He snuggled in closer, spooning with Brian as tight as it was possible to spoon.

  Brian rocked him slowly back and forth and whispered encouragements in his ear.

  Eventually Terry was cried out. He sniffed. “I did a terrible thing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “You’re going to hate me.”

  “I have shared bodily fluids with you for ten years. I could never hate you. Tell me what’s going on with you. It’s killing me.”

  “It’s killing me too.”

  “Just…tell me.”

  “I fucked the Ryde driver.”

  “You what??”

  Susan awoke to the sound of breaking glass. “What was that?” she asked. Tobias jumped up and started barking.

  “Corn flakes,” Dylan mumbled, turning
over in bed. “Marmalade.”

  “Dylan, wake up,” she said, slapping his shoulder.

  “Huh?” He squeezed open one bloodshot eye.

  “I just heard something smash.”

  “It’s prob’ly nuh—,” he said, not finishing his sentence.

  Susan rolled her eyes and then threw back the sheets. Springing to her feet, she felt around for her robe and hastily fastened it around herself. She opened her bedroom door and Tobias ran past her, disappearing down the hall. Susan turned and saw Kat emerge from her room wearing an embarrassingly revealing nighty. “What the fuck?” Kat asked.

  Richard’s head poked out of his door. “Heard it,” he said, noticeably averting his eyes from Kat. “What is it?”

  “No clue. Wanna go down together?” Susan asked.

  “Sure. Gimme a sec.” He closed his door.

  Susan turned toward Kat. “Don’t you have a bathrobe or something?”

  “What?”

  “We want the testosterone in this house pointed toward danger, not toward you.”

  Kat scowled at her but withdrew. A moment later she reappeared in her winter cassock.

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “Don’t start with me, miss ‘I can eat a whole carton of ice cream and still be a size five,’” Susan snipped.

  “Jealous.”

  “I swear to God I’ll claw your eyes out,” Susan hissed.

  “If you didn’t love me,” Kat grinned. She kissed Susan on the cheek.

  “Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Good morning, sweetness.”

  Richard opened the door, now dressed in his own cassock. His head jerked up when they heard another crash.

  The three of them stood looking at each other for a few seconds, listening. It occurred to Susan that if they’d had antennae, they’d all be quivering.

  Richard bolted for the stairs, and the women followed closely.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Richard looked around the living room but all seemed silent, except for Tobias’ distant barking. Then he heard another crash. “Back of the house,” he said, and half-ran past the front door, through the chapel, past the hallway leading to the office, into the kitchen. Brian should have been there, beginning breakfast—but he wasn’t.

  Richard paused as he saw that the back door was already open. Susan caught up to him. “Tobias could have opened that,” she said. The sound of barking betrayed that the yellow lab was already in the back yard. Richard flung open the screen door and stood on the wooden steps of the small porch landing. Susan and Kat hovered just inside the doorframe, but they didn’t dare step into the backyard.

  A three-foot replica of Michelangelo’s David was planted upside down in the soft soil of the yard that Brian had just recently been tilling for a new garden. Buried neck-deep, his godlike torso sprouted heavenward from the earth. Susan looked up and saw the shattered plate glass window of the cottage, which must have been destroyed only moments ago by the David-shaped projectile. “Tobias, careful! There’s glass everywhere!” For the first time in her life she wished she actually knew some Enochian.

  “Ors!” Richard shouted, his teeth clenched. Susan could see he was struggling to remember the language himself. “Tapvin, lvsd!”

  “That didn’t sound like a complete sentence,” Susan noted.

  “That’s because it wasn’t,” Richard conceded. But it seemed to do the trick. Tobias gave the house some distance but did not let up barking.

  Richard descended the stairs and crossed over to the cottage. He tried the front door, but it was locked. He pounded on it. “Guys, it’s Richard. Open up. Now.”

  Susan could hear Brian and Terry arguing. Every now and then it sounded like a plate smashed against a wall. Susan hoped it was a wall.

  “Goddam it,” Richard said. He fished the spare key from the top of the doorframe and opened it, disappearing into the house. Susan rushed to the cottage to join him. Just inside the door, she saw Terry in the fetal position in the living room, surrounded by shards of what looked to be the better part of a china set. Brian was in the door of the kitchen, tears streaming from his eyes. In his hand he held a porcelain figurine. “You betrayed me!” Brian shouted, his voice hoarse. Brian was wearing only dark blue bikini briefs and a t-shirt, his hunched back looming ominously behind his ear. “Mother fucking taxi-fucker!” he said and threw the figurine at Terry. It smashed just inches from Terry’s head, sending splinters of porcelain raining down on Terry’s flannel pajamas adorned with light blue bunnies.

  “I’m sorry!” Terry wailed. “I’m so sorry…” Susan recognized the figurines, then—they were Terry’s prized collection of Tom’s of Finland porcelain collectibles, and Brian had already smashed about half of them.

  Brian grabbed another figurine from a shelf that ran around the top of the room and took aim, but Richard stepped in between them and stared hard at Brian, daring him to throw. Brian’s eyes lost their crazed look and seemed to sink back into their sockets. His shoulders slumped and he dropped the figurine to the floor. “I’m…I don’t know…” but he didn’t finish.

  Richard walked toward him and embraced him, holding him up as Brian’s knees buckled, and he began sobbing. Richard lowered him to the floor gently and then sat cross-legged, tangled up in Brian’s limbs while he rocked him gently. He motioned to the women with his head, which Susan took to mean, Get Terry out of here.

  She knelt by Terry and shook him. Kat grabbed one arm and Susan the other. Together they pulled Terry to his feet and rushed him out of the house. Tobias chased after them as they crossed to the porch, up and into the kitchen. They sat him at the kitchen table and then hovered over him. “Are you all right?” Kat asked.

  “What’s the fucking racket?” asked Randy’s small, tinny voice.

  “Not now,” Kat said.

  “What’s wrong with the fag?”

  Kat turned the guitar amp to zero.

  Terry’s hands were trembling. “I fucked up. I fucked up. Oh my God. I so fucked…I’m so fucked.”

  Susan grabbed Terry’s hands and squatted down to be at eye level with him. “Terry, what did you do?”

  “I…I fucked that Ryde driver,” Terry confessed. “Or, I guess to be more accurate, I let him fuck me.”

  “Don’t you guys, I don’t know, have some kind of arrangement?” Kat asked, looking confused.

  “What is it with you straight people? Some of us are as vanilla as you are!” The momentary flash of anger seemed to actually normalize Terry for a moment.

  “Right, of course,” Kat fumbled. “I just…assumed…you know.”

  “You assumed wrong.” Terry looked down at his hands and at Susan’s hands holding onto them. “I wish you weren’t, though.”

  Just then the doorbell rang. “What the fuck is going on down there?” Marco’s voice was barely audible, even though he must have been shouting from upstairs.

  Mikael appeared in the doorway with yesterday’s cassock thrown on, topped with a jet-black cascade of bed hair. “What is going on?”

  “Can you get the door, please?” Susan asked, fighting to keep her voice calm and even.

  Through the kitchen door Susan heard the front door open, followed by the screen door slamming, the trammeling sound of many shoes, and the clank of unidentifiable equipment. Mikael’s face reappeared in the doorway. “Uh…CNN is here, or at least the lighting crew is. They want to know where to set up.”

  12

  “Get in, quick,” Larch said, holding the door for Fraters Purderabo and Turpelo. They scurried in and Larch took a quick look around to make sure they were not observed. Satisfied, he slammed the door and shooed them inside.

  His apartment was small, as was the norm in San Francisco, but so sparsely furnished that no one felt crowded. Frater Eleazar was seated cross-legged on the floor and appeared to be cleaning his nails with a large hunting knife. Frater Khams turned from the kitchenette with a bowl. “Black bean hummus,” he announced. “There’s celery and carrot st
icks, too.” He set the bowl on a low table beside a couple of folding chairs.

  Turpelo sniffed at the hummus, made a face, and did not go near it again. He slumped into a chair. “Why all the Skullduggery, Frater Babylon?” he asked.

  “There are still warrants out for us, or do I need to remind you of that?” Larch planted himself in a swivel chair next to a large, 27-inch computer display monitor on a solid oak desk—the only substantial piece of furniture in the apartment.

  “I’ve been giving your…ambitions some thought, Babylon,” Purderabo began, in a tone that was already frosty. “It reeks of arrogant over-reach.”

  Larch laughed. “Don’t beat around the bush, Purderabo. Tell us how you really feel!” He turned to the computer keyboard and navigated his way to a file. “The way I see it, either I lack sense or you lack vision.”

  “It does seem to be one or the other,” Eleazar affirmed, not taking sides.

  “But look here,” Purderabo continued, “we do not have a good track record. I mean, when we try to get…ambitious. We’re fine for the mundane activities of magickians. Any of us can assert our will on the world—in small ways. But whenever we try to do something of consequence…what I’m saying is perhaps we ought to take a hint.”

  “Do you know how many times Edison failed before he succeeded at the light bulb?” Larch asked, without turning his face from the screen.

  “Edison was not a magickian,” Purderabo noted.

  Larch turned and narrowed his eyes at him. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that, if I were you.”

  Purderabo’s eyebrows raised. “Edison was a magickian?”

  “He was a Mason—and a member of the Golden Dawn,” Larch said. “And the principals upon which electricity work? It’s not all physics, gentlemen. Edison set in motion a force that permitted electricity to work as it does, and that was a magickal working that is still in effect.”

  “No shit,” Khams breathed, his mouth full of hummus.

  “Would you like me to name another alleged failure?” Larch asked.