Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  Once recruits were indoctrinated into The Quorum, however, their scholarly pursuits continued. By the late twentieth century, a two-year sojourn in the Highlands prepared the novices. They had a great deal of history to learn, and The Quorum had recorded its own quite well. Such was firm tradition; at the time of the order’s founding, the power of knowledge belonged to the clerics alone. The monastic life bred impeccable recordkeeping.

  Ironically, though, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that those of The Quorum could even fully understand where they’d come from, and why, and what function they held in matters of ancient spiritism. The civilization of Sumer had long remained a secret buried by sand and time, lost to the ages because its architecture provided no lasting ruins. Unlike Egyptian stone, Sumerian mudbrick was leveled by annual rains and floods and shifting sands; once-proud towers and palaces became shapeless mounds indistinguishable from the desert.

  But in 1869, a French scholar attempting to decipher some inscribed clay tablets from the Near East decoded a passage that called this ancient land by name. Finally, Sumer was rediscovered by the world.

  Found on bricks and tablets, various cuneiform alphabets of different dynasties had already been a subject of study for a number of decades, though blindly, without knowledge of their origins. The Sumerian language began to be decoded as scholars worked backward using bilingual inscriptions. Old Persian led to an understanding of Akkadian, Akkadian unlocked Sumerian.

  Archaeologists began unearthing the cities from the desert in earnest during the late nineteenth century. Treasure troves of cuneiform tablets, some ten thousand in all, found their way into academic study. They provided an unprecedented key to understanding the deepest roots of human civilization whose influence was still felt thousands of years later, from technological advancements to law, from government to art, from the measurement of time to literature…

  And religion.

  Mesopotamian culture had a profound impact on Jewish liturgy and, later, Christian tradition. Most was assimilated when the Mesopotamian King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and carried its people, the Hebrews, into captivity. Biblical Old Testament accounts of creation, paradise in Eden, the rivalry of Cain and Abel, the great flood, and the babel of tongues all had antecedents in Mesopotamian literature. Stylistic antecedents predated such books of the Bible as Lamentations, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon, while many of the Psalms were reminiscent of Mesopotamian cultic hymns.

  Where Judeo-Christianity differed in substance from its original borrowed stylings were in matters of ethics and morality; these had no earlier counterparts. Nor did the notion of the bond of love felt by one God for the whole of Its Creation. Almost as if lowly humankind were inching ever closer toward ultimate truths.

  But The Quorum withheld secrets from the world, a few tablets that had been in its possession since the Third Crusade. At last, its scholars could unlock the original mysteries set down almost forty-five hundred years past by a scribe who gave his name as Annemardu. At last the details of the bargain struck with their gods were known, as well as warnings about the Scapegoats, on which Quorum scholars could never agree regarding their validity. Were they actually revelation, or were they added later, as human commentary?

  Certainly, admonitions to keep the Scapegoat of Famine from their own crops, and the Scapegoat of War from their leaders, were obviously common sense. The mandate that the Scapegoat of Pestilence be kept from a barren woman seemed more in the line of superstition. Especially since early peoples often developed entire cults around woman as fertility object, carving stone icons with ponderous breasts and swollen bellies.

  Quorum scholars and theorists took unbridled delight in analyzing the whole of world religion, looking for influences that might have stemmed from that original sacrifice in Uruk. Human legacy was charted in the rise and fall of countless belief systems over the ages. Generations and nationalities and individuals of vision, appropriating the past and shaping it into their present to best define their own lives. Their own search for meaning.

  Perhaps Christian theology reinterpreted Sumerian antiquity’s quartet of Scapegoats as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Perhaps the persona of the shunned outsider filtered into Welsh heritage with its concept of the sin-eater. The renewal of the spirit into person after person might have been incorporated by the Hindu as reincarnation.

  Seeds of belief, sown by need. Who was to say that whispers of that day in Sumer had not insinuated themselves into the deepest recesses of the human mind and soul? Becoming a part of memory that transcended race and time, into a heritage of the species.

  But no one could ever be certain.

  In a sense, the human race was no wiser now than during the dawn of philosophy in ancient Greece. Truths could still never be proven, only falsehoods disproven.

  Out of which was born that unmitigated need for faith.

  All of which, and more, Gabriel Matthews learned during his two-year stay at Loch Nevis.

  Death had largely made him what he was by the time he won a full scholarship to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It had made him a ward of the state. Which in turn had introduced him to fellow orphan Kate Quinn, and Gabe was never far from that night of splendors and helplessness as her lungs drew water. Seventeen years old, and once everyone had gotten over the initial shock, no one blamed him, That Kate, she was a wild girl anyway, and after all, Gabe was a model student. But it was my idea, he would think. We were out there because of me.

  Never so many questions, and never so few to provide answers that made sense. Religious schooling as an orphan had been minimal, prayers by rote, now I lay me down to sleep. But who was he inside? Where was he going? He combed books for answers. What of heaven and hell, and did he have a foot in each?

  He’d been active in high school drama for years, a chance to step into new shoes, other lives. With his wide mouth and strong jaw, Gabe had a face drama teachers loved. A little makeup, and his features projected all the way to the back row. He thought his finest performance in those years was a portrayal of the demon Mephistopheles in a pared-down presentation of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Never forgetting the chill of pathos he felt for this tragic tempter, uttering the line, “Thinkest thou that I, who saw the face of God, and tasted the joys of Heaven, am not tormented by ten thousand Hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?”

  He identified.

  He split college between business and philosophy. The former so that he could live in the world, the latter to give him cause to want to. The professor of an ethics class seemed to take special interest in him. Professor Ludlow, nice fellow, kindly, soft British accent, and not the least bit addled, as most people seemed to expect from an old philosophy prof.

  Ludlow had been particularly impressed with a paper Gabe had done for his class, a melding of earlier theories into something utterly unique. Gabe felt it to be his crowning achievement to that point. Beginning with Kierkegaard’s stance of theistic existentialism — while there was a God, humans had no fixed nature — Gabe grafted to it the dualistic notion of a soul independent of the physical brain, then imposed upon that the ethical relativism of David Hume. Yet in such a way that it applied not to the variable ethics of societies relevant to their own cultures and timeframes, but to individuals. Postulating what Gabe termed “the malleable spirit” — a soul that became what the will dictated as being necessary to accomplish a greater good, possibly even the will of God.

  Professor Ludlow had been impressed, began to have long discussions with him outside of class. Finally, here was someone taking a serious interest in him because of who he was inside, what he thought, his concerns beyond himself.

  And in the spring just weeks before graduation, on a campus swarming with hopeful graduates meeting with corporate recruiters, concerned with starting salaries and chances for advancement and benefit packages, Gabe wondered just what he was doing in such a shallow world…

  Until a most
unusual offer came his way, Professor Ludlow asking, since he was a devotee of David Hume, would he like to continue his studies in that Scottish philosopher’s native land?

  New arrivals were assigned a mentor at the beginning of their two years in Scotland. A friend, an adviser with whom they could discuss problems and fears, history and ethics, whatever. Cabbages and kings. They were like academic guidance counselors, operating in an entirely new realm.

  Gabe’s was a wiry fellow by the name of Bankim Mukerji, born in India, educated at Cambridge. He had to have been nearing sixty — he spoke of studying during blackouts in England during World War II — but his brown face was nearly unlined, his hair still jet black, his body as thin and hard as a train rail.

  The two of them became fond of strolling the shores of Loch Nevis, sometimes in the early morning, other times at dusk. Gazing out over the placid water, so dark, so secret, its long narrow channel more reminiscent of a river than a lake.

  “This is one of the few things here to make me miss India,” Bankim once told Gabe. “It reminds me of the Ganges.”

  “The holy river?” That was about it for Gabe’s knowledge of Hindu creed.

  “The dying often make a final pilgrimage to a sacred spot in the city of Benares. There they die, and their bodies are burned on the shore, and the ashes are cast into the river for the gods.” He smiled, eyes black and unreadable, but his twist of mouth suggested winsome longing. “When I die, I should like that to be done for me here.”

  They gazed over the water, rippling beneath evening winds from the west, staring forever. Gabe silently promising that, were death to take Bankim while he was around, this cremation would take place. He would see to it like a dutiful son.

  Then, “Do you think time changes them? Spirits, lesser gods? Whatever you want to call them.” Gabe had been wondering this for the better part of his first year here.

  “Is the immaterial world subject to evolution the same as the material?” Bankim rephrased. “Why should it not be? Is one not the shadow of the other?”

  He went on, speaking of logic with which Gabe was already familiar, but now it sounded new and different when carried on the clipped music of Bankim’s voice. Speaking of change as a process, kineology: Nothing living could ever be seen as static, only as a cross-section lifted from its ongoing evolution. The evolution set into motion by a prime mover — some called it God — since inanimate matter could not move itself. Change then continuing with the established momentum.

  “So do you think it follows, then,” said Gabe, “that the Scapegoats are different now? Shouldn’t they change with time?”

  Bankim chuckled. “In theory.”

  “It’s a more brutal world now than then, I think,” Gabe said. “In some ways. We’re more advanced, sure, but that brutality — I think it’s more inside our heads now. Everyone’s more isolated. And there’s so much less wonder about it all. Less respect. Less … awe.” He shrugged, didn’t know where this was leading. “Shouldn’t the Scapegoats reflect that? Shouldn’t they be stronger? Shouldn’t their abilities have gotten more powerful? You know, you flex a muscle, even if it is spirit, for forty-five hundred years, it has to get stronger.”

  Bankim chewed on this for fifty, sixty yards of grassy shore. “That I could not say. I’ve not even looked one of them in the face, in the eye. But someday, perhaps, you may. And then you will know.”

  Talk about temptation, Gabe thought at the time. It’d almost be worth it to push one and see how far it could go.

  But of course, that would be against their code…

  Kind of like the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

  Gabe had thought he understood the self-infliction of pain long before he’d arrived in Scotland. Evenings of discomfort, senses heightened by fasting, flogging himself across the back with a supple stick whacked down over one shoulder, then the other, back and forth until he felt he’d given the memory of Kate Quinn her due.

  Bankim Mukerji proved him an amateur, though, for Bankim was a master in the art, as a facet of his heritage. And while he’d turned his back on many aspects of the Hindu faith — its four stages by which a man’s life unfolded, for one — redemption and purification through pain was something he retained.

  Finally trusting Gabe after his fourteenth month in Scotland, Bankim showed him the contraption he had rigged in his chamber: ropes and pulleys, counterweights and cuffs for wrists and ankles. He would suspend himself horizontally above the floor, limbs drawn out from his body with such tension, it was a wonder they weren’t torn from their sockets. Brown body rigid as he wore only the traditional waistcloth, the dhoti, muscles as taut as the ropes.

  Bankim’s gaze journeyed elsewhere while undergoing the ritual, and at the time Gabe could not follow. He could only imagine, in envy. The spirit voyaged while sinews strained, while sweat pattered in great drops, dark on the stone floor. Gabe would watch him in astonishment, this holy man who was living proof that bodily pain was more than justified punishment — it could also be bridged to the soul.

  But why not? Mortification of one’s own flesh had a long and meaningful heritage. Hermits scraping themselves with sharp stones, and Carthusian monks wearing hair shirts. While Gabe believed there were greater mysteries than the Church acknowledged, or even knew about, he nevertheless thought of its saints in their death throes and considered them fondly. Flayed alive, or crucified, or burnt at a stake. Or Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, butchered in his own church by knights of his king. Men of spirit, pushed by ultimate pain into a moment of ultimate transcendence.

  Oh, to be a martyr.

  Gabe had to smile in spite of himself.

  He was such a romantic idealist at heart.

  IV

  FALL FROM GRACE

  If man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as we are, and more so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we have an idea of happiness, and cannot reach it.

  — Blaise Pascal

  Chapter 34

  It had been a month since Mike Lancer had turned his lower leg into splinters and kindling. Home convalescence, he wouldn’t wish this on an enemy. All these people he’d heard in his life, trudging to jobs like it was a daily trip to the gallows, wishing for extended sick time just to score another paid vacation — boneheads, every one of them. Take it from one who was there.

  He had his computer and modem, he could work. But after a month of staring at the same walls, he had the attention span of a gnat.

  It was possible he could return to the office next week, if the doctor said okay. Mike contemplated bribery.

  When the phone rang, he went for it like a lifeline — human contact with the outer world — notching his crutches beneath his arms and swinging into motion. Out of boredom, he’d set up a low-budget obstacle course of junk food delivery containers and empty bottles. A pylon course of the unused mates of shoes he’d worn lately.

  Answered by the seventh ring, call the Olympic Committee.

  “Hey babe. How’s my favorite cripple?”

  “Ramon! You’re a slag and a weasel, you know that? You haven’t visited me once this week.” Mike lowered himself into a large rattan chair. He stared at a panoramic vista of dirty dishes growing from his kitchen sink, then turned away. “Shit. I’m so bored I’m about to start calling up phone sex 900-numbers.”

  “Sorry, Mikey, I been a selfish asshole. Make it up to you tonight, though, take you dancing. How’s that sound?”

  “Suck my cast.”

  “Fussy today, aren’t we?” And he laughed, the sparring never ended. “Nah, listen, man, I got a piece of mail for you. Dawson Ministries. You know, you said watch your desk, see what comes in.”

  Mike’s belly tightened. “Did you open it? I mean, it could just be the latest cash plea. If that’s all it is, just deep-six the thing. Better yet, run i
t through the shredder.”

  “I opened it. It’s something else, Mike.”

  “You want to run it by? Anytime? Now? Five minutes ago?” He shut up, sounded like he was starting to beg.

  “I’ll be by after work,” Ramon said.

  The gods of homebound recovery were smiling upon him. This month had been like childhood rainy days, a whole summer of them strung together, while he sat as gloomy as an old hound dog in the window.

  After the call, he found he couldn’t work. Concentration had flown, winging him back to Oklahoma City, that final day. Tight focus on murder and broken bones, everything he’d had no idea he would find.

  He pondered it all from the couch, holding the Smith and Wesson ten-millimeter for company. Not that he worried much for his own safety anymore. Were trouble to follow him south in the aftermath, it would already have come knocking. He popped the pistol’s magazine out and in, chambering the first round, then ejecting it, replacing it in the magazine. Over and over. He could do this in the dark now, without fear of mishap.