Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  “It can’t be just our secret anymore. This morning you’ve got to be bringing in more people,” Paul said. “What are you telling them?”

  “That it’s something we’re thinking of trying out on Donny, and we’re testing it out on you first, just to see if we get any brain wave readings. That you volunteered because of your radio background and understood the technology involved.”

  Paul could say nothing. This guy, he was just fucking incredible, an answer for everything. The truth if it wouldn’t hurt, a lie if it was more convenient. Either one interchangeable, equally adept at both. He could’ve been lying to me all along and I would never have known.

  Gabe showed him into one of the dressing rooms where a single tech was waiting. A tall fellow, blond hair, balding pate, who brandished electrodes and wires from one hand. He was the only one with much to say, another of Gabe’s misguided rubes, saying now he’d seen everything, brain waves, what will they think of next. Delicately picking apart Paul’s hair, he fit and attached electrodes to the scalp with spirit gum. Two near Paul’s temples, two near the base of his skull. His hair had grown out a bit since that right-wing cut he’d gotten after first arriving, and it helped conceal both electrodes and wires. The tech arranged endlessly, misting hairspray to hold things in place. The wires converged into a single braid at the center back of Paul’s head, trailed down inside his shirt, then fed back out at his waist to connect with a wireless remote unit clipped to his belt beneath his suit coat.

  An impressive piece of work, as he watched in the mirror. All but invisible to close scrutiny. After the thorough spray job, his hair felt like a helmet.

  “Okey-doke,” said the tech, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “Now we’ve got to soundcheck you, too. So to speak.”

  They paced the hallways, out onto the platform, focal point of every seat in the house. Paul stood at center stage, looking over the wedge-shaped sections of empty seats radiating from this hub. Acres of gold carpet, intricate stained glass patterned with scenes of redemption, resurrection, ascension, which all seemed so far beyond him now. Such high hopes for this gift within, and now look at him, a sham even unto himself. Knowing its true nature and still pretending to be an angel of light.

  And he’d thought Donny was a fraud.

  The tech had Paul switch his belt unit on, then shot a thumbs-up into camera two, which would appear on the monitor console in the master control room.

  “How will they know?” Paul asked.

  “Think good thoughts.”

  So he did, staring straight into the eye of camera two, ignoring its operator, and cable puller Dougie Durbin, who was peering at him as if he were a freak on display. Mutant idiot child, that Dougie, I don’t think I even could fix you.

  Word came down that his signal was being received, brain waves actually being relayed to a receiver, channeled through an amplifier, modulated onto a carrier frequency in the outgoing mix. It boggled the mind, yet Paul found that he no longer cared. Just one more gimmick in Donny Dawson’s trick bag.

  They parted, Gabe his way, the tech his own, Paul wandering backstage again. All these performers and crew, no idea what walked in their midst. Until he met gray eyes that looked deeper, saw beneath his surface. Laurel glanced up from a folder of sheet music, one hand holding a paper cup. Lemon juice, probably; she maintained it was good for the throat.

  Nothing but eye contact for the longest time, as she fought to remain calm and professional, submerging every fear and doubt beneath the exterior shell. Her makeup perfect; hair drawn gently back, twining past her shoulders in loose curls. Her body was lost in the shimmering blue robe, elevated by black high heels.

  Love and fear, such strange bedfellows.

  “You look healthy,” he said, thought it amusing. Of course he was good for her. In sucking back the carnal illnesses and injuries, he was likely filtering out all the other impurities, distilling her health into peak form. She could last forever.

  “Last night,” said Laurel, eyes glassy with the trauma of remembrance, “you made me feel like … like I had no control anymore. Like what I wanted didn’t count at all…”

  “Oh, I see.” Paul stared at her as if for the first time. “You only like surrendering control when it’s just pretend, is that it?” Shaking his head in disappointment. “And I thought you were as real as I am.”

  Laurel shook her head too, eyes wet with bitterness, no, no, it wasn’t that at all, it—

  “How would you like to wake up and know you’ll never really have control ever again? How’d you like to walk through the day with that on your mind? How’d you like to stand in front of the cameras and know that?” And he could make it happen for her, too, couldn’t he? Pass his hand over her face and ravage it with grotesqueries of one form or another, leave it that way, see how she’d like to clutch that microphone and preen for the people then…

  Then he saw with a clearer mind what he was doing to her, the dissolution and the crumbling of her walls, knowing that his new strain of cruelty was gaining the upper hand again, damn him, and if she was to be spared, then distance was imperative. At least until he could sort it through all over again in the light of yesterday’s revelations, and he turned to flee her side.

  At forty minutes to showtime, Gabe — clutching a nylon gym bag retrieved from his office — linked up again with Terry Durbin. He’d already met with the brothers once this morning, listening with satisfaction to their recitation of all goals explicitly spelled out last night. That, and a weapons check.

  Gabe led him into the second-floor master control room, introduced him around to the newer members of the Dawson technical staff. Told him who held what function: director, technical and assistant directors, audio engineer, character generator, lesser engineers. All of which went dribbling out of his short-term memory in moments, but appearance was everything this morning.

  “We’re taking Terry around,” Gabe said, “showing him how things work behind the scenes. His brother’s a cable puller, and we’re looking to move Terry over here out of the mailroom. I hope nobody objects if he sits in and watches this morning.”

  General grumbles, no, no objections, even from those who recognized how limited his resources were. The assistant director looked to be a woman of some pity and took him under her wing, explaining the functions of the more prominent features on the consoles.

  Let her try, bless her heart. Imparting knowledge to him was like trying to fill a silo with a teacup. Gabe used the occasion to duck out and quickstep to the nearest second-floor bathroom, along a string of Sunday school classrooms.

  He flipped on the light, locked the door. A room of polished tan tile, smelling of cleansers. He shed his jacket, hung it from a wall peg near the toilet, unzipped the gym bag. Reached in…

  And fastened a barber shop apron around his throat. He reached into the bag for the electric shears, plugged them in beside the sink. Clicked them on and began at his front hairline, buzzing back from his forehead in steady, even strokes. On around his ears, denuding the sides, then buzzing down in back from the crown of his skull. Leaving the sink and floor littered with mounting piles of short thick locks.

  Gabe looked at himself once he was done, his head a field of brown stubble, as shorn as a Marine recruit. He then wet his head and lathered it with shaving cream, using a twin-track blade to bare it the rest of the way. Rinsed it, patted it dry with a towel, welcoming this new stranger in the mirror with his old face, and a pale shiny skull.

  Crowning glory, now gone, it was better this way. To stand before judgment under false pretenses, with vanity, would be a grave risk. He unsnapped the apron, let it fall to the floor.

  Shears and razor, shaving cream and hair, he left them littering the bathroom while slipping back into his jacket. No regrets this morning. He had lived life as best he knew how. I do love you, Paul, and I hope you can see that this morning.

  There could be no greater love than that of one for his deliverer. And where there was
no greater love, there could be no greater pain. He would meet it gladly, in grand spectacle, as the instrument of its full release. Gabe had planned well…

  And was so very very tired.

  There was the gratitude, that he’d been one that fate or circumstance chosen. He wondered, though, why Paul had lain dormant for some twenty-eight years before coming to full flower. Reasons could be legion: Nergal measuring time differently. Paul’s abilities needing time to grow out of infancy, just as he had. Or perhaps he had already delivered victims and never known.

  I just want it to be over.

  He snatched up the nylon bag and left, a minute later turning all heads when he walked back into the master control room. Double-takes, eyes wide in puzzled apprehension, a few sputters of startled laughter, what’s wrong with this picture? To do him credit, Terry Durbin seemed the least surprised, or perhaps he didn’t even notice.

  “Just a simple object lesson,” Gabe said. “We’re live this morning, so be alert for surprises.”

  It was the right thing to say at the right time, met with laughter, and the moment of tension abated. Everybody turned back to their own foci of specialty as Gabe picked up a private line headset and slipped it on. Featherweight headphones, a tiny microphone on a stalk at one side of his mouth. One earpiece carrying all conversation among the crew, the other the program audio. Cueing a vox switch riding his belt let him contribute his own comments to the crew.

  “Two minutes,” the director said over the PL, and as Gabe looked at monitor four, he eased into a huge smile of gratitude. Camera four was trained on the congregation, and he’d never seen such a capacity crowd in the chapel.

  He amended his earlier thought. There was one regret after all: There would be no way to explain to them all that he had never meant them harm.

  Early morning sprint through a woodland purgatory. Mike’s leg thumped to its own painful rhythm every step of the way. Leaves slick from yesterday’s rain shifted continually beneath his feet, while stray branches slapped at his face. He tried to light a cigarette on the run, couldn’t, and spat the thing out. He held his pistol and walkie-talkie, one in each hand, after finding they jostled too much riding in his waistband.

  Breath burned in his chest as he paused for a moment at the edge of the woods, checking Amanda’s third-floor window. Curtains wide open, her suggested signal for all clear, so he hobbled across the asphalt drive up to the house. Flung open the front door and nearly fell while crossing the threshold, damn this weak leg anyway. He looked up, saw Amanda sitting on the stairway with her cane, wearing a yellow sweatsuit, hair in a loose ponytail.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he wheezed. Either cigarettes or running was going to have to go. “But traffic — it’s backed up on that road like you wouldn’t believe.”

  She pushed up to stand. “Where’s Ramon?”

  “We abandoned the car, he went on to the chapel.” Mike cleared his throat and limped closer to her. Teeth gritting, he really did need a pain pill but feared it would dull whatever sharpness he had left. “He’s going in like part of the audience. It doesn’t matter who sees him, nobody knows who he is anyway.”

  For whatever good it would do, because at this eleventh-hour stage, he still had no idea how to play this out. What a fool’s quest he’d come on. Then he looked into Amanda’s face. Firm and resolute as she stood there, looking calmly into his eyes without blinking, calm confidence. Give it time, that look just might heal his leg; the wrong one in the family had gotten the reputation.

  “I know what to do now,” then she told him she would explain on the way. No time now, Amanda grabbing his arm, leading him toward the kitchen, out of the house. Her gait was slow, worse than his. Mike and Amanda, the fun couple voted most likely to fall down.

  “Couldn’t we take one of your cars?” he asked.

  “We could if I could find the keys,” and he felt the rage in her fingers, that fierce grip. “Donny doesn’t trust me enough to leave my own car keys where I could get to them. He really wants to make sure I stay a prisoner here.”

  They were easing each other down the back porch steps when Mike noticed the dogs, the Irish setters poised in their pen like wolves on a moonlit hill. Heads tilted skyward as they howled of mournful desolation, some portent only they could feel. Mike remembered tales of animals behaving strangely before earthquakes, hurricanes, other calamities. The eerie sound prickled the hairs along his arms. Thinking, People are going to die this morning, and here was one for the books: Suppose Donny wasn’t such a callous ass after all, and had left Amanda stranded here for her own safety?

  They were on the path leading toward the compound before she spoke again. Trees reaching overhead with gnarled arms.

  “It’s a live broadcast, no delay. Because Paul knew, Donny had to let everybody else here know I was back, he couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. But on the show, and the ministry mailers, I think he just ended up ignoring me. I guess he would’ve kept that up until I was as good as new. So there’s a whole audience out there that doesn’t even know I’m in this country.”

  Mike was beginning to catch her drift.

  “I don’t know what they’re planning over there, or even if they are,” she said, turning to him and smiling with tight sorrow. Perhaps even vindictiveness. “But if I was to walk out onstage and start speaking my mind, you can bet the whole show, the whole live show, would come to a standstill.”

  Master control room, taut with expectations and cool focus, while the machine ground into high gear.

  Eight o’clock, straight up.

  “Roll intro tape,” said the director, and a button was pressed, the master monitor filling with a swirling aerial montage of the Dawson chapel to a brassy musical accompaniment of “The Hallelujah Chorus.”

  “All cameras stand by, twenty-five seconds.”

  Stopwatch, ticking…

  “Camera three, hold long shot on the choir. Five, four, three, two, we’re live, people.”

  And Donny Dawson’s Arm of the Apostle Hour hit the airwaves.

  For the very last time.

  Chapter 41

  Ramon found the chapel label something of a misnomer. The word implied small, intimate. Dinky sanctuaries for Vegas weddings, barely enough room for the required witnesses.

  But the congregation in the Dawson chapel, oh man, it had to be at least four thousand strong. Filling every seat, even bulging into the aisles, and from where Ramon sat, the general frame of mind ran that Donny Dawson could do no wrong. Ramon’s one fervent wish was that once this service was over, his only complaint would be that it had been time wasted. You could always hope.

  Ramon was seated between some vast-waisted grandmotherly sort and a late-twentyish guy, blown-dry hair and a neat beard. The grandmother sneaked quick sideways peeks at him, trying to scoot farther away, but there was only so much of herself she could compress into the seat. Lips pursed in likely mistrust of him, this Latino with combed-back hair and earring and Italian-cut suit. Such open-minded people here in the heartland. He wanted to waggle a lewd wet tongue at her, see how she would react.

  Nerves nibbled at him, manifesting in a full bladder. Hell, he was no good under this kind of pressure anyway. Uncertain waiting, torture of the worst kind. Sitting rigid throughout the blue-robed choir’s opening, their voices ringing sweetly over grand piano and synthesized strings, while Ramon fingered the objects beneath his jacket and hoped they remained hidden. Automatic pistols and walkie-talkies, hardly standard worship sacraments.

  Come on, Mikey, where are you?

  Tumultuous applause greeted the choir’s final notes as they raised eyes and hands to Heaven. Over the heads of the audience, Ramon saw cameras and operators shifting positions, cable pullers in tow behind them, heading off the potential disaster of a snagged cord. A few beats after the song ended and the choir director bowed aside, Donny Dawson came striding out from a stage entrance by the choir loft. White suit, golden-brown hair, angels walk among us.

&n
bsp; “Thank you! Thank you so much!” he called from the pulpit, voice pouring like honey from speakers mounted on the walls and high ceiling. “God bless you all for coming to His house this morning.” More applause, through which he smiled while waiting to continue. “This is truly a landmark day for Dawson Ministries, and it’s your prayers and your love and your contributions that have made it happen.”

  He prattled on at a nervous clip, and Ramon had seen game-show emcees with more sincerity than this bozo. Dawson’s voice tight, arms moving with marionette jerks, This guy’s wired up on something, and as Ramon glanced about, it became obvious that not a one of these folks noticed. Or if they did, they didn’t care. The selective blindness of conformity, now that was scary.

  And they were getting what they’d paid for.

  After another minute, the walkie-talkie beneath his jacket chirped with a soft double-beep. Anyone in earshot would dismiss it as a digital watch alarm.

  But it meant Mike was in the building somewhere. Now all Ramon had to do was sit cool, play out the entire murky scenario by ear. Total improvisation. Sounded so easy in theory.

  The organ whispered into a hymn as Donny bowed his head for prayer, the congregation following suit, like four thousand condemned wretches lowering their necks onto the chopping block. Ramon peered furtively about, prompted by the cracking of Donny’s voice, three times, and even from this far back his cascade of facial sweat was apparent. The blind would think it passion.

  Ramon was feeling like a heretic for all the right reasons, surrounded by a suicidal mob that would carry him off the cliff along with them, all these people hooked body and soul on Dawson, getting their Sunday morning fix. Junkies planted in their seats and swaying with transcendence, mouthing hushed mantras along with Donny’s brittle prayer. Ramon knew what holiness felt like, and this was not it. This was hero worship, pure and simple. They would live for him, die for him, and God had been left out of the pact entirely.