The Six Messiahs

by Mark Frost

  "Perhaps tomorrow night, then," said the Captain. "I would propose that we do this after dinner?"

  "I should be delighted, Captain," said Doyle.

  Now if there were only some way to keep Ira Pinkus from finding out about it. He could just see the headline waiting for him in New York: HOLMES CREATOR CHASES SHIPBOARD SPOOK.

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  Look at yourself, Jacob: What you are doing here? Can there be any doubt? No, truthfully, I don't believe so. At the ripe old age of sixty-eight, when most men of your profession have long ago achieved mastery of their mind and self, you have taken complete leave of your senses.

  You old fool, the best part of your life was just beginning; remember how you sustained yourself through the striving and deprivation with the promise that after retirement you would devote yourself to scholarship? No domestic distractions or professional obligations, alone in your library, a lifetime's accumulated wisdom lining the walls, peace and quiet and months without end of metaphysical study and solitary contemplation. The logical, satisfying culmination of a life's work and such a joyous time this was going to be! And with it, within reach, the genuine possibility of enlightenment.

  But instead of sitting at your desk surrounded by books, in your cozy basement office on Delancey Street, a cup of hot tea with lemon in your hands, here you stand on a railway platform in the pouring rain in downtown Chicago, Illinois, waiting to board a train for—where?—Colorado, God forbid, where you don't know a soul in the world. And when was the last time they saw a rabbi in Colorado, I'd like to know.

  Because a dream told you to do it.

  All right, not a dream, exactly; a vision, if you like, that's haunted your sleep for the last three months. A vision powerful and frightening enough to send you careening out of your rabbit hole into the wilderness like some mad biblical prophet. The kind of Old Testament, bone-rattling nightmare you used to read about with such interest. In your comfortable chair. Warm, dry socks on your feet.

  Meshugener mamzer! You don't need a one-way ticket to the wild West; what you need is a doctor. This is probably the onset of an exotic fever or a galloping mental illness. There's still time to reconsider: You could be back in New York without a word of this madness to anyone before your son gets off the ship. And listen, Jacob, do you have any idea how disturbed Lionel is going to be when he arrives with the book he's gone to such trouble to get for you and you've vanished into thin air? There's a train leaving for New York in two hours; what in God's name should prevent you from being on it?

  You know perfectly well what's stopping you, old man.

  Having dedicated your life to studying the myths and allegories of Kabbalah, you know they're more than words on old parchments handed down through the ages. You know this earth is a battleground between forces of light and darkness and when you are called to serve in that struggle—you know in your heart that's what's happened here, Jacob—you do not wriggle off the hook by reciting a list of your infirmities ... although between your neuralgia and your arthritis, God knows you could make a convincing case.

  What did the rabbis tell you when you first took up Kabbalah? Only a man who is married, who has reached the age of forty with his feet firmly on the ground should study this strange book. What's inside these covers is far too dangerous for a dilettante. Knowledge is power and esoteric books are like sticks of dynamite, they said; it takes a special man to make this commitment.

  "I am that man," you told them.

  Why, what possessed you? If it was thirst for wisdom, there were hundreds of less dangerous wells from which to drink. And twenty-eight years later, here you stand waiting for a train. Mysterious, isn't it?

  Be honest with yourself, old man: Some part of you knew from the moment you opened the book—the authentic Sefer ha-Zohar—that as a result one day something extraordinary would happen to you. You wanted it to. So really, what's to complain about? What's so precious about this life you're living, anyway? Your wife gone six years now, rest her soul, your son grown. And Jacob, your office in that basement on Delancey Street? It's not exactly been the sanctuary you'd imagined. It's boring: There, you said it.

  You're going to get on that train to Colorado, Rabbi Stern, and make this journey to God-knows-where for the same reasons that brought you to Chicago: because you are a man who believes oracular visions must be paid attention to, even when they come unasked for to sixty-eight-year-old men in less than the best of health who have not led lives you would be tempted to describe as vigorous. Because you've since discovered that part of that vision has already come to pass—the copy of the Tikkunei Zohar has been stolen from Rabbi Brachman's temple in Chicago.

  Most of all because if you turn your back now and Lucifer does manifest in a desert somewhere and the earth ends up falling into the hands of the Evil One as this dream of yours suggests... well, if you feel poorly now, just imagine how rotten you're going to feel then.

  Here comes the train. God in Heaven, watch over my son— maybe I should wait for Lionel to arrive before running off. What if he's in danger as well? I could at least write him a letter—

  No. That's not what the vision advised. Relax, Jacob. Breathe; still your heart. That's better. There's a wonderful confidence that comes with losing your mind; you don't have to put up with nearly so much second-guessing.

  Have you got your ticket? Yes, here it is. If only this old suitcase weren't so heavy; I've never packed for such an unpredictable journey before, who knew how much to bring—

  Stop now: What were those words you always used to console the suffering in your temple? All of our problems are temporary, so why be sad about them?

  And you can also take some comfort, can't you, from that other part of the vision you don't understand. Those words that keep repeating in your mind.

  We are Six.

  Don't have a clue what it means. Sounds somewhat encouraging, though, doesn't it?

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  The Canton made port in San Francisco by the middle of the afternoon, but night had fallen before the authorities let the first workers off the ship. Better for the city's white citizens not to see so many Asians setting foot on their shores in the light of day, thought Kanazuchi.

  As the mob pressed forward to disembark, he made his way to the back of the pack where he could observe activity on the pier. Two Chinese at the base of the gangway shouted instructions in Mandarin as the workers left the ship—straight ahead, no talking, into the building! Guards in black uniforms carrying long sticks framed a loose corridor, and the immigrants massed along it like cattle toward the high entrance of a long processing shed.

  Inside the shed, following more barked orders, they obediently fell into lines and produced their papers for a row of white officials sitting on high benches. At wide tables leading to the benches, the workers' belongings were taken by the guards and opened for inspection.

  Kanazuchi realized he would have to make other arrangements.

  Three slovenly crew members on the foredeck above him were braying about their coming shore leave; using his second sight, Kanazuchi could see the anticipated drunkenness and debauchery already stimulating their lower centers. He slipped back into the shadows as the last of the Chinese were herded down the gangway.

  With the steel strength of his fingers, he shimmied twenty feet up a halyard, dropped silently behind the crew members, and waited until one of them broke away, a muscular, bandy-legged engineer's mate, moving to the sea-side rail to empty his bladder. As the mate finished urinating, two hands clamped onto his face with the strength of bear claws; whip motion, a quiet crack, the man's neck snapped. His clothes stripped in thirty seconds, body hoisted and carried over the side on the Holy Man's back.

  Kanazuchi used the rail to slide sideways along the ship's bulwark until he reached the anchor line, then lowered himself and the engineer's mate down along the heavy chain to the water, where he gently set the body adrift in the oily bay. Holding his clothes and the bu
ndle that carried his weapons, powders, and herbs dry above the water, he swam a quarter mile along the pier to an empty berth and scaled a ladder to the wharf.

  The clothes were a reasonable fit. A small amount of American money in the pockets. So far the gods were smiling, but his journey had only begun. Kanazuchi did not neglect to thank the dead man for the gift of his life and prayed that he was already enjoying his reward.

  He climbed over a fence undetected, slipped the pack that held the Grass Cutter over his shoulder, and started walking toward San Francisco. He knew his conscious mind need not worry about where he was going or how he would arrive: Sensei had said the vision which had chosen him for this task would lead him to the missing Book.

  A dark tower rising from the sand.

  A black labyrinth beneath the ground.

  Chinese coolies digging a tunnel.

  An old thin man with a white beard and a round black hat.

  We are Six.

  As he walked Kanazuchi repeated the phrase he used to begin his meditation: Life is a dream from which we are trying to awaken.

  BUTTE, MONTANA

  "Now they will never return me alive to that cursed black tower of Zenda! And I have you to thank for my life, my best

  and dearest friend, Cousin Rudolfo, and for my return to the throne of Ruritania!"

  Bendigo Rymer dropped heavily to his knees beside the king's sickbed, and as usual the shock shimmied the moth-eaten backdrop of the lush, cartoonish Ruritanian Alps. Rymer windmilled his arms, indicating the depths of emotion he wrestled with; speech, just this once, deserting him.

  "Come on, you ridiculous cow, don't flog it to death," muttered Eileen, watching from the wings as she waited for her entrance; she checked the pins in her hair to make sure her cheap paste tiara wouldn't go flying into the orchestra pit as it had last week in Omaha.

  "Your Majesty, my work here is finished, I can accept no praise. I am only too happy to have served you in the only way an Englishman knows how: with all my heart and soul," said Rymer finally, before rising and turning across the footlights to the audience. "Sacrifice in the service of so noble a cause is no hardship."

  That brawny declaration begged for applause from the men, brought out the ladies' hankies, and once again the good citizens of—where were they, Butte, Montana?—were only too happy to hold up their end; Rymer basked in the snug glow of their uncritical affections.

  Eileen snorted in disgust. Even for an actor, a breed not celebrated for their sense of restraint, the man was completely incapable of shame.

  "But there is still one way in which I can be of use to Your Majesty...." Bendigo made a dashing beeline north, upstaging the witless nincompoop playing King Alexander before he could counter the move; six months on tour and the moron still hadn't learned how to hold center stage. "I shall return to you the love of your fiancee, Princess Flavia, who has stood by through the darkest hour of your uncertain fate, praying for your return."

  Ha! If I was Flavia waiting to marry this bad haircut, | thought Eileen, by now I'd've slept my way through a squadron of Royal Mounted Dragoons.

  Rymer gestured toward the wing; Eileen gave her bosom a shove to encourage a plump decolletage—getting a little long in the tooth for this ingenue crap, aren't we, dearie?—and pranced ethereally onstage.

  "My lord, you're alive! My fondest hope! Heaven bless you!"

  She draped herself over King Chucklehead and sniffed experimentally. Good, at least he hadn't been munching green onions while offstage in the tower of Zenda. Then the big kiss—the kid hadn't thrust his tongue down her throat again since she gave him a knee in Cleveland—and Bendigo's ever so touching turn downstage, shielding his eyes from the indelicate spectacle of watching the woman he loved returning to the king whose life he had saved, as the final curtain fell and predictably brought down the house.

  American audiences were pathetically easy to please.

  "Eileen, darling, in our final scene together when I declare my, uh, undying love for you, do you suppose you could come back with your line about my ring always being on your finger just a bit, uh, faster?"

  Bendigo Rymer was staring at himself in the mirror, at the midpoint of stripping off his shiny greasepaint. Mesmerized as a charmed snake.

  What in the world does he think he's looking at? wondered Eileen. Sharing a stage with the man was punishment enough; inhabiting the same dressing room, as necessity required in some of these rural outposts, felt like a prison sentence.

  "Bendigo, darling, the point of Flavia hesitating has to do with being torn between her obligation to Kingy-poo and the incredible passion she feels for dear Rudolfo. If she replies too quickly, I'm afraid it suggests you don't hold nearly the same dangerous command of her affections."

  She waited for the gears of his mind to engage the idea and could nearly hear them grinding. "That's always been my interpretation anyway," she added modestly.

  "If it's played that way ..." he said, stroking his chin; as with every pose he struck having to do with thought, it seemed effortful. "It's rather useful to us, that pause then, isn't it?"

  "If Flavia is desperately in love with you, it's probably best to let the customers in on the secret."

  "How right you are!" he bellowed, jumping to his feet.

  "Bless you, my dear! I have always maintained you are a genuine asset to my company!"

  Bendigo tilted his head back and showered his mouth with a deluge of the McGarrigle's Throat Comforter he kept in the atomizer on his table.

  Oh God, that means he's going to kiss me.

  Rymer's breath generally gave the impression that he'd recently devoured an embalmed cat; the McGarrigle's only succeeded in making it seem as if the cat had been marinated in cheap cologne.

  Rymer loomed over her. Eileen skillfully, and somehow graciously, offered him only the top of her head; grease smeared her hair as his lips struck a glancing blow. Then Bendigo was off pacing the room, running his hands through his long dyed locks, simulating the look of a man in the frenzied grip of inspiration.

  I'm living a nightmare, thought Eileen Temple, not for the first time. Not even the first time that night. When she'd set sail for America ten years before on the wings of hope and youthful ambition, who could have imagined her star would plummet so far below the visible horizon?

  Bendigo Rymer's Penultimate Touring Players. (She'd never had the heart to ask him if he knew the actual definition of "penultimate"; her guess was no.) Former matinee idol Bendigo Rymer—Oscar Krantz from Scranton, Pennsylvania, truth be known; she'd come across his birth certificate once in the company strongbox—was pushing fifty, if it hadn't toppled already.

  If only I hadn't slept with him that one time in Cincinnati, thought Eileen: A moment of weakness early in their tour; she'd sipped too deeply of the vino bianco and the poor sod could still look half-handsome—his good side, anyway, the one he unfailingly tried to present—in the right light, for instance the pitch darkness of a mine shaft.

  And after all, she reminded herself forgivingly, you're only human, ducks, and loneliness does make strange bedfellows Rymer's subsequent attempts at seduction had been pathetically easy to fend off; he was far too preoccupied with himself to sustain an enduring interest in another human being—and the occasional conquest of some adoring, doe-eyed plain Jane as they trooped their way west seemed more than enough to satisfy his somewhat, how should she put it kindly, meager masculine needs.

  What about my needs, then? Eileen asked herself. Life on the stage had fallen so short of the land of milk and honey she'd grown up hoping for. Oh, there had been some thrilling early days in New York: every light on Broadway sparkling with the promise of fame, riches, and an endless supply of fabulously attractive men. That lasted about a week. And the theater was a harsh mistress when a girl hit the downhill side of thirty. Thank God for makeup, long, thick hair, decent bone structure, and a body that didn't run to fat or she'd've been out of a job years ago. Eileen was grudgingly a realist of bo
th the heart and mind, a distinct handicap in a profession full of dreamers and losers. In reality, the best parts usually fell to some younger, hungry-eyed girl, and all most of those stage-door johnnies were looking for was a weekend furlough from dreary marriages they were only too eager to bore you to death about over bottles of rotgut champagne.

  Lord, what these upper-crust American wives knew about sex you could engrave on the head of a gnat. Why else would their husbands be out every night baying at the moon? Eileen kept an up-to-the-minute inventory of her shortcomings, and lousy in bed wasn't one of them: Shame she couldn't make a living at it. Not that she hadn't considered the idea—she'd heard generous enough offers—but although she would on occasion accept with good grace extravagant trifles from her admirers, she'd never allowed their more explicit proposals to jeopardize her standing as a gifted, enthusiastic amateur. No, turning sex into business would only suck all the fun out of it, and fun was in short enough supply in her life. Nor did she have any intention of turning into one of these rumpot wardrobe mistresses who creaked around backstage half-swilled, mumbling about the good old days: playing opposite so-and-so, wearing such a glorious dress.

  But what had she planned for the inevitable day when even the Bendigo Rymers of the world didn't want her for a third-rate provincial tour of The Prisoner of Zenda. She hadn't exactly socked away a nest egg over the years, what with maintaining a well-accessorized wardrobe to keep the gents half-interested....

  Don't think about the future, love: Get through tonight and let tomorrow take care of itself. One more show in Butte, then on to Boise, Idaho. Three more weeks on the road, working our way south into ever deeper obscurity. Bendigo had just added another city near Phoenix that she couldn't even find on a map; some sort of religious settlement, he said, like the Mormons in Utah. Didn't matter to him who the pikers worshiped, as long as they paid cash to park their behinds in the seats.