Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  When he did come home for two weeks, his main concern was arranging her a proper baptism in the creek. Eleanora didn’t mind, she was a woman of belief and modest conviction and relished what diligence she could offer the Lord in her own way. But in her heart, she mourned the loss of Zuriel. After he up and left again, he resumed the same veiled incertitude, and eventually his letters made no mention of her at all. She bundled the letters and deposited them in the top drawer of her bureau, adding each new one to the pile unread.

  The house sweltered in June. Eleanora had done her part with the rest of the family to take care of Sherman, Zuriel’s ailing father. His fever had turned rheumatic and the chronic coughing and fits of delirium were getting worse. She sent for Zuriel, who returned from south Texas four days later by train.

  When Zuriel stepped into his father’s room, the shades were drawn. Even though it was cool and dimly lit, the air was choked by a foul humidity, the sort that only comes with sickness. Its stench wafted down the hall, reminding Zuriel of the tuberculosis wards he had visited in his travels, scores of crippled convalescents packed together like sardines. His eyes watered and throat cinched as much from his father’s body fighting the scourge of influenza as the waves of dread rushing forth, a son’s fear of seeing his father incapacitated, a reminder of frailty that made loving a painful risk and the duty of hating him that much more difficult.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” he told Eleanora, who tended to his father. His brother Jonathan kneeled at the bedside. “How is he holding up?”

  “Each day worse than the last, I reckon.” Eleanora leaned across Sherman to fix his sheet and turn the washcloth on his forehead to the side that was fresh and cold, careful not to wake him.

  Zuriel recited scripture to himself, As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. When his brother glared at him, he stopped, repeating the line another twelve times in his mind, as well as another psalm that said, All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. We finish our years with a moan, we finish our years with a moan. He gathered the courage to counter Jonathan’s solemn stare.

  “Nice of you to show up,” Jonathan said.

  “It was four days from San Antone, I left as soon as I got word.”

  “Out there saving everybody who needs it while your own father’s six feet from dying back home.”

  “You got that wrong, John,” said Zuriel.

  “You’ll have to explain it to me later, then.”

  The sour stench of salt hung on his shoulders. He had not felt more vulnerable or lowdown woeful than he did right then, so he resolved, for the sake of those involved, to stay out of the way. They watched Sherman sleep, his dry lips cracked open, talking through a dream. A slow breath decompressed his big chest, which pumped up again then fell beneath the blankets.

  “How did you manage to get him to sleep?” Zuriel asked.

  “Codeine.” Jonathan grabbed the tincture from the nightstand and shook it in the air. “Want some?”

  Zuriel slid his tall body through the doorway and stormed to the opposite corner of the house, cursing his brother. He drank from a cold bottle of milk he pulled from the icebox. Once he calmed down, he realized how tired he was. The revival was never short on tasks to be done. He had been working tirelessly with his brethren each day without so much as a break. Even the train ride home was arduous—boxcars smashing headlong down the rails, children crying, passengers gossiping, complaining about the heat that trapped them all in its noxious cloud. Maybe returning home was a blessing after all. Before he knew it, despite the taunts of his brother, Zuriel fell to sleep on top of the made guest bed, his cracked leather shoes kicked to the floor. Eleanora found him there, hat lowered over his eyes, shielding him from the world. She turned out the lamp and closed the door behind her, leaving him to sleep for two days straight.

  Three weeks later, Sherman’s condition had improved. Eleanora got him to melt an ice cube on his tongue as she read stories from the newspaper. He grew more responsive each day, sitting up on a stack of pillows, reading the paper, Chaucer, the Bible, soaking up the light that came through the window, even singing hymns with Eleanora. He held down chicken broth and drank tea with hibiscus honey to maintain his blood sugar. After two months in bed, he stretched both legs and finally planted his paper-thin feet on the wood floor. He made it down the stairs a few days later without informing anyone and sat in the rocker in the front room, petting their Persian Blue. Eleanora, Zuriel, and Jonathan could not believe what they were witnessing and rejoiced.

  Unknown to everyone else, it was during this time that Zuriel began hearing his own voice fracture and echo back to him, distorted. He had grown forgetful, but never more stubborn, insisting on versions of events that had never happened. He stopped sleeping. Ceaseless chatter could be heard throughout the house at any hour of the night. Eleanora dragged around her skinny frame, worried sick about Zuriel, left with no way to approach him that did not result in some hysterical episode. Half moons hung swollen below her eyes, her face ghastly and frail. She begged Zuriel to eat. He agreed but would only eat the Libby’s corned beef that came in cans. Mam’ Bayne kept them stocked in the pantry aside jarred gizzards and preserves. Eleanora couldn’t keep a bite down herself. She would occasionally spread some cream butter on a cracker and get what delight from it she could. She stuck to her tea and drank it in places of refuge in the house where she found solace, leaving her husband alone in a world only he seemed to occupy.

  The doctor visited for his last checkup. Sherman had improved remarkably but still coughed in spells, moved slow, and often fell because of swells of grave weakness that forced him to walk with a cane. The doctor suggested a routine Thorazine shot might serve to rebalance his equilibrium and elucidate his tension.

  They gathered at the base of the stairs discussing their father’s condition when, for no reason, Zuriel snapped. He lunged toward Doctor Gustavson and closed his hands around his throat. “May Saint James strike the poisonous pageantry from your hand!” he yelled. The doctor shielded himself from Zuriel’s attack and somehow kept him from prying his medical bag from his grip until Jonathan forced them apart. Eleanora cried out and ran to Doctor Gustavson’s aid. He smoothed his strands of blond hair and straightened his bifocals. Jonathan charged his brother backward until he had him cornered in the kitchen.

  “What in God’s name has gotten into you?” Jonathan yelled.

  “That is precisely what has gotten into me, the holy word of our loving Christ!” Zuriel continued to pace back and forth, but Jonathan wouldn’t let him through.

  “Spare me the Christ fervor, you lunatic. Hey, look at me.” Jonathan pulled Zuriel close and repeated the question. “Why did you choke the doctor?”

  “He comes in this house, first he pumps Pa up with codeine, Pa’s got a bit of trouble walking—he’s old!—and this viper’s ready to prick his arm with a Thorazine needle!” Zuriel raised his voice to make sure the doctor heard. “Look at him, clutching his bag of devilish tricks. Rotten peddler. Believe his day is coming, Jonathan. Yes sir, the holy spirit gone force a reckoning so this man poisons and deceives no longer!”

  Jonathan and Eleanora were swathed with embarrassment and apologized ceaselessly as they helped the doctor to the door. A line had certainly been crossed, but none of them knew just how far Zuriel would go.

  A month before Zuriel returned home and began his slide into madness, the Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry awarded Jonathan Bayne his medal of initiation into their twenty-fifth degree, crowning him a Knight of the Brazen Serpent.

  Though he belonged to the local in Carrollton, he traveled to the Grand Lodge in Little Rock for the ceremony. There he relinquished the various symbols and medals he held as Prince of the Tabernacle, then the elders cloaked him in a velvet robe and adorned him with a jeweled scepter as they read th
e rites of his new oath. One of the proudest moments of his life and he was there alone. Of course, that was the way all must arrive on the path of spiritual development. But he could not ignore that, save his lodge brothers, and the larger brethren of the Little Rock temple whom he barely knew, he had no loved ones or family there to share his achievement, no one to congratulate him once the ritual was complete.

  Crickets threw their symphony into a night Jonathan took in on the porch. He too was worried about Zuriel and contemplated heavily the nature of his affliction. He applied specific rites and individual lessons that the Mysteries had taught him in order to find a way to help his brother. Benevolence toward others who were suffering and an unwavering dedication to truth were paramount ideals to the true Mason, and because the subject Jonathan was concerned with was his own brother, he weighed the severity of the problem even more so. The death of the soul was of great concern, but for his brother to perish was unthinkable.

  When Jonathan thought of his brother, though, a towering wall of pity and anger arose. He could not help Zuriel if he still passed judgment upon him, and how could he judge Zuriel when he had not yet examined his own feelings and attitudes toward him? He struggled to move past the diversion of his anger and concentrate on the sadness that followed and threatened to consume his brother. He believed the evangelist’s need to save and be saved was born of selfish desperation. Furthermore, to have this vain effort acknowledged not by fellow men or an officer of the Church but by Christ himself, that was the most insane expectation of all. He hated Zuriel for insisting on the necessity of salvation for every living soul, that other people needed be saved and that he was the one to do it. He distrusted the surety of a belief like that because it was not open to him or the world. If anything, it showed disdain for the world by wanting so badly to leave it.

  Jonathan actualized this through the pain of his reflection. My brother desperately wants to die, he thought to himself. How could he hate Zuriel for that? He wished he could comfort him, tell him how we survive our own funerals and live on past death, that we return to eternal creation anew. Through Christ or the void, it didn’t matter. Zuriel would need to make that change within himself before he could reasonably expect the world to respond to the demands of his character or his beliefs. As he pressed on, Jonathan grew more frustrated. No, he said aloud, feeling himself getting closer to the root of the problem. That was a mere discrepancy of logic. He felt something essential rise in him and began to cry. If I could say only one thing to him, what would I say? he pondered. Jonathan’s mind cleared as he came upon the answer—you do not need to die to be able to accept love.

  He needed to find his brother and tell him how he felt. He leapt from his seat on the porch and paced through the house until he popped his head out the back door. He found Eleanora and Sherman fast asleep in their bed, but Zuriel was gone.

  The five-cent rooms at Baker’s Saloon were occupied by roughshod drunks who slept off benders and opium eaters who climbed the tethers of hellish bliss in a slow-unfolding silence only broken by the whores screaming in the toilet at the end of the hall as they struggled to piss through the ravages of syphilis. They avoided and laughed at the mad Christian who shouted repentances through the door of room three each time they shuffled past.

  Zuriel had no idea how long he had been there, but it was long enough for him to be caught in the ecstatic peaks and horrific depths of a revelation. Snakes worked through the woodwork as the whores of Babylon hurled their taunts. Zuriel stood poised on the bed, sermonizing to the wall. “Hard to believe I didn’t see it earlier, hard to believe my own flesh and blood, an adept of the occult. How could my brother, my own likeness, not see that in a world of light and dark he has stood opposite me? Perturber, blasphemer of God’s holy creation! He toys with nature and tears at the very fabric drawn across the wellsprings of Hell that serve to keep our demons imprisoned. Touting reason and self-analysis as the foundation from which you master your own soul, he taunts the echelons of angels and the entire divine order of heaven! Poor fool, duped by jinn, prostrate to the illusions of warlocks! Reason is faith, brother! True knowledge is not knowing! These idols of yours, these high priests of Egypt, mystagogues of Aryavarta, Kabbalistic Christ killers, they have all been dispelled by the glory of the true Redeemer! Dethroned by the empire of our cosmic Christ!

  “No wonder our father fell ill in my absence. There is a plague in his house and his name is Jonathan. I was brought back to face this demon festering inside him that controls his every move. The life is being drained from this family, and soon there will be none of us left. No one is prepared to do what is required.” He looked around him as bolts of lightning struck snake carcasses from the floor. “This room is protected by light,” he announced. “Shown the paladin’s way, armed with a sword of light, I am pure! I am blessed!” Zuriel knelt, holding his hands together. “Dear God, hear this prayer and accept it as my promise—I will save Sherman Bayne, beloved father, patriarch, sovereign of the Lord. I will draw forth any foe that seeks to do this family harm and will face it no matter how monstrous or familiar. Face the enemy, vanquish the darkness within. I swear this to you, amen.”

  Hours passed stretched by tremors before a loud knock woke Zuriel on the floor. His constitution was poor, his muscles twitched from malnutrition. He was subsisting in a state of constant animalic fear. Beleaguered, he hid behind the far side of the bed as the knocking continued.

  Sherman held himself up with a cherrywood cane, conversing with Jonathan about the best way to get Zuriel to open the door. They had a plan to get him to a hospital in Hot Springs, where he would receive proper care. They only needed Zuriel to let them into the room.

  “You in there, Zur? It’s your brother, open up.”

  Zuriel rose from his knees and searched his clothes in the top drawer of the dresser until he produced a Savage .32. He gripped the machined steel and paced the floor.

  “Come on, I can hear you in there. Please, open the door,” Jonathan reiterated.

  “You ain’t my brother!” Zuriel shouted through the wood. “You use his voice, Ifrit.” He laughed. “I’m sure you even present yourself similar, but I know the demon’s penchant is to deceive. Underneath our common likeness you’re hiding horns and eyes redder than a harvest sunset.”

  “I maintain to you, Zuriel, that I don’t look like no devil, a truth you could easily ascertain if you opened the damn door.” Jonathan cocked his ear and saw Sherman wince at his side. “What?” he asked his father.

  “Nothing,” Sherman elaborated. “Just, that is something a demon would say.” Sherman’s voice was tender from months of sick. He coughed and gripped the wall.

  “What’s that noise?” Zuriel asked. “Who’s that with you, Jon? The law?”

  “No police,” Jonathan assured him.

  Sherman got it together and stepped up to the door. “Zuriel, this is your father. I want to know that you’re all right. How about you let us in? No one out here is going to hurt you, son, I promise.”

  “Ho, if that ain’t a fine impression!” Zuriel smashed the gun against the door, repeating the word no, no, no as he drove his skull into the wood until his forehead was caked with blood. In his mind, he saw a creature with gray skin, sharp teeth, and long nails trying on members of his family like costumes. It was the same demon he had seen ever since he was a child. He had been watching it appear for weeks now, transforming into his brother, telling him lies in his voice, like there wasn’t no law waiting to drag him off to prison, and that his Pa was out there beside him in that hall, healthy as can be, when he knew that old Sherman Bayne could not hobble more than a cursed yard to save his life.

  Jonathan attempted to find some middle ground with his brother. His voice carried down the hallway. “Evil is temporary in this life. You know as well as I that good is the only force strong enough to prove eternal.” He recalled the tenets of his Masonic teachings, hoping to find an aspect of his illumination that would also apply to the
beliefs Zuriel held so dear. “The soul begs to return to its source in heaven, but in order to do that it must grow and suffer in the body. That is what we all must do, together.”

  Zuriel held the gun flat against his temple, driving it into his hair and sliding the metal against a crimson streak of blood. Then he raised his voice and called out a reply. “In the battle for my soul, I have been sanctioned as a holy apostle to stand against the wicked. The fight has brought me here, to this battlefield, where the lives of loved ones are won and lost. Satan sent a devil to infiltrate my life. He turned my brother to sorcery and used that portent to sicken my father. I see now that the battle was for my soul all along.” Zuriel’s face went slack with wonder. “To keep me from gaining my station in the kingdom of the Lord,” he said, refreshed. “I am emboldened by my faith, scourged of fear, immune to the illusions of idols and persuaders of every kind.” Zuriel ran to the opposing wall of the room then back, within arm’s length of the door, where he spread his feet wide and squared his shoulders. “I call you forth, minion of hell. Emerge from where you are hidden so that you may be judged!”

  Sherman held himself up by his cane on the other side of the door as it exploded with eight nickel-sized holes. Bullets splintered the wood and hit whatever was in their path with fury. When the shooting stopped, Jonathan uncovered his face to find his father heaped in blood, gasping for breath on the floor. The door hung shredded on its hinges. Jonathan pushed it open the rest of the way to find Zuriel, pistol smoking, casings scattered at his feet, grinning at the righteousness of his apocalyptic deed.