Chapter Three
Daniel Jackson awoke with a gasp. He was completely disoriented. “Shit!” he looked around for his sketchpad, but he wasn’t in his bedroom, he was sleeping on a blanket on the ground, under a tarp in a makeshift camp that was across the street from a small stucco walled church. The people in the camp were a strange mix--men, women, families from all backgrounds. They were people who had been blasted from their previous life by the strange events of the past weeks. They all were seeking some new way to live.
Energy breezed through the camp like the scent of flowering trees in the spring. People around the camp were starting to sing. A woman with a powerful voice started to belt out an improvised hymn. Daniel followed the sound. He recognized the woman’s face, he’d seen it on the side of city busses over the summer. She was an opera singer with a world class voice, but here she was in this camp in a vacant lot. Daniel was drawn into the circle around her. She was standing on a stack of railroad ties and dirt that were once a ramp into a building that no longer existed. She channeled her vivid memory of the Samantha’s battle with the snake into song:
Creeping darkness came,
A dragon with forty thousand scales;
Each a tongue whispering lies to shadow men;
They whose black souls are dead;
They who drag the living into death and darkness;
Then three were clothed in light,
And paid the price
To set us free!
The circle of people was swaying together and humming, feeling the song. Daniel shouted out, “I saw it! I saw it too! Her name is Samantha, Samantha of the Red Hair.”
People in the crowd murmured the name and looked to him. He climbed up next to the singer and spoke with passion. “I’ve seen her twice. Once a few weeks ago, then again last night. Her name is Samantha. She is a goddess of wisdom, of knowledge, of seeking. She’s come to do battle with the foul serpent. I was at the National Mall yesterday when military men came and murdered and raped. They are in service of the Beast. They don’t know they are enslaved! We didn’t know we were enslaved! We feed it with violence, with fear, and with money! We need to break its grip on us all!”
A man in his mid forties who had once been a banking lobbyist was still wearing slacks from a suit, but he had discarded his dress shirt in favor of a T-Shirt and was wearing a red barn coat. He shaved his black hair down to stubble on his scalp and he wore a red wool knit cap. He shouted, “Their money feeds it! My name is Peachey O’Neil, I was a lobbyist for Wall Street banks. I’ve seen my bosses conferring with this creature. When Samantha fought it, I saw them, their shadows, and saw the snake talking with them!”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Preach it brother! Preach!”
Peachy continued, “I left work that day and never went back! I’ve been wandering, like you all.”
Daniel was almost frantic. He said, “I’m an artist. I want to paint the scene!”
A man in a black shirt joined them. He spoke to Daniel, “Come paint on the walls of my church!”
The gathered throng followed them to the spartan, one story stucco building with a large white cross atop the spanish tiled roof. The reverend spoke to the gathering as Daniel began painting the exterior, “I once loved Christ and in my heart I scorned other faiths, but then I shared this same vision, of a man, bathed in pure light haloed by a cross, the Occitan Cross, and I saw Samantha of the Red Hair. She kissed me! I felt her divine energy flow through me. There are gods and they are among us! Praise Samantha! Seek your divine companions! Seek wisdom!”
The crowd whooped and cheered and began singing. Daniel was in ecstasy. He shouted, “I need more colors!” People in the crowd ran off to go find more paint. The others sang and watched. When they recognized scenes they smiled, or wept.
Helicopters regularly buzzed overhead. Television stations were broadcasting scenes of people spontaneously abandoning their humdrum day to day routines. Parties were breaking out all over. Again, rather than bedlam and chaos breaking out, people were in a joyful mood, as the winter solstice approached, they were eager for a change.
As Daniel’s mural wrapped its way around the church, elsewhere in the city, another crew of artists were creating an enormous pointillist image of Samantha’s face by plastering construction paper to a parking lot.
A story was breaking on N-Cubed. Half of the United States congress went into a coma. The news reader, an attractive brunette in a skin tight red dress, started laughing in the middle of the story and said, “I’m not sure how anyone could tell, am I right?! Fuck this professional liar gig...” She stood up and walked off set. The network cut to a commercial, then went off the air.
The Chardon Chronicles: Season Two --- The Winter Page 46
