"I don't know. A lot of it's confused mumbo-jumbo. I don't think the hospital knew enough of what was going on to transcribe this correctly. It's truly a pity—I wonder how many mental health patients through the years had a genuinely enlightened or divine moment and were dosed with drugs into oblivion for it. Probably nowhere near as many that were tortured and exorcised for being mentally ill, though. Ahh, here's one that halfway makes sense. Ball Mott demands his due. They didn't know what they were transcribing. Ba'al, not Ball. Mot, with one 't', not Mott like the applesauce. Ba'al Mot demands his due. Obscure reference, but known to us. Mot is from Ugarit, an ancient Canaanite god of death; Ba'al is Master, or Lord, so Lord Death demands his due. Does that help?
I shook my head, although that was ringing a bell. Ugarit? Ba'al Mot…Ba'al Moloch? Moloch was also a biblical reference, wasn't it?
Stirrings of something that was there…serving Ashtar under Mastema's reprieve. "Does Ba'al Moloch mean anything to you?"
Tom looked at Justin, and then looked back at me. "Moloch is pretty common in several Canaan religions. Could mean several things. In combination with Ba'al Mot…Ugarit religion?"
I scratched my head. "Ugarit?"
Justin adjusted himself in the seat. "That's a small city whose ruins were unearthed in Jordan, in what is ancient Canaan. Yes, the same Canaan that Jesus came from. Some cuneiform tablets were found there, and you're naming gods from their religion. Ba'al Mot and Ba'al Moloch are two of the gods from their pantheon."
"What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
Tom looked up from the laptop, and looked over at Justin, before looking back at me. "I'm just giving you the basics. As to what it means to this situation, uh, we were hoping you could tell us."
I shrugged helplessly, perplexed. "Justin, originally you said you wanted me to help you and join you. I still don't understand what I'm agreeing to here. You wanted my cooperation, and I agree my father needs to be stopped, but you won't tell me what it is that the Harmon Group does, and you haven't stated what it is that you'd like me to do."
"Well, I'm glad that we agree that your father needs to be stopped. But in the longer term, beyond that, I'd like you to consider coming aboard with us. We can help you, and you can be of a great help to us."
I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering how he thought he could help me. His group had religious connotations, obviously, and didn't shy away from the strange and the unexplained, which obviously followed me around in fucking abundance. "Help me how? With my unusual talents? It appears to me I have far more experience than you do with such things, as little as even I know about them. I just barely understand them, and I can run circles around you with them."
Justin just regarded me with a steady gaze. "I may have underestimated you initially, but that doesn't mean we lack knowledge or resources, Ryan. We could help you come to terms with them, and control them better. Right now, you have the finesse of a child with a hammer, and you're bludgeoning your way out of situations. We have others with talents, and you probably have talents of which you aren't even aware. It would be a valuable education for you, Ryan. In exchange, we'd want to put those talents to moral and just use."
"That sounds intriguing, but those are mighty bold claims, Mr. Harmon. I'm supposed to believe that you hold more information about my talents than I can learn on my own, and that it has a high value that I should accept blindly?"
"I'd be happy to show you more, but I really can't do that until you come on board. We value anonymity and discretion, and that requires commitment on your part before we can disclose any further information. Suffice it to say that you won't be disappointed nor would you regret the decision—we have so much to show you, you would not believe it."
"Why are you so keen to bring me on board? What use would I be to you? You do realize I'm bound by a curse. As Elohim, I have two fates, neither of which involve going to heaven. It is irrelevant what I do. Every breath I take is simply a countdown until I face my fate in Hell."
"You'd be of tremendous use to us. This excursion is only one concern, of many that we explore. We are a diverse organization. Again, there's much that I could show you, but it's a matter of discretion, and that requires commitment. We value our secrecy and anonymity. To be very direct, Ryan, I'm recruiting you as talent that we would value highly. We would make it worth your time, and you would not regret it. However, as for your fate, that's where we differ significantly in opinion, Ryan."
I blinked heavily. I had never heard a countering view, and I ran through everything I knew. I had never heard of different fate. "Oh? What do you think my fate is, then?"
"I don't think your fate is sealed any more than any other man's. We all have to choose our fate. You are not an exception. Your father chose his fate. You have to choose yours. That's the covenant of free will."
"Well, if, and I'm not convinced that there is a choice, but if there is a choice, I'd clearly not choose my father's fate. For the sake of argument, God made a promise during the time of Noah to decimate the rebel angels and their abominable offspring for leading man astray, and sentence the rest to serve as tormenters of men as demons of Hell. Why would God break that promise?"
"God also told us to give him sacrifices and burnt offerings on an altar. But we don't do that anymore. Why not?"
I blinked stupidly for a few seconds. "He sent his son as the ultimate sacrifice."
"Right. He made a new promise, a new bargain. God wiped the slate clean. Matthew 5:17—Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. That's the new promise, the good news everyone seems to forget that Christianity promises…and that's exactly why I don't think you're blindly consigned to a fate you didn't choose. That's the power of my faith, my belief, that god has not forsaken you, despite your belief otherwise."
It seemed to make sense, but it also seemed shocking at the same time. I couldn't think of anything to say in response, so instead, I stared out the car window while I tried to wrap my head around the concept. You get so used to getting fucked over at every turn that after awhile you just expect to get bent over again. Your keep plowing ahead, but your brace for it. You forget why you keep forging ahead, and when you discover that weird glimmer ahead of you, it's hard to recognize what the fuck you are looking at. Bizarrely, you come to realize that you're still capable of feeling some hope, and that can knock you back a few steps, as you blink to take it in, and stare at it wonderingly. Hope, but is it well founded?
I remembered standing on a small dam that created a man-made, aptly named Horseshoe Lake up near Harrison when I was fourteen and staying at a small cottage with a friend. The cottage was so rustic the sink had a hand-pump and the bathroom was an outhouse out back. The lake was a dammed river, and the small dam was about twenty feet high with a metal sluice feeding the river below. I remember the first time I stood up on the edge of the dam, the water roaring below be as it poured into the river. My friend had laughed and leapt off the edge, falling with the waterfall into the river below. However, I stood, trembling, listening to the roar of the water, and eyeing the roiling water at the foot of the dam below with trepidation, my heart pounding wildly. He kept yelling at me to jump, but every time I worked up the nerve, my heart pounding, the blood rushing in my ears, my stomach in knots, I'd hesitate at the last second, nearly tumbling over the edge. My friend clambered back up and jumped again, proving again how easy it was. I still couldn't work up the nerve to do it, no matter how many times the other kids called me a fucking pussy.
I finally climbed down from the concrete ledge, and waded out into the river, having chickened out for the day. My friend gave me a lot of shit about it, and it's all I heard about for the rest of the day. The next day, I walked to the top of the dam, and looked down at the water sluicing out of the grate below, roaring, and pouring into the river. Without hesitation, I stepped off the edge, and felt the giddy exhilaration of having let go. I was falling, weightle
ss, with the white water enveloping around me like a shroud. I seemed to fall forever, even though it was only a few seconds, and I felt satisfaction. There! I did it. I overcame my fear. He could no longer call me a fucking pussy anymore. Then splash! I landed in the river. I felt myself rolled repeatedly in the violently roiling water, and I swam, trying to kick myself free to the surface.
I felt my head slammed into the smoothly polished rocks of the river bottom, and I felt the tremendous pressure of the water against my ears. Within the violent underwater roar, I felt like I was about fifteen feet underwater, due to the pressure on my eardrums and chest. I tried to push off with my feet from the bottom, but the current was so powerful the current tumbled me about violently. I tried to swim upwards, following the hollow in the riverbed that the pouring water from the dam carved out, but the roiling water kept sucking me down. The violent washing-machine twisting action inside the downpour from the waterfall off the dam kept bouncing me off the bottom of the river, pounding me relentlessly.
My head slammed against rocks on the bottom several times, and my lungs were burning badly from the lack of air. Luckily, I was a strong swimmer, and I was used to holding my breath underwater, but this was extremely punishing, and I was now finally panicking. I lost any semblance of control, and fought to find the surface in a rush of fear and adrenaline. I kicked and fought, but refused to give up, and fought like a hellcat to reach the surface. Involuntarily, I felt my head arch backwards, my hands flopping wildly at the sides as I stopped kicking, and all rational thought left me. It was my body's last desperate attempt as the drowning instinct kicked in and tried to save me.
When I finally broke the surface, I gasped desperately, and could barely swim. I was desperately exhausted. The other teens were shrieking my name in desperation and raw panic. I barely managed to keep my head above water, and two of them came splashing out into the river to drag me up onto shore; I was too exhausted to crawl out of the river. How long was I down? No one knows. One minute? Two? When panic sets in, time becomes fluid and flexible. What we all agreed on, though, was that no one would tell the parents what happened, lest the parents ban us from going down to the river again.
"You know what Justin?"
Do things always turn out badly? It sure seems that fucking way. We never learn, do we? I jumped.
"Fuck it. Let's do it."
Justin smiled. "Excellent."
~~~~~~ *LP* ~~~~~~
I stared at the dilapidated house and barns. The entire yard was overgrown with weeds, and the barn doors stood open, the barns barren and empty, the farming equipment long ago sold off at auction. The only light came from the powerful flashlights that Tom had handed out from the trunk of the limo.
I shined my flashlight up towards my old bedroom window, which had long ago had the pains knocked out of it. One of the panes was still intact, with the old reflective tot-finder sticker from the seventies faded but still reflecting the light of the flashlight beam. The roof was in poor shape, and I could see through the broken window that the water-stained ceiling had started to fall into the room below. I shook my head, and turned my flashlight beam out towards the empty barns.
"What makes you think he's out here somewhere? This place is a fucking ghost town. I don't really want to be here right now."
Justin stood, looking around unconcerned, before turning to me. "Paul's here. He has to be here."
"How can you be sure?"
He shrugged. "Because you don't want to be here, Ryan."
I considered flipping him the fucking bird, and thought better of it.
"Well, if he's anywhere, it's in the goddamned woods. That's where we were at last time."
Tom looked at Justin, and Justin nodded.
Tom motioned for me to lead the way, and I started walking through the waist high weeds, memory easily taking me back to places I didn't want to go. Tom followed, patient and alert. It occurred to me that yesterday I thought he was just some asshole yuppie lawyer in an overpriced suit, but clearly there was more capability and depth to Tom than I originally was willing to give him credit for.
"Ryan, what do you remember about the last time? From eleven years ago?"
I covered my flashlight, and peered into the gloom, looking to see if I could see any flickers of light up in the woods ahead. The foliage was dense though, and the mosquitoes hummed about me in a thick, distracting cloud. "Tom, they originally tried to pin it all on me." I looked down at the scars on my wrists. "The condition they found me in? The shit I was raving about? How could they not think I was guilty of committing all those murders?"
Tom was silent for nearly half a minute. "What changed their mind?"
"The forensics started turning their case to Swiss fucking cheese in a goddamned hurry. They expected to find my fingerprints and other evidence at the Mason's house, and while they did, like in the living room, on the video game controllers and shit, what they found was my dad's boot prints and fingerprints all over the critical crap like the murder scene in the basement. And in the bathroom up stairs. And with my mother in the dining room. Ridenour, who was so quick to hold a news conference showing me being loaded in an ambulance and talking about having the suspect in custody, looked like a complete fucking jackass when the department had to recant the story. He's still fucking pissed. He blames me, personally. Because of the lunatic shit I was ranting and raving when the cavalry arrived."
"Do you remember anything about how you stopped Paul, then?"
"Only fragments. Flashes. There's only one thing that I remember with any clarity, and I would do anything to forget it. I don't think it does us any good."
"Yeah? What's that?"
I stopped and looked at Tom. "Do you want to know what I think Hell is?"
~~~~~~ *LP* ~~~~~~
I was drifting along, contemplating nothing. Existence simply washed over me, the words passing me by, familiar and comforting in their own way. I had very little awareness of myself as a person, though I was talking to someone, and had been for some time. There was no end, no beginning. Simply a moment in time. A loop, really. I could hear the car door slam, the engine rev, and the squirt of gravel as the car took off.
I felt myself swinging in a porch swing. I looked over at someone. He's sitting in a wicker chair, in the shade of the porch of the old farmhouse on a hot summer day, drinking a beer. He was familiar, but I couldn't place him. "So, the thing you've got to ask yourself is this." I've heard this line many times before, but I've had no conscious thought of thinking of this line. I simply said it. What does it mean?
He doesn't look over at me. "Yeah? What's that?"
I look back out over the road, over the field of corn, standing tall and green in the midday summer heat. "Does any of this matter? I mean in the long run. What if we're just victims of a fate we can't control?" Fate. The wheel of ka. An endless cycle. In my mind, I see the flash of a boy. He's standing in a doorway of a darkened room, highlighted from the light behind him. Do I know this boy? I realize I know very little, and I drift along, content to watch this play out.
The man takes a long draught of his beer, and looks over at me. "What do you mean?"
I rock for a bit, and finally I hear myself speaking. "What if we're caught in the wheels of destiny? We're living our lives, which were preordained from birth, and we're just acting out lines in a script that was written before we were even born. This is just an endless cycle, and we've done this an infinite number of times before." I see a flash of that boy again within my mind, although a few years older, still standing highlighted within the doorway. There's a sad look in his eyes. I think, "I should know who that boy is. He's so familiar." It's as though the name dances on the tip of my tongue, so tantalizingly within reach. "We'll do this an infinite number of times again, and the results will always be the same. None of this matters, because we never had a choice." What does that choice mean, exactly?
The other man stands up, and walks down the porch steps. "Well, I can't put much sto
ck in that. The way I see it, every man always has choices." In my mind, I see a flash of the boy again, only he's much older now. Almost a man. The sadness in his eyes has been replaced by something harder. Resolve? Or something harder? Something sharper? "That's the only thing a man ever has, is choice. You do the best you can." He opened the car door, and paused before getting in. "You make your choices, and you live with it. Only time will tell if they were the right ones."
Then the car door slammed, the engine revved, and I could hear gravel squirt out from the tires as he roared off up the driveway.
I look over, and he's back, sitting in the wicker chair on the porch again, staring out over the cornfields. The light breeze is hot, and barely refreshes as I hear myself say, which I recite along with myself in my mind, "So, the thing you've got to ask yourself is this."
He doesn't look at me, and I realize, he's actually pissed off at me. "Yeah? What's that?"
I'm confused. Why would he be mad at me? I try to think, and I realize I have no idea why he is mad. I can't remember anything. Not even my own name. The only thing I know is this moment in time. I look out over the road, and over the endless tassels of corn stretching into the distance into the woods beyond. "Does any of this matter? I mean in the long run. What if we're just victims of a fate we can't control?" Another flash in my mind of the boy highlighted in the doorway, and I try to place the boy. I know I should know who that boy is, but again, my memory seems to be restricted to this looping moment of time.
I look back over at him. "What if we're caught in the wheels of destiny? We're living our lives, which were preordained from birth, and we're just acting out lines in a script that was written before we were even born. This is just an endless cycle, and we've done this an infinite number of times before." Within my mind, the flash of the sad young teenager in the doorway. Did I do something to this teenager? Is that what this is about? A low warning starts going off within my mind, and I want to stop and think, but relentlessly, the scene plays on.
Ryan's Suffering Page 28