“Who has seen the beast?” Her eyes gazed out over the congregation as if looking beyond into a world where such things roamed. My fingers itched as she spoke. I wanted to draw the bestiary of the chapter. I knew that I was going to add these creatures to the game I was designing. The evil king in my story would send four horsemen in pursuit of his queen. And she would be pregnant.
“The beast is here,” she said. “He is of our own making. He has risen from the seas inside us. Born of our sinful nature and wandering minds.” Mother Sophie began to describe the world as she saw it. Women dying of overdoses and leaving their children motherless. Gangs knifing and raping. The epidemic of suicide among the young. Aborted babies stuffed in garbage bags and dumped in fields. A tide of mud people at the border, bringing crime and disease. A church she called “the whore of Babylon.” A government run by Jews that conspires against its own people. “Even now they are watching,” she said. Her gaze glanced over me without landing, but I could feel eyes boring into the back of my head from the congregation behind me.
Maura, is this how you felt every Sunday? A great pretender? Did he hurt you because you didn’t share in his beliefs?
Mother Sophie held up her own swaying arms as she spoke of Y2K and the coming days. Nuclear meltdowns and jumbo jets falling from the atmosphere, the computers dead inside them. The four horsemen riding roughshod over the sodomite cities of this earth.
“Will you receive the Mark of the Beast the One World Government sets upon you?” By this point, the room vibrated with tension. Mother Sophie had led us to a terrible place. It seemed so fantastical, so impossible, but I had read articles in respected publications that posited how Y2K could happen. I had not thought much about it before now, but here in this room, she made it a tangible reality for her listeners. I wasn’t sure what to think.
Tears jeweled the corners of Mother Sophie’s eyes. In the years since, I have not thought of the Book of Revelation as a particularly hopeful chapter, but it became so now in her rough, homespun retelling. She recited to us this passage from chapter twenty-one: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, no crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And when she finished, such a note of pure longing in her voice, there were tears in my eyes as well. I was not the only one. Behind me, a man blew his nose. One woman wept openly.
I’m not sure how long Mother Sophie spoke, but my bony posterior ached on the metal chair, so I figure she’d been talking for an hour before she mentioned Pastor Elijah. “I know some of you have heard he had a breakdown. But the Lord has his finger on that one. All you need to know is that Pastor Eli has gone ahead of us to prepare the way.”
The congregants murmured in sympathy.
She called for us to bow our heads in prayer. I thought we’d come through the strangest part of it, but in the midst of one moment of silence, a woman at the back stood up and growled in a low, gravelly voice, a sound that didn’t seem to come from any human being. The words, both foreign and unknowable, raised the hairs on the nape of my neck. It was like a dead tongue come to life, the cry of some terrible angel. Her voice filled the room with a dire, ancient chant. It reminded me of the nightmare-sound of Arwen’s raven, calling out with its split tongue.
I turned around. One of the Ojibwe near the back stood swaying in her bright blue dress and patterned shawl. She wore a beaded necklace that clinked like finger-bones as she swayed. Her entire body quivered, shot through with invisible electricity. The moment did not feel fake or forced. I felt like I was in the presence of some Other greater than myself. There was no translation for the words that rolled from the woman’s slack jaw. Yet, I discerned a story there.
I shut my eyes and let her words wash over me. And when I did, ravens whirled out of the snow, screeching in their harsh tongue. They flew past me, their black wings whisking near my ear. There I was again, in the midst of the maelstrom. And the Enemy was there, too, whispering of anger and famine. A story of blood and starvation. His chanting strung them together, like chords of music from a hidden conductor. And the Enemy was trying to reach for me as well, reaching for my mind.
Then the woman at the back of the room gave a great sigh, collapsed into her metal chair, and slid to the floor where she lay trembling as if her body was being squeezed by a great hand. She was quickly surrounded by other women, fanning her with pages of a prayer booklet and speaking in rushed, excited voices. I also slumped in my seat, released from the vision. I had to swallow down my sick.
“Tell me, children, who here knows what she was saying?” There was a querulous, uncertain ring in Mother Sophie’s voice. Maura had also told me about this. Someone else from the congregation, guided by the Holy Spirit, had to translate what the person had been saying. Sometimes, there was no translation.
Did what I saw count? I felt a quickening under my skin, sweat trailing down my spine. No one answered Mother Sophie’s question. Except for the ring of women surrounding the one who’d collapsed, the others in scattered places glanced around the room nervously or studied their hands in their laps as if afraid of being singled out by the Spirit next.
“Surely someone here felt the tremor of the Holy Ghost.” Mother Sophie’s gaze passed over the top of our heads, her eyes filming over with a deep disappointment.
More silence. Someone carried a glass of water up from the basement to the woman at the back. There was a ringing in my ears, like an explosion had gone off inside me. My own voice sounded so far away, but I heard myself say something. A rough question before I coughed out this sentence. “They came in the storm,” I began, my voice quavery at first.
“Go on, Meshach,” Mother Sophie said, her eyes finding me. “Go on and tell us.”
I told of my vision and what I had seen that day, how it came back to me when the woman had been speaking. I stumbled a few times, but my voice picked up in strength as I spoke. A certainty that this was meant to happen. I had been chosen. At one point I even closed my eyes again so I could see it better. I swayed in my chair as the woman had swayed. “They were starving. They were scared. I could see a darkness swirling inside them. The one you call the Enemy.”
I paused and opened my eyes. Mother Sophie’s eyes were shut as if she were in a vision of her own. Everyone staring at me. I told them about the birds massacring one another and the wolves that came later to feed upon them and the snow that covered up the blood. How after a day it was as if it had never happened, but the woods still scared me, like the earth itself had been stained.
A long silence followed. Mother Sophie opened her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She thanked me and turned back to the congregation. “You are wondering what this means?” Her voice subdued, her hands folded in front of her. “What this young man saw has no ordinary explanation. Do you doubt that the world is broken? Do you doubt that it is a sinful place? The reckoning is coming. The carnage Meshach saw is but a physical manifestation of the trials in the world to come. A demon moved in those birds. Meshach here today bears witness. But evil is powerless against the name of God. I say again, only Jesus has the power to command the darkness. The only thing that redeems this fallen world is love. God’s love. The things of this earth are passing right before our eyes. This old earth is dying. The things of the earth are but a pale shadow of the Maker. A shadow cannot command another shadow, that is only for the Son of Man. Oh Lord, send us Your light so we know the way. Send Your Holy Spirit to lead us out of this valley of shadow.”
She continued like that a long time, half-prayer, half-incantation. I should have felt wrung out after seeing the vision, but strangely I felt elated, like sharing what I had seen had lifted a burden from my own spirit.
A few members of the congregation came up to talk to me after the service was done. I didn’t know what to make of any of this yet, except that it felt nice to be at the center of attention, even if it
wasn’t deserved. Even if I was here under false pretenses. Down in the church basement, chewing on a crumbling old-fashioned doughnut and sipping black coffee in a Styrofoam cup, I tried to feel like I belonged.
Mother Sophie came up behind me where I was seated at the table. She leaned over me, her skin smelling faintly of talcum powder. “Can I pray over you?” she said.
She began to pray, placing her hands on my head. I don’t remember the words exactly, but the feeling has not left me all these years later. It felt like she held fire in her palms, a healing heat. She finished her prayer, leaned over, and kissed the top of my head. “You will do great things for God,” Mother Sophie said. “You will stand in the fire, Meshach.” She thanked me for my words and went off to talk to someone else. I hadn’t even had time to process the encounter before Roland stood beside me. He set his hand on my shoulder and said, “There’s a prayer meeting this coming Tuesday morning at ten. At a place we call The Land. Care to join us?”
Roland drew me a map on a napkin.
Hymn of the Hunt
By the time I made it home my bladder felt ready to burst. I rushed inside the house and opened the bathroom door to find Arwen naked, perched on the edge of the bathtub, a razor poised at one ankle, the leg above lathered in cream, her breasts swaying. In shock, I stood there gaping like a fool. So intent I’d been on my mission, I’d forgotten that a stranger was now living with me. With the draining tub gurgling behind her, Arwen must not have heard the door open when I came in, but now she looked up, her eyes widening before she covered her breasts with her left arm. “Out!” Arwen snapped, and I hurried to obey.
I relieved myself in the downstairs bathroom and splashed cold water on my face before trudging back to my own room and shutting the door. From the bedside table I plucked up a fist-sized agate geode, a gift from Maura. I sat on one corner of the bed and squeezed it in my fist until it hurt, until the stone pulsed in my palm like a dark, beating heart.
He had entered the bank shortly before closing, a twitchy young man in a red ball cap, the brim pulled low over his eyes. When he hunched over the kiosk to scratch out a withdrawal slip, I could see the ridges of his spine through his white t-shirt and the glint of something black-handled poking from the waistband of his baggy jeans. The lobby was empty except for him. I glanced at Maura, saw her take notice. He wasn’t one of our customers, so far as I knew. A minute later the young man headed to my slot, his head down, his face unreadable. When he did look up his eyes were a jaundiced yellow and they registered surprise to see me on the other side of the counter. I would wonder later if he meant to target Maura.
The folded withdrawal slip he passed me had these words scrawled on it: All your money. Don’t hit alarm. Not a word. No die pak or I will kill you. The misspelling in the last part—he knew about the dye pack hidden in the midst of one stack of twenties, rigged to explode if it left the premises and coat the money in red ink to render it un-spendable—is what made me glance again toward Maura. This was a mistake. The young man lurched, snaking one bony arm across the counter to snag me by the tie and yank me closer to him. I gagged, my tie turning into a noose that cut off my windpipe. I felt something cold and metallic poke into my temple. Close up, I smelled the ammonia reek of his breath when he hissed, “The money. Pronto, pretty boy.”
When he released me my hands went to my throat and I drew in a raspy breath. “Pronto,” I muttered dizzily. I wasn’t afraid, but my mind had gone absolutely blank. A whirling void in my head. I fumbled through my upper cash drawer and shoved bills across the counter. I didn’t even realize until after I’d passed him the money that the dye pack was still inside. From the crotch of his jeans he wrenched out a wadded-up pillowcase, stuffing the money in one-handed, some of it fluttering to the floor.
“Yours, too,” he growled at Maura, waving the pistol in her direction.
Maura was opening her drawer when a customer entered the branch, a pregnant mother carrying another child in an infant car seat.
The robber turned and screamed, “On the floor! Now, bitch!”
The woman froze, one hand going to her swollen stomach. Her mouth fell open, but no words came out. He lunged in her direction, bringing up the pistol.
“Sir,” Maura called in a clear and commanding voice. “Sir! I have your money right here.” She slid it smoothly across the counter, as if this was an ordinary transaction.
He turned back to Maura, stuffing the pistol in the back of his jeans. At her slot he grabbed for bills and tucked as much as he could into the bulging pillowcase. His head down once more, he scurried out without another glance at the pregnant woman, who was still standing there with her mouth open, too terrified to even follow his directions.
I remembered a strange sense of serenity in the immediate aftermath, recounting the story to the officers and to our manager, Harry Larkin. A bank robbery always involves the Feds and they catch about eighty percent of them. They would catch this guy—a tweaker skinhead named Milosz Jarowski—after the dye pack exploded, coating his hands in red, and his own mother turned him in.
Only later, after the cops were gone, only after Harry Larkin left Maura and I alone in the break room so he could fetch his bottle of Jameson from the glove compartment in his car, because he said we needed a shot to steady us and send us home, only then did the shakes come over me. I stood up too quickly from one of the swiveling desk chairs and a wash of dizziness made the room spin around me. Maura must have seen me reeling. “Oh,” she said as she caught me in her arms. “Careful.”
Since I’d been losing my balance, I ended up with my face pressed against her breasts, so close I heard the rush-rush-rush of her beating heart. She didn’t seem to mind this intimacy, her blouse soft against my cheek. The feel of her body against mine righted me at once. We had been through something frightening together, so it felt so natural to hold one another. I had never touched a woman like this before. My hands naturally looped around her waist, drawing her closer as I steadied myself and the wave of dizziness dissipated. Her eyes were shining when I looked up, her cheeks flushed. Maura just shook her head. “Did the robber really call you ‘pretty boy’?”
I nodded, too overwhelmed by the feel of her body against mine to speak at first. “‘Pronto, pretty boy,’ is a hard command to ignore,” I said.
The bell in the outer lobby dinged to announce Harry Larkin’s return with his bottle of whiskey, and Maura squeezed my arms reassuringly and stepped away. Harry didn’t even seem to notice how close we were standing as he opened the bottle and poured a tall finger for each of us into Dixie cups from the watercooler. He held up his own for a toast. “Robberies are terrible, but I’m glad no one got hurt,” he said. “Your first one is always a hell of a thing. Hell of a thing.”
How Maura had watched me as we toasted with our Dixie cups. Her lips parting, the good burn of the whiskey in my chest, the laughter in her eyes.
Maura had given me the agate for my twenty-first birthday, a couple of months after the robbery. She pressed it into my palm along with a note folded into a crisp triangle. “Happy Birthday.” We were alone together again in the back break room, next to the vault, standing so close our heads nearly touched. I only had an empty apartment to go home to. I wanted to stay here with her as long as I could.
Six months had passed since I clumsily confessed my feelings for her. Rather than putting distance between us, our relationship had only deepened since. I was sure Maura was in love with me, too. Things had also grown more intense because Elijah was pressing her to quit. He wanted another child. He had forced her and Sarah to move back to The Land, and Maura was trying to figure a way out. She hated it there, smothered by a belief system too heavy on wrath and fear. She told me if things were different, if she didn’t have a daughter. If, if, if . . .
Her fingers pressed down on the gift, my skin thrilling where it touched hers. “You wrote a song for me?” So far she had resisted
writing any of her music down.
“It’s more like a prayer or poem.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I folded my hand on top of hers, felt the smooth weight of the gift and wondered over it.
We had rarely touched before the night of the robbery, our connection purely emotional, wanting what you couldn’t have, loving what you could not hold. The robbery broke whatever physical barrier had been between us. One night closing, Maura traced the love line of my palm with one finger as though she could discern our future there, and the rest of the night I felt the pulse of my blood beneath, a fissure or fault line that ran from my palm to my heart. Once in this small, enclosed room, I pressed my hip against hers, a dangerous dance, while we counted out twenties from the vault, her sandalwood scent blending with the smell of new paper. The other female tellers were starting to notice, Maura told me. She didn’t have to tell me what they were noticing.
This night Maura didn’t pull away. When I looked up she was watching me, the pupils in her hazel eyes dilating under the flickering fluorescent.
We had closed the bank a few minutes before, bid good night to the assistant manager, Toby Wilkes, and locked the front door behind him. Our tills had been balanced and we just needed to count the money from our cash drawers for the vault and then run a security sweep to make sure all the machines were shut down, all transaction forms tidied and stowed away. What nightly cash we counted would be zippered into a mesh envelope and dropped into a chute leading to a locked slot outside, where the armored car company would pick it up later that night. All was as it should be.
The Land Page 7