A Lower Deep

by Tom Piccirilli

  I could tell that Fane badly missed his robes, scapular, tunic, and cowl. He wore a black wrap usually seen only on Muslim women. The scent of heavy oils and pine preceded him by twenty feet as he limped toward me.

  "You could've beaten that boy easily," he said. "Why didn't you?"

  "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to, Fane, or I'll let you inside my head too."

  He was smart enough to be scared by that.

  The distant noise of a Harley back-ending a flatbed trailer and the shrieks and breaking glass followed as we turned and walked out of the alley. Man, did that get old fast. I wondered if it made him a better or worse penitent for having been dead on the operating table those twelve minutes after his accident. His victims didn't trail him, so perhaps he had found some redemption in purgatory.

  "I've been to the Givat Ram campus of HebrewUniversity," he said, "and I spent time at the Shrine of the Book to look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. I spent much of the morning at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial."

  "You're a regular tourist."

  "They're evacuating visitors. You can feel the city about to tear itself to shreds, but I needed to stay."

  "Why?" I asked.

  He still drew strength from the weakness in his legs, hobbling fast to keep up the pace and enjoying the agony it brought. "I wanted to see and learn all I could while I was here in the Holy Land. My intent was to discover something that might help."

  "Did you find out anything useful?"

  "No," he said while the motorcycle trapped in his former life echoed behind us. I thought perhaps he'd found God again, but not yet his soul. Maybe there was still time. "Nothing that might help in the coming battle." He rankled his nose at me. "You need a bath."

  "I've had a bad day."

  He nodded at that and we didn't say anything for a time as we walked. The hail had ended. Self glanced about moodily, and once I caught him looking into his own palm. I stopped at a shop and got him some cookies, which he ate noisily. He offered one to Fane, and Fane took it and held on to it but didn't take a bite. He said, "I was visited by John this morning."

  That stopped me. "In a dream?"

  "I don't really know. Possibly. I felt awake and I was standing, but I often am in my dreams."

  Pane had plenty of his own Freudian traumas to deal with, and I couldn't be certain if the abbot had returned or if Fane's subconscious was merely boiling over with hidden meaning.

  "What did he say?"

  "He said that the first angel has been loosed. The other six will soon follow. And Michael remains chained."

  Several hundred Jewish settlers attacked Israeli Arabs' homes in Nazareth. Sporadic conflicts and further rioting spilled into Hebron, BidiyaVillage, Jisr al-Zarka, Netzarim Junction, and the Erez border crossing. Israelis took to the streets in anti-Arab protests at several points throughout the country. In northern Israel, at Tiberias, residents raised an Israeli flag over a mosque and set fire to the building before police restored order.

  The full moon rose over Babylon.

  I made it back to the gratis hotel room and could feel the presence of my mother as I walked the corridors. I knew someone was already in my room.

  I turned on the light.

  My father sat on the edge of the bed and stared blankly ahead.

  Gawain lay on the floor, hands folded neatly over his belly. His blind eyes focused on me and the corners of his mouth lifted. He'd been stabbed twice in the stomach.

  I kneeled beside him and took his head in my lap. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. He did not appear to be in pain. His serpent's tongue twined as he mouthed words I didn't understand. I talked to him for a few minutes about nothing that mattered as my tears trickled onto his forehead. He closed his eyes and let out his last breath.

  We stayed like that for an hour while I cradled Gawain's corpse, and finally I accepted that this truly was the apocalypse.

  Self crouched at the window and pointed into the sky as the bloated moon slowly became as blood.

  Finally my dad turned and looked at me. With that mad intelligence blazing in his moronic gaze he whispered, "Megiddo."

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was Easter Sunday.

  Most of the train and bus service had been disrupted due to the disorder. I decided to rent a car from Sixt on King David Street. They were reluctant to let me have the Jaguar XJ8, but I paid in cash and took all the insurance.

  If we were going to travel to the end of the world, then we might as well cruise there in style.

  It was dangerous to be out. The heavy hail came down in fits and starts. Israeli helicopter gunships kept up their buzzing and Palestinians were lynching and setting fire to anyone they considered an Israeli spy.

  Mobs roamed freely. The drive to Megiddo would take us through some of the worst areas of the fighting. It would keep everything in context, listening to the shouts and shrieks in these days of rage.

  I was eager to get started. I'd never owned a car that came close to the roaring power, stealth, and deftness of the Jag. Who would have guessed you could get such a quality beast here in the Middle East, at the brink of the final war, while children huddled against stone walls and had their kidneys shot out, on the day Christ had risen two thousand years ago?

  My father sat in the backseat with Self, and they held hands like a parent and child. They whispered together and occasionally tittered. Self complained about his hypoglycemia some more so I stopped at a bakery and got him a hazelnut honey lekach.

  He took two bites out of it and spat it on the ground. Gross! There's ginger in this!

  Hey!

  And nutmeg! Go get me some challah bread!

  You ungrateful little bastard!

  He went around spitting like a cat. You couldn't just get a slice of apple pie? A few cupcakes or hamantashen? A growl emerged from the back of his throat. Can't you ever do anything right?

  Who the hell do you think you are?

  I know who I am in hell. Who are you?

  I drew my hand back knowing what I was about to do but not completely sure why I was doing it. As if from a great distance I watched as my palm came down and struck Self across his cheek. It startled him enough to make him go Wha! He blinked twice. His bottom lip quivered and then he leaped.

  He climbed my shirt and grabbed me by the collar, panting in my face. You aren't going to make it.

  Then you won't either.

  You're wrong. I'll never die.

  Get in the car.

  I need sugar! I feel light-headed!

  Come on! Let's go.

  He jumped down and got back into the Jag and thrashed around in the seat for a few minutes as we drove. Soon, my father began making faces against the window, yanking his mouth wide with his pinkies and mashing his nose on the glass. After a while Self did the same and they laughed until they could hardly breathe.

  I was losing control. I started having memory flashes of the times when my dad had taught me to swim in our pool and taken me to the beach. They became so strong that after twenty minutes I had to pull over because my hands were trembling so badly. I flung open the door and listened to the shouts of thousands. Neither of them got out of the car while I staggered around in the dust.

  I couldn't shake my thoughts and kept remembering when my father used to drive us to the shore. How we'd walk down the dunes and see the damaged remnants of cyclone fencing. He'd hike me to his shoulder and carry me past the goldfish pond, the ice cream stands along the boardwalk, and all the pockets of pale short-tempered people with their stinking sunscreen and umbrellas positioned as if to stop a stampede. When he put me down in the water it would only take a minute before the waves and wet sucking sand had buried our feet. I'd take a stance behind him and watch as the roiling surf and foam broke against his heavily muscled legs.

  I could smell other Easters, the chocolate bunnies and spring in the park. My mother's dresses were always dappled with flour or honey, but her cakes never
quite rose enough and were always burned black around the edges. The sun sifted in over her shoulder as she turned, one hand on her hip, the other smoothing back a tangle of her hair, with the fiery light enveloping each angle of her face and catching in the beads of sweat flecking the point of her chin. Dad would rush into the kitchen like a bursting storm, sometimes smiling as he knotted his tie, sometimes upset with his lips smashed white, in the years after we were no longer allowed to attend church.

  I walked back to the Jag and leaned against the car door with my hands on the hood. I crouched, looked inside, and said, "Dad, tell me . . . do you know where Michael is?"

  The changing of our roles was as common as it was profound. All men grow and watch their fathers weaken from legends into old men. All men bury their fathers.

  He crooked his finger and beckoned me to him.

  I held my face up to his with the window between us, and in a way I'd never felt closer to him.

  He stuck his black tongue out and said, "Woo woo."

  My hair was thick with ice crystals, and when I moved my curls rang together in harmony with my father's jangling. I had a flash of deja vu. This had happened before at the mount. We hadn't gone anywhere, he and I. Despite these trials and all this damnation over the years, we were in pretty much the same place we'd started out, vying for who might be the bigger fool. At least he was finally having some fun now.

  When I got back in, Self started singing from "The Wizard of Oz" and Dad went along with it, swaying in his seat as if it were a jazz blues riff and he was grooving back in his beatnik days. We're off to see the Wizard…

  Coming over a hill I saw Fane hobbling down the road. I considered just tapping the horn and passing him, but I couldn't be bothered with such spite. I pulled up alongside and said, "Hop in."

  I could tell he wanted to walk the distance. That fanatic enthusiasm of the martyr was bright in his eyes from all the glorious discomfort he was in. He'd been walking for hours and would've crawled if he'd had to. Letting me drive him to the apocalypse in an air-conditioned Jaguar wouldn't count for as great sacrifice in the Book of Judgment, but Fane didn't want to miss out on the battle. He stumbled around to the passenger side and got in. "Thank you."

  "Don't mention it."

  Nip had been leading Fane by about fifty yards, as if ashamed to be seen with him. I pulled up and Nip got in the backseat too, still weeping and groaning as my father swayed to his own rhythms and Self went into another chorus. Because of the wonderful things he does…

  "You're making a joke of this," Fane said to me.

  "You think so, huh?"

  "Yes."

  I glanced over and wondered if Fane would have enjoyed having both his arms broken nearly as much as he did his crooked, pitiful legs.

  "Listen," I said, and my voice was already quaking. "Yesterday morning I woke up lying beside a butchered woman who'd been taken over by the mother of all harlots and-"

  "Another prophecy fulfilled."

  "Don't interrupt me, Fane! Last night Gawain bled to death in my arms. Now I'm going to Har Meggidon to face a man I once loved above any other, who tells me if I help him bring our messiah back he'll return to me the woman who made my life worth living. It almost sounds funny, doesn't it?" I glared at Fane and squeezed the wheel until the steering column began to groan. "I've got a fair amount on my mind right now, so don't give me any shit. I didn't have to make this a game. It was a hoax long before I ever got into it."

  "Your self-pity is evident," he said.

  You talkin' to me? Self's DeNiro still needed work

  "Yeah, well, sorry," I hissed at Fane, "but I'm in something of a mood."

  "You've never learned the worth of servitude."

  "Yes, I have. It's worth nothing. If you weren't always squirming in your own torment you'd know that."

  He sighed and shook his head, and I thought he might actually smile. "Each of us enjoys our own agony too much."

  "Yes," I said. The air conditioner circulated his noxious perfumes and I had to turn the vents in his direction. "It's the devil, you know."

  "You blaspheme even now."

  "Especially now, wouldn't you say? The Holy Land is brimming in the blood of children and suicidal believers, but they're not dying with the love of God in their hearts."

  "You don't know that."

  "I do know that. They're only seething, and they'll keep up their frenzy until they all spill apart in the dust."

  It was nothing compared to the coming days, when heaven and hell burst wide open as the wars began, and the stars fell into the boiling oceans and earth became a poisoned cinder.

  Are we almost there yet? Self asked.

  The street was empty but there'd been fighting here recently, with burned-out trucks littering the walkways. I hit a pot-hole two feet deep and Fane blanched and let out a gasp as his mangled knees clacked together. He spoke through his gritted teeth. "A third of the earth's population will begin dying soon. Today is the start of a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Tell me where you'll stand."

  "I'll let you know when the time comes."

  "You're not even sure, are you?"

  My father let out a knowing high-pitched giggle that made me want to scream. "Well, if you don't like the answer you can always slap me around with your pine sticks."

  Fane drew his stiletto and scraped the edge of the blade against the underside of his chin. It might have been a threat of murder or suicide. "Something like that."

  Floor this bitch! Self shouted, and I did.

  And so we came to the Plain of Esdraelon in the Jezreel Valley, just west of the Jordan River, and faced the entrance to Tel Megiddo.

  In the distance we could see MountTabor to the northeast and Mount Gilboa to the south. The watercourse of the KishonRiver kept the soil productive as an agricultural region. There were crops of wheat, corn, and cotton, and my dad went into a sneezing fit because of the heavy odor from the tobacco fields.

  Megiddo, the place of battles, connected all the cities of the ancient world. To control it was to control trade and the movement of armies from the pyramids to Babylon and Mesopotamia. It had once been the most heavily fortified city in Israel while the first straw huts were being built in a village that would become Rome and one day conquer all of the Holy Land.

  I could feel the death of millions in the air. We all could. Over the millennia more than twenty-five cities had been built and destroyed on this same spot, one on top of the other, erected on a foundation of obliterated armies. The surrounding land was fertile with bonemeal. No wonder they believed this was where the final conflict would take place. All major wars of the ancient Middle East had centered directly on this spot.

  Here too the Israelites worshipped Baal, and the archeological vestiges of altars and pillars still existed where the child sacrifices took place.

  Not even a brownie, Self whined. You couldn't get me a brownie? My blood pressure is low!

  I parked the Jag and we all got out except for Nip. He just sat there in the backseat with the tears coursing through his fur. He didn't want to take the chance of seeing disloyal Uriel again, so I left him there.

  Fane limped alongside me through the ruins and said, "I can hear that jackdaw."

  "They're all here," I told him. "I feel Elijah's hatred too."

  "Within the Nephilim?"

  "I suppose so, unless he abandoned the body."

  "And what of Michael?"

  "Yeah," I said, "and what about Michael?"

  Fane gulped air and said, "I hope you make the right choice today."

  "I thought you trusted me because I had nothing to lose or gain. I thought you pitied me.

  "I don't pity you that much."

  "Well, don't be shy. If you know the right way to follow God's .will, you just let me know."

  He stuck out his hand and it took me a second to realize he wanted me to shake with him. "Peace be with you."

  I shook with him. "Sure, same to you."


  We moved through the remnants of an annihilated city following the incessant screeching of Hotfoot Johnson, the squealing and mewling of the other familiars, and the overwhelming weight of consequence. My father no longer laughed aloud but he continued smiling inanely. If I had one great regret outside of the night Dani died, it was that I couldn't remove that goddamn clown costume from him.

  Self touched one of the crumbling stone altars and said, Baal got fed a lot of kiddies here.

  Yes.

  If he didn't get his supper he would have torn out their eyes, and they knew it. He would've dug their smallest veins out inch by inch and knotted their unraveled intestines together.

  Listen, do you always have to-

  Those old-time Israelites didn't mind feeding him. Oh no!

  Don't you think we ought to be a little more focused?

  But some of us need to beg just to get a friggin' piece of cake!

  My hand had been hurting ever since I'd struck him, and now the pain grew so bad I couldn't ignore it any longer. I looked into my palm and saw my lifeline changing again even as I watched. It crawled and shifted from one pattern into another. Perhaps I still had a few choices left.

  We stepped from between two pillars and once again I stood before my coven.

  There are meetings you never think about or dream of but you expect nonetheless. There was no surprise in any of our faces. Perhaps I had simply been fighting an unalterable fate as they'd been telling me the whole time. Maybe I hadn't been led here at all but had instead led each one of the others.

  I walked to them slowly, casually, as if returning home. Perhaps I was, in a fashion.

  Jebediah appeared dangerous, assertive, moderately aggressive, and a little bit crazy. I saw through the gossamer act and knew he was both anxious and frightened. His face crumpled in on itself until he had the expression of a sixteen-year-old boy about to get laid for the first time.

  Somewhere along the line this had stopped being his plan and had spiraled out of his limited control. He was draped in the white robes of a coven leader, the same ones he had worn the night of our final sabbat. I fingered the cloth-it had been re-threaded and rewoven but I could still see the vestiges of stains and burns.