Prayers to Broken Stones

by Dan Simmons

  Brother Freddy realized that he might be dealing with a demon here. After almost forty years of preaching about demons, teaching about demons, finding the spiritual footprints of demons in everything from rock music to FCC legislation, warning against demons being in the schools and kids’ games and in the symbols on breakfast cereal boxes, and generally making a fair-sized fortune by being one of the nation’s foremost experts on demons, Brother Freddy found it a bit disconcerting to be sitting three feet from someone who might very well be possessed by a demon if not actually be one. The closest he could recall to coming to one before this was when he was around the Reverend Jim Bakker’s wife Tammy Faye when her “shoppin’ demons were hoppin’ ” back before the couple’s unfortunate publicity.

  Brother Freddy clutched the Bible in his left hand and raised his right hand in a powerfully curved claw over Vanni Fucci’s head. “I abjure thee, Satan!” he cried. “And all of the powers and dominions and servants of Satan … BE GONE from this place of God! In the name of JE-SUS I command thee! In the name of JE-SUS I command thee!”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Vanni Fucci. He glanced at his gold wristwatch. “Look, let me get to the important part of all this. I don’t have too much time.”

  As the Italian began to speak, Brother Freddy kept his pose with the raised hand and clutched Bible. After a minute his arm got tired and he lowered his hand. He did not release the Bible.

  “My crime was political,” said Vanni Fucci, “even though that Short Eyes Florentine put me in the Bolgia reserved for thieves. Yes, yes, I know you don’t know what I’m talking about. In those days the political battles between we Blacks and the dogspittle Whites were of great importance—a third of Dante’s damned Inferno is filled with it—but I realize that today no one even knows what the parties were, any more than people seven hundred years from now will remember the Republicans or Democrats.

  “In 1293 two friends and I stole the treasure of San Jacopo in the Duomo of San Zeno to help our political cause. The Duomo was a church. The treasure included a chalice. But I didn’t go to Dante’s Hell just because of one little robbery about as common then as knocking over a convenience store today. No. I have prime billing in the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle because I was a Black and because Dante was a White and the unfairness of it all pisses me off.”

  Brother Freddy closed his eyes.

  Vanni Fucci said, “You’d think an eternity of wallowing in a trench of merde and hot embers would be enough revenge for the sickest S-M deity, but that’s not the half of it.” Vanni Fucci swiveled toward the Breakfast Club guests on the divan. “I admit it. I have a temper. When I get mad I give God the fig.”

  Frank Flinsey, Reverend Deeters, and the Miracle Triplets looked blankly at Vanni Fucci.

  “The fig,” repeated the Italian. He clenched his fist, ran his thumb out between his first and index fingers, and thrust it rapidly back and forth. Based on the mass intake of breath from the crowd, the symbol must have been clear enough. Vanni Fucci swiveled back toward Brother Freddy. “And then, of course, when I do that, every thief within a hundred yards—which is everyone in that goddamned Bolgia, of course—turns into reptiles …”

  “Reptiles?” croaked Brother Freddy.

  “Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads, and two-headed amphisbands, that sort of thing,” confirmed Vanni Fucci. “Alighieri got that right. And then, of course, every one of these damned snakes attacks me. Naturally I burst into flame and scatter into a heap of smoking ashes and charred bone …”

  Brother Freddy nodded attentively. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sisters Donna Lou and Betty Jo helping the three Security men use a chair as a battering ram against the invisible barrier that kept them off the set. The barrier held.

  “I mean,” said Vanni Fucci, leaning closer, “it’s not pleasant …”

  Brother Freddy decided that when all of this was over he would take a little vacation at his religious retreat in the Bahamas.

  “And being Hell,” continued Vanni Fucci, “the pieces, my pieces, don’t die, they just reassemble—which is the most painful part, let me tell you—and then, when I’m back together, the unfairness of it all gets me so pissed off that … well, you can guess …”

  “The fig?” guessed Brother Freddy and clapped a hand over his own mouth.

  Vanni Fucci nodded dolorously, “Both hands,” he said, “And off we go again.” He looked directly into Camera One. “But that’s not the worst part.”

  “No?” said Brother Freddy.

  “No?” echoed the five Breakfast Club guests.

  “Hell is a lot like a theme park,” said Vanni Fucci. “The management is always trying to improve the attractions, add a more effective touch to the entertainment. And can you guess what the Big Warden in the Sky has provided the last ten years or so to add to our torment?” The Italian’s voice had climbed the scale as his anger visibly grew.

  Brother Freddy and the Breakfast guests vigorously shook their heads.

  “BROTHER FREDDY’S HALLELUJAH BREAKFAST CLUB!” screamed Vanni Fucci, rising to his feet. “EIGHT TIMES A GODDAMNED DAY. 90-INCH SYLVANIA SUPERSCREENS EVERY TWENTY-FIVE FEET IN BOLGIA SEVEN!”

  Brother Freddy pushed back in his chair as Vanni Fucci’s saliva spattered his desk top.

  “I MEAN …” bellowed Vanni Fucci, his wide, glaring eyes fixed on something above the catwalks, “… IT’S ONE THING TO SPEND ALL OF ETERNITY BURNING IN HELL AND BEING RENT LIMB FROM LIMB EVERY FEW MINUTES BUT THIS … THIS …” He raised both arms skyward.

  “No!” screamed Brother Freddy.

  “No!” cried the Breakfast guests.

  “THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF!” bellowed Vanni Fucci and gave God the fig. Twice.

  Things happened very quickly after that. To get the full effect, one has to play back the videotape in Extreme Slow Motion and even then the sequence of events can be confusing.

  Brother Freddy went first. He doubled over the desk as if an Invisible Force were vigorously practicing the Heimlich Maneuver on him, opened his mouth to scream only to find that three rows of long fangs there made that highly impractical, and then grew scales and a tail faster than one could say “born again.” The metamorphosis was so fast and the movement afterward was so quick that no one can say for sure, but most observers agree that the Reverend Brother Freddy looked a lot like a cross between a giant bullfrog and an orange python in the brief second before he—it—leaped across the desk with one thrash of its powerful tail and lashed itself around Vanni Fucci from crotch to throat.

  Frank Flinsey turned into something altogether different; in less than a second the middle-aged Armageddon expert evolved into something resembling a six-armed newt with a jagged tail-stinger straight out of Aliens. The thing used its tail to plow a path through the carpet, floor, divan, and crushed velour to the hapless Vanni Fucci, where it joined the Brother Freddy python-thing in a full-fanged attack. Experts agreed that Flinsey was probably the pharean to Brother Freddy’s chelidrid.

  There was no doubt about Bubba Deeters transmogrification: the street preacher who had found God in a foxhole deliquesced like day-old fungi, reformed as a green-striped amphisband with a head at each end, and slithered toward Vanni Fucci to get in on the action.

  The Miracle Triplets instantly changed into slimy, dart-shaped things which shot through the air, leaving contrails of green mucus, and embedded themselves deep in Vanni Fucci’s flesh. Scholars are certain that the Triplets had become what Dante and Lucan had described as jaculi, but most viewers of the videotape today merely refer to them as “the snot rockets.”

  While these creatures threw themselves on Vanni Fucci in a roiling, writhing, snake-biting mass, there was more action on the set and elsewhere.

  Brother Billy Bob had put his earphones back on just in time to turn into what a nearby cameraman later described as “… a thirteen-foot-long garter snake with leprosy.” A second cameraman, since relieved of his duties by the Born Again Ministrie
s, was reported to have said, “I didn’t see no change in Billy Bob. All them directors look the same to me.”

  Sisters Donna Lou and Betty Jo fell to the ground only to slither onto the set a second later as two immense pink worms. Much has been written about the phallic symbolism inherent in this particular set of metamorphoses, but the irony was lost on the three security guards who emptied their service revolvers into the giant worms and then ran like hell.

  The audience was not untouched. Vanni Fucci had said that all thieves within a hundred yards of his blasphemy traditionally were transformed. Out of 319 audience members present that morning 226 were unaccounted for the next day. The auditorium was filled with screams as those who stayed human watched their husbands or wives or parents or in-laws or the stranger next to them transform in a flash into snakes, fanged newt-things, legless toads, giant iguanas, four-armed boa constrictors, and the usual assortment of chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads, and amphisbands. A University of Alabama study done a month after the incident showed that most of the thieves-turned-reptiles in the audience had been in sales, but other occupations included—lawyers (8), politicians (3), visiting ministers (31), psychiatrists (1), advertising executives (2), judges (4), medical doctors (4), stock market brokers (12), absentee landlords (7), accountants (3), and a car thief (1) who had ducked into the auditorium to get away from the Alabama Highway Patrol (2).

  In less than ten seconds, Vanni Fucci was the center of a mass of scales and fangs representing every reptile-thing in the Bible Broadcast Center auditorium. The Italian struggled to get his hands free to get off another fig.

  Brother Freddy sank its bullfrog-python chelidrid fangs deep into Vanni Fucci’s throat and the blasphemer burst into flame.

  The studio filled with a stink of sulphur so strong that thousands of cable subscribers later swore that they could smell it at home.

  The entire mass of reptiles exploded into flame along with Vanni Fucci, disappearing with him in a napalmish, orange-green flash that left the vidicon tubes of the RCA computerized color cameras with a 40-second after-image.

  The Hallelujah Breakfast Club set was suddenly empty except for the flaming wreckage of the divan, desk, and crushed velour chair. Overhead sprinklers came on and the “bay window” imploded with a shower of sparks and glass. The sunrise did not survive.

  Later that night, the Nightline video replay drew a sixty-share. On the same show, Dr. Carl Sagan went on record with Ted Koppel as saying that the entire event could be attributed to natural causes.

  That week Brother Freddy’s Hallelujah Breakfast Club Prayer Partners sent in Love Offerings totalling $23,267,894.79.

  Except for the occasional Billy Graham Crusade, it set a new weekly record.

  Introduction to

  “Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle”

  This is another story about televangelists.

  Wait! Before you close the book or decide that my only form of recreation is harpooning this particular brand of helpless sea slug, let me explain.

  Some time back, the award-winning writer Edward Bryant approached me about a project. It seems that a Colorado-based publication wanted four short-shorts for their Christmas edition. The publication was … you see it was a … well, it was a comic book catalogue. But a good comic book catalogue. Actually, it was much more than that, since it carried a book review column by Ed and a fine film-review section by the discerning critic Leanne C. Harper.

  Anyway, four of us would do these Christmas short-shorts and Ed would write the framing tale. (A difficult task at the best of times.) There were no restrictions—except for length—and the fact that the story had to be about Christmas and had to include an “overlooked present.” The other writers were all members of the Colorado Mafia—Steve Rasnic Tem, Connie Willis, and Cynthia Felice. Cynthia had already suggested that her tale would be “upbeat,” so the rest of us were allowed to return to our crypts and release whatever demons waited there.

  The results, as one would expect, included a typically brilliant, subtle, and haunting piece by Willis, a powerful and seriously disturbing story in Steve Tem’s inimitable style, my own offering reprinted here, and a clever framing tale by Ed Bryant that somehow managed to tie these disparate efforts together. But Cynthia Felice had to bow out due to other pressing demands, and the result was a trio of tales so unrelievably dark that the reader would probably ask Santa for a razor blade or cyanide capsule that year.

  The distant publisher of this comic book catalogue was said to have suffered instant seizure upon reading the first fiction to grace his pages, began spinning and bouncing off walls like a Linda Blair doll, and reportedly didn’t respond to Thorazine until well after New Year’s.

  The truth is, I’d indulged myself in the story to the point of including a few in-jokes, one at the expense of my book publisher and another gently poking an editor I actually thought very highly of. What the heck, I thought, who’s gonna read a comic catalogue?

  It seems everybody did. And if that wasn’t enough, the trio of tales was soon sold to Asimov’s SF Magazine where it served to darken the next Christmas for a host of people. And if that wasn’t enough, Bryant had sent copies out as Christmas gifts to everyone he knew—which just happens to be everyone in the publishing industry and probably everyone in Known Space.

  It wasn’t long before I had the reputation as The Man Who Sacrificed Christmas with a Survival Knife. Compared to Simmons, the Grinch and Scrooge were Santa’s helpful elves.

  It doesn’t help that I assure everyone who will listen that Christmas is my second-favorite holiday (after Halloween, of course), or that every Christmas Eve my wife Karen and I accompany our small daughter up to a nearby snow-covered hillside to watch for Santa’s sleigh, or that I once played Billy the Orphan who was really the disguised Christ Child in our fifth-grade operetta, or that …

  No, I didn’t think it would help.

  Meanwhile, ponder this: when the Big Mistake finally happens and some computer pushes its own button, uncorking the Ultimate Detergent and putting us all through the Rinse and Burn cycle, when the accumulated weaponry of forty years of stockpiling gets launched just to scratch someone’s itch to see if it will work, when the mushroom clouds have withered and the nuclear winter has grayed to nuclear spring … well, ask yourself: Self, what institution in the U.S. of A. has the infrastructure to withstand such a boot in the anthill? Who has the relay satellites already warmed up and plugged into our homes and communities, just waiting to carry the Leader’s voice whispering in the nuclear night? Who has the followers in the millions … followers who already show the precise blend of fanaticism, obedience, and joyous aggression necessary to carry on with the Program while the rest of us are digging Uncle Charlie out of the rubble?

  Got the answer yet?

  Move over, Walter F. Miller.

  Oh, yes—one final footnote for future biographers and bibliographers: the more discerning among you may note that in this story and in all of my stories and novels that include money-grubbing, venial, dishonest and otherwise fake TV ministers, the center of their web is invariably Dothan, Alabama. Now some of you may ask, “What terrible trauma, what dark, unrecorded and possibly unprintable incident occurred in Dothan, Alabama, to cast such an indelible blot on the escutcheon of this fine southern community?”

  Well, you’ll never hear the answer from me.

  Vexed to Nightmare

  by a Rocking Cradle

  Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob brought the Word to the New Yorkers on the eve of Christmas Eve, paddling his long dugout canoe east up the Forty-second Street Confluence and then north, against the tide, up Fifth Avenue, past the point where the roof of the Public Library glowed greenly under the surface of the darkening waters. It was a cold but peaceful evening. The sunset was red and beautiful—as all sunsets had been for the two-and-a-half decades since the Big Mistake of ’98—and cooking fires had been lit on the many tiers and tops of shattered towers rising from the dark
sea like the burned-out cypress stumps Brother remembered from the swamps of his childhood.

  Brother paddled carefully, aware of the difficulty of handling the long canoe and even more aware of the precious cargo he had brought so far through so much. Behind him, nestled across the thwarts like some great cooking pot, lay the Sacred Dish, it’s God’s Ear raised to the burning sky as if already poised to catch the fist emanations from the Holy Beamer that Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob had left in Dothan, Alabama, fourteen months earlier. Set behind the Sacred Dish, crated and cradled, was the Holy Tube, and behind it, wrapped in clear plastic, sat the Lord’s Bike. The Coleman generator was set near the bow, partially blocking Brother’s vision but balancing the weight of the cargo of sacred relics astern.

  Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob paddled north past the trellised remnants of Rockefeller Center and the ragged spire of St. Patricks. There were dozens of occupied towers in this section of Rimwall Bay, hundreds of fires twinkling on the vined and rusted ruins above him, but Brother ignored them and paddled purposefully northward to 666 Fifth Avenue.

  The building still stood—at least thirty-five floors of it, twenty-eight still above the water line—and Brother let the long dugout drift near the base of it. He stood—balancing carefully and shifting the weight of the Heckler and Koch HK 91 Semi-Automatic Christian Survival Network Assault Rifle across his back—raising his arms high, hands empty. Shadowed figures looked down from gaps in dark glass. Somewhere a baby cried and was hushed.

  “I bring you glad tidings of Christ’s Resurrection!” shouted Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob. His voice echoed off water and steel. “Good News of your coming Salvation from tribulations and woe!”

  There was a silence and then a voice called down. “Who do you seek?”

  “I seek the eldest Clan. That with the strongest totem so that I may bring gifts and the Word of the Lord from the True Church of Christ Assuaged.”