by Jesse Jordan
But it doesn’t matter.
The War, remember? The War. Remember when you came up with the first story? It doesn’t matter anymore because of the War and the armies and the return of the Creator, and Ezra said this world doesn’t even matter anyways ’cause it’s just a place for them to prove themselves. Remember?
But that’s not right. That can’t be right.
Maybe it doesn’t have to be now? I mean, Ezra says they’ve been waiting for, what, a thousand years? No! More than that. Before there even was a BC/AD, right? Thousands of years they’ve been waiting. So what’s . . . twenty or forty more? I can make the comic—I can do what I want. They can’t tell me I have to do this now. I could . . . Dorian’s finally . . . Why would I stop everything now? I have Eliza! She’s right there. I have the first issue, I have, I have everything—
But Ezra says it has to happen now.
Why?
I don’t know, but he does. They all do. They’re waiting for you. They’re aaaaaalllllllllll waiting.
Let them wait! What about me? What about my life? I didn’t agree to any of this. I don’t want Earth, I just want Dorian. I want . . . Ahh! I don’t wanna lead any stupid army in any stupid war and Ezra and Dink and Mikhael and everyone everywhere can just—
James’s cell rang, and when he looked over and saw Dorian’s yearbook photo smiling from the screen, he lunged for it like providence.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I figured you’d call me today, and it’s totally no big deal—”
“Yeah,” James said, “I was. It’s just early. I didn’t wanna bother you.”
“It’s eleven, James. I haven’t slept past eight since I was in the third grade.”
“Jesus.”
“I know, right? Anyway, my dad and Deborah, his new girlfriend, who—oh my god, I shouldn’t even start. She is the worst. She’s one of those girls who thinks dumb is cute. You know what I mean? Like, I can tell she’s not actually that dumb, but she thinks it’s just the most adorable thing ever. Who wants someone who doesn’t know anything about anything?”
“Well, your dad, apparently.”
And then she was laughing, and it was amazing, just exactly what James had thought one of these conversations would be like.
“Right. Anyway, they’re picking me up later and we’re gonna go to a matinee and dinner, so I just thought that if, y’know, if you wanted to like hang out today or something, we could go grab a coffee.”
“Yeah.” Was that quick enough? Too quick? “Yeah, definitely. When? Now? I mean, I can go now if you want.”
“Sure, now’s cool.”
“Cool. Funky Bean?”
“God, it sounds awful when those words come out of a human mouth, doesn’t it? This town needs a Starbucks.”
“So . . . Funky Bean?”
“Yes, James, the Bean.”
James cleaned up fast and was out the door so quick he was already sullying his washing and deodorizing with a fresh sheen of sweat. The sunlight filled up the world like water as the morning burned away, and all at once, a thought bloomed—An end, an end, this is an end. He could feel the truth of it, even if he couldn’t articulate exactly what it meant. So many of those things and ideas by which James had defined James were disappearing. The sensation wasn’t quite as sad or scary as James would’ve expected; it was actually pretty exciting. His loneliness—and that wet-heavy fear that loneliness uses to suffocate—it all felt like it was ending. All of it. Just walking here in the sun, James felt a power and freedom that he had never known in his life. He wanted to run, to do something big and open and visceral. He wanted to kiss Dorian again. Yes, that was it. Sweat crept down his back, and James dreamed of diving into water, of coming up to find Dorian, their mouths pressed together, their tongues the circuitry that connected their souls.
That was when the Escalade turned in front of him and screeched to a stop. James’s mind was somewhere else and he started to apologize, but then the front and back doors sprang open. Two men, black suits, the clop-clack of hard soles on pavement. James took a single step back and felt four hands from behind take hold of his elbows and shoulders and—“Hey!”—he tried to twist away but they were too strong, and a moment later the hands in front had a hold of him too and he was pushed/pulled into the waiting Escalade. The men behind him climbed in as well, so that the spacious sports utility vehicle was about as full of humans as it could get.
James turned his head to see the men behind him. They were mannequins, or could have been for all the emotion they showed. Dead eyes and stiff jaws, varying degrees of brown hair cut close. Those hands, though—they communicated. They said, “Fight back and we’ll break you.”
“Listen,” James said, but that was all he could get out. He felt the Escalade lurch into motion.
“He speaks!” a voice called from the back of the vehicle, and all at once, everybody in the speeding Escalade but James burst into song. Loud and basso, sonorous, they sang.
“WHEN ISRAEL WAS IN EGYPT’S LAND, LET MY PEOPLE GO . . .” Plastic zip ties affixed his hands and feet to each other. “OPPRESSED SO HARD THEY COULD NOT STAND, LET MY PEOPLE GO!” James heard the rrrriiiiiiiiip of duct tape and then felt it grip his mouth closed and wrap once around his head, pulling at the hairs on the back of his neck.
Someone leaned close and whispered into his ear, “You won’t sway us with your poison words, Devil.”
“GO DOWN, MOSES, WAY DOWN IN EGYPT’S LAND . . .” A bag was pulled down over his head and the Escalade went dark. Not black, though. The bag was porous enough that some light filtered through, though nothing could be discerned. “TELL OLD PHARAOH, LET MY PEOPLE GO!” The fabric was rough and scratchy against his cheeks. And that smell—What is that? “THUS SAITH THE LORD, BOLD MOSES SAID . . .” Potatoes. That’s it. It’s a potato sack. “IF NOT I’LL SMITE YOUR FIRSTBORN DEAD, LET MY PEOPLE GO!”
That was the next fifteen minutes of James’s life. As they sang51 he felt a fear he’d never known before. It wasn’t—as fear had always been—debilitating but instead agitating. The fear was an itch, and behind it, something else. Something that felt gross inside. James held his hands in fists and waited, his teeth pressed together. He shook with fear, and his bladder felt as if it might go at any moment.
James heard the unmistakable sounds of tires coming to a stop on gravel. Seat belts released, engine off, clack, clack, clack, thump, thump, then the hands had him again, lifting/guiding him out of the Escalade as his feet scrambled for purchase on the loose rock. It was bright and warm and he could smell something . . . synthetic, like rubber, and then the quality of light changed. A door closed behind him and the sound of it reverberated across far-off walls and ceiling. Warehouse? Factory? Did they drive me around and around and then bring me to the ChocoMalt factory?
No, the smell’s wrong.
A chair was pressed into the back of his knees, forcing him into it. The ties were cut from his hands and feet, but those extremities were immediately zip-tied to the arms and legs of the chair. He could hear movement. Footsteps far off, the shuffling of fabric nearby. He could smell the breath of the man affixing his right-wrist strap: fish and vinegar. The scrape of something metal being dragged across the floor, the clop of those hard-soled shoes just a few feet in front of him, a click, a mechanical whirring, and then the potato sack was pulled from his head.
James knew the man instantly—the severe cheekbones, chin like two knuckles, the butter-yellow hair.
The sunglasses were gone, lying on the table next to him, along with a running tape recorder and—James’s greatest fear, which he now saw in its naked ridiculousness—James’s backpack, open and empty, lying beside clear Baggies holding some of his more depraved drawings. The Baggies were grouped in three piles, each labeled in thick, black ink: Perverse. Seditious. Evil.
“Hello, Son of Perdition.”
He nodded to someone off to James’s right, and a moment later James felt something press a
gainst his throat—cold metal with a determined edge. Old Fish-and-Vinegar Breath leaned in once more. “One word out of line, one trick, and I open your throat.” The warmth filled James’s lap and ran down his left leg. The blond man watched the dark stain spread. The light tinkley drip from James’s shorts to the floor below filled the silence, and for an instant James saw doubt darken the blond man’s face. Then the tape was ripped from James’s mouth like a punishment.
“Such a long-awaited day,” the blond man said.
“Why am I—?” James began, but the pressure of the knife made him stop.
The blond man crossed himself, said a few silent words, and then turned his gaze fully to James.
“Yes?” The blond man said.
James didn’t risk a sound.
“Let him speak.”
The edge of the blade backed ever so slightly away from the pulsing artery.
“Why am I here?”
“You are here because you are the enemy and we are the katechon. You are the scourge, you are the Antichrist, and you are here to die.”
“No.” James couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to beg. He wanted to stand up to them, but that would not happen. The tears started and multiplied, threatening to choke him. His whole body reacted, jerking up and shivering. He wanted to tell them he wasn’t the Antichrist or that even if he was, he promised not to do anything. He wanted to beg and tell them they couldn’t kill him because he was only sixteen and he wanted to know what it felt like to be forty. He wanted to tell them so many things, but instead he just cried.
This, it turned out, greatly confused the blond man. He had been raised to destroy the Antichrist, prepared his entire life for this one purpose (just as his father had been, and his father’s father and his father’s father’s father, and so on), but this was not what he’d been told to expect. And as James continued to weep while sitting in his own urine, the blond man’s brow crept down his face and his mouth twisted to the side. He tilted his head, staring at the boy.
“Uhhhh, one moment please,” the blond man said, motioning for Old Fish-and-Vinegar and Pudgy Dark Hair to huddle up a few feet to the left.52
It was at that exact moment, just as James felt the knife leave his neck, that he remembered Dink. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t reach his pocket. He shut his eyes tight and begged that his voice would be enough. “Dink,” he whispered.
Old Fish-and-Vinegar looked over, squinting, before returning to the huddle.
And then James felt it. A flutter in the pocket, squirming, wriggling, darting free and clambering up him. And then the homunculus was once more perched on his shoulder by his ear.
“Dink?”
“Sssh. It’s alright, kid. I’m here.”
“Can you help?” James said in the mousiest whisper he could eke out.
“Course I can help. That’s why I’m here.” Dink swung around, taking in the room in an instant. “Okay, kid, you’ll be fine. Just stall and act stupid. I mean dumber than the dumbest dumbass in history, okay? Set smart to zero. You got it? Deny and act confused. Nothing more. Can you do that?”
James nodded.
“I’ll be back. Sit tight.”
James felt the homunculus slide down his sleeve and watched as he jumped to the ground, landing with a roll. The little man darted across the floor, his tiny feet scampering until he came to the leg of the small metal table. He climbed with an undulating motion, arms and legs stretching then coming together like an inchworm. He scampered up onto the table, hiding behind the tape recorder just as the three men returned.
The blond man resumed his position directly in front of James. The confidence was back on his face, and the knife was back at James’s throat. “Very clever, but I think it’s time to begin.” He planted his hands on his hips and stood there in what can only be described as a Superman pose. “I . . . am Adam,” he said. “Who . . . are . . . you?”
“Listen, you have the wrong person—”
“Who are you?”
“Listen—”
“Who are you?”
“Uh, my name is James Salley. I’m—”
“That is not who you are.”
“Yes—”
“Yoooouuuu,” Adam screamed, devouring James’s words, “are the Antichrist! The evidence against you is staggering. Are you ready for your trial to begin?”
“Trial?”
“Trial, yes. Like the Holy Inquisition. You will be questioned, and though you don’t deserve it, you will be given the option of confession.”
“Confession?”
“Then you will be smoted and flung back into the lake of fire from whence you came.”
“Listen,” James said as he searched for Dink, “I really have no idea what you guys are talking about. I’m just a kid. I go to school at—”
“The trial commences!” Adam shouted, his arms raised to the heavens.
“Amen,” intoned the other two.
Adam wove his hands together behind his back and began to pace before James like a caged tiger, quick steps giving way to tight spins. “I, Adam Thursberry Delacroix of the Chivalric Order of Christ’s Knights, do hereby begin this trial of James Lovie Salley, herein known as the Son of Perdition—”
“I don’t even know what that means!”
“Quiet!” Adam’s pacing jerked to a halt. “There will be time for you to answer charges later. Now I have to . . .” He hovered over the tape recorder for an instant before waving it away and resuming pacing. “Oh, I guess we can edit it later. Okay, where was . . . Begin this trial of James Lovie Salley, herein known as the Son of Perdition, the Little Horn, Tool of Satan, Deceiver, or the Antichrist. It is eleven forty-seven in the morning, Central Standard Time. Amen.”
“Amen,” the other two crooned.
“Now,” Adam said, rounding on James, “to begin. Paul, may I have the materials?”
“What?” the pudgy one said, his eyes suddenly wide.
“The materials, Paul. For the trial.”
“Oh, I . . . they’re in the bag, I didn’t know you’d . . . this early . . . I’ll get ’em.”
James and Adam watched as Paul rushed over to a black attaché, riffling through it as he stumbled toward them. His hand burst triumphantly from the attaché with a few papers clutched tight. Adam did not seem to share his sense of victory, and so Paul handed him the papers and retreated to his former spot.
Adam snatched the top sheet and snapped it crisp.
“Your name is James Lovie Salley.”
James stared, unsure if something was being requested of him.
“Is your name James Lovie Salley?”
“Yeah—yes.”
“You live at 323 Jackson Street in Stone Grove, Illinois, do you not?”
James nodded.
“Speak up, please. For the recording.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother is Eleanor Jane Salley, née Vuckman, and your legal father is Joshua James Salley?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“And please, put aside the innocent act. I think we both know who your father really is.”
“Satan is his father,” Paul bellowed while standing at military attention. “He came up from Hell and begat a son of mortal woman!”
“Thank you, Paul,” Adam said, turning to him, “but in the future, would you mind refraining from answering unless questions are posed to you?”
The pudgy man looked down and nodded. James wondered for a moment if maybe Paul could somehow . . . but it was as if Old Fish-and-Vinegar read his mind, and the pressure of the knife intensified, leading James’s gaze away from Paul.
“Now,” Adam resumed, “it may seem unimportant to you that we verify that information, but large truths hide in small details. Do you know the truth of numbers, beast?”
Adam waited for an answer.
James said, “What?”
“When we look at a person’
s name through the truth of numbers, it tells us things which they might like to hide. No one can hide from the numbers. That is how the Almighty speaks to us. Do you know what gematria is?”
James shook his head. He wanted to cry, but it was as if he was too paralyzed even for that. Maybe Dink left me. I can’t die. I can’t.
Adam nodded, and the knife left James’s throat. A moment later, another chair was pulled up alongside James’s own. Old Fish-and-Vinegar then handed Adam a clipboard and a pen, but when he went to place his knife back at James’s throat, Adam held up his hand.
“I think we’ll be alright without that for now. Mr. Salley understands his situation. Do stay close, though.” And with that, Adam seated himself next to James, holding up the blank sheet of paper for James to see.
“Gematria,” Adam began, “is an alphanumeric system by which numeric values are assigned to certain letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It has many variations, many cousins. There is an English gematria; there is isopsephy, which is according to the Greek alphabet; there are Kaballah and arithmancy and many more. And do you know what, Little Horn? They can see you. That’s right; there’s no hiding from them. The numbers can always see. Look.”
Adam wrote the name across the paper.
J
A
M
E
S
L
O
V
I
E
S
A
L
L
E
Y
“Now,” Adam said, his pen hovering just above the paper, “let’s look at arithmancy first, shall we? There are two major schools, or methods, of arithmancy: Agrippan and Chaldean. We’ll use both. So James gives us one, one, four, five, one, which equals twelve, according to the Agrippan, and one, one, four, five, three, which equals fourteen, according to the Chaldean. You see? Each letter has a numeric value. According to the Agrippan method, for instance, A, J, and S equal one and B, J, and T equal two, and so on and so on. The Chaldean table is the same for certain numbers, different for others, but here, let me just . . .” Adam filled in the rest of the name, so that the finished product looked like this: