The Kingdom of Heaven

by 19

  Jordan ended up driving.

  He was pressed against the passenger side window, trying to physically shrink to keep from touching Zillah again. He was being jostled mercilessly, and he was tired and thirsty and he could smell Zillah, sand and sweat and something clean and sweet underneath it.

  Zillah passed him a joint. He smoked. He tried to pass it back and discovered that they each had their own. It was extravagant, and wonderful, and he smoked the whole thing and relaxed in spite of himself. He was pressed against Zillah's right side, and he leaned his head between the window and the back of the seat and studied the fact that they seemed to be driving up a vertical desert wall.

  Jordan was smoking, flicking the loose ashes out the window. They had a little portable tape player between them. Both were singing along to music that he couldn't hear. So he was left out of that, too. He tried to look out of the corner of his eye, to read their lips. He wanted to figure out what song it was so he could pretend to hear it too, sing along, but he couldn't tell.

  He was incredibly high.

  He hurt. Ached. He had the urge to cry, and he gritted his teeth against it and wondered why he spent so much of his life choking emotions back, keeping words in the back of his throat, hiding what he felt. He was tired of it, but he had no idea how else to function. If he said anything, everyone would know that he could be hurt.

  And that…well, that would just be the end.

  There was a strange duality to his fear of nonexistence, and this was one of the times he used it to his advantage. Sometimes, the thought that he did not actually exist was a dark comfort. He held that comfort close, now. He was not real, therefore this immature pain was equally unreal. He was not suffering, because he was not even there.

  Somehow, this time, the comfort seemed thinner than before. He pretended otherwise. He would not believe that this final refuge had been denied him.

  He pretended to doze off, and stared at the vertical wall in front of them through slitted eyelids.

  He was tired of pretending things.

  He wondered if everyone else was the same way, if they were all actors, constantly improvising. He wondered if he was actually fooling anyone.

  (7)

  The truck pulled into Spectre's front yard with a scrape and a whimper, much to the terror of several chickens, a duck, and a pig tied to what was left of a fence.

  Jordan shrieked in delight over the zoo. He scrambled out of the truck with the engine still running.

  He sighed, reached over Zillah and cut the ignition, pocketing the key. Zillah turned and stared at him for some damn reason, with no real expression, only something like thinly veiled amusement in his wide gray eyes. Then he slid over, climbing out with infuriating grace.

  He stared after Zillah, wanting to say something, anything. He missed his chance.

  Jordan was petting the pig, sitting on the ground, talking to it animatedly. The pig was ignoring Jordan, snuffling at the ground and making piggy noises.

  He was not in the mood for farm animals, meeting strangers while dressed like a homeless Satanist, the sunlight, Zillah...

  The sunlight. He groped in his pocket and found his sunglasses. Great. After forever in the blinding desert, he would find his glasses now. He put them on, ran his hands through his hair, tried to brush off the worst of the sand.

  The house was a strange mutant thing that had once been a doublewide trailer. It had been added to until it was almost unrecognizable. It sprawled out crooked and friendly, looking like the end result of an explosion in a hardware store. A handlettered sign on the front door read: WELCOME FRIENDS, in yellow paint on a scrap of plywood. He smiled a little. He liked that. It was silly, but it did make him feel welcome.

  Just then, the door opened. Spectre leaned out, grinning. He was a stick figure with white hair and watercolor eyes that the desert had bleached from green to a color like roots that were pinned under a rock. He wore a widebrimmed, battered straw hat with a faded loveworn rainbow scarf tied around it. –Jordan! And friends, no less. Welcome to my house. I see you met Bartholomew.

  –Bartholomew is cool! Jordan said back, leaning over and pressing an enthusiastic kiss onto the top of the pig's head. –Did you just get him?

  –Someone left him with me. He's not mine, exactly, just a kind of guest for a while. Welcome, he added, looking at him and Zillah.

  –Hi. Thanks, he said, waving awkwardly, just standing there. He was wondering if he should start unpacking the back of the truck. He was tremendously high. The entire scene was frayed at the edges, like a dream.

  –Just leave all that. We'll get it later, Spectre said, reading his mind. –Come inside. I just made tea.

  Did his entire life have to be so existential?

  He smiled and nodded, and climbed the rickety wooden steps.

  Inside Spectre's house it was cool and dark. Sticks of sandalwood incense were burning in an empty Chartreuse bottle on the coffee table. There was a couch covered with a handmade quilt, and a bookcase made from packing crates, sagging under the weight of hundreds of books.

  He wandered over to this immediately, drawn by the bookmagnet in his head. Albert Camus. John Gardner. Frank Herbert. Jung. Foucault. Ayn Rand and Stephen King and Clive Barker. Salman Rushdie. Poppy Z. Brite. Anton LaVey. He was amazed Spectre had come by those, banned since the even before the war.

  Jordan came in behind him, followed by Zillah and a chicken. Spectre gently maneuvered the chicken back outside, making a ridiculous noise at it. It left a feather.

  He picked it up. It wasn't yellow. He dropped it again, no longer interested.

  –You can borrow any of those you want to, Spectre said, startling him.

  The, feathers? –Excuse me?

  The books. I've read them all.

  –Thanks. Thank you, he said, astonished. Maybe this Spectre really was good people. He wouldn't actually borrow any of them, of course, but somehow he knew that if he had, it would have been okay.

  Jordan sprawled on the couch, chattering about a dead scorpion he had found. Zillah sat down beside him, moving silent and canny like a cat, settling in with possessive closeness.

  He sat on the edge of an easy chair with cat scratches on the arms. He looked around, wanting to find the cat to have something to do. He liked cats anyway, but he didn't see one anywhere, and he sure as Hell wasn't going to go kitty kitty in a silly voice, for fear that the cat had been dead for a year, or something equally embarrassing.

  Spectre was poking around in the kitchen–a yellow sunny space that had a window in the wall looking out into the living room. A suncatcher hung there, sending tropical-bird shaped rainbows across the worn carpet. He stared at this, vaguely interested. Spectre handed him a glass with dancing dinosaurs on it. It was tea. He sniffed at it to make sure.

  Spectre noticed. –I only make shroom tea with orange Kool-Aid, he said, grinning. He wasn't offended, wasn't even surprised.

  –Sorry, he muttered, and took a big swallow to prove it. –It's good.

  –It's tea. How good could it be? Spectre smiled to clarify that this was something like a joke, nudged his shoulder lightly. That startled him. He leaned back too quickly, slopping tea down the front of his shirt. This person was acting like his friend, and no matter how hard he looked it didn't seem as though Spectre was acting.

  –You know, we have a shower. With water. It's a lot less sticky than using tea to get the sand off, Spectre said.

  He laughed. He couldn't help it. There was light, something clear and clean and good about this odd boy.

  But something was wrong.

  Spectre was staring at him suddenly, too hard, too intently.

  His sunglasses had slipped down. Fuck. He pushed them back up, nervous.

  It was too late. He sighed, reached up and took them off, slipped the earpiece into the neck of his shirt. He looked up at Spectre, almost defiantly.

  Spectre didn't move for a very long time. He managed to get even paler, and he exhaled in a lo
ng startled rush. He didn't inhale.

  –It's not a contact lens. Now breathe or you'll faint, he said, quietly.

  Silence.

  He didn't speak. He'd been in this silence before. Nothing he ever said was right.

  –Do you want- Spectre lost it, started again. –Do you want to come out on the porch with me?

  He frowned. Zillah and Jordan were kissing, oblivious. –Why?

  –Talk.

  He made a vague gesture with his shoulders. –I guess so. This is the part where either he makes a pass at me or offers to show me his Tarot cards.

  He brought the tea with him.

  The porch was screened in, with a ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, cushioned wicker chairs. He sat across from Spectre, sipping tea, feeling like an idiot. He had nothing to say to this stranger. He was afraid he already knew what this stranger had to say to him.

  Spectre was leaning forward, his eyes bright with intensity, his mouth tense. –You're him, aren't you?

  –Him who? he said, staring at the dinosaurs on his glass.

  –You're the Bringer. I dreamed about you, Spectre whispered. Before you came here, before Jordan told me anything about you, before I knew you were real. I saw you. I didn't recognize you with the glasses. God, I was joking with you and everything, you must think I'm... He drew in a long, shuddering breath. –You were standing in the desert at night wearing a funeral shroud, and you raised your hands up and the sky broke apart. It's you. I always knew you would come but having faith and having you here on my porch are so different– His voice snapped, and he stopped, blinking hard.

  He cleared his throat, drank again, embarrassed. –Look, I don't know who you think you're talking to, but you've made a mistake. I'm just a guy. I'm a friend of Jordan's. Having two different-colored eyes is a genetic defect. Lots of people have it. David Bowie had it, I think...or he got in a fight, or something….I mean, I appreciate you letting us crash here, but if I'm going to upset you this much maybe we’d better move on.

  He was starting to stand up. He didn't know where to put his glass.

  Spectre stretched out his hands, stopping just short of touching him. –Please don't go. It's just hard, after years of legends and graffiti and everything. It startled me...your eyes. Don't go.

  He didn’t go.

  Oh, how this hurt. So much. Every fucking time.

  –You are him. I know. I can see you.

  He sat down again, very slowly. –I'll stay, if you don't cry, kneel, or start reciting things from Ezekiel. Okay? Is that a deal?

  Spectre sniffed, smiled weakly. –Deal.

  He nodded. He hated this. Absolutely hated it. But he liked this boy with his chickens and his ghostcolor hair and his willingness to lend out books that were absolutely impossible to replace, and he would go through this for him.

  –How do you know Jordan?

  –I...saw him. Out in the desert. You were in Mirabel, working, and someone gave him some bad shit at a party, Spectre said. –He was out of his mind, about a hundred miles from here. I just...knew he was there, and I went and got him. I had this old Fairlane at the time, and when I found him he was singing at the sky, or something. That's how we met.

  He nodded. That more or less agreed with what Jordan had told him, except that Jordan tended to start in the middle of a story and plunge headlong into the beginning.

  –He never mentioned your eyes, Spectre added.

  –What is it you need?

  Spectre flinched. He was toying with the end of his rainbow scarf, and he seemed to suddenly notice he was doing it. He took off the straw hat and set it on the floor, a tangle of fidgeting and fear. –I need...you to do...what only you can. But I'm afraid for you to do it.

  Calm. Easy. Be gentle with this boy. He lives half-here and half in dreamtime, and ghosts are as real to him as you are. Don't hurt him.

  –Confess you, you mean, he said. –Because you don't need physical healing. It has to be psychological.

  –Yes. That. Please. I've been...carrying something for years...

  –What could you have possibly have done that is so terrible? he asked, not to be sarcastic, absolutely serious. He saw no darkness, no guilt in this boy.

  Spectre leaned back in his chair, his shoulders drawn in, his arms folded tight. He was looking at the floor, with his hair hanging in his face. –It's not what I did. It's something that I didn't do.

  He hated this. But he liked it too. He was enjoying the old patterns clicking into place, the familiar mindset, the words on his lips before he even had to consider them. He felt like a transmitter. His identity had fallen away like the dead skin it really was. –You won't like this, he warned. It would be the only warning.

  –I know, Spectre said.

  –Uncross your arms. Look me in the eye. No matter what, you don't look away, he said. The words were blunt, but he made his voice as gentle as he could.

  Spectre nodded, and obeyed.

  –Start with your real name.

  –John, Spectre whispered.

  –Keep going, John.

  Spectre did. –I was ten years old when it happened. My mother...she ran this safehouse. She was so good at it. She could cook like crazy, and she loved everybody, just everybody. It didn't matter who you were or how dirty you were, if you didn't have anything to give back. She made everybody feel welcome. She would hug them first, the minute they came into the door. And she'd say, welcome home.

  –What was her name, John?

  –Elizabeth. Spectre drew in a deep breath, bracing himself. –One night there were these two men, horrible people. I could see how bad they were, and I tried to tell her. She said, hush, John. They're people, too. Only they weren't, they were machines made out of meat and they were selfish and hungry and empty, and she wouldn't listen! Why wouldn't she fucking just listen! I was just a kid, but she knew I wasn't stupid!

  It was more or less the story he had expected to hear, nothing new under the sun.

  He closed his eyes, briefly.

  It was no less horrible for being redundant.

  –And after I went to bed, I heard her scream. Spectre was crying, in the calm disconnected way that happened when you opened a very old wound. –I came out. I saw what was happening, I was in the dining room, the one just outside the bedroom. Mary was just a little kid–and I could hear her crying but I couldn't go to her, and I saw. And I hid. I hid under the table and I watched, and I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything.

  –You were ten, he said, very softly.

  –I was all she had, Spectre snapped back, nearly shouting. –I knew where the fuck the gun was! And I laid there in the floor and cried and covered up my ears!

  –Come here, he said.

  Spectre wasn't ready to hear that yet. –You know the worst part? She got pregnant. And it killed her. I was trying to help her, and she bled to death, and the baby died after about a minute. It was so small. It didn't even have fingernails.

  –Come here, he said again, pulling Spectre back from the edge of an undeserved Hell with the power of his eyes.

  Spectre tried to, fell to his knees. So much for our deal, he thought, and resisted the insane urge to smile. Crying, and now kneeling. Well, he’d expected both.

  He pulled the boy closer, and Spectre had his head in his lap, sobbing. He let him cry. It was about time. The tears had come quickly, and that was good, because this kind of psychic surgery–a combination of confession, exorcism, and amputation–was easier once you were beyond the breaking point.

  Afterward they were both just sitting there, the silence broken by Spectre's hitching every few minutes, and even that was getting fainter, less violent.

  –Let me tell you another story, he said, when Spectre was ready. – Once upon a time, there was a woman named Elizabeth. She had a son named John, who she loved more than anything on Earth.

  Spectre was sitting on the floor, still resting his head on his knee. He was stroking Spectre's ghostwhite hair, very gently, and
he kept his voice pitched to rhythms that held the boy there, that made him listen. –She ran a safehouse, in the middle of the desert, and she welcomed everyone into her home, without prejudice, with so much love that it spilled out of her eyes, glittered in her hands. And one night, she was hurt, very badly, by two lost souls who had forgotten how to understand love.

  –That night was the beginning of the end of her life.

  --She left behind hundreds of people who had a memory of someone beautiful who made them feel like they belonged somewhere. And some of those people started safehouses of their own.

  --One of them was her son. And he carried inside him all the love that everyone is born with. What made him different, made him special, was that his mother had taught him how to give that love away. What made him pure was that the evil that happened didn't make him bitter.

  --He came through it, wounded, but still the kind of person that would paint welcome friends outside his house in yellow paint.

  Spectre's body unwound, then, and he cried again, the kind of clean tears that emptied out all the darkness. After a long time he managed to get back into his own chair. He covered his face with his hands, soundless, sat motionless for an even longer time. You could almost hear the edges of the wound knitting together.

  (8)

  –Do you feel better? he asked him, after he was sure he had waited long enough not to be interrupting Spectre's rebuilding.

  –Yeah. I think so. Tired, and sort of hurting, but I think I can heal, now. Thank-

  –Don't, he said, too sharply, and began again more quietly. –Don't thank me.

  Spectre uncovered his face, stared at him for a long time. He understood it, then, and smiled. –I won't. But you won't...Spectre paused, uncertain. –You won't tell anyone, that I cried like that, that I was...

  –Tell anyone what?

  The look Spectre gave him was so grateful that it made him sick to be what he was, tired and disgusted and maybe even a little suicidal.

  Jordan poked his head in. –Are you guys done?

  –Are you? Spectre countered, before he could answer.