The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

  He puffed reflectively.

  “For a while we toured with a freak show. Dr. Ebenezer Wonderlic’s Not-So-Human Oddities. Wonderlic was no doctor; his Christian name was Roger Cornwall. Ex-con, boozer, a five-time loser whose sole talent was in collecting curious specimens: men with congenital deformities and women with congenital idiocies that were so lonely, so shunned, they grasped at the dubious life preserver he tossed.”

  I had no clue why he was being so candid. A knot of unease locked up my gorge: if he was set to dispose of me, he could say whatever he liked.

  “These freaks Cornwall assembled were the most benighted bunch you’d ever seen. He had a flair for monikers. Henrietta the Mule-Faced Woman, Dogboy Jones, Francis Rutledge: Heroin Monster, Pliny the Pinhead. He’d lock Dogboy in a cage and let gawkers toss rotten fruit at him for a buck a throw. Other times he’d have Dogboy caper and jig and gurgle and act the fool. Cornwall understood that all spectators wanted was to feel wholly superior: to understand there was a pecking order and that, despite their having a harelip or a clubfoot or rampant hair loss, in the grand order of things they weren’t so bad off. The freaks functioned as a barometer of sorts: they were the lowest, most unlucky and unloved ebb one might descend to. Everyone went home feeling better about themselves because it could be worse, and the proof of that stood before their eyes.

  “The mongoloids and mental feebs didn’t understand they were being abused. The ones with mangled bodies but working brains—they got it. One night Pliny visited me. Pliny’s head was no bigger than a grapefruit and his features outsized: squeezed onto that tiny head, they gave him the appearance of a too-big baby. He’d come to me for a Divine remedy. I could lay hands upon Pliny so God might bless His defective creation with the forbearance to accept his imperfect nature, but a cure? Not possible. But I also told him this, which I will tell you now: the Lord hovered around the poor souls of Wonderlic’s Not-So-Human Oddities. Never have I felt so strongly the presence of the Lord as I did in those days—His gaze was trained nearby; I needed only direct it my way. And do I miss that, my son. That Divine closeness.”

  Next, the Immaculate Mother breezed in through the half-open door—it was cracked open no more than fifteen inches and it opened not an inch farther with her entry. She wore a violet robe of brocaded satin. Her arms resembled nothing so much as the fetlock bones of a horse skeleton.

  “The day’s blessings be upon you, Good Father,” she said to The Prophet.

  “And you, Dear Mother,” he replied. “This is the Acolyte who was with Eve on her final night.”

  She gave me a long, considering glance.

  “Your partner,” she said. “What is her name . . . ?”

  “Doe.” I was surprised she’d know anything of her.

  “Angela,” the Immaculate Mother said. “Angela Doe, yes. Is she . . . alright?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s recovered nicely.”

  The Immaculate Mother looked genuinely relieved. “That’s wonderful. So important to see those entrusted with the public’s safety are themselves safe.”

  Servants entered with plates. Olives, green grapes, sliced cantaloupe and apple. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted fresh food. The Immaculate Mother did not eat a bite: instead she punctured the fruit with one long fingernail and inhaled its scent. She was following her own dictum to “Taste with one’s nose, not one’s mouth.”

  The Prophet bit into a cantaloupe slice and tongued the juice dribbling down his chin. To me he said, “I won’t insult your intelligence by rehashing the recent happenings in our fair city. Since, according to Chief Exeter, little progress has been made on securing culprits, the duty now falls to me. I have sat in council with the Lord these past two days and nights, eating naught but bread and drinking naught but lemon water. On the second night God did come to me as a ball of Heavenly light and guided me as to how we shall cure the affliction that has lately plagued our city.”

  I pushed my plate aside and leaned across the table, straining toward The Prophet as the Man beckoned me do.

  “The Lord directed me to enact the second of the seven deadly plagues, my son. He said it is time to set His works in motion.”

  “When did the Lord say to do so, your Grace?”

  “Tonight, my son.”

  I said: “Who’s heading things up?”

  “Exeter and Deacon Hollis both. Apart from the pilots and the Chief, it will be an Acolyte-only affair.”

  “Do it for Eve’s sake,” the Immaculate Mother said to me.

  A tear rolled down her cheek. It was the most patently fake display I’d ever seen. She was like one of those dolls that ejected a crocodile tear when you squished its stomach.

  I said, “Will you prophesize its coming?”

  “At today’s sermon, yes.” The Prophet spread his hands to me. “It is God’s will, after all. We are merely providing the lightest push.”

  “You’ll advise people to stay indoors and off the street?”

  The hue of The Prophet’s eyes darkened the way the sky scudded over before a storm.

  “That is nothing at all of your concern, Follower Murtag. What I say or do not say is no less than the Lord Himself has instructed.”

  A servant removed me from their presence soon afterwards.

  I was led down the hall in a daze. In the foyer sat The One Child’s processional bier; my heart performed a funny little flip-flop at the sight of it.

  The bier was an ornate box with royal purple curtains draped down each side. It sat on the tiles, cherub balloons bobbing from the gold-inlaid curtain rods—could The One Child be in there?

  The One Child was the greatest mystery and most honored personage in the Republic. No other city boasted anyone quite the same. He or she—the sex of The One Child was unknown; it was deified as a pansexual being—had been born through divine intercession. It lacked a mortal father: its father was Our Lord and Father. The Lord had come upon the Immaculate Mother back in the revival show days and sown his flawless seed in her womb. She had woken overcome with hysteria at the painless heat emanating from her belly until the face of the Lord appeared in her morning oatmeal—a manifestation made somehow more reasonable for its curiousness—to assure her it was He who’d planted the seed within her.

  The seed had ripened at an unnatural rate and seven months later The One Child entered the world: Republic birthing records indicate it was born at the stroke of midnight on a moonless, starless night. The midwife died during the delivery: an autopsy report showed her eyes had been burned from their sockets and her hands turned into salt.

  Nobody had laid eyes upon The One Child since: not The Prophet, not even its own Mother. To look upon The One Child was to behold the face of the Almighty made flesh: a sight beyond any mortal’s capacity to bear. Its handlers wore blindfolds at all times and even the highest state dignitaries wore blacked-out glasses in its presence.

  A photographer claimed to have snapped a shot of it from the crotch of a tree overlooking The Prophet’s compound using a telephoto lens, but when he opened the camera the insides were melted and the film turned to ash. The rogue shutterbug had been executed later that same week.

  Eyes downcast, I hurried past the bier. I didn’t look back.

  Outside, the famished peacock made another tortured rush at me. I held my ground as the starvation-crazed thing pecked my boots, tearing at shreds of the leather flaking off the toes and eating them hungrily.

  I reached into my duster pocket for the grapes I’d surreptitiously stashed from The Prophet’s table and scattered them on the grass.

  The bird ruffled its tail feathers and stared at me with sad, grateful eyes before bending over to eat them.

  Sermon

  I joined the sluggish traffic streaming toward the Stadium SuperChurch. I parked in the St. David section, 1-B, under a light stanchion bearing the Saint
’s picture. I dodged the crowds gathered round devotional street performers and made my way to the ticket boxes.

  “Your ticket has been upgraded,” the wicket maiden said. “Check at will-call.”

  After presenting my ID at the will-call booth I found I’d been upgraded to third row aisle, a mere twenty paces from the stage. The ticket envelope was stamped BY SPECIAL INVITATION OF THE PROPHET.

  I was given an invasive pat down before being ushered onto the thick red carpet of the cathedral-level lobby. Men and women I’d seen in the Wining and Tithing section of the New Bethlehem Bugler mingled, bowing or receiving bows according to their position.

  I grabbed a program and scanned today’s sermon: “Wages of Sin, Taxes of Retribution.”

  Prophet’s Introduction

  Funeral Procession for the First Daughter of His Heavenly

  Mouthpiece The Prophet

  The Immaculate Mother Addresses Her Devotees

  The Prophet’s Weekly Forecast

  Collection Baskets

  Healings (time permitting)

  The One Child’s Song

  The SuperChurch rose in sloped tiers like ancient Greek amphitheatres. Each level was barricaded with Plexiglas and loops of razor wire to keep each social strata separate. Every year when tithes were toted, families moved up or down tiers depending on their contribution.

  The Prophet’s introductory music—Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”—boomed over the speaker system. Neon laser-lights wheeled across the dome roof.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer intoned, “devoted Followers, arise for your Heaven-Sent Hero and Bosom of Christly Love . . . The Prophet.”

  The Prophet emerged from the sacristy, moving across the stage to a glass altar. I saw the sweat glistening on his forehead and the slim microphone friction-taped to the side of his face.

  “Harken to me, my children; hear the word of God. Who amongst us cannot say that these past weeks have brought woeful tidings? Seeking answers, I fasted and prayed for three days, eyes cast Heavenward in search of an answer. And lo, the Lord did come to me and His wrathful gaze stripped me to the bone and He delivered a prophecy that froze my soul. He said, ‘The Devil has come to New Bethlehem.’”

  A low moan rippled through the congregation. An old woman in the front row was so overcome she passed out; she slid bonelessly from her chair swaddled in the folds of her fur coat.

  “I speak nothing but the gospel truth, Lord’s lips to mine. And when I asked why the Devil has come to New Bethlehem, how he’d come to insinuate himself within the city walls, the Lord did not tell me to blame the crafty Jew or the heathen cow-worshipper or the fanatic who exterminates himself in the name of Allah. The Lord said it was He who sent the Devil to New Bethlehem!”

  The congregation swooned.

  “He did so to test the truly faithful. For while it was written in Jeremiah 15:21 that the Lord shall deliver Followers out of the hand of the wicked and redeem them out of the hand of the terrible, first He must know His people are worthy of redemption. I spoke unto the Lord and asked how we might spot the Devil—what guises will he take? And unto me the Lord saith the Devil’s name is Legion, he contains multitudes. Thus, he might be glimpsed in anyone’s face: your wife or husband or grandfather or teacher and even your sons or daughters. The great deceiver Satan may live in every one of you; it was your lack of piety that let him in!”

  A funereal bagpipe dirge dripped out of the speakers. A pair of swinging doors were flung open and Eve’s coffin emerged onto the stadium floor. Eve’s face was projected on the big screen: virginal, serene, ringed by a shimmering halo.

  “Rise and pay respects to my precious daughter, swept away in the tide of blood that has washed over this city. Eve laid down her life for New Bethlehem, dying for the sins of those gathered under this roof.”

  A pandemonium of sadness gripped the assembly.

  “Eve!” The Prophet lamented. “Sinless Eve, we thank you for your sacrifice, and beckon you: spread your eternal beacon over our besieged city in this, its darkest hour!”

  The Prophet took a knee, exhausted, mournful. The Immaculate Mother exited the sacristy to drape him in a purple robe. The choir sang “Nearer My Lord to Thee.”

  Next, The Prophet’s shoulders hitched and he threw off the robe just as the choir kicked into a rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In.”

  At this close vantage I could see his eyes. They were dry as desert stones.

  “Eve-ah!” he hollered, re-energized by the light of the Lord. “Praaaaise you, Eve-ah!” He danced on the balls of his feet. “Your death shall not be in vain-nah, because the people of this city are set to reform their wicked ways and root out the Devil-lah, root out the great scourge Satan-nah!”

  The stadium exploded into wild cheers and cries of “Hallelujah!”

  The Prophet was running in place, high-stepping, knees whapping his chest.

  “Now you tell me-ah, we gonna run from Satan?”

  “NO!” the congregation replied.

  “Now you tell me-ah, we gonna let him take our city-yah down the path of Gomorrah?”

  “NO!”

  “Are we gonna make this city pure-ah; are we gonna prove to the Lord we are worthy of redemption-nah?”

  “YEA!”

  “And are we gonna catch the Devil wherever he lays-sah, close our hands round his venom-spouting throat-tah, and crush the life outta that fulsome serpent-tah?”

  “YEA!”

  “Can I hear a ‘God is Great, Amen’?”

  “GOD IS GREAT, AMEN!”

  The Prophet ran a circuit of the stage, fists pumping. Laser lights strobed and danced. A chain of fireworks went off, bathing him in a shower of golden sparks. Eve’s coffin had nearly completed its tour of the stadium floor.

  “Can I get a ‘Praise be to God, Hallelujah Amen’?”

  “PRAISE BE TO GOD, HALLELUJAH AMEN!”

  The coffin passed through the swinging doors unnoticed—it was as if Eve had been some bombing vaudevillian given a merciless hook. The show went on.

  I tuned out the Immaculate Mother’s address to her devotees. Same old song and dance: abstinence, denying want, pure body equals pure soul. She ceded the stage to The Prophet, who emerged in a kingly robe.

  “Followers, this week’s prophecy is grave. Evil has infested our town and made it unclean. We pray to the Lord for answers in this time of need.”

  We said: “Lord, hear our prayer.”

  “The Lord saith we shall be visited with a punishing plague because, just as the heathen Pharaoh of old, our hearts have been hardened. The Heavens shall pour forth pestilence; so saith the Lord. We can only pray for respite—so let us pray.”

  “Lord, hear our prayer.”

  “And I sat in council with our Lord, and he did repeat unto me Luke 4:23—Physician, heal thyself. He shall help those who help themselves. Whomsoever might spy a man acting in an ungodly manner, defacing city property or conspiring in league with Satan, must alert the authorities. Give us strong men, devout men, to ferret out the disease festering within these city walls. We ask this in the name of the Lord.

  “Followers, this is my prophecy,” The Prophet went on. “It is immutable. It is the Word of the Lord.”

  The One Child was borne onstage. Its bier was rigged for sound and it began to sing . . . unearthly, that voice. The One Child’s songs were wordless—it had no need for words. Its language was one of evocation: of love, of triumph, of spirit and empathy and hope. Hearing its song, you knew this was no creature of our world. This was a Heaven-sent gift. Undeniable proof that yes, God existed and yes, He cared deeply for his creations.

  The One Child’s song ended. We filed out of the stadium silently. A hundred thousand shaken shells.

  Plague #2

  Rain of Frogs

>   That night I waited outside the motel for Garvey. His car slewed up and over the curb. Its bumper sticker read: I’m Pro-Choice . . . I choose to keep my PANTS UP!

  He hoofed the passenger door open and leaned across the seat.

  “How much you charging, sweetheart?”

  I slid in and said, “Your soul.”

  “Awful steep, even for a purty little tulip such as yourself.”

  He was in an upbeat mood. This, I noted, could be due to his having consumed an enormous quantity of Hallelujah Energy Boost. Empties rattled round the floor. He had that telltale Energy Boost ’stache: gritty yellow crystals clung to the stubble of his upper lip.

  The sky was scudding over with a layer of low-lying thunderheads. The perfect night for our sort of devilry. Mother Nature graciously providing camouflage.

  Years ago I found myself in conversation with a Jew who’d made his living as a film producer back when Hollywood was still called Hollywood. He told me about a radio show that had provoked mass hysteria when he was a boy. It began with a newscaster stating in a calm stentorian tone that aliens—saucer creatures, he called them—had landed on Earth with the intent to enslave humanity.

  Panic had broken out in the streets. Listeners rioted; they ran for the hills. Why? Because people are imminently deceivable. In a masochistic way they want to be deceived, so long as the deception proves the existence of an unquantifiable entity they’ve harboured a longstanding belief in.

  Like aliens. Or God.

  A razor wire fence ran round the airstrip’s perimeter. Garvey nudged the unlocked gate open with the car’s bumper and we drove cracked ruts along the airstrip’s edge, wheels kicking up bone-coloured dust. The hangars sat like steel tortoises on the alkali flats.

  Exeter was tapping his watch as we pulled up. Hollis, Applewhite, Henchel and Brewster, and the rest of the crew were there—and, standing outside the circle of men, arms locked across her chest, was Doe.