The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

  “So you saw . . . not a thing?”

  “That place over there was none of our concern,” the bartender said. “No reason to spare it a glance.”

  “Nothing? Not a single thing?”

  The Quint’s nails punched into the bartender’s hand.

  “Please,” the guy blubbered, “I’m a loyal Follower. . . .”

  “If you saw nothing,” The Quint said equitably, “tell me—what good are you?”

  Withdrawn from the folds of his albino duster, the Quint’s gun didn’t quite resemble one: only a black effigy in the rough shape of a gun, dark traceries wafting from the barrel like raw diesel smoke. Speaking, it made hardly a sound: the whuph of a propane barbecue igniting.

  The bartender’s head split open. One half vapourized into a fine red mist while the other hung like a waxing gibbous moon, the remaining eye staring out with horrible awareness.

  The Quint walked to the last booth with cool momentum, duster flapping like the wings of a crippled moth. He surveyed the two old men who occupied it and shot the pair. Their heads ricocheted off the wall, bodies tossed out of the booth. One of them wasn’t quite dead; his liver-spotted hand reached out to the Quint.

  “What do you see?” the Quint whispered to him. “Please, tell me what you see.”

  But the man was past answering. Two shot him in the face. Next he shot the jukebox and walked out the swinging batwing door.

  By the time I staggered out to the street the Quint was walking back from his car with a jerry can in each hand. We bumped shoulders—his body was cold steel—and the collision sent me sprawling to the wet flagstones.

  “You butchered them,” I choked.

  He faced me down. “The Lord butchered them. I was only His blade.”

  I lay dumbfounded out on the street until the Quint emerged from the bar trailing a line of gasoline. He hooked his fingers into my collar and yanked me backwards with him. I let myself be dragged a few feet before pushing off with my heels to get myself partway to standing, at which point he shoved me in the direction of the Buick.

  I crumpled into the passenger seat. Another whuph. A vein of fire wound across the street under the bar door. The porthole window lit up orange. The Quint watched awhile, and when the door blew off its hinges, felt his work was done.

  We drove. Steam fumed from manholes to form curtains of vapour. The Quint drove casually, three fingers guiding the wheel. Face flecked with blood. We came upon an oil-drum fire. Indigent men clad in rags were warming themselves by its light. The Quint slowed down.

  “Hand me one of those,” he said, indicating the toys.

  I gave him a teddy bear. Heavier than a stuffed animal ought to be—then I saw the pin looping from the fur of its belly, a pin the Quint pulled before tossing it out the window where it landed with a soft thump.

  “Christmas comes early,” he called chummily.

  We pulled away as the men peered with bafflement at the bear. They had receded a quarter-block into the rearview when an explosion rattled the windows.

  We came upon two Followers trundling a shopping cart. A man and a woman, both quite young. A black-eared dog was yoked to a lead tied round the cart’s handle.

  “Hand me another.”

  In the cart, dozing atop the couple’s possessions with a pom-pommed toque snugged over his head: a young boy.

  I said: “No.”

  “They’re agitators.”

  “They’re a homeless family.”

  We cruised on past. Two’s eyes were riveted on me. I sent a prayer up: Please Lord, a few days to set my house in order. Make amends. Save whatever I can.

  What is the velocity of a prayer?

  We pulled over. The Quint’s revolver butted my chest.

  “Open the door.”

  The pressure of the barrel intensified. I jerked the door open and went down on my ass on the curb, my feet still in the Buick’s foot well.

  “When you’re needed, you’ll be summoned.”

  I’d been cast out a few blocks from the apartment. I limped home. Amira was still up. I walked into the bathroom and stripped for a shower. Water too icy to work up a lather so I just stood in the spray with my teeth chattering.

  I dressed and retrieved the spare key from the cupboard above the fridge. Amira was sitting on the floor cross-legged—Hopi Indian style, my mother would’ve remarked. I sat the same. The key rested on the bare wood between us.

  “It’s yours,” I told her. “Put it somewhere safe. Come and go, fine by me.”

  I slid the key toward her. She put it in her pocket.

  “The day may come I don’t walk back in that door,” I said. “If that ever happens, think to save yourself. Let the animals go. A pond for Frog. Bird can fly away. Rabbit and Goat . . . don’t worry, they’ll figure it out. Worry about you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go to bed, Amira. You can sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  Once she was asleep I cracked the window. Cool currents swept over the Badlands, air infused with the scent of Cherokee rose. Out of that silence the explosions rolled back to me.

  Judges 15:4: Samson caught ten jackals and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He fastened a torch to every pair of tails and set them lose in a field of Philistine corn.

  The phone rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Hello?”

  Distant, frail: weeping.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Sometimes . . .” Angela’s voice. “. . . Jonah, sometimes it’s better not knowing.”

  “Angela? What’s that matter? What are you talking about?”

  Click.

  I sat by the window until sunlight broke over the cathedral spires. The power had yet to be restored.

  Article IV:

  He Falls for the Second Time

  New Bethlehem Makes a Choice

  They picked me up in a van not long after six o’clock.

  Brewster drove. Henchel sat in the passenger seat. Filling the bench seats: Applewhite, Garvey, most of the Acolyte crew. No Hollis. No Doe.

  I wedged in beside Garvey. The van had the desperate stench I associated with the uptown men’s shelter. We wound through block after deserted block. Not a soul to be seen. A wasteland, except for the most part, things were structurally intact. The odd blackened patch where a bomb—one of the Quints’ teddy bears?—had gone off, but in the main, the shops and buildings still stood.

  “What about Hollis?” Applewhite asked.

  “AWOL,” Henchel said. “Nobody’s seen him since Exeter.”

  “Chickenshit.” This from Garvey, who was fussing with the tattered end of his sleeve, teasing the threads obsessively.

  We drove to The Prophet’s estate. The old guard shack had been blown to bits. Brewster badged past the whey-faced plainclothesman who occupied the hastily rebuilt shack. In the driveway: the Quints’ Buicks, a TV truck with a satellite dish jacked up on a pole, and Doc Newbarr’s car.

  Tonight, for the first time in the city’s history, The Prophet would deliver his weekly sermon via satellite feed. The Stadium SuperChurch had been vandalized—spray painted banners reading MAY YOUR SINS GO UNPUNISHED—and besides, Followers were too terrified to attend. We had been called in as props: by flanking The Prophet while he delivered his sermon, we’d stand as proof that law and order still reigned.

  The wardrobe assistant had a conniption at the sight of our stubble and our gravy-stained tunics. We were dispatched to the mansion’s many bathrooms with safety razors and motel soap and a stern order to return as human beings.

  A makeshift studio had been set up in The Prophet’s sitting room. Klieg lights shone upon the wide walnut desk. A cameraman hovered off to the right: The Prophet’s left profile was widely acknowledged as his most appealing. We fanned out behind him. We look
ed a bit more professional having shaved and soaped. The Quints stood directly behind The Prophet’s chair.

  The Prophet entered stage left. It was the first time anyone had seen him in weeks. He hadn’t thinned out like the majority of the citizenry—rather, he had ballooned up. His bulk strained against that vanilla suit. He walked—waddled—into the camera frame. The boom mike picked up his tortured breathing.

  “Come unto me and fear not!” he barked. “Have I not sighed for thee—wept for thee? Do I not live for thee? Fear not! Do I not watch o’er thee? Dost thou not cling to me—cry to me—need me? Fear not!” His voice went ragged. “My eyes are upon thee, my arms around thee, to keep thee and guard thee. Trust in me. Call to me. Fear not!”

  He collapsed into the chair behind the desk. He blotted the beads of sweat on his brow with a linen hankie.

  “Trying times in New Bethlehem,” he said. “All have suffered, none more so than me as I witness my good works going for naught. Angered with us, the Lord sent a rain of frogs and still His worshipers fail to honor His wishes—persisting with your blasphemies! As Deuteronomy 16 counsels: You must circumcise the foreskins of your hearts to admit the healing love of the Lord and yet, like stubborn heathens, your bosoms remain walled off!”

  One of the Quints cut his harangue short. “You’re off the air.”

  “What’s the matter?” the camera operator asked his techie.

  The tech fiddled with a nest of cables snaked into some kind of control box. “We lost the feed.”

  “Well, get it back!” The Prophet said, his face red as a boiled ham. “I can’t be cut off in the midst of a citywide benediction!”

  “Something’s disrupted the signal from the trunk line,” the tech said.

  The monitor went from static to a still shot. A cement-walled room. Two figures wearing cherubim masks stood behind another figure who knelt with hands lashed. This figure was naked with her head lowered.

  “Pardon the interruption, gentle Followers.”

  Swift’s voice.

  “Please stand by for the Immaculate Mother’s address to her devotees.”

  One of the masked figures was huge. It had to be Porter Rockwell, the Golem. Which meant the other one was Swift. Rockwell nudged the naked woman with his book. She looked up dazedly. The Immaculate Mother. She tilted her face to the left: the profile widely acknowledged to be her strongest. The vanity of the gesture sent nausea crashing through my gut.

  “It was a lie,” she began. “All of it. The structure was a tool. A tool to maintain equilibrium. Why? People lie and steal and kill, so you have to scare, shame, threaten them into being good Followers. So we lie.”

  “She’s been drugged,” The Prophet said.

  “Who’s to blame?” she went on. “Big fish eat little fish. Sheep and shepherds. Not everyone can be a shepherd. Most are happy enough sheep. Whose fault? Me?” A violent head-shake. “The rules existed before I came along; I only played by them.”

  Porter Rockwell knelt behind the Immaculate Mother, shoulder gripped so she would not fall over. His free hand held a knife—no, not a knife: a wheat sickle.

  “All your gods are dead,” she prattled. “All your gods . . . all your . . . dead . . .”

  “It’s your choice,” Swift said. “If I hear from you, then it will be done. If only silence, she lives.” A carefree shrug. “So what say you, good flock of New Bethlehem?”

  I turned and left the makeshift TV studio. Nobody cared or tried to stop me. I walked out to the sprawling mansion grounds. I stood outside waiting and listening.

  What say you, New Bethlehem?

  The first came from a long way off. The honk of a car horn. A few short bursts, timid in its way, then loud and ongoing. It was joined by others: air horns, sirens, pots bashing pans and so much more. The whole city was answering. It rose to a discordant crescendo and, as a child who hollers himself hoarse, ebbed to a satisfied silence.

  I caught movement along a hedgerow and spotted the peacock from my previous visit. Most of its luminous blue feathers had fallen out. It lay on its side, breathing heavily. I removed my duster and settled it over the bird. Something was the matter with its leg. Its neck hung like boiled spaghetti. I cradled its head along the crook of my arm.

  “Look who’s here.”

  I turned to see Doc Newbarr.

  I said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Coincidence,” he told me. “The Prophet’s regular sawbones is indisposed. The Prophet’s been experiencing gastric distress. Bleeding ulcer.”

  “You do anything for him?”

  A shrug. “Used to be medicines. Now? Told him to drink lots of milk.”

  “I’m leaving,” I told him.

  “Your crew’s not going to be upset you skipped on them?”

  “They may be.”

  “Well, I’ll give you a lift.”

  “I’m bringing this bird.”

  “Okay,” he said simply.

  “Did you watch it?” I asked once we’d driven past the gates. “The Immaculate Mother?”

  “I watched,” Newbarr acknowledged. “Shouldn’t have, but there are things . . . can’t live seeing it, can’t live not seeing it. When they took her head off there was hardly any blood. Nothing but a trickle out her neck, like comes out of an old water fountain.”

  When we pulled up at my place, he said, “I’ve got a cabin out of town. Built for my wife and me, although she never got the chance to enjoy it.”

  Newbarr’s wife had died of cancer, though I didn’t recall what kind.

  I said, “You’re leaving?”

  “Soon enough. Getting my ducks in a row. It’s a ways south; plenty of forest. Well back off the road. Canned food. A cistern. Lake nearby’s swimming with fish.”

  The peacock made congestive popping noises in the back seat, the sound of acorns bursting in a fire.

  “What I’m offering is I’ll draw you a map. Would you let me do that?”

  I said: “I’d appreciate it, yeah.”

  “Okay, then. We’re settled.”

  “Thanks. And Doc . . . just one more thing.”

  When I told him what I wanted he said, “That’s strong stuff. What do you want it for?”

  “A contingency, is what I’m thinking.”

  Newbarr frowned. “Very odd contingency. I’ve got a quarter-bottle of it in my medical kit. Enough to do the trick one time. I’ll get it to you next we meet.”

  The Little Astronaut

  The next morning I found myself standing over the toilet, trying to urinate as the peacock stared at me from the bathtub.

  Its leg was broken. Amira had noticed that right off. She immobilized it using a popsicle stick and trash bag twist ties. Next she hunted through the dumpster behind the building and returned with a moulded brick of styrofoam. She gashed two holes in it with a steak knife and managed to thread the bird’s legs through the holes. The peacock had flapped its wings, clearly distressed. Amira found a Tensor bandage I’d had lying around after an old ankle sprain and wrapped it round the bird’s wings down under around its body. She filled the bathtub and set it inside. It had been there all night.

  “Same as with horses,” she’d told me. “Float them in water to help their broken legs heal.”

  When I came out of the bathroom, I saw Amira had fixed us bowls of oatmeal. We sat in silence but the apartment was full of noise: budgie twittering, peacock splashing, goat bleating through the wall.

  “I have to go out,” I said. “You stay, take care of the critters.”

  My man was easy to locate. I found him right there in the white pages.

  He lived in a scabby brownstone overlooking Saint Matthew’s Square. I mounted the crumbling stone steps and knocked. Soon as the door opened, I knew why Swift had wanted me to meet this man.

  “Caleb Murphy?”r />
  “Yeah?” He stared up at me from behind the security screen. Evidently I’d caught him during breakfast: a can of chili with a fork stuck out of it.

  I flashed my badge. “May I come in?”

  This made him smile. “I got plenty of worthless tin, too.” Tapping the chili can with one squared-off finger. “See? Actually, mine’s not so useless: holds my vittles.”

  Gapping my duster, I showed him the butt of my revolver. “How ’bout this lump of pig iron—got your attention?”

  His smile widened. “Sure, boss.”

  Murphy let me in. He swept an arm round the room.

  “See anything you fancy? We’re having a fire sale. Every little thing must go. Every little thing ’cept me, that is.”

  I saw a cabinet full of tchotchkes and freak show arcana, including what looked to be a pickled fetus. The windows were smeared with dubbin or lard gone dark and cakey in the heat; sun leaked in through cracks thin as spider legs.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off Murphy. My guess was that he’d be accustomed to it, having made his living as an object of grisly attention. He stood three feet tall, if that. Proportionally his body was the same as anyone’s—all except his head. His skull was no bigger than a grapefruit. His features were crowded together on that tiny canvas: his face was an expressionist painting by an artist with a skewed grasp of symmetry.

  He said, “Used to be you’d have paid two bits for the eyeful you’re getting.”

  He pointed to a coffee tin sitting on a TV tray. An ink drawing of an eyeball was taped to it. I deposited all the change in my pockets and said, “Why do you figure I woke up with your name written on my chest?”

  “You did?”

  “Yep.”

  “I suppose you should start by asking yourself what manner of people you shut your eyes in the company of.” Upon inspecting the tin, he offered a bemused snort. “There are worse ways of waking. This one time I woke up drenched in chicken blood. I was bending elbows with Otto the Geek and ol’ Otto, he bit the head of a peahen; I was too drunk to notice it’d sprayed all over me. Next morning I’m covered—let me tell you, chicken blood’s thick. Like waking up in syrup. So a name on your chest ain’t so rough. Unless they carved it with a penknife. They do that?”