The Real

by James Cole

  Meanwhile, the Monika show marched on. Done, it seemed, with words, she turned her attention to the object enshrouded on the altar. Like a magician, she pulled away the white linen cloth to reveal a silver chalice. The subsequent production she made of the folding of the cloth reminded Jeremy of the Catholic rite of Communion.

  “Prepare your hearts for what is to come,” she announced grandly.

  Monika grasped the two wing-like handles of the chalice with both hands and presented it to the group, holding it over her head like a trophy.

  “I think it would be appropriate for Trey to go first,” she said. “As most of you know, he has been of utmost importance in the operation of the affairs of our little group and I would like to show my appreciation by letting him begin. After his turn, I will call the rest of you up in no particular order.”

  “Trey, would you please join me at the altar?”

  “So you’ll know what to say...,” she said as she handed him a piece of paper. “Place your right hand on the Bible.”

  Trey did as he was instructed.

  “Begin.”

  Trey began to read:

  “With God as my witness, I give over everything that I am, my heart, mind and soul to Claire’s Way and to the one who stands before me now. I also pledge my loyalty and my everlasting friendship to my fellow eleven group members. I swear that nothing shall ever come between us, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, not anything else in all creation, not even the love of Jesus Christ himself.”

  Jeremy recognized part of the oath as coming from the Bible, except Monika had twisted it around. Why did she have to bring God and Jesus into this anyway? Before, Monika told him that she didn’t believe in God, but if that were true, why did she feel the need to have them swear on the Bible? Why was the ceremony held in the church and why did she have them recite a vow that essentially disowned God? Jeremy did not know if God was real or not, and he wasn’t prepared to make a final judgment on that very important question tonight, but one thing he did know: All this was making him extremely uncomfortable.

  “Drink,” Monika said to Trey, “and freely receive all the powers inherent in the Source.” As Trey drank from the silver cup she offered, she added, “Together we shall burn.”

  When he was done, she said, “I love you, Trey.”

  “I love you too, Monika.”

  “Call me Claire.”

  Trey didn’t miss a beat. “I love you too, Claire.” His ears-wide smile could not be missed as he returned to his seat, even in the low light of the candles’ glowing tongues.

  “Jeremy, would you please join me at the altar?”

  Jeremy’s stomach lurched. Why did he have to be next? Slowly he rose from the pew and watched his feet walk the short distance to the altar. He could not shake this feeling of trepidation, that this was wrong, and that he shouldn’t be here – but it was too late. Wasn’t it he who wanted to become a party to Monika’s secret group? He had asked for this. He couldn’t back out now.

  Or could he? Grady had told him to fear the point of no return and had warned of losing things he didn’t even know he had, or something to that effect. Jeremy had scoffed at Grady and his seemingly nonsensical advice. And yet, as Jeremy stood here with his hand on the Bible and his heart in his throat, Grady’s words fit. There could be no doubt that he now stood at the proverbial fork in the road.

  Movement on the wall caught Jeremy’s eye. The see-through Christ was trembling. Logically, Jeremy knew it had to be the well-documented hallucinogenic effects of the Unreal, nothing more than a waking dream. Unfortunately, logic had little to do with the fear and apprehension growing exponentially within him.

  Monika offered him the parchment that held the words of the oath. He accepted, but with an uncertain hand. Solemnly she raised the cup up and out from her body to a position even with his chest. Jeremy peered inside the shadowy innards of the chalice to feast his eyes on the mysterious elixir known as the Source. Except for a faint, fruity-fermented odor that wafted up to meet his nostrils, discernment was impossible. The liquid looked like used motor oil, though even the crystal clear waters of Sticks River would have likely appeared just as black in this light-deprived space.

  “Begin,” Monika instructed as she raised her serious gaze to meet his.

  “With God as my witness…” he began shakily, “I give over…”

  Jeremy froze, unable to continue. He felt as he had as a child in first grade, called upon to read aloud but stuck on some indecipherable word. As the pause stretched longer, the tension mounted.

  “Jeremy?” Monika (the teacher) asked, shaking him from his trance. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes – I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought.”

  She looked questioningly into his eyes.

  High on the wall behind her, the movements at the Crucifix were multiplied. The Jesus figure seemed to be writhing in savage pain, just as one might expect from a man nailed to a cross.

  Forget the Crucifix, he told himself. It’s not real.

  Jeremy took a deep breath with no resultant calming. “May I start over?”

  “Sure,” she said hesitantly.

  He looked down at the paper he held and tried to speak but the frog in his throat allowed only a raspy whisper to escape.

  “Take your time,” Monika said, visibly concerned.

  I can do this.

  Jeremy cleared his throat and began again.

  “With God as my witness, I give over everything…”

  He stopped again and looked up just in time to see the look that flashed across Monika’s black-ice eyes, a frightfully malevolent presence no dainty twenty-something-year-old girl had any business owning.

  His blood ran cold. “I don’t feel so good,” Jeremy said.

  He blinked and she blinked and the evil look vanished. “What’s wrong?” Monica asked with connived innocence.

  “I feel a little woozy. Is there a bathroom I can use?”

  “In the vestibule.” Monika pointed to the doors at the back of the sanctuary. “But I’m not sure you want to go in there. It’s nasty and there is no running water.”

  Jeremy turned abruptly from her, bumping the chalice and spilling some of the blackish liquid.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he wiped his hand on his shirt tail and walked away from the altar. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Y’all go ahead.”

  The farther Jeremy got from the altar and that whacked vow of allegiance to Monika’s so-called Alternative Way, the faster he walked.

  This is not right.

  This ceremony, these strange vows, and the way the Messiah on the cross kept wavering and writhing: all wrong. But could it just be his imagination getting the best of him? Jeremy didn’t know. Once upon a time he had a method: Anything that didn’t fit into his preconceived notion of what was reasonable – the illogical, the supernatural, even God – was swept under the rug of rationalization. Somewhere along the way he lost his frame of reference. No longer could he tell the difference between what was real and what was not.

  From nowhere, the song Jeremy loved began to play, and he faltered.

  From behind him, familiar words: “Listen to the music, Jeremy. It helps you to become.”

  It was Monika’s voice, though Jeremy could not be sure if she spoke out loud or if it were only his mind replaying his dream.

  My mind has wings.

  The song he loved summoned him back to that first night in the time of his life, back to that exquisite moment at the break in the road when his mind opened to a brave new world. In an instant, Jeremy relived that night and all its lures: his adoration for Monika, the ecstasy of the Unreal, the way the song stimulated new reaches of his mind and the indescribable confluence of the three. He remembered the feeling of her hot breath on his neck and the words she whispered in his ear:

  It’s just like heaven.

  Jeremy’s progress up the aisle slo
wed to a crawl. Could he walk away? The biggest part of him longed to turn around and take the vow, to enter into the mysterious intrigue of Claire’s Alternative Way, to accept on faith this gift Monika offered, to once and for all give himself away to her. And maybe, just maybe, he was taking this all too seriously. Perhaps this ceremony was more a joke than anything else, something Monika dreamed up purely for theatrical effect. After all, wasn’t the whole purpose of an initiation to make the prospective member uncomfortable? Didn’t the Greek-system pledges have to endure hell-week and make oaths of allegiance just like this? Maybe this was no more sinister than the process of joining a fraternity at the University.

  But he could not shut his mind’s eye to that look Monika betrayed at the altar. Often, Jeremy had taken note of a certain faraway look in his dark angel’s eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul, as the old saying goes, but Monika veiled hers in secrecy. Try as he might, he had not been able to decipher what lay beyond the veil. This was, in part, what attracted Jeremy to her in the first place. It was certainly what drove him to investigate the origin of the Unreal she provided and to deepen his quest for the hippie queen she referenced. He yearned for Monika to open up to him, to show what she had secreted away. Jeremy had always imagined beautiful things concealed there, an extension of her stunning physical gorgeousness. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  It’s just like heaven, Monika had said, not only that night at the break in the road but also at the bonfire to describe Claire’s Way. It occurred to Jeremy that a distinction could be made between just like heaven and heaven and he wondered if the two states might be mutually exclusive.

  “Jeremy! Are you listening to me?”

  “I can’t do this,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry.”

  Every head snapped around to stare at him, the dissenter.

  “It’s too late to back out now, Jeremy,” asserted Monika coldly. “You know too much.”

  “Too much about what?” Jeremy asked. “I could care less what you and your group are up to. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to carry on, to take your Unreal and have your secret meetings? There’s no reason why I would want to hinder you. Live and let live, I always say.”

  “You can never go back,” she said. “Take the vow or face the consequences.” Monika’s gaze pierced the space between them like lasers.

  “What consequences?”

  Monika held her position behind the altar clutching the silver chalice. “The time has come,” she said.

  Jeremy had missed it earlier, back at the fountain, but now recognized this as a reference to the riddle:

  When the time comes, you will become, and time will come.

  He still had no idea what it meant except that the moment of reckoning had arrived. Now, the time had come, but it was the next line of the riddle that really had him worried. If he recited Monika’s vow and drank from the silver chalice, what would he become?

  When he didn’t respond, she tried a more amiable approach: “Lighten up, Jeremy. It’s me, your girlfriend. You’re supposed to trust me.” In a louder voice she asked, “Anybody else in here having second thoughts?”

  When no one responded, Jeremy retorted, “I’m sure none of them want to face the aforementioned consequences.”

  “Do you?” Monika asked forebodingly.

  Jeremy had had enough. “To hell with all this,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

  Menacingly, Monika responded by saying, “Don’t let him leave.”

  By now the male members of the group were standing. Trey eased out of his pew and into the aisle while the others fanned out behind him like the living dead. Jeremy backed slowly up the aisle. Why had he telegraphed his intentions? He should have run when he still had the chance. Better yet, he should never have come here in the first place.

  “Y’all don’t have to do this,” he insisted.

  “You and you,” barked Monika at two of her henchmen, “Guard the exit.”

  Jeremy held his hands up as he retreated, like a hiker might move away from a bear encounter – no sudden movements – all the while furiously thinking of what his next move might be.

  “Come on, Jeremy. Think about what you are turning down.” Monika flipped back to the soothing tone. “Join us and become what you were meant to be.”

  Two of Trey’s burly brethren joined him and the three of them crept slowly up the aisle. Jeremy moved backwards in lock-step, keeping about 15 paces of separation between them.

  “Last chance,” warned Monika. “Don’t be a fool.”

  Jeremy made one last appeal, this time to Trey. “Trey,” he pleaded. “This is crazy. I’ve got nothing against you.”

  “If it were up to me, I’d have cut you loose a long time ago,” Trey said. “Just take the oath and drink the juice and everything will be copacetic.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Then I’m afraid I’m gonna have to take you down,” replied Trey unmercifully.

  Jeremy glanced around, looking for something – a loose board, a Bible – anything he might be able to use as a weapon.

  As his desperation increased and the hopelessness of his situation became apparent, Jeremy’s thinking mind gave way to instinct. Lacking any obvious viable options, he succumbed to that adrenaline-pumping, last resort, nuclear option of survival – fight or flight.

  Jeremy bolted. He burst through the swinging doors at the back of the sanctuary. Passing by the boarded-up front doors, he charged up the first flight of stairs that led to the upper seats of the church. As he lunged up the second flight, the pounding sounds of his feet on the steps were joined by those of his pursuers. They were already in the lower stairwell, not more than a few seconds behind. Jeremy broke into the openness of the upper seats of the church. He could hear shouts coming from the sanctuary below. In the midst of it all, he also heard the music, playing even louder than before. In an instant he realized that he was near the source of the music. It was coming from the balcony. Jeremy thought he might run into the members of the band as they had been in his dream, perched like black birds in the balcony, but instead he glimpsed a jam-box as he sprinted by.

  I remember now.

  The song Jeremy loved played on but it became something altogether different, no longer a wire around his heart. In that instant he knew where he had first heard it, and it was neither that night with Monika at the break in the road nor at the Singe show. Even in the midst of his pell-mell dash for the creaky door at the back of the balcony, his panic faded into peace; inexplicable soothing peace.

  He knew exactly what he had to do. He also knew that there was a chance that he wouldn’t make it, that this might be the end-game but somehow he was fine with that too. In seconds flat Jeremy glided up and around the box-shaped stairwell, out the undersized door and into the open air of the bell tower.

  Calmly and deliberately Jeremy climbed onto the rail and, without a moment’s hesitation, sprang out into space, his target the crown of the tree he had scaled earlier. He flew through the air, a bat out of hell ready to seize hold of any part of the old rugged tree that might arrest his fall. Small branches snapped as he tore through, scratching at his face and arms, but doing nothing to slow his acceleration. Finally, a brain-rattling collision bled away most of his momentum. Jeremy grabbed at what he could not see and tumbled down a bit farther before finally coming to a precarious rest. It took a moment for him to understand that his view of the world was inverted. His knees were draped over a small limb that supported most of his weight. His right hand gripped the tree’s trunk while his left arm dangled freely.

  Luckily for him, this tree, despite the lateness of the season, had not yet shed its leaves. Through a space in the brown foliage he clearly saw Trey and his companion as they burst out onto the bell tower balcony. Jeremy could only hope to remain hidden from their sight.

  “Where did he go?” Trey shouted breathlessly. He did a quick scan of the scant perch. The bell housing and the small roof offered no place for a grown
man to hide.

  Jeremy did not move and did everything he could to stifle his heavy breathing. His position was not more than 20 feet below where they stood.

  “He’s not here,” answered the other one.

  “I can see that, you idiot. Did you see him enter the stairwell?”

  “I saw the door swing shut. I can’t say that I actually saw him go through it.”

  “He tricked us, the sneaky little bastard. He didn’t come up here at all. Go, go!”

  With that they disappeared from Jeremy’s view. He breathed a sigh of relief. Had they been one second closer, they would have heard the cracking of the branches as he fell. Slowly Jeremy pulled his battered body to an upright position. He had to get down and away before they realized what had happened.

  *****

  Jeremy climbed down the tree without a hitch. As he trotted down the deserted alleyway, he ran over a short list of options. His first thought was to contact the police but he wondered if any provable crime had even been perpetrated. Sure, he had been chased and threatened but the only bodily harm inflicted was from the jump. The police would likely rule no harm, no foul. He considered calling Tavalin to ask for a ride but did not want to involve his friend in this unless he absolutely had to. As for hiding out at home, Jeremy knew he could not count his condominium as refuge. However, it might be feasible to retrieve his car from his garage if Monika and her crew lingered in the church. Conversely, if they quickly realized that Jeremy had escaped the church, they could conceivably hop in a car and beat him home.

  When Jeremy reached the main thoroughfare, he glanced one last time over his shoulder. The alleyway remained dead quiet.

  What to do?

  Jeremy opted for his car. He turned toward home and sprinted down the sidewalk at full tilt, his progress measured by the passing of the gothic street lamps. As he passed each light, his shadow trailed at first before drawing even and finally accelerating past. At the next street light, a new shadow racer gave chase and, like the one before, started slow but won the rigged race in the end. His Birkenstocks slapped the concrete, an audience of one clapping for the assured victor – the shadow racer. Surely he was leading Monika in the race back to his apartment, and he hoped that she, unlike the shadow racers, was not bound to win in the end.