by Ray Garton
“Did I say that?”
“You didn’t have to.”
“It’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? Why did you come? I can’t think of a single reason in the world for you to be here.”
The conversation, the tone of Hester’s voice, the whole situation stirred in Lizzie old and painful memories. She felt as if she were reliving that day on the playground when she pushed Hester in the swing. She could almost feel the lump of hatred and anger and pain that had grown in her chest that day, and on countless other days when she’d encountered Hester … but only almost. Now she felt confident, felt that she was in the right place at the right time; and toward Hester, she felt a little pity. The woman was actually trembling from either anger or fear or both. “Like I said, Hester, I came to see you. I see you on television, in newspapers and magazines. You’re famous. Local girl makes good. I knew about the festival and thought I’d come see the show.”
“Show? Show? That’s all you think this is? A show?”
“Poor choice of words. I meant—”
“No, no, I think you said exactly what you meant. What do you think of the Universal Enlightened Alliance? Honestly. What’s your opinion?”
“I don’t really have to tell you that, do I, Hester? You know I’m a Christian. You know what my beliefs are, and I know what you think of them. Surely you must know how I feel about yours. Our beliefs are simply not compatible.”
Hester’s head tilted back and she began to walk slowly around Lizzie. “And why is that, Lizzie?”
“I don’t have to tell you that. Besides, you know better than to talk about things like religion and politics. They make for poor conversations.” She was fighting that smirk again.
“Isn’t that why you came?”
“Did I say that?”
“You know, I was raised a Christian, too,” Hester said, still circling Lizzie slowly, smiling.
“I know.”
“Even later, as an adult, I studied Christianity myself. I’ve studied all religions. But I’ve found that so many religions claim, in one way or another, that we are somehow unworthy of existing, that we are filthy or sinful and must be cleansed by some god. That doesn’t ring true for me. It seems so … degrading. But Orrin taught me that we are all perfect creatures and we judge our actions. I have finally found peace with what I believe today.”
You will not die and you will be as gods, Lizzie thought. She said, “You know where my belief comes from. Where does yours come from, Hester?”
“From Orrin.”
“Yes, but where does Orrin come from? Where is he?”
“He’s everywhere. He’s with me all the time. Every minute of my life. His voice is in my mind, guiding me, encouraging me.”
“He’s been there all your life?”
She stopped in front of Lizzie and nodded. “Yes, I think so. I just didn’t realize it until I was an adult.”
“Why is he in you?”
“Because he chose me.”
“Didn’t any of that seem odd to you, Hester?”
“Well, at first, maybe it seemed a little—”
“No, no. I mean, considering your upbringing, what did you think of that voice at first?”
“At first, I thought I might be crazy. Then he began telling me things I couldn’t possibly know, like things that were going to happen … and they happened. That sort of thing.”
“And that didn’t scare you a little? It didn’t remind you of certain things you’d been taught?”
Hester’s smile disappeared. “I know exactly what little corner you’re trying to back me into and it’s not going to work. I was raised a Christian, but I’d rejected the belief, so there was no reason for me to consider its teachings in my decision as to whether or not to accept Orrin.”
Lizzie shrugged and cocked her head. “Oh well.”
Hester didn’t like that. She took a few steps forward until her face was just a couple inches from Lizzie’s. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed into a pinched mask of anger and hatred.
“I want you to leave Grover, Lizzie. Today. I want you to say good-bye to your friends, pack your bags and leave.”
“Why?”
Hester leaned even closer and when she spoke, another voice came from her mouth; it was the deep, rumbling, male voice Lizzie had heard on the playground so many years ago.
“Because you have no business here,” the voice said, and Hester lifted her arms, hands flat and ready to slap onto each side of Lizzie’s head as they had before, but—
—Lizzie grabbed Hester’s wrists quickly and resisted with all her strength, thinking, Oh, god, I’m gonna need some help here so, please, in the name of Jesus, give me a hand. Then, in a loud and firm voice that, Lizzie was surprised to hear, did not tremble, she said, “God has business here!”
Hester’s lips pulled back further than it seemed possible, exposing teeth and gums and saliva dribbled from her lower lip as she continued to struggle with Lizzie. They stood as one large A, locked arms over their heads, Lizzie’s hands wrapped around Hester’s wrists, each standing with one knee bent.
Spitting on her as it spoke, the unearthly voice said, “You’ve come to spread the Great Lie, but the power is on my side, the people are on my side … even those who have passed on … like your husband.”
Lizzie felt a churning in her stomach.
“He buggers little boys in hell, you know.”
Rage flared inside her, but she thought, No, no, he wants you to get angry.
“He’s mine now. And so is the woman. I told you before, leave her—”
Somewhat winded from the struggle, Lizzie hissed, “In the name of Jesus Christ, get away from me!”
For just an instant, the blink of an eye, Hester’s face became a hideous yellowed mask with inhuman eyes and rotted teeth and lips and, as if Lizzie had slammed a baseball bat into her stomach, Hester shot away from her butt-first, arms and legs outstretched before her as she released a furious and painful sound that was not of the earth. When she landed on the path a few yards away, her body began to convulse; her legs kicked and her arms flapped, hands slapping the path. Saliva spewed up from her mouth and the sound continued. It was the sound of a cage of animals burning alive, of metal crunching and an elephant vomiting, the sound of a spoiled child’s tantrum magnified a hundred times.
Lizzie stood there watching and trying to catch her breath, but she didn’t stay long. She backed away slowly at first, watching Hester continue to convulse, then stopped to look around and see if anyone was watching. No one. Just like on the playground, no one had noticed.
She turned and hurried back down the path. She didn’t run, just in case someone saw her, but she walked very fast.
Once she was back in the parking lot, she slowed her pace. But she couldn’t slow her pounding heart.
“Thanks, lord,” she muttered under her breath.
As she rounded the corner of the hotel, the hellish cry rose from the woods again and Lizzie was so startled by it that she tripped over her own feet and stumbled forward wildly until she regained her footing. Others walking around the hotel stopped chatting, some even stopped walking, and looked with concern in the direction of the cry. Lizzie moved on as if she’d heard nothing.
She saw the others standing by the same tree; Jordan and Marvin had gotten their breakfasts and were eating hungrily. When she got there, they all stared at her as if she were wearing a duck suit.
“What’s wrong?” Marvin asked.
Lizzie realized she was trembling all over and her shoulders were rising and falling with her rapid breaths. “I’m fine,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“Fine?” Coogan asked, stepping forward. “You’re white as flour. What happened?”
“I, uh … had a little cuh-confrontation with Hester and it was j
-just a b-bit unpuh-pleasant. That’s all.”
Jordan perked up then. “What did she say?”
“Well, it’s not so much what she said …” She caught her breath and, when he offered, she took a few swallows of Marvin’s orange juice. “It was almost exactly like the playground all over again.”
“Orrin spoke to you?” Jordan asked.
“You can call him whatever you want, but now I’m dead certain who he is, and his name’s not Orrin.”
“Well, what did he—”
“I’m so glad I found you!” Joan gasped, running up to them. “I figured you’d be here, but it’s not easy to find anybody in this mess. I don’t have long because I’m on break, but I thought you’d want to know this. It was just on the radio at the diner.” She stopped to get her breath.
Lizzie was suddenly forgotten; everyone was staring at Joan, waiting … waiting. …
Then she said it: “Edmond Fiske is dead.”
4.
Half an hour later, the large garbage cans at the ends of the tables were overflowing with paper plates and cups and napkins. The tables were cleaned off and cleared away and two large speakers were set up at the back end of the green. The press was there, too, of course, setting up equipment of their own.
The crowd began to gather before the speakers, sitting on the ground until the rectangle of grass was completely covered and surrounded by even more people who stood in the surrounding gravel, with everyone facing front.
They were seated in the center of it all, silent, waiting. Lizzie still had not quite recovered from her experience with Hester and the others had not quite recovered from Joan’s news. Another of Orrin’s “warnings” had come true.
“You think it’s got anything to do with that phone call?” Marvin asked Jordan quietly shortly after Joan left.
“I’d bet money on it.”
They decided to talk about it later when there was less chance of being overheard.
When Hester appeared, the hum of voices in the crowd was buried by applause. She looked fresh and lively in her shimmering white silks and waved with both hands at the audience. She tapped a finger on her lapel mike to test it, then said, “Good morning, sweet souls!”
Everyone in the audience responded loudly, as always. Everyone, that is, except for five people in the center.
Once the noise died down, Hester talked for a few minutes about the New World Festival and its purpose. “Your belief, your energy, is what will usher in this New Age of Enlightenment, and that New Age will unite this planet in a New World Order. We will be a planet of oneness. One leader, one government, one set of laws, one spiritual belief. There will be no wars, no churches, no disagreements.”
In spite of the smiles and nods of affirmation and agreement she saw around her, Lizzie thought she could imagine nothing more frighteningly wrong.
“This festival,” Hester continued, “is designed to bring on all of that more quickly. And if all goes well, I hope to have an announcement to make by the end of this festival. An announcement that will change your lives and mine, the lives of everyone on earth.”
She talked about the various events that would take place at the festival—the channelings, crystal healings, aura massage training, hikes up the mountain for meditations, and more—and told everyone to be sure and pick up a program on the way out. Hester showed no sign of the confrontation that had taken place earlier. She looked unshaken, even refreshed. Lizzie watched her every move, waiting for a sign of uncertainty.
“Now that we’ve covered the festival,” she said, “I think it’s time for some words from Orrin. As many of you know, Orrin has been sharing with us some rather dark, but entirely necessary, things lately because, as I’ve said before, the New Age will be preceded by a time of turmoil and unrest. We are in that time right now, ladies and gentlemen, and Orrin is simply reminding us of that fact. He wants us to have courage and come through this time clean and untouched and in possession of the one and only truth. He wants the Godbody to be whole and healthy. Now, if you’ll just give me a few moments …”
She lowered herself onto the grass and began the familiar procedure of opening the channel that would allow Orrin to speak through her. The crowd waited patiently and silently. The only sounds were birds and the rustling breeze, until—
—“Greeeetings, sweet souls!”
“Greetings!” the audience replied as one.
Hester stood and began to pace back and forth as Orrin said all the usual introductory things about unity and godness and the Godbody.
Jordan noticed something about his thought processes at that moment: as he absorbed the words coming from Hester Thorne and looked them over inside his head, he no longer thought of them as Hester Thorne’s words as he had at the Sheraton in San Francisco. They were Orrin’s words. Orrin was taking on a sort of personality in Jordan’s mind, he was becoming a very real entity. Jordan didn’t like that; it frightened him because it meant that things were being rearranged in the neat and tidy little room he’d set up within the walls of his skull, almost without him even realizing it. It had been happening a lot within the last twenty-four hours.
First, Orrin’s warning about Reverend Hallway came true, and now the one about Edmond Fiske; he’d been killed when his private elevator dropped forty-eight stories because of a broken cable. Then there was Lizzie Murphy.
As far as Jordan was concerned, the fact that she was a Christian automatically made her suspect. But she didn’t act like the Christians he had known. She condemned no one, she laughed and had a good sense of humor and didn’t behave in a holier-than-thou manner. Yes, she quoted scripture now and then, but always good-naturedly. So she was an amiable Christian; that didn’t change the way Jordan felt about the belief in which he’d been raised. And it didn’t change her story. Had Hester Thorne manifested an Orrin-like phenomenon as a child? And how had Hester known that Lizzie was married and the name of her late husband? Lizzie had claimed there was no way Hester could have known, unless she’d kept tabs on Lizzie all her life, and Lizzie suspected the chances of that were microscopic. Then, of course, there was the biggie, the granddaddy of mind-benders: everything Jordan had seen in that cave.
All of those things had been stomping through Jordan’s mind, leaving deep tracks that were impossible to ignore, and the impressions they’d made had completely changed the way he viewed Hester’s channeling.
He broke through the surface of his thoughts and listened.
“—darkness descending upon the destroyers of the earth, upon those who continue to knowingly and willing escalate the decay and destruction of the planet that is not theirs to destroy, as it is now and shall always be. They refuse to participate in the few attempts made to stop this destruction and correct the damage. They refuse even to acknowledge what they are doing and make an attempt—however small—to change, although they profess to be doing all they can. They lie, so be it. The darkness of change falls upon them.
“And this is the most painful turmoil of all, for it shall claim the lives of innocents. Along with the destroyers of the earth it shall take those within range of its terrible light. But they shall be re-embodied and walk among us again. The light itself, however—the searing glow of nuclear power—shall be extinguished, for from this, others will learn and will go about making the necessary changes, as it is and always shall be.”
“Oh, my god,” Lauren hissed, startling Marvin, who sat beside her. “Oh, my god, the plant. The plant, the plant,” she gasped, clutching Marvin’s arm and shaking him.
“Sh-sshhh.” He took her hand. “What’s that?”
“The Diego Nuclear Power Plant,” she breathed. “Mark used to work there. See? She’s … oh, lord, she’s gonna use Mark the same way she used Simon Better to kill Reverend Hallway and the same way she might’ve used that other guy to kill Edmond Fiske.”
Without taking hi
s eyes from Lauren, Marvin reached around and beckoned Jordan, who sat on the other side of him.
“He was one of their engineers, he knows that plant inside and out and everybody there likes him. He could do it. If he really wanted to, he could do it.”
“What?” Jordan whispered.
“You heard what Hester just said,” Marvin replied. “Well, remember where Mark worked?”
It took a second, maybe less; Jordan’s face seemed to age within that second. “Oh, shit. Holy shit.”
“I think it’s a mistake to discuss it right now,” Marvin whispered. “This isn’t exactly private.”
“You’re right,” Jordan said. “As soon as this is over, we go someplace where we can talk. Jeez, unless—”
“Unless he’s already gone,” Lauren finished for him. “He could be on his way there right now.”
“Maybe, maybe,” Jordan said. “But I saw him just last night. Late last night. At the ceremony. Look, there’s nothing we can do now. Let’s just get the hell out of here as soon as we can.”
Lauren tried to hold back her tears, but failed. Jordan and Marvin showed their anxiety in small ways as they feigned interest in what Orrin had to say; Jordan rocked slightly back and forth and Marvin picked at his socks furiously. The three of them didn’t hear a word Orrin said.
When Hester was finished channeling—sitting on the grass again and hunched forward, exhausted—one of the white-suited fellows stepped forward, grinned and told everyone that they could pick up program sheets in front of the hotel and reminded them that Alliance literature and souvenirs were on sale in the gift shop.
Jordan stood and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here fast.”
They stayed close together and tried not to look hurried. Lizzie and Coogan hadn’t heard the brief conversation earlier, so they didn’t know what the hurry was, but they could tell something urgent had come up.
As they were rounding a corner and starting along the side of the hotel toward the parking lot, a woman’s voice called out behind them: “Daddy? Wait a second! Dad!”
Coogan turned toward the direction of his daughter’s voice and saw her running toward them, cutting a wobbly path through the gravel on legs that seemed bonier than usual.