"In here, Doug." His voice had grown stronger. "Come and see."
My teeth and fists clenched. My heart jackhammered against my ribs. I silently recited Scriptures and fought down a growing sense of panic. Inch by inch I crept along the wall, toward the voice.
"Doug!"
My heart jumped into my throat. The wall ended in open air, and the voice came from directly in front of me. I was standing in the open bedroom doorway.
I forced open my eyes.
It was an ordinary large bedroom—thick carpeting, double bed, a chest of drawers with a wide mirror in which I could see my own terrified, sweating reflection. This room, I thought, had seen loving nights between loving couples; tender words, the sparking of new life. Now no one could look at this room and think of love, where everything burned with a hellish red-yellow, where it was impossible to tell what other color anything in the room had ever been, where the rippling heat licked like flames at the skin, stung and watered the eyes, and seized the heart with loathing and a nearly unendurable fear. And in the center of it all stood Randy, with the cloak wrapped around him. It covered his body from the legs up and hooded his head so that he even looked evil. A hand extended from its folds, beckoning. The cloak itself was tattered, foul; but what I really noticed at that moment was the bed. Just a bare mattress—no sheets.
I looked from the bed to him. "You slept on it?"
His mouth twisted. "Yes ...but not just me, Doug."
I gaped. My head moved, slowly, from side to side. "You didn’t."
He laughed again, sputtering. "You couldn’t begin to imagine it, Doug. How wonderful...how awful."
"You didn’t!" "I—"
"You little creep." Snarled it out. My fists clenched at my sides. "How could you?"
"I never planned on it, it just came to me all at once. The idea made me want to puke at first. I never thought I’d really do it...but...it wouldn’t let go...kept hounding me worse and worse, and...finally picked someone up in a bar ..." He spat out a laugh. " Two minutes, and it was over. That was all it took. She was smart; she ran off. And the way I felt...something had changed. I had changed, and the cloak had changed—that’s when it started turning yellow and everything, rotting. I prayed, I begged God to change it back; nothing doing. I swore I’d take it back to the mountain, leave it, forget about it...yeah, right."
I just stared at him.
"I picked up another girl. She took one look at it and ran. After that I couldn’t even get anyone in here—by then, girls were avoiding me. Guess that wasn’t too surprising." He paused. "So I started wrapping it around myself."
I folded my arms. And what did you do with yourself, Randy, while you had "God’s gift"
wrapped around you?
"Doug!" His face squeezed up and he sobbed. With a jolt I realized I’d said that out loud. I had more to say besides. "You pervert. You lousy little freak. That’s about a billion people who aren’t going to be helped now, thanks to you! Happy now?"
He buried his face in his hands. He let the cloak fall to the floor, then sank down himself, one leg extended and one tucked underneath, looking as if sitting on glowing embers. I stood over him with balled fists.
"This is why I didn’t want you taking it! I knew something like this would happen! Damn you, Randy, I could have been another apostle, you understand that? I could have almost been up there with Christ! I could have made history!"
I fell silent, shaking. I sweated in the heat.
Randy looked up at me with yellow eyes, his face wet. He sniffled. "Just being a believer," he said quietly. "That’s not enough?"
I put a hand to my face, drew a deep breath. Now I wanted to sob. Dear God, what did I say? Did I really say that? I choked.
"The cloak," Randy said. "It made you say that."
I shook my head. Because, even tainted, the cloak still came from Heaven, enough at least to remind me of why I’d kept my distance from it before. It made everything appear dirty. It highlighted flaws you may have always been blissfully unaware of until you got too near it. I shuddered.
"Doug...?"
My eyes flew open, and my body leaped into automatic. I grabbed the cloak with both hands. Something jolted me, a flash that shot my pleasure center off the scale; but in a moment I had it off of him and threw it in a corner. "Go start the car!"
Randy sobbed again. "Doug, I can’t ..." "Go!" I muscled him out of the room.
That one touch set off a frenzy that I had to fight all the way downstairs and out back to barbecue grill as I carried the thing on a broomstick, held out in front of me. My hands shook as they sprayed on the lighter fluid, lit the flame.
I turned away; I could not bear to watch it burn. It could have helped so many people. People who would now remain imprisoned in their wheelchairs, blind people, cancer patients who would now suffer and die without ever knowing of the miracle that might have saved them. What proof of the Almighty’s power! How many souls would have been saved—
No. Don’t think of that. Randy needs your help. I focused on that.
Five minutes later my hands still trembled, gripping the steering wheel as we wound back down the road, through the woods with the twin white headlamps lighting the way. Randy was sprawled next to me, staring straight up. Neither of us had yet spoken.
He shifted in his seat. "Thanks," he whispered. I did not reply. Silence for another minute.
"Doug?"
"Yeah?" I kept my eyes on the road.
"Can ..." He sobbed. "Can you forgive me?"
Big Apple Gothic
Matthew Quinn Martin
I’m old.
Just how old is up for debate. The rock itself formed in a Precambrian intrusion of fluid fire eons before anyone was alive to number them. The chunk that would become me was hewn from the earth’s crust far later—quarried eight hundred years ago, not even a blink geologically. Then some fifty odd years would pass before the carving I think. I can’t be sure. I wasn’t awake for it. Laugh if you like, but there was magic in the world in those days; far more than now from what I see, high on my perch above Manhattan’s West 71st Street. Yes, laugh. This gargoyle, has a sense of humor.
Trust me, if you get a shot at a good belly laugh, take it—you never know when those chuck- les will turn to ashes in your mouth. It’s hard to get on for half a millennia without a sense of humor. The rain is hard too. Already I’m worn in spots—slick in some, pitted in others. Another thousand and I’ll likely be as round and smooth as a pebble on the beach; nice enough way to spend my retirement, rocked to sleep by the pounding surf till I’m nothing but sand caught in a pretty girl’s bikini.
Boredom is the real foe, however, and for now I’ll have to content myself with milder distractions. I read quite a bit. Occasionally, someone will leave a shade up and I’ll catch a little boob tube. There’s Shakespeare in the Park—got a great spot on top of Belvedere Castle. Once, during Macbeth, I even managed to plant myself on stage among my plaster doppelgangers. And, of course, crosswords. You folks really ought to erect a statue of Arthur Wynne for that one—so the pigeons can play Jackson Pollock with his head, as they do mine. But what I do most is watch. Watch you. Watch what happens below.
You think I’d have learned my lesson by now.
Of course, before nightfall, there’s no other option. All I can do is watch. In the sunlight, I’m still as a statue. Didn’t know that? I think you might have, deep down, at least suspected that the creepy crawlies bedecking the spires and parapets of your churches would come to life after dark; gargoyles, grotesques, and chimera partying till dawn. Don’t be silly. It’s just me, far as I know. Don’t ask me how it works. I haven’t a clue. It’s just the rules. There’s a lot I don’t know—like why I can see and hear, but not speak. Why my arms and legs work fine, but not my wings.
Nominally, Spring had come to New York, but I could tell by the way you all shuffled along in those nylon cocoons of yours that Old Man Winter had yet to relinquish his frosty grip on The
City. With my birthday coming up—or at least the day I’d picked to celebrate it—I’d planned to hunt down a Sunday crossword and a nice cigar. Those used to be easier to come by. Forty years ago you couldn’t go half a block without stumbling over a smoldering butt. Not anymore, gone the way of the fedora. Pity. I love a good cigar, even if the tobacco does nothing for me. Well, I suppose after decades there’s some carbon deposits, but no rush, no nic fits. Why then? Because a gargoyle with a cigar stuck in its maw is damn funny. And it’s the closest I’m going to get to breathing fire. Which is ironic, considering how that night played out.
April 27th, 2009, was a Manhattan dusk like countless others. Right up until wasn’t. Caught beneath the fading day’s spell, my stone eyes fixed on the alley beside the church, I found myself helpless to stop the terror unfolding in all its sick simplicity. Moments later, I might have been able to stop the bastard, scare him off with a well-thrown brick. But by the time I shook off the remains of daylight, little was left but a charred, oozing mess. I’d imagine the stench was rank. Good thing I can’t smell.
But I could hear the screams. Oh yes, I could hear the screams.
In the basement of the church I roost at is a homeless shelter, but there’s never enough room in the winter. When the cots run short, those souls that can’t fit inside stake out different parts of the church property. Most pick the steps—building cardboard condominiums under the sheltering stone arch—but one or two will bed down in the alley. I’d seen him around, usually scribbling into a notepad, or circling words in the newspaper, and muttering like he was trying to solve some grand problem. Maybe he was. He was a night owl, like me. Past sunset, I’d spot him crawling out of his cardboard den to forage for cans or food in the trash bins of the better-heeled. Like me, he had no real home and the shadow of this church was as a good as it was probably going to get. Like me, he could blend in easily. Between the box he called a roof, and the plastic bags stuffed with dirty clothes stacked on either side, a casual passerby would see nothing more than a heap of garbage.
But there was nothing casual about the way one visitor hovered over that man’s cardboard home. It wasn’t just a curious pedestrian standing there, fondling something in his pocket. Frozen on my perch, I watched him pull a flask from his wine-hued leather jacket and pour the contents over the box. Then he calmly lit an extra-long cigarette, and dropped the match.
Whoosh!
Flames ricocheted from the hoops of his glasses, twin cameos of Hell. Smiling, he screwed the cap back on his flask, breathing in the gasoline fumes, cigarette smoke and mayhem. Then he turned, melting into the crowd before the first screams bounced off the alley brick. Fierce retching howls came from the box as the man fought to break out. Animal screams. Pray you never hear a scream like that. Pray harder you never make one.
I felt a tingling in my claws. Soon I would be free. But not yet. Not in time.
As the man tore free of the cardboard, flaking scraps flew in every direction, fluttering to the asphalt like blazing black butterflies. He threw himself against one wall, then the other, then back. It didn’t do a damn thing. The gasoline and flames had sunk their tiny fiery hooks too deep.
None of the growing crowd dared venture into the alley, too scared to get burned—or involved. And as the man’s screams shifted from the primal to the pathetic—as he crumpled against the dirty brick, slowly sliding down—all they did was watch. Watch the human-shaped lump huddled next to his worthless possessions as the last of the flames licked his blistered, blackened skin. It was like they were as frozen as I was.
Finally, the church janitor appeared with a dust-covered fire extinguisher and sprayed, pointlessly. Foam covered the still-smoking remains like a fresh blanket of snow. It looked absurdly serene. Forced fire and fake ice, how poetic. "Did anyone see who did this?" the janitor asked.
No, buddy, nobody saw it. Nobody but me.
"Shouldn’t we...shouldn’t we cover him up or something?" a voice piped up from the throng. "I don’t...the police...the police will take care of it," the Janitor said, still clutching the extinguisher to his chest.
Yeah, the police will take care of it. Rest easy folks. Sure they’re gonna stamp it top of the list. Right alongside the two other such attacks in as many months. I’d read about them. Never thought I’d get to see one up close.
~
By the time the cops and the news crews showed, I was free to move. I crept down the gabled roof and watched as the flatfoots taped off the area, shooing the cameras and wide-smiling reporters to the side. This was front page stuff after all, perfect Post-fodder, great for circulation but not enough to set off a panic. Why worry? Just a few bums after all.
You catch a lot when people look into your eyes and find nothing more than sightless pits of marble—when they don’t realize someone’s looking back. The good, the bad, the triumphs, tragedies and general embarrassments that plague your kind’s mayfly lives are all on parade. But I don’t think I’ll ever fully plumb the depths of your cruelty, or ever understand just how evil you can be. How broken. You, with your guillotines and death camps, child soldiers, blood diamonds and American Idol. Just when I think you may have learned—that you’re crawling out of your caves at last—one of you goes and does something like this.
I’d seen enough; didn’t feel much like a crossword any more. Ditto for the cigar. It was shaping up to be a pretty crappy birthday week, enough to make me wish I could cry. Oh, that I was made of flesh like you.
~
Later, after the coroner had carted away his grizzly payload, I headed inside to sulk. Pulling bricks from the alcove wall—carefully, one by one—I crept into the stone ductwork that ventilates the church, following it to the choir loft. The ducting is wide enough for a man to crawl through if one were so inclined. I don’t even have to stoop.
The church was deserted. The priests comfortably ensconced next door—maybe praying the liturgy of the hours, maybe playing pinochle. I slipped though the small wrought iron gate that opens near the foot of the organ console. I could have used something—anything—to keep from wondering about the next stop for that forgotten man. Hart Island? Buried three deep and two across in a death trench? Another broken and discarded shard for the potter’s ground, no statuary, living or otherwise, to watch over him during his long sleep? Or would it be the crematorium? The tax-paying citizens of New York finishing the job?
It made me glad I don’t sleep, mostly. Wouldn’t want what few dreams I have polluted by that creeping evil. I like my dreams pure. And when they come, they are of a time when rocks rule the planet. I can’t tell if it’s the past or the future, but in this vision I am no longer alone, no longer lonely. Countless voices surround me, and our language is the low whistle of wind through standing stones, the crash of water turning cliffs to powder, the fiery boom of mountains exploding. No meddlesome clay vessels around to muck it all up.
But getting to those dreams isn’t as simple for me as it is for you. Just falling asleep can take months—years even—but then I’m out for a good decade at least. It’s been almost a century since last I slept. Waking in New York was a bit of a shock, I’ll tell you. I’d tucked in for a quiet nap on the side of a monastery in Lorraine and when I opened my eyes, there was the Hudson. Seems they up and moved the building while I was out, made it a museum. I love The City though. So brash; what it lacks in age it more than makes up for with sheer nerve. Ever been to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine? Now that’s Big Apple Gothic.
I needed to think things over. Think them over—like I have already, countless times over countless years, as I looked out over countless thankless cities. I hopped to the ledge and gazed across the vast arching emptiness stretching from the rim of the choir loft to the grand Crucifix that hung suspended—like the wooden sacrifice upon it—above the sanctuary. The towering stained-glass windows were as dark as the night outside. They looked like stone; their stories silenced, and Saints just chips of slate blending in with the blocks, v
aults and columns. All becomes one; such is the power of darkness.
Down by the altar, a small brass lamp cast a soft red glow as a beacon to all that God is present, safe in His brass box. You’d think God could do better than a crummy hole in a church’s back wall. Do better than a man nailed to a cross. You’d think that.
"A sermon in stone," I could hear a faint voice echoing in my head from so long ago. Not sure whose, but it was describing the place I was born—if you can call it that—describing a cathedral not so different as the church I call home. This one’s smaller of course, but the broad strokes are the same. Just shrunk to fit city life like so much of New York.
I try not to get involved with the things that happen below. If you wanted a guardian, you should have woken up one of the angel statues instead. One with a sword. I’m a gargoyle, not a saint. It’s not like there’s anyone to show me the way, to tell me who I was, or even what I was. I wish I could have asked a sorcerer, but their kind was near extinction even then. I don’t think they ever really knew what they were playing at—not any more then their successors: putting iron birds into the sky, building metropolis after metropolis—fields of towers to dwarf Babel—or releasing God’s own all-consuming fire by splitting the atom.
Am I a freak of supernature? A dusty relic of the days when magic, not electricity, meant power? Or just a stone? It’s said the man who laid the foundations of this Church—this and all the others—called himself a stone, a rejected one at that. Said too, he left the keys of Heaven itself in the hands of a man who’s name translates to "rock."
You learn a lot in five centuries; a lot about good and more about evil. Good, and its One True Fountainhead. Evil, with its countless shades and smokescreens, its sound reasons and slippery justifications. The two always separated by that thin tissue of choice. Ready to reach for that apple? Will you turn these stones to bread? Or walk out onto the air?
What was my choice going to be?
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