Jim unlocked his car, and opened up the nearside rear door.
‘Go on,’ he said, indicating with a nod of his head that both of the Silences should sit in back. ‘I don’t want to have either of you next to me, thanks.’
‘You should not be so aggrieved, Mr Rook,’ said the Reverend Silence, as he climbed in after his son. ‘After today, I promise you, you will be a celebrity.’
Jim said nothing, but slammed the door and then climbed into the car himself.
The journey back to West Grove Community College was uneventful, even though the sky was now so dark that every vehicle was driving with its full headlights on, and it began to rain. None of them spoke.
After a few minutes Jim switched on the radio to hear if any of the news stations were carrying reports about the sudden mid-afternoon gloom, but all he could pick up was the endless hissing of white noise, punctuated by occasional spits and crackles.
They turned in through the college gates. As they made their way slowly up the driveway, Jim saw to his growing amazement that the entire forecourt and all of the slopes surrounding the main building were crowded with students – thousands of them. West Grove had enrolled more than eight thousand five hundred students for the new academic year, and at a guess he would have said that almost all of them were assembled here.
Although it was now thundering loudly, and rain was sweeping across the seventy-acre campus, the students all stood motionless, and drenched, although some of them were holding open books or folders or sodden magazines over their heads.
Jim slowed down as he reached the outskirts of the crowd, and then stopped. A few students turned around to frown at his car, but none of them registered much interest in his arrival, and immediately turned back to face in the opposite direction.
Jim looked at the Reverend Silence in his rear-view mirror. ‘So what are they all doing here? This must be every student in the whole darn college, and the extension, too.’
‘You’re right, Mr Rook. Every student who isn’t away on some course or out of the country or home sick in bed. Why don’t you park your car here, and we can get out.’
Jim steered over toward the curb and stopped. The Silences climbed out of the back seat and stood beside the car waiting for him to join them. Jim waited for a moment behind the wheel, wondering if he should back up fast and get the hell out of there, but then the Reverend Silence beckoned to him and pointed at his wristwatch, and Jim could see that he was miming, ‘Come along, Mr Rook! We’re wasting time!’
He got out of the car and into the rain. Together, he and the Silences pushed their way through the crowds. Some of the students had to be given a sharp second nudge before they would move aside, but none of them seemed to resent it. They were obviously fixated with whatever was going on in the center of the forecourt.
As he elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, Jim saw at last what they were all staring at. It was the hooded figure, sitting cross-legged on the asphalt in its gray, rain-soaked robes. Even when it was sitting down, it was almost as tall as the students who were gathered around it. Its head was bent forward so that its face was completely hidden in the dark interior of its hood. Its shoulders were stooped and its robes were tucked underneath it, so that the only visible part of it was its grayish left hand, which was resting loosely on its knee. Jim recognized its ring at once, with its convoluted snakes.
It had arrived. It was here, in the real world, in the rain, and now it was visible not just to Jim but to everybody – all of these thousands of students. The Holy Trinity had kept it quarantined in limbo for thousands of years, but now the Reverend Silence and his three false crucifixions had released it. It had arrived, and it was ready for the Great Atonement – the reversal of everything that God had ordained since the creation of Adam.
Although he had been expecting the hooded figure to appear, and he had been reassuring himself all the way from the Church of the Divine Conquest that he would be able to cope with it, Jim felt a deep, cold sensation of dread – especially when the figure stirred slightly, underneath its robes, as if knew that he had arrived.
What really disturbed him, though, was the students of Special Class Two. They were here, all thirteen of them, standing in a semicircle behind the hooded figure, their arms by their sides, damp and dripping, but with patient expressions on their faces, as if they were prepared to wait for ever, if they had to.
‘Mr Rook!’ called out DaJon Johnson. ‘We was beginning to think you wouldn’t show!’
Jim circled cautiously around the hooded figure to join them. ‘What are you all doing here?’ he asked them. ‘Kyle – Joe – Jesmeka?’
At that moment, Dr Ehrlichman came through the crowd. His bald head was spotted with rain and the shoulders of his khaki linen coat were dark with damp. He held out his hand and said, ‘Jim! We’ve been waiting for you!’
‘What’s going on here, Walter?’ Jim demanded. ‘What are my class doing here?’
Dr Ehrlichman opened out his arms and spun slowly around. ‘What a turnout! Look at them all! Our acolytes! Our faithful acolytes!’
‘Walter, these aren’t our acolytes. These are our students! These are just college kids!’
But now the Reverend Silence stepped forward, closely followed by Simon Silence. Their wet, white linen shirts were rippling in the breeze. ‘The Great Atonement requires a congregation, Mr Rook, and what congregation could be more appropriate than the students of your own college? Doctor Ehrlichman has been most cooperative in assembling them all here. He has promised every one of them that they will find their own personal Paradise.’
‘Come on, Mr Rook!’ said Al Alvarez. ‘It’s going to be amazing! Think about it! Everything we ever always wanted!’
The Reverend Silence cocked his head to one side, and said, ‘He’s right, Mr Rook. In a few minutes, your Bethany could be standing here, holding your hand. Your father could be here, too. Ba’al will give you the power you need, and all you have to do is call them. Your disciples will help you.’
‘My disciples? These are my class, not my disciples. I’m not Jesus, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Ah – but what you will be doing here today will be like the feeding of the five thousand. But it will be a much greater achievement, because there are so many thousands more – and instead of giving them loaves and fishes, you will be giving them their heart’s desire!’
Jim couldn’t stop himself from thinking: blasphemy. But he looked around at the huge crowd of students, and then back to his own class, and Dr Ehrlichman, and the rest of the faculty. He could see Sheila Colefax and she was smiling at him, and so was Roger Ball, the math teacher, and Heston Greene, who taught social sciences, and Cato Philips, the football coach, was nodding at him furiously and giving him a double thumb’s-up.
The Reverend Silence tried to lay his hand on Jim’s shoulder. Jim raised his arm to fend him off, but the Reverend Silence leaned towards him and said, in a low, cajoling voice, ‘You cannot let all of these people down now, Mr Rook. Look at them! Look at their faces! They are all depending on you – every one of them! They have gathered here today expecting Paradise, and you are the only person who can give it to them! Here – take hold of your disciples’ hands, and stand in a circle around Ba’al, and let the calling of the dead begin!’
Dr Ehrlichman called out, ‘Come on, Jim! For the sake of West Grove! Think how great morale is going to be, when every student has everything they ever wanted! Think how high our reputation will rise! Think of our accreditation! And don’t forget how much money the Reverend Silence is going to give us for our sports facilities!’
The Reverend Silence leaned even closer and added, in his seductive tone, ‘Think how you will feel, Mr Rook, when you get what you want!’
Jim thought: This is madness. Here we are, all of us, over eight thousand students and their teachers, standing in a thunderstorm around a dark, gray demon, expecting to be given happiness.
But then he thought: Why not? Whe
n has God ever given us happiness? When has God ever given us anything but pain, and suffering, and tragic loss? Since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, what have men and women ever had but toil, and doubt, and cruelty, and betrayal?
He turned to DaJon Johnson and held out his hand. ‘Come on, DaJon, let’s do it. The rest of you, form a circle, OK? All hold hands around our hooded friend here.’
‘You will never regret this, Mr Rook,’ said the Reverend Silence. ‘Your name will live for ever more.’
Jim didn’t answer, but offered his right hand to DaJon Johnson, and his left hand to Rebecca Teitelbaum. Soon, Jim and the thirteen students of Special Class Two were standing in a ring around the hooded figure seated on the ground, all holding hands, shuffling their feet and looking self-conscious. Jesmeka Watson tossed her head to shake off the raindrops and the beads in her cornrows rattled.
‘Are we all ready for this?’ said Jim.
‘If we ain’t ready now we ain’t never going to be ready!’ said Rudy Cascarelli. ‘Hey – I feel like some kind of a faggot here, holding two guys’ hands!’
Directly above their heads there was an ear-splitting burst of thunder. Then, when the thunder had echoed and re-echoed across the hills, and grumbled into silence, it was followed by a low murmur that went through the crowds of students all around them, a rising tsunami of sound that eventually seemed to overwhelm the whole campus.
Jim understood what it was, that wave of sound. It was the sound of hope, and excitement. Almost every student had enrolled at West Grove because he or she had realized that they urgently needed to better themselves. This afternoon, in the rain, they were being offered success and happiness without any coursework, or study, or exams. All they had to do was show their devotion to Ba’al.
The Reverend Silence walked around the ring into which Special Class Two had formed themselves, and then came up and stood close behind Jim, Simon following in his footsteps. Jim could smell his breath and it was slightly garlicky. He raised his hands and sang in a high, tremulous pitch, ‘The Lord God took in each hand the earth from the ground and shaped each handful into a human being, one male and one female. And they were equal. But did the Lord God regard them as equal?’
Jim was startled when all of Special Class Two shouted out in unison, ‘OK!’ This must have been the response that Simon Silence had taught them when he had taken them for prayers in the middle of the night. But it suddenly occurred to him that ‘OK!’ didn’t mean ‘yes!’. He knew that the first use of ‘OK’ meaning ‘all right’ had not been recorded until the late eighteenth century. This response must be the Greek word óxi, which sounded like ‘OK’ but actually meant ‘no’. Every response to what God was supposed to have done when He had created Paradise was ‘no!’
The Reverend Silence sang, ‘The Lord God cast Lilith out of Paradise, but when He realized that Adam would need a wife in order to propagate the human race, He sent angels to bring her back. But what did Lilith say to the angels?’
‘Óxi!’ chanted the class.
‘And did not the Lord God curse the offspring of Lilith for ever, that one hundred should die every day. And was this just? And was it merciful?’
‘Óxi!’
‘But we have found a savior, and today the offspring of Lilith shall reclaim the Paradise that they were denied by the Lord God, and by Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Ghost. And the great Ba’al shall rise again, and have dominion over the world which is rightfully his. At last we shall see the Divine Conquest, for which we have waited with such endurance for so many thousands of years.
‘All hail to the great Ba’al!’
The wave of sound from the crowd grew louder and louder. It was more of a reverberation than the sound of human voices, and Jim felt as if his teeth were buzzing.
Very slowly and jerkily, like some kind of mechanical automaton, the hooded figure started to unfold, and to climb to its feet. Underneath its wet gray robes it appeared to be skeletally thin, but when it had reached its full height it was nearly fifteen feet tall, and it towered over all of them.
It turned its hooded head slowly from side to side, as if it were relishing every moment of its reincarnation, and the huge crowd that had assembled to greet it. What impressed Jim more than anything else was that none of the crowd appeared to be frightened. Instead, they were all staring up at the figure with something approaching adoration.
The Reverend Silence sang, ‘O great Ba’al! I am your servant and – here! – I have brought you the only man who can call back the children of Lilith from the realm of death.’
The hooded figure looked down at Jim, who was still holding hands in a circle with Special Class Two. Jim could just make out its eyes, glittering inside its hood. It seemed to stare at him for ever, not moving, not speaking, but then it reached out its gray, bony left hand toward him, with the silver snake ring shining on its ring finger.
‘Take it,’ the Reverend Silence coaxed him. ‘Take the master’s hand, and all of the power that you need will be yours.’
Jim released his hold on DaJon Johnson and Rebecca Teitelbaum. He knew that this was the critical moment. If he refused to take the hooded figure’s hand, then all of this huge assembly would have to disperse without the gift of Paradise they so desperately wanted. The Reverend Silence and Simon Silence would have to return to their church and pray that they could find somebody else in the world who could really call spirits from the other side, like he could, and who could guess how many years that might take?
But if he refused to take the hooded figure’s hand, the three sacrifices of Bethany, Santana and Ricky would have been nothing more than pointless butchery, and how could he live with that?
The Reverend Silence came up very close behind him and murmured, ‘Go ahead, Mr Rook. Remember what Khalil Gibran said. “Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.” Take the hand of Ba’al, and you will defeat death.’
NINETEEN
Jim took Ba’al’s hand. It was surprisingly dry, like snakeskin, but it was intensely cold, and he could feel every bone in its finger joints. Unlike his father’s hand, on the beach, it was real, and solid.
He thought to himself: I can hardly believe this. I’m holding hands with one of the legendary kings of hell. This is almost like holding hands with Satan.
The students kept up their low, resonant humming; and the sheet lightning flashed again and again, giving the clouds the appearance of a cheap stage-set.
From inside its hood, in a deep, muffled voice, Ba’al said, ‘You are indeed the one. The only one. I never believed the day would come. I can see through your eyes. I can see so many of the dead, waiting to return.’
‘Just wait up,’ Jim challenged it, although his throat was constricted with fear and he was so breathless that he could hardly speak. ‘The Reverend Silence made me a promise.’
‘The Reverend Silence? Ha! That is a most ironic name for one who has never been revered, and who is rarely silent.’
‘Maybe. But I’m not going to help you until you give me back the three people who were sacrificed to set you free. You know – nailed to the ceiling, with the cats. I want those three back first. And my father, too. That was the deal.’
‘Then call them,’ said Ba’al. ‘Call them, summon them, and I will give you the power that you need to bring them back to life.’
Jim tried to steady his breathing. His heart was thumping hard against his ribcage. He thought of Bethany, standing at the end of the corridor, in a blur of sunlight.
‘Think of all the things we could do together, Daddy. We could go for picnics. We could walk on the seashore. We could read a book together, on a windy hill. We could talk and talk and talk and never stop.’
He thought of Santana, looking up at him from his gopher-hole digging in the back yard at Briar Cliff Apartments.
‘Hola, Señor Rook!’
He thought of Ricky, sitting in front o
f his easel, trying to paint The Storyteller.
‘I used to think the sixties were weird. Then I thought the seventies were weird. But today . . . whoa. The whole fuckin’ world is weird.’
Finally, he thought of his father, standing on Santa Monica Beach, still wet after thirty-three years of drowning.
‘How can I be a ghost? That doesn’t make any kind of sense at all!’
As he thought about them, he felt a soft, cold, rushing sensation up his arm. It was like being given a blood transfusion, except with blood that had been taken straight out of the fridge. It flooded up his arm and across his back and down his other arm, and then it quickly filled up his whole body, so that he shivered uncontrollably.
He looked up into the shadows of Ba’al’s hood, and he could see that its eyes were glittering even more intensely than ever.
‘Do you feel it?’ said Ba’al. ‘Do you feel the power? This is the power to defy death. This is the power of immortality. The Lord God thought that He was the master of life and death, but He forgot that we used to be angels, too, and that we used to execute sinners and idolaters at his command.
‘Together with your gift, we can bring back all of those who died so unjustly, and we can sweep away all of those who should never have been.’
Jim was about to ask Ba’al what it meant by that, when he heard a voice calling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’
He turned around, although Ba’al kept a painfully tight grip on his hand, so that he couldn’t tug himself free. Hurrying toward him through the crowds of students was Bethany, her light-brown hair tied up with a ribbon, wearing the same gray dress in which she had appeared to him before, in college. Her face was bright with delight.
Even before she reached him, Jim saw Ricky and Santana coming through the crowds, too; and not far behind, he saw his father, William ‘Billy’ Rook. This time, his father was not wearing the suit in which he had drowned, but his favorite brown corduroy bomber jacket, and his khaki drill pants.
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