The Blood of the Lamb

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Sometimes the feeling was exhilarating; and sometimes utterly terrifying.

  What was happening to him? A year ago, he was just a simple man, happy in his small simple life. Now the parish, and the people, of Saint Sebastian seemed lifetimes distant.

  He had no idea what lay ahead for him, but he knew one thing: he would never return to Saint Sebastian’s.

  Time lost its trip on him as he stared into the magic window of the universe. Soon his thoughts melted into one another and he sat in a state of quiet reverie. He felt as if he could sit there forever.

  Sunrise flooded across the basins and the desert with alarming quickness. Almost instantly, distant rock formations began to shimmer and waver behind thick lenses of heated air. Peter faced the south and stared at a distant point along the edge of the Painted Desert—a black speck that seemed insignificantly small yet which drew his gaze irresistibly.

  He had needed to get away. Away from all of them. This time alone would cleanse him, purge him of the stress from their demands, their expectations…

  The black speck seemed larger.

  Peter imagined it was growing closer—closer, but no more distinct. There was something about the object, whatever it was, that kept demanding his attention. It was definitely moving, floating just above the rocky terrain. Each time he glanced at it, the thing seemed closer.

  But it had no recognizable shape. It seemed amorphous, mutable, like smoke or mist though Peter somehow knew it was actually some kind of solid. At first he’d thought it might be a piece of sagebrush or half-burned tumbleweed, but it was now obviously something far more strange than that.

  The desert panorama faded away, losing its pigments and composition like watercolors being bled from a page. Peter could concentrate on nothing other than the darkness, and he began to feel the first windowpane, taps of apprehension. Whatever was gliding smokily across the desert floor was directed squarely at him.

  Despite the dry heat, he felt coldness surround him like a Kirlian aura. If the absence of color is blackness, then the cloak that enwrapped the approaching object was indeed black. But as Peter eyed it intently, he felt the thing was darker than mere black.

  He was beginning to be afraid.

  Closer now, and the object finally began to assume some semblance of a configuration. Roundish, or perhaps ellipsoid, it appeared to have delicately interleaved folds or layers, like the fissures in a brain or the petals of a flower. It seemed as though the more directly he stared into its mass, the less distinct it appeared, but when he only glanced at it from the periphery, it assumed hard, crisp edges. The impression that it was a sentient, intelligent entity came to him in an overwhelming instant like an open palm smacking him in the face.

  There was no longer any doubt the thing was homing in upon him. A flash of complete irrationality capered through him—he wanted to start running, to never look back.

  But he held his position and waited. He stared into the black depths and realized he was not staring at something as much as its absence. Looking into the object was like looking into a hole in reality. The shapes, folds, and furrows, the suggestions of things moving within the blackness created a sensation in him of the purest loathing, but he continued to stare.

  Such good works you have done, Father Peter…

  The words touched his mind—there was no other way to describe the experience. The coldness no longer just surrounded him; it was seeping into his pores.

  “What are you?”

  You know what I am, who I am…

  He stared into the center of the absence and concentrated, trying to make sense of the chaos that swirled at the heart of the darkness. Part of him responded to the thing before him in ways he did not like. There was a certain beauty, a correctness, about its asymmetry.

  And he did know to what, or whom, he spoke…

  “What do you want with me?”

  That should be obvious.

  “I’m not sure it is.” Peter tried to look away from the thing that hung motionless before him. A visual intoxicant, it was dangerous, yet infinitely appealing.

  Peter, don’t fuck with me…

  “What?”

  Play semantic and philosophical games with others. Please, Peter, don’t insult me. You’ve turned the corner. I just thought I’d tell you, boy: you’re mine now…

  A chill raced through him as the words touched the center of his being. For the first time in his life, Peter believed he felt true fear.

  “Nobody owns me,” he said, staring hypnotically into the center of the darkness.

  He felt the sensation of laughter rather than the actual sound.

  Perhaps you’re right. It could be that I’ve been presumptuous.

  Yes. You’ve made me realize the truth in that. Besides there is no fun in merely taking you, Peter.

  “Better if I joined you willingly, eh?”

  More feelings of laughter.

  Infinitely so. You see, like that other great mythical figure—Saint Nick—I was watching and listening when you killed Daniel.

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  Liar, liar. Catch on fire.

  More laughter.

  “I didn’t kill him—he had a heart attack.”

  You really believe that, don’t you? You stand here before me, staring into the Abyss, and you don’t remember what happened.

  “I remember thinking I could feel his heart pumping crazy, like it was going to break out of his chest.”

  Laughter.

  Then: Oh, you could “feel” it, all right.

  “He was my best friend…”

  And you thought he might be turning away from you. Forgetting to be properly awed. Oh, and let’s not forget—he might be fucking your woman, too. How utterly human of you.

  Peter felt a pang of guilt, a deep sense of regret. With Daniel dead, his concerns about infidelity seemed pale. What difference did it make if Marion and Daniel had made love? It was merely a meeting of two bodies—brief, ultimately harmless. How and why had so many cultures turned such a simple thing into something so cataclysmic?

  You’re going to need me.

  Its insistent voice invaded his thoughts like a not-so-subtle virus.

  “I don’t need you.”

  You’re going to need more power, and I can give it to you.

  “At what price?”

  No reply came, but in its stead, Peter was abruptly stunned by a sensation he’d never experienced before. The perception overwhelmed him, threatened to absorb him totally. He could not describe it as other than an undifferentiated impression of human suffering, of pain and death on an unimaginable, global scale. Like an impossible weight, an unfathomable darkness, the sensation tried to engulf him. Peter backed away from the Presence before him, gathered his consciousness about him like a cloak. Shielding himself, he shrugged off the sum total of all human pain. The thought of enduring anything close to that again laced him with cold, damp terror.

  That’s coming for you, Peter. It’s going to get you. You’re not strong enough on your own. You can’t create anything, and in order to overcome what you just felt, you will need more power. You can be a Creator. You can have that power. And with the power of creation comes the rest of the world. Your thoughts of Marion and her delicate flesh, flesh which will eventually wither and die, will be as those of a child. With the new power, you will have dominion…over all.

  Peter smiled. “Is this where I’m supposed to tell you to get behind me?”

  You can do whatever you want…That’s the beauty of it, Peter. It’s your show. From here on out—just say the word, and you can make it happen.

  “Fuck you. I don’t need you. I’m in control.”

  Brave words. You have the ego to do well at this business. I like that.

  “Do your stuff, or get out of here. You bore me,” said Peter.

  Laughter. Unheard, but felt.

  I’ll show you who I am, and if you can deny me or my nature after seeing the truth, I will l
eave you forever. No titanic struggle, no metaphysical bullshit. Okay?

  “Do your worst.”

  Just to be theatrical, I think I’ll preface this with a nice BEHOLD!

  He stared into the center of the Absence which roiled before him, eating a hole in the hot desert air. It was a spinning galactic cluster of all that could ever be, ever was. The spinning center became the All, the heartbeat of the Universe. Antipodal forces flowed and ebbed like dark tides of fear and elation, love and loathing, pride and humility, hope and desperation, dream and nightmare, sainthood and depravity, and every other emotional bolt ever struck in the stormcenter of human passage. The cluster spun wildly, a vortex that pulled him in. Within its dark center, he could see the folds and petals of the blackest rose, the blossom unfolding in a new and terrible heat. Suddenly he saw a face within the folds of nothingness, and the face was his own.

  No war raged within or without. Peter knew what he faced and he accepted the anthracite truth of it.

  And so it is…said Its voice as It began dopplering away from him like the whistle of a passing train. He listened to Its departure like a sad lover at a midnight station, a last-chance depot of the soul.

  The Absence contracted, receded, collapsing into itself. Watching it disappear, Peter had the impression that it was also racing away from him, red-shifting through the spectrum to the vanishing point.

  A brief burst of intuition told him that It was taking something from him, something precious and irreplaceable.

  He found himself staring idly at a black speck in the mirage-shrouded distance, beyond which the desert loomed like the scape of an alien moon.

  The sound of an approaching engine cracked the eggshell silence that surrounded him. Turning, he saw the helicopter approach, canting through a wide, arcing turn. It dipped down to alight testily on the rough terrain. As the rotors whoomped down, Larry Melmanik climbed out, started walking toward him.

  A whirlpool of conflicting emotions churned in Peter’s soul. Memories of Daniel and his ugly death suddenly surfaced in his mind. Peter still didn’t know how he should feel, what he should do.

  Maybe he never would.

  Whatever he’d been doing before the ’copter arrived now eluded him. A chunk of time and memory—gone. The notion gave him a chill. He looked up and tried to shake it off as his manager approached.

  Wearing a blue oxford shirt and a pair of tan slacks, Larry looked as casual as he would ever allow himself. Tim Vernon remained in the ’copter’s cabin with the pilot, watching.

  “Wasn’t sure where to find you in all the confusion,” said Larry.

  “Until you checked with the front desk.”

  “Right. But I gotta tell you I was a little surprised you called in the Air Force.”

  “Haven’t you ever needed some time by yourself, Larry?”

  “Sure, I understand,” said Melmanik, waving off the question with an impatient gesture that revealed he didn’t understand at all.

  “So, you’re here,” said Peter. “You must want something.”

  “I talked to Marion. She had no idea where you were. Between Daniel’s dying and you disappearing, she was half-crazy.”

  The mention of Marion’s name left him oddly cold. “I’m okay, I guess.” He wondered what Vernon and Melmanik were doing out here. And what had Marion told them of Daniel’s death?

  Larry sat down on a rock beside him, touched him gently on the back. “Peter, I know this is going to sound funny, but at this point, we don’t know what else to do…”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “The water’s run out, and the food’s gone.”

  “Just like you figured,” said Peter.

  “Well, with that many people out there, the law of averages says you’re going to have problems, and we’re getting them. Eisenglass isn’t going to help, and the National Guard isn’t crazy about the idea either. We’ve contacted the governor, but it’ll take time to get a decision.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Larry picked up a pebble, tossed it over the ridge. “I don’t know. Everybody suggested you. Maybe you can at least get up there and talk to the crowd. They’ll listen to you. Maybe you can keep them occupied until we can get some provisions, some water.”

  “What about the music?”

  Larry looked at him with sincerity. “I think they need more than that right now, Peter.”

  Frankly, he wasn’t in the mood to do anything for anybody right now. He was steeped in the business of learning more about the dynamics of his own soul. He wanted some time to be selfishly introspective, but he had this altruistic, sacrificing reputation, and there was no place for him to turn.

  Maybe it would always be like this. Maybe there never would be a time or a place for him to be weak, or to need, or to be comforted.

  He picked up a stone, tossed it in the direction where the black speck had first appeared, then stood up.

  “Okay, let’s go.” Peter drew in a deep breath, exhaled. The air was warm but dry and scented with unrecognizable blossoms. “I can’t promise anything, though.”

  Larry nodded. “No problem. At this point, anything’s better than nothing, right?”

  Peter shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  He climbed into the back seat of the chopper, trying desperately to remember…

  FORTY

  Colorado Springs, Colorado—Windsor

  * * *

  October 24, 1999

  She had been standing offstage with two of the guitarists from Your Member when Peter arrived with Larry Melmanik and Tim Vernon. Sunrise had kissed the pasture more than an hour ago, and Daniel Ellington’s body was probably just getting cold. She couldn’t believe he was really dead. She felt numb, dead herself.

  Dan dead? Don’t be ridiculous.

  And Peter storming off in a Goddamned helicopter. It was like they’d left her to clean up their messes and she wasn’t sure she could handle it. It was hard to imagine Peter being so…so what? Jealous? Angry? Crazy? She wasn’t sure what had gotten into him, but his reaction to finding her with Dan had been way out of line. But then, so had Dan’s reaction—although she had a hard time accepting his rage as the cause of his heart attack. She kept replaying those few traumatic minutes in her head until she thought it was making her a little crazy. She had to distract herself.

  Even though she wasn’t sure what Peter was thinking, she’d wanted to be near him for solace. But he was gone, vanished into the night. She’d thought then of the concert, the musicians she’d met and welcomed the distraction they offered. She’d headed back to the ranch.

  Things hadn’t turned ugly for the half-million-plus crowd, but such incidents were unpredictable. No food, water, or sanitation was going to make its mark eventually—but Eisenglass and the others had been afraid to try to shut down early. The rock and the hard place. The music continued, but there was an edge to the performances, a barely hidden apprehension that something was going to happen—good or bad, nobody knew.

  “Here comes the Main Man now,” said Sammy Eisenglass, seemingly oozing up from the backstage shadows. He brushed very close to her, making sure he came in contact with her breasts, then moved to the landing where Peter had just ascended.

  “They’re waiting for you,” yelled Sammy above the high-decibel level of the music.

  Peter nodded, forced a smile. His normally placid, seamless features had traces of fault lines, the gray pallor of stress. He looked directly at Marion and the smile somehow became more genuine. Was he trying to tell her everything was going to be okay?

  “Peter…” she said, forcing herself to not reach out and grab him.

  “Not now,” he said softly. “My people need me.”

  She said nothing but her expression must have held him for a moment.

  “Later, Marion…I promise.”

  He sounded sincere and his eyes didn’t betray him. Marion felt instantly better. She resented that he had so much power over her,
but then, he had great influence over everybody, didn’t he? My people, he’d said. For some reason, the phrase didn’t agree with her. There was something odd about the way Peter said it, something not right.

  Peter stood in the wings of the stage, hidden behind a two-story stacked array of speakers, until Oracle finished their song. Sammy Eisenglass fidgeted and twitched alongside him until the final chords and less-then-enthusiastic applause faded away. Then he ran out onstage with a remote mike and screamed at the crowd: “Heyyyyyy! Evree…bodddeeee! Here’s the guy who can make it all behhhhderrrrrr…Father Peeeeederrrrr!”

  Peter approached the center of the stage, holding his own remote mike, as the applause gradually grew stronger, more responsive. Despite the stress and the gradual dehydration, the crowd slowly came to their feet and started calling his name. Eventually the cacophonous calls gathered force and synchronization, and soon the entire pasture thundered with a single, giant voice.

  “Help us!” They cried. “Help Us! Help Us! help Us! HELLP-USS-HELLP-USS-HELLP-USS-HELLP-USS…”

  The sound became a meaningless chant rolling over him like words from an alien tongue, like the mindless symphony of a million locusts. He held his hands outstretched, gesturing for them to let him speak. For a moment they ignored him, as though to emphasize how much they needed him, and then suddenly, they stopped. The pasture shuddered once from the sudden implosion of silence. Marion could feel the intensity of the crowd’s focused attention.

  “Okay,” said Billy, as he moved up beside her to watch. “Now we’re gonna see the power of the Lord at work.”

  Marion smiled at him, but he did not take his eyes off Peter. Billy’s faith in Peter was a beautiful thing, and she wished she could still share such enthusiasm. Now, she could not escape the feeling that things were somehow getting skewed.

  “First, I want to apologize for waiting so long to speak to you,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’ve had a few problems of my own.”