by Lee Thompson
Dad shook his head. Mom held her wounded hand, a piece of wood jutting from her palm. “You drove me to this.” She flexed her left hand, fingertips touching the branch and her right dropped the knife as she winced. And he remembered how she’d said, Those boys can’t come up here anymore—after Natalie had disappeared, ran away, Mom saying, Girls like her think they know it all, and they don’t come back, and they’d all accepted it, except late at night when Mike soaked his pillow, heart hoping that she would come back, older, wiser, the wrinkles in their family dynamics smoothed, still. And he remembered Mom in the hospital bed, just two fucking days ago, raising her hand, the light on the wall reflecting off the scar tissue on her palm as she waved him away saying, I don’t have a son, rubbing a secret in his face with the scar tissue, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Bitch.
Mike knelt and wrapped his fingers around the knife, expecting his hand to pass through it, enter the soil by the pool, but it felt good there, in his palm, thick and weighty, palpable.
Mother ignored him as if she couldn’t see him, as if he didn’t exist, never had.
He rammed the knife into her heart, blood a hot spurt on his right hand, across his cheek. The blade scraped bone. John screamed, breath hot against Mike’s eyes. The fog swirled. John’s mouth opened, his face pale.
No!
“Yes,” Baal-beryth said as it hopped across his feet, wings fluttering as if preparing for flight. The sun exploded, stars pitched in rings of black halos, as a body pressed against him through a haze that knocked Mike to his knees. “We all destroy each other a little more, in countless unseen ways, every day. And other times we lash out blindly and accidentally kill that which we adore.”
Chapter 36
I heard Angela say—Take my hand—but I couldn’t; the flashlight filled my left, sweeping over the fog. The bowl weighed heavy in my right, something squirming inside it.
Lightning convulsed against the basement windows. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood. The word I’d carved over my heart the morning I’d awoke among the dead girls itched. A soft hum radiated from the walls, or the fog; I couldn’t tell which. I heard chanting, thousands of broken voices, heard my father whisper in my ear, “Jesus is still in his tomb. He’s building a manger for the next messiah.”
The windows shattered and glass crashed to the floor. I waved the flashlight back and forth. This isn’t going to solve anything. I set it down and worked at the lid of the bowl as I stepped through the mist snatching at my face, unseen fingers digging into my skin, trying to remold my flesh into whatever image they worshipped or hated.
The fog cleared, stood in a wall behind me. The lid didn’t budge. I kept at it, eyes on the thing sitting on a golden throne. Images cast in gold writhed—demons mauling a corral of women—and their pleas riddled my flesh with hopelessness. One of Three of Seven or one of its brothers, stirred, a large book bound in red leather on its lap, marked by gold script I couldn’t read. It reminded me of Father’s Bible, the old tattered cross on its cover. The beast raised its horned head, three ivory spikes flickering as if charged by its waking, black eyes half-closed as if in trance. “You’ve brought a gift to my altar.”
I shook my head and tried to force my knees to still. The images of gold twisted on the throne, the Fallen fell on the women and tore them apart as they raped them. “I brought you something, but it’s not a gift.”
One of Three of Seven slapped the book closed. Fingers tight around the binding, he jammed it forward, his arm six feet long. I trembled. All it had to do was stand and take one step to close the distance between us and I wasn’t sure the fog would let me back through if I tried to run. The beast shook the book. “Your name is on the page. Don’t you dare think you can tempt The Fates!”
I looked over its shoulder, hoping Mike was right behind him. No. But when I looked back Angela stood off to his left, long thin fingers working Mark’s key into the lock of a black lacquered box on a workbench, hair in her eyes, her whole body trembling, excitement pulsing from her in waves.
One of Three of Seven took the step. I looked up at it to keep my eyes away from its sex staring me in the face. The creature smiled and my bladder let go, my pants grew hot and wet as my fingers tore frantically at the lid. The Beast grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me up. “She’s betrayed you.”
I couldn’t get my body to stop trembling, blackness crawling around the edges of my vision, as coldness passed from the demon’s touch. Don’t faint! I kept seeing the vision Red had shown me, of Ethan being torn in half and I knew it could do it to me if it wanted.
I tried harder to pull the lid off, sweat stinging my eyes, my fingers bleeding, every breath ragged. One of Three of Seven spoke, voice as thick as mist, and dust fell from the ceiling. “You’re her sacrifice, to us, to the god who sleeps where no wind blows. All-Mother. She who can take this burden and make it flesh.”
I tried to pull my head back from that gigantic mouth, but there was nowhere to go. I spat in its face, angry with my own helplessness, angry with Mike for leaving me to do this all alone. And what can I do? I can’t even open this fucking thing!
“Does it break your heart? Did you think you could trust the bitch? She only wants to return to He who never cared, never willed his faithful anything but heartache, coldness. We’re going to help her, you and I. Blood is sacred. The water of life. You know about the water. You know about sacrifice, don’t you? All the things you’ve done that have paid nothing in return, only heartache, and only grief. But I promise you, this will be different.”
“Sacrifice, huh?”
It nodded. “Why do you think I’m here? The doorway she sent me through only led me home, to the crossroads, the altar.” I broke a fingernail on the lid. The monster closed its hand further and my shoulder blades rubbed together, grinding. I cried out.
“You’re special, Johnathan. No matter what your deceiving father, neglectful mother and lying lover have told you.”
Angela opened the box and stared, a bright shine to her skin, black light blowing her hair back away from her face. She looked angelic and I closed my eyes as One of Three of Seven leaned in, breath hot on my neck. “Will you worship? Will you sign The Pact?”
“No.”
Wings rustled, a buzz built inside my head pushing everything out—all my failures, every regret, every single joy. It dropped me, writhing, to the floor. A breeze stirred across my cheek but it didn’t touch the coldness spreading through my limbs. My eyes felt like they’d freeze if I didn’t find heat, escape. I saw the bowl a few feet away from where I’d landed in a quivering pile of frigid flesh. The lid had jarred loose. I smiled weakly for a second, until Angela turned around holding something. A newborn? Or a doll? I couldn’t tell. Blood slicked her hands; she sucked on her index finger, a coy grin consuming her face. I scuttled forward, every muscle aching, tearing apart, and grabbed the bowl. The heat radiating from it multiplied the cold enveloping me, made it a thousand times worse.
One of Three of Seven, said, “Maybe I was wrong about you.” Then he sat down on his throne, opened the book and blew dust from its pages. A typhoon of glimmering rainbow light snatched me from the floor and knocked me sideways. My skull cracked against stone and blood stained my vision, flashes of fireworks and every life-storm I’d ever endured. A voice rose from a pillar of fire before an altar made of veiny flesh and shadows danced all around me as fog grabbed at my boot and collar, trying to hold me to the wall. A whisper fell, close to my ear. I spun to my right, saw Father shaking his head, Bible tucked beneath his left arm, lines around his mouth deep and dark.
I held the bowl to my ribcage. Head swimming, I jerked away from the wall and stumbled toward the pillar.
An olive tree sprouted from flames, filling the basement. Its highest branches tore through the manor’s ground floor. Dust and broken boards hit my shoulders. I threw my right arm over my head to shield it. Roots snatched at my ankles. I kicked them aside and knelt beneath a branch.
A raven eyed me around the trunk, opened its beak, panting. The trunk split and two bodies fell out, embracing, slicked in shiny fluid. Angela wrapped her hands around his waist, both of them nude, and ground against his hips.
Stop!
Rain slid down the tree’s long arms and puddled on the floor around my feet. Far off water ran fast, furious, building in intensity, from dull hum to buzz saw. The lovers rolled over and Mark lay atop Cat—April—and she pressed her nose to his and stared into his eyes as if to know every crook and cranny of him. I grabbed the bowl’s lid and pulled. My hand slipped and cracked against my side. I tried again. It wouldn’t come free. My heart screamed: Betrayers!
I wrestled the darkest emotions, trying to suppress them. It never works like that. Look at him. He’s happy using her. He’s happy to pawn her off, to play me for a fucking fool.
Mark snapped her neck and tore at her throat with his teeth. He looked up, grinned, blood on his chin. “We’re really not so different. I’m just more upfront about it.”
I shuffled forward and kicked him in the face. I smashed the bowl on the back of Mark’s head, panting, feeling the cold abate with every swing.
Hit him again! Again! Kill him! A chorus of voices.
One voice kept swirling through my head. Mark laughed from the ground as he bled more under every crash of knuckle and every stomp of the foot. I slipped in the water around the base of the tree and went down on one knee. I drove my elbow below his left eye. “I used to love you and hate you! You brought me up and broke me! You’re a destroyer!”
I drove a knee into his chest. Mark coughed blood over my leg.
“Why did you hurt me? Our whole lives?”
Mark smiled, two of his teeth missing, left eye swelling shut. “Kill me if you got the balls. But I don’t think you do.”
I rubbed my face and took a step back. I saw April and her son in Jim White’s shop, sitting next to me. Heard her mouth flowing nonstop about how much I had given her hope. Doors inside me opened, and a summer breeze ran over the winding river; I exploded to the surface, gasping for air, hands slapping my back—Father’s—and Rusty and Mark, and so many others on the river bank, praising God at my baptism. The smile on Father’s face looked so peaceful, so proud. He said, “It’s all perspective. But from where I’m standing, your name fits you, Gift of God.” And April spread her arms from next to a dying tree and cried, “Forgive me.”
I pressed a palm to my forehead. The basement washed back in, filled with expectant silence. He wouldn’t have sent her unless he thought I would do better in making her happy. He wouldn’t have sent his son to be raised by another man unless he thought I could do something he couldn’t.
April stood between us. And I saw some metaphor in that, but my head felt full of fuzz still, and my pounding heart filled my ears. Angela stood behind her, a black dagger that looked made of ice in her hand. And I saw a black lacquered box behind her, and a key in her hand shaped like a blade, and I didn’t know what they meant, didn’t have time to figure it out.
I remembered when I’d given her Mark’s key, and her saying: By giving me this key, you’re giving me two keys. Angela cut April’s heart free and said: It’s beautiful, watching your Soul-Birth, a tiny flame where before there was only a resigned emptiness. It’s part of what I love about you and your friend, part of what I need, even as everything around you falls apart.
I turned from them. They were beyond my reach.
I looked at my grinning, broken brother, and offered my hand. “I know you sent her because you thought I could take care of her. It was a compliment in its own way. I don’t think I’m more of a man than you, but that’s kinda—”
Mark stood, and steel flashed, and a sharp pain blossomed in my chest. I looked down and saw a hand holding a knife, the blade missing and I didn’t get it, didn’t understand, shaking my head, mouth working but not finding any words. Blackness swirled around the walls—the room is spinning, I thought. When I looked up, I looked into Mike’s wide eyes, tears on his cheeks.
I said, “Did we win?”
* * *
Mike left the knife stuck in John’s chest, afraid if he pulled it free the wound would bleed worse. Blood ran out in heavy gouts around the edge of the blade. He wiped John’s hair off his forehead, sickened by how pale he looked. A pulse beat against his finger, soft beneath the flesh of his temple, and Mike prayed this was all part of their game.
He looked around, expecting to see a room full of black wraiths, ready to take their sacrifice. Angela stood next to his father’s workbench. He grabbed John’s flashlight, by his right knee, and threw it at her. She slapped it out of the air and it clinked across the floor and bounced off the wall, the lens cracked. Chanting filled a place in the back of his head, it tickled the sweat running over his chest. He peeled his white shirt off and tore three strips of fabric free. He stuffed the edge, where blade met flesh. The rags quickly turned red. Angela knelt next to him. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
Mike said, “You let this happen.”
She nodded. “For you. For both of us. You can be my prince once we get what we want.”
“You did nothing for me! Only tricked me into helping you get what you wanted! You let this happen.” He stood, saw what she held in her hand. “What is that? What was worth his life?”
She sighed. “We are done playing God’s game. I’ve tried for All-Time to win this struggle, if I love Him, if I hate Him. Like you with your mother. Like Johnathan with his brother. But for eternity, a road behind me that has no beginning. He made us Black, Himself White. We have no identity, other than what He’s given us. And we’re searching for it now, the Hierarchy wants to break away from His will that we stay evil, that we never grow, never learn, soulless, destitute, and miserable in this empty coldness that stretches out forever, eons of watching men like you Feel. We want to feel. We want our independence from His plan, because His plan is one sided, there is no room for second chances. Part of me has always cried at His feet. And God has never once so much as laid his hand on my shoulder and said, There will be forgiveness. There will be a second chance. But you get to learn, your soul can fly in brightest day and blackest night. And He still loves you. We’re done with Him. Done with all of it. Once the Hierarchy is here, in this plane, fully, we can become walking flesh. We can break away from the coming apocalypse, no longer pawns to bring Glory and Praise to His name, He who has destined us to be hated before he created us of His own loins. But to get across, we need a Soul-Birthed. John’s has. You help us, sacrifice him, and you can go on, we all can. What is the price of one life?”
Mike shook his head, trying to absorb it all. “What is the knife?”
“This?” She held up a knife fashioned of smoked black glass. “It’s the dagger Judas drove in Jesus’s side so that the guards could take him. He didn’t go of his own will like your Bible says. He was going to escape, because he found the immense well of being human. He went because Our Father had tricked him, he had Michael forge this blade to paralyze his son, and Michael handed it over to Judas while Jesus prayed in the Garden and the wind flayed his skin at the blasphemy of his heart’s desire, to simply be one of those who Father had destined him to save. Commands, Fate, Divine Will. But for Jesus’ good? This is what you’re going to use to finish him off. Slit his throat.”
He realized it was what she had taken from his father’s black lacquered box and he wondered why his dad had hidden it, what purpose it had served in his past. “You’re a natural liar. Fuck you.”
“Your words fall forever. You know I speak the truth. And it scares you. Slit his throat or I will.”
Mike looked down at John, the bowl next to him. Why would he bring a silver bowl down here? Distracted by what waited when they came down, the house dark, he hadn’t even noticed it. John’s blood covered the metal lid. Mike looked at Angela, hoping to get her to talk while he figured out what the hell to do. “Through all this bullshit, you’ve shown me wh
at happened though, didn’t you? That’s what you meant by the truth, and how family can destroy us, our secrets—because you knew from experience. My dad dug my sister’s grave at the back of the pool after my mother murdered her. Then what happened to him?”
“I’m sorry, Michael. I wanted to see you be who you can be. We could have given each other hope. Hope made of our own imagination, the possibilities limitless. But I don’t think you’ve got it in you.” She held the knife out, tip of the blade near his throat.
“Your god and our god aren’t the same. You used us.”
“I have a handle on it when I’m moving, but when I rest, I dream.” Her eyes looked big and sad, but he wasn’t sure if she was just continuing her game. “No, they’re not the same. Your god is a dictator and a manipulator. I worship Mother.”
“Dream about what?”
“All-Mother calls me back to her breast. It’s my constant curse. When I dream, I do bad things to earn her favor.” She shook her head. “I can’t help it. You can’t blame me.”
“Why do you need us?”
“Baal-beryth is my brother. I love him the way you love Natalie, even after death. The Hierarchy is my home and when God crushed my heart with his macho bullying only my brothers cared—and like the men made in their image, they only cared half the time. But it was enough. It’s not a matter of how often, but how intensely. My god is Passion and she wants you at her breast, to drink of her cool, rushing milk. Only one of you can. You or him. It’s an honor I’ve marked John for destruction and you for glory. It’s an honor to be recognized. All-Mother, from whose womb worlds formed, from whose heart the Hierarchy expanded, chose you, Michael. You see madness where I only feel warmth. And you can too, if you trust me.”