“Does anyone know where Regina’s gear is?” she yells in a Nordic timbre.
The guy with the handlebar mustache glances at her. But before he replies, his eyes drift over to me.
“Hey,” he shouts. “Who the fuck are you? What are you doing?”
My eyes go immediately to Helios, who is also staring at me, almost as if he’s frightened to find me here where even his father probably wouldn’t dare to look for him. Helios doesn’t say a word as the guy rushes toward me, his soles scattering the rocks with each thrust.
A flap in the caravan tent opens, and Vic steps outside, her hand shielding her eyes from the nonexistent sun. She has on a different floral ensemble, pale cornflower shorts and a shirt patterned with daisies. She immediately lifts her arm in a gesture that stops the guy from hurtling forward. Vic tilts her head and walks calmly toward me.
“It’s fine, Noah. All are welcome.” Noah doesn’t like that I’m fine. He clasps his hips to accentuate the broadness of his chest, and his teeth nibble at his piercings.
“We have too many,” he grumbles. “It’s not safe.”
She examines me curiously, her soft blue eyes filled with compassion, not as if she’s the one stepping closer but as if I’m leaning out of a train window and she’s watching me depart, a friend she’s going to miss. She reaches her chubby arms out and her hands cup an invisible bowl.
“Welcome,” she says. “Welcome to Camp Revelation. Are you tired yet?”
I stand still. “Tired of what?”
“Tired of searching,” she says with a rehearsed smile. “Tired of looking for fulfillment in all the noise and glitter. Tired of fighting the battle you know you’ve already lost. Because that’s what we offer. A way out.” Her voice modulates into the hushed, lulling tone of a librarian reading a picture book to a child. “We could make you better. We could take all of that hurt inside of you and throw it in the sea. There’s no fear here. All you have to do is want it. Want for the hurt and worry to stop.” It’s like she’s staring inside of me; I do want that. But suddenly her chest convulses and a volcanic cough erupts. The cough takes full possession, leaving her gasping between its thrashes, like one of those fake pro wrestlers stunned by an amateur blow of actual pain.
Noah races to a cooler and retrieves a bottle of water. She sips tentatively, keeping her eyes shut, evaluating her body for further activity. She gulps down the rest of the water.
“Excuse me,” she says, when at last she opens her eyes. “My name is Vic. I’m glad you’ve come.”
“I know your name.”
The noisy, glittery world is not so far away that she doesn’t appreciate a reputation. She smiles.
“And I know you,” she replies. “I saw you the morning our sister and brother had their bike accident.” She taps out a sign of the cross on her daisy shirt. “We miss them. I found it very moving the way you sprinted toward their bodies in the field. It stayed with me, that image of you running with all of your heart toward their deaths.”
“I thought it might be someone I knew,” I retort. I can feel my defensiveness taking control. I don’t want Vic returning to her conversion mode. I don’t want her seeing inside of me.
“Ahh.” Her smile tightens. “Well, we’re not much for tourists at our camp. This is a place for the lost and the found.”
“What about for the missing?” I hope this question might hint at Charlie, but Vic doesn’t take the bait.
“You’ve never been missing. Not for a single day. She’s always been with you. You just need to reach out your hand.”
“Is that girl here with you? I think her name is Carrie Dorr, the one who found the bodies.”
Vic’s smile vanishes. She nods toward her tent. “Why don’t we talk inside?”
I follow her up the beach. Noah studies me carefully. I search behind him for Helios, who is now sitting with his back to me, the towel fully obscuring his face. Vic lifts the flap, and I duck inside. Yellow scrolls of carpet cover the floor. Cheap sequined pillows and rolled sleeping bags in the center create an improvised lounging area; one of the pillows is needlepointed with the numbers 5:47:31, which I assume is a biblical verse. The interior smells stale and damp, like summer locked in an unused cabin. On one side of the tent, wooden shelves house a stockpile of canned goods and stacks of tourist T-shirts still wrapped in their factory cellophane. On the bottom shelf is a row of plastic bins, one of which appears to hold a cache of cell phones and laptops; in another, piles of passports. One open bin teems with Greek guidebooks and cracked leather Bibles. On the other side of the tent, a laminated map of the Greek islands is taped to a piece of particleboard. Pushpins of various colors cover the map in an amoebic constellation. A small chalkboard, not dissimilar to one in Skala, lists the weekly ferry schedule to and from Patmos along with port connections to adjoining island chains. But it’s a black metal container secured with a padlock that takes up most of the space. A lace tablecloth and a pile of candlesticks cover it. But I can’t help wondering if it’s filled with fishermen’s dynamite and detonators, in case the Apocalypse needs a little encouragement to get under way.
The boy in the sports bra is standing at the map, shifting a pin.
“Thank you, Leif,” Vic says in dismissal. He nods obsequiously, sweeps his hair back in a ponytail, which accentuates his beautiful eyebrows, and departs.
“Have a seat.” She folds her stocky legs under her and adjusts the pillows around her hips and calves. There is something of a den mother in Vic, because of her age or because of her unassuming, vaguely midwestern features, or because she’s the only one at the camp wearing a watch. She has three strapped to her right wrist. She notices me staring at them.
“Two tell Greek time,” she explains. “But even I am not entirely free of the past. It’s my last indulgence. Rapid City, Mountain Standard, paused eternally at 5:47:31, the very second I found the Lord.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Six years and so many months. I don’t remember how many, nor do I care to. It’s no longer important.” I recall Charlie telling me that Patmos gets its share of insanity cases lured by the dream to live on the island of Revelation, as it did for the Chicago pedophile. Although his reasons are sharply different from Vic’s. “I’ve been on these islands ever since, devoting my life to Her, preparing for Her coming, for the battle and the feast.”
“You mean the end of the world.”
She smiles. “If you think only in losses, the end of this world, yes. But it’s just the beginning of a better one. Is this old world really so good? Read a paper. I dare you to read two of them without feeling sick. It’s far too late to save it. I’m not saying anything your scientists haven’t already determined. Two strokes to midnight. The second hand is circling fast. Are you ready?” She chews at her cheek. “What’s your name?”
“Ian.”
“Ian.” She studies me as if watching a sparrow at her window, fascinated by the survival skills of the bland and ordinary. “I can feel it in you. Has anyone told you that? Has anyone ever bothered to really look inside of you before? You have so much pain and confusion and doubt scored deep, and I sense you are struggling to find a lasting place. I’m sorry. There won’t be one. Not where you’re looking.” She leans over and pats my knee. “I don’t ask anyone to believe. Every member of the camp chooses freely to be here, chooses to wish for something greater than what they’ve been programmed to accept. How would you feel if you let go of all that hurt? Would you still be Ian? Do you need him?”
“What’s the map for?” I ask, redirecting her away from Ian.
She glances behind her, as if admiring the number of pins.
“The word is getting out. Young people are coming, more and more. We help them find their way. We plan their routes and lead them home. Every single one of those young people outside have been tortured and abused, warped by their parents, bankrupted by their education, let down by their governments and communities, ridiculed for who they
are. Most of our contingent started out as backpackers, traveling in search of a little meaning, and those who don’t find us end up back at home knowing less than they did when they began. Pictures on a phone. That’s not meaning, Ian, is it? A few sunsets? Trivial public intimacies? We are the antidote, the backpackers who didn’t return, the empty chairs at the table, the last army.” Vic exhales what sounds like petrified lung tissue, and her coughing resumes. She lunges for a tissue behind the needlepoint pillow and crushes it against her mouth.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she insists. I wonder if the 5:47:31 on the pillow also marks the exact time of her diagnosis. Nothing makes for a quicker believer than a terminal disease. Befriend the beast and ride it into the grave. Take the world with you. Because we all know what we are told not to believe: the world does end, some essential golden part of it, when you die.
“Why all the tourist T-shirts?” I ask.
“Oh, those.” She sighs. “Bulk surplus. It’s a cheap way to clothe the kids. We’re a free community, but we still need supplies. We don’t mind dressing like the enemy. It’s easier to circulate that way, to make inroads, to deliver God’s verdict, righteous millennialists disguised as self-righteous millennials.” She laughs. “I thought that up myself. Some of the members donate what savings they have, although, of course, that isn’t a requirement. We take in all sorts. Yesterday, we had a girl, a Swede, who joined us. She left her family’s yacht to embrace her freedom with our group. I don’t take that sacrifice lightly. She insisted on bringing her Dalmatian. Our dogs don’t like him. I had to keep them from attacking him in the night.” She clears her throat. “We live humbly on these rocks. And the island allows us to be close to the cave as long as we stay on public ground. We weren’t always on Patmos. This is our first full summer here. Last year we tried Leros, but the locals weren’t sympathetic. The monks here understand the emergency of the hour. The Omega is where we are.”
She stares at me, one half of her mouth retaining its smile, the other half deflated. “I don’t think you’re ready, Ian. I don’t feel I’m reaching you at all. You aren’t humble enough. You prefer to be scared. And that’s okay. We don’t recruit the timid.”
“Do you know Charlie Konstantinou? He isn’t very humble, is he?”
She doesn’t feign bewilderment at the mention of his name. Vic must already be apprised of the fact that I’m his friend, and perhaps that’s why she’s taken a special interest in me: a pet project to poach from the enemy side.
“Not humble a bit by the look of him. Gluttonous, selfish, insatiable. Pretty girlfriend. He’s a type of person, which is the saddest person, don’t you think? He’s a childhood wrapped in an adult’s body. He’s a kind.”
“You don’t like him.”
She laughs sweetly. “Do I like him? He embodies every malady that’s corrupted and destroyed the planet. All that shimmering excess, the me, me, me that feeds the engine and continues to steamroll. Hasn’t his family done their part in the atrocities of the Middle East? They build a war and they float away on yachts. But make no mistake, you can’t be a prince twice. You must choose your dominion. And on the day of battle, the birds will feed on your friend’s body. They will pick him clean outside the gates. That’s God’s prophecy, not mine. It was put down on paper on this very island.” It would be difficult for even the most fanatical to make avian torture sound upbeat, but Vic achieves a buoyant sanguinity, as if she’s scored front-row tickets to the final annihilation show. “I prefer to picture him like a shark in a sea soon lacking any prey. There will be nothing left for him to devour. Think of an ocean with just one shark in it, alone.”
“So you wouldn’t be too upset if something happened to him?”
“To Charlie?” Vic clasps her legs. “You misunderstand. I don’t wish Charlie harm. In fact, he’s a secret collaborator. So secret he isn’t even aware of the good he’s doing our cause.”
“How is he your collaborator?”
“We need more like him. His greed, his arrogance, his apathy, his religion of money. What do you think are the signs of the coming end? He’s speeding the second hand along. I told you, there’s no going backward. The canker is already on the stem. This is how God wins, not by fighting the Devil but by letting him do his work. Charlie’s evil, I won’t deny that. But he’s a necessary one. I hope no one touches a hair on his head. Please, make more of them who roll in their fortunes while so many starve. Only God knows the hour, but we can certainly oil the clock.”
Vic smiles at me, fully aware of how she’s coming across, like a true believer, like Marx off his meds.
“I was once like you,” she says solemnly. “You think gravity doesn’t apply and the market just keeps going up and the poor will eventually find some way to get rich. Well, that won’t happen. We’ve tried the century of the merciful Jesus. It didn’t take. Now it’s time for the vindicator, the furious judge, the thief. How can you watch the horrors on this planet and still hope humanity will right itself? That’s belief to the point of delusion. We’re realists by comparison. God has given us the answer. You don’t understand a book unless you read its last chapter. Revelation. It’s ugly, but it’s also sweet.”
Noah sticks his head through the flap—or has been sticking his head there for some time.
“Everything all right?” he asks.
“Perfect.” Vic beams. “I think I’m being interviewed. It’s too bad he hasn’t brought a photographer.” She jokingly pats her hair. “We’re almost finished. Get the wine and juice ready for prayer. Check the expiration dates on the cartons.” She turns to me. “You won’t be staying for that.”
I get to the point when Noah departs.
“That bomb that went off last month in Skala. Your congregation wouldn’t have happened to have set it to hurry the destruction along?”
Vic coughs into her ball of tissue, and a few blood spots bloom on the white. She tries to conceal them by tightening the tissue in her hand.
“Is that what the tourists are saying?” she replies nonchalantly. “We wouldn’t need to. There’s so much destruction already. Didn’t they conclude it was some anti-Eurozone faction? Or maybe it was Al-Qaeda or ISIS or the Jabhat al-Nusra or any of the black-flag wavers running around the Levant.” She ticks off terrorist groups as if listing other secret accomplices. “Or maybe it was a summer vacationer who spent a week being massaged and fucked by strangers and having her room cleaned by maids and her mouth stuffed with grape leaves and her snorkel gear adjusted by staff and she just couldn’t take it anymore. The emptiness in the postcard was too severe. The pleasure only increased her pain, so she blew herself up. Ian, we believe in the end, but we’re a mostly peaceful people. We don’t have to lift a finger to bring it about. The world is doing it for us. Whether they know it or not, everyone on Earth is doing what they can. We’re only a few more collapses away now. Haven’t you seen the refugees washing ashore? Poor souls. There’s a passage in chapter—”
“If you’re really a Christian, shouldn’t you do something to help them? Why don’t you stop praying for the Apocalypse and lift a finger for good? Wouldn’t your god like that too? Isn’t there room for mercy?”
Vic hangs her head in disappointment. Outside, a bell is clanging and the sound of feet and laughter gathering close to the entrance of the tent.
“Do you know what sin is?” she asks in a whisper. “The essence of sin is doing what’s right in your own eyes. Sin is conforming God to your own moral code. It doesn’t work that way if you really believe. All suffering upsets me. But once you embrace the horror, you’re no longer scared of it.”
We have reached the moment where lines grow fuzzy, where the lunatic has the facts of the world on her side and my attempt at rational humanity is equivalent to hugging trees during a forest fire. Vic begins to climb from the floor, but she pauses on one knee.
“Why did you ask about Carrie?”
“She went to the police after Dalia and Mikael we
re found. She told them Charlie might have had something to do with their deaths. I wanted to talk to her about that.”
Vic swats her hands dismissively and rises to her feet. “That girl is confused. She came to me confused two weeks ago. I shouldn’t have let her in. All she did from day one was doubt me. I love misfits. I love the kids who have been hurt so much all they need is love around them. That’s what we offer, unconditional acceptance. But Carrie wasn’t interested in that. She’s a tourist, and unfortunately a romantic when she set her eyes on Mikael. He was one of my most dependable members. I cared for him dearly. Dalia too. They had both been with us since June.”
“I thought I saw Dalia the night before she died exiting a ferry. Didn’t she just arrive?”
Vic lifts the tent flap. She staunches a rumble in her chest.
“You’re mistaken,” she says, staring out at the young men and women assembling around the campfire. “And so was Carrie. If Charlie had anything to do with their deaths, I would have been delighted to point that inspector his way. But the truth is, Mikael was always careless on a motorbike. He enjoyed taking turns too fast.” She sighs with motherly obligation. “I have to slow some of these kids down. Their lives are precious, but they’re too young to realize it.”
“Can I talk to Carrie?” I ask.
She gawks at me as if I’ve invited her to a rally to protest Arctic drilling.
“She’s gone,” Vic says, looping her fingers around her necklace. The hemp digs into the fat of her neck. “She took her phone and passport and left. I tell you, the girl was completely off her rocker. All you would have gotten from her is nonsense. But she went back to America. I’m sure she’s home in New Jersey by now taking selfies of her tears.”
Noah glides up to the tent entrance. He taps his dirty fingers along his knife handle.
“Leif needs to pick up two who are arriving from Kos in an hour.”
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