by J. R. Mabry
There was no one to see him. He motioned to Kat and Terry, and they, too, got out of the car and stood beside him on the sidewalk, facing the church.
“Looks pretty dead,” Terry said.
“That should make it easy, then,” Mikael said.
“Don’t count your chickens,” Kat cautioned.
Mikael nodded and motioned for them to follow. “It looks like we’ve got three primary entrances: the front doors to the sanctuary, what looks like a kitchen door on the fellowship hall, and there’s got to be a back door to that building, too, more than likely. The two buildings are joined, there, so if we get into one, we can get into the other. First, let’s see if anyone left the main doors ajar. I’ll take the back; Kat, you take the front doors; Terry, kitchen.” He paused to see them nod. Kat started forward, but he caught at her sleeve. “Oh, wait. We’re only a stone’s throw from Oakland, remember, so look for signs of an alarm system, too.”
Noiselessly, they scattered to cover the various doors. Mikael wound through the trees to the rear of the fellowship hall. Just as he had expected, there was a back door. Mikael approached and examined it. It looked typically institutional—metal with a narrow, wire-reinforced window. He tried the horizontal bar-style handle. It didn’t budge.
He didn’t expect it to, really. But first things first—he would have felt silly looking for a window to crawl into if there had simply been an open door. Having eliminated that, he began to scout other methods of entry. There was a row of basement windows. He was too big to fit in any of them, but Kat probably wasn’t, he reasoned. He stooped to examine them. One of them was slightly loose, but the others were fast.
“Tsshhht,” he heard. He looked up. Terry was peering around the sanctuary at him, waving him to come. Mikael straightened up and, stepping carefully so as not to trip in the dark, moved quickly to where Terry was standing. He pointed up. Mikael squinted to see where Terry’s finger was indicating.
“Sacristy window,” Terry whispered.
“Looks like it,” Mikael agreed. “And it looks like it’s slightly ajar, too. Here, let me give you a leg up, then you can stand on my shoulders.”
“Oh jeez, I hate the acrobat stuff,” Terry complained.
“Hup!” Mikael whispered and hoisted Terry up so that he was standing in his cupped hands. “Okay, sit on my shoulders.” One foot wiggling uncertainly in Mikael’s grip, Terry swung his other foot up and over Mikael’s neck. Steadying himself against the building, he straightened so that he was indeed sitting squarely on Mikael’s shoulders.
“I can reach the window,” Terry said. “Hold still!” Mikael looked up and saw Terry reach for the window, swing it out wide, and get a solid handhold on the sill. Then he drew his knee up and placed his foot on Mikael’s shoulder. Then he heaved.
Mikael was almost thrown by the recoil of Terry’s motion, but he caught his balance and held it. When he looked up again, the bottom half of Terry’s body was snaking into the tiny window. The distant sound of breaking glass heralded the tiny priest’s arrival. A moment later, Terry’s cherubic face filled the window. “I’m in. Go to the kitchen door with Kat. I’ll let you in there.” Then he disappeared.
Mikael jogged off around the back of the building to the kitchen door. There he found Kat climbing a tree, about three feet shy of reaching a ventilation screen. “Terry’s in,” he whispered up the tree. “Come down; he’s going to let us in!”
“Thank God!” Kat whispered back. “’Cause I didn’t really think that was going to work.”
The kitchen door creaked open. “There’s an alarm, but I figured out the code.”
“How did you do that?” asked Kat, scrambling down the tree.
“Well, it’s an Episcopal parish, so it can only really be one of four possibilities.”
“As in 1549, 1662, 1928, or 1979?” asked Mikael.
“Exactly,” Terry nodded. “Years the prayer books were published.”
“So, let me guess,” Mikael said, impressed by Terry’s logic. “1928?”
“Bingo.” Terry winked at him.
“I guess we know where their loyalties lie,” Mikael said.
“Let’s go,” Terry said, just as Kat jumped the final length to the dirt.
Mikael and Kat scurried inside, and Terry swung the door closed behind them. Mikael breathed deep. “Okay, that was the major hurdle. We can’t turn on any lights, but we can probably talk normally now.”
“Okay where is this thing?” Kat asked, “What is it, a spear?”
“Not just any spear,” Terry said. “The Spear. And it’s supposed to be in the place where the holiest things are kept.”
“Which is?” Kat asked, her eyebrows and voice raising.
“In the tabernacle,” Mikael answered, “where the body and blood of Christ reside between services.”
In a line, they followed Terry through the fellowship hall to a hallway in a much older building. The hall ended in a door, which Terry pushed open gently. As it swung, Mikael saw the dim sanctuary come into view, looking otherworldly and forbidding in the ghostly glow cast by the moon and distant streetlights bleeding through the stained glass. The silence seemed almost loud to Mikael, and he resisted the urge to start singing just to drown it out.
Once all three of them were inside, Terry headed for the altar. It was a grand, freestanding marble table with a halo of gold hovering about three feet above it, suspended by tiny wires. The combined effect of the finely carved stone altar and the halo was one of majesty and mysticism intertwined—a perfect evocation of the Mystery of the Incarnation.
Walking past it, Terry approached the tabernacle—the finely wrought gold box in which the consecrated elements were stored for later use. A sanctuary light hanging beside it indicated that the Lord’s body was indeed present inside.
Terry bowed respectfully to it then turned the golden key to open the door. Inside, Terry saw only a silver ciborium. Opening it, he saw just what one would expect to see—consecrated hosts.
Terry replaced the ciborium and considered the tabernacle. “There’s a lot of wasted space here,” he pointed out. Mikael stooped, hands on his knees, to get a closer look. “See, the shelf ends here, but the tabernacle extends for another six inches.”
“I would think that was just ornamental,” Mikael said.
“Well, it could be,” Terry said. He felt around the edges of the tabernacle, and then his breath caught. “A latch,” he breathed.
Mikael watched Terry’s face flinch as he tugged at the latch. But his facial contortions were mostly in anticipation of a resistance that did not, in the end, materialize. As if the door had already been opened recently, the latch flipped without resistance, and the door swung open easily.
Then Mikael was blinded as the sanctuary lights blazed to life. “Don’t move!” a voice boomed in the empty sanctuary. Shielding his eyes, Mikael saw a tall figure coming toward him. But his eyes could not adjust quickly, and the figure just looked like a walking tree, coming near and bending close.
51
DYLAN SALUTED the bouncers guarding the door of the medical marijuana dispensary. They held the door for him, and as he entered, he breathed deep of the skunky, verdant aroma. There were only a couple of people in line ahead of him, and the menu above the counter boasted some of his favorite varieties. Unfortunately, the ones he loved the most—such as the Jack Herer and the Violet Bubblegum—were pricey. He wanted to make the small amount of cash he had go as far as possible, and that meant the medium-grade Skylab.
He resigned himself to it but salivated as he approached the counter and saw the THC-laden candy and cookies. “Oh mah,” he said to himself as he finally approached the counter. One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control, he reminded himself, and ordered a quarter ounce of Skylab.
His next stop was the convenience store across the street for a pack of rolling papers and a twenty-ounce plastic bottle of Mountain Dew. Having procured these, he turned North on Telegraph and walked the sh
ort block to People’s Park.
The park was a part of Berkeley history and the cause of almost constant friction between the mostly vagrant park “residents,” their advocates, and the University of California regents. Dylan was conflicted on the issue. On the one hand, the property belonged to the UC, and they should be able to use it in whatever way would benefit the school most.
On the other hand, it was more than just a vacant lot—it was a symbol of the rights of the disenfranchised to simply live, to have a place to be. Dylan was reminded of the ancient code of the Jews to leave the seed dropped while harvesting so that the poor may have something to gather. The park was society’s “leavings,” and the homeless felt that they had a right to it.
Overall, Dylan was just glad that it wasn’t him making such decisions. Entering the park, he saw a circle of people gathered around a barbecue pit. One cradled a drum and every now and then would light into a wicked pattern. Mostly, though, there was just convivial talking. “Mind if Ah join yas?” Dylan asked. “Ah’ve got a joint t’ share.”
The guy with the drum waved him into the circle, but several of them eyed him warily. It was a diverse crowd. About four of them were street punks—homeless kids who at one time might have spent their days following the Grateful Dead but now just drifted, idealizing the 1960s counterculture and Jamaican style in equal measure. Three others in the group were older, what Dylan thought of as “the hardened homeless,” who gave no thought to style or pit bull puppies on rope leashes but only to filling their bellies another night.
Generally, the kids were convivial, the older group sour and suspicious. But everyone warmed up as Dylan pulled out a bag of weed and rolled up a fat splif. Once it was done, however, it seemed unnaturally heavy in his hand.
A part of his brain told him he should go home right now, apologize to Susan, and hold her. The other part of his brain rebelled—he was angry, his pride was wounded, he wanted to strike back. This splif, heavy as a baseball bat in his hand, was his instrument of revenge. It felt good, it was satisfying, it was inevitable.
He was too hurt to resist the comfort it promised. He cupped his hand around its end to shield it from the wind and struck at his lighter. In a moment, green acrid warmth was filling his lungs, and a lovely woolen blanket of calm was pulled over his brain. Instantly, he felt a deep relief, but at the same time, a stab of guilt. He pushed it away. He exhaled slowly and passed the joint to his left.
“Hey, man, why are you dressed like that?” the kid with the drum asked him.
“Mah name is Dylan.”
“That’s a weird restaurant uniform,” the kid persisted.
Dylan exhaled the rest of the smoke into the cold night sky. He shivered a bit and hugged his arms to his chest. “It’s a uniform, but not fer a restaurant. Ah’m a priest of the Old Catholic Order of Saint Raphael.”
“And you smoke weed?” The kid raised one eyebrow.
“What’s yer name?” Dylan asked him.
“Craig,” the kid said.
“Are you a good person?”
“Yeah,” Craig answered quickly.
“Do you smoke weed?” Dylan asked.
“Well, yeah, but I’m not pretending to be a holy person.”
“Ah’m not pretending to be a holy person, neither,” Dylan shot back. “So-called holy people are just as fucked up as anyone else, and anyone who tells you they’re not…Waal, not only are they not holy, but they’re just garden-variety hypocrites. Let me tell you somethin’ that Jesus said once—”
“Oh Jesus, here it comes,” one of the older homeless guys said. “I’ve got to take a piss.” He got up and left the circle.
“A bunch of religious hypocrites came up to Jesus and said, ‘Dude, why don’t your followers wash their hands before they eat?’ ’Cause back then, if you didn’t wash your hands, you know, in a ritual fashion, you weren’t a good person,” Dylan explained.
“Sounds like my mom,” a girl of about sixteen said. “She’s a religious whack-job.”
“Ah’m sorry about that; there’s a lot o’ them,” Dylan said quietly to her. “What’s yer name?”
“Jenny,” she said, smiling sweetly at him. She seemed touched that he’d asked.
“So, you know what Jesus said?” he said more loudly, to the whole circle.
“No, what?” Craig asked.
“He said, ‘It ain’t what goes into the mouth that makes us bad; it’s what comes out of it.’”
“You mean, like, vomit?” Craig asked, confused.
“No, dude. I mean like telling lies, or yelling, or judging people. Smoking a joint doesn’t make you a bad person, but harshin’ on a dude you don’t even know, well, that’s just not cool.”
Craig nodded, looking mildly impressed. “Jesus said that, huh?”
“Matthew, chapter 15,” Dylan said. The joint had passed around the circle and had come back to him. He reached for it and took another long drag. He passed it on and blew the smoke out over the flames. From his perspective, it seemed to fill the sky until the wind whipped it away.
“So, what are you doin’ here?” Craig asked him.
“Awww…” Dylan looked down at his feet. “Had a fight with my ol’ lady.”
“I know that one, right?” Craig pointed at his friends, and their heads nodded up and down like bobble-heads, big grins growing on their faces.
“Wait, how can you be, like, a priest, and have an old lady?” one of the older homeless guys asked.
“An’ you are?”
The man pointed to his chest. “Chip.”
“Well, Chip, sir, Ah’m an Old Catholic priest, and we can be married…or gay, or whatever,” Dylan said, matter-of-factly.
“No way!” Craig held his head like it was about to explode. “That’s not right!”
“It’s only Roman Catholics that have to pretend they don’t have privates,” Dylan said, nodding. “And they’ll come around, you’ll see.”
“In a hundred years,” Jenny said. “And even longer before girls matter.”
“Waal, yeah,” Dylan agreed, sadly.
“So, what do you do all day, like, pray?” Craig asked.
“We fight demons,” Dylan said. He smiled. He knew he had them hooked from that moment forward, and he regaled them with some of their more recent adventures. The moon rose high in the sky as he talked, and before long he was rolling another joint, and taking a sip from a bottle of wine that was passed around.
Eventually, he, too, had to pee. He brought his tale to a stopping point, excused himself, and lumbered off toward the freestanding restroom a couple of hundred yards away. He passed a few more fire pits, and several more ad-hoc gatherings of lost souls. His heart went out to them, but he recognized that just being with them was valuable—because only then did they stop being “the homeless” and become real people—like Craig and Jenny and Chip. They were people that mattered, to him and to God, rather than simply a problem to be solved, or worse, gotten rid of.
Dylan navigated inexpertly in the dark, nearly tripping over the uneven, torn-up ground that passed for a lawn at the park. He found the restroom building and wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t lit. That seemed unfair—surely even homeless people deserved to see what they were doing when they went to take a dump. He chalked it up to valuable experience as he approached the urinal. He swept the folds of his cassock aside and unzipped his jeans.
Behind him, he heard a rustle. A voice, rough and sickly, came from directly behind him. “Don’t turn around. I want you to drop your wallet and your pot on the floor. Do it now.”
Dylan couldn’t have stopped the stream of piss if he’d tried, so he just continued to pee as he reached into his back pocket and tossed his wallet behind him. With rather more regret, he reached into his front pocket and pulled out the still-nearly full baggie of Skylab. He dropped that, too.
Before he could even zip up, he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. Then he felt a sharp blast of pain between his shoulders. A w
ash of red filled his vision, then he fell as everything went black.
52
“WELL, SHIT,” said Richard, sitting down on one of the picnic table benches. It was wet, so he stood back up again. “Shit,” he said again, feeling the wetness on his ass. Richard fought down a feeling of panic. He had his phone. He had his wallet. He wasn’t in West Borneo. As he clicked through his mental checklist, he realized he was only really worried for Tobias’s sake.
Well, this is a pretty pickle, said the sinister voice in his head.
A picture of pickles in drag flashed through Richard’s mind. He squeezed his eyes shut to banish them. “Could you suggest a helpful image, maybe?” he said. Richard paused. “Wait, did you know this was coming?”
What do you mean? Duunel sounded hurt.
“I mean, did one of your cronies tip you off that my car was going to be stolen, and you just kept quiet about it?”
You wound me, sir, Duunel said theatrically.
“Right,” Richard said, growing angry.
Honestly, I don’t relish being stuck out here in the middle of bumfuck California any more than you do. And besides, what makes you think that every transgressive human act is of demonic origin? Some people are just bad, Duunel argued.
“All people are just bad,” Richard countered.
I’m not going to argue in favor of Catholic theology, but—
“But?”
But you can’t blame me for your Calvinist anthropology, sicko, Duunel shot back. As far as I’m concerned, the main problem with the world is that there actually are misguided, so-called good people.
Richard said nothing. After a few minutes, he stood up. “We’ve got to do something.” He reached for his phone to call the police.
I wouldn’t do that, Duunel sang in his ear.
“Why not?”
Oh, I don’t know. Something about a 5150 order hanging over your head, maybe?
“Oh shit,” Richard said again. He put the phone back in his pocket. The night suddenly seemed oppressive. He felt completely alone.