A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds

by Piccirilli, Tom

  "Eddie has fully recovered after his ordeal on Armon. Cathy named our baby Jean, after her grandmother."

  "I'm glad everyone is fine."

  He took another step closer and I could tell he wanted to get into it. "A month ago when I saw you last you had a small scar at the edge of your left eye. Now it's gone." He peered at me more closely. "How can you ever learn from your mistakes when you don't even carry your own scars?"

  "Do you really want to get into a conversation about wounds seen and unseen, and lessons that ought to be learned?"

  Despite his failings, Fane was a scrapper and wasn't about to back off. "Your life is full of ghosts."

  "Isn't everybody's?"

  He appeared surprised that I should think so. "No."

  "Enough of this. Is John with you?"

  "He's dead."

  I grimaced and let out a groan. Red lights blinked on camcorders pointed in our direction. I drew sigils and threw a hex so they'd get nothing but static. My anger welled and I reached behind me to scratch at the stone wall of the chapel. I wished for some vision or message to come down through the rock, and to be heard in the murmur of the two millennia since Christ perished.

  "He didn't hang himself either," Pane said. "He left the mount with Janice and me and our family, and we went to Ohio. I don't know what he intended to do there or what kind of life he was hoping to find. I'm not sure I could've learned to sell shoes again, but I was willing to try. His third day in Cincinnati he was run over by a cab. If you laugh I'll kill you."

  He'd drawn a stiletto and had the point wedged under my ear.

  I thought about breaking his arm in three places, but this melodrama only proved that he'd loved the abbot deeply, and I sort of admired him for it. Irony mattered just as much to a witch as symbolism, and it was never anything to laugh at.

  "Your judgment isn't very good either, Fane."

  "I know," he said, pulling his one nice trick so that his voice came down from all around, high near the church ceiling. "It's true." The words swung between us, circling and swimming. Along with them came the distant echoes of his out-of-control Harley, the shattering glass, and a woman's shrieks.

  He put his blade away and I wondered if he ever wearied of hearing those noises that had set him on his course, the way that I tired of listening to mine.

  I asked, "Is Uriel with you?"

  "No, though I suspect he's in Israel. Without his brother, his familiar, or his . . . 'god' ... I don't expect him to enter the conflict."

  "Don't be so sure."

  "I'm not, really, but in his eyes he's already fulfilled his greatest purpose."

  "I suppose he has," I said.

  Fane had more on his mind but he didn't know how to come out with it. He hobbled forward, awkward as an infant just learning to walk. The terrible pain was evident in his face. He must've just broken his legs again within the last few days, maybe the first minute he stepped foot into the Holy Land. Whispering, he asked an odd question. "Do you ever get worried?"

  Sometimes you can be prepared for absolutely anything, except sincerity. "Why are you here, Fane? There's nothing you can do, one way or the other."

  "I'm trying to keep the world from ending. If this truly is Armageddon—"

  "It's not."

  "You are worried. I can hear it in your voice. And you've every right to be. Before Abbott John left Magee Wails he had a dream about you."

  "He told me."

  "No, he had another vision. One that involved you and the archangel Michael."

  Michael who would slay the red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns and save the world.

  I said, "Involved us how?"

  "He said Michael was trapped. I don't know what that meant, but the abbot believed you were supposed to free him."

  "Abbot John was a good man, in his own way, but he was insane. After all that suffocation his brain was oxygen starved."

  Fane was still edgy and tried to get the stiletto at my throat again, but I caught his wrist and easily bent it backward. Still, he wouldn't let go of the blade. "Your order doesn't hold much credence with me, Fane, considering recent events."

  "Armageddon is upon us. The signs are occurring."

  "Crap. You're putting too much faith in that book."

  "And you too little."

  I shoved him away and thought about it.

  John of Patmos, author of the Apokaylpsis, the book of Revelation, and who called himself a companion in tribulation, was an extremist who kept the floundering Christian religion alive with fear of the apocalypse during a time of rampant paganism. His book was a letter written to the seven churches in Rome's eastern empire of Asia Minor, telling them to endure the worsening conditions for Christians under the Roman persecution.

  Some preached his prophecies to be literal while others believed the book concealed his message in symbols and imagery, a message that couldn't be deciphered without some lost key to the original subtext. The truth, if it existed, might lie somewhere between. Or it might not.

  I hissed into his face. "Do you expect the sun to become black as a sackcloth of hair, and the moon to become blood, and the stars to fall from heaven?"

  "There is no wind."

  I swallowed, spun around, and just then saw Theresa floating above us with the silver cord flapping hard against the windows. My name on her chest stood out as clearly as if it still ran with her warm blood. She clawed at the air, trying to get closer. I brushed Fane aside and went to her, but she was already moving off, reeling with her arms outstretched to me as she slipped farther and farther away.

  Fane took a step forward and nearly fell into my arms. "There's no wind because the four great angels hold the four winds in the corners of the world."

  Maybe it was true, but I'd never much believed in Revelation because so few angels were spoken of by name.

  "The apocalypse is already in motion," he said.

  "And has been since the beginning of time."

  "Abbot John said—"

  "Do you really believe that my actions, or yours, might somehow alter the will of God?"

  "We all must fulfill our fates."

  I burst out laughing. It was a deranged and lonesome sound in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in the place of the skull.

  Perhaps no one had laughed here in thousands of years—perhaps never.

  And I couldn't stop.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Holding a cup of sweet Muslim coffee, Self found me in the streets. He was eating stolen Easter cookies, traditionally shaped like crowns of thorns. Crumbs speckled his lips, but still somehow reminded me of blood.

  Glad you're having such a good time, he said.

  What's so funny?

  Nothing. Have you seen my father or Gawain?

  Heard Pop's bells ringing a couple of times but I never caught sight of him.

  He finished his spiced coffee with one large slurp and started to head back toward the bazaar for more. I stepped in his way and he glanced up curiously, with only the hint of his teeth showing. We'd come so far together and yet had hardly moved at all. The spices worked at the back of my throat, flooding my sinuses. Sugar coated my tongue, those cookies fresh and still warm in my stomach. He understood so much at times, knowing what he shouldn't. Other important concerns didn't matter to him at all.

  My second self climbed up my shirt, perched on my shoulder, clambered over my head, and leaped to the ground where he ran off to find more coffee. I followed and watched while he stole a cup from a street stand. I tried not to enjoy the taste of it too much while he hummed to himself in delight.

  Where's my father?

  I don't know.

  Tell me.

  You don't listen very well.

  I reached out to him then for some reason, and in the same second he held his hand out to give me a cookie. My new skin was red and looked raw and bleeding in the sun. I noticed his lifeline was much different from mine now, and I wondered if one of us was going t
o die soon.

  Try to keep that happy mood, Self said. He nodded east, toward the Mount of Olives. Jebediah's arrived with his brood. They're waiting for you.

  Any suggestions?

  He actually seemed to think about it. Let's leave this goddamn dusty place to the zealots and head for Jamaica.

  I only wish.

  He stomped a nice calypso beat, slowly at first before really swinging into it. He was good. I could almost hear the kettle drums and conch shells. Come on, da ganja do you good, mon.

  We headed for MountOlivet, toward the central summit, which was regarded as the Mount of Olives proper and where Jebediah would undoubtedly be expecting me in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  I was still weak from the fire, and the walk emptied me further as sweat ran through my hair and dripped down the backs of my arms. Soon I felt as if I'd spent all morning in a sweat lodge ceremony and yet hadn't been cleansed. There was no balance or tranquility in it. The nausea returned, vicious but fleeting, and I was forced to my knees in order to ride the sickness out.

  Faith meant everything now, even if the reasons for it were unknown. When the queasiness passed I stood and continued to climb the hills. The interminable silence was broken only by my footsteps and the occasional passing tourist bus. Self kept practicing his Jamaican accent and mimicking the booming laughter of huge island black men. I could feel the knotted mass of my thoughts and emotions unraveling into perfectly spun threads. Where could Michael be trapped and how could I find and release him? Who had the power to control the archangel that would champion the earth? Who had sent Griffin? And could I possibly resist the temptation to raise Danielle again?

  Self said, Mon, we get dat good roadside jerk chicken and steamed callaloo, and listen to dem drums! We gonna dance! We dance all day long and into da dark night!

  Who's here? I asked.

  He gave the only answer he could, grinning while he pranced. Everyone who needs to be.

  And there at Gethsemane, in the Grotto of Agony, where Iscariot had brought the soldiers and placed his kiss upon the betrayed,

  I looked up to see the stoic disfigured face of Jebediah DeLancre.

  His hair had grown almost completely silver and white, and those mismatched lips, forever melded into a sneer, looked like the kind of mouth that might have kissed Christ and led him to his death. The moon caught the exposed shard of yellow canine so that it glinted like a fang. He wanted to be beautiful again, and his vanity had led him to work on new spells to rid himself of the ugly stretches of scar tissue. They hadn't helped. He plucked at his goatee, which was also white.

  Even now, as he aimed toward ruling the earth, he seemed less than half the man he'd once been. He would never get over the loss of his familiar, Peck in the Crown, or forgive the Sephiroth that had purified and ushered it into heaven. I no longer got any satisfaction from his suffering. His glare forever held fury, righteous loathing, and incredible overconfidence, but there were also traces of loss and transgression in his eyes.

  Here, for the moment—this was his temple.

  The members of his new coven milled about. They had names but no identities, growing to function as a single conflicted essence. Six men and five women, victims and victimizers, almost interchangeable as they moved through the garden. I could see that he'd snatched them from the world already rotted. They stank of murder, prison, and asylums. He'd learned after his first coven, after using and destroying us, that innocence and naïveté had capability too, and it was a potential he could not completely control. He'd learned from his mistakes.

  Still, they were young, the same way we'd once been. Their faces were vain and arrogant and enraptured in the mystical lore and texts they'd unearthed. I had difficulty telling one set of features apart from another because they shared so much in common.

  The marks of a variety of demons branded them already, and their familiars played in the garden and ran around my ankles. I recognized the jackdaw Hotfoot Johnson and the black owl Prickeare, the imps Vinegar Robyn and Mr. Broadeye Sack. The fat legless spaniel called Jamara, having once been lord of North Pandemonium and leader of sixty legions, worked itself like a slug over my shoes. Even at the bottom of hell there are still lower depths.

  Uriel sat among them, desperately holding on to Aaron's sword, empty of its traitorous familiar. He'd torn most of his hair and beard out so that thick welts and scabs crosshatched his broad, sorrowful face. Perhaps he was a martyr for his god, or simply another lunatic. His porcelain figurines, plastic saints, and wooden statuettes lay broken but carefully propped up near his feet. He still needed his dolls.

  He'd slid his hands over the blade so often that he'd cut the fingers of his left hand down to their last knuckles. The nubs were freshly cauterized.

  When he looked up I knew he didn't see me at all. He whimpered, "Thy will be done, oh Lord, thy will be done." He'd said it so often since killing, his brother that the words had lost all meaning, even for him. His voice was strained and sounded as dead as Aaron. I thought he probably hadn't said anything else to anyone since the caves beneath the mount, repeating his one plea to God as if that could save him.

  Jebediah's other murdered coven wafted past, eager for their fulfillment and vengeance. If he'd sent Griffin against me, then he might possibly control the others. Jebediah himself didn't have enough respect for the dead that one needed to beckon them back at will, but he knew enough to toy with souls and reanimation, and always surrounded himself with ghosts.

  I looked around at the new coven thinking there might be a new necromancer among them. Sweat stung my eyes as the faces of the living and the deceased swam, blended, and merged.

  The stench of the atrocities they'd committed rose from them like vapor. I smelled Fuceas among the women and realized the demon earl had impregnated his eggs in two of them, just as he'd stuffed Janus with his yoke. They were hardly more than girls really, not even yet out of their teens. They stood together with their bloated bellies nearly touching, unsure of how they should greet me. They each gave a bizarre little curtsy.

  They all used the olive grove like the altar beside the covine tree, circling but not quite fully aware of each other. They weren't a true coven, in balance and harmony with the earth. Even their evils did not fully mesh. Unlike our own covendom, this was not a place for witches. For martyrs, of course, and for the dissidents and the faithful, but not for us. They all knew it too, especially Uriel, looking toward Jebediah for some kind of authority that would make them potent here. I could see death in their eyes already, and couldn't get past the fact that Jebediah was about to slay yet another assembly of his followers.

  Even as a ghost, Bridgett enjoyed touching the slain as much as she had when she was alive. She wove among Rachel and Janus, wanting the spawn of Fuceas for herself.

  Self found her there and, almost shyly, crept closer to her as she kneeled before him and allowed him to scale her chest. Her blond hair still had those two sweeping curls crab-clawing into her mouth, and he used his tongue to sweep her ringlets back. Her slashed throat still poured psychic energy, and he nuzzled the stream, kissing and licking her neck, trailing his fingers against her thighs. Like his mother, Thummim, he swung from Bridgett's left breast, suckling the witch's shriveled teat, which was filled with just as much syrupy milk as before. Her piercing green eyes cut toward me, features still containing some of the love of the novitiate she'd once been.

  "Hey, lover," she said.

  The incensed ghosts of the triplets Diana, Faun, and Abiathar, their lips still wet with wine, faded in and out around the Franciscan flower gardens. None of us could get away for our own past, not even the dead.

  As I'd done so many times before, I reached forth into the depths of Jebediah and found the silver cord of his soul, hoping something had changed about him by now. But it was still nothing more than a razor-sharp wire, rusted and slicing into my psyche. It hurt, but I'd missed the old feeling. He groped for my spirit as well, stalking my heart, pressing into the
soft spot at the back of my skull. His dissatisfaction showed through. He'd found that the well of my love for Dani was still full.

  He tried to smile as if there weren't a decade of carnage between us. "Walk with me."

  "All right."

  Most of the tourists and spiritual seekers stayed close to Jericho Road and the Church of all Nations, facing across from the Golden Gate. They liked to look at the stone presumed to be the place where Jesus prayed before his arrest. I had no doubt that Betty Verfenstein had been here or would soon visit as part of her vacation package. Danielle would have enjoyed the serenity of the garden despite what had occurred here twenty centuries ago.

  "You still love her," Jebediah said, "even after all this time—"

  "Yes."

  "I don't believe that someone who so desperately holds on to the past can be called a romantic. It's why you're the Lord Summoner and master of the art. This love for the dead."

  I didn't argue the point. He was right, in his own fashion, and though he meant to be insulting I took a certain pride in what he said.

  "Do you really want to murder more children, Jebediah?" I asked.

  "Oh, don't be so tedious. They're not children. You wouldn't dare say so if you knew what viciousness they can be held accountable for. Or perhaps you would. In any case, they came to me seeking glory. Surely you, of anyone, can relate to that. Who am I to deny them the chance?"

  "This absurd dream of yours isn't glorious."

  He didn't hear me. His askew smile widened as he drank in the atmosphere. Swirls of remnant energy circled above us and spilled on him. "This beautiful site is known throughout the world as the place where Christ pondered his fate before the soldiers dragged him off to be executed. Do you think he kneeled there?" Jebediah pointed in one direction, then another. "Staring toward that hill? Or that promontory? Can you guess what happened in that spot centuries before Jesus stepped foot here?"

  I could guess. Holy sites were usually built upon the unholy. He couldn't help feeding off the errant majiks of the land, and motes of black energy bubbled from his eyes. I didn't need to suck the marrow of massacre to know this had once been a place of child sacrifices.