A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds

by Piccirilli, Tom

  Self touched one of the crumbling stone altars and said, Baal got fed a lot of kiddies here.

  Yes.

  If he didn't get his supper he would have torn out their eyes, and they knew it. He would've dug their smallest veins out inch by inch and knotted their unraveled intestines together.

  Listen, do you always have to—

  Those old-time Israelites didn't mind feeding him. Oh no!

  Don't you think we ought to be a little more focused?

  But some of us need to beg just to get a friggin' piece of cake!

  My hand had been hurting ever since I'd struck him, and now the pain grew so bad I couldn't ignore it any longer. I looked into my palm and saw my lifeline changing again even as I watched. It crawled and shifted from one pattern into another. Perhaps I still had a few choices left.

  We stepped from between two pillars and once again I stood before my coven.

  There are meetings you never think about or dream of but you expect nonetheless. There was no surprise in any of our faces. Perhaps I had simply been fighting an unalterable fate as they'd been telling me the whole time. Maybe I hadn't been led here at all but had instead led each one of the others.

  I walked to them slowly, casually, as if returning home. Perhaps I was, in a fashion.

  Jebediah appeared dangerous, assertive, moderately aggressive, and a little bit crazy. I saw through the gossamer act and knew he was both anxious and frightened. His face crumpled in on itself until he had the expression of a sixteen-year-old boy about to get laid for the first time.

  Somewhere along the line this had stopped being his plan and had spiraled out of his limited control. He was draped in the white robes of a coven leader, the same ones he had worn the night of our final sabbat. I fingered the cloth—it had been re-threaded and rewoven but I could still see the vestiges of stains and burns.

  "Rejoice," he said.

  "Oh, shut the hell up."

  His scars seemed to ripple as he smirked. "We stand at the dawn of a new age. Be proud. Put your old angers and malice away. Every wound is about to be healed."

  "Tell me," I said, "are you doing this because you want to remember your past or because you want to forget it?"

  He moved in close as if to kiss me again. "The same as you," he said and left it at that.

  "You really are an asshole."

  "The mystery of God is finished," he said.

  The ten kids of his new flock were panicky but quiet, constantly looking toward Jebediah for reassurance. Good luck, I thought, there's not much chance you'll find it there. Uriel had cut off a few more of his knuckles but he still had enough fingers to hold Aaron's sword. He carried the blade in the crook of his arm, pointed straight up like a solider about to present arms.

  Among the coven again, Marcus fell back into anonymity. It took me a minute to find him among the other young men with similar features and equally disturbed penetrating eyes. He had his sleek grin back but it was only stale bravado. I could see his fear and he could see mine, and I really wished he'd just get away from here. I wished they'd all get away from here.

  "How about if you send all these people back home and you and I finish this thing alone?"

  "I would if you really meant it," Jebediah said.

  There hadn't been any anger in me for a while—not even when I'd trapped Marcus or held Gawain dying in my arms. Only when I'd slapped Self, and that was significant. Perhaps all our wounds really were about to be healed, in one way or another.

  The two girls impregnated by Fuceas appeared ready to burst, and I could tell that bothered Jebediah. The introduction of other participants would alter the plan he'd worked so hard to achieve, even as he watched it already changing and slipping further away from him.

  This place and these people were as familiar to me as a recurring nightmare.

  My father hovered about a dozen feet away, dancing and clapping alone like a child making his own fun.

  The coven enjoyed the gathering of forces. It was their first real taste of the enormity of time, vision, and dream that they'd tasted. They'd fashioned themselves into a circle of power, taking their rightful places. Jebediah had trained them well, and they each moved fluidly with a perfect syncopation. Marcus kept his eyes on mine, maybe wanting to kill me or only earn my respect. If anybody got out of this alive, I was sure it would be he.

  I'd allowed him to run loose inside my head and he'd learned from it. He had a new element to his nature now, a respect for the sacrifices that had to be made. His women sought his attention but he ignored them, concentrating, wary. He'd brushed up against my soul and some of my past clung to him like paint. He had other shades swirling around him, just the barest wisps that Hotfoot Johnson tried to stab at with its beak. Marcus would be haunted with a touch of guilt for the rest of his life, my guilt if not his own. Danielle and my mother had become his ghosts as well.

  "It's not too late, Jebediah," I said.

  "It's always been too late for us. Sometimes I think this was the only reason I was ever born"—he turned and the immense sadness in his eyes made me want to hold him tightly, the way I once had—"just to bring you here on this day, at this hour."

  "We don't need to do this."

  "Of course we do. We're no less God's slaves as the Seraphim or Satan or the rabbis or Christ Himself. Our lives were written out the moment God became aware and separated light from darkness."

  "You can't really believe that," I said, although it was a thought I'd had on more than one occasion myself.

  "Perhaps I do." Then he shrugged. "Perhaps not. We'll be beginning soon. Prepare and ready yourself."

  "I am."

  "I know, you're always ready to raise the dead. It's your beautiful genius."

  I expected him to walk away but he didn't. He stood at my side and looked out over the JezreelValley and I could see the pulse in his neck hammering so quickly that I thought he might have a heart attack any second now. Sweat poured off my face. Elijah's fury washed against me like blasts of steam, but I still couldn't see the giant Nephilim anywhere. Elijah had either left the hybrid body or changed it or was still on his way here with his hatred leading him by miles.

  Fane took up position near Uriel and tried speaking to him but got no response. Self found the spirit of Bndgett floating about and started getting funky with her again, climbing and clawing. The flaps of her slashed throat slapped together loudly and sent echoes across the plain.

  The sound of mutilated flesh excited the other familiars. There was a sudden din of their hungry and lustful cries and titters. Jamara the fat legless spaniel slid itself toward Bridgett in the hopes of stuffing its tongue into the gaping wound of her ghost. His mother Thummin was nowhere to be seen. Vinegar Robyn and Mr. Broadeye Sack, and the black owl Prickeare started slinking around, edging toward Bridgett's stink of church. Self had to slap them away.

  I'd almost forgotten why we were doing this. It took me a while to remember that Jebediah had said we could force our way into paradise and sit at God's left hand. I didn't know why we'd want to.

  That yellow cracked tooth crept out from under his shredded lip and glinted at me. "We've come full circle."

  "Stop saying that." It might have been the truth, but I didn't need to be constantly reminded of the fact.

  "We need blood."

  "Considering how many of your flock have already been murdered, I'd say maybe you had your own preoccupation and love for the dead."

  "Assuredly. I need their aid from the other side, to bring Christ closer to us."

  It didn't take long before he was back in form. The sorrow in his face fled and the fiery madness slid back into place. I thought his own lifeline might be skittering around in his hand and driving him even more crazy. I could tell that he suddenly wanted to kill someone, and his eyes settled on Uriel. He wanted to murder his brother for revenge as much as to put Uriel out of his own pointless misery. Chop him down to pieces, inch by inch, just as he'd done himself. Perhaps Uriel
would even help.

  "We need blood," he repeated, almost pleasantly, smiling, and taking a step toward his brother.

  I grabbed Jebediah's shoulder. "There's already enough death here and has been for five thousand years. Where's Elijah?"

  "What?"

  "Where's Elijah?"

  I thought that might make him drop his smile, and it did. The Nephilim was another variable that might disrupt his bizarre plans if he actually had any, and I was no longer sure that he did. "Coming."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jebediah used his athame to mark the circle of power in the dirt, eighteen feet in diameter, as he walked deosil—clockwise—in association with the course of the sun and stars. The other coven members took their places in a circle. Each of the four cardinal points were covered exactly, with me and Jebediah standing to the north, associated with earth, the pentacle, secrecy, and the color black. This purified space acted as a boundary for the reservoir of our concentrated will.

  We made the correct cleansing gestures and began chanting, each word and phrase awakening emotions, memories, and visualizations of energies and eons. I could make out a faint silvery glow about each of us. Sparks began to bounce around the ruins as if the swords of the slain warring soldiers still clashed together.

  The darkened sun loomed over us. The girls carrying the offspring of Fuceas could barely stand, and I imagined the yolk of the demon earl eating them from the inside out, ready to spring to life. The spirits of Janus and Rachel swam over them, jealous that their own profane children had never come full term and been born into the human world.

  My father stood beside me, wandering to the edge of the majik circle, dancing along its edge and then stepping back. Self leaped to Dad and sat atop his shoulder the way I once did as a child.

  Hey, mon, we should be on de island of sunshine and plenty, not here.

  You sure about that?

  This is bad juju, I'd know that even if I wasn't starving.

  We get out of this one and I'll set you up with a lifetime supply of glazed doughnuts. With chocolate sprinkles?

  Sure.

  He ran his fangs over his bottom lip. I could taste blood in my own mouth. Too damn late.

  And it always has been, hasn't it?

  You said it, not me.

  Jebediah began his opening invocation, honing the gathered psychic intensity of the coven. It rushed forward and receded like a tidal force. I saw Uriel cut off another knuckle and let it drop across the stones at his feet. There was no sign of Fane.

  My lifeline kept prowling around in my hand. If I was going to make a different choice it had to be now. I didn't know what would happen if I stepped out of the circle. Any other time the invocation would be subverted and possibly backfire, causing a psychic recoil that might blind or kill any of the members. Jebediah's will swallowed us. But the spell had already gone beyond the coven. I could feel it. We weren't needed at all—Armageddon was already here, and we didn't have anything to do with it.

  I stepped from the majik circle and nothing happened.

  The silver light surrounding the others continued to glow, and Jebediah had thrown himself so deeply into his incantations that his eyes had rolled up into the back of his head.

  Find Fane.

  Why?

  I don't know.

  Well, that's helpful.

  I think it might be important.

  Now look who needs help.

  I backed away and started searching the ruins for Fane. Self crept along beside me, feeling the same thing in his gut that I did. My dad started doing the Hustle and twisted into a few other disco craze dances. His rhythms started snarling in my brain. Shadows slithered together and parted around us. I thought I spotted a splash of red, a flash of pink, and a hint of steam in the chill air.

  There, Self said, pointing. She's got him.

  Fane lay on his back between two collapsed pillars, gutted but still breathing, sputtering blood from his frothing lips. He held both hands to his belly, trying to keep himself from spilling out. His stiletto lay on the ground beside him in a lake of his blood.

  Self and I looked up at the same moment to see four miscarriages bobbing on silver cords overhead, their translucent, vein-heavy skin shimmering in the dark sunlight.

  Another psychic cord trailed disconnected down in the dirt.

  "Oh shit," I said.

  Coincidence didn't exist anymore. I should've realized that I had met her on the plane for a reason.

  Betty Verfenstein moved closer, holding a butcher knife, her pink hair curled into little wings from where it had been spattered with Fane's blood.

  The elderly plump woman gave her defiant, rough laugh. Three days ago it had filled me with a pleasant warmth but this time it just scared the hell out of me.

  Fane was trying to talk, sputtering as his belly continued to bubble up around his fingers. He stared directly at me. "Don't . . ."

  I kneeled and thought about trying to console him, but Fane was in agony and I knew he enjoyed it. A martyr lives to die. "What?"

  He seized hold of my arm with his dripping fist. "Don't bring me . . . back. . ."

  "I won't," I told him, and he just had time to nod thanks before he was gone.

  "He was going to kill you," Betty said. "He was sneaking up on you ready to cut your throat."

  I believed her, but that didn't change a damn thing. I looked into her face more closely than I had before, and I finally noticed that she had a glass eye. My spell had worked three days ago, when I sent my curse back through time.

  "Betty, it was you." My voice sounded delicate, much more frail than hers. "You murdered your own daughter."

  "Sacrifices had to be made."

  My mouth opened and it took me a while to get anything out. "But why?"

  "I did not fail the test of Abraham."

  Cool! What's your GPA?

  Betty Verfenstein wasn't raving and didn't look insane. She was composed and calm and had the same air of controlled fanaticism as almost everyone else in this land of grudges. She had no more or less zeal about killing her family as the men forced to murder their loved ones and commit suicide at Masada.

  "I had to keep you walking on the path, following the will of the Lord. The messiah is about to return. My daughter will sit in glory at the hand of the Father tonight, with all the martyrs, beloved and blessed above all others."

  There's gonna be a full house sitting at the hands of God tonight.

  Dad wandered past, playing with the floating miscarriages. Their fishlike faces peered at him and he peered back, prodding them with his fingers. The psychic cord lying in the dust had been chewed through. Theresa had learned the truth about her mother and had at last escaped the old lady.

  "Who told you my name?" I asked. "I've always known your name."

  "Who told you?"

  "Since I was a child I've had visions. Our meeting on the airplane, your father's face covered in foundation, and wearing his ten-gallon cowboy hat. You were a ridiculous sight. I even knew you'd put my eye out, but it had to be done. Theresa dreamed of you too."

  "It makes no sense."

  "It had to be done."

  "But why slaughter Bethany Shiya?"

  "She'd achieved the goal set out before her. You laid with her and wailed for her as God demanded. Once that was done, the great harlot had to be purged. But the whore of Babylon wouldn't leave the woman's body, so she had to die. Don't look so shocked, could you really have expected anything else?"

  "And Gawain? Why Gawain?"

  She flinched as if struck. "That pariah! Don't speak of it. It did not belong in this world."

  "He was my friend!"

  Craning her neck, Betty looked over the mighty stone remains of Megiddo, watching the coven sway in harmony together, chanting. Her eyes bloomed with fear and frustration. She grew shrill. "They've already begun and you left the circle. How could you have done that? Why did you leave the circle?"

  "It doesn't mean anything."


  "You must fulfill your duty in helping to raise the returned messiah!"

  She's working to assure the second coming of Christ? With a name like Verfenstein?

  "You left the circle! You've a fate to carry out!"

  "I am," I said.

  "No, no, it's not supposed to happen this way. I've watched over and protected you. You must lead them. God told me!"

  "I'm leaving. Whatever happens, I want no part of it."

  "You fool, you damned fool!"

  "Listen, lady, I'm sick of all you—"

  She raised her knife and lunged for me before I could get my hands up. She had an amazing compact strength and her leap carried her right to my throat. Watch it! Self shouted. He dove but only caught a few pink wisps of hair in his hands. The blade descended.

  My father shoved me out of the way.

  The enormous blade drove into his belly up to the hilt, and he let out a soft chuckle.

  He reached out with both arms and hugged Betty Verfenstein to him, pressing his painted nose to hers. She stared wide-eyed and started letting out choked, terrified cries. He planted a kiss on her forehead, and when he finally let her go she backed up into Fane's blood, slid, and tripped over his corpse. The old lady hit the ground hard, and her head snapped back and struck the rocky terrain with the sound of steak slapped down on a butcher's block.

  She was dead in less than a minute.

  It was too easy a resolution.

  Whoa, Self said. That was quick.

  Dad tugged the knife from his midriff and let it fall. There was barely any blood and it didn't affect him at all as he skipped back toward the circle.

  The coven hadn't noticed a thing. They were beyond such dimensions. The ceremony continued on course, the twelve members lost at the bottom of the abyss inside themselves. They'd gone too far and too deep, and now struggled to remember who they were. In order to evoke a spirit you must have complete knowledge of it and the purpose it will serve. They stood at cross-ends, ignorant and unprepared. Motes of energy poured from Jebediah's eyes and bled into the air.