“Where did you get this?” Madeline asked at last.
Brandt nodded at Liz. “Liz drew it. I met this man, in a vision. I saw the table, and the sacrifice. I shared his hunger, saw it seeping from his eyes. He told me that ‘it’ was not over. He told me that we would meet again, but before he could tell me why, or when, or how, he was gone.”
“He called you then,” Madeline said, nodding with sudden conviction. “He knows what is to come, knows more than any of us. Whatever it is, one thing is certain. We must prepare the feast. We must call Brian from the shadows and prepare the sacrifice. God moves in mysterious ways.”
“Still have to wonder which God,” Dexter commented dryly. “That guy seemed to think you and he share one. I remember some strange things from where and when I grew up. Saw some bizarre, fucking . . .” he hesitated, lowering his eyes sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” he continued, “some strange things. Snakes. You would be surprised what a sane man or woman will do with a live snake. You would be shocked, I think, to hear how well a trailer-park-dwelling matron who never graduated sixth grade can recite in Latin. There was a power to all of it, and a pattern, but I could never convince myself there was an ounce of good in it. It drew me in and spit me out more than once. Wild shit.”
Dexter clamped his mouth shut, nearly biting through his tongue as his language slipped again.
“That must have been a long time ago,” Shaver grinned. “You seem to have lost some of your humility along the way.”
Dexter sipped his coffee. “Whatever. All I’m saying is, there’s an awful lot of ‘Gods’ involved in all of this, and I hope to Jesus, no offense intended, we find the right one.”
“There is only one,” Madeline asserted, turning away from the window and fixing Dexter with a stern gaze. “There are a lot of things in this world that we don’t understand, and a great many of those I expect we were never intended to understand. You have seen those who saw His grace in the eyes and sharp tongue of a serpent, and you have heard His voice in languages that meant nothing to you. I have seen His grace in the sacrifice of one great man to the sins of another. The willingness to take on a burden not your own, to allow a soul entrance to Heaven. There may be other powers at work here, but make no mistake, God is watching, and Brian is watching, and as long as the two of them are our focus, we will see our way through this.”
Brandt nodded, leaning back and wrapping his arm tightly around Synthia, who’d been brooding and silent through it all. There was a long period of deeper quiet, each lost in the scent and taste of the coffee, and their own thoughts.
“Dex,” Synthia said, “you know where Brandt comes from, we all do. You know my life now, the angels watching me morning to night every day of my life, and you know all about Shaver’s father, and Liz’s father. What about you? You drop all these hints, all these bits and pieces of,” she thought for a moment, “of a pattern. All you talk about is music, the song, and patterns.”
Dexter wasn’t watching her. His gaze was focused on his coffee, and he was trembling visibly, as if he knew what was to come.
Synthia continued. “I just want to know your pattern. I want to know you like you know us. Hell, I don’t want to face the Devil without knowing everyone on my team, and where the hell, no pun intended, they come from, you know?”
The room grew silent. No one even seemed willing to breathe into that moment. Synthia’s words had the ring of a challenge, and though it was tinged with love and respect, it was a challenge still. Tension spilled into a room already overflowing with nervous fear.
“You know we’ll listen, bro,” Shaver said. “You know we care.”
Dexter nodded. He expelled a long, even breath, gathering his thoughts, and then he rose and moved to the coffee pot and refilled his cup. His fingers danced nervously over the rim, as if seeking something to count, or stack. Instead, he returned to the table, took a quick sip of the hot coffee, and began to speak, never once raising his eyes from the Formica tabletop.
“I wasn’t raised by my parents,” he began softly. “I never knew them. Let’s say I was a foster-child of God. Here’s the story. . . .”
Seventeen
“I was left on the doorstep of the Church of the Holy Light when I was small enough not to know the difference. Light was light, food was food. I probably missed my parents. I probably knew they weren’t there, but after a while, as a baby, food, and light, warm and happy, and nothing else matters. That’s how it started.
“I was raised by the church. I never really had a family, though I lived in Reverend Bob Sanders’ home most of my young life. They took turns. I was ‘the miracle baby, brought to them by God to watch over and protect.’ For Sanders, it was probably a gimmick, though he was good enough as pseudo-fathers go. Even then, I was fascinated with patterns.
“I painted, worked in the garden, and I listened. Always, I listened, because there was something, just beyond what I could understand, that itched at me. Reverend Sanders said it was my ‘calling’ to the Church, but I knew pretty early on that whatever was calling me, it was not a fuc . . . not a church.”
The fumble over his language brought Dexter’s hands to the tabletop, where he unerringly reached out and snagged a spoon, and a knife, left over from some earlier meal. He flipped them nervously in his fingers, tapping the tips on the table in an odd, intricate rhythm as he talked. It was mesmerizing. Dexter didn’t even seem aware he was doing it. His words were in sync, and yet, they were not.
Synthia was staring at the silverware, unable to draw her gaze from the near-magical motion, blurring the plate-steel across the table.
“My family,” Dexter went on, weaving the words into the rhythm, “was the church. I spent weekends with different families. I did homework with one group of kids each night, different homes, but all the ‘brethren’ of Holy Light. It wasn’t a bad life. Hell, at times, it was the best of all worlds. Was never in one place long enough to really piss anyone off, and I had all the support and love a kid could want.
“I guess if it hadn’t been for Sundays, that life would have rocked.”
Dexter fell silent. Madeline moved closer, pouring more coffee into his cup. The sound revived his hands, and the rhythm returned, slowed only for the moment it took him to take a long, hot sip of the coffee and close his eyes.
“The Church of the Holy Light,” he said softly, “was a slice of reality that just didn’t fit. No matter how you cut it, it came out crooked, malformed, and odd. I don’t know how to explain it. The world would sort of warp as you walked through those doors. Perfectly normal people would stare at you with an intensity that shifted their features completely. Sunlight, warm and comfortable on your skin, wove through the images on the stained-glass windows of that church and nothing was ever the same in that light.
“The women’s features sharpened, and the men grew tall, brooding, and dark. No smiles. No joy, really, but intensity. So much intensity, belief, like an addiction to them all. On Sunday, I was the ‘miracle child’ in ways that barely made sense the other six days of the week.
“They showed me the pattern first. In that church, every Sunday, I got a glimpse of it. I saw, and I was pressed closer, and I slid my hands in, and through it, rearranging and shifting each line and shape. Writhing and twisting, turning and sliding, line over line and design over design, but all one big pattern.
“They pushed me to it, at first, but it drew me in. Each time I didn’t die. Each time they chanted, and danced, and cried out, it drew me deeper.”
“Snakes?” Liz whispered the word, question and statement in one, her eyes very wide.
Dexter nodded. “Snakes. Hundreds of them. They were Sanders’ passion, after God, and the Church. He kept them in a series of large, glass aquariums. Somehow he always had plenty of food for them, mice, rats; he would trap them carefully and save them in separate feeder cages.
“The congregation never saw that side of him. They saw this tall, imposing man in dark robes, his eyes full o
f fire and his voice like some kind of controlled thunderclap. That was the ‘Reverend Sanders.’ I knew Bob Sanders, too, and he liked those snakes. On Sunday he’d spout how they were the symbol of Satan, how the serpent had tempted Eve. He’d tell you how the sins and redemption of men swirled in that tank, and how faith, and faith alone, could bring one through that dark embrace unscathed.
“Sounds like a joke, I know. Sounds like something out of a B-grade horror flick, but it wasn’t. Not at all. It was powerful, compelling. All eyes in that church were locked on that tank and the swirling mass of motion it contained. They couldn’t really see them. They could sense them. They could see the movement, and could feel the tension drop over the room like a shroud, but to them it was no different, say, than the choir launching into ‘Amazing Grace,’ or Reverend Sanders calling for the Communion.
“Most of them never took that stage. Most of them never got close enough to a snake to know if it were a garter snake, or a rattler. Might have been f . . . freaking gummy worms for all they knew, or cared.
“Now that I’m out of there, and can look back on it, it reminds me of watching professional wrestling, or a NASCAR race. I was a naive kid. I was the ‘golden boy’ of the church, the miracle child. That is what they told me, and for the longest time, I believed it. Now I know. I was the ‘Jerry Springer Show’ of the Church of Holy Light.
“They weren’t watching for me to pluck the serpents from the tank, hold them aloft, and be praised for my righteousness. They were there for that one slip-up. They were there to see a sinner taken by the poison and to dance hallelujahs all over his grave. They came up disappointed each time, but the power was there, the draw of danger and the knowledge that it could be next Sunday, or the next.
“I never felt the tension at all. I watched those sliding bodies, those shifting patterns of stripes and triangles, bands and colors, eyes glittering but not really registering me as I watched. It was always the same. Sanders would start with a prayer, every head bowed, and his words would flow with the sinuous motion of those snakes. His mind would link, somehow, with their minds.
“I never closed my eyes. I never prayed with them. I watched, and I waited, and as I did, I used to drum on the tanks. At first, I kept it quiet. No one wanted Reverend Sanders staring at them during a service for any reason, and damn certain not for making noise as he prayed. This was different. I watched those serpents, and my fingers worked over the glass, tapping, thrumming, sometimes moving so quickly they vibrated and the glass hummed, other times more subtle, less distinct, but still there.
“They reacted. The snakes reacted, and the congregation reacted. Even Reverend Sanders reacted. I thought he would be angry with me, but he never said a word. He watched those snakes, and he watched how they moved when I ‘played’ on the glass, and he kept his peace.
“When the time came in each sermon where he talked about those snakes, the eyes in the room were already focused on me. I never saw them, but I felt them. My own gaze was trapped by the pattern. It would slip through and around and out of those twisting, turning bodies each time. Never the same twice, never the same for more than an instant, and yet, I knew deep inside that it was always the same. I knew that if I could just pluck the truth from those slipping, sliding bodies and live it, if I could find the pattern with my fingers and play it back to them, they would form it a final time and stay that way. I knew it. I felt it so strongly it stole my reason, and each time this happened, I would wake to the sound of voices, crying out, screaming, praying, and to the sight of bodies writhing in the aisles of the church.
“Each time I opened my eyes to find that I’d plucked two bits from the puzzle, that two of the serpents dangled from my hands and my head was thrown back, eyes to heaven. I was never bitten. I must have slid my hands into that sea of moving death thousands of times, and never once did I even come close. It was a pattern, and I could see it clearly. Every time they shifted, I anticipated it. They moved to the rhythm I tapped on their glass, and that rhythm drew my hands in, and out, and though it preserved me—though I didn’t die like the dumbass I was, sticking my hands in a pile of poisonous snakes—it was never enough. Each time I ended up in tears, feeling that small bit of the puzzle I’d dragged free, and unable to piece it back together. Unable to see the whole of it.
“Reverend Sanders said I had a gift, but there were Sundays when I thought it would be better if the damned snakes would just take me, make me one with that pattern and drag me down.
“I don’t play with snakes anymore,” Dexter said at last, “but I’m stuck with the patterns. They’re everywhere. I find them, I work to recreate what I remember, stacking and counting, and none of it works. It isn’t the same. I see pieces, just like with the snakes, only now they are all pulled free. I don’t have just two parts, but all the parts, and there are times I believe that if I don’t get them all together, I’ll just sit in a corner and scream. If it weren’t for the drums, and the music, that might have happened already.
“Then you,” Dexter’s gaze flashed up to capture Brandt’s, holding steady, “you had to bring it all back. You had to waltz in there and play that . . . that song, that pain, that pattern flowing from your fingers like a squirming tank of snakes. I was part of it again. I was part of what held it all together, and I felt it like I’d never felt it before, and then it stopped. Just stopped. You walked away. No one even yanked a piece out that time; it walked away, and all I could do was stand, and watch as it all unraveled. I didn’t know what the f . . . didn’t know what to do, man, but I’ll tell you honestly, I was leaning toward following you and just kicking your ass.”
They all burst into laughter at that, even Madeline, and a few moments later Dexter joined them, grinning sheepishly.
Then he turned to Shaver. “I wanted you to know most of all, bro. You put up with me when no one else would. You listened to me go on and on and on about that perfect song. Well, it isn’t just a song. There is so much more to it, but that song is our ticket in, you know? I heard you play the first time, I knew you could open the door. Still know it.”
“I had no idea,” Brandt said. “The pain. I don’t know how to describe that to you. It was all I could think of, and that night I saw things I have not seen since, and that I hope I never see again. I was barely aware the rest of you were there, once it started, and at the end? I was empty.”
“Not your fault,” Dexter said quickly. “Not trying to lay the blame on you. Not anyone’s fault. We all saw what went on that night, Brandt. No idea how, no idea who all those people were. I felt that pain, not like you did, but felt it ebbing and flowing, felt how you channeled it. The pattern, all part of the pattern. That is what I saw. That is what I lost. Synthia, she was staring off into the back of the bar like we were being watched by some ghost-patrol, and damned if I don’t believe we were. Not sure what happened then, but it touched her, and it touched them, and I wish you could have been there the night that pattern unfolded.”
“I wish I could have been too,” Brandt said, turning to Synthia and drawing her closer. “Wish a lot of things might have been different, but then, who knows what that might have caused? If we are here as part of a pattern, then everything happened as it was supposed to happen.
“The best we can hope for now is to figure that pattern out. There has to be something here that has drawn our evil friend along, something in this ‘pattern’ that is potentially wrong. On the other hand, I was drawn here as well, as were we all, bit by bit, and piece by piece, and I know it isn’t all his doing. There are deeper powers and stronger forces than any of us here involved in all of this. I wish Wally were here.”
“The old guy?” Shaver asked.
Brandt nodded. “Wally is the one who showed me the pain. He is the one who told me not to ask for things I didn’t really want, and the one to guide me to safety the few times I was too far over the edge. I think he was even in Syn’s apartment the other morning when things were too much. I have no way to contact h
im, no way to know if he is with us, against us, or unaware, but I know that he pushed us here as certainly as Madeline’s Brian drew us.
“I don’t know why we are here, but somehow I know it is where we belong. All we can do is blend into,” he turned and glanced at Dexter, then smiled, “the pattern, and hope that what we’ve heard since we were all children is true . . . that good will conquer all.”
“Amen,” Madeline said. The others echoed her, and even that soft echo formed a pattern, sifting off into the silence and the shadows.
“How do we do that?” Synthia asked suddenly. “How do we blend into something we aren’t a part of?”
“I can help,” Madeline answered before anyone else could speak. “In a way, Payne was right. They’ll come to me, I expect. They’ll wonder what to make, and how much, how to lay out the table, and what to do with the candles and the flowers. Most of them have been to the ceremony, but few of them were ever involved in it.
“We always had music. When Reverend Forbes was alive, there was the choir. There was something about the singing at those times, something powerful that would draw you in and mesmerize you, turning your mind from the moment at hand. Since they will come to me, and since Liz has come home with you,” Madeline turned to her daughter and smiled then, the most genuine smile they’d seen from her since they arrived, “I will suggest that they defer to you for the music. I trust you know a few things that would be appropriate?”
Brandt and Shaver and Dexter laughed in unison.
“I’m sure we can work it out,” Brandt said at last. “Hell, if Shaver here can get me to play Hank Williams Senior, I guess almost anything is possible.”
Synthia rose and moved closer to Dexter. She watched him carefully, and slowly the others quieted. Dexter frowned, but didn’t speak, as Synthia moved closer. Her eyes were wide, and she was staring, as if terrified, though she kept moving closer.
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