“What is it, Syn?” Brand asked quietly. “What do you see?”
She shook her head, stepping right in front of Dexter and waving her arms over his hands slowly. Dexter’s eyes cleared, and he shook his head.
“They aren’t really there, Synthia,” he said softly. “You know that.”
Synthia stared again, then took Dexter’s hands and gazed into his eyes. “They are there. They are waiting. Two pieces of the pattern. I don’t know why I never saw them before. I have the feeling they’ve always been with you. Maybe . . .” Synthia hesitated for a long breath. “Maybe they are trying to find their way back to where you took them from? Maybe they are the draw, the reason the pattern pulls at you so hard. We have to take them home.”
“We’re a long way from where they would have come from,” Dexter answered, staring at his hands, only half-believing. “A very long way.”
“Maybe not,” Shaver cut in. “You’re the one always talking about the pattern, and the song. The song. The one you and I are going to find, the one that will make it whole, and bring us to where these two,” Shaver waved a hand toward Brandt and Synthia, “already went. Don’t tell me you don’t believe it anymore? I think we can find a place or two to slap those snakes if we concentrate. I know they look like drumsticks when you play, but if you start to see snakes in the song, dude, you put them back.”
Dexter nodded, not smiling. “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe this is it. Maybe we’re all here for some reason, finally, and I just had to wait. Hell.” He grew silent for a moment, and then his grin returned. “I might have been putting the pattern back together all along. I tried to get you to follow Brandt way back. I came after you even when your fingers were mush and you couldn’t play a lick. I even took you to the coffee shop where Liz was, because I thought she might put some energy back into your sorry . . . um . . . butt.”
“You saying this is all your fault?” Shaver’s eyes were sparkling.
“Could have done worse,” Dexter answered. “You finally got rid of that dog of a Mustang.”
They all laughed again, though Madeline was a bit baffled by their banter, though it was stilted by their almost comical efforts to modify their language for her benefit. It was a moment of hope, and in that moment, Brandt moved as he always moved, toward the case that held the old guitar. For the first time since meeting Wally in the alley, he didn’t feel the all-consuming draw of the pain. No one called out to him, and yet he needed to play. He felt it welling up inside of him, and there was only one release. Always, that one way out.
The others followed his lead. Dexter didn’t drag out his drum kit, but he leaned in, making himself comfortable with Madeline as he had with old Mae. “Where do you keep the spoons?” he asked.
Madeline turned and pulled open a drawer.
Dexter grinned, snagging a handful, choosing four, and dropping the rest back into place with a clatter. “Learned to improvise,” he whispered conspiratorially. “They kept me locked in an apartment for days.”
Liz rolled her eyes and slid into one of the chairs surrounding the table. She had one of her sketch pads open, and she watched Dexter with mild amusement as he slapped the spoons experimentally, adjusting his grip and tapping them against his thighs.
Shaver had his guitar free of its case and slid the strap over his neck. Without an amplifier, it wouldn’t have much volume, but somehow, it didn’t seem to matter at that moment.
Syn had her pig-nose amp, but she adjusted it so low that the soft thump of the base didn’t drown out the rest of the sound.
“What are you going to play?” Madeline asked, smiling almost girlishly. “I haven’t heard a bit of music since Reverend Forbes passed, and that wasn’t too cheerful.”
Brandt grinned sheepishly. “I’m afraid that most of what we have played in the past isn’t going to be—appropriate. I just felt like playing. I guess we’ll just start with what we do best, and see what comes of it.”
He pressed his fingers to the strings and drew the pick down in a quick jangle of notes. E. Solid and tingling with promise. Brandt broke into a simple blues progression, drawing the notes, one to the next, with sliding strokes of his fingers that twisted and tortured the strings. The others waited, letting him play a quick interlude, catching both rhythm and sequence easily. Shaver was the first to join in, catching up on the third time through, second bar, with a soft flurry of notes that shifted between Brandt’s chords and wound up and away. Synthia settled in with a quiet, but solid back-beat, closing her eyes and swaying from side to side.
Dexter wasn’t as quick as the others. He waited. He let the rhythm settle, though he would usually be the backbone of that. He let the melody soar, and settle, and soar again, and still he waited. He closed his eyes until the sound gripped him. His hands twitched, but he controlled the urge to release the energy. Finally, as the third chorus rushed past, he felt an opening, a hole in the sound that was unacceptable, and he slid into it. The spoons vibrated, clapping together and slipping apart with an easy rhythm. Dexter didn’t try to become the rhythm section. He didn’t try to force his own beat to the music, but flowed instead to that of the bass, letting Synthia be the backdrop. Instead, he let the clatter of metal on metal dive between Shaver’s notes. He let Brandt’s steady, heavy chords drive through him and transferred each to his fingertips, letting the emotion and the melody sift through his mind and translate to those spoons.
His hands vibrated. He brought it all to the front of his mind, concentrated, and shifted it through and out. Vaguely, Dexter was aware that Brandt had begun to sing. He felt the words, felt the softer vibration of Brandt’s voice, but he couldn’t make any of it out. He was focused too deeply.
The room had begun fading slowly from the moment Dexter first slapped the spoons to his thigh. He hadn’t really been with the others for some time. The memories had drawn him in, and the visions of his past were powerful. He’d buried those visions deep, and now they had returned, haunting him. Try as he might, as the notes slipped over and around him and his own rhythms danced into the mix, the visions were too powerful to deny. He watched helplessly as the room disappeared around him.
The altar loomed, a million miles away, down the aisle and up behind an oak railing. Dexter felt the size of an ant as he began the slow walk down the aisle and up those heavily carpeted stairs. Voices echoed all around him, whispered words, questions, and even a few bets. Dexter ignored them, keeping his steps even as Reverend Sanders had instructed him. It was all part of the “show,” as Sanders called it.
Dexter had walked that aisle a thousand times, and yet, something was different. Something was wrong. He heard the soft music in the background, not exactly as he remembered it, but close. He stepped into the aisle, but no heads turned. No eyes bored in through his skull to try and steal the secret, or the pattern. No one seemed to know he was there at all.
Every head was turned forward. Every gaze was locked on the altar, and the tank beyond. Dexter shifted his attention and stopped, standing very still. The music rose around him, loud, much louder than he had ever heard it, and the congregation had begun to stand. First one, then a couple more, a slow trickle of rising human flesh that swayed in the grip of that deep, pulsing sound. Dexter took a step forward, raising his arm and opening his mouth, as if to speak. He said nothing.
The man staring back at him from the other side of the tank was familiar. The face they all stared at was young, maybe early twenties, and intense. His eyes glowed with reflected light from the colored spotlights Reverend Sanders had had installed for the “rite.”
In the background, through the music, Dexter heard Sanders’ voice, crooning, coaxing the crowd and the moment to a frenzy. He’d heard those words too many times, felt the effect they had on the people, the insidious hypnotic blur they induced, combined with the voices of the choir. Only there was no choir this time. The music was richer, full and resonant. There were guitars, and bass, and on one level, Dexter knew what that music was,
where it was. He could feel the quick slapping of the spoons against his thighs, could unwind the bass from the lead and back.
He took another step closer.
“And the Lord our God shall protects us, one and all,” Sanders intoned. “He shall send His angels to lift us up, that we not fall and be hurt. He shall send His spirit to fill our hearts with love and drag us from the mouths of demons and the pits of hell, and He shall give us His courage in the face of that which challenges our faith. The Devil shall not have us brethren, and The Lord our God shall protect us, even in the face of the serpent’s poison, even in the presence of the tempter’s true form, and all it portends, shall He sustain us. Forever, and ever . . . amen.”
Dexter stepped closer, slowly, lifting each foot with an effort and planting it a little closer. His gaze was fixed on the young man’s hands. He knew this moment, felt it tingling up and down his nerve endings. The room shifted, and the light dimmed. The bodies swaying and dancing to both sides of him, between the heavy oak pews, drew long, twisting shadows across the red carpeted floor. Dexter watched them from the corners of his eyes. Watched the bodies, and watched the shadows, letting his gaze flicker from one to the other, to the altar, to the young man, whose head was thrown back now, eyes to heaven and his arms, sliding down, and in.
Dexter felt the motion all around him, forming, reforming, the pattern swallowing slowly. The shadows had elongated until they wound in and around one another, knotting and slipping free, and still Dexter moved through them, slipping closer, fighting for a closer look. That man.
He wanted to call out, to make them stop. Whoever that man was, he shouldn’t be there. It was Dexter’s place, his reason for being, that tank of serpents. Dexter stumbled, and then righted himself, his steps blending to the pattern, drawing him forward and in, down and across the room.
Dexter glanced to the left, and he caught a glimpse of Madeline, swaying with the others, but her eyes were clear, and they were not aimed at the stage, but at him. She smiled, a smile so filled with love and compassion that Dexter’s eyes clouded with tears. Behind Madeline, Liz writhed, caught in the grip of the song and stretching, reaching out toward the stage, elongating.
Dexter turned away again. This time his head spun the other way and he caught sight of Brandt, Synthia, and Shaver. They stood back-to-back in a triangle of extended guitar necks and cords, impossibly thick cords that wound down and around their legs, binding them to one another as they played. Brandt’s eyes were closed. Synthia stared right through Dexter as if he weren’t there at all, and Shaver, who turned the triangle slowly as they caught Dexter’s attention, stared directly into his friend’s eyes. Shaver’s face was taut with concentration. His fingers flew; the tendons on his arms stood out like cords, looking for all the world as if you might pluck one and get a tone. There was a madness in those eyes, and a hunger. He caught Dexter’s gaze, and he held, just long enough, just long enough to convey—strength, support, long enough to remind Dexter of the rhythm in his hands and the spoons, of the small cottage and the mountain, of the man on the altar.
He turned, and he moved forward, more swiftly now, winding between shadows and sliding bodies, as the congregation moved from the pews and filled the aisles. Dexter’s foot pressed lightly to the first step, and he lifted himself, feeling a long, slender leg slide over his smoothly, and away, moving between two other figures, slipping lower to the floor and back up. Winding and drawing himself upward. Second step, and third, dropping away behind and the world glowing red now: no candles, no dim overhead lighting, but flame, deep and burning, somewhere in the distance.
He stood atop the altar, and he saw that the young man had drawn free two of the serpents. The snakes coiled tightly around slender arms as they were lifted, as the chorus followed, as Reverend Sanders began a low, rumbling “Hallelujah.” Dexter stepped closer, standing directly across the tank from the young man who’d taken that place of power and death, who’d slipped his arms into the pattern and drawn the serpents free. The pattern had not slowed, it moved all around them, drifting from one image to the next and dragging tendrils of shadow over and around the altar.
“Who are you?” Dexter asked, voice low. “Why are you here?”
Sanders had turned, and his eyes were pure evil as he seemed to only just realize Dexter was there. “You should not be here,” the Reverend said, voice still a low chant. “You should not be here, you will disrupt it all.”
Then that face shifted. Dexter nearly stepped back as Sanders’ face melted to the leering, too-bright smile the young drummer had seen on only one other occasion. The bar. The bar where Brandt and Synthia had found them, where Liz had drawn her father/grandfather, and the music had drawn them in.
“I should be here,” Dexter said, ignoring the shift, ignoring everything but the pattern surrounding him, the sound and the images, and the voices whispering in and out of his mind. “No other can do as I can do. No one can find the pattern.”
“I can,” the young man’s chin lowered, and his eyes came level with Dexter’s. In that moment, Dexter knew him. In that moment, everything whirled, and he fought the sudden attack of vertigo to remain upright. He stared into his own face, his own face in years to come, and not so many years. A face that could not be staring across that tank at him.
“How . . .”
The man’s eyes grew sad, so sad that tears flowed suddenly down Dexter’s cheeks.
“I tried,” the man whispered. “I tried to put them back.”
Sanders was Payne was Reverend Forbes, was Sanders again and his laughter rocked the small church on its foundations, drowning thought and speech. Dexter lurched forward, but he was too late. The young man with Dexter’s face drove his hands back into the tank, the serpents still clutched tightly, and his face twisted in agony, immediate and desperate, as Sanders moved behind, pressing him close and holding him there as the serpents drove their fangs in deep, again and again, more and more of them, turning, and twisting, the pattern fallen to pain, and anger, and Dexter was falling forward, toward the tank, determined to stop it . . . to drive it all over on top of the bastard who wouldn’t stop laughing, but he fell, and fell, and nothing, hit nothing, until the floor, curling into a tight ball as Madeline’s kitchen shifted into place around him.
Brandt slid from the guitar strap and leaned the instrument against the wall. It started to fall, but Synthia reached out and gripped it, and with a quick and silent “thank you,” Brandt slipped from her side and was on the floor, kneeling over Dexter in seconds. Liz was there, as well, and Shaver not far behind. Madeline sat, stunned, staring at them all as if she saw nothing, her hand clutched to her breast.
“Dex,” Brandt said softly, shaking the drummer by his shoulder. Liz gathered up the spoons, laying them to both sides, and Shaver came up on the far side from where Brandt was kneeling. The two of them managed to gently turn Dexter over to his back. Liz handed Shaver a small glass of water, and Shaver dipped his fingers into it, splashing the cool liquid over his friend’s face.
“Hey,” Shaver said. “Wake the hell up.”
Dexter blinked slowly. His eyes flickered once, and then opened, and his hand slipped up to rub gingerly at a red spot on his forehead.
“Wha . . .” Then his gaze cleared, and he fought to sit up, Brandt and Shaver forcing him to move more slowly, and then lifting him to his feet and into one of the chairs.
Liz had moved to her mother’s side, leaning down and wrapping her in a hug.
“It’s all right, dear,” Madeline said at last, blinking. “You make sure that young man is okay.”
“I’ll live, ma’am,” Dexter said shakily. He turned to Brandt. “Did you see him?”
“Which him?” Brandt asked. “I saw ‘Reverend Payne,’ and I saw another Reverend—was that Sanders? I saw a young man who looked a lot like you, staring back at you over that tank.”
“That him,” Dexter nodded. His voice dulled, and he glanced at the floor. “I’m thinking I just l
earned something important. I’m thinking, maybe, that I wasn’t left on the doorstep of the church, or that my parents didn’t abandon me at all. Not one of them, anyway. I think I know how Sanders knew I’d be able to see the pattern. I think that was my father.”
They all grew silent then. Brandt, Synthia, and Shaver moved to put their instruments away, and Liz set yet another pot of coffee on to brew. Outside, the wind picked up slowly, until it was whistling through the trees, ushering in a heavy storm. Rain splashed against the windows, and they all gathered more closely around the table.
“Well,” Madeline said at last. “I hope you young folks won’t take this wrong, but I think that will be enough music for tonight.”
They all laughed at that, and as Liz poured the coffee, and the wind rose to a roar beyond the walls of the small home, they fell into a comfortable silence, waiting, and wondering for what.
Eighteen
Sunlight filtered in through the blinds, painting the kitchen in zebra-striped brilliance. The table was littered with empty coffee cups and the remnant of a half-eaten muffin on a paper plate. Dexter snored lightly, his head sideways on a pillow of arms, chair scooted back from the table.
The others had wandered off to various corners of the home to try and rest. Madeline had watched them all in silence, smiling despite all that had happened as Liz and Shaver slipped off together. It had been too long since she’d felt like a mother. A woman. Too long since she’d felt at all. The group of them, full of energy, and so—powerful—had energized her as well.
She and Dexter had been the only ones left, he sitting, hands clasped tightly around a final cup of coffee and she seated at the far end of the table, reading a passage from her Bible. They’d spoken quietly for a bit, but the words had trailed off. There wasn’t much left to say. Something was happening, something that was drawing them all in deeper and more fully with each passing moment.
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