It was the one point on the trip when I wanted to give up. I considered, for a moment, whether there would be rope in one of those Amish tobacco barns. I considered, for a moment, if one of the barns had a loft, from which an aspiring god could hang himself and be done with it all—be done with this lonely rebellion in which those liberated from the control of the old god offered up not gratitude but disgust. The Arihiros of the world didn’t want freedom from the old god. That loathsome Jap probably wanted his old eyes back. Probably yearned to see the world as he had before!
He clung to the old god’s illusions even when I gave him a clear alternative. If little Arihiro could fight me in my efforts to enforce a new reality, how could I ever hope to grant the New Vision to the entire world?
A gust swept over the farmland, rustling the stumpy remains of tobacco plants and smacking me in the face. Whistling in my ears. When it abated, I once again heard the mumble of gods from other galaxies. They were louder than when I’d heard them in the dorm room. Perhaps, out here in the middle of nowhere, they felt they could speak more freely. Or perhaps I became more able to hear them with each passing mile westward. Maybe I was becoming more of a god, with each mile westward—my senses becoming better attuned to the same frequency of hearing as my brethren elsewhere in the universe.
“Not yet,” they seemed to mumble. Yes, that was what they were saying. Their voices were not merely louder than they’d been in the dorm room, but also clearer. These god-voices from other worlds sounded like wolves and insects and snakes. “Gods don’t die alone,” they said. “The old god wants you to die here, before the appointed time. Die later, or your death won’t be worth a dime.”
The gods of other galaxies made perfect sense. The old god would want nothing better than for me to end my own life in the dark, pungent squalor of a tobacco barn. The old god wanted me to abort my mission.
I would not let him get the better of me.
I got up off of the ground, brushed my jeans off, and went back to the car.
An Amish man walked out of the tobacco barn, clapped his hands free of dirt, turned around, saw me, and shuddered.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
For a second, I considered telling him the truth. “I am the new god,” I considered saying. “Traveling to New Harmony, Indiana, for my coronation. Kneel before me now, so you might become among the first to find my favor.” But I knew he was one of the old god’s creations and—after my experience with Arihiro—I knew conversion wasn’t that easy. I could’ve spent days trying to convert him. Removing his old eyes—diseased as they were, with the old god’s reality. Giving him new ones. Nursing him through the process. And, even after being as careful as possible, I could still end up without success. I didn’t have the time. I needed to get out to Indiana as soon as possible. So, I dodged his query.
“My identity and my present actions aren’t important, right now,” I said.
He appeared taken aback by this answer. “You need to get off my land.” He spoke in an odd sort of English. It wasn’t exactly like he had an accent, but it sounded forced. It lacked the cadence of English, as ordinarily spoken by native speakers. It wasn’t his language of choice.
“I was just resting.”
“Not on my land, you weren’t. You were trespassing.”
“I’m on my way to Indiana.”
“Fair enough. Then be on your way, please.”
I began to fumble with my car keys, jangling them from one hand across to the other. “I’m following the sun west.”
“Then go. Follow it, while it’s still there to follow. From the look of the sky, doesn’t look like you have long to use it as your guide. Just leave me and my land alone, now. Please.”
How quaint a notion. “His” land. In time, it would be mine.
I looked at my keys, and for the first time noticed how much longer the car key was compared to my post office key or the keys to my parents’ house. I began to wonder if, in a pinch, it could do the same trick the corkscrew had done in the dorm room. I didn’t want to have to do the same sort of surgery I’d performed on Arihiro, though. If I was going to evade the cops, I needed to get moving. My heart started to pound in my chest. Oh, how I wanted to let loose my wrath on this simple fool who dared treat me so condescendingly. Get off his land, eh?
He was pushing it. Part of me thought he probably wanted to egg me on. Maybe he saw through my subterfuge and realized I was the new god. Maybe he was a soldier loyal to the old god’s reality, and wanted to pick a fight. Taunt me. Tease me.
Could a god allow such things?
I remembered what the hierophant had written me: the part in his letters about how I was a wrathful god, but also a god not without mercy. He was Amish. Amish were pacifists. Not soldiers. Therefore, not a soldier of the old god’s reality?
I decided to err on the side of mercy. I would overlook his insults. I grabbed my car keys and started to walk back to the Honda.
Then that nasty little Amish man just had to start muttering to himself in that bastardized German-derived language of his.
The gods of other galaxies whispered in my ear, even more loudly and more clearly than I’d heard them while resting in the field. “Blasphemy,” they hissed, “the man blasphemes you! The old god would not tolerate such an insult. The Bible says: ‘...whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.’ Are you just going to stand there and take it?”
So the nasty little gnome of a man decided to mutter his insults in a language I couldn’t yet understand, eh? Little did he know the gods of other galaxies had my back.
I might have been a chump back in high school, back when people whispered insults about me all the time. But that was before I’d heard from the hierophant and realized I was soon to become a god.
I placed my car key between two knuckles, so that it seemed to grow out of my hand like a claw. Then I ran. My feet fell on the dry ground like the stampeding hooves of a bull. I let out a scream. The Amish man turned around. Then, together, we danced.
That’s what it seemed like, out there on the farm. I had elbow room out there. Room to grab his throat in my hands and whirl and twirl him around like a partner in a waltz. I imagined the sight—the gorgeous sight—of our silhouettes dancing the dance of justice against the backdrop of miles of farmland and the setting sun. I flung him to the ground and aimed for his eyes, but he deflected my thrust and so the key ended up lodging in a flap of flesh under his chin. Stunned, he muttered more Amish nonsense.
“Blasphemer! You’re in my reality now. Mine, not your old god’s. Mine!” I had my knees on his shoulders, pinning him down. I put one hand over his mouth. I had the other on my jingling keys. “When I take over,” I said, “I will ask humanity to make a covenant with me. And the sign of the covenant will the presence of new eyes—to see beyond the old god’s disguise.”
The Amish man squirmed. I used my car key like a handle, the rest of the keys like a mace and bashed the blasphemer in the head a few times. He whimpered.
“But for blasphemers, there shall be no new covenant. There shall only be blindness. No new eyes at all—just removal of the old ones. An outward and visible sign of your inward and spiritual disgrace!”
And then I went to work in earnest. I don’t think he really knew what was coming, because he panicked so much when my car key did its work. First his right eye. Then his left. It was rough work. Unpolished. I didn’t have scissors to snip away all the tendons. Bits and pieces of eye still rested in the socket. The sockets reminded me of birds’ nests. The tiny flecks of bloodstained gel remaining in there reminded me of newly hatched eggs. He squirmed. Of course he squirmed. He was squirming under the gaze of divine justice. He started to choke. He started to shake.
I laughed. Took my hand away from his mouth just long enough to slap him. Laughed some more, then put my hand back over his mouth.
His hands clenched his chest. He choked some mo
re. I took my hand away from his mouth to slap him again. I think he wanted to scream, but all that came out was a gasp. Then he put his hands on his chest again. He trembled some more. Shook like a marionette in the hands of a spastic puppeteer. His mouth foamed. He pissed himself and shit himself and that was the end of it.
The sun was starting to dip below the horizon. The searchlight was off to another continent; off to find would-be escapees. If that image was correct—if it was the old god’s searchlight—then I had managed to avoid getting nabbed. If that image was wrong—if it was indeed merely the beacon to the west—then I perhaps would lose my way.
But how could a god get lost?
“You are on the one, true path,” the gods of other galaxies said. “Let the blasphemer serve as an example.”
So I left the Amish man out there where he died. As an example to other blasphemers. I went to my car and fetched a piece of my yellow legal pad and a pen. I wrote in big letters, so no one could miss it:
THUS ALWAYS TO BLASPHEMERS
I thought about putting the note underneath the little Amish dude’s suspenders, but didn’t feel comfortable it’d stay put with the wind gusting around the field. So I managed to tuck it under his body. That was all his corpse was to me: a paperweight. His face wasn’t even worth slapping anymore.
I used a stray tobacco leaf to wipe pieces of eye meat off my hands, and then I climbed back into the Honda. As I began to place the key in the ignition, I noticed it was still slathered with the blasphemer’s gore. I wiped it off on my pants, started the engine, and drove down the road once again.
I felt much better than I did when I’d pulled over. My encounter with the blasphemer had heightened my resolve. I would keep driving west. I would not panic. The punishment of a blasphemer seemed to grant me greater focus. The sun was slipping away, and I turned on my headlights. I followed the old god’s spotlight for as long as I could. I’d never really thought about it, but the sun setting wasn’t as big a problem as I’d originally feared. I mean, I’d never really paid attention to it, but it wasn’t like the sky went from total light to total darkness. Even after the sun set, there was a bit of its light still lingering, enough for me to follow it. I wasn’t in the light or in the dark: I was in the in-between, and that would work for me, just fine.
Driving along the road, I passed another clip-clopping Amish buggy. I wondered if its occupants knew the blasphemer. Part of me felt tempted to steer the Honda right into them, because they were probably blasphemers, too. But that would be reckless. That would be killing.
I wasn’t a killer. The Amish guy had died, but I think he gave out from a heart attack. I couldn’t get it out of my head—the way he kept bringing his hand to his chest (as if that was going to do any good). It was, I think, the stress of gazing upon the face of an angry god that killed him; and for that he had no one to blame but himself.
But the police were bound to misunderstand. Just like they were bound to misunderstand what had happened with Arihiro. This seems to be the pattern of things. Before you become a god, you become a criminal.
Hop-frog let out a raspy groan. I looked over at him. “Tired already?”
My stomach started grumbling. I tried to ignore it, as I always did. I was a god. I had only meager nutritional needs to keep this carbon-based farce of flesh animated with my spirit. I could wait. I realized the safest thing for me to do would be to drive until I got out of the Baltimore and Washington areas. I needed to go someplace where the story about Arihiro wouldn’t be blaring out of every TV set. The last bit of Amish farmland faded away, yielding first to a tiny town and then—as I approached the Potomac River—swamp land. A sign told me I was 98 miles from Richmond.
When I arrived there, I would stop for gas. I would get a small bite of something to eat. I would buy a map. I would procure a weapon that suited me better than a car key.
* * *
Deputy Hollister shook Dr. Al-Refai’s hand, then the attorney’s. “I won’t be here long, Doc. Just a few questions to help us out with the investigation. I’m sure you’ll understand.”
“Please,” Dr. Al-Refai said, “be seated.” He went to a file cabinet and pulled out a folder, then joined the others around a small conference table.
“Ordinarily,” the lawyer said, “I would advise my client to invoke doctor-patient privilege here, Deputy. I’m sure you can understand that, with this being so early on, there remains a possibility that parties in this case may—perhaps while they’re in an angry, unreasonable mood—unfairly slap a civil suit against my client.”
“So you’re here to make sure he doesn’t put his foot in his mouth.”
“He’s here,” Dr. Al-Refai said, “as a precaution. If policemen had to pay malpractice insurance, you would—perhaps—be more sensitive.”
“All I want to know is where you think he might be.”
Dr. Al-Refai shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in over six weeks, the boy just started college. I have no information about where he would go, in this situation. He was perfectly stable when he was last in my care. I made certain he had plenty of refills of his medications. Something must have happened to him when he got down there. Something about his routine must have changed. He must not have been taking his medication as prescribed. This is not the patient I last treated.” He looked at his lawyer. The lawyer offered the doctor a slight nod.
“Did he ever talk to you about wanting to…injure people?”
“No, he did not.”
Hollister took out a notepad and began scribbling into it. “Now, just so we have some idea of what we’re up against, Doc, can you please tell me what Mr. Bryce’s diagnosis is?”
Al-Refai looked at his lawyer. The lawyer nodded. “Psychotic depression. A disturbance of both mood and his perception of reality. The medications kept that well in check for over a year. I can only assume he stopped taking them.”
“Was he ever into drugs, alcohol?”
Al-Refai looked at his lawyer. The lawyer whispered in his ear.
The deputy sighed. “You realize you’re not the one who’s a wanted man, don’t you, Doc?”
The lawyer answered. “There was never any mention, on either the patient’s part or on any family member’s part, of there being a substance abuse disorder.”
“Is that all, Deputy? I’ve had a long day, and I’d like to go home.”
The deputy cleared his throat. “Just one more question. Can you verify your patient’s height and weight? His driver’s license lists him as five-foot-eight, one hundred eighty-five pounds. That sound about right to you?”
Al-Refai glanced inside the folder he’d retrieved from the filing cabinet. “When I weighed him six weeks ago, he was up to two hundred seventeen pounds. The Stelazine—it’s known to trigger weight gain. Nasty side effect, but the lesser of two evils, you know?”
“Any distinguishing characteristics?”
“None. I won’t go so far as to say he looked normal. Even while medicated, this fellow would look like he had a lot on his mind. He was a serious-minded kid. But he didn’t have any tattoos or any of those crazy haircuts some of my patients used to wear five or ten years ago. I mean, he always came in here just wearing jeans, a T-shirt some days—maybe a button-down shirt other days. No scars. Nothing unusual, other than that expression on his face. That preoccupied look.”
The lawyer chimed in. “I think that’s enough for now, don’t you, Officer?”
The deputy filed through his notes. “I suppose. I can’t say how Sheriff DeWalt’s going to take it, though, when I tell him the biggest lead I’ve gotten so far is that this kid’s a little chunkier than we’d originally thought.”
The lawyer cleared his throat. “If the sheriff has any more questions, let him know he can have the state’s attorney for St. Edward’s County file a subpoena. Otherwise, I think we’re done.”
* * *
Sergeant Bache offered the campus policeman a cup of coffee. “It seems you were the last person
to get a good look at Bryce before he made tracks.”
The campus policeman nodded. He looked just about as miserable as a little boy whose puppy just got run over. “I did. He fed me some phony story about Takahashi going off with a prostitute.”
“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. I mean, of course you believed him. It made a hell of a lot more sense than the truth does, you know? I mean, if you had said to Bryce, ‘Open up the closet, I know you have your roommate incapacitated in there, and furthermore, I suspect you may just have plucked his eyes out,’ then you would’ve sounded like you’d belonged in the loony bin right next to him.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“You wanna be a cop when you graduate?”
“My father runs a private security company. I was planning to go into business with him.”
Bache fought the temptation to roll his eyes. No academy, no bustin’ ass on third shift to get a meager promotion to corporal. Just go straight from college to an office right next to Daddy’s. Must be nice. “So, you want to redeem yourself? Help catch Bryce? Give me some information we might be able to use?”
“When I saw him, he was wearing jeans and a dark blue T-shirt.”
“Anything written on the T-shirt? You know, logos, iron-ons?”
“Nothing like that. Just plain blue.”
“Did he look like he was getting ready to move anything? Did you see any packed bags, for example?”
The campus policeman sighed. “I wish I could say yes, but I didn’t.”
Bache paused. Took a sip out of his own coffee. “You look like you have something you want to say, though.”
“Well, by this point this isn’t exactly a news flash…but he was just so…odd. When I entered the room, he was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the closet. He said he was meditating. There were times during my questioning when he looked not-quite-there, you know. Looked like he was going to burst out laughing.”
I Am the New God Page 7