Bache rubbed his eyes. “He thought it was funny? Hrm. We’ll see how much the little bastard laughs when he’s fresh meat in county lockup. I mean, here’s the deal—sooner or later, he’s going to run out of gas or run out of money and need to go running back to Mommy and Daddy. When he does, we’ll nail him.”
“I questioned some of the other guys who live on the same hallway of Winchester with him. One of them said his girlfriend saw Bryce at Calvert Cliffs recently, he was screaming at her. Incoherent. Anyway—I’m not sure if that helps. I mean, there’s no guarantee he’d go back there. But it can’t hurt to poke around and ask if he’s been spotted there.”
“Thanks. I can pass that on to Joe Spendahl in Calvert County. Anything else you learn about Bryce from talking to the people who lived near him?”
“Not really. It’s like he was there, but not there, you know? People saw him, but he never talked to anyone. The Japanese guy never said much, either.”
“At least he had an excuse. I’ve heard his English isn’t great. We finally had to break down and arrange for a translator to take a decent statement from him. And even then, the translation didn’t make much sense. For the longest time, he just kept saying over and over, in Japanese, ‘Greg is god and god is Greg.’”
“Holy shit. You think Bryce, well, brainwashed him?”
“I think I’ll lose my lunch if I start to think too much about what went on between those two. I think all I can do now is work to track down the little psycho. And I think we need to cast our nets north to catch this fish. If he’s gone to Calvert Cliffs, that’s north. If he’s going back to Mommy and Daddy, that’s north. There’s three hours of road between St. Edward’s College and his parents’ house in Cecil County.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of road to cover.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to think of it this way: the longer the road, the more chances we have to catch him.”
* * *
Jacob Yoder, bishop for the Mechanicsville settlement, was the third member of the community to look upon the body. The first was the deceased’s wife, Ruth. The second was her full-grown son, Samuel. All three of them gazed at the man without eyes.
Jacob frowned at the sight of the first flies starting to swoop in and out of the sockets. “Have the crows already gotten him? They don’t often work so fast.” He turned to Samuel. “You say he was woodworking this afternoon?”
“Aye,” Samuel said. “He was going to come over this way to grab a saw he’d left behind. This isn’t something anyone here did. We should inform the policemen.”
“Not yet,” Jacob said. “Let me have a look at him first.” The bishop knelt next to the body. Put his hands on the dead man’s jaw and turned his head back and forth, almost as though he were playing with a child’s toy. He examined the body for other wounds, first on the front. He then turned him over. A piece of yellow paper was under the corpse.
Jacob read it. A grave expression overtook his face. He looked up at Samuel, trembling. “I must assemble the other elders. We won’t involve any outsiders yet. No one shall inform the police. This is no concern of theirs. This is the work of either the Lord or the Devil, I am not yet certain which.”
* * *
When I arrived in Richmond (just an hour or two after the thing with the Amish guy), I relaxed. Maybe I didn’t have the right to relax. Maybe cops would be out looking for my blue Honda, looking for my Maryland license plate. Looking for me. But I couldn’t stay tense all the time. I had to let myself feel happy, for a change. The evening was still young. It was just about seven p.m. I had no idea how far New Harmony, Indiana, was from Richmond, but I tried to convince myself that if I just kept moving west, I could get there before dawn.
The cops wouldn’t be looking for me there.
The Honda needed gas and my body needed food. So I pulled over into a truck stop. It was a pathetic-looking, grimy building with grimy people filing in and out of it. They had gas pumps, of course. They had a motel there, too, along with a general store and a hole-in-the-wall diner.
I decided to leave Hop-frog in the car, at least for a little while. I’d bring him back some table scraps in a doggy bag. It felt good to stretch my legs again. It was good to find a place that sold maps. There was one entitled “The Mid-Atlantic States,” which covered a broad swath of the East Coast. Another was dedicated to just Virginia and West Virginia. They were the kind of big maps you had to unfold to get a good look at them.
I was about to start unfolding the one that included West Virginia (west, always west, until I hit Indiana) when a hand fell on my shoulder.
“You look lost.”
I turned around. A guy in his midthirties with a thin, reddish blond beard and even thinner, receding hair stared back at me. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, a jean jacket, and sneakers. A light blue handkerchief was tucked in his rear pocket. He had a little hoop earring in his right ear.
“I’m going to Indiana,” I said.
“Long trip ahead of you, but not as long as mine. You’re looking at the wrong maps, by the way. What you want is one of them Interstate atlases.” He grabbed a thin book from the bottom magazine shelf. Right next to the girly magazines. It was the last one left. He handed it to me. It was published by Triple-A. It showed all the roads in all the states. I started to flip through it. It looked like a good book to have on the journey.
“Thanks a lot for your help.” I turned and started toward the counter.
“What part of Indiana you goin’ to?”
I craned my neck around (entertaining the idea he might help me with the trip to New Harmony), but thought better of it. I walked back toward the counter.
“Wait! Maybe I could give you some more directions. I mean, it has to be a bummer, traveling all alone, eh? I mean, without a navigator. What I mean is, I know what it’s like, and I don’t like traveling alone. Sometimes, it’s awful nice to have company.” He smiled at me. “Don’t you think it’s awful nice to have company sometimes?”
“I guess.”
“Take it from the voice of experience, junior, it sucks to travel to someplace as far as Indiana alone. You’ve probably never even been there before, have ya?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Are you even out of high school, junior?”
I sighed, started to jingle my car keys around in my hand, a little nervous-like. “Don’t call me that.” If we’d been out in the middle of nowhere, I would have shown him just who he was dealing with.
He stepped toward me. Lowered his voice. “Say, how old are you?”
“What do you mean, how old am I? Why do you care?“
“I’m just a friend, that’s all.” He grabbed the Triple-A atlas out of my hand. “For example, I’m enough of a friend that I’ll pay for this, that way you can save your money. I mean, I’m sure you don’t have an unlimited supply of cash for this trip of yours.” He started to laugh, then sauntered over to the counter.
“I have plenty of money.”
“Think of it as a little kindness, junior. I guess you could say I’m the kind of guy who always feels sorry for little waifs.”
I would have hit him in the face, but he was a bigger dude than Arihiro. Bigger than the Amish guy. I’m not saying I couldn’t have done it, I’m just saying it would’ve been harder. Still, even taking that into consideration, I would have hit him in the face (or even worse) for blasphemy, if it wasn’t for the fact a couple of cops had just walked in.
“You looked like you were about to slap me! Aren’t you quite the spitfire, eh?”
“Look, let me have the atlas.”
“Nope, let me get it for you. I insist.”
I went along with him. He was the lesser of two evils. The police were the ones who actually had the power to deter me from becoming a full-fledged god. The blond man was just a nuisance. We went up to the counter together. The cashier lady looked at us funny.
“Now, Buster, what do you need a Triple-A road atlas f
or? Don’t you already got one?”
“It’s for my friend.”
The lady behind the counter rolled her eyes. “You and your ‘friends.’”
He smiled. “Maybe your problem is you don’t have enough friends.”
She counted out his change and shoved it back to him, smirking. “Maybe my problem is I have to put up with assholes like you.” She handed the atlas to him.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad. You won’t see me again for another month or two. I’m headin’ out to make a run to St. Louis, and then I’ll be going north from there. Oh, and can I have that in a bag?”
The woman sighed, and did as Buster requested. Then he looked at me and smiled. He was missing teeth, and those remaining were every bit as filthy as the outside of the store. “C’mon, let’s make tracks.”
“Gimme the atlas,” I demanded.
“Let’s you and I talk first.”
I folded my arms across my chest. Bit my lip. Jangled my keys in my hand. “We’ve done enough talking. Give it to me!” I made a move for it. I was able to snag a corner of the plastic bag in my hand. He pulled it back, giggling. “What do you think you’re doing, you fucking spaz?”
One of the cops made eye contact with us. Started walking our way. He had a doughy face, as though his flesh was clay that hadn’t yet been placed in the kiln. It had a molten quality. Unfixed. The flesh seemed to wobble around on his face like a mask that was too big for its wearer.
“Is everything all right over here, gentlemen?”
“Perfectly fine, Officer,” Buster said. “Don’t mind my friend here. He’s just a little tired from being on the road for so long.”
The cop looked at me, then looked at Buster, then looked back at me. He sighed. “If I were you, I would get back on that damned road just as soon as you can.”
Buster smirked. “Yes, sir, Officer.”
The cop opened the door for us with his right hand and pointed to the parking lot with his left. “Now git!”
The loose-flesh cop was an annoyance. If anyone deserved to be blinded, he did. His last name (“Rollins”) was inscribed on a plastic badge on his uniform. I remembered the name, in hopes that one day I would have the opportunity to avenge his insulting treatment. But, on the positive side, he seemed to completely miss the fact that I was on the run. He’d looked right at me. Held the fucking door open for me!
I grinned.
“My car’s over here,” I told Buster.
“Hey, I forgot to ask you. You got anything to eat?”
“I’ll probably go back in and get a bite.”
Buster sneered. “Back in there? With that fucking highway patrol pig? Maybe not the smartest idea there, junior.”
I got up in his face. “Fuck off with the ‘junior’ and give me my atlas.”
“What a fucking whiner. You need to get a good, hearty meal in your fucking mouth to keep you from squawkin’. I’ll give you your atlas, but first you need to get somethin’ to eat. I got somethin’ for you to snack on, if you want.”
The gods from other galaxies—those wolf-voices and insect-voices and serpent-voices—started to wail, then moan, then scream, then shriek. Buster said something to me. I saw his lips flap, but couldn’t make out the words over all the god-sounds. Then the night started to melt around me, like the wax of a black candle. The sky (and the stars, and the moon) curled up in a deformed river of molten material. Hot black globs of it rained down on the parking lot, hissing when they landed.
The old god’s reality was coming apart. His hold over reality weakening. Mine, on the other hand, was getting stronger. The gods of other galaxies were my allies as I worked toward overthrowing him. He had to expend energy in guiding the police as they searched for me, which distracted him from the task of maintaining the illusions of reality. He no longer seemed to have the energy to do both. I was winning. But it was not without peril. When the old god’s reality started to break apart around me, I became disoriented. Caught up in vertigo. I had to brace myself against a propane tank outside the store so I wouldn’t fall onto the ground. I covered my ears, the gods of other galaxies were so loud.
Buster took me by the elbow and led me toward his melting tractor-trailer. “Fucking spaz!” he kept on saying. “Fucking, fucked-up spaz.” Then he giggled. With every hyena-like whinny coughed up from his throat, he seemed to lose more teeth. They weren’t breaking apart, though. Like the sky and like his truck, they were melting. Yellow, stained globs of wax trickled out of Buster’s mouth.
He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was as unreal as the sky.
He put the key in the ignition. The cab rattled. I didn’t like this. Hop-frog was back in my car. I would need to show Hop-frog to the hierophant to become a god. What would he say if I showed up in New Harmony, Indiana, empty-handed? The tractor-trailer started to lurch away from the curb. The steering wheel was melting in Buster’s grasp, but he kept on turning it, undeterred. When I tried to grab the door handle, he pushed a button.
The man was trying to lock me in. Me. A fucking soon-to-be god. I responded by kicking the door. Then the window. Neither budged.
Buster stopped the truck. Grabbed my hair. Pulled it back with his right hand while fetching something from under the driver’s seat with his left. The gun was melting like chocolate in his hand. I laughed when he shoved it in my face and part of it smeared off onto my nose.
“That’s not the usual reaction I get when I point a pistol in someone’s face, you fucking loon. You think I’m not going to use it on you, just because you’ve got a sweet-lookin’ mouth? Is that what you think? Well think again, spitfire! Use that little loony brain of yours to get it through your skull I don’t care how young you are—I’ll cap your motherfuckin’ ass.”
He jammed the pistol in my face, and the barrel started to sag like a flaccid dick. How could I not howl with laughter?
Buster gritted his teeth, grabbed the gun by the flaccid end, and started to whip the handle across my face. I howled. My cheekbone cracked. The gods of other galaxies gasped. I saw black and I saw white and I saw it start to swirl together. Then I heard the revving of an engine, and I felt us move forward.
* * *
When I came to, we were pulling off the interstate and into a town called White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The old god appeared to have used the period of time while I was asleep to stitch the fabric of reality back together. Neither the sky, nor the truck, nor Buster’s gun, nor Buster were melting now.
My head didn’t feel so hot. My stomach growled. The digestive machinery needed fueling.
“I know just what your problem is,” Buster said. “You probably need something to eat.”
He pulled the tractor-trailer into a dark, empty grocery store parking lot. The truck rumbled over the cracks and speed bumps on the pavement. He cut off the headlights, grabbed me by the hair, and put my face against his crotch. There was denim. There was a metal zipper. There was his carbon-based seed-infusion device sticking out of it. “Suck it, spitfire. I can tell by the way you sashay that faggot ass of yours it’s not your first time.”
When Buster’s seed-infusion device wormed its way into my mouth, the gods of other galaxies started crying.
The Passion of Gregory Bryce
It pains me to admit I didn’t recognize the new god when He arrived on my doorstep. Perhaps this is because I hadn’t expected to meet Him at all. Not, at least, until we had gotten to the final two steps on the Sevenfold Path to Godhood. We were only at step three—and hadn’t even completed that, by my reckoning. Or, I may have not recognized Him because His arrival woke me up. He’d knocked on my door at nine a.m. and ever since I was shooed out of church ministry, I’ve let myself linger in bed until ten. Or, it may have been that He looked so different than I’d expected Him to look. His clothes had gone days without washing. The child I’d spied at the bus stop five years ago was clean cut. He’d gotten heavy. The child I’d seen was skinny as a rail. His features had matur
ed a little, but His chubbiness gave Him a cherubic baby face (marred only by swelling and bruising over one cheek). He didn’t look nineteen. I knew it was Him, though, because He had one of my letters in His hand when He introduced himself.
“Are you the hierophant?”
I nodded, and began to feel my legs tremble.
“I am the new god,” He said. “I didn’t have any way to get your phone number, so I just used the return address on your letter to find the place.”
I fell to my knees. “My Lord! Forgive me for not recognizing You immediately.”
“I…I need to rest.”
“Of course, sire. And, it would appear You could benefit from, well…that is…some ice for Your injuries.”
“No ice. Just sleep.”
“Yes, of course. If You’d like, You can sleep in my bed. I wish I had clean sheets for You, but—alas—I only use one pair. To clean them, I’d have to take them off the bed and You’d be placed in the position of needing to wait to use them. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, my liege, if I knew I was responsible for delaying Your rest. I can lay down a clean sleeping bag for You in the bed. Please forgive the lack of preparation for Your arrival. It’s just I was expecting to next hear from You by mail. B-but d-don’t misunderstand me, sire. I am honored You chose to visit Your humble servant. May I ask, m’Lord, if Your creature is here with You? I, I w-would very much like; that is, I would be greatly honored if You could allow I, Your humble servant, to gaze upon the creation myself.”
The new god brought His hand up to His forehead and ran His fingers through a tangle of unwashed, dark brown hair. “I, I didn’t bring him.”
I swallowed. “I see. Is it in Your car?”
“I didn’t drive all the way out here. I got a ride. My creature…well, Hop-frog was his name, he…he got left behind in Richmond.”
“But, Lord, if I may be so bold as to point out to You, we will be needing Your creation for—”
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