The new god grimaced and pushed His way past me and into my living room. “Where’s the bed?”
I pointed. “Down the hallway, first door on the right.”
I followed the new god, three paces behind, as He staggered toward my bedroom. He collapsed onto my covers and within moments was asleep. I knelt by His side, ran my fingers through His hair, and sang (in a soft, whispering voice) a hymn in His praise.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see,
only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.
I grabbed a spare blanket from my linen closet (admittedly tattered, but at least clean) and covered Him with it. While He was asleep, I drove into town to buy some more discarded chicken heads from the slaughterhouse. The sudden appearance of the new god at my house startled me. I hadn’t planned for this. I needed advice.
* * *
The autumn sun was weak. The air, for the first time since April, had become chilly. The fire in the powdered chalk circle felt good. The eyes of the decapitated chickens stared in that unfocused way dead eyes seem to stare. When they burned, there was black smoke and gray smoke and a bit of a stench. But the worse of the smoke went away after a half hour or so, and I could live with the smell. If an unpleasant odor was part of the cost of communing with the head of John the Baptist, then it was a small price to pay.
When the worst of the smoke cleared, I ingested the sacred drugs. The last time I’d communed with my predecessor, his head had appeared in a manner like unto a burning bush: in the flames, yet not consumed by them. This time, however, it was as though the physical head wasn’t even there. I saw only a face made out of flame. With each Aramaic word coming out of his mouth, there was a gust of heat.
“This is the last you shall see of me. Your student seems very close to finishing His lessons.”
“I met Him tonight, for the first time. He just showed up, out of nowhere.”
The burning face smiled. “Gods do that. So, this is good news for you. You are indeed very close. At the end of the process. The sixth and seventh steps.”
“Well, I’m not entirely certain. You see, He didn’t bring His creation. There’s no real documentation He completed the fourth and fifth steps, or even the second and third.”
“You will need to ask Him about this, after He’s had His rest. It is not for nothing that I revealed unto you the Sevenfold Path. Surely, you’re not telling me this knowledge has been wasted.”
“We were communicating by epistle. I’d told Him about the second and third steps—that He must sicken His creation, then cure it. I was expecting Him to write me back with an account of His progress in these endeavors. I wasn’t even expecting the return letter for another day or two, to be truthful. Then He shows up to my house, unannounced, looking much bedraggled.”
The fire eyes widened. “This is unusual…the haste with which He seems to want apotheosis. I will warn you, once again, to beware those who seek the prize of godhood without going through all seven of the necessary steps. Shortcuts are the sign of greed, impatience. You may be raising a devil, not a god.”
“And yet, you still fade away. With each time you visit me, you grow less substantial. What if Gregory Bryce is a devil. I wouldn’t want to be a part of raising Him. We’d have to fight Him…you and I together, I couldn’t just fight Him alone.”
“Peace, hierophant! There are ways to deal with devils, just as there are ways to deal with gods. These ways are not as different as you think. As for your role in possibly raising a demon, I will only tell you this: you have no choice. The duty of leading Gregory Bryce through the Sevenfold Path fell to you. You cannot shirk it now. I see inside your heart of hearts, hierophant, and know you don’t want to shirk it. Not really. I know what makes you tick, you see. You seek vicarious glory. That’s the character flaw of all of us holy men. We are unable to achieve it in our own right, and so we seek it out in the service of a deity. The men of your time and place took all that away when they defrocked you. You were no longer welcome in the old god’s service. And so, for a man like you, what choice is there other than to seek out a new god? To create a new god where once there only stood a man, and to worship Him? If you raise a devil rather than a god, I tremble for our world…but I rejoice for you because you will finally have someone inviting you into His service, rather than shunning you from it.”
“You make it sound so easy to serve a devil! What would you know of such things? If I’m raising a devil, doesn’t that make me every bit as monstrous as He is?”
“You speak prematurely, hierophant. You must first clarify your student’s manner of proceeding along the Sevenfold Path. Let Him rest during the day, then prepare a meal for Him.”
“But that makes no sense. What need has He of food?”
“He will have gone quite a long time without it, and even those on the path to godhood need to keep their flesh-vessel afloat. Make Him a meal. Talk with Him. Find out how far He has truly proceeded down the Path, and then lead Him the rest of the way. You overcomplicate things, hierophant. If you simply stopped worrying and did what fate has called on you to do, you wouldn’t need to summon me. Now go, let me be. I grow weary of interacting with this plane of existence. Too many years. Let my spirit go.”
I hung my head and meditated, letting the vision slip from me. It was a painful thing—letting John go and then coming to, there on my isolated property on the outskirts of New Harmony. A man such as I wants and needs visions. It’s a steep fall—going from talking to a famous man from the Bible to awakening on a dull, cloudy autumn day in southern Indiana. I encouraged myself with the knowledge that the young man asleep in my bed wasn’t a man at all. Whether He be devil or god, one thing was certain: He was transcendent.
I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for supper.
* * *
I woke up to the sight of darkness outside my window and the smell of cooking meat. My bones ached. I got up and talked to the hierophant. “I need to brush my teeth. I need to use mouthwash.”
He wobbled over to the bathroom and started looking into his medicine cabinet. “Here’s a fresh brush, sire. The toothpaste is on the sink, right next to the mouthwash and Dixie Cups.”
I nodded. Brushed my teeth three times. Rinsed my mouth out six or seven times. Just to get that taste out. When I looked in the mirror, I noticed my face was starting to lose its opacity. Light was starting to seep through my skin in radiant twinkles. When the glow hit my eyes, they reflected a crystalline spectrum of colors.
My flesh was starting to slip away. “Slip away,” the gods of other galaxies mumbled. (Or, maybe, they said “Lips will sway,” I can’t be one hundred percent certain.) What I saw and what I heard made me smile. My body may have been bruised and defiled by Buster, but isn’t that the way of things? Hadn’t Christ been humiliated right before his apotheosis?
Everything would be okay.
When I was through tending to my teeth, I went out to the kitchen.
“While You were sleeping, I went to the store and got us some lamb. You like lamb?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”
“I think You’ll like it. I’m afraid all I have for a side dish is baked potatoes. Is that to Your liking, m’Lord?”
I wasn’t crazy about them, but I knew if I told the hierophant, it would drive him into a tizzy. So I nodded and said I didn’t mind it.
“And here’s some wine to go along with it.”
When the hierophant took out the corkscrew, I couldn’t help but think about the traitor, Arihiro. He who led me to believe I was being worshiped, when in fact I was being betrayed. A bitterness ricocheted through my mind, and I could feel the glow behind my face intensifying. When I became a full-fledged god, Takahashi would be among the first to pay for his sins.
The cork opened with a pop, and the red wine flowed into the glasses. �
�Red zinfandel,” the hierophant said. “I don’t know a lot about wine, but I suppose it goes well enough with lamb. I mean, I know technically You’re underage and all, but I suspect this isn’t the first time You’ll have imbibed a little drink. Moreover, such prohibitions are meaningless to one such as You, sire, eh?”
“I’ve drank before. But I’m not here to get drunk. I’m here to finish the process. If you don’t mind me being blunt, we really almost don’t have time for dinner. I need to get made into a god, as soon as possible. You see, the old god knows about the rebellion. He has his minions out looking for me.”
“Looking for You?”
“They want to stop my apotheosis. It’s your job to tell me how to become a god.”
“Yes, sire, and…if You’ll recall…that’s what I’ve been doing. Now, who’s looking for You?”
“Police.”
“Where did You last see them.”
“Well…back in Virginia. But back there the cops didn’t know it was me, you see. It’s in Maryland, mostly, that they’ll be looking for me. Unless they’re looking for my car and find it at the truck stop. That’s where my Hop-frog is, too.”
The hierophant sighed. “If I may be so bold, sire, this troubles me. Did You even get my last letter?”
“I was waiting for it when I had to leave.”
“Had to leave?”
There was no time to explain it all to him. “There was a problem…I made the mistake of trying to convert my roommate to my side. I thought he had actually been converted. Then he denied me, betrayed me. Told the police things. And because the cops are mired in the old god’s reality, they have no choice but to believe him. I was reaching out to him with mercy, you see. But the only ways the old god’s minions know how to respond to my mercy is to lash out at me. To confine and punish me!”
“I…well, I see.” He took a nibble of lamb and a quaff of wine. “So, I can understand Your urgency now.”
“You told me the first step, and I did that. I need to know the other six, and I need to know them now.”
The hierophant coughed. Wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Well, right now, there’s a letter in Your mailbox telling You what the second and third steps are. I mean, it’s either there in Your mailbox or it’ll get there tomorrow.”
“That won’t help me. Just tell me.”
The hierophant got up from the table. “I’ll do better than tell You, my liege, I’ll show You the notes I took after I received the message about the Sevenfold Path.” He went down the hallway and retrieved a stained, wrinkled sheet of notebook paper littered with ink scrawling. He’d been in a hurry when he’d written it. He’d not intended it for my eyes, but ended up passing it over for me to look at.
I held the paper in my hand and, finally, read all the steps of the Sevenfold Path at once:
I. USING ONLY YOUR MIND, MAKE A MAN
II. & III. YOU MUST SICKEN, THEN CURE, YOUR CREATURE
IV & V. YOU MUST KILL, THEN RESURRECT, YOUR CREATURE
VI & VII: YOU, YOURSELF, MUST DIE AND BE RESURRECTED
My hands trembled as I read the words. This was good news, indeed. In the end, Arihiro’s violence against Hop-frog would turn out to be a blessing, not a curse. For, by killing my creature, he forced me to resurrect him. And by resurrecting the creature, I had rushed ahead and completed the fifth step on the Sevenfold Path. I had jumped ahead! I told all of this to the hierophant.
He stretched. Bit his lip. “Your haste, m’Lord. It troubles me. It would have been better if You’d brought the creature with You and to proceed from—”
I pushed away from the table, grabbed the corkscrew, walked over to the hierophant and brandished it right in his face. “Are you telling me what I should’ve done, little man?”
He quaked. Fell prostrate on the floor. “N-no, m’liege. It’s just that…”
I put my shoe on his head, placed some of my weight on it, and said, “It’s just what, heirophant?”
“I-it’s just not what I had expected. It’s all happening so much differently than I’d thought. Forgive me, please.”
“I’ll forgive you when you help me with steps six and seven.”
“You are quite certain, sire?”
I swished my tongue around my mouth. That taste…the taste of…everything that happened with Buster….couldn’t get it out of my mouth. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
“Very well, sire. I’ll assist You. I suppose my fate will allow me nothing else but to assist You with these final steps.” His face took on this tight, hurt-looking grimace and he started to sob.
“I know, hierophant. You’re going to miss me. But I’m not going away for good. You know that. It’s just a change, not true death.”
“I’m Your servant,” the hierophant said. “I want to serve. I want to be a good follower. But I’m scared for You, sire.”
I took my foot away from his head. “You may rise, hierophant. I trust in your sincerity. You’re not like the boy I shared a room with at the college. You are a true believer.”
Now the hierophant was getting up off the floor and blubbering. “H-h-have I ever been anything else, sire? When I went out and about looking for a new god, and I first cast a glance at You…it was like…well…it was like I had found my life’s work. You were only fourteen then, sire. I had to wait for five long years before I revealed myself to You. When I couldn’t watch over You, I hired someone to do it for me. You have to understand. This is the end of…well…quite a long journey for me.”
“Endings…there are no endings here, hierophant. You should know that. I am without end. For both of us, this is just the beginning.”
He wiped the tears from his face, sniffled. “Then we should get started. Let me fetch the materials.”
He abandoned the dinner table and went out onto the porch, rummaging through a toolbox. He took out a couple of six-inch-long nails and kissed them. He stood up and placed one of the nails adjacent to my wrist, getting a sense—I guess—of how deep into the wood he could drive it. “Should work,” he said.
“That’s not going to hold my weight.”
The hierophant nodded. “You are, of course, correct, sire. I’ll use rope to actually fasten You to the cross. The nails are there for symbolic value. But in this kind of business, symbols aren’t frivolous. This will be a sign to show the old god that You’re able to take just as much pain—if not more—as he was able to take.”
I nodded, then looked up. I heard the gods of other galaxies cheering me on. “Out-die the old god,” they chanted in their alien-animal voices. “Out-fly the old god!”
The hierophant fetched a pile of rope and hung it around one shoulder. He carried the hammer and nails with him, in his hands, and walked outside. I followed him, carrying the ladder into the chill night air. Crickets chirped. The light from inside the house poked out of its windows, stabbing the night here and there but never making much of a wound. The light shining from underneath my face dimmed, then extinguished entirely. After a minute of walking, I was immersed in the darkness. On my own, I couldn’t have found my way. The hierophant guided me. Led the way toward my own personal Golgotha.
I’d noticed the cross off in the distance when Buster had dropped me off in front of the hierophant’s farmhouse earlier that day, but I hadn’t thought much of it. Such monuments to the old god dotted the landscape out here. There were probably half a dozen of them in the New Harmony area, alone. Now, I saw only the bottom of it. The little bit I could see looked a lot like a telephone pole. The rest was obscured by the darkness. Clouds blindfolded the moon and stars.
In darkness, the earth and the sky seemed not so different from each other. There on the hierophant’s lawn, I lost my bearings—could no longer tell up from down. Up was dark. Down was dark. The darkness felt round. I dropped the ladder. It felt like a cocoon was growing around me. A gust of wind slapped my cheek and a black residue of night stuck there, like tar. I felt the radiance under my face
stir once more in an attempt to burn away the blackness of night, only to have more night slather itself over top of me. Over my face. Over my body. Into my orifices. I tried to scream, but ended up only choking.
The hierophant rushed up to me. Started yapping at me like a frightened dog. I couldn’t hear what he was saying…not with the molten night clogging my ears. I could only hear the gods of other galaxies (who were, I supposed, strong enough to be heard even under such circumstances) mumble reassurance: “Cocoon—god soon. Cocoon—god soon.”
Then the thick black ooze of night worked its way into my eyes. No seeing. No hearing. I couldn’t understand. The whole point of apotheosis was to make me into a god—not into a blind, deaf, mute. I calmed down by reminding myself this wasn’t godhood, it was just a transitional stage en route to godhood. The gods of other galaxies even told me so.
“Cocoon—god soon…Cocoon—god soon…”
I sensed myself moving forward. I had no tactile sensation, but my muscles still had a sense they were moving. I sensed myself climbing steps. A ladder? A ladder up the cross? The muscles in my arms had a sense of moving backward, stretching out. Wide. Then a pummeling. The night-cocoon had covered my skin to such an extent that I didn’t feel the nails’ piercing, but my muscles—inside—felt their pummeling. First on my left wrist, then the right. Then on both ankles.
It hurt, but not as much as one would think. It made perfect sense. The cocoon was there to protect me, to insulate me from the worst of the pain. All gods must have been born this way. It had to be the only way they could endure the pain of apotheosis. The cocoon was all just part of the process.
There on the cross, I had a sensation of floating in the inky, oozing night. Of flying. “Die, god,” the gods of other galaxies sang. “Fly, god.”
I wanted nothing more than to die, but it seemed to be taking a long time. I started to fall asleep. In my naïveté, I thought that was dying. I invited it. Yes, night, I thought. Take me. Make me hibernate until I reawaken, glorified.
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