Perhaps I even did sleep, up there on that cross. Slept, that is, until the cocoon of night was pierced. It started at my feet. At first, it was an almost-cozy warmth, but that only lasted for a few seconds before it was replaced by the stinging soreness of burning.
I wanted to scream, but the part of the cocoon around my face still lingered there. The cocoon was dissolving, bottom up. It was turning to ash. It was only a matter of moments before swaths of the cocoon were torn away from my belly and my shoulders. Then, finally—unmercifully—from my chin, my cheeks, my nose, my eyes.
Then, only then, did I see and smell the surrounding flames. I glared down at the hierophant bastard, looked him in his beady little eyes as they glowed with the reflection of fire. While I was snoozing in my cocoon, he’d gathered kindling and set it ablaze at the foot of the cross.
When the fire finally reached my mouth, the cocoon of night shriveled and fell away. I screamed at him with blistered lips. “Why?!”
“I’m not certain,” the hierophant hollered, “if You are the new god or the new devil. On the one hand, Your insistence to rush through the Sevenfold Path makes perfect sense. On the other hand, I’ve been warned that such insistence only lingers in the diabolical heart. I didn’t know whether to crucify You or burn You at the stake. So, to be on the safe side, I’m doing both.”
* * *
Yes, it’s true, I burned Gregory Bryce after I crucified Him. Like the old god before Him, He asked why. Unlike the old god before Him, He got an answer—an answer I delivered as calmly as I could. He needed to know. Yes, in retrospect, I’m sure He may have found it disheartening that—up to that very moment—I was uncertain of just who He was. That’s my cross to bear.
To be sure, I had some concerns about my methods. The people around here are mostly the simple kind of folks who would just shrug if they saw a cross burning in the distance. They aren’t the kind of folks to call the cops over something like that. But there are, as I may have mentioned, no small number of would-be hippie philosophers out in these parts, and I suppose I was slightly worried they would mistake my ceremony for Ku Klux Klan activity. Lucky for me: with the right wood, a burning cross only looks like a burning cross for the first hour or two. After that, it just looks like a big bonfire. If anyone in town saw it from off in the distance, they probably assumed I was having some sort of autumn celebration.
Did I tremble while burning my Lord? Of course I did. There is a difference between merely reading the steps of the Sevenfold Path and actually watching them come to completion. Even my experience burning chicken heads hadn’t prepared me for the unique stench of human flesh meeting flame. I suppose, even if you brace yourself for it, there’s nothing that can really prepare you for that. I’m not a ghoul—it’s not that I was totally unaffected by what I was doing; but John the Baptist had been quite clear about exactly what one must do to walk the Sevenfold Path.
So I didn’t freak out. I kept calm enough to finish what I’d started.
I poured charcoal on the base, threw a bunch of lighter fluid into the mix. He was no longer a slender boy, so I had to constantly replace the fuel on the fire, so that the flames could consume Him. The whole thing took about six hours. I had enough supplies on hand to keep the fire burning nice and hot all through that time. For hours, I sat there in front of the flames, trying—the entire time—to find some trace of John the Baptist inside of them.
But he wasn’t there.
Then, round about two in the morning, I got out a hoe, climbed the ladder, and poked at my Lord’s remains. They started to fall apart. He was now just chips of bone and ash. When I prodded at His skull, it fissured with orange embers, then collapsed in a wisp of flame. When I prodded at His chest, it imploded and the entire charred cross fell down into the fire.
I had to fight the urge to throw myself on the pyre with Him, like some Hindu widow engaged in the ancient rite of suttee. But if I committed such an act, my ashes and bone would be mixed together with those of my Lord. I didn’t feel myself worthy of such an honor.
So I took out a fire extinguisher and did my best to douse the flames. It wasn’t as easy as they make it look like on TV. For one thing, my little handheld extinguisher didn’t kill the whole fire. It made a big dent though. When the fire got small enough, I smothered it under a musty old horse blanket I’d found in the barn. It took a while to extinguish it, and even as the eastern sky started to glow with the coming dawn, it wasn’t totally out. Flame still poked out, here and there. The ground still smoldered.
I went inside my house to the kitchen and retrieved salad tongs from a drawer. There were a few places under the cross that had cooled down enough to walk on. I stood there and looked for bits of His bones, then collected them with the tongs and set them aside to cool. Many of the fragments turned to dust during the collection process, but some didn’t. After about twenty minutes, I’d picked up as many of the fragments as I could. There was a residue of His dust on the ground. I went inside and fetched the envelope His most recent letter had come in. I took the letter out, went outside, and positioned the envelope onto the ground in such a way as I could blow some of His ashes into it. Some of them made it in there. Some of them blew off into a gust of wind. I tried to collect as many relics as possible. But I could only do so much.
I went back inside and hammered the bits of bone into pulp, and placed them in a mason jar. I poured the ash from the envelope in, too. Then I drove out to the labyrinth. The coolness of that autumn morning felt fresh. Dew still lingered on the plants that made up the labyrinth walls. I poured the new god’s dust out of the mason jar and into my palm, then scattered His ashes a little at a time as I tread the labyrinth. It felt like the right thing to do. I felt like a farmer scattering seed.
When I made it through the winding paths and reached the end point in the middle, I entered the cabin of contemplation, put the mason jar down and prayed. I was glad that I’d both crucified and burned Him. I’d covered all my bases. But if He was a devil and not a god, had I committed an act of black magick by scouring His dust over the labyrinth? Had I just reconsecrated this labyrinth to evil? Had I become evil?
As if to answer the question, there was a knock on the door. A moment after the knock, a man entered, wearing the blue and gray uniform of the New Harmony, Indiana, town marshal. It was old John Robb.
“Pardon me, Reverend…but I’ve had a call from, well, Maryland State Police. They want me to ask you some questions about a kid back east who’s gone missin’.”
The Last Phone Call
“Mrs. Bryce?”
“I thought I told you that I’m not speaking to you unless I have my attorney present.”
“I’m not calling to ask you questions, ma’am. I’m calling to update you about the status of our investigation.”
“You found Greg?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid not. But his car was found by Virginia State Police, at a truck stop.”
“So are you going to apologize for accusing me of harboring him?”
“Ma’am, that’s not what this is about…”
“What, you don’t think we deserve an apology?
“Ma’am…ma’am just let me finish. We have concerns that your son may have met with foul play in Richmond.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Lord. No!”
“Ma’am…please…I want to tell you about this but I need you to work with me here.”
In the background, the woman’s husband speaks. “What’s wrong, hon?”
“It’s Greg. They think someone in Virginia hurt him.”
“Ma’am…we’re not one hundred percent sure, but I need to update you about the investigation. He was last seen in the company of a truck driver with a record of several past assaults. Virginia State Police have sent out an APB to be on the lookout for him.”
“Assaults?
“R-rapes, ma’am. Against younger men. In some cases, minors.”
She starts to speak and her voice cracks halfway through
the first syllable. “You see! I told you he was more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator! You scared him. You scared him until he ran away and you scared him so much he couldn’t think straight and he…” The cracks in the woman’s voice grow into outright breaks. She’s crying, but screaming through the tears—as though grimly resolved that no amount of grief will overcome her anger. She’s screaming because she has cried enough—over Greg, over Daniel, over mental illness, over mental retardation, over her own apparently diseased womb, which was incapable of sprouting anything other than a deficient child. She’s screaming because she doesn’t deserve any of this. Because God, it seems, has forsaken her.
“Ma’am…I want to tell you more, but if you continue to be upset like this, I’m going to have to wait. Can you put your husband on the phone?”
Sniffles. A few sobs. Then a clearing of throat. Heightened resolve. “No…no I won’t put him on the phone. I can handle this conversation quite well on my own, thank you very much!”
“Very well, then. We have a few more leads and have procured a search warrant to look through your son’s post office box. He seemed to have been in communication with a religious fanatic in Indiana.”
“Religious fanatic?”
“Well, that’s putting it mildly, ma’am. A nutcase, truth be told…with some very strange notions about your son. We think he may have been heading west to seek refuge with this man when he ran afoul of the truck driver. After conferring with the local authorities, it seems pretty clear that your boy never made it out there. No one saw him come into town. No one saw him leave. There’s no trace of him there.”
“So, we think he’s with the truck driver?”
“Ma’am, we honestly don’t know. That would be the best-case scenario: that your son is still alive and riding along with the driver on some highway out there. Right now, Virginia State Police are attempting to get a hold of the trucking company, to find out where this fella is going to be dropping off his load.”
“Maybe he’s the one who hurt the foreign boy, too.”
A sigh. “No, ma’am. That doesn’t make any sense. We have no evidence of the driver having been in southern Maryland at the time of the assault. Your son is still the suspect in the attack on Mr. Takahashi.”
“But…I don’t understand. This should prove that he’s not the perpetrator of a crime. He’s the victim!”
Another sigh. “Ma’am…it’s more complicated than that. You want me to make things neat and tidy, to say he falls on one side of the fence or another. It ain’t that simple sometimes. We’re still at the early stages of trying to reconstruct what happened here, but what we do know is this isn’t your typical assault case. Nothing’s going to be simple about the way this shakes out. I don’t think it’s an either/or kind of thing. Your son isn’t just the perpetrator of a crime or just the victim. He’s both.”
Enthroned
Wanna hear a joke?
“What’s the difference between a god and a devil?”
“About two thousand years.”
Rim shot.
Who said that a god couldn’t have a sense of humor? Who said that a punch line couldn’t communicate an epiphany?
The little nugget of edification inside that joke is, of course, that “devil” is just the name given to a recently dethroned god. There is no essential difference between the two. Yes, heaven operates in much the same way as a banana republic. You denounce your predecessor and condemn him to infamy.
Take the Christian devil, for example. Beelzebub. Before he was the Christian devil, he was a Philistine god. Ba’al Zebub.
Devils are simply defeated gods. Gods are nothing more than future devils. It doesn’t matter if a transcendent force is considered benevolent or malevolent. All that matters is the transcendence.
The hierophant did well to both burn and crucify me. The hierophant is a wise man.
* * *
When my spirit initially arose out of the labyrinth and into heaven, I finally had a chance to see my great adversary, Christ. He was manifested before my eyes as a hunched-over, arthritic shadow. In a trembling, half-coherent voice, he tried to bargain with me. Had I not been aware of all the efforts he’d taken against me, I would’ve pitied him.
He’d used up all his energy trying to prevent my apotheosis, and that had failed. He knew it was futile to keep fighting me, so he tried to negotiate terms of surrender. His words were halting and slurred and twisted; only slightly clearer than the moans Daniel tried to make. “I g-g-give up,” he stammered. “H-h-have m-m-mercy.” He mumbled something about realizing the whole Cold War thing was a mistake. He said he’d already arranged things so that the Berlin Wall would soon fall. He said the Soviet Union would dissolve, as well. He wanted to make things right. He was concerned about his legacy.
I enjoyed a hearty laugh at his expense. For a moment, I considered keeping him on as my court jester. But that would have been cruel. And I am a god of mercy. So I lifted the sword of righteousness that lay, unused by his side (he’d grown too insubstantial to wield it). I picked it up and brandished it.
“Kneel,” I commanded him.
The Shadow-Christ whimpered and tried to flee. I sighed. I couldn’t have that. I didn’t want to stab him in the back, you see, but he gave me no choice. I thrust the sword of righteousness forward. It sliced through the Shadow-Christ, and slew him. I sliced him. Dissected him. Eviscerated him. By the time I was finished, there were just tiny shreds of shadow littering the throne room of heaven. Tiny bits of him scattered around, just like when Arihiro had torn apart Hop-frog.
Finally, the entire galaxy was mine to command.
I decided against destroying Earth entirely and rebuilding from scratch. I would, instead, twist the former god’s world. Redecorate it until no one would recognize that it had been anything other than my own. I began to melt the polar ice caps. That was the most efficient way to make new water. Better water. Water that would be loyal only to me.
The melting of the ice caps would take decades, so to entertain myself I created a whole other realm of existence. The digital world, cyberspace, whatever you want to call it. Instead of eliminating human consciousness, I would trap it among pixels. Trap it inside a world that surpassed the old god’s wildest imaginings and mocked any previous notion of “world without end.”
I created it, and it was good.
The Commonwealth of Virginia charged Buster the Truck Driver with my disappearance but ultimately let him go due to lack of evidence. However, it turns out that his employment with a cross-country trucking concern violated the terms of his parole. Thus, he ended up in prison anyway.
I saw to it that Trooper Rollins of the Virginia State Police came down with a bad case of herpes (contracted when he finally gave in to his urges to explore his own yearnings for the sort of ecstasy highway rest stops could offer). Certainly, I’d whispered various temptations in his ear to help that process along…encouraged him along the way. But I didn’t put the urge into his brain cells. The old god had done that when he’d made him. All I did was let the desire loose.
The hierophant was another suspect in my disappearance, but—again—without any trace of a body there was no way to convict him. Moreover, all his lawyers had to do was point to Buster the Truck Driver’s previous convictions and—in the blink of an eye—the jury had reasonable doubt. (Although, if he’d really needed my intervention, I would have provided it. He was always loyal to me. I am a just god. I repay loyalty.)
I wanted him to be the foundation upon which I’d build my church. But he didn’t seem too eager to spread the word. From my high perch in the throne room, I looked in on him. He seldom left the house anymore. He would pray to me. I’d speak to him. I’d tell him to spread the word. He said he feared coming out in support of my deity, for fear of the repercussions. He said the old god’s minions would fight him. Destroy him.
So I sent him help.
It made sense. I couldn’t start with just one
adherent. I’d need two (maybe three). The first one I convinced to join him was Bishop Jacob Yoder. The Amish almost never left their communities. I’m not certain an Amish bishop had ever left.
But with god, all things are possible. I told him where the hierophant lived. When he found the farmer’s body, he’d wondered whether it was an act of god or the devil. I encouraged that line of questioning—whipped it up into a fervor. He grew restless. He had to know more. He left the confines of his community.
The hierophant greeted him warmly. He’d grown lonely. They lived together in the farmhouse in New Harmony for months. The hierophant told the bishop what he knew of me. The bishop became convinced he needed to start a new community focused on my worship.
All of this was a good start, but it was missing something. Both the hierophant and the Amish bishop knew a little about my ministry on Earth, but neither of them knew about my unique sign of baptism.
Neither of them knew about the sign of the covenant.
Arihiro did.
Yes, Arihiro had denied my divinity, but St. Peter had denied Christ’s three times. If the old god could redeem his denier, then I should be able to as well. So I found him. He was in a long-term psychiatric group home in St. Edward’s County. He’d started to believe in me again. Begged for the staff to put seashells under his eyelids so that he might see my reality. Some doctors said this was post-traumatic stress disorder. Others said it was psychosis. But they all were in agreement he wasn’t a well man. He didn’t help matters by caving in to depression. The guilt of having denied me weighed too heavily on his heart. He’d had three unsuccessful suicide attempts.
He wasn’t meant to die. I had a plan for him.
I Am the New God Page 10