Cipher smiled. He understood the joke better than anyone now. He wouldn’t wish the touch of God on any mortal. “I’ll never feel as good as I did that first time,” Han said, his voice becoming as cold as the tomb that held his hopes and dreams.
“Just chill out for a while. I’ll take care of everything,” Cipher said as Han seemed to drift away; the drug-induced stupor was as close as either of them could come to an escape. Part of him was envious, wishing that he could join his friend, but a larger part of him was glad to be free from the drugs. Physically, he’d never felt better; an unexpected consequence of his training regimen was that it had improved his mood dramatically. It was difficult to maintain a positive outlook on life when one knew the truth of existence as Cipher did, but having a purpose helped. Even now, after the failure of his sortie, he had hope. He had stabbed God; no one had ever wounded that creature before, and if it could be wounded, it could be killed.
Cipher finished gathering his computer equipment, packing up his case, and filling a duffle bag with wires and sound equipment. When he had all he could carry, he awkwardly began to work his way to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited as he traveled down the twenty-three floors to the lobby. When he arrived, he gathered his equipment back up and made his way to the front of the building, where Han’s car was parked, and used Han’s key to pop open the trunk. It was a clear night, and the street was empty. The trees swayed slightly in the cool summer breeze; it would have been a lovely night, but it was moonless and dark and the emptiness of the street highlighted a feeling of alienation. Even though he had Han and Father Hurley, his was a lonely life. Humanity believed a lie and was imprisoned and doomed, and he was one of a very few who knew it.
As soon as he was finished tossing his bags in the trunk, he slammed it shut. He then suddenly became rigid with fright as he saw a figure in the reflection of the back window of the vehicle. He whirled to confirm that he was no longer alone on the black, empty street. Cipher’s father had come to say hello.
There was only one problem with that: His father had killed himself more than thirteen years earlier.
4
Caiaphas had elegant tastes. He didn’t just adorn himself in the best clothes, eat the best food, and drink the finest wines because he wanted to portray a certain image; Caiaphas couldn’t have cared less what mere mortals thought, assuming the humans could conjure a worthy thought at all. Caiaphas surrounded himself in the finest because he loved the indulgences of the mortal plane just as much as he despised the more oily, odorous corners of civilization—and this bar certainly qualified as the latter. He shuddered to think about what the alcohol-soaked, peanut-shelled floor of the establishment would do to the stretched baby calfskin leather of his new Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. Serving God on the mortal plane certainly provided the benefit of enormous wealth, but like most heavenly blessings, it had its drawbacks as well.
He stepped lightly, careful to avoid the dampest areas of the floor, and pulled out his durable, double-ply, English-style handkerchief, making the regrettable but graceful decision to sacrifice it in the name of saving his sleek, flat-front Burberry cotton trousers. He placed it on the decaying, splintered bench of the booth where Officer Roche’s ample frame was docked. Roche barely looked up from the red sauce coating the chicken wings clutched between his meaty paws and blubberous opposable digits. Some of the sauce had made it into the several-days’ beard growth that forested Roche’s convex cheeks; Caiaphas briefly wondered how many days the sauce might remain there.
“Thanks for meetin’ me here,” Roche began gruffly, breathing spicy sauce at Caiaphas, “I was starving. I needed food.”
That is not food, Caiaphas thought as he surveyed the destruction of several chickens. Real food would’ve consisted of a mushroom risotto with shaved truffles, or beef tenderloin with pan-seared foie gras on cauliflower-horseradish purée. Real food was lobster ravioli with vanilla butter sauce. “Anything to accommodate our city’s finest,” he replied with a perfect smile, flashing perfectly straight, snowflake-white teeth. “Our organization could not exist without the help and protection of those guarding the status quo.”
“Don’t mention it,” Roche replied, chicken fragments threatening to strangle his words. He freed one claw from his pre-killed prey just long enough to toss a thin manila folder on the table, complete with red, saucy claw-prints. “Like I said, we got a match on your perp.”
“Wonderful,” replied Caiaphas, his smile shifting almost immediately into a grimace as he considered how he should handle the situation; his handkerchief was already under his bottom, so it would require a quick flick of his pinky finger to open the folder. It swung open to reveal a black and white photo of Andrew Marlow, aka Cipher.
“Turned out he had a record. Not what I was expecting, considering you guys’ interest in him, I figured him to be a serial killer or something. He’s just a computer hacker. He’s stolen a lot of money that way, through the Internets.”
“Indeed.”
“They let him walk though. He was a good boy and his parole ended a little over a year ago.”
“No, Officer Roche, I assure you that we’re dealing with a very, very bad boy.”
“What did he do?”
Roche’s question was met with a freon upward glance from Caiaphas.
“I’m sorry. I was just curious. I didn’t mean any harm,” Roche muttered into his chicken, bowing his head like a dog caught traipsing over an antique couch.
“Your ignorance is for your own protection, Officer Roche. If you and people like you knew of the intricacies governing the system in which you live, that system would no longer be able to function. Life as you know it would end.” Caiaphas leaned over the surface of the table, careful not to allow his silk Armani tie to make contact, and lowered his voice as he continued, “And so if I were to tell you, your life would be forfeited, and it would not be me that you would have to worry about, as I am just an intermediary. It would be…something much worse.” Caiaphas smiled again as the words finished slipping through his glossed lips.
Officer Roche, on the other hand, took a moment before remembering to breathe, then exhaled hard and gasped immediately for more air as he stuttered to repeat his earlier apology. “I was just, uh...curious. I didn’t mean any—”
“Not to worry, my good man,” Caiaphas said, waving away the clumsy attempt at speech. “Just remember, when dealing with us, ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is...safety.”
“Would you like us to go get this guy? We’d be happy to do the usual to him. He could be all disappeared by the time the sun comes up,” Roche offered, eager to demonstrate his willingness to obey.
“No, Officer Roche. This one is special. We will deal with him.”
5
It was one of those nights.
Things had been bad for a long time—for years—and it seemed it would be that way forever. Andrew lived alone with his father (his mother had found a man with his own brokerage firm while sipping a latte one summer day two years earlier, then found the nearest exit from their lives), and now it was up to father and son to live with the father’s demons.
Andrew’s father had never really been well, at least not as long as Andrew could remember. If the man had ever been mentally well, it was before his own father, Andrew’s grandfather, had been kidnapped from their home by British soldiers for being a member of the IRA and was summarily tortured to death in prison. From that moment on, Andrew’s father, Charles Marlow, was a dead man walking; the only question left to be answered was how many people he would take with him. The answer to that question: a lot.
Charlie had been the leader of a terrorist cell in Belfast, an IRA battalion, and his cell had been extremely successful. Their young leader had a thirst for revenge and vengeance that could never be quenched, something his superiors exploited to its full potential. The young Charlie was an expert sniper, but even more impressive was his knife-wielding ability and his creatively horrific ways of m
aking sure the British soldiers he murdered always made it into the national headlines. Their favorite of these sadistic deeds was the castration of four soldiers, each found the next morning with one of the other’s genitals stuffed into his mouth.
However, as with all wars, no matter how brutal the resistance, the oppressor’s brutality always trumped. Even in his mid-twenties, Charlie lived at home, as did all poor Catholics, with his mother and five younger brothers and sisters as flatmates. His phone was tapped, and once the British were satisfied that they’d heard the names of every member of Charlie’s battalion, they stormed his home, tore it to the ground, blew up his car under the guise that is was suspected of being rigged with explosives, and dragged Charlie away to show him where his father had been killed. He was tortured for the next twenty-four hours, during which every member of his cell was arrested; only then was he summarily released. They had more than enough to book him, but that wasn’t the intention of the British. Their traditional powdered-wigged courts were slow; they knew Charlie might live for years, filing appeals, perhaps even drumming up sympathy in the court of public opinion. No, what was needed for Charlie was swift justice—the kind of justice they knew the IRA would gladly dole out to a traitor.
Charlie walked out of the relative safety of a British prison and torture and into the world—a new, vast prison from which there was, seemingly, no escape. Within a half-hour, a gray van pulled up next to him. The doors opened, and four extraordinarily grim men set their gaze upon the next soul to be liberated from its body. Charlie didn’t hesitate to comply. He bowed his head and stepped into the van.
He was driven to a house in the country, outside of Belfast, and tortured—far worse than what the British had done to him. These were his people. Charlie never described the events that took place inside of that house to anyone as long as he lived, though he did once tell Andrew while drinking a late-night pitcher of beer something about a car battery and a bathtub. What actually happened to him had been lost to the ages, but Andrew always thought it was odd that his father had a complete set of false teeth, even when Andrew was just a preschooler and Charlie was not yet thirty.
At any rate, Charlie survived the ordeal. Somehow, he convinced the men who were using his body as a canvas for trauma that he had not given away the names of the members of his battalion. He was released on the condition that he would leave the country immediately; he did so with the help of a second cousin, who helped him land a job in the New World. Charlie, still only in his twenties at the time, was exiled and excommunicated, and his part in the war for his country was over.
Nevertheless, the battles were not over for Charlie. Though he’d left one war, he’d enlisted in another: the battle to stop killing. He had always marveled at how easy it was to kill after he’d made the decision to do so; much more difficult was switching it off. He held on to his mask of sanity as long as he could. He even met a woman, married her, had a child, and moved up in the company, following the roadmap of modern human existence. Yet this was not fulfilling. When his wife’s body became too familiar and lost its ability to excite him, he began to see her as the bars of a new cage, and he rattled those bars as often as he could.
Before long, the cage doors opened, but there was still a problem: that godforsaken child.
Andrew reached his teenage years and Charlie saw the boy as spoiled. When Charlie was a lad, he had to fend for himself. This boy had shoes on his feet and clothes on his back. What else did he want? Why wouldn’t he just leave Charlie alone? Why did he have this constant reminder of that gold-digging bitch to drag around with him, draining him, manacled onto his ankle, creaking and scratching every time Charlie wanted some fun—a drink, a drug, a woman. Why couldn’t Andrew just disappear?
One night, the answer came to Charlie: If the boy would not take a hint and disappear, he would make the boy disappear. After a few too many sniffs of a particularly potent cocaine and a late-night argument with another bitch on the phone, Charlie went upstairs, got his gun out of his bedroom closet, walked into his son’s bedroom, and opened fire into his sleeping son’s back.
Only after the sound of the two shots snapped him partially back to reality did he realized the gravity of what he’d done. He had been a fool! He was high and wasn’t thinking clearly. He had forgotten to do anything to muzzle the sound. The neighbors would have heard the blasts for sure, and before long large men with guns and badges would be entering his home…again.
No. Not this time. He moved the muzzle to his temple and squeezed the trigger, taking himself as his final victim.
6
Charlie opened his eyes, but it seemed he could barely see. It was oppressively dark. There were black, slow-moving shapes on the walls, and in the distance there was a faint, twinkling white light.
“Dad?” his son’s distorted voice spoke, though it wasn’t clear where the voice was coming from.
Charlie spun toward the beckoning and saw his son standing not far from him, still in his boxer shorts and socks, the outfit the kid always wore to bed. Charlie’s head was clear, as he was free from his body; there was no such thing as being high in the tunnel between Heaven and Earth. “I-I’ve killed us,” Charlie whispered.
Andrew didn’t respond. As far as he knew, he was simply caught in a nightmare—an unusually vivid nightmare for sure, but a nightmare—it had to be a nightmare.
“I’ve killed us, yet I still can’t get away from you,” Charlie whimpered. “I can’t live for an eternity with you. I wanted you to go away. Then I wanted to go away myself. But this? I can’t stand the sight of you anymore, you little puke.”
Charlie’s voice was beginning to quiver, and Andrew knew the signs all too well: This was the beginning of a rage. He began to freeze, just as he’d always done, enclosing himself in an invisible bubble of protective disconnection from reality. It was better to stay perfectly still and just endure it; there was nothing that could be done when his father needed to abuse him.
“Why…won’t…you…go…away?” his father bellowed at him in a voice that sounded more menacing, more shaky than usual, reaching a level of amplitude and a viciousness that could never be attained in the real world. Andrew felt that this was one of the worst nightmares he had ever endured. His father’s face was distorted and twisted into inhuman and unnatural contortions.
Why can't I wake up? Why can't I just wake up?
Charlie lunged with preternatural ferociousness and wrapped his hands around Andrew’s neck. He began to push hard against the boy’s throat, trying to suffocate him, but no matter how hard he pushed, Andrew seemed to be fine.
“Stop please,” Andrew pleaded.
Charlie’s eyes suddenly widened. “This is a nightmare! I-I can’t kill you,” he said, releasing his grip.
Andrew’s eyes left his father’s when he realized that the white light in the distance had seemingly traveled toward them, down the tunnel; it was now very close and extraordinarily white. Its glow wasn’t physically warm, but somehow seemed warm nonetheless.
Charlie felt the glow and saw the look in his son’s eyes, then turned to face the light. “Heh. So that is the white light, is it? Does death have to be so fucking cliché?” He stepped toward the light and examined the portal. “What now? Am I to pass through and start singing ‘Kumbaya’ and accept Jesus into my heart? Heh. That's not going to work on me.”
Andrew’s eyes were wide as he watched the silhouetted frame of his father standing against the white orb. The light shone brightly, yet the whiteness was so perfect that one couldn’t help but notice the absence of anything else; it was empty—a big, white nothingness, a zero. “A cipher,” Andrew whispered to himself.
Suddenly, the white void filled with something. With a screech that could not possibly be reproduced by any living thing or machine on Earth, the sound of the wall between dimensions being torn asunder, angels burning with the eternal flames of their caste, sprang from the white light and pounced on Charlie. He fell backward as two an
gels became three, then four. They clutched his clothing and pulled his hair, hoisting him quickly to his feet. Charlie screamed; oh, how Charlie screamed. It was a banshee’s wail that Cipher still awoke to at night, even thirteen years later.
“Andrew! Andy! Save me! Save me!” Charlie wildly twisted his body and desperately looked back at his son, who was still on his back a couple of meters away.
But the unwanted son couldn’t move. The sight before him was paralyzing.
His father’s pointing and screaming had alerted the angels to Andrew’s presence; one of them had fixed its glowing eyes on new prey. It bounded toward Andrew and was upon him in moments. The angel grasped Andrew’s hair and yanked him roughly to his feet. An instant later, he was being pulled toward the light, following his father into oblivion.
“Oh you useless bastard! I knew you couldn’t help me! We’re finished now because of you, you useless son-of-a-bitch!” Charlie continued to scream.
Suddenly, a seam burst in the side of the tunnel. A gust of wind…
Andrew was pulled from the angel’s grasp and toward the opening.
“Where are you going? Where are you going? Don’t leave me, son! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” Charlie screamed and screamed and screamed.
An instant later, Andrew opened his eyes in a hospital room and saw a doctor and a nurse looking down on him.
“You’re going to be okay, sweetie,” the nurse said, smiling; she was confident in her assurances yet completely ignorant of the truth.
This was how Cipher was born.
7
Charlie Marlow stood in the stillness of the dark street, his mouth slightly open, blood running from the gaping exit wound at the back of his head. Cipher’s feet were nailed to the sidewalk as his heart pounded and blood rushed to his ears. He’d seen spirits on the Third Plane before, but one had never sought him out for a meeting. This could mean only one thing: God knew where he was.
The God Killers Page 2