“You ready to go?”
“Go, as in go get something to eat, or go as in die?” If this guy was the Grim Reaper, he sure didn’t seem grim. “Actually, no. I was a lousy husband. A so-so father. Now I’m the patron of a blind sculptor. Figure that one out.” He finally breathed easier. He cocked one eye open and turned to his visitor. “And I’m mean to the Priest. I think it’s because I knew he was in love with my wife.”
“Well, there’s love and then there’s love.”
“He never makes any sense either.”
The stranger gave him a gentle elbow-nudge to the ribs. “Kellan’s a good man. Just afraid of stuff he doesn’t understand. He wants to protect Angelo. So do I, and I need your help.”
“I’m in. All in.” Alby struggled to his feet. He could make it to the front door, but the golf clubs would have to stay in the trunk. Vansandt warned him about intermittent bouts of weakness. He didn’t say they’d come out of nowhere like disappearing strangers.
“Ayii...Senor Rector!” Lupe rushed to his side and pulled his arm around her shoulders. “I help you. Did you fall?”
“Yes, yes, that’s it.” He faked a sprained ankle, and leaned on her up the stairs and into the living room.
“I’ll call Senora Rector.” Things were looking up.
“Do that."
“Get you an ice pack.”
“Okay.” Angelo came downstairs, and followed the voices into the living room where Alby sat in his favorite red recliner, his leg propped up on a stool. “I just need to rest for a few minutes,” he assured him. Angelo knelt by the chair and felt for Alby’s hand.
“Are you sure, Amigo?” he said as he held the cold fingers in his. “You were up late last night. I heard your footsteps to your studio. You tell me to take it easy, but what about you?”
“I had a dream. Satan was holding a meeting with a bunch of Nazi bigwigs—Goring, Goebbels, Hess—they were all there with Adolphus-goofus plotting with men in turbans and caftans as naked women served them living heads to eat. Heads that begged for mercy. I didn’t want to paint the scene, but then one of the women said I should think of how much Cupertino would like it and how it would sell. So, I got up and went to my easel.”
Angelo touched Alby’s face and felt his shoulder. “You grow thin. You speak slower. You are ill, I think. You should tell the Senora.”
“She won’t come, Angelo.”
“She will if I ask her.”
****
Among silent, rotting corpses, impaled and burning to illuminate his private chamber, Satan supped on scrambled brains and fried livers harvested from the damned. With Kha'zar and Torquemada imprisoned, and all for naught, his anger could not be placated by his villains. And he knew they mocked him behind his back because he’d been outwitted by fools. One fool in particular, gave him ulcerous aches: Charles the Charming, who seemed to have cast his lots with the Guardian’s protectors. And for what? The love of fickle Time, frozen at thirty years old?
“They will tire of each other—in a millennium or two,” Medusa reminded him. She coiled her body around his leg and rested her head upon his hairy chest, courting his good opinion though he never invited her to his strategy sessions. “I hear Albion Rector visits the Spirit World regularly these days. Sweet little Kha'zar planted the seeds of disease, and they're bearing fruit. Rector believes he’s going to die, but seems to be recovering.”
“Death refuses to do his duty because of the Guardian.” Satan was kissing her cheeks and stroking her bare breasts with heavy, clawed hands.
“Or because he wants to thwart your machinations. Fate's an enemy unworthy of your skill, Evil One. It’s Death that ambushes your servants and derails your plans from the safety of the shadows. He is your greatest challenger.”
“My generals agree with that.” He rolled over on her and wouldn’t be denied satisfaction by idle talk of old news.
“Then there’s a plot afoot?”
“Why pester me with question you know I will not answer? You women busy yourself with the affairs of demons, but never commit to action.” He stood, and threw her away from himself. Her tail unwound from his leg, and she slithered out of his reach towards the seraglio. There, perhaps, she would find like-minded souls who were willing to serve the Master in deeds.
Take Care
It was Good Friday, and Father Kellan was in his office stewing over his Easter Sunday sermon. He needed to throw that Hail Mary pass, the long bomb into the end zone that would keep the fans coming back for more. It's all in the delivery, Rice had told him in the seminary. Think of it as performance art. In the end, preachers are ad men hawking salvation, and it's not a glamorous or sexy product. It's more like snake oil.
Lupe was watching the Maury show on the 13 inch TV she kept in the kitchen as she peeled potatoes. She never understood the Anglos romance with the tubers—fried, mashed, baked, boiled—there was no end to their delight. She held her hand over her heart where Francesca’s scapular rested against her chest. She would serve lamb for Easter dinner and buy white roses for the table.
Angelo was listing to ESPN as he worked on St. John's sandaled foot. Tap. Tap. Tap. The toe detail had to be perfect. He'd make them bony. Exposed to air and whether, the feet would probably be dry and calloused. A well-placed depression would give the appearance of hardened flesh. And he would lean heavily on his staff, unable to look away from the suffering Christ, hoping the dying man would see his brother shared his agony.
Alby was sleeping in his red recliner. The vegetable soup he’d had for lunch was staying down. Vansandt had told him to visualize a stable tummy. Meditate on the medicine. Imagine a tiny army of engineers rebuilding your blood cells, reconstructing your bone marrow. He’d closed his eyes, and remembered the History Channel special on the building of America's bridges: the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn, the San Diego Bay, and the covered Bridges of Madison County. Every one of them a work of era-reflecting art. But Popeye intruded on the grandiose parade of progress. After eating a can of spinach, the pipe smoking salt built an entire building to the frenetic strains of von Suppe’s Poet and Peasant Overture.
Elise and Stephen were driving to London. She’d meet her mother at the airport, and they’d travel on to California together. Dad had told them all not to worry, but do come, just in case. She had vacation and sick time coming from the Tate, and Robert and Robin could fend for themselves. Lord knows Stephen was useless when it came to the kids. How did she manage to marry a guy like her father, she kept asking though her mother explained it many times: we become our parents.
David opted to drive to San Diego. The 405 South would be relatively uncongested at 2 AM and he'd be there by four. Dad would probably be up and working anyway. He’d grab a few hours sleep, and take Angelo fishing off the jetty. It was their shtick, and he'd get the inside info on how his Dad was really doing. Once he got the ladies settled in, he’d return to Hollywood to begin his Ars Gratia Vitas documentary about his famous father and his protégé, the blind sculptor.
Death moved among the passengers, listening to their lives one by one, soon to be ended on flight 408 from Berlin to London. One hundred ninety he'd take today including Mohammed bin al Muqtada and Maddie Rector, who sat side-by-side in the 57th row. In the luggage compartment was a suitcase containing two pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and a detonator smuggled aboard by Sharif Imani, Lufthansa’s newest employee. At 35,000 feet, the plane would level off and Muqtada would enter a code into his cell phone, believing paradise awaited him.
The plane exploded just outside of Rotterdam. Alois and Etiene Bellard, driving into the city to celebrate their first anniversary, died too when falling debris, including Maddie’s right arm, fell on to the windshield. Alois slammed on the brakes, and their Volvo skidded into a ravine at 75 miles per hour.
"Where do I belong?" Maddie asked the young blonde man in the swirling black cape. Round and round, heels over head, cascading into one blue pool after another, landing softly in the war
m water, then falling again but without fear because he held her hand, they danced. "Who am I?" she said. "Where am I going?"
With each un-answered question, she seemed farther and farther away from herself. Her companion gave no response to her inquiries, and at last she realized it no longer mattered, and she no longer cared. She would belong wherever she landed, and that's where she'd been going all along. She would eternally be herself and no one because she was free.
****
As Death sat entering the names of the dead, Stoker saw the sadness creep over him, wasting away his flesh. This was not Hell, and yet, for Death, forever grieving, was this not a kind of hell? “Here, Bram, take this ledger for its pages are full,” Death said quietly. Stoker opened the back cover and noted the last entry—Bianca Constanza a.k.a. Maddie Rector. Last words: Why now when he needs me?—and placed it on the shelf. He turned to console the Dreaded Specter, but he was gone.
“I tell you, Angelico, being Death’s Messenger is a heavy burden. Is he doomed to this eternally?”
The painter peeked around his easel. “Death does not weep for the dead, but for the living. Come, I’ll show you.”
In an instant, they were outside the open window of a sun-lit cottage covered with morning glories and lilies. Inside were two young women at a table playing draughts while another woman rocked a small child near the hearth. “Bianca’s mother and sisters,” Angelico whispered. “And the child—Raphaelus Germanicus.” He motioned Stoker to follow him, and they started down a path through a grassy field. “They wait for her.”
“All these centuries?”
“As but a day or two. But they grow impatient because they know she is dead to the world, but has not awakened to the Spirit World.”
“Where is she?”
“Adjusting. As the infant does to a world without water and with eyes just beginning to focus. Death, like birth, is a process. Do you remember where you awoke after your death?” They were in a village now, on a street lined with shops and eateries.
“I was here,” Stoker said as he looked around. “At the pub. Death bought me a pint.” The memory brought a smile. “It was as though I’d known him all my life. As though he’d walked with me as a companion. And you?”
“I awoke in the company of my boyhood chums who took me home to my parents who were as if I’d never left. God knows our heart’s desires. We long to see those who have been gone too long for us when we’re on earth.”
****
“Attention. Attention. Flight 408 on route from Berlin has exploded.” All eyes fixed on the airport monitors. A fireball, caught on a cell phone, appear in the sky. Elise fainted. She didn’t hear the rest of the announcement, the shrieks and screams, or the warnings that the airport was on locked down. When she came to, a EMT was checking her blood pressure and an oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth. Stephen was patting her hand. Rotterdam was the new Lockerbie. I’m taking you home, Elise. No survivors. God damn the terrorists. Manstein’s on his way. Our Father, who art in heaven...
David and Angelo stopped at the DQ for ice cream, decided they were hungry and went inside. Everyone was standing in front of the TV screen, and no one was talking except Fox News anchor James Rosen who reported the president condemned the act of terrorism as obscene. “Not again,” David said to the kid behind the counter, “now what’d they blow up?”
“Some airplane flyin’ to London.”
“Give us a couple of dogs and two cokes. What plane? Did they say?”
“Yeah. Flight 408.”
Angelo was at his side, his hand resting at his elbow. David felt it clamp around his arm. “Mother of God.”
David threw a twenty on the counter and led Angelo to the car. Angelo reached for the seat belt, but was shaking so badly, he couldn’t get it hooked. David felt his knees buckle and knelt down to help fasten it. He called Lupe. “Where’s Dad?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Keep him away from the television, you hear? We’re on our way.”
Lightheaded, he braced himself against the car and tried to take long, slow breaths. He called Stephen.
“She’s gone, David. No survivors. We’ll come as soon as we can get out of here. It’ll be hours before anything gets into the sky over here. We’re in a meeting room of some kind. The airline people sent in counselors.”
Only three miles to Dad’s. Hang in there. Be cool. He pulled out of drive-way and headed down Morena Boulevard, then left up to Mission Hills. Angelo was crying. Trying hard not to, but the tears kept coming and his body was rocking back and forth against the seat belt. He called Father Kellan. “Have you heard? Can you come? Dad’s not in any shape to handle this.”
Lupe clutched Angelo to her heart, comforting him with murmured prayers, while David searched for Alby. He found him in his studio, sitting on the floor, gazing at The Lady With the Red Parasol. “Tell the families, I’ll need photographs to paint a mural for the memorial.” David open his cell phone and took pictures. Of Alby, Angelo, Lupe, Elise, Stephen and Father Kellan—he’d need them for the documentary.
The Great Divide
Covered in stone dust, Michelangelo came out of his studio into the Guild hallway. “What’s happened to the light? How can I work if...” Picasso and Dali were already on the balcony overlooking the sea that was turning grey. “What’s going on?” He sneezed a dust-tickle sneeze and went to the railing. A cloud was spreading overhead, eclipsing the sun.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Dali said. “Is this Satan’s handiwork?”
“No. Death rules the world between heaven and earth. I wondered when he’d grow tired of Satan’s illegal interference.” He shook his whiskers and sneezed again.
“Since when does Satan obey rules?” DaVinci had come up behind them, brush in hand. “It’s the nature of evil to reject regulation.”
“I’ve never seen water that color,” Picasso said, mesmerized by the changing hues of cresting waves growing taller by the minute.
“Hush,” Dali said. The gulls had stopped their calling and hid among the steep cliff’s clefts. Even the pounding waves were silent. “How still it is. Reverence or fear?”
The world was losing its color and the trees casts long shadows on the tiles. “Anger. Anger immense and implacable. Death, the Destroyer, is loose in the universe,” Michelangelo said.
“We needn’t fear him,” DaVinci said, hope replacing surety in his voice.
“Stoker will know what’s going on.” Dali transported to the Fortress and found Death’s newest Messenger contemplating an open scroll at his secretary’s desk. He rapped softly on the table and Stoker looked up. “From whence comes this abominable darkness?”
“Death’s discovered Medusa and Demeter’s Sirens caused the unscheduled demise of those aboard Flight 408..”
“Then it was not retaliation for Kha'zar’s recapture.”
Stoker rolled the scroll and secured with a golden cord. “If it had been Satan’s retaliation, he might have let it pass. But seeing the hand of his mother in this cabal of jealous women hiding behind feigned allegiance...”
“How’d he find out?” Dali was studying the room. From Olympus, he could see the Fortress in the distance, and had wondered what manner of life-style Death maintained inside its somber exterior.
“Time and Fate. While traveling in Asgard, they heard about one who seeks to take Medusa’s place beside the King of Hades, the Queen of the Norse underworld, Hel.” He put the scroll into a drawer. “It’s said Satan scolded Medusa and she sought to curry his favor.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but a random act of violence seems a frail motivation for plunging the Spirit World into Darkness.”
Stoker gave him a wary glance. “It wasn’t random. Maddie Rector was on that plane. Demeter connived to strike a blow to the Guardian through the woman Zeus admires.”
“Destroy two true-love birds with one stone.”
“Aye,” Stoker said, “And the hun
dred and ninety-one others who died prematurely. Fate was piqued his vacation was postponed, and was only too happy to stoke the flames of an eons-long family squabble. As for Medusa, the snake-head’s not only ugly, she’s stupid. Raphael is Death’s friend—the red cloak he wears advertises his affections. Did she not notice?”
Dali walked to the door to the Swallows. “Is the suicide bomber within?”
“Yes, and another cell await the perpetrators of the murders. Listen.”
The two men felt the stone walls begin to sway as a faint rumbling, like that of a train, rolled over the Fortress, growing louder and louder like a tornado’s overture. “Is it safe to look upon Death’s army?” Dali asked as he reeled towards the foyer.
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