Scars on the Face of God

by Chris Bauer

  Pop, louder, pop, louder. “Owww…”

  I covered my ears and turned weak-kneed away from the doors. This noise—it needed to stop, felt like it was shredding my eardrums—

  The air suddenly retreated. The racket dwindled, the painful pressure in my head disappeared. I dropped my hands to my sides and slowed my breathing. Nose-to-nose with the closed doors of the library, I knew how terrified I was, could smell it in my own body odor. Still, I had to face it down.

  I cozied up to the doors, cupped my hand around my ear, put it next to the polished wood and concentrated. Nothing moving inside far as I could tell; all quiet. Dead quiet, like a hospital morg—

  The door I leaned against rumbled open so fast its beveling nearly took my ear off—THOCK-K-K-K!—the doors then slamming into their pockets. I had my arm coiled and my fist cocked except I was left staring at…what?

  The archway was empty.

  I stepped inside the library. No sunlight showed through the windows. I checked the parlor with a glance over my shoulder; still was a sunny day. A straw-colored lampshade, its bottom rim curved under like a rice paddy hat, covered a dangling light bulb, the bulb socket’s length of black wire disappearing overhead, into the dark near the ceiling. It felt close in here, unsafe, like the rubber hose room at the cop precinct or a boxing ring, two places where pain could come at you unexpected and from any angle, or in the prison hallways where you had to keep your eyes on everyone’s hands, or on the farm, where a leather strap settled everything. Or worse, where the gripping, gruesome agony in the room was not your own, but rather your defenseless, dying son’s.

  The shade and bulb swung slowly, silently, like a clock pendulum. They cast a shaft of yellow light onto an opened book on a card table in the middle of the bare oak floor. I stilled the light with my hand then tipped the shade up to get a better look at the library.

  Wow. The furniture was all jammed up unnatural-like against the ceiling and windows and walls like twigs in a bird’s nest, only the nest was upside down and close enough overhead to make my scalp tingle. Grade school desks, their wooden lids cocked and twisted off their hinges. Paintings and mounted photographs clawed from their fractured picture frames. Arts-and-crafts papers, some shredded into strips and hanging, others ripped into tiny pieces of confetti sprinkled overhead like stars in a midnight sky. Books, their pages pulled from their spines, the bookcase shelves they once sat on snapped and crushed. And attached to the ceiling, the steamer trunk, big and black and sturdy enough to hold a car engine, gaping like a screaming mouth. Inside the trunk its contents hung there, frozen in place.

  Get out, my mind shouted. Go.

  I wiped my palms on my trousers. That’s when I noticed it, on the wall above the fireplace. Two floor lamps, their shades gone, their long brass poles slapped against each other. Into a cross.

  My blood pounded in my ears. My eyes centered on the book on the card table. I could hardly breathe. I leaned over it.

  The Devil’s Bible. My nose filled with the reek of attic must and cat piss.

  Creak.

  I jumped. A wheelchair rolled out of the shadows, slowly, each plank of hardwood floor groaning as it crossed it.

  “Raymond.” I held my hand to my chest and exhaled.

  I strained to look at his face, at those open, unfocused, other-way eyes, and I listened, waiting like a fool, somehow hoping to have this orphanage library bedlam explained by, how was it Leo put it? A voice from inside a seashell?

  Raymond stirred, his weak, chicken-bone chest rising to catch a full breath. He lifted his head off his shoulder, his eyes widening but still vacant. His chin rose. Then he laid his head back down, exhausted.

  “You should go,” I said. “So should I.” But my eyes were drawn to that Bible.

  I told myself it was just a book. With a trembling hand I reached under the heavy front cover, its leather binding strips cracking from age. I closed it then opened it again.

  A maze was on the top half of the first page, in reds and blues, a circle working itself outward from its middle. The German started right in, written in a flowing hand beneath the circle, the first few words large, including Der Heirlige Bibel, or “The Holy Bible,” then smaller, Am Anfang, or “In the Beginning.”

  What I knew about the Bible could fit inside a comic book. If there was anything in there worth seeing, like—well, like maybe something that could explain all them infant skeletons—I’d need to translate the whole book to find it.

  the back

  I glanced at Raymond, swallowed hard, and turned to the last page.

  Inside the heavy back cover was a brown envelope newer than the book, more like a businessman’s small portfolio than an envelope, with an accordion bottom and leather shoelaces tied around its middle. I unwrapped the laces and shook the contents onto the card table and spread them out. Maybe a hundred or more old death notices, flimsy and yellowed and in different sizes.

  I tried to remember what Father said. How many newborns died back then and didn’t get buried in Our Lady’s cemetery? A hundred and, ah, what was it, one hundred and—

  one hundred and nine

  I pushed them into a pile then squared them off. First card showed a drawing of the Blessed Virgin with a short supplication for the dead under it. It was for a Baby Warner, no first name, born October 17, 1879, died the same day. Second card had the same drawing of Our Lady, same prayer, was for a Baby Gunther, who also died the day he was born, November 2, 1879, again no first name. Third card, Baby Hochmeyer, January 21, 1880, same story. Aside from the names and the dates, each card looked the same, all showing a black and white sketch of Our Lady and carrying the same prayer for the dead that ended with the words “…some shall die so that all will live.”

  Wait a second.

  March, 1880—April, 1880—May, 1880—

  I turned through the pile of cards, slow at first then faster, stopping once to take a swipe at sweat on my upper lip. Some of the notices ripped as I turned them over, they were so flimsy.

  Sonovabitch.

  They were in order. By month, day, year, oldest to newest. But they came out of the envelope in a sloppy pile, upside down, some even turned over. All I did was push them together. Just how in the Christ—

  Something moved, above me, on the wall. I snapped my head up, heard a scrape, metal on metal.

  ignore it

  I shook the noise off. Here was the last notice in the pile. April 20, 1899.

  take it

  I stuffed it into my pants pocket.

  The book suddenly slammed shut, scattering dust in my face. I cleared my eyes with my fingers and palms, not sure of what I seen. My shoulders were in a knot, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I told myself it’s only a book, damn it. I stepped in closer.

  The cover flipped open. The first page rose by its bottom edge, its top corner dragging down lazy-like and sounding as scratchy as sandpaper on wood. My wrinkled hands balled into fists so tight I could feel my fingernails biting my calloused palms. The first page settled flat against the inside of the front cover. The second page lifted itself the same teasing way, moved in slow motion, right to left. Then the third, and the fourth.

  I wondered what would happen if I touched it—

  The old pages suddenly flipped by my face in a wind-whipped, tan blur that halted at a page near the back of the book, the air above it shimmering like summer heat rising from a city street’s blacktop. The overhead lamp pulsed yellow then white-hot then yellow again. The pages settled into a mild flutter then finally flattened out. The cone of lamplight now swept across them, slowly, each pass like the creak of a rocking chair. Then, like a magnet, the pages pulled the light steady again, centering it above them.

  Hell, I should have guessed.

  The book was open to the leering little demon Father showed me before. Clawed hands, long, red, and sharp groping fingernails. Lunatic smile. I leaned in, looked into the demon’s eyes. Black. Crazy.

  “All
them dead babies in the sewers,” I said to it, my voice raspy. “Why?”

  I waited for a response, a sign, anything, swallowed hard, then waited longer. I burrowed my eyesight deep into the demon’s face. “C’mon, you little fucker, tell me, damn it—”

  I froze. Something was on my leg, lightly crawling up the back of my thigh. It moved softly, felt big, like one of them hairy tarantulas. It tugged at my shirt.

  I grabbed it and felt fingers.

  “Raymond!” I was breathing hard, about to crucify this kid.

  yes

  I released his fingers, lowered his long bony arm into his lap.

  read the book, Wump

  “The what?”

  the page facing the picture. read it

  I lingered, looking over this young man and his long, thin body. A body of not much use to him his whole life and failing him even more now that he had the leukemia. His mind—maybe it was making up for all the other parts of him that never worked. I turned back to the book, to look at the page Raymond said to look at. Nothing was on it. Or—maybe there was something, real faint, like a shadow, showing through its back.

  I turned back one page. Still blank. Yet when I turned it back again the shadowy writing was still there.

  It was on this page. It only looked like it was on the other side because it was slanted the wrong way, like it had been written—

  yes, backward

  read it from the other side

  I tilted my head and leaned in, almost flat to the book, concentrated on seeing the handwritten words against the light and through the paper, on its other side. I squinted. Now I could make them out.

  “Ich wurde von ihm herausgeschmissen,”

  I was banished from him,

  “wird wieder geboren,”

  will be born again,

  “der erste aus zwei…”

  the first from two…

  “jungfrauen,”

  virgins,

  “ihm gewidmet.”

  avowed to him.

  I lifted my head up. “Sounds like crap.”

  keep going

  “Mein kind folgt seinem,”

  My child follows his,

  “ein tausend mal zwei,”

  a thousand times two,

  “schreckliche ende fuer seine diener,”

  vile ends for his servants,

  “ein neues Universum. ”

  a Universe new.

  Above me I heard a long, tortuous scraping of metal. I snapped my head up, saw the crisscrossed posts of the two hanging floor lamps moving, sliding against each other, slowly grinding out silver-gold sparks from the contact, the sparks spraying the clutter on the wall and ceiling, the lamp posts twisting, shifting from an upright gold cross into a throbbing, glowing, red X. It sizzled like a branding iron as it hovered. I stepped back.

  “Out. We need to get out—”

  I grabbed at Raymond’s wheelchair from the front, both my hands on its arms. The chair was stuck. “The brake! Where is it—?”

  Flames from the X exploded over my head. I stumbled backward, hit the floor, felt the heat—

  Raymond. God, help me help him.

  I strained to reach the brake lever, twisted it to free the back wheel, stood and quickly backed the chair out of the fire’s reach, toward the library archway, toward the way out.

  The library doors slammed shut in our faces. I looked back, saw the blazing cross, heard its ferocious roar. Another fire blast exploded like a stoked flamethrower, shot across the card table, tickling the pages of the demon bible. I draped myself over Raymond, watched in panic past my shoulder as something took shape in the center of the flames.

  Out thrust the face of the demon, its skin charred, its lips parting, its lazy eyes opening. The lips separated into a smile, showed silver-white dagger teeth drenched in spit. The smile became a leer.

  I was way past fear. My mind quickly entered a place I’d seen other soldiers go when the horror of the battlefield had closed in on them, where adrenaline took over, and the soldier’s own life didn’t matter. I straightened up, turned to face the demon head on, Raymond to my back. I leaned forward, my chest broadening, leaned into the heat, no turning back—

  “Open these doors!” I bellowed. “Open them! Now!”

  I inhaled a breath, my lungs filling up in a fiery agony. I quickly exhaled. The air leaving my mouth felt scorched, like I was burning from the inside out. My mind was overcome by images of lungs on fire and arteries igniting like long fuses, their red-hot trails coursing through my arms and legs then sizzling their way back through my veins and into my heart, my beating, fiery, unsacred heart, charring it tar-black. Now I knew what the fire was after. It tickled a wafer-thin inner sense of my being, my inner tabernacle, my pure—

  The demon’s leer was now a booming, scorn-filled laugh…

  —and everlasting—

  The laugh ricocheted inside my skull.

  HAHAHAHA!

  …SOUL!

  YES, YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!

  FUCK WITH ME, OLD MAN, AND I WILL BURN IT!

  The blast-furnace flames on the cross immediately retreated, sucked back inside the cross, whole. With a hiss, the devil-head disappeared. I hugged myself, saw and felt no burning flesh or fiery blood vessels, aware my heart was working overtime but still on the job.

  Raymond.

  I turned to him. He was unharmed in his wheelchair. He hadn’t broken a sweat from all this commotion. But his eyes…

  They were still an ocean-blue beneath narrow blond eyebrows but somehow, in some way, they were different.

  They were focused. On the wall. Focused on the lamp-cross now throbbing with a red glow, the cross again suspended in the nest-like debris hanging there. His eyes were focused and doing what? Staring? Like a sighted person?

  His eyes fluttered and all at once, the stare I thought was there was gone.

  The glow of the cross dimmed until the polished yellow-gold of its plated brass returned. I unclenched my fists, the tidal wave of adrenaline in my blood beginning to retreat, but still…

  We needed to get out. I tried separating the doors. Useless. I swung around, looked for another way, got ready to scream at the lamp-cross again except now I noticed the cross was dripping water.

  I took a few slow, careful steps around the book on the card table. I raised my hand, tapped a finger against the brass; it felt cool. I tapped it again, saw the lampposts were sweating. The water droplets pooled onto my fingertip, ran past my knuckles into my palm, soon became a trickling stream. I stepped back as the stream changed color, a sparkling crystal turning cloudy until—

  It erupted, became a baby-shit-brown waterfall that gushed from the crossed lampposts, stinking like a rain-swelled cesspool, and it was then that I saw it. Another shape, forming from a glob of head flesh, with thumbprints that became eyes and a small gash that turned into a suckling mouth, and—

  Out of the sewage waterfall leaped the vision of a baby’s face, its eyes and mouth closed, its cheeks puffed like tiny pink balloons. The infant’s head was shaking, struggling, its only noise a fierce grunting as it fought to keep its eyes closed and its lips sealed. The cheeks deflated and the lips parted, the mouth now gagging furiously as it gulped in the sewer water, the eyelids pressing down hard until they couldn’t stay shut any longer. The eyelids opened, and I seen in the newborn’s face a deathly terror, a terror that came from not knowing cold, not knowing pain, and not knowing what it meant to drown.

  21

  “Wump.” A female voice startled me. “You’re as ashen as a tombstone. Are you all right?”

  Sister Dymphna hovered as I regained my bearings, only half hearing her speaking. I was on my rump on the library’s hardwood floor, everything around me out of focus. Father Duncan leaned in front of my face, studied me, then tugged on my upper arm. The two of them got me to my feet. I needed a few deep breaths.

  “Can’t rightly say I remember ending up on the floor, Sister. I—”

>   I got a jolt. The devil head, the drowning infant, fire, gushing water—these images made me wince as they jammed my senses then were gone. My heart was thumping again. I raised my head and turned around, slowly, Sister and Father each clamped onto an elbow. I kept turning, made it a full 360; I was awestruck. “What happened to it? The library. It’s…”

  “It’s what, Wump?” Sister said. “What happened to what?” Her eyesight followed mine, ending with the empty space above the fireplace.

  Everything was as it was, same as when Father and me were here a few days ago. Framed paintings, the photographs, the artifacts and other Sister Irene keepsakes, all of it sitting on tables and chairs and against other furniture, and all this furniture down, on the floor, where it belonged.

  “There was fire, and water, and it was like a funnel cloud came through here, everything whipped up, raised eye-high around me. The furniture; them brass lamps. And there was a card table—”

  Sister and Father traded glances. I knew how this sounded, like old Wump was sprawled on the boxing canvas, reaching for the ring ropes. “Raymond,” I finally managed. “He was in here. Where’s Raymond?”

  “Over there, Wump,” Sister said. “In the corner.”

  Raymond was in his wheelchair, next to the arts and crafts supplies and an old mahogany secretary’s desk. His hand twisted the tuner knob on a small table radio, stopping every few seconds to listen.

  “Ask him,” I said to her.

  “Ask who?”

  “Raymond. Go ahead and ask him. He’ll tell you what went on in here.”

  “But, Wump,” Sister said, resting her hand on my shoulder, her head giving me a patronizing tilt. “Raymond’s mute, remember?”

  “He can talk. Not with his mouth, but with his mind.” They looked at me like I had three eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but I heard him.”

  I brought this up to Father Duncan before, but he’d passed on it; maybe this time he’d believe me. Father said nothing at first, but I could tell he was working it out in his head.

  Father turned to Raymond. “Raymond. Is this true?”

  Nothing.

  Father crouched next to the wheelchair. “It’s a special gift if you have it, Raymond. No need to feel embarrassed. Is Wump right?” Silence.