Darkborn (39 page)

Will shook his head. It’s all too much, he thought.

“You can look around at our world and see that God is losing.”

Yeah, thought Will. And I’m losing it.

“Here. Let me make it simple. The soul, the human spirit, can affect external events. Say you get discouraged. Down on yourself. And, presto, suddenly you start having a bad day. Very simple, but
that’s
the process. Hopelessness and hatred feed off each other, growing around us. Weakening the power of God.” James cleared his throat. “While the Adversary of existence grows stronger.”

“The Adversary? Who’s the Adversary?”

James answered him by handing him the chalkboard.

“That’s what we have to find out.”

James sat back and waited a second before beginning his ever-more-incredible explanation.

“Automatic writing, Will. We’ll try it. We’ll see if you know more than you think you do.”

Will grinned. “You’re losing me. I was just trying to get some help, some advice —”

James looked affronted. “You came to me? Correct? I didn’t come to you. You came to me. And I believe in the power of God.
And
the power of evil.
You came to me
. If you don’t have even the beginnings of some belief, then why in the world did you come to see me?”

Will shrugged. He looked at the chalkboard. He remembered something about automatic writing. A phony psychic’s trick. It’s in the same class with a Ouija board, a crystal ball.

James saw him looking down uncomfortably at the small chalkboard.

“If I called this psychometry, would that make you feel better?”

Will knew that term from his psych courses, years before.

Psychometry was the unconscious reading of objects and events. It was the Jungian idea — later adopted by spiritualists — that objects would carry fingerprints of their past.

Will held the chalkboard. “I don’t know. This seems —” He wanted to act polite.

Through the stained-glass windows, Will saw the light fading. The dismal afternoon was giving way to the early black shadows of a fall night.

The doors opened again. And Will turned to see a young woman walk in. She dipped her hand in the holy water fountain and then sat in the last row.

The cheap seats, Will’s father used to call them.

He turned back to James. James held out the chalk. Will shook his head. But he took the chalk.

“Close your eyes, Will. Close them and relax and listen to me.” .

Will made a face. But he followed James’s directions. “Now just listen to my voice, Will. Think about nothing else, nothing but what I say. I want you to write whatever words come to your mind as I talk to you, and nod if you understand.”

Will made his head go up and down.

Ridiculous, he thought.

What did I get myself into here?

“Any words. I want you to picture all your friends from that night. Each of them, and — as you do — I want you to write their names .
 
.
 
. and any other words that occur to you.”

Will made the chalk move on the board. It screeched, the horrible sound echoing in the nearly empty church.

James went on talking, quietly. “Good. Think about that night, what you remember, what you see, as if you were there, Will, right there, on the rocks, drawing on the rocks, saying the words.”

As Will wrote, he felt James lean over and erase the board, clearing it for more words, and —

Will felt his hand moving. Just jiggling up and down. Like the needle on a seismograph, shooting up and down. He laughed nervously, almost opened his eyes.

“Don’t open your eyes!” James commanded, his voice loud, surely scaring the woman in the last pew.

Will nodded.

“Remember it all,” James commanded.

And Will did.

The salty wind. Standing in the circle, in the points of a star. The words, silly, making them laugh. All of them drunk with the booze, all of them wobbling on the star points, waiting for something to happen.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Except —

Something did.

(I never remembered this. How could I forget this?)

There was a hole.

A monstrous, black hole at the center of his memory. He couldn’t imagine the circle, the star anymore. There was just this
hole
. And the five of them standing around.

No one was smiling.

I don’t remember this.

Yet it was there.

He went on writing.

Words upon words upon words.

James erased, hardly able to keep up with the flailing movements of Will’s hand.

Something glistened from within the hole.

I see something, Will thought.

There — where the circle, the star should be. Lumbering out of the hole.

We all watch.

We all see it.

It didn’t happen.

But why do I remember it? Why do I see this?

Out, until the black glistening skin revealed an iridescent rainbow of colors, moving swirls of magenta and purple, like a dark jovian planet filled with giant storms traveling along its surface.

We all look.

Then it’s there.

The smell fills his nostrils.

No one laughs. No one’s drunk.

It’s there. A shape with blackish eyes, or do we just imagine them? And a mouth, an opening. As if it would speak, as if it would talk to us.

It looks at each of us.

And I — and I —

Will cried out. He screamed.

“No! Oh, God, no!” He stood up, and the chalkboard slid to the floor.

Will looked at the altar.

The nun started back.

“No,” he muttered.

“Will.” James was up next to him, his arm around him, strong, gripping him. “You have to continue, Will. You can’t stop now.”

Will shook his head back and forth. “Yes, I can. I can stop now —”

James knelt down and picked up the chalkboard.

He grabbed Will’s hand and stuck the board in it, then the chalk. “No. Sit down. Finish it. You know you have to finish it now.”

Will turned to him.

He thought of Becca. Setting the table for dinner. The chatter of their two girls. He thought of his house. Please, he thought. I want to go there.

Joshua James is a madman. He’s going to make me lose it all.

But he knew that wasn’t true.

Because he was beginning to know what the truth was.

“You’ll continue?”

Will nodded.

He sat down. He heard the church doors open. The lady left.

Not a good night for quiet prayer.

“All right .
 
.
 
. close your eyes .
 
.
 
. continue …”

It turns and looks at each of us.

Each of us, fixing us with those eyes, sending messages, wonderful promises, with each amazing swirl of colors on its body.

Just a form, Will knew.

It can be anything. Anywhere. Anytime.

At any moment.

It looked at Will .
 
.
 
.

Will felt it then. Looking at him. Demanding.

Promising. Oh, the promises, the wonders, the power, the beauty .
 
.
 
.

Asking the question.

Will felt it.

And he felt his answer.

Will opened his eyes.

He was crying.

James cradled, held him close. Will sobbed, in a way that made him think he was five years old again, watching his mother leave home for the first time. Crying for her. Heaving, gasping at the incense air.

“Oh, God, oh, sweet God, I never —”

James pulled him close. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Call on His name.” James laughed. “It’s okay here .
 
.
 
. it’s all right .
 
.
 
.”

And Will was allowed to cry until the feeling was over.

Then James released him and said, “You have to continue now. You have to finish, Will.”

But Will knew that. Knew it.

Because he was beginning to know how all this would end .
 
.
 
.

It turned from him, and all that beauty and power, all the promises of worlds and life to come vanished. There was just the terrible stench and the cold and the crashing of the hungry sea.

It turned from him.

Will’s hand moved on the chalkboard slowly.

“Tell me,” James said. “Tell me who it is.”

It turned and Will watched it, saw it looking at the next person on the point of the star. It stretched something out, a hand from some part of its body, arm-like, reaching out.

And someone reached back.

Will stopped his writing.

He gave the chalkboard to James. His eyes were red, puffy from his tears.

The old nun was near the sacristy door, pointing at them. A young priest stood next to her.

James looked at the chalkboard.

“The Adversary,” James said. He turned to Will. “You did well. We have the name. And there’s power in names, Will.”

“It was like I was there,” Will said.

James nodded.

“Yes, you were.” He looked at Will and smiled sadly, as if he realized the strange, hopeless thoughts running through Will’s head. “I can tell you now about time, what it really is, but I needed you to do this” — he held up the chalkboard — “first.”

Will looked at it.

He saw letters, the words barely legible, scrawled across the board.
Zar .
 
.
 
. Osirin .
 
.
 
.

“Its name,” James whispered.

And below it another word, something that Will knew already, just one word. The letters all crooked, jagged, spiky, fighting the pressure of his fingers.

Tim.

Will shook his head.

James patted his hand. “I won’t lie. You’re in danger, Will.
Your family is in danger
.”

Will turned and shot a look at him.

I’ll kill him, Will thought. I’ll kill the goddamn —

But he knew that wasn’t possible. It wouldn’t be that easy.

James made a small smile, trying to be reassuring. “But there’s time, Will. Always time. He can be stopped. If you do everything I tell you .
 
.
 
. if you trust me completely. Can you do that?”

Will nodded.

The young priest opened the gate that was part of the communion rail. He walked toward them.

“Good,” James said. “There’s time .
 
.
 
. and we have the name. God help us, we have the name.”

* * *

35

“Hey, Dad,” Sharon said, nearly barreling into Will as she went galloping up the stairs. She grinned. “Er, you like missed dinner.”

But then her smile faded.

And Will knew that she must have seen that he didn’t look okay. Something’s wrong with Dad .
 
.
 
.

I must be showing the telltale signs of insanity. This is how madmen look just before they cart them off.

He saw a book tucked under her arm.
Mathematics Around Us
. There was a ruler and space shuttle on the cover. A reassuring statement about the world. From the King’s foot to deep space — all of it is understandable, manageable by the human mind. With the help of modern mathematics’

Except for some things that just don’t fit, Horatio.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

Will shut the door behind him feeling like Willy Loman in
Death of a Salesman
. And what I’m selling today, they wouldn’t buy even on cloud cuckoo land.

Beth ran into the room, wearing a happy smear of chocolate across her face. She grinned — the weird gap of her missing front teeth both comical and bizarre.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said. Then, pensive, thoughtful .
 
.
 
. “Where were you?”