Seraphim (44 page)

“Jesus,” Chris whispered.

“Indeed,” Gamble said, then began laughing. “Up ahead, maybe dear old Mom will roll away the boulder for you, as well.”

Chris coughed. There was now a ferocious stink coming out of the walls. “Careful, dude, you’re making it sound like I have a chance of getting out of here alive.”

“Perhaps,” Gamble admitted. “Let’s just see where the road takes us, shall we?”

“If I remember my high school physiology, it takes us to a uterus.” Given his mother’s present size and position, Chris felt it odd that there was no slope, and the canal had already turned out to be far longer than it should have been. A flat, slippery trek, so far. He didn’t know if Gamble had simply adjusted the angle for comfort, or if was part of the dream experience because Juanita (like himself) just didn’t have a whole lot of experience with the damned things.

Chris said, “You’re after something, dude. Something only the real heaven can offer.”

“Your insight continues to astound me, Mr. Kaddison. Absolutely correct. This is about a large piece of real estate known as the Shallows. It offers an unlimited supply of souls, among other things, and the key to eternity.”

“You’re not eternal?”

“No,” he said. “You see, I have a beginning; therefore, I have an end.”

“Any chance in the next five minutes?”

Gamble slapped him hard on the shoulder and laughed. “Even without the Shallows, I will forge on for millennia. And within that time, I will have likely found a cure for my terminal illness.”

Chris guffawed. “You think?”

“Even if I have to exhume Jonas Salk and turn him into a beaker-toting zombie.”

“Kinda like how we created your zombie ass?”

“Yes, up until the point when I began recreating myself,” Gamble said. “Now
I
have the brush, and infinity will be my canvas.”

“Yeah? And what if the real God decides to become an art critic?”

Now, like a ring announcer: “Then He’d better stay His ass out of the Louvre and start gearing up for some compelling surrealism, baby, ’cuz I’m ready to
rum-bulllll!”

“What, you and the real hell are going to, like, gang up on heaven?”

“No, I’m afraid both parties find me and my minions unsavory. They’ll be joining forces to try and outwit me. I’m sure of it. Quite honestly, though, between the two of them, I don’t think they could muster enough guile to trip up a one-legged giraffe.”

“Heaven and hell on the same team?” Chris laughed nervously. “There’s a concept.”

Chuckling himself, Gamble said, “Yes, well, I doubt they’ll be toasting one another at the victory party.”

“So, now it’s just you and your fake subordinates in Wonderland?”

“Not for long,” he promised. “We’re about to leave a vacancy.”

“And you—a man-made, soulless, thinking hologram—think you can defeat the real thing?”

“The ‘real’ thing? Don’t insult me, Mr. Kaddison. I’m more real now than you are.” He held out his palms. “Do you see these lines? They’re magnificent, aren’t they? When Lincoln was President, they were just beginning to emerge.” He stepped closer. Pointing with his right index finger, he said, “Do you see that one there? The one you call the Life Line? It’s not broken anywhere.” Then he offered his right hand. “This one’s the same way. Now, I don’t know about you, but it looks like I’m going to be around a long, long time. And look at my fingers! Man, I’ve got arches, loops, and whorls, oh my!” He held his wrists out to Chris. “Book me, Danno!”

After a short burst of merriment that consisted of odd dancing, whooping, and more of those strange animal sounds he’d made earlier in the church, Gamble said, “Now, take a look at
your
palms, Christopher-san.”

Bringing his palms to his face, Chris said, “What am I supposed to find?” But he already knew.

“Degradation, dear boy. Oh, you’ve still got a little time left before any significant changes begin to occur. Besides, you’ve had more lotion on your hands than Andie McDowell. Jerkin’ with the Jergens. Jesus. My point is, you’re not all here. I’m more real than you are now. You and every other ignorant asshole topside, along with your reality, have begun the process of vanishing. You see, just as man wished me into being, I’ve started wishing him away. Just your physical selves, mind you. Naturally, I have some disturbing plans for your eternal souls. You see,
my hand prints were the last to show, so for you they’ll be the first to go.”
He giggled at the rhyme. “Oh, and may I be the first to congratulate you on realizing that wonderful fact, even though it’s unwarranted, since you came about it not by brilliant deduction, but through an act similar to osmosis. Each time you visit Wonderland, you absorb its essence like spilled coffee. You’re a paper towel, my boy, not a scholar.”

“What is it that you want from me?” Chris asked.

“I want to know everything there is to know about your friend Duncan,” he said. “I’ve had my eye on him for quite some time now.”

Chris started moving again. “Like, why don’t you just leaf through my mind, tear out the pages on Duncan yourself? Being all-knowing and all, I’m surprised you even have to ask.”

He laughed. “Oh, I’m not omniscient, either, Mr. Kaddison. Where would be the fun in that? No, I’m not even comfortably close.”

“Still, this is Wonderland, dude. In here, you don’t have to be a deity to read minds. This
is
the mind.”

“Right again. And since I’ve already gleaned from you the knowledge that you have no idea who this Duncan McNeil is, I’ll skip right to the point which you just made. Get the fucker in here!”

“Bring Duncan into Wonderland? Go blow yourself.”

Gamble grabbed one of Chris’s earrings, pulled him down to his knees. “I have to know, and you’re the only one who can float him in.”

On all fours now, inebriated with dolor, Chris looked like a teenager ready to heave up the six-pack he had for supper. He chuckled. “You couldn’t get into his head either, huh? Well, join the crowd! I’ve tried. It’s...impenetrable—”

“Again, that’s why I need him in here! And since I’m being forced to redundantly make that point, I’m going to share with you a secret. As incentive for you, I’ll hold off from turning Patricia Bently into my own personal sex kitten, and you into a fly on the wall.” He leaned in. “Oh yes, lover boy, you’ve got the hots for that sweet piece. You’ve even taken quite a shine to her daughter. A guy doesn’t have to invade your mind to see those affections.” He let go of Chris’s earring.

Slipping, trying to get to his feet, Chris cried, “You motherfucker! You touch them and I’ll kill you!”

“Of course you will.” Gamble reached down and clamped Chris’s head between his hands, then pulled him up. “I’ll do things to Patricia that will make your very pores bleed with envy. And pity. And I’ll triple the debaucheries I intend to perform upon Katherine Bently, once I’ve gathered my second daughter from that fleshsack. And not only will I make you watch, J.R.—I’ll make you participate, and turn that weenie of yours into a painfully long and gluttonous gash grinder. So don’t fuck with me,
dude.
Just bring Duncan in!”

“Your
second
daughter?”

Gambles fingers pressed upon Chris’s head, and the vagina expanded, now assuming the enormousness and personality of Carlsbad Caverns. Glistening, mucous-formed stalactites were pulling down from the shadowy upper reaches, where black, throbbing ulcers spread like bat swarms, restless as the twilight of another reality began peeking through the rifts and crevices.

Then, Wonderland imploded, forcing Chris to the forefront of consciousness.

6.

He bolted upright, his own palms pressed vice-like against the sides of his head.

Satisfied that Gamble’s fingers were no longer there, he turned to the Swiss clock ticking on the south wall.

Only seven minutes had passed.

He swallowed dryly, wondering if time would stop altogether once morning found them.

Eyes wide and dazed, he began to focus on one thought: Gamble’s second daughter
is inside Kathy?

“Bullshit,” he finally mumbled. “It’s a lie. Has to be.”

7.

Eli stood naked before the montage of wings. Although the seventh window was there, he held himself back from walking through. Oh no, he wanted to
fly
into those new and promising environs…

With his own wings.

To feel the exhilaration he had for so long awaited.

To glide and soar with his own feathered appendages.

To whip up crashing tides of air and desquamate the paper walls of what had been for so long a fragile existence.

The moment was one where time stood still. He might have been a father staring into the bright liquid eyes of his brand new baby girl.

Finally, Eli backed himself to the Wall of Faces, against the delineated space reserved for his own body.

He closed his eyes and waited.

Tense moments passed. Then…

A snap and flash of pain—what could only be described as two steel bear traps springing into his shoulder blades.

He roared in agony.

In wide-eyed, pain-generated, air-steeling dementia, he could only mouth idiocies at the windows staring back at him from the opposite wall.

Laughing at him.

He staggered forward and fell.

“Gabriel blew, and a clean thin sound of perfect pitch and crystalline delicacy filled all the universe to the farthest star...as thin as the line separating past from future...”

—Isaac Asimov,
The Last Trump

Part Five

Transgressions

1.

Dawn was grooming the Atlantic’s mane; its gusts of breath shearing off the hoary tufts, its inhalations then combing them back down into youthful blackness.

Farther inland, a shuttle bus pulled to the sidewalk in front of Joan Pendleton’s house. Pillsbury was the first to notice the vehicle. She was howling incessantly at the front door with more than a hint of doggy emphysema. Every fifteen seconds or so she would stop and gag, then resume her baying with earnest.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted from the kitchen.

Joan was the second. “What on earth,” she complained, cinching the sash of her threadbare housecoat as she ambled frumpishly across the dining room’s wood floor. Her bedroom was on the main level, on the other side of the kitchen; an arrangement that was intended to keep her off the stairs as much as possible.

She stopped three feet from the dog. Hands on her hips, she asked, “My lord, Pillsy, what has gotten into you?”

The third was Chris. Already showered and dressed, he stepped out of the second-level bathroom, leaned his scrawny frame over the banister and began imitating the howling dachshund. He maintained a praiseworthy rhythm and even went so far as to emulate the strangling noises, all the while appearing very confused, if not frightened.

“Young man,” Joan chided, “is that really necessary?”

Chris shook his head that it wasn’t, but continued to howl nonetheless as spasms rippled through his body.

Duncan peeked out from his bedroom doorway with a weary, yielding aspect, as if nothing this early could be worth fighting for. Moments later, Rachel appeared beside him, pulling a brush through her hair, her expression firm, determined. Still damp from their showers, both were dressed in Levis pants and sweatshirts. After all, only the most beguiled wore evening gowns and Armani suits to the Apocalypse.

“Knock it off, the both of you,” Patricia demanded, coming down the stairs. “For crying out loud! Enough is enough!” Also in rough-and-tumble attire, she shook her finger angrily. “Bad dog!”

Not sharing her opinion one bit, the dog continued to bay. As did Chris.

Kathy and Juanita were the last. Kathy stepped out of her old room (also on the main level and adjacent to grandma’s), with Juanita following, still in the same smock, now considerably wrinkled, that she’d been wearing the day before.

Walking over to the dog, Kathy silenced her with just one gentle touch. Then she opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, returning almost immediately with the morning paper in hand. “Our ride is here,” she said cheerily.

“What ride?” Duncan said, descending the stairs in Patricia’s fragrant wake.

“The one to get us out of here,” Kathy replied.

Now down the stairs himself, looking out the window and still jittery from his doggy fixation, Chris cried, “Dead Man! Dead Man! Dead Man! Dead Man!”

Patricia, fists clenched, turned to Chris. “Would you please shut the hell up?!”

Surprisingly, he did.

Kathy smiled at everyone. “Don’t worry, Dead Man’s okay. He’s just the driver.”

Duncan reached the door, Chris now beside him, both watching the driver make his way toward the porch. Every other step the cloaked figure would stop and lean his head toward the lawn. It was obvious to Duncan that the driver was being enticed by the very same
something
that had yesterday lured Chris to do likewise.

“Everybody stay back,” Duncan ordered. He opened the front door, just a crack.

Duncan decided that whoever was hidden within the long black robe was, at best, emaciated. He could not see the person’s face as the hood was pulled tightly, leaving nothing but a thin slit up the middle.

The driver reached the steps of the porch, his prowess on the unsteady planks a tribute to felines everywhere.

Duncan winced as the smell of chemicals and decay leached through the crack.

Whimpering now, Pillsbury scurried out of sight.

With a mummified hand, the corpse reached inside the door and grabbed Duncan’s wrist. “Get everyone out of the house immediately.”

Duncan jerked his hand away. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell are you?”

“Your driver,” said the corpse “Now listen very carefully. It has begun. Everyone in this house needs to get on my shuttle, and fast.”