The Book of Feasts & Seasons (11 page)

“You think you can escape?” He drew off his sunglasses and smiled.

It was the most horrible sight, that empty smile, what he had instead of eyes, that face. It was pure misery, superhuman hate and emptiness and loathing. I would have eaten a whole bottle of those damned elf pills to get that sight out of my eyes, out of my brain, out of my soul.

“You think you can reform?” he said gently. “Go, then! For a year, for a hundred years, for a thousand! Your craving to kill him, he who has taken everything from you, will not diminish. You are no longer trapped in time. Let a million years of your time pass, and come back here, to this moment, now. We will preserve this moment for your use. We will place a charmed circle around it. The fire will be waiting. Look.”

A freak gust of wind snatched Sylvester’s hat off his head. With a curse, he trotted after it, then ran, then sprinted, as the hat jumped and hopped and soared just out of his reach. The hat landed just on the doorstep of the hotel. Sylvester trotted up the stairs….

He was right over the buried gasoline tank the hotel used for a small diesel generator in the basement. That tank would also go up like a bomb if the basement full of flammable fumes went up.

I stepped into the timelessness. The scene grew misty, like a pane of rippling glass were now in the way. The voice of the Fixer, more beautiful than the voice of any woman, was dim, but clear.

“No ghost can depart to his judgment when undone tasks, unsated passions, unfulfilled desires, chain him to the world where we are prince and primate. Flee as far as you can. The light will not receive you. There is no place, no time, no where to go but back to this place, now.”

I shouted back at him, “You are damned wrong, Fixer! And damned! I can turn over a new leaf—”

“Mortal men can do that. For you, it is too late. Too late to confess, too late to repent, too late to start a new life. You have no life in you.”

I dove straight down to get away from him.

His voice followed me, silvery, fair words, like music. And that face. I could still see it inside my head, growing larger and clearing in my imagination. Soon I would lose the ability to envision or see any other thing, and my face would look like that face, too. The pain of having all your skin burned away was nothing compared to that face. Those eyes.

He took so much simple, idiotic, empty and innocent joy at my misery, such childlike joy, I had to feel joy at my misery too, and so I hungered for misery and despair to eat me into an ever smaller burnt-out nub, a shadow that shrank and shrank, encountering ever more pain as it crushed itself into ever smaller volumes, smaller than a speck, smaller than a microbe, smaller than an atom. And still I would consume myself and dwindle in misery — but never find an end, never enter the peace of oblivion.

As I swam, I could feel the tugging, towing, hauling, heaving, wrenching sensation trying ever to pull me back, back to the moment where Sly waited for me to kill him. Back toward that face.

That was just once glance in a dim light, from across the room, while his features were overshadowed by a hood. What if I saw him clearly, brightly, in his throne room of fire?

I fled.

The moaning and sobbing I heard was my own voice.

That scared me all the more. Because it sounded like something from a cheap horror movie, or even a comedy, one where Abbott and Costello meet a ghost. All those moans you hear about, which the straight man thinks is the wind, and the clown thinks is the dead walking the earth? I now knew what caused those moans.

And I could not make myself stop. I could not remember or imagine what silence would sound like.

The first thing I did was look for that tunnel of light I had turned my back on during the moment I was shot. If only I had not looked back, looked down at where Lorelei was hugging my corpse, crying out with grief and regret at what she had done—If I had not looked back, surely I would have just soared up.

But that was the funny thing. No direction here in this sea was up. If I went what I thought was upward, the images of the mortal time grew strong and clear, and I was at the surface again. Where was that light? How had I lost it?

Next I tried to find Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. If I could get back into the confessional booth, even if the angel burned me, I could confess, and get clean, and somehow the priest would show me the tunnel of light…

There! An image of the Cathedral when she was young, in a city before the electric light cracked the night, and her spires reached to the stars. I raced for the vision.

And bounced off, thrown back by some unseen force. I tried again and again. It was like trying to push the south ends of two bar magnets together, if the magnets just got stronger the more you pushed. I was a bird battering myself against a soft and sticky windowpane. It was like wrestling in quicksand. It was like trying to break a bad habit: you think that maybe this time you can resist, and then…nope. It was like trying to cure sin.

Over and over again, I dove down, sometimes really deep, and came up in another place. I tried to find some childhood memory that could carry me back into the past, or some vision of the future. I tried to find my honeymoon, the first man I killed in combat, my graduation, my confirmation, my first paycheck for delivering papers when I was a kid, and my brother Al clapped me on the back and called me a man. There are some days you just don’t forget.

But somehow, I had forgotten them. I tried to see the faces of people I knew, someone else to whom to say a fare-thee-well, someone else I hated and wanted to haunt. Anything. Any excuse. Any face.

The only face I saw was the face of misery. His face.

I could not break the surface. The Fixer had fixed it. There was no entry into the world of living, except where and when he wanted me.

In desperation, I turned and dove as deep as I could, to the point where I was past the prophets and the madness, past the eternal visions of myth.

I do not know how long I was there, moaning, and seeing a face inside my mind. I said a prayer. I could only mouth and gasp the words, because the moaning was controlling my lips and lungs.

No, not the Paternoster. Not the Memorare. It was impromptu, and it went like this:
Jeezus! Jesus, save me! Save my damned soul, damn it! Fer chrissake, get me out of this, Christ!

Surely the worst prayer ever. But I meant every word.

I saw a glint of light and swam toward it.

Here came images from the mythic memory of mankind. But in one and one place only, they were different. The image of a mythical and timeless events were linked by rays of light like a tree to specific events that happened at specific places in the mortal world. It was like a road or a path or a tunnel reaching from the deep parts of eternity, far too far for me to reach, up to the mortal time. It was a pathway or pillar spanning the whole deep of the sea from the surface to the bottomlessness depths.

The dreams grew thick about me as I approached the path of light. I saw two trees, one white as chalk with silver fruit, one black as pitch with luscious fruit and red, guarded by a freakish shape like an ever twisting snake with wings of bronze, and along all its length, and in every feather, eyes that shot lightning. In the hands of the snake was a two-edged sword that twisted and darted in every direction, but the tip was broken off, so that the point was square and blunt. I saw a barge like a huge box, covered over with a roof, wallowing in stormy sea, up and down waves that passed like walking mountains, and uprooted trees, scattered roofs and livestock, and endless acres of corpses, of women and children and giants, floated in the waves. I saw an empty tomb.

Toward this last I turned and rose. I came to the surface in mortal time. Nothing barred my way.

Next to the empty tomb was a man in white.

The robe was whiter than any washerwoman of earth could have cleaned any cloth. It shined like the sun. When I stared at his face, I gradually came to remember what a human face looked like.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” he asked me. “Why are you a dead among the living, seeking?”

“I have unfinished business,” I said. “I need saving. My soul needs saving. My soul is all I have, now, at the moment. And my soul is wounded, it is forgetting, it is rotting from the inside. I need a savior. Is there a Mr. Christ around? First name, Jesus?”

“He is not here. He is risen,” said the angel.

“I believe in Him. Sort of. I’d like to believe in Him. Can I make an appointment or something?”

“Now is the appointed time. Kneel.”

So, who am I to argue with Gabriel or whoever? I knelt. I saw what being too proud to kneel made you into. I saw what face you wore if you went that way.

“Confess your sin.”

“But I have not done anything wrong! I’ve already forgiven Rory for shooting me! It actually did not hurt that much, and —”

I had to throw both hands before my face. The angel’s face had grown too bright to look at. This was someone more complex than a guardian angel. This was an archangel. It was not just a bolt of lighting, but an intricate symphony of lighting, of pure light, the divine powers blazing with all the colors of the spectrum, and the million other colors human eyes never see, beyond infrared and ultraviolet, all the way from radio waves to cosmic rays, each one more beautiful than the next.

I realized what was happening. He was not getting brighter. I was getting darker.

“Forgive me! For I have sinned!” I cried in desperation.

“Confess!”

The whole story poured out of me. “My unit was shipped home before his. She had heard somewhere — I don’t remember, a rumor printed in the paper, or from Madame Zhulyi the gypsy — that his unit was wiped out to the last man. On Normandy Beach. I did not know it was not true. I did not know for sure! He COULD have been dead!”

“Confess!”

There was only one way to make it so I did not go blind. “I thought he was maybe alive. So I lied. Wouldn’t you lie to marry a girl like Rory? She was the prettiest, the smartest, and the most smart-mouthed. She knew how to clean a gun and where to bury a vampire so it could not get up again. And that hair! Those eyes! She was the best we had, the prettiest. And — and — Do I really got to say this out loud? Can’t I just tell God privately in my heart?”

“Confess!”

“Aren’t you the broken record, then? I lied to get the girl. She married me. When Sly showed up—she had always loved him. The stupid, dumb, strong, honest guys. A guy she could wrap around her little finger. But she stuck with me. Sly never complained. I gave him a job, and that was so I could rub his nose in it a little. Him with all his medals, more than mine, and his good grades in school, higher than mine, but in the civilian life, in the real world, I was the boss, see? He could not spend a dime without my say-so—and—and–”

I opened my eyes again. The angel was no longer blinding.

“And I am the bad guy here. I was the one keeping them apart. I could have sweet talked her out of pulling the trigger. Didn’t try. In a way, that makes it suicide after all. Don’t it?”

The angel said, “Why did you buy the insurance? It was more than you could afford.”

My imaginary mouth felt dry. “Guilt. A wedding gift to them for after my death. I lived a dangerous life. I fought monsters and I mouthed off to elves. I knew I was going to die. I knew she would go back to him. Childhood sweethearts, right? And I knew I could never have children, not after I mouthed off to that fertility goddess, and told her to take her best shot. She always wanted children.”

“Even as you are now, you could have spoken to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Why did you not?” The angel’s tone was gentler now.

He was asking why I had not told the Judge, or Father Donovan, or anyone I knew who could see ghosts exactly who had shot me. It was as hard as pulling a tooth without Novocaine to get the words out of my mouth.

“I had already ruined her life. I did not want to ruin it more. Some detective, huh? I want my murder never to be solved. And my sin is envy. Jealousy. Anger. Even dead, I still wanted to possess the one woman I could never possess. Why does he get to have her? Why? She’s no angel. He’s not perfect. Why does he get to be the hero, and get the girl, and have a happy ending?”

“Because he desires not to possess her but to be possessed. He conquers by surrender, and by dying, he lives. So too does your lord. So too should you. Look backward at your life. You are head down, and see things reversed. Did you not die to save her life, your wife?”

I suddenly knew why the timelessness seemed always to be downward to me. I had put mortal time, the human world, above me when I turned back. I had turned back to see her hugging me as I died. I was like Lot’s wife, who turned and looked and was cursed. I was looking down and it became up. I put my sight of her above my sight of the light calling me, and the light winked out.

I knew that if I stepped into the timelessness now, I would no longer be sinking below the surface of time, but breaking the surface. That is, if somehow the curse of Lot’s wife were lifted from me.

I waited, but the angel said nothing.

“Well?” I said impatiently. “I confessed my sins and now I’m sorry. I promise never to marry my best friend’s best girl again, if it ever comes up.”

The angel looked at me with fathomless eyes.

“So? Then can I be absolved?”

Now he spoke. The angel looked surprised, even shocked. “I have not that authority! Who is like unto God? Not I!”

I jumped to my feet, sputtering in anger, and the dust swirled about me, and rocks trembled, reminding me what kind of ghost I was. “What? You can’t absolve me? But you are an angel!”

“And I am no Son of Man.”

“Great! So I am the villain of this story, and I get to go to hell? I was hoping for–”

“For what do you hope, Son of Adam?”

“I was kind of hoping each man would be the hero in his own life. A tragic hero, if he goes bad, or a happy one. But not just cursed from the start.”

“All men are cursed from the start.”