He stopped, gripped his temples as the feeling faded. Then, suddenly, a terrible rotten smell hit him. Like meat gone afoul. Nausea rolled in his gut. He sniffed the air, then placed a hand to his mouth, realizing with utter dismay that it was his breath. He ran back into the drugstore, bought some gum and mints and filled his mouth.
He returned to the spot where his car was parked.
Stopped.
Stared.
Clutched his leaping heart.
On the windshield.
Drawn in white chalk.
6:00
.
Bev looked at his watch. 2:13. He gazed around in a paranoid fashion, just as he had at the beach when he’d discovered that someone had been watching him. Saw no one suspicious nearby. A heavy set woman stood before a Jeep Cherokee, loading a child into a car seat; a man wearing a Spock’s Beard t-shirt was by the entrance to the drug store, opening a pack of cigarettes he’d presumably just purchased. A girl with green spiked hair sailed by on a skateboard.
“Hey,” Bev called to her.
She glanced around, then one-
eightied
on her skateboard, rolled over and stopped a few feet away from Bev. With a flick of her foot, she kicked up the skateboard and caught it with one hand. She waited in haughty silence.
Bev eyed her various piercings; nose, eyebrow, lip. He said, “You know who I am?”
She shook her head.
Not that famous
.
“My name’s Bev. Bev
Mathers
.”
She looked at him quizzically. “So?” Arrogant youth. Not one of his crowd. More in tune with The Sex Pistols, or The Misfits.
“Well...I guess it’s not important.”
“What do you want?” the girl asked, tossing her skateboard back to the blacktop.
He pointed to the windshield of his car. “See that? The six o’clock? You didn’t happen to see who wrote that there, did you? It had to have happened within the last five minutes or so, while I was in the store.”
“Actually, yeah, I do know who did it.”
Bev’s heart sped. A lump formed in his throat.
Anxiety symptoms
. “Mind telling me?”
“Nope. I did it.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. It’ll come off with water.”
“I’m not worried about it washing off.” Bev stepped forward, ready to grab the girl should she try to flee before he had an answer. But, the girl remained steadfast, living up to her arrogant appearance. “Who are you? Why’d you put that there?”
“Hey, man, don’t shoot the messenger, okay? Some guy paid me twenty bucks to do it.”
“Some guy? What’d he look like?”
“I don’t know.
Kinda
geeky, I guess. Said it was a joke. I didn’t care. Got me twenty bills out of it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Drove away after I did the deed.”
“What was he driving?”
“
Uhh
...white car.
Kinda
small.”
This meant one thing: that the man from the forum party, the one that left the note about the party, was still tailing him. Bev shivered, considering all the unanswered questions: who was this guy? What did he want from him? Was it really just a party, as Kristin suggested? Or was there some other kind of motive to acquire his presence? One thing was for certain: the guy’s intentions were determined, and focused.
“Can I go now?”
The girl fidgeted the loop in her nose,
thrusted
a tongue stud forward with her teeth. She looked impatiently bored.
Man, if she were a big Bev
Mathers
fan, this would’ve been the experience of her lifetime. As it so happens, I’m just another stranger on the street, one taking up too much of her ‘valuable’ time.
Like the doc had said: I’m only human
.
“Yeah, you can go. Thanks.”
She nodded and skated across the lot around the side of the building, out of sight.
Bev peered back at his windshield.
6:00.
He felt in his pocket for the invite. Took it out. Stared at the typewritten words:
A LIMO WILL ARRIVE AT YOUR RESIDENCE AT 6:00 PM
BE AVAILABLE
He looked at his watch.
2:28.
Be available
.
The man went into his room, sat on the edge of his soiled bed. He folded his hands in prayer, but his invocations were interrupted by harsh memories. The past. Thirty-four years ago. When the call came.
We have a child for you. A six-year old Israeli boy whose parents were killed in the war. He was rescued by a team of archaeologists in the desert, and has been nursed back to health. We believe that you and your wife are the perfect parental candidates for him. His name is Allieb.
The lengthy application process had asked a seemingly never-ending list of questions, from religious preferences to dietary practices to political beliefs. One question in particular carried a great deal more weight than the others: it’d asked if the applicants had desired only an infant child. A humorless woman at the adoption agency explained to them that most eager parents preferred to start from scratch, so to speak, regardless of the long wait for a newborn. But, if they would agree upon a child up to the age of ten years, then the wait would be much shorter.
There are many parentless children in overseas camps waiting for an opportunity to come to America
. Feeling pity for the thousands of faceless children the agent had so sorrowfully referred to, the future mother and father agreed to this arrangement, knowing that soon they’d become the proud parents they’d always dreamed to be.
Three months later, a call came to notify them of the good news. A child had been chosen for them. They’d rejoiced in prayerful song and feast, their dark world falling beneath the beams of a previously impenetrable light—the man’s curse of sterility, now offset with a gift from God. There had never been a happier moment for the two of them.
Papers filled. Signed. Then, a son.
On December 25th, 1968, they met him at the L.A. International Airport. Dark curly hair. Olive skin. Large unflinching eyes. The man recalled the undying emotion of the moment, heart pounding with joy, of proud anticipation racing through his veins upon first sighting his son. He remembered how they’d locked gazes for the first time. And how he’d felt a fleeting second of a headache, a unique scratching in his head like a fingernail on limestone, and then a faint burning smell like charcoal that had seemed to have come from nowhere, and with all of this a slight stir of hesitancy washing over him, disturbing the happiness of the moment that faded as soon as the boy smiled and raced forward, hugging him around the waist.
They showered him with affection from that moment forward. Hugs. Gifts. A new home to sleep soundly in. All had seemed perfect—a grand start to a wonderful life together. What more could they have asked for?
Soon, however, something was realized to be wrong.
For weeks thereafter the boy remained silent, tentative of his new surroundings, unwilling to do little more than eat raw vegetables and sleep during the day and pray silently in his room at night. He spoke very little, mumbling only in prayer and acknowledging his parents with curt whispers and nods only during brief respites. Despite this reluctance to communicate, the man and his wife still poured their heart and soul out to him, making sure that he was fed, clothed, protected, hoping that soon he would open up to them and return the love that they were so willing to give.
Months passed. In time, the boy had indeed begun to open up, to show some willingness to speak, and even took an interest in primary education. It seemed as though the new parents’ hard efforts were beginning to pay off. As a minister, the man made every effort to raise the boy a Catholic, despite his intrinsic Hebrew upbringings, and his odd silent payers. The boy consented to the man’s indoctrinations, attending his father’s sermons, although the man suspected the boy might not have paid attention to the daily teachings instilled upon him. Still, he brought the boy to church every Sunday and continued to school him at home, religiously, and educationally.
By the age of nine, the boy spoke fluent English.
By
ten
, French.
And soon thereafter, Italian. And Latin. And German.
The boy exhibited not only a proficiency for language, but for math as well, able to decode even the most complicated formulas, whether it be algebra, trigonometry, or calculus. Even stranger, the boy retained knowledge of events that required research beyond his restricted capacities, from events in Russian history to the man’s own genealogical background.
With this sudden and rather alarming proficiency, the man and his wife, driven mostly through religious influence, grew very concerned.
On a instinctual whim, the man began to research the history of the boy’s name: Allieb. No mention of it in the Bible, although there had been a passage in The Old Testament that stated,
Removing the lie shall reveal a demon in disguise
. It had stood out for weeks in the man’s mind, pestering him like a persistent itch, until the pieces of the puzzle finally fell together.
On a piece of paper, the man wrote down his son’s birth-given name: ‘Allieb’.
Remove the lie
. He crossed out the word ‘lie’ in his name. That left ‘A-L-B.’
Rearranging the letters, he spelled out: B-A-L. He shuddered, then looked at the remaining letters, L-I-E. He
HHHmixed
them up, then one by one placed them back into his name.
“Dear Jesus, help us,” he said aloud, staring at the letters written on the paper.
B-E-L-I-A-L
.
A demon in disguise.
Feeling helpless, the man continued his daily routine of preaching and teaching and supplicating, watching over his son carefully as the boy continued to exhibit an intelligence far beyond his schooling and development. The boy went about his odd routines, maintaining his arrogance, keeping quietly to himself at all times, even when his father outwardly probed his behavior. Arguments arose. Fights ensued.
Then, on the morning of his first communion—a special day his parents had looked forward to for years—the boy’s true persona emerged. They found him on the bathroom floor, naked, peering up at them, a straight razor clutched in his hand. Mother had dropped the blue suit she’d been holding and ran from the room, sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of her son. Father had stood there motionless, making the sign of the cross, praying for his son who’d shaved his head and eyebrows and sat smiling idiotically on the floor.
The communion commenced, the man unwilling to allow the spawning darkness to assume his only child. The procession of children went fifty or more long. Allieb had stood in the middle, fidgeting uncontrollably as he neared the front of the line. Unexplainably, the church organ blared loudly upon his turn to accept the host.
The boy closed his eyes. Opened his mouth. The priest placed the Body of Christ upon his tongue.
Immediately Allieb gagged and collapsed to the floor, clawing at his lips, screaming, “It’s choking me! It’s choking me”. His eyes rolled up into his sockets, exposing bloodshot whites, and when the priest kneeled down to assist him, the boy jutted up as if tethered on strings, arms outstretched, mocking crucifixion. He spit a wad of phlegm the priest, laughing as he did so, taunting his stunned parents with cold vicious eyes.