Authors: Robert Swartwood
Lightning flashes and I see them all around me, on both sides of the trail. All standing there staring, all waiting for me to either slip and die or make it and live. And now that I’m closer to the clearing, making sure not to trip over rocks and vines, I see Samael at the top of the trail.
Images invade my mind again, only these are sporadic, completely random.
Joey lying in his hospital bed, the machines beeping around him, saying,
Did you ever wonder what would have happened had Adam and Eve said no to Satan?
Moses in his RV, after having poured rum into a
Sesame Street
glass, saying,
Man acts, God reacts
.
My grandfather the day he took me out of school, in the driver’s seat of his Impala as the state police were outside with guns drawn and about to take him out of the car, saying,
Know when to stop
.
And now I’m almost there, I’m almost to the top of the trail. Very soon I’ll make it to Samael. I’ll drop to my knees and bow before him and his legion so that he can show me mercy.
Rain pours and lightning flashes and thunder rumbles, but I ignore it all and stare forward, at Samael who stands there staring back at me. He’s smiling and I can see it in his eyes, the satisfaction, the knowledge that soon he will be raised above Satan and closer to God.
Behind me the giant’s gaining distance. How far exactly I don’t know but I know it’s getting closer, that its long legs are giving it that extra step it needs. I’ve got maybe thirty yards left to run and then it will all be over. A cramp is forming in my side, accompanying the pain, but I know I can ignore it, I know I can make it and fall to my knees, bow before Samael and keep my life.
He must sense it even before he sees it in my face. First his smile begins to fade, then his eyes begin to narrow. He starts shaking his head, starts opening his mouth to say something. But already it’s too late. Already I’ve slowed my pace until there’s only twenty yards between us now, maybe fifteen, and behind me the giant continues, it somehow sees me and it sees flesh to destroy so it runs with purpose.
Lightning flashes one final time and in that instant I see the legion is no longer looking at me, waiting to see my fate. Now they’re looking at Samael. His body’s trembling and his head’s shaking, and I hear his voice through the rain, I hear him as he begins screaming.
“
No! No, you can’t ! YOU CAN’T!
”
Then the world explodes in a mass of bright, intense light, and I know no more.
Chapter 41
T
he church parking lot was deserted. I parked in the same handicapped space I’d used three weeks ago. Unlike then, James Young wasn’t waiting for me at the door. Instead there was a note taped to the glass that said:
Christopher, please let yourself in
. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Then stopped.
From where I stood in the foyer I could see down the hallway, into the main lobby. I could see the ladder there, a yellow A-frame. I could see the sneakers that were balanced on top.
“Christopher?” James Young called. “Is that you? Please, come here. I need ... I need to tell you something.”
I started forward. “Pastor Young, what are you doing?”
“Hello, Chris.” A noose circled his neck, the other end wrapped around the weathered wooden beam in the ceiling. “I’m glad you came.”
I took another step forward, slowly this time, for some reason afraid that if I took the wrong step the ladder would tip.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“But I do, Chris. I know you won’t understand—that nobody ever will—but I have no choice. I ... I’m a damned man. I have sinned by murdering, by lying, by believing in false idols. And then the Lord took my family away from me. But I ... I didn’t want to. Please, Chris, please understand that.” Tears falling down his face, he spoke quickly, almost babbling. “Please, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt your folks. But I ... I had to choose. My
father
, my father who’s been dead for seven years, he made me choose. And I ...”
“Pastor Young, please.” Taking another step forward. “Don’t do this.”
“Stop!” he shouted, practically screamed. “Just answer me one question.”
I stood waiting.
“Do you think ... God will forgive me? That ... that I’ll get my redemption, my forgiveness from doing this?”
I shook my head. “Not like this.”
He said, “Well, then I guess we’ll see,” and kicked the ladder out from under his feet.
•
•
•
T
HE
ROOM
THEY
put me in was the nursery. I was surrounded by tiny chairs and tables, surrounded by friendly pictures of Jesus on the walls. In every picture he had long brown hair and a smile on his face and he had his arms open, welcoming the poor and the diseased and the whores. Welcoming everyone who was willing to come to him.
Eventually the door opened. Steve Carpenter stepped inside. He didn’t say anything at first. He came toward where I was leaning against the counter in the room, where they probably changed the toddlers’ diapers. Then he stopped and surveyed the room, realized there was nowhere to sit, and sighed.
“So what happened?”
“I already told the other officer.”
“That’s great. Now tell me.”
For the past hour I’d been thinking over what had happened. About what I’d told the first officer who took my statement, and whether that statement was going to work. For some reason I wasn’t surprised this was how it ended. Samael seemed to like testing men and women of God, he liked to see just how strong their faith truly was. James Young had been the one who murdered my parents, the one who painted the cross in their blood on my bedroom door because that was what his dead father had told him to do. And now James Young was dead, just like nearly everyone else in my life.
“He called me last night, wanted me to come see him again. I figured he wanted to follow up on the conversation we had last time. You know, the one we had before I went up to Bridgton. But then ... well, when I got here, he was like that.” Nodding my head toward the door, indicating what was beyond the door, the hallway which led to the lobby, the lobby which had the tipped over A-frame, the body of James Young hanging by a noose.
“And that’s it,” Steve said. His voice betrayed the fact he didn’t believe me at all. “He didn’t leave a note or anything. He just killed himself like that, wanted you to find him.”
“Huh,” I said, more to myself than to him. “You know, that never even crossed my mind. That, you know, he wanted me to find him. But ... well, I don’t know.”
I fell silent then, hoping that would be enough. Steve just continued standing there, tall in his police chief’s uniform, his massive arms crossed. After calling the police I’d snagged the note taped to the entrance door and flushed it down the toilet. I knew there would be no other notes, at least in terms of the suicide, because James Young had only wanted one person to know the truth.
Steve said, “You know, this entire thing is fu—” but he quickly cut himself off, remembering he where he was. “This entire thing is screwed up. All of it.”
I knew he wasn’t just referring to this recent matter.
“Yeah,” I said. “Tell me about.”
He was quiet for another moment before he uncrossed his arms and jerked a thumb at the closed nursery door. “Let’s take a walk.”
We used the exit door at the back of the church. Here the afternoon sun was bright, hardly a cloud in the sky, yet there was a breeze blowing that made it feel like a nice enough summer day. The property here sloped down toward a drainage dip, filled with rocks and littered with debris: an empty soda bottle, a torn black flip-flop, a Twizzler wrapper.
Standing in the shade of the building, Steve said, “I want to apologize. Before you left I promised you we’d find the guy who murdered your parents. But we haven’t even come close. It’s been almost a month now and we’ve turned up nothing. The state police couldn’t find much either. It’s embarrassing, really, and I’m sorry.”
I just stared down at the drainage dip, watching that red candy wrapper shivering in the breeze.
“So anyway,” Steve said, when he realized I wasn’t going to answer him, “I’m also sorry that this is the first time we’re talking since you got back. I mean, after what happened up there in Bridgton. I tried calling that Sunday because Dean hadn’t gotten back to me and I heard what happened. I wanted to go up there myself but couldn’t. I talked to Sheriff Douglas though, and she told me what happened—about your grandmother and uncle. She said you were in the hospital. She said that you’d been shot and that ... that you’d been struck by lightning.”
Lightning was the official word. There were witnesses that reported to have seen it from miles around. For the second or two it touched down on earth, satellite and radio waves had been disrupted. TVs and computers and radios blinked off at the same time before coming back on, like nothing had happened.
But I was there. I felt it. And I knew it wasn’t lightning that struck.
“That’s what they tell me,” I said, and forced a smile. I didn’t tell him anything else, though. Not about how when I woke up in the hospital it had been Tuesday. How the doctors told me I’d been in some kind of coma. How even though everyone at the church witnessed me being shot there was no entrance or exit wound. Even the cuts on my hand were gone. I didn’t tell Steve how that I was released just in time for Grandma’s funeral, then Dean’s. That I even attended some of the others’ too, like Henry and John Porter’s, even Dawn and Lindsay Bowyer’s. That a week later I’d gone to Ohio, to return two friends back to what they would have called home, so one could be buried next to his wife, the other’s ashes spread above his mother’s grave.
Steve turned to me. He wasn’t wearing his hat and the breeze caused some of his gray hair to twist and turn in a kind of dance.
“So that’s it,” he said. “That’s all you can tell me about what happened.”
“Honestly?”
He nodded.
“Honestly, I can’t remember much about what went on. Even at the church with Dean. I just ... I can’t remember.”
But I was lying, and I hated myself for it. Steve had proven himself a friend throughout this entire thing, and I had no reason at all to lie to him like this. But the truth was I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to tell him that ever since I’d awoken from that coma my memory had improved. And not just of that one week in Bridgton, but of my entire life—every good thing said and done, every bad thing, all there in my head, ready to be picked at random. I imagined that green field of endless doors in my mind, all those doors now standing open.
Not only that, I also had better insight into other people’s lives, both living and dead. I could see everything Moses and Joey had gone through, I knew everything Sarah had ever thought. Even right now, standing here with Steve, I knew about his wife, how she’d been told just five months ago that the lump in her breast was indeed cancer and that after all the tests, it appeared it was malignant.
“Well, I figured as much,” Steve said. “I was hoping though you could tell me about the old man they found by that stone house in the woods. From the reports I read he had a rifle with one expelled shell, and his head ... his head had been pulled off.”
I glanced back down into the drainage dip, back at the Twizzler wrapper. “I wish I could tell you, Steve, but like I said, I just can’t remember. I think ... I think getting struck by that lightning screwed up something in my head.”
Steve nodded like my answer was acceptable enough, just like the police up in New York when I told them the same thing. They’d been sympathetic but had wanted answers too, answers that I knew were much too wild for them to believe. So I did what I swore I’d never do again and lied, told them I couldn’t remember. After talking to the doctors they then let up on their questioning. They said it was actually a miracle that I was alive to begin with, that I’d been standing in the right spot when the lightning struck. Anywhere outside the area I was found lying unconscious and I’d be dead. I didn’t believe it until I went back a few days later and saw for myself. All the grass and trees were darkened and dead except one spot, a spot that was green and full of life.
“Can you at least confirm one thing for me?” Steve asked. “I hear someone came back with you. A young pregnant girl. Supposedly she’s staying with you at the house.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling grateful that I could finally talk about something. I told him about Sarah, how her mom had died in an accident two years ago and how her dad and brother had been killed at the church along with everyone else. “She’s got no one in her life right now, the same as me. So I offered to let her stay as long as she wanted until she figured out what to do with her life.”
“You know people will gossip.”