The City Was Not Worthy of Them

    It was barely noon or just after, but already the sky was dark. I shivered and hurried on, eager to reach the city before whatever calamity this celestial portent indicated, but the earth lurched and I fell sideways and stumbled to the ground. I smacked my face against a stone and tasted blood. I spat and saw my blood in the gravel and the dust.

    The earth shook again and I screamed as rocks careened down the hills around me, cracking in half and breaking. A cavern opened in the hillside in front of me. And the wind whipped up. I heard a voice shouting – calling for God, though I could not make out the words.

    And from the newly opened crevasse there came a morbid parade. I saw the bodies of many holy ones walking forth. Their flesh still bore the marks of the pillory and the scourge. One carried her decapitated head in her arms. Another severed torso pulled himself along with his arms as his legs walked alongside. One young man had thorns in his eyes. They wore sheep and goat skins. They were bruised and emaciated. Some still had shackles on their wrists and ankles. I heard the clank of their chains as they marched out of the earth. I smelled flowers as they passed.

    “Media vita in morte sumus,” I stammered as these lively dead entered the holy city ahead of me. And the city was not worthy of them. “Speraverunt et liberasti eos.”

Matthew 27:51-53

A Future History of a Remembered Apocalypse

    Fifteen years ago, just before midnight, on the night that the mounted police came to our door, I was in the basement writing unrhymed distortion poems for the Free-Radical Press. The horses’ Lorenz-Helmschmied barding was crafted of plaited ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers. They rode silently to the door. We never heard them at all.

    We didn’t hear the blackwing Megiddo-Copters either, sweeping low over the valley with pulsar flares and active INVICTVS tracking systems. There would be no escape.

    The mounted police came with calamitous purpose, looking to deal punishment, harboring the view that the world needed God’s wrath to purify it and wearing neuro-peripheral interference shock gloves. The demands of divine justice held in human hands. We were alienated and estranged, enemies in the mind of wicked works. Dumbfounded and numb with broken hearts.

    Life inaccessible without proof of citizenship. Blood like the blood of a corpse without a demonstration of loyalty. Compliance. Peace through strength. And peace through blood. Split skulls and spilled blood. Casualties mounted.

    We heard a voice over the loudspeaker call out the command, “Go!” And the cavalry attacked, a hellish invasion with bitter biologicals and chemical weapon sprays. Federally authorized weapons of mass destruction. Flashes of fire and brimstone smoke and sulfur.

    An army of red-blooded pressurized American patriots was gathered at the place, ready to make an overwhelming assault with fireworks and jump-cut explosions. Two hundred million poorly trained agents authorized to use excessive force without legal restraint.

    I saw single mother saints and brown skinned prophets shot down and trampled. The house erupted into flames. I ran out of the house, scrambling to put on my shoes and my coat as I fled.

Revelation 16

Shadow Faces Loud Voices

    There are angry faces beneath the window as the day wanes toward darkness. Shadow faces with loud voices. There are boots on the gravel and hot breath fogging the glass.

    “Any last words before we plunge the hole with you?”

    “I told the truth, I swear.”

    How long for crushing shame? How long for speeches? If I’ve erred, my errors are mine. If I’ve stumbled, my feet are my own. If I misspoke, they are my words and I will eat them. Every one.

    “Forget it, asshole. We see you. You have the contradiction contained within your skin. Strange flesh…”

    Can you feel it? The buzzing, cockroach sensation behind your eyes… Clicking, scuttling, hissing. That anxious warning. An inflamed anger...You’ll never know what. You’ll just have to accept the encroaching darkness. It comes from inside.

    Do not open private doors.
    Stay out of sight.
    Come out of this selfish catatonia.
    We won’t be here long.

    Unheard protests against an impassable wall. Assailed from all directions. Rotted flesh beneath the skin. Bones and broken teeth. Uprooted and vanished. Everyone’s gone away.

    Record my words with iron. I have a living defender. After my awakening, set me close. And from my flesh, my skin I will see God.

Job 19

A Technical History of Violence – part 1

     Si vis pacem, para bellum.

    Our contemporary language is indebted to the Roman men of action who had as many great words as they had weapons to wield when they needed them. Semper Paratus. Semper Fidelis. Great words to describe the human physique. Great words to understand the anatomical structure – jawlines and bone structures – of their subjects. They knew how to describe a variety of pharmaceutical effects. They knew how to accelerate the process when necessary. Roman guards with hammers and war-clubs killed as many as five hundred prisoners a day and filed the proper reports.

    But the toughest part of the executioners’ job – taking hours, if not days, sometimes as long as nine or ten days – was figuring out what drug and what dosage, precisely to finally kill the victim. Too much of the wrong drug and too little of the right drug produced equally unsatisfactory results. Administering the drug was precision work. You have to account for fungus and pH levels in the water, for barometric pressure, and semi-erratic auguries. Traumatic exposures of this sort often left them bleeding to death from the inside.

    Pause for the audience – seated at the bar in red shadow and gold lights, a moody backroom at the club on the corner. Drinking cheap beer. “Buy us a drink, player?” Lights flash green and gold in rhythm to the music from the jukebox. They do not look at themselves in the mirror behind the bar. Cigarette smoke drifts. Breathe. Prepare yourselves. Make your orisons here.

    They caught their victims by the beard – in every battle – caught them and smote them. Slew them with sword and spike. Many well-respected generals of the law were drawn out of the paw of the lion. They abandoned their soldiers to slaughter. All men most miserable, their young years given to cruelty and to blackmailers. Betrayed. Soldiers who trusted the day. Soldiers who braved the night, but were led to the slaughter.

    Our responsibility is for war. Our responsibility is to strength. In order to raise the mighty warriors of tomorrow, the soldiers of future generations, it is imperative that we make all the natural preparations. They need to be taught verbally. They need to be tested physically. This is freedom. War provides and strength enables everything.

Questions for Review: Bodies

    How are the dead raised up?

    With a mighty whoosh, propelled by gases and burning at thousands of degrees. A violent wind filling the entire house. And fire like a flood, separating on the head of everyone, burning everything. Heart pounding within the throat. Blood splashed across the mirror. How is this possible? Historically? It is a mystery written in fire and in flame.

    And with what body do they come?

    Literally melting skin from their bodies like a horrific fireball. The lucky incorruptible survive – not subject to decomposition. Subject to char and to ash. Subject to cinder. A body of glory in black smoke. It is searching – not weakness. It is clawing in the dirt, flailing at broken windows, refusing to die.

    What is the ‘Spiritual Body’?

    Dormant for centuries, pent up, waiting for release. Like a plague. Razor-like shards of faces and torsos squeezed through the emergency exit. Bodies pulled from the iron furnace. Bodies under a shower of iron arrows.

    What are the four stages of the resurrection of these bodies?

    1) Men come back to their physical senses. What held them back? A bullet in their brains. 2) Petite women dragging themselves through an inferno, screaming through the smoke. Women armed with blowtorches. 3) Men of strength and security - a skeleton crew in the catacombs. Same agenda. Different crew. 4) Women breathing – barely. Coughing. Staggering. Screaming for policemen in the distance. Rushing toward from the fire in a spontaneous display of rage.

    Has the leak been sealed?

    Position his arms on the patibulum­ - the horizontal – and his legs on the stipes – the vertical. The largest of soldiers swung his mallet and drove a wrought-iron spike through his wrist.

    Has the leak been sealed? Answer me.

    The leak was sealed, but the seals have been broken.

    What two purposes will the tribulation period serve?

    Slam the prisoners against the wall. Pin them there with a fire hose spray. Turn off the spray. Watch them fall to the floor. God will change these vile bodies so they can enter locked rooms, vanish from sight and appear in the clouds. There is no guarantee except exhaustion.

    Who is the beast of prophecy?

    AntiChrist. False Prophet. Slight of build and two inches shorter than me. Just another spoiled American, complaining. The local cops kick in the door, en masse for the arrest. Watch for a wicked chemical flash like napalm on white skin, bubbling black like burnt asphalt. Then comes the end – though none of it makes sense without the handcuffs.

    What is a literal interpretation of prophecy?

    More smoke than an oil refinery. More shit than a proctologist.

First Level Documents

    Initiate search protocol:
    Translate and log variable data – sort by date (approximate) and/or subject.
        Variable mood. Variable weather.

    Please enter your personal ten-digit security code now.
    Computer beeps confirmation.

    System verifies coded pathway. Engage.
    View: local news: pentagon threats.
    View: secret information – first level documents

    Interpol documents (digital transfer from Denmark, from UK) indicate a history of domestic violence. Trying to leave chaotic and dangerous situations -Noted: Lack of intervention. Noted: Lack of response. Thirteen minutes of inactivity*unexplained.

    Sort: War
    Sort: Death
    Sort: Sorrow/Tears *exception-tears of joy.

    Exterior night and interior darkness. A web of branches over uneven ground. The world falls silent. Darker as it moves deeper out of sight. A tingle of electricity in the beating EKG monitor.

    Vaulted walls open. Chambers open. The wall, the rumbling floor are spinning.
    Cleared access – second degree secrets. American assassinations (cash exchanged)

    View: Local News. Police reports
    Null.
    View: Local News. Police investigation.
    Null and void.

    Clear path. Closed loop process.
    What a man knows in secret cannot be used.

History Passes into Lies

    Then I beheld all the fruitless work of man. Armed conflict between thirty nations. Millions threatened. Mounting pressure from international leaders. And Pope John XXI dies when the ceiling of his study collapses. He’d been Pope for eight months. Affliction comes to make us sad or make us wise.

    Freedom is a heavy load, a choice through scorching days and restless cold nights. South American strip mines and deserts are rocked by earthquakes, meanwhile Pope Adrian IV chokes to death on a fly in his wine. This is the curse that feeds on life.

    History is recorded by impatient observers. Pomp and circumstance in the land of hope and glory. Fading ancient fame. Pope Celestine V, overwhelmed by the pressure and demands of the papacy, renounces the throne and returns to the hermitage. He is later imprisoned by his successor and all men shall fear.

    How wretched I am,
    too long living among a people for war.

    Lies pass into history. Critical food shortages on three continents in a season of bitterness. Supply lines strained by militants. Pope Sylvester II makes a compact with the devil for redoubtable scientific and mathematical knowledge. History passes into lies.

    Therefore, behold, Pope Boniface VIII is belligerent. He kicks political envoys in the head. He throws ashes in the eyes of kneeling bishops. He is captured during the violence of the Outrage of Anagni and imprisoned for three days. He is beaten. He is starved. He dies, chewing off his own hand. A marvelous work among the people, and a wonder to the world.

    Work while it is day; the night comes when no one will work. Regional salt wars are fought by child-soldiers and immigrants. Pope Joan’s horse is startled during a procession and she goes into spontaneous labor. The child is born. Her secret is revealed but she dies. And there is none that can deliver me.

    Lord, save me from lying lips
    war-arrows over red-hot coals.

    Yea, before the day, Pope Formosus is exhumed by his successor nine months after his death and put on trial for perjury, for having taken the papacy illegally. His corpse is dragged to the courtroom and found guilty before being reinterred. His papacy is annulled. May the truth protect me always.

A Catechesis under Duress

 

    I begin to feel ill.

    I am bound behind a closed and locked, iron door, sitting in the gloom of a faint light on an unsanitary floor. I’ve been here before, with my arms nailed out, chained within the gilded rooms of our favored fathers, reading the spidery handwriting of forgotten saints.

    Open the closed doors.

    Rome is America. Empire is empire no matter who holds the sword. And the sword will not be held in vain, my brothers. Rome circa A.D. 45 or the United States of America 2026 – it is the same illusion stretched over space and time, simultaneous simulacra. Sinister simulations. A projection. A hologram of time irreal crowding out the kingdom of God.

    The blind mechanical agents of the tyrant on the Potomac observe our movement and conversation. An incessant cricking sound of servo motors trailing behind us on the streets. The test produces results, and the transcript is produced for the imperfect prefects. “What’s all this about sin? You propose to tell us of sin? You needn’t proceed any further.”

    Return for beatings. Blood on the iron door. Return to your cell.

    But where could I go to escape? If I go to the edge of the world it is there. And I am not out of it. The authentic has not yet overtaken the manufactured reality that we are forced to inhabit. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

    It is a catechesis under duress. Our teacher in this is Jesus the Christ, born for this and raised from this. Crucified under Pontius Pilate. And that we reasonably worship him, the soul of the world. Learn this: Repentance. Chastity. Charity. Love for all enemies. Care for the poor. Mercy and not greed.

    Why can you not accept us who believe that we will receive again our bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth? Would you, seeing semen, believe it to become a full human body? Resurrection is difficult, true, but nothing is impossible for God.

    Return for processing. The face is clawed away. Force of impact thrown down the stairs. The body cracks sharp, bent at a sinister angle. Blood on the floor. Return to your cell.

    Returned. Revealed. Restored. Reflect, if you will, on the death of disciples and kings.

    I am guilty, perhaps, but I am not wrong. I am not a criminal no matter what the oscillatory prosecution said in their public statement and press release. Crucifixion is for the guilty and even the innocent can be guilty. Enjoy that contradiction for it is a true one and I am an honest man.

    No cause. No effect. Only destruction, the destruction of human identity. The collapse of objective information. What kerygma is here? No redemptive death, only death. No crucified Christ, only a crucified carpenter. Rome did not fall, it follows.

The Night of the Murder

    We saw this coming. Everyone knew. But everyone looked the other way. Pretended not to notice. Or to care. We were all tense. Unsettled. We were nervous. What could we do?

    Which isn’t to say…

    We’d seen the photos. We saw the police on the street, the detectives. We saw the reporters and the news crews. The bathroom window broken. A stranger on the corner. An unknown car parked across the street.

    We closed the doors. Like being in a void. Avoid. Weightless and unreal on the floor. Fallen. The press of feet and hands on my face, my head. Stopped center. Even my skin was ill at ease.

    But what do we know? We were obscure strangers in the dark.

    “What?”

    “We don’t have to…”

    “We don’t have any choice.”

    “Of course we have a choice. We always have a choice. God damn!”

    “Sorry.”

    That got half a smile. But not much more. And no news.

    “Never go that dark.”

    The shadows continued collapsing into the basement where he kept his pornography, his filth. The beginning, middle, and end of all his horror. All the conversational cause and effect, false affect. Fate and destiny forever just below the surface, continuing inevitable. No one paused to consider these things. We barely spoke to each other.

    We smoked cigarettes.

    I remember one woman, a local girl. Unzipped. On her knees. Surrounded by broken windows. Sightless windows. Half remembered buildings passed by, offices moved to new, brighter premises. A disused playground, abandoned by progress, forgotten by the future. Children crossing narrow pathways to secret places. Sheltering in improvised homes here and there.

    Some desire nothing but to keep as they were. Some forget. Some sleep.

    No. No. Forget it all. We had no recollection of night of the murder whatsoever. No barking dog. No surveillance. Nothing. We were trapped. Cold and nervous. The following gaze of prying eyes. Only moonlight on the lawn.

This Week Only: The High Lord Exorcist, Sceva and His Seven Sons

    “Come one, come all” shouted the carnival style barker with a pencil thin mustache and a straw boater hat, “Roll up! Roll up for the magical, mystical exorcism show starring the High Lord Exorcist known throughout the Levant and all points east as the Chief Priest, Sceva and his Seven Sons! This week only! See them today because they won’t be here long! Lay down a fin and see the show. Lay down a sawbuck and we’ll let you participate in the show.” Crowds thronged in the narrow Ephesian streets to see the world-famous exorcists. They clamored and shouted, screaming out the name “Sceva! Sceva! Sceva!” over and over again in their enthusiasm and excitement.

    Careful investigation may have revealed that Sceva was not actually related to the priest Zadok, or a member of any of the priestly families and that he had never actually presided over any sacrifice. He may have claimed high rank as a priest of God, but he’d never served in the Temple in Jerusalem. That the seven young men who assisted him in the exorcisms were his sons was also a dubious proposition. They probably weren’t even brothers.

    But the throngs of people screaming out the name “Sceva!” couldn’t care less. They were thrilled by his supernatural performances in the market square and wanted more of them. They came every day to see Sceva and his sons drive out all demons and astral spirits, all the kosmokratores of the heavenly spheres who were responsible for ailments, afflictions and physical maladies of every kind.

    “The magical, mystical exorcism revue is about to begin!” the street-corner barker called out to the passing crowds. The citizens of Ephesus put down their coin, cash on the barrel, to see the show. They came to feel the exhilaration of being in the presence of Kuru demons – the demons responsible for cannibalistic brain disease. They came for the thrill of seeing Astatine spirits, rare and radioactive, spirits who do not want to exist and are usually vaporized by their own heat, a half-life measured in hours. And yet, in that time, they can do significant damage.

    “Step up to witness superhuman marvels beyond belief!” the barker called, and the crowds came to see the show.

    The Lord once, in the primordial past when waters still covered the entirety of the earth, split the sea and smashed the heads of dragons in the waters, those extraordinary, uncanny beasts from the deep, dragons of no taxonomy, no classification, no order, no kingdom except the kingdom of darkness. But the Jews of Ephesus plunked down their coins to watch the itinerant exorcist Sceva and his seven spangled and sequined sons as they displaced demons with a colorful display of vomited gall.

    The Sons of Sceva called for a volunteer from the audience, someone troubled by a demonic presence. And a bandy-legged old man raised his hand. “I am possessed by an unclean spirit,” he said. Then, waving their mystagogic amulets – amulets containing secret inscriptions and sealed with wax – the seven sons of Sceva began the exorcism ritual as their nominal father looked on.

    They spoke in turns, invoking the sacred phrases:

    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Uriel, the power of light, regent of the sun.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Raphael, the power of health, and binder of desert demons.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Raguel, bringer of fire and harmony.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Samael, angel of venom and poison.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Michael, the great prince of heaven.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Gabriel, the power of strength and player of cool jazz.”
    “I adjure you by the name of the angel Phanuel, the face of God, sustainer of hope and health.”

    And then all held their amulets aloft and, with a choreographed little dance shouted in unison, “Gathered together the forces of heaven, numbering seven, archangels forever. Amen!” And the audience cheered.

    Then, after quieting the crowd again, the old man Sceva himself spoke in a ventriloquist voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once:

    “Great is the ineffable name of the Lord, by the God of the Hebrews, by the unerring knowledge of all that exists. I adjure you by the maker of heaven and earth, to smite you with a mighty blow, to destroy you by the angel of his fierce wrath. I cast out every incubus of natural disease. I cast out all anguipede inversions of the sacred name – even if they be embodied as a man with a rooster’s head and snakes for legs. I cast out ravaging angels, Lilith demons, and bastard spirits. Owls and weaving spiders come not here. I cast out polluted blood, corrupted bile - be it yellow or be it black - and all congested phlegm. Your horns are horns of dust. Your stones are soft. Your eyes are weak. The light that shines from the sun will not find you. To condemn you to lowest Hades, to lie in darkness.”

    The seven sons formed a circle around the bandy-legged old man and began their chant.

    “By the name of Jesus of Nazareth and the name of his servant Paul…”

    But this is as far as they got before the demon within the man interrupted in a voice that rattled shingles from the roofs of nearby buildings. “Jesus I recognize, yes. Yes. Jesus I recognize, and Paul I know. Yes. Yes. Paul I know. But you? Who the hell are you lot?”

    The spindly little man leapt to his feet and slashed out with his untrimmed nails – gashing their faces and gouging their eyes. He grabbed the nearest one while swiftly ramming his knee into his groin. He bashed his elbow into the nose of one of the boys. Blood sprayed.

    The sons of Sceva fled the scene screaming, following after their father who’d begun running as soon as the demon began to speak. “I don’t know you!” the demonized man shouted in a voice louder and deeper than possible with human vocal cords. “I don’t know you!” He laughed after them as they ran away with their matching outfits in tatters. “I don’t know you!”

Dream Police and Rêv Conditioning

    “What am I going to do? I’ll be marked for Rêv Conditioning for sure. It’s illicit dreaming. A 0180 infraction with repeat modifiers.”

    “What are you talking about, Jeff?”

    “I’ve been dreaming about Shay – a woman that I work with.”

    “Multiple occasions?”

    “Three times now. The first time I dreamt that she pulled open her blouse to show me her new bra, but I recognized it as one of my ex-wife’s brassieres.”

    “That is strange. And the second?”

    “We – Shay and I – were at a museum together when her husband showed up to accuse me of having an affair with her. In the dream she defended me, saying that it wasn’t true – even though she knew, in the dream, I did in fact want to have an affair with her.”

    “And the third?”

    “The third was just the opposite. She was cold me, refused to speak to me or to look at me. And when I asked if I’d offended her in some way she said ‘Nothing.’”

    “She wouldn’t answer you?”

    “No. I asked if I’d offended her and she answered only with the word ‘Nothing.’”

    “It sounds as if you’re right to be concerned about the Dream Police.”

    Agents of the Imperial Dream Police smear a thin layer of ectoplasm over their naked bodies which acts as both an aphrodisiac gel and as an infiltration serum. This, along with the nictitating membranes that cover their eyes, allows them to slip into the unconscious sights and sounds of your sleep and dreams. And the sodium thiopental they secrete from their pores allows them to see through the absurdities of the dream and to know the truth of your reveries. They are weird figures dressed in white suits and dark-faced transparent helmets, communicating in grunts, clicks, and whistles.

    Dreams are great magicians, conjuring up fully formed and vanishing locomotives on their way to purgatory, poisoned uteruses, and piles of eggs stacked in the corner of the room.

    It all seems rather obvious in the light of the new morning, I suppose. Hardly even worth writing about. But if we accept the interpretive principle that we are each individual within our dreams, these rather commonplace dreams might become somewhat more revelatory. I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know if I want to think about that. There’s too much bleeding in the Red Zone City to worry about a nightmare of knives and ex-wives.

    There will be no telephone apologies, only bad dreams. And I cannot worry about the Dream Police right now. Politicians may be able to get away with that sort of lack of concern – and not just in dreams, in waking life too. But me? Not so much. The Dream Police don’t care what the dreams mean. Symbols are arbitrary. Signifier and signified are both fluid- there’s no enduring link between the two. Meaning is irrelevant to their procedures. There’s too much else going on.

    And the Dream Police are jealous of their magic.

Everything’s Back to Normal

    She arrived home a few minutes early, before the shouting, before the gunfire. She came back to their apartment to relax. To rest before the next trip to the other side, across town. To Kyiv, Belfast, Beit Lahia, Chicago, Des Moines… She knew she would need to sleep in the meantime of memory. She was tired. More than tired, really. She was worn thin by the constant pressure of disaster, the rapid cycling of bad news. The listed names of the dead mispronounced on the radio.

    “Is that you, Darling? I’ve been waiting for you.” Her husband, the artist. The insurgent.

    She smiled flatly at his voice. “It’s me. I’m home.” She tossed her keys into a small dish on the table beside the door, hung her coat on a hook and closed the door. She saw her reflection in the windows staring back at her years apart. Remembering. Hoping. Some things can’t be clear. Some things can’t be returned. She wondered if it were a question or an exclamation. She had no response either way. “Working late?” she called out to him.

    “Just trying to finish up before…”

    Then came the explosion and the fire. The gunshots. The sirens. The roar and shout. The oppressive heat of rising fire. Ringing alarums in the air.

    Weightless and unreal, she fell to the floor. Her eyes were closed but she knew his weight when he covered her with his own body. His skin, his flesh, his scent. She could feel his heart pounding against her back. The screams were hers and his together in the dark. One.

    Later, when the smoke had thinned, the glass swept up and the bodies removed – little more than the diluted nightmares of social polish – she went into the cramped kitchenette. “Coffee?” she asked as she watched him spread their beloved flag across the cracked window. Another reminder of danger.

    The coffee pot rattled in her trembling hand. Another cup of coffee? We can’t go back to the way things were. Everything’s back to normal. And things will never be normal.

Before the Money

 

    The other day I wrote a surreal sort of crime story: Money Makes Demands. I thought it was going to be just a one-off bit of writing, but today I've written a sort of backstory for that story. 

Before the Money

    How did it begin? First point – and on this he was very clear. Certain: I would give him an alibi for the time of the murder. And just like that, I was in for better, for worse. For risk and reward. For crime and punishment.

    I’d been a man without a safety-net for too long. Not destitute, not yet. But these were desperate times. The obvious shocks and lesions of international discomfort and internal abuse. Living in danger both foreign and domestic. And here he was offering me money for a job – a job that would cost me. Laurence had the notes, the books, the one remaining letter, and – importantly – the motive. I was to be a blind. A shield.

    I was to be the protection and security of division. What he hadn’t inherited, he’d taken. What he hadn’t taken, he’d destroyed. A known offender. There were stories of contacts in Italy and Spain. Trade in Eastern Europe. All the illusions of a criminal imperium of a mid-level boss. And me – just another day player. An unnamed extra in the night.

It wasn’t always like this. Golden nostalgia tells me things were in the long distant past. But too much time passed now. An ex-wife or two. A foundered business. My daughter – was she angry with me? The two of us alone for so many years and separated now.

    Thirty years ago, thirty-five, there had been adventure. Promise and challenge. There had been love – or the expectation of love. All of it unfulfilled. No champagne. No lunch at L’Adagio. I had the early trauma and long path of failure same as anyone. What secrets did I have? Laurence knew he could offer and knew I would have to accept. ­The bright light of youth had gone out years ago.

    Laurence gave me the list:

    -Theft from property
    -Homeless
   -Disappeared and unidentified
    -Apparent suicide
    and
    -No record of employment

    “What does any of this mean?” I asked but Laurence only raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t one to answer questions.

    “You want the money? You’ll follow instructions. Details will follow.”

    Money was transferred with a pen and a click. Payment message received. Now I was obliged to follow through. There was always a choice. Choices and options. There were choices that had to be made. But was I prepared to kill for them?

    The law firm downtown where Laurence held office was a false front. That was obvious. No investigation was necessary. I took the money along with the list. He motioned toward the door. But I hesitated to leave. Not that it was warm and dry inside – though it was. Not that it was pouring outside – though it was. But a reluctance. A reticence. I knew what I was getting into.

    Or thought I did.

    The night that followed, behind the Leslie Houses in the dark, working over the earth. Digging in the uneven ground. Soft earth and wet leaves. Dark but not silent. I could hear the murmur of voices, muttered prayers and intimate whispers. Screaming fathers. Laughing children. Televisions and barking dogs. I worked quiet, looking for the older graves. “This is the first test,” I told myself. “This is the first of what will come.”

    I crouched in the dark. He hadn’t said grave robbery. But would I have refused? Could I have refused? The world fell silent. And now it was raining again. Drenched and slipping in mud, I was nearly done when my phone rang.

    “Get the item and get out of there. Now.”

    Head beating. Surprised by tears. Somewhere between scream and sob. I couldn’t help myself It felt like a dream. Rush run faster. A kind of clarity in movement. Thrust. Double back dark but not empty. Across the field. A glance back and no one. The car was waiting. Drawn up and ready and away. I’d become another crime story. I would make the delivery and wait for the next assignment.

***

    The fact remains that I’d tried to call my daughter earlier that day. Truth, whole truth and whatever. She was always the one to charge in and change until things worked again. She was the one who looked after people She looked after me after her mom left us. And again, after her stepmom left. And then, somewhere along the way she’d left me to. Or I’d left her. Or both.

    She didn’t answer, of course. Maybe her phone was turned off. Maybe she still didn’t want to talk to me. There wasn’t enough evidence to convince her of the better life. I already tried.

    Our last conversation was a shortness of breath. “I’m not really interested,” she said at the end. “You don’t have interruptions. You have objectionable characterization. You have the resistance of a moment.”

    “We need to talk,” I said to her voice mail and put my phone back into my pocket. I told myself that I would try to call her again later. But I knew it was unlikely.

    Meanwhile – Laurence…

    Someone was in charge, but I didn’t really think it was him. Strangers not friends, someone else was in charge. It could have been any number of blood sucking ticks from any one of the families that had moved into controlled territory. A pattern of abuse that led to the death of his victims. Hurt and humiliation. Hurt and burns. There were people chattering on the courthouse steps and women in the bathroom – but no one was talking about him. Whoever he was.

    The trial was over before it had begun. Betrayal was there. Say what you want. What now? More questions?

    I checked my phone for any sort of response and went outside for a cigarette. If anyone was going to find me, it wouldn’t be there. Walking away, unstuck and open. Skulking around outside. Chain smoking on the stairs. Worrying about everything. I was still trying to make sense of it all. Life in the past few days or months or years… I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

    What was I doing in this hotel room? This hotel room? I didn’t understand but maybe that was the advantage of disappearing problems. I was scared – an odd inglorious feeling. I was frightened. There was real trouble – of falling – of running from police. Released from the rails and real trouble. There were gunshots and breaking glass outside and the crash of falling bodies. I hooked the chain on the door and turned off the lights. I lay on the bed and starred at the ceiling.

    Spiders and sex workers running through the night. The mercurial mercy of doctors, cops, ministers. It was all betrayal. Betrayal and murder. And I still had to set up that alibi.

    Kicking myself now.

    What could I say? I knew the despondent feeling of wanting the consolation of a woman. The remembered past was locked away. All you could do was deal with the pressure brought to you. I might have made mistakes. You make a lot of mistakes along the way – but there had to have been a few good decisions too, right?

    More gunshots and the sky broke.

Money Makes Demands

    It was both later and earlier than I realized. It must have been some time after midnight. I was in a thin corridor, crowded and cluttered with posters framed photographs – all the artifacts of a rich man’s gilded and spoiled history, that led away to the left. I considered the hallway a potentially useful exit, especially as they approached. Laurence would be here soon with a list and inventory of demands He was expecting another fourteen grand from me, but I didn’t have the money. I never had it, any of it. The whole deal was skunked from the beginning. Confound him and his perpetually raised eyebrows.

    Yet, let it be said, the old man did, in some ways, remind me of the moon.

    Looking around, I saw little in the way of any other help or aid at the far end of the room. One victim was still there on the wall. Flashed and slashed. Beside the body was an old television on a stand, pointed at the corpse. Some silent film noir played upon the screen. A man in a fedora, a woman with a gun… Beyond the archway was an open-plan ceiling. Moonlight but no escape.

    And at the far end of the hall, yet unnoticed by everyone, a room without a view. I stared into the blackness and felt the faintest rush of morning air. Something breathing. A way out? Or was it just another way further into the dark? There was no time for this or any of the other old debts.

    “Why am I here?”

    I stepped and staggered over the unmade bed, ignoring the blood on the bed sheets, withdrew the key from my pocket and told myself to breathe. And breathe again. When I arrived, I had expected something to happen, but not like this. And now it was too late. Treacherous panic reared up within me. I narrowed my eyes and, despite the stench, breathed in through my nose.

    The old man’s lower body was gone but not through the open door. Exposed from the waist up. Arms pinwheeled, hands pinned. A body posed in perpetual tumble. Mickles and muckles on my mind, I must have missed much. Like the fact that one of his eyes was smaller than the other. The other had been gouged out. He was old and severed by a vicious knife wound. The cause of death couldn’t be clearer.

    Two years ago there had been another the same. Slashed and flashed. Left in the basement surrounded by pornography and filth. Laurence had come back sober. His share of horrors was particularly dark. After the fire, no one attributed it to coincidence. Burning old news and secrets. So many secrets.

    “Why am I here?” Drop everything. Go. Follow. Flee. Get out.

    There were additional stab wounds, but I didn’t have time to count them. White, now desaturated. I’d taken too much time getting here. Clearly too weak, too feeble. Too late to form an opinion. Trying to think. Trying the door handle.

    One last time, “Why am I here?”

    I thought once more of my family, my daughter and all the notes and maps in her room. She knew about this. Probably. All that research in the libraries of Europe, she had to have known. Right? Either it hadn’t registered or she didn’t want to risk telling. Was it all my fault? I wouldn’t doubt it. I had failed her too often. The last time I’d seen her was at the carpet shop, abandoned there. I couldn’t expect her to wait anymore.

    I paused. Was that the elevator? Someone upstairs? Down? I opened the window and peered out. Moonlight was spread across the lawn like silver milk. There was nothing in the unsupported air. Had someone called the police? Where were the lights and sirens? Why the delay?

    I buried the key beneath the books and journals and newspaper cuttings inside my backpack. Laurence would demand it. Money makes demands. Always. Eternally insistent. Another pause and I shoved my backpack behind the bed. Further behind.

    “I heard that you’d called,” Laurence said from the door, annoyance in his mouth and that superior arched eyebrow. The man standing there in that silver three piece suit and silver revolver in hand. “And now you are going to...”

    “I’m sorry,” I blurted out, spinning round. “I have to you,” I stuttered, words spilling out of my thoughtless mouth. “I mean, I have to tell you. There can be no excuse. A full report, properly. In person.”

    “Why are you here?” Laurence asked. “It can’t be because of Franklin, can it?”

    Silence.

    “Was it something to do with Franklin? It’s very important that you tell the truth. Don’t lie to me, my boy. My good boy.”

    Silence. And then “I can’t tell you that right now, but if you’ll give me, if you’ll let me…”

    Sudden gunshots and armed intruders, masked, crashed through the door. The military police had finally arrived. Splintered boards clattered across the room. From where I lay, prone upon the floor, I watched as Laurence turned his gun upon the police. He fired once, twice before a salvo of automatic gunfire ripped him to shreds.

    I screamed my way into the darkest levels of hell.

Mischief Night – Friday, 1987

    It was another Friday in that long ago and misremembered 1987, October 30^th. Mischief Night, or Devil’s Night as some of the more alarmist voices were already starting to call it. All Hallow’s Eve Eve… The threshold of the threshold.

    “We should go out to the cemetery and watch for Satanists,” Dave suggested. “They’re bound to be out, right? Getting ready for the great ritual, the high holy Samhain.”

    We were all together again – in the attic space above Dave’s family apartment that we’d claimed as our own. The television was on, some eurotrash horror film called The Sweet Terrors of the Succubus, but we’d grown bored of it and lost track of the plot, such as it was, and we were casting about for something to do. Dave’s mom had suggested that we could help her make rice crispy treats for Halloween trick-or-treaters, but we’d declined.

    She also brought up a small box of Halloween decorations – mostly paper cutouts of skeletons and ghosts and witches. “Mom,” Dave whined. “That’s kids’ stuff. It’s corny.” She smiled and left the box anyway and Micah was sorting through it. He hung a few of the spiders and skeletons from the ceiling.

    “If we wanna go to the cemetery,” I said, “we’re going to need to call Allison.”

    “No, dude,” Dave said. I’m not exactly sure why Dave didn’t care for Allison. He called her “Yoko.” I told him that was uncool, and he shrugged. Anyway, Micah was already dialing the phone. Dave saw it. “Dude, no.” Micah handed the phone to me.

    “Hey,” Allison said. “Whatever it is, I’m down.”

    “Trip to the cemetery,” I told her.

    “On Mischief Night? Groovy.” I could hear her grin through the phone. Twenty minutes later she was in the alley behind Dave’s apartment, and we were sneaking down the back stairs.

    “How’d you get the car?” I asked as Allison drove us across town towards the Resurrection Cemetery. “You don’t have your license yet, do you?” Dave and I were in the back seat. Micah was up front with her.

    “No. Beth and the parentals are out of town. They’re taking her to visit one of the colleges she’s interested in. They don’t know I’ve got the car.”

    I nudged Dave with an elbow to the ribs. “Well, thanks for driving us to the graveyard. It’s cool you’re coming.”

    “Actually,” Allison said without taking her eyes from the road, “It’s a cemetery. Though we use the words somewhat interchangeably. Cemeteries are larger and not connected to a church. Graveyards are smaller and associated with a church.”

    “Cool,” Micah said.

    “Same’s true of coffin and casket,” Allison continued. “We use them to mean the same, but they’re different. Caskets are rectangular with four sides. Coffins are tapered with six sides.”

    “Cool,” Micah said again. I don’t think I’d ever heard him so verbose.

    Allison turned off the headlights and parked the car a ways up the road. “Quiet now,” she warned. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

    But she needn’t have bothered. The place was dead. Bad pun, I know. I know. People had been there but now it was only us and the remains of someone else’s party. We shone our flashlights around the scene and saw the remains of their revelries. There was trash everywhere. Empty beer cans and vodka bottles, empty cigarette packs and cigarette butts. Dave found a used condom and Micah found a stray shoe and a very large black bra. There were a few broken candles scattered around one tombstone and lots of pieces of paper blowing around in the grass.

    Dave stepped on one to stop it from blowing away. He picked it up and read from it. “It’s from the Bible,” he said. “This page is Isaiah. ‘My heart falters, fear makes me tremble; the twilight I longed for has become a horror to me...”

    That caught my ear. “That’s… I recognize that one. Why do I know that one?” I looked at Allison for help. “It’s so familiar. Why do I know that passage?”

    “Beats me,” she said. “But maybe we should clean this up. I mean, we just can’t leave it like this. It’s so…”

    “Disrespectful,” I suggested.

    “Ugly,” Dave said at the same time.

    “Yeah,” she said to both. “I think Beth’s got a trash bag in the back of the car.”

    So we spent the next half hour walking between the graves, using our flashlights to find the trash and detritus left behind by the unknown revelers and mischief makers. We worked methodically in silence to gather up all the Bible pages and beer cans and other assorted debris. Dave used a small branch to pick up the used condom and to drop it in with the rest of the trash. We nearly filled the bag.

    When we finished, we gathered around Micah who was pointing his flashlight at a headstone with a pile of small stones on top. We watched in wonder as Micah added one more stone to the pile.

    He pointed his flashlight at the grave marker again and said, “My uncle.”

    LEVI ABELMAN – 1932 – 1984
    BELOVED HUSBAND – DEVOTED FATHER

    Allison turned and hugged him. And we all sat there in silence on the ground.

    “It’s like that song by This Corpse Alive – Dark Gethsemane,” I said as we sat together there at Micah’s uncle’s headstone.

    Early hasten to the tomb
    where they lay
    this lifeless clay
    all is solitude and gloom.

    We huddled together in silence for several minutes. Not speaking. Not moving. Just listening and thinking. After what seemed like a long while I asked a question. “Do you ever wonder if this is all there is? I mean, these bodies. This flesh… This life. There’s more, right?”

    Dave nodded. “But what is it?” I asked again. Now he looked slightly panicked. Micah shook his head and shrugged.

    We went out that night looking for performative blasphemy, all the satanic rituals of death in the Resurrection Cemetery, but we found something like the meaning of life. Or at least the right questions. And that’s still the question. All these years later. Is this all there is? All our assumptions about life and death and life after death and life after life. Spirit disembodied, removed from the material and the physical. A presence without weight and a weight without presence. Is there more? Are we more?

    “I don’t know what comes after life,” Allison said. “But whatever it is, it’s not worth much without love.” She placed another small stone on Micah’s uncle’s headstone.

    That’s when the police rolled up and turned on the flashing blue and red lights.

    “Shit! We’re busted,” Allison hissed.

    “Should we run?” Dave asked.

    “No,” I said as I stood. “He’s probably already got the license plate from the car. Even if we ran, he’d still track us down.”

    “Okay, you punks. Just hold it there. Don’t move,” called out the police officer as he turned his powerful flashlight on us. “Every year it’s this same damn thing. You kids come out here on Devil’s Night to topple some gravestones or spray paint pentagrams all over everything.”

    “Sir,” I said raising my hands over my head. “We’re not satanists. We came out to see satanists, but we didn’t find any...”

    “But they were here,” Dave interrupted. “They left their trash all over everything.”

    “We just cleaned it all up,” Allison finished the explanation. And Micah pointed to the trash bag at our feet.

    “Open that up and let me see,” the officer instructed. Micah knelt down and opened the bag wide enough to see inside. The condom was still right there on top of all the beer cans.

    The officer spoke into his radio, “This is Richardson out at the Resurrection Cemetery. You got anything on that license plate?”

    “Negative. No tickets or outstanding warrants.”

    “All right kids. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to haul ass out of here before I have to arrest you for trespassing. You’re going to go home. Straight home. And I’m going to file a report saying that I didn’t find any evidence of satanic mischief out here tonight. Which not only saves me a lot of other paperwork but has the added blessing of being true. Now haul ass.”

    We took off running for Allison’s car. But he shouted again, “Hold on, hold on! Take this trash with you.” Micah ran back and grabbed the bag, and we all beat feet for the car.

Rituali de Sangue - Friday, 1987
Twilight at Saint Gerald's - Another Friday, 1987
Exorcism Live - Another Friday, 1987

Exorcism Live, Another Friday, 1987

    I was lying on my bed, listening to music Allison had given me when Dave and Micah showed up. The music had captured me; it was totally unlike the metal I usually listened to. One entire side of the cassette was a song by Brian Eno – thirty minutes of drifting synths. Just drifting. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling drifting. Almost floating even.

    I thought about her – Allison. Since the event at the hospital she hadn’t been allowed to drive Beth’s car anymore. She was grounded, but not really in trouble. Her parents – all of our parents – were so relieved that we were safe that they implemented only token punishments for our poor choices. But still, she wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. Not till she actually got her license anyway. We hung out at school more often since the hospital. Walked the halls between classes together. That’s when she’d given me the mix tape.

    “You should expand your experiences,” she said.

    So I was listening to this music of nothing, this melody of air and moonlight through the headphones. I didn’t know how to hear it but there was something profound there.

    And that’s when the guys came in. We were at my place instead of the unfinished attic above Dave’s family’s apartment, but we were at my place almost as often as Dave’s. They kicked open the door and Dave yanked the headphone cable from the stereo. The sustained lilting of the airy melody flowed into the room.

    “What’s this shit?” Dave asked.

    “It’s a mix-tape Allison gave me.” I tossed him the cassette case with her handwritten titles.

    “Brian Eno?” he read. “Never heard of him. Sugar Cubes? Mississippi John Hurt? Carter USM?” he looked up from the list. “Are these songs or bands or what?” He continued reading. “Herman’s Hermits? Herman’s Shitting Hermits? Don’t your parents listen to that crap?”

    Micah pushed the stop and eject button on the cassette player, removed the tape and handed it back to me. He shook his head, “No.”

    Dave pulled out one of my This Corpse Alive albums. We were really into them. I still listen to them. The percussive pounding began immediately:

    Creeping in unnoticed
    The ungodly! The ungodly!
    Creeping from the remotest
    The ungodly! The ungodly!

    “No. Not that one” I objected. I was still feeling the ambient drift of the Eno song and I couldn’t handle the throbbing metal just yet. “Play the next track.” Dave moved the needle and suddenly the distorted guitars and drums were replaced with somber, if somewhat dissonant strings layered with gravel voiced mournful vocals.

    The righteous dies and no one cares
    In these evil days. These evil days.

    That song moves me. Even still. I can’t hear it without trembling a little. But back then, back in 1987 when we were fifteen, we were smart kids doing dumb things. Or dumb kids listening to good music and watching bad movies. That wasn’t the plan for this Friday night though. No. We’d planned that dumbest of teenage pranks – the prank phone call.

    In preparation I’d gone back to the University library and found a copy of Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. The librarian at the desk wouldn’t let me check it out though. “Stolen too often,” she told me. So I had to make xerox copies of the pages I wanted. The librarian eyeballed me the entire time to make sure I returned the infamous text before I left.

    Don’t get me wrong though. We weren’t satanists or anything. We just thought all that occult stuff was interesting. We read some of Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial magik, we looked up ancient summoning spells. We tried some of those, but never had any luck with them. And I read some of Anton LaVey’s books. Some called him “The Black Pope,” others called him the “evilest man in the world,” but to me he just sounded like Ayn Rand with pentagrams and black candles. Boring really.

    But armed with these devilish provocations we were going to call Bob Larson’s Talk Back radio program. Larson was one of those televangelists – though he was on the radio, not television in those days. His show was a crack up. Talking to teens about Satanism and ritual Satanic abuse and all that hype. He was a showman, always asking for people to donate money to his ministry and pitching his books and tapes. He was loud. He was abrasive and abusive, often shouting down his guests, telling them to shut up so he could rail against them. His voice was high pitched and pinched, and even more so as he became riled up. We turned off the record player and turned on the radio and tuned in the program just in time to hear the beginning of his show.

    “Good evening, America. Welcome to Talk Back with Bob Larson. I’ll be here for the next hour talking about what’s on my mind and hearing from you about what’s on your mind. Tonight we’re talking about teenage satanists. If you’re a teenager and you’re involved in Satanism or the occult dial me at 1-800-821-TALK. Call me. Maybe you’re into witchcraft. Maybe you’ve been involved in some sort of ritual sacrifice. Maybe you’re a member of a black metal, death metal band. Or maybe you want out. Maybe you want to be set free. Call me.”

    Dave was already dialing and talking to the call screener. Trying to get us in to the show as Bob continued on the radio.

    “Satan promises power. Power over parents. Power over school authorities. And even power over God. Is it a passing phase? Or are these teens committing to the rituals and a lifestyle that will take over and consume them? Do they have the devil in them? Is it Lucifer or Belial, or Leviathan in them? Why are teenagers turning to Satan? Call me. Talk to me. We’ve got a young man from Bloomington, Indiana on the phone.”

    “We’re on! We’re on!” Dave said thrusting the phone at me.

    “So you’re a teenage satanist?” I heard Larson say in the phone earpiece and on the radio and I was momentarily confused. “How long have you been duped by the devil?” Dave thrust the xerox LaVey quotes at me. Micah turned down the volume on the radio a little.

    “Do you kiss the ring of Satan? Hello? Are you there, caller?”

    I suddenly found my voice – not my regular voice, but the mewling, growling voice I used to crack up Dave and Micah as we read Crowley and LaVey. “Gather around me, Oh! Ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!”

    “My, what a lovely singing voice you must have,” Larson quipped. “So you’re a teenage satanist. You’ve obviously read The Satanic Bible…”

    I interrupted his spiel, “Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought. Life is the great indulgence – death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life, here and now!”

    “Caller, what’s your name? And how old are you?”

    We’d prepared for this. “Call me Liber Samekh,” I said, not dropping the voice. “And my minions, Cernunnos and Draugor are here with me.”

    “Are those your witch names? Your ritual names?”

    “Yes,” I answered and kicked at Micah who was wheezing with laughter on the floor, holding his yarmulke on his head with one hand. 

    “And do you and your minions listen to heavy metal, black or death metal music?”

    “We do. We follow This Corpse Alive. They’re the greatest.” I was getting off track a little. Dave shoved another page in front of me, jabbing his finger at a highlighted quote. I read it, putting all the menace I could into my cracking, teenage voice. “Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.”

    Larson was incensed. “Liber Samekh, Listen to me. Liber Samekh, I won’t allow blasphemy on my show. This is my show. Listen to me! Listen you’re getting into something that you can’t control. You don’t know…”

    I interrupted him again, louder and more forcibly. “Say unto thine own heart, ‘I am mine own redeemer.’”

    “Begone, Satan” Larson started shouting. “I bind and cast you out of this boy. I bind and cast you out of this child. I bind and cast you out in the name of Jesus…”

    He probably went on like that for some time, but we were laughing too hard to hear him. It was dumb and childish, of course. Puerile. But it was fun and funny. We were reading Crowley and LaVey and all that other rot, but we never bought into the “Satanic Panic” of those years. Bob Larson was a carnival barker. Anton LaVey was little more than an egoist. But one thing still stands out from those years – that song by This Corpse Alive still haunts me.

    The righteous dies and no one cares
    these evil days. These evil days.

Rituali de Sangue - Friday, 1987
Twilight at Saint Gerald's - Another Friday, 1987

Twilight at Saint Gerald’s – Another Friday, 1987

    Judas the Hammer brings ruin to many!
    Judas the Hammer will capture the city!

    The growling vocals and throbbing, distorted guitars of This Corpse Alive shook the room. They were our favorite band back in 1987 and we listened to their albums whenever we got together, despite our parents objections to that ‘devil-music’ as they called it. We were at Dave’s place – in the upstairs unused half attic of the apartment – our usual spot. It was me, Dave, and Micah. And Allison

    “I appreciate that you’re here to do this, but aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsal, or something,” I asked, twisting my head to see her. I liked her cinnamon hair. And that her older sister, Beth – a senior while we were freshmen – would sometimes get us some pot. She was there to pierce my ear with a safety pin. My mom was going to be so cheesed.

    “Sit still,” she insisted and squeezed my ear with the ice cube to numb it. “Yeah,” she said. “Stupid Guys and Dolls.” She snorted. “They cast me as one of the Hot Box dancers. But it’s not like I can dance all that well. It’s just ‘cause I have boobs.” Micah, Dave, and I blushed and turned away from her and she laughed at us. I sneaked a look at her chest as she squeezed my ear again. Harder.

    “Hold still,” Allison said. “This is gonna’ hurt.”

    “I thought the ice…” I started to say and then she stabbed the pin through my lobe. I screamed, but it was done.“You’re such a puss,” she said and handed me a towel. “Wipe up the blood.”

    Micah brought me a small hand-held mirror and nodded in approval. “Cool,” he said.

    “Are you guys still into that Satan shit?” Allison asked as I preened in the mirror with my new punk rock jewelry.

    Micah shook his head back and forth, nearly dislodging his yarmulke. Dave laughed and said, “We’re not Satanists, you know. We just thought it’d be cool. Not that it worked or anything.”

    “Do you have anything else planned?” Allison asked as she sat down on the couch next to Micah.

    “We were just going to watch a movie. I think The Brides of Betrayal is on tonight,” I said.

     “So. Just another boring Friday night for the Three Investigators?” Allison said with a slightly sardonic grin. Now I almost regretted telling her about my childhood obsession with those books. Almost. She grinned at me and continued. “But what if I said I know how we can get into the old Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital.”

    The three of us stared at her as the This Corpse Alive album continued playing on the stereo.

    My heart is bewildered, a dread overwhelms
    The twilight I longed for has become my terror.

    The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital had been empty – abandoned since before any of us were born. None of us really knew why. There were stories, of course, each more outlandish than the last: human breeding experiments, Nazi doctors, you know the sort… Weekly World News kind of stuff. It was probably something entirely boring like taxes or insurance but the stories circulated. The city kept it pretty well boarded up so that it didn’t become a hobo camp and there was very little graffiti on the walls. A tall chain link fence cordoned off most of it.

    “Hellfire!” Dave shouted. “Let’s go!”

    “But how are we going to get there?” I asked. “It’s on the other side of town.”

    “I’ve got Beth’s car,” Allison said.

    “But no license, right?”

    “Are you coming or not?” She asked and followed Dave down the stairs. I looked at Micah. He just shrugged and followed along. We piled into Beth’s maroon and rust Ford Escort and Allison drove us across town to the Saint Gerald. Micah offered a cassette for the tape deck, but Allison refused it. “No more of that death metal crap tonight, boys. You’re going to hear some real music.” She played some synthesizer Euro pop. Micah just sulked in the back seat staring out the window.

    The Saint Gerald was boarded up and secure – except for one basement entrance that Allison knew about. The iron stairs down to the door were dangerously sloped and bounced uncertainly as we made our unsteady descent. I felt a wash of vertigo as I stepped down, but it passed. At the bottom she pulled away a band of yellow and black barricade tape and pulled on the door. It opened. Reluctantly, but it opened.

    We were ready to enter but Allison held out her arm. “Should we pray first, or something? For protection?”

    “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s probably a good idea. Dave, what have you got in the way of protection prayers?”

    He looked sheepish and said, “I don’t know. I guess we could recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm Twenty-Three, maybe.”

    Micah held his hands in the air with his fingers spread like Mister Spock and began to pray: “Hashkivenu Adonai, Eloheinu l’shalom v’ha’amideinu shomreinu l’chaim. Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha v’takneinu b’eitzah tovah milfanecha v’hoshee’einu l’ma’an sh’mecha. V’hagen b’adeinu v’haseir mei’aleinu oyev, dever, v’cherev, v’ra’av, v’yagon, v’harcheik mimenu avon vafesha. U’v’tzeil kenafecha tastireinu ki el shomreinu umatzileinu atah ki el chanun v’rachum atah. Ushmor tzeiteinu u’vo’einu l’chaim u’l’shalom mei’atah v’ad olam. Baruch atah Adonai, shomer amo Yisrael.”

    “Amen,” we all agreed, though we didn’t know what he’d prayed.

    “Dude, was that from Star Trek?” Dave asked and Allison smacked him on the back of the head.

    “Hold up. Hold up,” Dave said rubbing his skull. “I’ve got something else. I’ve got these.” He pulled out a small wooden box from his jacket. He opened the lid and revealed three communion wafers. “I smuggled these out from Mass when we were getting ready for the summoning ritual.” He looked at Allison. “I didn’t know you’d be with us or I would have gotten more…”

    “Isn’t that blasphemy or something?” she asked.

    “No. We’re doing something dangerous here. We might encounter some evil spirit inside there. We need the holy presence to go with us.”

    “Still seems iffy to me,” I said. But we each took one. For protection.

    “I’ve got something too,” Allison said handing us a piece of chalk. She looked at me and said, “Just like The Three Investigators, right?” She smiled and I melted.

    “So we don’t get lost,” Allison explained and drew an arrow on the wall. She stepped through the door into the darkness and we followed after her.

    Inside it was stuffy and dark but not like a cave. When my family went to the State park caves near here for vacation, they smelled fresh and clean. Living even. Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital, abandoned for so long, smelled dead. I don’t know how better to say it. Our flashlights did little to illumine the facility. There was little to see. If we expected to find medical equipment and blood stained walls we were disappointed. It was just an empty building. Empty hallways. Empty rooms.

    But there was something, some nervous hesitation, some unexpressed unfamiliar dread. “Aren’t these places full of radon?

    “Radon?” Dave said. “What’s that?”

    “Radioactive gas that seeps up from the ground,” I explained.

    “Radioactive gas? You’re full of crap. You know that right?” Dave said.

    Maybe it wasn’t Radon, but there was something. I felt. We all felt it. And my newly pierced ear was throbbing. I think I saw interdimensional flashing lights. Fairy lights and there was …

    It’s here that I mostly have to end the story.

    I don’t really remember what else happened. We woke up in the hospital – the actual functioning hospital, with doctors and nurses and everything. Our parents were there, sobbing and squeezing us until we were nearly crushed to death. Alternately laughing and crying and shouting at the doctors. It turns out that someone (we never learned who) made an anonymous phone call to 911 reporting a gas leak in the area of The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital. Police and Fire Department responded and found the four of us unconscious in the heating system of Saint Gerald’s. They followed our chalk marks, apparently. They flooded the room with fresh clean air and we were revived and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

    I still don’t know how we got into the heating system.

    And, what is more, Saint Gerald’s had been vacant for years, everything shut down. No power, no utilities. No gas. Who made the call? Why was there the smell of gas there? These things we never learned.

Rituali di Sangue - Friday, 1987

Rituali di Sangue – Friday, 1987

    It was long ago in a time of misremembered darkness and we were reading poorly translated thirteenth century Italian blood rituals by candlelight while heavy metal bikini girls writhed in the late night movie on the TV. It was 1987 and I was fifteen.

    “Baptized as we were into these bodies of flesh and death...” We intoned the words – some of which we’d had to pencil ourselves to fill in lacunae in the translation with our best adolescent guess. None of us actually spoke any Italian, but I’d had a semester of French and Micah knew a little Spanish. We thought we could fake it. A flash of hellfire lightning outside the window briefly illuminated the room and we all jumped. I shrieked. Yeah, like a girl, and then laughed.

    “Don’t break the circle, dude!” Dave shouted as Micah flinched. We’d drawn the protective circle on the floor using Morton’s salt filched from Micah’s mom’s kitchen. I burst into another fit of laughter.

    “It’s not working, is it?” I asked. We’d been holding hands around the circle, but now my hands were damp and sweaty. I wiped them on my jean jacket.

    “Don’t break the circle,” Dave insisted again.

    “Come on, man. We’ve been trying to read this book for an hour. It ain’t happening.” I’d found the book, Rituali di Sangue Per l’apparizione Demoniaca, in the special collections section of the college library – a university library card was one of the perks of taking AP classes in high school – so it was my fault we were spending that Friday night with obscure occult performances. I’d convinced the guys to try one of the rituals, but it obviously wasn’t working. Dave, who needed little persuading, wanted to continue.

    “Keep reading.”

    “Micah?” I asked. “What do you think?”

    Micah, who said very little stood up from the floor where we were sitting and turned on the lights and blew out the candles. I laughed again.

    “Fine!” Dave huffed. He went over to the stereo cabinet and pulled out a vinyl album by This Corpse Alive – some black metal band from Australia, I think. He settled the needle at the first track and turned up the volume. Thick guitars and drums filled the room.

    Step by step he staggers to the skull!
    Step by step he staggers to the skull!

    “Help me clean up this salt,” Dave said. “or my mom’s not gonna’ let us hang out up here anymore.” The room was an unused half attic above the apartment where Dave’s family lived. The first floor was their family’s business – his parents were both CPAs.

    I turned the music up a little louder and the three of us started to clean up the candles and salt. “Don’t put away the wine,” Dave said. We’d sneaked a bottle of wine out of his dad’s basement.

    Follow him down, down to the tomb
    drink of his blood, his flesh consume!

    With the ceremonial accouterments swept up, extinguished, and put away we sat down on the couch together. Dave poured us each a bit of wine into plastic cups decorated with Smurfs and Carebears. “What’s on the TV?” Dave asked as he sat and sipped from his cup. Micah pointed the remote at the screen and turned up the volume. Some hapless blonde was running barefoot and braless through the woods, screaming.

    “Same ol’ shit,” Micah muttered. But it didn’t matter. We often spent Friday nights watching the late night horror shows. And we loved it. All those gruesome films with gallons and gallons of bright red blood and screaming beauty queens with bright red lips. We especially loved the badly dubbed European ones.

    Another flash of lightning and an immediate bang of thunder rocked the upstairs room and the electricity went out. “Holy hell,” Dave gasped. “That was close. Sounded like it was right on top of us.”

    We sipped our wine as we waited in the dark for the power to come back on.

    “Should we get the candles back out?” I asked after a minute. Micah, never so loquacious, nodded and got the candles and the lighter back out from the cabinet where he’d put them. Soon the room was aglow again with the soft flickering light of the candles.

    “How long do you think…” I started to say but Micah hushed me with a finger to his lips. We could hear something approaching even over the howling, screaming wind and rain outside. The room suddenly felt heavy and close. Smaller than ever before. Something groaned in the darkness.

    Suddenly the door flung open. We all screamed and grabbed each other.

    “What the hell’s going on up here?” Dave’s mom said “Good grief, boys. It’s just a storm. And where did you get that wine?!

Light Rises in Darkness

    How can anyone prove/disprove the cold increasing threats without dismantling the government? Nuclear code phrase arms race. The volatility of secret tests and difficult decisions. The moral restraint of even moderate elements is disregarded. We need a new anthropology – one guided by smokeless gunpowder and heavy water. We need more guns for the flowering American manhood. A new crusader ethos. Do not tamper or destroy. Do not screw with us.

    The descendants, the generation of the upright will be blessed. Light rises in darkness when justice rules our lives.

    Couriers of peace are still agonizing – as they should be. Let them suffer. Let them bleed in this new, never-ending war. Let peace, we say, flow like blood from their veins. We will take action ourselves. God knows the weaponry available to us to drain away the spirit.

    But the righteous shall never be moved. They will be remembered forever. Light rises, justice rules.

    Kill someone! Someone who matters. Someone who presents a real threat. A credible threat. Today. Right now. Our allies? Greedy children with grasping, grabbing hands. Hollow out their abdomens and refill them with incendiary devices. Fire drills and evacuations. Some of them will believe eventually. What other choice is left to them? Can this wait till tomorrow? The audience laughs and applauds. Shall they blaspheme forever? Who’s to stop them?

    The righteous, their hearts are steady. They will not be afraid. Light rises… Light rises!

    We are prone to wander. Prone to fever. A wash of vertigo. Driving by memory and guesswork. Warnings ignored. Abrupt summons and secret enrichments. Alarming midnight rhetoric. Death and destruction far surpassing previous success. Explicit surveillance videocassettes. Can love be purchased outside the blast zone? Any survivors? Do we care? The profit or loss depends upon the audience. All is justified in the economic reports. We can leave your body in a valley of dry bones…

    Gnash their teeth and melt away! Can these bones be remembered? The desires of the wicked come to nothing. But light… Light rises! Light rises in darkness when justice rules.

Neither Way. No Hand

    “Oh, of science we have many and varied kinds, observational science is but one. We have Revelation and Inspiration too, as well as Illumination and Interpretation. We are not unlettered and unlearned here. We have no need for your million pictures faked with photoshop and generative AI. Your sophisticated sophistry.”

    I am beat up and run down before I ever got going. No life. No zip. All ache.

    “There is a spirit that guides them, of course, that’s what makes the conspiracies make sense. They share the same breath.”

    They cannot read out of doors, neither will they hear inside. Screw the inscrutable and doubt the redoubtable. Dig into hell or climb into heaven. Neither way. No hand. Where are the violent upheavals of earth to swallow them up? Where are the she bears from the mountain? No. No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. Not really. 

    “We need new underground bases. Deep Underground Military Bases, right in the heart of the nation. We have seen the lighted triangles on the lunar surface. Dark lights coming to the Earth in the near future. These spirits have habitations beyond the Earth.”

    I saw the news as well: two found dead near Lake Silverado, their bodies within their submerged vehicle. Lovely and Loving but no longer Living.