Over the heads of the angry crowd I could see Alacrity begging me with her eyes.
And then the simple, almost silent word “yessssssss” hissed in everyone’s ears. It was a word and it was spoken, but it was as if it had been whispered to each one of us.
He was right behind me, the torturer of Horace LaFontaine. His suit was black and his shirt red. I moved out around the crowd and made my way toward my teacher’s side. The rest of the Close Congregation turned to the soft-spoken refutation of their demands.
“I am Grey Redstar,” he said. “It is time for death.”
The first man he reached was Ordé’s bodyguard Jason Feldman. Jason reached out to stop the skinny black man. We all heard his arm snapping. No one believed it when Jason’s body went flying over the mob at Ordé.
The teacher ducked, and Gray Man plowed into the innocent mortals, breaking bones and rending skin.
“Halt!” Miles Barber shouted. He had jumped out of some hiding place in the trees and approached the zombie. He wore a straw-colored suit with green, red, and black lines sewn crazily through it. He held a large pistol with both hands.
As Gray Man broke the neck of Ordé’s second bodyguard, Alexander, Miles Barber fired. Gray Man turned. All I could see was his back, but the fear that blossomed in the policeman’s face told the story.
Ordé shouted, “No!” and ran toward Gray Man. He was fast, but not quick enough to save Barber’s face from becoming pulp.
Ordé jumped upon Gray Man, followed by Gijon and Zero.
My teacher was torn in two. I saw his back as he fell upon Gray Man and then I saw him come apart, giving off a shower of blood and dying blue sparks.
The Close Congregation scattered, shouts following them down from Ordé’s rock. I looked around for Addy and her daughter. They had moved back toward the trees. By the time I turned to see about Gijon and Zero, they were both dead, just bloody pieces on the ground.
I considered whether I should try to stop Gray Man or help Ordé’s widow and child.
Then I realized that Gray Man was closing in on Wanita, Reggie’s little sister whom Ordé had nicknamed Dreamer. She had her hands out in front of her like claws. Gray Man smiled and prepared to destroy her, but just then Eileen Martel stood before him. She grabbed him by both wrists and stood her ground.
With my vision I witnessed the towering blue flame above her. The darker blues of Gray Man rose also. The lights burned no longer than ten seconds. People were still shouting and running. Paula McDunn, an unemployed RN from San Francisco, ran past me, her face covered with blood.
Suddenly the lights vanished and Eileen fell to her knees. I yelled to bolster my own confidence and ran at Gray Man. I was more than forty yards from them. I knew that Eileen would be dead before I got there, but I ran anyway.
I leaped over Eileen and grabbed Gray Man. He fell to the ground and I froze. It was when he screamed that I realized that our enemy had fled.
“Lemme up!” Horace LaFontaine, Gray Man’s dead host shouted, “lemme up!”
He scrambled out from under me and ran, fell, and tumbled away from the scene.
Most of the Close Congregation had also fled. Myrtle Forché and Claudia Heart were gone. Reggie and Addy came up to Eileen, Wanita, and me. Wanita was crying over Eileen, who had fallen on her side. Her face was the color of ash. I could see that she was trying to rise, but it was as if her body weighed a ton and she just couldn’t lift it.
She opened her mouth, which, along with her eyes, was flooded with blue light. Then everything was dimmed.
“We gotta go!” little Alacrity said.
And we did.
Two
Interlude
After Ordé’s death, and the deaths of so many others I’d loved, I took Adelaide and the children and ran. We found our way to the forests north of San Francisco, living off the checkbook I’d kept for Ordé. We were running for our lives, but sadness, not fear, was our common companion.
Whole days were spent when Addy and I never said a word. We were horrified and numb. The children played or watched TV, when the motel we stayed in that week had a TV, but they cried before going to sleep every night. Wanita had nightmares about losing an eye or a limb. Reggie ran in his sleep, jittering in his bed like a dog, remembering some fright from the day before.
Alacrity called out for the father she’d known only a few hours. The only way she’d go to sleep was for me to sit next to her and stroke her shoulders.
I read the newspapers every day looking for news about Gray Man or Horace LaFontaine. But there was no news about the massacre after the first couple of weeks. Miles Barber had survived Gray Man’s attack, though he was badly disfigured and severely injured. One account that described his condition said that he had to be held in restraints to keep him from tearing the flesh from his face. He was in constant pain and ranted continually about the devil roaming the world.
The police labeled the Close Congregation a cult and blamed the episode on drug use. The public dismemberments were called the “culmination of a series of sacrifices,” which, they said, included all the poisonings and the murder of Phyllis Yamauchi.
Arrest warrants were issued for various congregation members, including me. Because of the police I spent much of my time hidden in the back of the used VW van we purchased. Addy did the driving and checked us into cabins and motels.
We moved around a lot, rarely staying more than a week in any one place. Our nomadic routine continued for months. The depression that filled up our days was punctuated now and then by high points of fear. Fear that the police would arrest us and keep us in one place long enough for Death to come.
Nothing happened. We just moved around the woods, sighing and crying, hiding in efficiency cabins and hoping for some kind of sign. Reggie was always on the lookout for the perfect hiding place. There was someplace to hide, he was sure, but its location was always just beyond his perception.
But we weren’t the only part of the story. Gray Man hadn’t stamped out light or life yet. Others were grouping and regrouping on different sides. While I was hiding in backseats or bathrooms, Claudia Heart and Nesta Vine and Juan Thrombone were plotting, gathering, and evoking the words that spoke God. There was the police investigation and the perversions of love. A lot happened before our story continued and so for the sake of the continuity of my History I shall tell first about the events that occurred while we hid in the woods.
I learned these stories from newspaper articles and secondhand sources. Every now and then I gleaned my knowledge through blood. And for a while there, I learned while sharing the dreams of the closest friends I ever had.
It doesn’t really matter how I learned what I know, not now anyway. Maybe in some far-flung future, when science is not estranged from the soul, someone may find this text and know how to believe in it.
Nine
Winch Fargo lay in his cell, eyes closed, arms and legs bloodied, pale and incoherent. Every once in a while he’d mutter, “Cunt,” thinking about Eileen Martel, about how she hadn’t been to see him in months. He lay back with his teeth clenched, trying not to hear the music that played only half the melody, trying not to see the small part of what he could never become. In his dreams he’d see himself stalking a man he hates. The man runs scared and Winch falls on him with a knife, but always he turns into the victim at the moment of his thrust, the knife buried in his own chest. The old woman he sodomizes in this dream becomes him. The food he eats, the ground he stomps on. The shit from his ass.