“Hey, my name’s Meg,” said the girl, putting her compact away, pulling a cigarette from her purse and lighting it. “What’s yours?”
“Clare. Have you heard about the manifestation?”
“What do you mean?”
“At the movie theater.”
“At the Mirror? You mean the picture on the wall? Yeah, I already saw it. It’s a hoot.”
“It’s an image of Christ,” Clare said. “It portends his return from a faraway galaxy where he’s been imprisoned until an army of the Elect was assembled to set him free.”
“Sounds like Star Trek. He sure picked a shithole building to put his picture on,” said Meg.
“Well, it’s because it was Todd’s mural.”
“Who’s Todd?”
“This is Todd right here. Todd, aren’t you going to say hello?”
“The head? Ho ho!” said Meg. “Hi, head! What’d you say his name was, Todd? Where’d you get that thing, anyway? It’s cool, it almost looks real.”
“Better leave the discussion right there,” said Todd. The girl didn’t seem to hear him. Maybe only Clare could hear him. He might be right. No, no more pretending, the Coming was nigh, and she was going to tell the world the way things really were.
“It is real,” said Clare. “They tried to destroy him, but they were too late. The Resurrection of the Dead is underway.”
“Are you into Wicca or something?”
“No.”
“No? But that’s some shit about Samhain or whatever you’re talking about, right?”
“Certainly not,” said Clare.
The girl tossed her cigarette out the window. “This one guy I was running around with, Tyler, is into all that too. He’s a real asshole. I’m going to kill him and Ryan when I find them. Fuckers, taking off without me just ’cause I fell asleep.”
“Today is the start of the end of everything,” said Clare.
“Is that kind of like ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life,’ only bad?” asked the girl.
“That’s why His image has appeared,” said Clare.
“But doesn’t that shit happen all the time? I mean, a stain gets on a silo or some shit and somebody says it looks like Jesus. Then a bunch of hillbillies come and gawk at it and get all excited, and it gets on the news.”
Clare was only mildly annoyed by these ignorant comments. “No, it isn’t like that. There are those among us who want to prevent it from happening, who want to drag the whole world down to their level by spreading cynicism, by seducing the unwary—”
“Oh yeah, I know about them. They’re all over the place.”
“You know about the Gnoomes?”
“No, never heard about that, but there was this one guy I was living with for a while. And he was like trying to use drugs to try and fuck me. He wasn’t dosing me or anything, just thought I’d be grateful for getting high. But I wasn’t that grateful, ha! ’Cause he was this real old guy, but he was like an old hippie, so he thought he was still cool and shit. You know, that’s how they are. He was giving me this weird drug that was supposed to make me his slave or some shit. I do like to get high, but I figured out what was going on because he started trying to order me around, like he was going to pimp me out. But it didn’t work the way he wanted, not on me. Asshole.”
“You were very lucky,” said Clare, “because that was a Gnoome. I’m surprised you got away. Maybe a Niff intervened on your behalf. There is a drug the forces of evil are employing now to try and enslave young women.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s what they want. It’s like white slavery in the old days. I mean like, this guy was weird but he was like a lot of, you know, regular guys. He didn’t just want to get into my pants, he wanted me to really like him, but I guess he thought that was the way to do it. At first, he was just trying to fuck me, but then I like got to him, I guess. Did you ever see the movie White Zombie?”
“No,” said Clare.
“I have,” said Todd, but the girl didn’t seem to hear him.
“It’s a real cool old movie, like from a hundred years ago, where this girl gets made into a zombie by this guy—”
“There’s a drug being distributed very widely today that’s intended to make the entire population of the world into zombie-like creatures of a sort.”
“You don’t mean worm, do you? Some people say you should call it vee dee, but that sounds like venereal disease.”
“It is called that, though it’s real name is Verum De—”
“Oh shit, I did some of that last night! I don’t think it’s the same as what this hippie guy was giving me. Either that or this stuff we had last night wasn’t very good. It just made you feel, like, wound up but really useless. I mean, Ryan liked it, but he would. Tyler said he thought it was okay. It wasn’t like that other drug I was talking about. That was a pill you swallowed. This was stuff you eat and it looks like gummy worms. That’s why people call it worm.”
“You took Verum Deus.” Clare sounded very serious.
“Yeah, if that’s vee dee. Why, does it fuck you up? I do feel a little strung out still. Guess that’s why I’m babbling.”
“It will take over your entire mind and soul as time goes on.”
“Omigod, don’t tell me shit like that. Where’d you hear that? You sound like Dr. Trumpetface or whatever.”
“It’s in the—”
“I’m not taking any more of it anyway. I don’t need to be doing that shit. I need to get another waitressing job, and I can’t work if I’m strung out. I was going to stay with Tyler at his crib, but now he says he’s moving back in with his parents, the little homo.”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? It matters to me.”
“Everything will change, starting today. You won’t need a job.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how I’m going to eat or where I’m going to live. I was living in my car for a while, but then I had this stupid accident and it got totaled.”
“You can have this car if you like, but you’re not going to need it.”
“Huh?”
“I said, you can have this car.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“No, take it. This is where we get off.” Clare stopped, pulled out the keys and handed them to her, grabbed the head and jumped out.
“Jesus, that thing looks real,” said Meg.
“Yes, it’s all real. Don’t blaspheme,” said Clare as she walked away.
CHAPTER 36
FRED’S DREAM
Fred was taking a nap on the cot he kept in the back room at the Limbo before it was time to open. More and more, he didn’t like to stay at home. His wife had died two years before, and he didn’t feel as comfortable there by himself, and tended to get depressed on days when he was home. He had the radio on, tuned to a country music station that still played real country music, oldies they called them, from the ’60s or earlier, rather than the kind that sounded like rock and roll to him. He was half-awake and noticed when an old Kitty Wells record came on, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” and was slightly annoyed when his mind conjured images of girl angels with blonde ringlets in long white gowns playing guitars. He didn’t really believe angels looked like that, maybe this popped up when he was on the edge of dreaming because of those old turn of the century pictures of angels Grandpa still had in his house, adorable girls in pious poses with superimposed wings, rolling their big eyes heavenward, all a little on the young side. But abruptly the song was replaced with a news report, and he heard a frantic announcer say something like “The White House itself has now confirmed that millions have disappeared throughout the world, especially in the US. Newborns in maternity wards were the first reported disappearances…”