My neck prickled.
Mary Claire stepped away from the microphone and gave her daughter a concerned look. She might as well have been shooting at a rainbow; Angel wasn't there anymore.
"You float on the skin of your past," Angel said, her eyes wide and sightless, "suspended above the dark landscape below. There are hills there and valleys there. You created them but you've forgotten where they are."
Her mouth moved in time with the words, but it wasn't a little girl's voice. And yet it was her voice, there could be no doubt about it.
"You cast your line down into the waters and you bring up small pieces of yourself. They are bright, silvery, and quick. But how many more shimmer away, how many escape, every time your line splashes into the water?"
"Hot shit," Skippy whispered to himself.
"You must do more," the voice speaking through Angel said. "You must learn the map of that invisible landscape below. It is the map of your life."
"And a little child shall lead them," someone said behind me.
"Why should they escape, those silvery ones?" Angel said. Her body was limp and lifeless. Her spine sagged against the hard back of the chair. Only the jaw seemed to be animated. It moved as though it had a life of its own. The kitten had jumped from her lap and strolled offstage.
"They escape because you throw your nets, you cast your hooks, into the past. There is no past. You know that and you've always known it. A baby knows it.
"The eternal moment is now. Only by existing in now, now and only now, can you command the power you need to deal with a world that will break you, defraud you, destroy you, if you let it. There are things you must cast away.
"You have baggage with you. Cast it away; you can't fight with your hands full."
Skippy sighed beside me.
"You have memories with you," Angel droned on inexorably. "Cast them away; you can't float on the moment when you are anchored in the past. That is what the Listeners are for. To help you chart your explorations, to receive your memories.
"You have commitments with you. Cast them away; you can't diffuse your strength by fighting others' battles. You can only give them one thing, the gift of example, the example of someone who can survive in the world.
"You have your past with you. Cast it away. Become born in the eternal moment, the moment of now."
Except for the stretched, contorted voice, the hall was absolutely silent. No one coughed, no one shuffled his feet.
"There are devils in the world," Angel said. "They're not supernatural. They look like you and me. They are you and me." People cast sidelong looks at each other. "They're people who are stretched beyond their breaking point, people who are held together only by their skin, people who are trying to sustain the burden of their past, of all their pasts, in a world that exists only in the present.
"They are people who haven't learned to cast away the Four Last Things: possessions, memories, others, one's self- one's past self. Pity them."
Mary Claire had moved noiselessly across the stage to sit in the chair to her daughter's left. She looked worried.
"Your past is your enemy," Angel said. Her legs shivered, and suddenly she sat upright. Mary Claire put a hand on her shoulder but her daughter didn't feel it.
"You agonize," Angel said in a new and louder voice. Someone sobbed behind me. "You agonize because there are things in your past, things you've done, things you haven't done, things that were done to you.
"Release them.
"You feel inadequate. You feel inadequate because you are weighed down, chained down, with hopes, with fears, with old conceptions of your past. You're wrapped in a cocoon, the cocoon of your past.
"Break free from the cocoon.
"You are frightened."
Someone cried out, "I am."
"I can feel it," Angel said, "you are frightened. You are frightened because you can't look the moment in the eye. You can't look the moment in the eye because you're standing in a hole, the hole you've dug for yourself, the hole of your past, and you don't know how to step out of it.
"Step up, step out of it." Her arms lifted as though pulled upward by strings and crisscrossed in benediction.
"The moment is all," the voice said through her mouth. "The moment is harmonious. The moment is in perfect balance. The moment is a cross section of all that was, that is, and that will be. It is the pause between breathing out and breathing in. Without it there is no past, no present, no future. Everything is here. It is here now. Right now. You can learn to meet it. You are already in perfect balance with it. You just don't know it.
"Release yourself. Break free. Step up. Step up into the moment. Say good-bye to the Four Last Things and say hello to yourself. Say hello to the world as it really is. Say hello to power and fulfillment and satisfaction and perfect love.
"We can show you how.
"We can give you the key to the moment. It's so simple." She made a guttural sound that might have been a laugh.
"The key to the moment is the key to the world."
The little girl collapsed back into her chair and her eyes fluttered and then closed. Her mother placed a hand on her daughter's forehead and then got up and hurried to the microphone.
"That's all," she said. "I'm worried about Angel's stomach."
Two men in dark clothing came out and helped the little girl from her chair under Mary Claire's watchful eyes. Angel sagged between them as they guided her from the chair. Her head rolled back as though her neck were broken.
A murmur rolled through the auditorium. Skippy turned to me and placed a hand on my arm.
"Wow," he said reverently.
I looked around. People were watching the progress of the mother, the little girl, and the little girl's… the little girl's what? "Pallbearers" was the only word that came to mind. I turned back to Skippy.
"No shit," I said.
Chapter 7
Absolutely everything was for sale. The room adjoining the auditorium was jammed full of tables, and each table was stacked with books, pamphlets, cassette tapes, and posters of Angel and Mary Claire. We'd been given a tote bag when we entered the room, and I stood next to Skippy, watching the church members drop the items into their bags like women at a hosiery sale. Nothing so vulgar as money changed hands; the people paid by waving their room keys.
Skippy seemed subdued. He'd acknowledged a few greetings from people he didn't seem to know very well, but other than that he'd said nothing since the Revealing ended.
"What is it?" I said.
"I wish you hadn't said that, about it being hard on her. Usually she doesn't seem to mind, but tonight I almost felt like she was fighting it." He looked around the room. A number of people had gathered around a table with a couple of industrial-size metal coffee urns on it. They were sipping from Styrofoam cups and chewing on pastries. "Most of the time she seems to enjoy it," he said. "She says she enjoys it."
"Skippy, how long have you been involved in the Church?"
"About five years."
"And she's how old, twelve?"
"I guess."
"So she's been doing this since she was seven at least?"
He looked bewildered for a moment. Then his face cleared. "No, no," he said. "I forgot, you don't know anything about it. She's the third Speaker. There were two before her," he added, helping me with my math.
"What happened to them?"
A heavyset woman with such round cheeks that she looked like she was carrying a week's supply of nuts in them came up to us and shyly asked Skippy for his autograph. Looking simultaneously pleased and distracted, he wrote his name on her tote bag. She blushed appreciatively and headed for the pastry table.
''What?" he said absently.
"What happened to the other two?"