Tomsen regards me uneasily for a moment, then parks behind a shuttered bookstore. The moment she cuts the engine, the kids spring out of their fort. They look excited. Even Joan and Alex look excited; their skin shows a faint wash of their natural hues, cool brown and pale pink.
“You have to stay,” I tell them.
“But there’s music!” Sprout says.
“Not safe.”
Julie kneels down to Sprout. “Let us go check it out, okay? If the music’s any good, we’ll come get you.”
“You promise?”
“Promise. We can’t have a kid as cool as you listening to shitty music.”
Sprout smiles.
“Stay with them?” I ask, glancing from Tomsen to M. Tomsen nods, but M stiffens.
“If it’s not safe,” he mumbles, “I should be there.”
“Marcus,” Julie says, shaking her head. “No you shouldn’t.”
“But Nora—”
“Whatever danger she might be in…” She gestures to the bruises on his face and neck. “…you can’t help her right now.”
He lowers his head.
“If she’s there, I’ll talk to her. We’ll figure this out.”
Slowly, M nods. But I’m finding it hard to concentrate on M and Nora’s tension. I feel my own rising up around it, smothering my friends’ plight under my own anxieties. I hear booming voices condemning me for my selfishness. Heat on my face. Smoke in my nose—
“Let’s go, R,” Julie says, stepping out into this nameless town, and after a moment to pry my fingers off the door frame, I follow her.
There’s something medieval about the town that makes me want to call it a village. The leaf-caked streets resemble dirt paths, and some of the rotten rooftops almost look like thatch. The remains of the sunset cast everything in a dull orange glow while the sickle of the moon hangs in the eastern blackness. I think of Bosch. I feel the gloomy skies of his dour moral universe pressing down on me. Every time we round a corner, I expect a mob of surreal grotesques marching forth to illustrate my sins.
The music drifts through the cool air from somewhere just beyond the retail district, too far to make out a melody. It clarifies as we get closer, but it’s still a murky muddle even when the source is in sight: a flat, featureless building the size of a gymnasium, all concrete and sheet metal painted matte blue-gray, its entire perimeter lined with blinding floodlights. The only windows are the glass entry doors, behind which I see dense crowds—perhaps a whole village’s worth of people. The building has no signage, but its clean, monolithic presence stands out so sharply from the decaying homes around it that its identity is obvious.
“R?”
Julie has stopped and is watching me expectantly, because I’ve fallen an awkward distance behind her. My boots drag like they’re filled with stones. I can make out the chords now. Major, major, minor, major, a familiar emotional recipe.
“Julie,” I mumble. “Maybe…we shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?” She holds out her palms, squinting at me in the dark. “Shouldn’t go in? Nora’s in there, R.”
“Maybe she…wants to be left alone.”
“R,” Julie says, taking a step toward me. “She’s just scared. She lost control of herself and she doesn’t know how to come back.” Another step. “I’ve been there. So have you. We have to show her she’s still loved.”
My dry throat sticks to itself as I swallow. I wish she would smile or touch my arm right now, some gesture to include me in this concept of unconditional acceptance, but she doesn’t. She returns to the task at hand, striding toward the crowds and the lights and the music, and I have no choice. I jog to catch up with her, and we push through the doors into the pandemonium of God’s House.
Pamphlets fly at our faces as we squirm through the gauntlet of eager greeters. They want to know our names, where we’re coming from, is it our first time here; they welcome us over and over without ever specifying what they’re welcoming us to. A church with a tarnished brand, perhaps. A church with a reputation.
We settle into a dark corner at the back of the auditorium and I see Julie’s eyes searching the crowd, but from here in the back there are no faces, just featureless knobs of skin and hair. The ceiling looms over me, tiny fluorescent lights miles away. The building is huge, yet I feel claustrophobic. The lack of windows, the unadorned walls of corrugated steel. I feel like meat in a shipping crate on my way to be rendered. The congregation is packed neatly into rows of purple office chairs, all eyes on the stage at the front, where attractive young musicians blast pop-rock worship songs through an arena-worthy sound system. It’s moist with emotion. Foolproof chord progressions, fervent male vocals meekly supported by female harmonies. It jerks hard on the heartstrings, commanding me to feel uplifted—a sensation that becomes profoundly dissonant once I pick out the lyrics:
Lord take it all, consume my whole life, leave nothing behind, no struggles no strife…
Burn me to ashes, the hour is now, don’t need to know why, don’t need to know how…
I feel the slow creep of nausea. I glance down at the program in my hand. No name or logo, just blocks of small text that I can’t read in the dim lighting. But I hear murmuring from the wretch in my basement, waking from a long nap. At first I can’t understand what he’s saying, and then I realize he’s not speaking—he’s singing. With a bitter edge in his weary voice, he’s singing along to the church’s self-immolating anthems:
Burn down my pride, burn all that I’ve built, passions that die, and flowers that wilt…
Quiet my dreams, Lord silence my voice, I’ve nothing to say that can alter your choice…
Finally it ends, the church erupts with applause, and the band shuffles offstage. My nausea deepens and I feel the dread of certainty: vomit is coming. It will not be deferred.
“R?” Julie whispers, looking at the side of my face. “Are you okay?”
I stare at the stage with bulging eyes, sweating from every pore as the lights come up and the purple curtain parts. Time convulses, the past gives a peristaltic heave, and out comes a man I once knew.
“No.”
I don’t mean it as an answer to Julie, but it will suffice.
Paul Bark is old. His doughy teenage countenance has firmed into rigid angles, crow’s feet and frown lines. His shaved head fails to hide his receding hairline or the scattering of burn scars marring his scalp. He raises his hands to the cheering crowd, either to quiet the applause or accept it. His face is theatrically grim, like he’s here to do battle, a pro wrestler entering the ring.
I sink low in my chair, not so much hiding from Paul as hiding Paul from me. I should not have come here. I should have smelled this hellmouth’s sulfurous breath all the way from Ohio. I was prepared to face Axiom, to brave that dark corner of my past, but I never expected to stumble into this one.
“Hello, Ardents,” Paul says into his headset mic, and a chorus of cheerful hoots rises from the congregation. “Are you feeling strong? Are you ready to sweat?”
More hoots.
“Good. Because God can bench the universe, and he’s not impressed with your girly pushups.”
A murmur of chuckles.
“He’s tired of your excuses. He doesn’t think you’re ‘curvy,’ he thinks you’re a fucking fat-ass, and it’s time to tighten up.”
A wave of delighted laughter.
His clothes are a costume of asceticism: leather sandals, distressed jeans, a V-neck T-shirt that looks woven from horse hair. He wears just enough stubble to evoke casual disregard without softening his firm jaw, his permanently jutted chin. More burns on his hands and forearms, too symmetrical to be accidents.