A Lower Deep Page 7

  Blond hair draped into my mouth, and Cathy gave me a look of flawless pity. She wouldn't be able to lift me alone. Eddie helped, and after a time the mother too. I limped off the ferry, struggling up the curving stone trail forged and smoothed into the side of the mount.

  Above us we could see the church and sheltered arcade cloister, the sacristy and refectory, and the snow-covered transverse tunnels leading from building to building. I glanced back and watched the ferry being drawn once more to the far side, and I wondered if my father the harlequin would be joining us tonight.

  It took over an hour to make it to the top of the mount, and by then Cathy was near fainting. We held on to each other for support, wheezing in harmony. Self had chewed and snipped free most of Eddie's knotted specters, but the poltergeists continued to float around us like scared children, staring wide-eyed and wandering in confusion. Self was feeling crowded and bit a few in the ass to get them moving, taking out chunks of memory and heartache, but they only smudged themselves harder against the kid. They shuddered in Eddie's armpits and hid in his ears, moaning.

  We stood before the outer ward wall of the monastery, staring at the doors with bronze friezes showing images from Revelation and the lost books of the Bible. Scenes from Wars of the Lord, Thomas the Gnostic, and the Book of Enoch reached out, with displays of loss and atonement swirling in the metal.

  A copy of the Book of Enoch had been in Jebediah's library. It was a tome devoted to the human and not the hallowed that had been discovered in Abyssinia in 1773, a region of Sheol and place of the wicked. It recounted the story of the two hundred insolent angels who swore a blasphemous pledge against God. They consented to the fall in order to take human wives, and then descended upon Armon, the Mount of the Oath.

  A young monk with a shaved head stood there watching, the purple welts across his face bright in the sunlight from where he'd accidentally struck himself while scourging his shoulders.

  Janice wrenched my arm forward, dumped me into his chest, and said, "Take him, you idiot." She knew her way around the abbey, and led her children straight to the priory. Her shadow fell heavily across her son, and the signs I read showed Eddie on the floor, disemboweled. The puzzled monk didn't know whether to go after her or to help me up first. He started walking me toward their small infirmary but I resisted and aimed us for the sacristy. Self gave a deep sigh and snuggled against my chest. He loved churches.

  Follow them, I said.

  No, that bitch gives me the creeps.

  I leaned on the stone and felt the waves of the ages rumbling against my back. Inhuman antiquity walked here, filled with human frailties and failures.

  It hadn't been easy mending on Magee Wails, and would be even more difficult this time.

  The monk had smashed out a couple of his front teeth so he might be able to form ancient cruel words not meant for a man's mouth.

  "Take me to Brother Aaron," I told him. "Or Uriel."

  We walked the white-stone pathways along the cloister gardens, past the basilica residential buildings. Other priests and acolytes descended the crude pine steps of the scriptorium and stared. Despite being surrounded by the lush expanse of forests and rivers they still carried the desert with them. They'd taken the most severe and unyielding tenets of the Cistercians, Trappists, and Benedictines, and used the harshest doctrines to try to garner harmonious results. They were kidding themselves, and some of them even knew it. Hollow faced and grim in the purpose and rigors of the soul, the heat of their beliefs beat into them, searing as deeply as the sun off the sands of Persia.

  Aaron DeLancre stormed down the passageway with his sword drawn, and both Self and I growled. The veil of evil draped over his entire family. They could follow the bloodline with ten generations of doctors or accountants and they'd still smell like the Inquisition. Uriel also appeared from the scriptorium and did his best not to mouth any curses. They both looked exactly like their brother Jebediah, with the same broad features and sorrowful mantle of those born of witch killers. They even kept beards, but only so they could yank out handfuls of facial hair, the way the Roman guards had done to Christ.

  Aaron held his sword just as men in the 1950s used to hold their cigarettes, with an easy charisma and a touch of vanity. "We know why you're here."

  Of course they knew, but I had a duty to swear it aloud. "I'm going to have to kill your brother." The chills began to wrack me again and the darkness rolled across my mind.

  "God help us," Uriel said.

  Self guffawed at that, showing off every incisor, and slowly took some of my blood.

  I ranted for the next two days while the fever worked through me. Aaron and Uriel stood guard over my bed, muttering charms, with their blades pointed to the west and the east. In the hilt of his sword Aaron kept his familiar, Lowly Grillot Holt, who played cards with Self and was only a slightly better cheater. Uriel's silent familiar, known only as Nip, proved to be as somber and melancholy as his master, and did little more than sit hunched on the windowsill peering out over the frozen forest.

  Occasionally Aaron pricked my thumbs to see what glyphs my blood would spatter on the floor. He and Uriel interpreted the signs differently, but neither of them saw anything good. By the time I awoke on the third day and the fever had cleared, my blood staining the tiles had dried to a rusty powder that Lowly Grillot Holt sniffed and gagged on.

  In the night, echoes of whips brought the rats squealing out of their dank corners. Prayers and chants merged with sobs of lonely despair and the scuffling of sackcloth covers. There was some trouble with Self running through the nunnery. He stalked among them while they were at prayers, sniffing the incense and shuddering with pleasure. The scent of souls was thick in the air, cloying but heady.

  In the past few days two men had already leaped to their deaths into the river, where the crush of ice floes made the corpses look as if they were dueling with one another far below. Age rumbled in the dirt. There was laughter, giddy and saccharine, underscoring thousand-year-old hymns, and the goats gnawed steadfastly on weeds grown in the cracks between blocks of immovable history.

  My promise held more meaning than it should have, and I had angered antiquity. Metal moved as if alive. Scenes in the bronze friezes changed almost hourly, always shifting the way the word of God is forever altering under interpretation. Beautiful penitents scarred themselves with coarse clothing strung with bone slivers and barbs.

  Some of them didn't know whether to set the fire or stand against the stake. Perhaps both. And below it all the thrum of conscience flowed from the heart of time.

  I sat with Nip on the windowsill, staring out over the abbey and the sisters and monks, the travelers and the lost, smelling the freshly baked bread and opened wine. He gave a six-hundred-year-old sigh that blew tufts of gray fur clear of his quivering nose, and resettled his meaty pink paws on his knees. I could see why he and Uriel got along so well, with this acceptability of silence and uncountable sorrows.

  I had to check on the Kinnions.

  I could feel the protective power of my own rash promise running out. There wasn't much time left.

  In the early evening, when the sun began to settle and the members of the choir hit the same repulsive pitches they reached during their scourges, Fane hobbled in and came to test himself against me.

  At that very second signals and symbols abounded. Dogs howled deep in the valley and the temperature dropped ten degrees until my breath billowed and hung in the air. The ice floes drew away with a tremendous groaning. The corpses flopped against each other like exhausted opponents and finally rolled into the lake.

  Self drowsed fitfully and uncurled slowly, his eyelids hooded as he blinked at me. I could feel the wheel drawing on, events loosening and becoming fluid again. My oath couldn't stop the motion of the mount, and once more we began our slide toward a ruthless fulfillment.

  When I'd last been in the monastery, with my Dam's blood still ingrained in the skin of my hands and neck, Fane had lurked at ve
spers with his own chronicles written in his eyes. A failed seminary student, Fane eventually became manager of a shoe store and spent most of his time gambling away his paychecks until his wife walked out and moved in with her lesbian lover. He'd been dead for twelve minutes on the operating table after his Harley back-ended a flatbed trailer and he went wheeling through the plate-glass window of a pizza parlor, killing three people and crippling a cheerleader.

  Now he went to great trouble in order to properly portray the enigmatic, all-knowing monk furtively prowling the corridors. He wore a severely pointed Vandyke so that his beard angled and split into two sharpened prongs, the way he must've thought the druids kept theirs. He always wore his black habit, scapular, tunic, and cowl together, subverting the identity of the man he'd once been. There was a corrupt scent on him I recognized but couldn't quite place. He'd recently bathed in heavy oils and had made splints from freshly cut pine. He broke his own legs two or three times a year hoping for a touch of redemption or admiration for his self-pitying martyrdom.

  Fane was perhaps the one man in the monastery who had not come to appreciate the totality of the dead past. He believed that experiences could be sliced and sorted, with certain events taken as truth while others were cast aside. It's how the Gnostics had piecemealed the Bible, choosing alternate versions of chapters and abandoning others, which led to such confusion and absurdity over the millennia. He didn't have the conviction of a soldier of God, and didn't have the arrogance a vessel of hell required. He had no familiar because no familiar would have him. Like most of us he'd lost and found God-and his soul-several times over already.

  He carried several of Eddie's poltergeists in his hands. He reeled them across his fingers like twine and threw them at my chest. Nip turned to glare at us for a moment, then went back to sighing at the waters below. Self mumbled at me and dropped his head to my shoulder, snuggling.

  Fane staggered closer. The poltergeists clung and swirled around us, and for the first time I noticed they were all women, and they were fading.

  He said, "They're free to leave and die elsewhere but they don't. They trust you, even though you're not worthy to be here."

  "Fane, you're a shoe salesman from Cincinnati."

  In the last few years he'd devoted a good deal of time and a portion of his essence to his studies. I could feel the straining effort of his will in the structure of his spells. He had a separate well he was drawing from, a depth outside himself-perhaps love, perhaps perversion. Even the poltergeists sensed it, and wavered wildly.

  "Do you wish to confess and do penance?" he asked.

  "More than anything, but you won't hear it."

  When he put his mind to it and recited his evoking prayers in a whispered litany, his face receded into shadows beneath his cowl and it looked as if his clothes emptied and drifted aloft. He drew strength from the weakness of his legs. His voice sounded as if it came from somewhere high near the ceiling, bearing down, with the hushed noises of shattering glass and his out-of-control Harley resonating distantly. A nice effect, and probably a lot of fun at a birthday party for a six-year-old. Mental fibers of his angry unconsciousness pressed outward.

  "Is there a particular reason you're starting this?" I asked.

  "Of course there is."

  At least he was honest. "Feel like letting me in on it?"

  "You've done damage."

  "I could say the same about you." The noises of the men dying and the cheerleader getting her legs crushed dwindled.

  "You've much to account for."

  Not only had he been training, but in the past few years he'd picked up a superiority complex somewhere. "Try to hide that judgmental tone a little better, Fane, or someone might think you were beginning to grow smug."

  Down the hallways several doors shut at once and the sheep bleated in perfect harmony with the wind. Just another part of the production-pitiful in a way, but also empowering. Even so, I sensed a certain sincerity in him that didn't fit with the attitude he was throwing. Perhaps I was merely jumping to conclusions.

  "Why are the Kinnions supposed to die?" I asked.

  Without any face he answered, "So another might live."

  "What do you people care about Elijah?"

  "I care as much as you."

  "No," I said. "You don't."

  "The prophet Elijah ascended bodily to heaven-"

  "Jesus, Fane, I don't need a Bible studies refresher from the likes of you."

  "-the only man to do so besides Christ."

  "The prophet Elijah didn't die, he ascended alive."

  "And according to Jewish faith he will return to usher in the coming of the true messiah."

  I squinted at him. "You people don't really believe this is the prophet Elijah returned, do you?"

  "Some might," he said, his voice above, behind, and in front of me. "And they might do anything to protect him."

  Or kill him, I thought.

  There wasn't any anger here. No righteous wrath or petty intolerance. His grin shone through the blankness like that of the Cheshire Cat. He thought he was being honest and proud, but I could see his fear as the air warmed again. "Abbot John would like to speak to you in his chambers."

  Fane eased away limping back down the hallway, smiling almost giddily to himself. He was, somehow, a man full of hope.

  "Wake the beast," he said. "You're going to need it."

  The stink on him was bad milk.

  Chapter Eight

  Unlike Uriel and Aaron DeLancre, who'd always been destined for Magee Wails, Abbot John had been born into the typical world and hurled against the mount by his own crimes.

  He gave the impression of being almost as wide as he was tall, a solid block of mortal mortar who'd once enjoyed twisting the heads off dogs, raping geriatric women in their nursing home beds, and tracking families relocated by the Witness Protection agency. He'd suffered from visions and garnered a taste for the carotid. When he met my father his hallucinations ended, and in one overwhelming surge Abbot John's sanity engulfed him. Perhaps it was actually my dad's own finite rationality that had been given up, since a short time later he gave in to the rush of his madness.

  The years hadn't been kind and neither had Abbot John's atonement. He hanged himself daily and the rope burns had been raw and wet for over a decade now. The graceless angles of his face folded in on themselves as if he couldn't swallow enough of the man he'd once been.

  His bald head shone in the candlelight. He'd shaved off his eyebrows and plucked out each of his eyelashes. It made him look foolish, which was the whole purpose. His hands clenched and unclenched, and the veins in his wrists squirmed like centipedes. He still had the haunted appearance of a man who knew that no matter how much good he did in his life it would never equal the amount of harm he'd caused. His eyes were still clear and merciful, but when he smiled I knew his course wouldn't be swayed. He trusted me but that wasn't nearly enough. If he had to, he'd crush my skull in his fist. If he didn't kill himself first.

  After all of his hangings he had hardly any voice anymore. It trickled out between his lips in a guttural whisper, like the hiss of water on a heated tablet of granite. "You've made a significant oath here."

  "Yes."

  "That was foolish in this place."

  "Not as foolish as your believing that Cathy's child is the true prophet Elijah."

  "You don't know that it's not."

  "I do know, but you won't believe me."

  I could tell he was eager for the rope. "You've made a heinous error that's endangered us all," he wheezed. "You have no concept of what wheels you've allowed to turn."

  Or stopped from turning. "Okay, so tell me."

  His fists opened again and the candlelight flickered across his palms, looking like the running blood of elderly women. "Janice is my sister." His chest heaved as he fought to control himself and all that was inside himself. "Catherine, my niece."

  He couldn't say any more. His words caught in his damaged throat, his f
resh wounds oozing across his scapular. I realized that as abbot of Armon he felt equally responsible for my oath as he did for any other unanswered plea or ill-kept promise on Magee Wails island. Events had already spiraled out of his minimal control. He stroked his upper lip as if wanting the mustache he'd once worn when gathering dogs from the pound.

  He whispered a word I knew well.

  The rage didn't need to build, it erupted alive and throbbing while my second self snored daintily with his eyes open. I breathed through my teeth. "What the hell's gotten into you people?"

  He repeated himself. "Sacrifice." Even with his gasping I knew he threw a little something extra in how he said it, as if making the word his own. Melting wax dripped loudly and candle flames wavered in the draft. He blinked his lashless eyes at me. "Jebediah may be strong enough to succeed."

  "No," I said. "He isn't. He won't."

  "Even you don't sound very certain."

  "I am."

  "Perhaps you shouldn't be." Swirls of blurred moonlight made their way across the room. "I've seen the faces of the two hundred seraphim who consented to the fall, the 'sons of God, who saw the daughters of man and that they were fair.' The angels Sanyasa, Armers, Ramuel-"

  "And Saneveel, Batraal, yes, I know their names. Why is everyone giving me Bible lessons today?"

  "They descended upon Armon, Mount of the Oath, and became men no more contemptible or noble than any of us. Imagine them giving up all of paradise for what was to be found on earth. Imagine how far they'd go to get what they wanted."

  "And what did they want?" I asked. "Affirmation."

  I slumped farther down in my seat and tried not to sigh. "I've got a feeling that you don't know the first goddamn thing that you're talking about."

  "Sacrifice is purity. I do know that."

  "Are you speaking of redemption or murder? You think you can find atonement by killing children?"