A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds (12 page)

Janice stared at me until my incompetence must've spilled across her feet. Her ghosts trusted me even if she didn't, and they urged me forward to comfort her. I waited until both Cathy and Eddie were asleep, listening to Uriel's murmurs and Self's wonderfully moving singing voice.

Janice Kinnion said, "If you try to touch either of them, I'll kill you."

"I won't touch your children."

"They sent you here. He sent you here... my brother."

"No, he didn't."

"They want her dead. Are you gonna tell me you don't know that?"

"No."

"I came here for help and they've gutted my son and now they're trying to kill my daughter and what's inside her. And they keep pretending this is a home of God."

Sadly, it was, and that proved to be the ugliest irony of all. "It's been a home to many things," I said. I sounded vague and misleading and wanted to nail my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

She chose not to argue. "Can they do what they say? Can they make him whole again?"

That was two different questions. "I don't

know. They can probably heal his body."

"What goes along with the rest of that?"

"I'm not sure."

"Come on, come on, out with it already!"

Reason had its place here, but not as an eternal truth. Discord arose minute to minute, and belief broke its own back from the way men bent it to their own devices. There was always a price to be paid: for every midnight caress or kiss or hastily scrawled poem of infatuation, for each promise made and each disregarded. Greater affirmations had to be found at any cost.

The wars of the Lord could not end in stalemate. Sacrifice was not purity, but it meant more than chicken's blood. There were those who would slay the lamb as sacrifice to God, and there were shepherds who would protect the lamb for either God or themselves or for no discernible reason.

These walls were going to come down. The quandary of the mount made the rock itself lament.

"Something here wants your kids," I said. "Why?"

"I don't know."

She whispered at herself, sounding so much like her brother. "I need to get them out."

"It's too late to run."

"Then I'll fight."

"No!"

"If you get in my way I'll kill you."

The snow was on fire. Uriel's plastic saints glared and skipped along the chantry. I left the room and Self slid alongside me with a pair of aces under his tongue.

At the far end of the hallway, the empty cowl of Fane peered back for a time before straying out of sight.

Chapter Nine

M
y mother came to me in the night, knowing I was weak. She sang to me the way she sang before the crucifixes cracked in my father's fists, back when the priests still came over for lemonade. I could feel the texture of her presence like the downy blankets of my childhood, when the apples fell in the corner of our backyard. I lay there and couldn't keep from panting like a sick dog. Self ran around the hemp mattress on all fours, yawping and sharpening his claws against one another.

At the foot of the bed, a nun smiled timidly at me. She held up the hem of her robes, showing off the luscious angle of her legs. The great whore burned in her gaze, the harlot gilded her lips. She pulled off her headpiece and let it drop behind her. She winked and winked again, eyelid fluttering while the tic moved across each muscle of her face contorting her features. Tears hung off her chin. She swept forward, trying to throw her hips into it, giving it some Mae West, but she'd been in the nunnery for so long that she couldn't quite remember how to even try to seduce.

Her hair had been shorn to a Joan of Arc pageboy bob, which somehow only accentuated her feminine qualities. She giggled to herself, the glow of moonlight catching her knees. Trails of blood dripped down her inner thighs and speckled the floor. She began to sway and the spatters widened into ugly omens. Those earthy sniggers became even more revolting, and finally they deepened until she didn't sound like a woman anymore. She glanced down to read the warnings in her own blood, and the struggle inside her became more clearly defined.

Self had finally managed to win some money off Lowly Grillot Holt, and he held up a dollar bill.
Take it off, baby!

She drew her habit over her head and threw it swirling behind her. I saw that she had the marks of Jezebel on her, the dog bites and the painted face.

Ooh la la!

Self sauntered forward, quivering and clapping. His arousal drove a white-hot spike into my forehead, so that all my barricaded cravings and desires released at once into my veins. The blood lust had always fueled and intoxicated him, but never like this. My pulse ripped at my neck like pincers. I snorted loud as a horse.

Nun ninnies! Mas garbanzos!

Stop it!

I held on to the back of my second self's head with one hand, and clasped the other over his mouth so he wouldn't lick away the portents. I tried to read them but the slate gulped down the blood. The nun crooked her finger at him and offered up her small, pointed breasts. I tightened my grip.

If you're not going to take advantage of this situation, then I am!

What's happening to you?
I asked.

I ain't no damn priest!

Other figures flailed on the floor, wagging and heaving like a carpet of snakes as they fondled and masturbated. More hermits, sisters, and penitents drawn into the dream. Elijah's living hatred bulged in the room. The glamour had been cut loose. It latched on to them in their passive state of
apatheia
even while they sought
gnosis
, the knowledge of God. Anything could be corrupted.

I spelled out fiery exorcistic rites in the air, but they did nothing except light the room further. Hands and faces were darkly bruised and red with welts, their backs and asses running from the cat-o'-nine-tails. Self broke free and dove away. I arched on the bed with every muscle inflamed. They giggled wildly, and so did he.

And so did I.

Orgy time!

Thoughts of Caligula and the senators' wives packed my head, and the stench from the vomitoriums made me gag. I flung myself forward and tackled Self hard, pinned him down, and bit deeply into his shoulder.

I took some of my blood back and his enraged screams brought me awake a little more. The women coiled around my ankles and knees, but they didn't want me or anything like me.

You bit me, you sick bastard!

Stop your crying.

What're you, crazy?

I had less control over him and he had much less control over himself. I held his eyelids wide open and looked inside him.
What's gotten into you?

Me?
He mewled.
What's gotten into you?

What the hell are you doing?

Hey, they're begging for it, you friggin' prude! Shit, I need stitches!

Quit it!

I dressed quickly, grabbed him by the arm, and tugged him from the room while he screeched. I fought not to scream when he sank his fangs into my wrist. My blood splashed against the black hallway walls as I marched outside into the gusting snow. I made it to the outer wall and yanked back the huge wooden plank of the main gate doors, and stared at the bronze bas-relief friezes while they roiled and surged like molten metal.

It showed two new faces among the frothing others.

Both of them blinked and calmly watched me sweat in the blizzard.

"Gawain is coming," I said. "And he's with my father."

Chapter Ten

I
waited for them all night in the storm.

Moonlight ignited the swirling swells and billows of snow. There was no other watch. At some point, one of the acolytes came out and tried to place several thick woolen blankets over my shoulders. When he touched me the embers of arcana blew back into his face and he cried out in surprise as his teeth glimmered blue and orange. I stood freezing in the rising steam with the snowfall melting as soon as it hit me, the wind alive with flaming sigils. It was getting rough out. Self glowered at me but said nothing. My oath had taken its toll on him as well. The more I held my ground the farther we split apart. The wheels of the world turned out of sync, grinding and squealing and waiting for the grease of sacrifice.

I'm sorry
, I said, but he didn't answer.

Uriel plodded through the knee-deep snow to stand beside me, staring down the cliffs uncertainly. In all the time I'd known him he'd said only a handful of words to me. He remained stoic as stone, immovable perhaps, but never unfeeling. Even his brother didn't know his capabilities or the extent of his convictions. He wore dangling crosses, some inverted, others not. The ebb and flow of his hidden inclinations brushed against me.

Eventually he picked up the blankets and wrapped himself in them. Occasionally the living idols would clamber over his tunic, gaze around, and squeak to him. Nip was nowhere in sight, but his tears flowed from Uriel's brow as if he were sweltering. The plastic saints started playing peek-a-boo. Uriel's prayers were of a kind I'd never heard before. He spat wards into the wind but they froze in midair.

After another hour, as the blizzard worsened, Uriel gestured to me and said, "Don't peer into that darkness too closely." He spoke little enough, but managed to really say even less. He turned, fought his way through the snow, and plunged back inside the abbey.

Time became tangible and smeared all around me. The weight of the past came down again, bloated and crushing. I no longer heard my mother singing. Instead my father's giggles reigned over me. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be right from the beginning. The steam dissipated, and so did the majiks. My fingers grew numb. I fell over and shaped a snow angel for myself. I nodded off, slumped against the gates. The friezes rolled under my cheek. I slept for a time and only awoke when my father's frigid bronze lips kissed me.

I couldn't see much of anything besides the thrashing snow and revolving hexes. I thought I heard jingling and I spun around, listening intently for the sounds of my dad's humiliation. There was nothing but my heavy breath in the battering wind. Self frowned and pointed high. I shielded my eyes and looked up.

The possessed nun who'd tried to seduce me had climbed out my room window to stand shaking on the ledge. She'd gotten dressed again, and the folds of her habit fluttered and rippled like a spreading black stain. Thick ice rimed the precipice. Hands groped for her ankles. She inched along the ledge, reaching back to steady herself against the rampart, but continued on. Other people sprouted from the window trying to reach her. They began whipping themselves right there, invoking God and other deaf creatures. The bride of Christ crouched and waited, denouncing herself before the vast chasm and crashing floes below.

She managed to smile though, and plucked at the snowflakes in front of her face. I thought I could understand why she might do that. Perhaps because the flakes, at least, were so close and solid in an otherwise ethereal place. Her arms came up as if she could hang on to the air, and simply step out onto the falling snow and drift back down to earth. She leaped and floated, or maybe flew for a moment, buoyant in the howling jet stream. Maybe the mount didn't want to let her go yet. Perhaps it would pull her back inside. She hovered there for another instant and dropped into white silence.

Is this my fault?

Ask yourself. My ass is cold.

Gales ripped across the courtyard. I got lost along the outer curtain. I stumbled towards the monks' Chapter House and found the access tunnel to the cloisters but the doors were frozen shut. I wandered and lost my bearings. I fell asleep again for a few minutes, until more jingling bells roused me and I came awake half buried and shivering violently. I wondered if they'd abandoned me or if I'd deserted them instead. Self was gone.

The moon had set but there wasn't any dawn. I felt utterly alone and thought of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. While he awaited the kiss of Judas and the arrival of the Roman soldiers, Christ could have called on twelve legions of angels, but he went to his fate alone. What guts.

I followed the jangling toward the inner curtain and back into the monastery. Two sets of wet footprints led a trail to the west wing.

I'd waited all night and had still missed the return of my father.

T
hat awful stink of burning tallow wafted on the draft. Smoke formed new shapes of damnation. Ash on the walls spelled out the names of my high school graduating class, rows of those who hadn't become students of hell. Supplicants and monks lined the corridors, giddy and anxious. Assertions were being made.

Priests murmured their masses as I stalked past. The tinkling bells withdrew farther into the distance. I heard a baby crying, and I started sprinting.