Dead Things
Authors: Matt Darst
Dead Things
A novel by Matt Darst
Copyright 2012 by Grand Mal Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address www.grandmalpress.com
Published by: Grand Mal Press, Forestdale, MA
Dead Things, Copyright 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grand Mal Press
p. cm
Cover art by Matt Hale. www.ablerock.net
I dedicate this book, with love, to Dad.
Thanks for teaching me to wonder.
Contents
Chapter One: Of Nightmares and Neckties
Chapter Two: Baggage, Emotional and Other
Chapter Three: Plane in Vain (or, the Clash)
Chapter Six: Walk Like an Egyptian
Chapter Seven: Look Who’s Coming to Dinner
Chapter Eight: The Reluctant Doctor
Chapter Nine: Shopping Mall or Shopping Maul?
Chapter Eleven: A Bottled Message
Chapter Thirteen: Footprints and the Prince of Darkness
Chapter Fourteen: Run for Your Life
Chapter Fifteen: Bathroom Break
Chapter Sixteen: Everyday is Halloween
Chapter Seventeen: Bait and Switch
Chapter Eighteen: The Accidental Spelunker
Chapter Nineteen: Van Wars – The Return of Brom Sybal
Chapter Twenty: History Lesson
Chapter Twenty-One: Ill-Starred Indeed
Chapter Twenty-Two: Head Off (or a Dog’s Tale)
Chapter Twenty-Three: The End...Well, Almost
“The sun…
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.”
Paradise Lost,
John Milton
Chapter One: Of Nightmares and Neckties
They stream like army ants, climbing and clawing through the jagged mouth of the shattered bay window, ripping their forearms and torsos into ribbons.
Something competes with his fear, stealing his breath. Something sickly sweet, pungent like decay, tumbles over him like a churning wave. Fetid, it suffocates him, makes him choke.
A man’s hands, trembling but strong, shield him and his mother from the encroaching horror. The man rushes them into the closet, the heavy down coats cushioning their impact. The door slams behind them, locks. A key slides under the half-inch gap beneath the door.
The shrieking begins.
Shrill shrieks. Blasts from the alarm.
Ian spastically searches for the clock, his hand pitching about the nightstand, a pale perch out of water. His fingers find his wallet, then his keys. One last convulsion, and he locates the snooze bar. Just ten more minutes—
“Ian!”
—or not. His mother bursts into the bedroom. Rise and shine, she sings, and give God His glory. She tears the curtains open wide, and his room explodes in sunlight.
Ian winces. The sheets do not offer him sanctuary. He is caught like an escaped prisoner, pinned against a wall, encircled by the guard tower’s spotlight.
She says something in her southern lilt about not being late for church. Again. Today is special. Today people will want to say their goodbyes.
Oh, and one more thing: he should wear a tie, perhaps his father’s. It makes him look…distinguished.
She emphasizes her impatience with one word: Seriously.
Ian feels his mom standing at the foot of his bed. The color behind his eyelids turns from orange to cool purple as her long shadow passes over him. She is not leaving, so he submits, flipping his sheets and sitting upright in a fluid motion. “Happy?” he blurts, huffily.
He sees her nod through eyes that are little more than slits. He thinks he spies a smile spreading across her apple face. Her hazy outline glides from his room.
Ian stretches and yawns, groaning like a bear waking from a long winter of hibernation. He clutches at his Stranglers tee, wrestling it over his head. He wads it up and hooks it, Doctor J style, toward the hamper in the corner.
The shirt sails through the air in a high arc, the final seconds of an imaginary shot clock ticking away. This is still Kentucky, after all, and basketball, like life, finds a way. The shirt dances on the hamper’s edge and falls to the floor, taking up residency with a drift of socks and jeans. Shit, he mutters, a goat once more.
His mother raps on his brother’s door. “Josh, rise and shine…”
**
The tinted window of the butcher shop is his mirror.
Ian watches his dark twin attempt the Windsor knot for a third time. The beige and navy stripes bulge and wrinkle as he pulls the knot tight. He hopes like Goldilocks that this time it’s just right.
His stepfather never taught Ian how to wear a tie. Bobby Joe does not own one. Fashion is as foreign (and, technically, as dead) to him as Paris, Milan, New York, and all of those other far off places associated with haute couture.
Bobby Joe calls neckties “nooses.”
The front of the tie hangs just above Ian’s navel, the rear falling like the tail of a kite below his waist. He sighs, starts to untie the knot.
From his perch on top of their horse-drawn cart, Ian’s brother regards him with a mixture of fascination and derision. To Josh, Ian’s fixation is alien and too…
adult.
Josh says to forget it. Let’s go. Mom’s going to get pissed.
The horses secured, Ian’s mother and stepfather are already walking. They are several paces ahead.
As if on cue, she calls for him to stop fussing. He looks fine. He is beautiful, just as God intended. So
puleease
get a move on.
Ian grimaces. Yes, the Lord intended many things, but he is fairly certain He never intended “please” to have three syllables.
Josh snorts. “Yes, let’s go,
Beautiful
.”
Ian abandons his mission, and jogs sluggishly past their twin horses toward his parents. He delivers a light elbow to Josh’s shoulder as he passes.
Josh hops to Ian’s side. “What’s his name?” Josh asks in a whisper.
Ian looks confused.
“You know,” Josh caws. “The guy you’re getting pretty for!”
Josh is crude, but clever. Ian knows and loves his half-brother for it. But, there are limits to publicly recognizing Josh’s wit. Paying his brother such respect would be viewed as weakness.
Like canines, siblings smell fear, and there can be only one Alpha Dog. If Ian subverts this universal dogma, he’s certain the space-time continuum will fold in upon itself. So Ian never acknowledges Josh’s teasing. He does what any brother does. He escalates, just as the canons of diplomacy and flexible response require.
Ian knuckles Josh in the shoulder—something his buddies call a “frog.” It’s immature. It belies his twenty-two years, but he can’t help regress as all brothers do when a sibling pushes a button. And Josh knows all of Ian’s buttons. Josh may as well be tapping out A-C-T-space bar-J-U-V-E-N-I-L-E on the keys of Ian’s mental typewriter.
They laugh.
Bobby Joe is annoyed by these boys, by their commotion and by their lack of respect. They pass the empty stockade, the wood of its frame, and the gravel in its shadow, dark with dried blood. It is a constant reminder of the law of God as prosecuted, applied, and adjudicated by men. It should be a reminder to these boys that they must behave…or else.
Bobby Joe hisses at them to control themselves. They are just steps away from the weathered brick façade of the cathedral.
The Third Church of the Tribulation and Second Coming of Christ, Established During the 3
rd
Year of the New Order, is not a church. For Ian, it is a prison sentence meted out in two-hour increments, fifty-two times a year, more if including Christmas and Easter.
It is also a compound comprised of a rectory, a school, a community center, and a small cemetery. The cemetery is a remnant from a time before the New Order. The church is built on an “L,” an allowance for the twenty or so worn headstones that remain.
Church elders govern day-to-day matters, spiritual nurturing, gospels, sacraments, and infrastructure. Ian knows most of the elders by sight, if not by name.
It is what Ian doesn’t know that concerns Bobby Joe. The power of the elders is illusory, for supporting them is a dark network of buttresses, shoring, and struts known commonly as the church court. The church court, or synod, convenes in the compound as well. It is the law of the land, judging all matters brought to them for resolution, including matters of discipline. Disputes are resolved privately just as Matthew 18:15-16 dictates. That is, unless, someone wants to “tell it unto the church.” Then the questions start, and all hell breaks loose.
The synod hides behind Deuteronomy and the Quaestores, inquisitors acting with the church’s full authority. If a denouncer accuses another of sin, the inquisitors can call secret hearings. But they rarely bother. They have other methods. Their methods are shadowy…but effective. Acquittals are rare.
The guilty are paraded before the parishioners. The lucky ones are penanced, tortured or locked in the galleys only after publicly renouncing their sin. Or, they are reconciled, whipped, imprisoned, and stripped of property. Relaxation is reserved to the worst offenders, witches and heretics, like scientists and teachers who make the mistake of giving voice to Darwin’s ghost.
“Relaxation” is, of course, a misnomer. Sinners rarely find being burned alive “relaxing.”
In the church, Ian’s mother rejoices. There is an open pew.
An hour later, the wooden bench has cut off Ian’s circulation. He cannot feel his lower extremities. His right leg from just below his buttock is asleep, buzzing like a hive of honeybees. The choir sings, “Christ My Very Peace Is.”
At least my ass is at peace
, Ian thinks.
But there is no peace for Pastor Statten. Statten is agitated this Sunday, as he is every Sunday. He wrings his hands, like a mad scientist contemplating the end of the world, and paces furiously before a great oak dais. Then he freezes as if becoming aware of the congregation for the first time, as if they have surprised him. It is an oft-repeated dramatic gesture, but Statten is a gifted thespian, and he sells it every time.
He tells his “friends” that they are in their final days.
Ian can almost mouth the words of the lecture in unison. He’s heard it all before. The spiel has been a staple of Statten’s for more than a decade. By now the concept has lost much of its imminence.
Statten drifts from the anchor of the dais, his small frame moving to the foot of a vast, stained-glass window. He is silhouetted by shards of ruby, cobalt, emerald, and violet.
Images of angels…
The vibrant colors look as radiant today as when Ian first beheld them as a child. The colors of hard candies, he is lured by their brilliance, if not by their subject matter.
…
Angels descending upon the Earth…
Statten’s tone is brimming with tension. He tells his friends that they stand at precipice of time. They stand at the end of—
The end of the world
, Ian finishes.
If so
, Ian begs,
please let it happen now
. He cannot take any more of this sermon.