On a Pale Horse (20 page)

The nurse blanched. “You aren’t going to hurt anyone? I only follow rules, I don’t want trouble, but I don’t want anyone hurt.”

So the man did have some meager conscience. He was lazy and indifferent, but not evil. “One man will die, as he was fated to. No one will be hurt.”

The nurse considered that, evidently having a bit of trouble reconciling death with not hurting. He swallowed. “Then I’ll call in my protest to the owner’s answering service. It usually takes them forever to get back to me, especially when there’s an emergency.” He scowled. “Emergencies cost money.” He reached for the phone. “But there’s no stuff here to use, not even a radio. My boss says silence is golden, and he does love gold.”

Zane turned away, disgusted with that owner. Perhaps one day that character would discover himself grubbing for gold in Hell. “I shall tend to this,” he told his client, turning off his countdown timer. “You will not feel discomfort until you have had your hymn.” He walked out of the nursing home.

First he tried the dance hall next door. The entry foyer was crowded with machines dispensing candy bars, two-bit love potions—“Slip her this, and she’ll promise you anything!”—and spot dressings for blisters. The main hall was empty, for this was the dead morning shift. Several shaggy teenagers were on the stage, working out with drums, guitars, and an electric organ, bashing out dissonance with a deafening beat. This was rehearsal time, though Zane could not see how such noise could profit from practice.

Zane approached and put his hand on the largest drum, the fingers of the glove causing its sound to die immediately. “I require a performance,” he said.

He had their instant attention, though they did not recognize his nature. “Hey, a gig? How much?”

“One song, for charity, next door.”

They laughed. “Charity! Go soak your snoot in battery acid, mister!” the drummer said. “We don’t do nothing for nothing!”

Zane turned his potent gaze on the kid. “One song.”

Like the nurse before him, the youth blanched. People seldom saw Death when they were not clients or closely attached to clients, but Death could indeed force his awareness on them when he wished. Hardly ever did a person face Death directly without feeling the impact. “Uh, yeah, sure. Guess we can do one song, like for practice.”

“A hymn,” Zane said.

The laugh was louder, though somewhat uncertain. “Man, we don’t do church junk! We’re the Livin’ Sludge! We boom, we flow, we fester; we don’t damn well hymn!”

Again Zane delivered the Deathstare. Young punks like this were more resistant to it, since they did not believe they were ever going to die. “One hymn.
Holy, Holy, Holy
.” His bony, square eye sockets bore into the fleshed orbs before him.

Again the kid was fazed. “Sure, well, I guess we could try. Like, it’s only one tune. But our singer’s out, she’s zonked on magic H, and anyway, we’ll have to rehearse. It’d take two, maybe three days, you know, just to start.”

“Now,” Zane said. “Within the hour. I will find you a singer.”

“But we don’t have no music or nothing!” the youth protested desperately.

“That, too, I will provide,” Zane said, controlling his ire. Had he ever been this age himself? “Go now to the nursing home next door and set up your gear. I will rejoin you with a singer presently.”

“Yeah, sure, man,” the kid said faintly. “We’ll be ready in half an hour. But you know, this ain’t exactly our bag. It ain’t going to be too sharp.”

“It will suffice.” Zane left them and strode to the church on the other side of the nursing home.

He was in luck. The church choir was rehearsing for the coming weekend service. Several black girls were
present, doing what to Zane’s ear was a mishmash of notes and ululations.

The preacher spotted him immediately. “Hey, don’t you go takin’ none of mine, Death!” he protested. “We’re good folk here. We don’t want no trouble with you!”

Zane realized that this church might be poor and backward, but the preacher was a true man of God, able to discern a supernatural manifestation instantly. That would help. “I only want a hymnbook and a singer,” Zane said.

“Hymnbooks we got,” the old man said eagerly. “This white do-gooder group, they raise money, bought us books, don’t know nothin’ ’bout our music. Got a big pile of ’em under dust in the closet. But one of my girls—Death, I won’t stand by and—”

“Not to die,” Zane said quickly. “To sing one hymn for the folk next door. For a man who is about to die.”

The preacher nodded. “Man’s got a right to one last melody. What’s it called?”

“Holy, Holy, Holy.”

“That’s in the book, but we don’t sing it. Not our style.”

“Find a singer willing to try.”

The preacher addressed the practicing choir. “Anyone sing white music? Hymnbook stuff?”

There was a murmur of confused negation.

“Listen,” the preacher said. “You don’ know this person in the hood, and you don’ want to. But
I
know him. The eye of the Lord is on him, and he needs one hymn, and we’ve got to help him any way we can. So if any of you can even try to oblige him, come on.”

At length one rather pretty girl in her teens spoke. “Sometime I sing ’long on the radio stuff, jus’ for fun. I guess I could try, if I got the words.”

The preacher rummaged in the closet and brought out an armful of hymnbooks. “You got the words, sister. Come on, we’ll go help this person. Won’t be long.”

Zane took some of the books and led the way to the nursing home, where the Livin’ Sludge was setting up, to the considerable entertainment of the inmates and the non-protesting nurse. Probably there had not been an event like this here in decades. Cables and loudspeakers and
instruments seemed to fill the main room. “Hey, don’t set those big speakers in here,” the nurse was saying. “Small place like this, that noise’ll deafen these old folk, and they’ve got problems enough already. Face those monsters out the windows.” And it was done, for it seemed the Livin’ Sludge was constitutionally unable to function without full-volume amplification.

The young singer eyed the Sludge, and the Sludge eyed her. Each evinced a certain morbid fascination with an alien life form, but neither evinced approval. Zane realized it had probably been a mistake to involve the instrumental group; the girl would have done better
a cappella
. Too late now.

The preacher stepped in, seeing the need. “You boys don’ know hymn music, okay? This is Lou-Mae; she don’ know junk music, so you’re even. So let’s try her doing the hymn, you follow, okay?” He was more or less speaking pigeon, in order to get his meaning across to these foreigners. He passed out the hymnbooks.

The musicians leafed through the books, bewildered. “This scene’s worse’n bad-spelled H!” one muttered. Zane knew that H was bad, enchanted H was worse, and badly enchanted H was a horror. But addicts had to take what they could get. “We’ll never live this down.”

“You boys getting high on S-H?” the preacher asked, frowning. “That’ll put you in H!” He pointed down, signaling the change in meaning. “You better find some better interest before it’s too late.”

“Wish we could,” the drummer confessed. “But you know, we’re locked into the scene. S-H don’t let nobody go.”

“Neither does H,” the preacher said, with a dark glance down. “Nobody hooked on either H in my church.”

“Yeah, sure,” the drummer said wearily.

Zane got them on the page with
Holy, Holy, Holy
. “Play this,” he said.

They tried. They were, underneath, reasonably competent musicians. The tune did not adapt well to drum and guitar, but the electric organ picked it up easily enough.

The phone rang, the sound almost lost amidst the noise
of preparations. “But I can’t sing into a mike,” Lou-Mae protested. “It’s in my way, and it looks funny.”

“I’ll tell you what it looks like!” the Sludge drummer said, grinning.

“Jus’ ignore it, sister,” the preacher advised quickly. “Jus’ sing your way.”

“There are people gathering outside,” a nursing home inmate cried gleefully by the window. “Gawking at the loudspeakers!”

“Hey, they must think we have a party in here!” another said. “Cutting the mustard!”

“Sure we are! You can tell by the smell!” Laughter burbled around the inmate sector. This was turning into the biggest event of these old people’s lives.

“Hey, mister,” the male nurse called through the din. “That was my boss on the line. For once he checked with his answering service. I told him I couldn’t stop the music, so he’s calling the police. Better do that song and get out of here soon.” It was fair warning, but obviously the nurse was enjoying the ongoing event.

The Sludge was still getting organized, piecing out bits of melody, trying to integrate unfamiliar elements. “I can’t do this,” Lou-Mae complained. “Singing a hymn to a drum roll?”

“Listen, black doll, we don’t like it either,” the drummer said. “But we got to have a beat.”

“You jus’ do your best,” the preacher said soothingly to both. “The Lord will make it right.”

“Man, He better!” the drummer muttered. “This whole thing’s crazier than a double-bum trip!”

“Still worth doing right,” the preacher said.

Zane heard the sound of a siren. He went to the door where the other choir singers clustered, peering in. They gave way nervously before him, and Zane saw the police cars arriving. The vehicles screeched up to the nearest corner and disgorged helmeted riot police. These were tough cops armed with billy clubs, hefty side arms, tear-gas bombs, and disorientation-spells, accustomed to breaking heads in the lawful performance of their duty. That nursing home owner had really made a complaint!

Zane turned to face inside. “Do the hymn now,” he said.

Lou-Mae, suddenly nervous, dropped her book and had to scramble to recover it. “ ’Sokay, chick,” the drummer said sympathetically. “First-night jitters. We all get ’em. We’ll start without you, a preamble, and you catch your place and signal when you’re ready. Like Uncle Tom says, we’ll merge.”

She flashed him a fleeting smile. The music started, drum roll leading into guitar, the beat of it blasting like developing thunder out the windows as the police charged up the steps, billies in hand. The choir girls crowded back fearfully, not liking any close contact with the big, brutal men in uniform.

Zane drew his cloak close about him and stepped out to meet the lead cop skull-to-face. “Do we have business?” he asked.

The policeman’s eyes and mouth rounded out as he stared into the aspect of Death. He fell back, literally, and had to be caught by the two behind him. The urgency of the intrusion of the law abruptly abated.

Now Lou-Mae found her place. The drum faded to a background beat, and the song proper began. “Holy, holy holy! Lord God Almighty!” she sang, starting tremulously but gaining courage as she sounded the name of the Lord. Somehow the amplification provided resonance and authority that her voice might otherwise have lacked. The drum roll behind her growled like the rising wrath of Deity, and the guitar punctuated the theme with an inspired extemporaneous counterpoint.

“Early in the morning, our song shall rise to Thee!” And the electric organ swelled in an urge of joyous worship, sounding exactly like the monstrous pipes of a towering cathedral.

The crowd in the street was being rapidly augmented. Some of the police were trying to hold the people back. It was already late morning, but the height of the surrounding buildings sheltered the street from direct sunlight. Now that light angled down, a broad beam that splashed across the pale helmets of the police and faces
of the people, illuminating them, as if it were indeed the break of day or of a new era.

“Only Thou art holy; all the saints adore Thee!” The sound pealed out, flooding the neighborhood, reverberating amidst the buildings. Instruments and voice had integrated perfectly, as if from years of devoted practice.

“Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea!” And the police, stunned despite their cynicism by the magnificence of it, buffeted by the booming sound, began to remove their sunlight-golden helmets. The people followed, compelled by a feeling they did not comprehend. In a moment every head in the crowd was bare.

“Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before Thee!” And one of the impressionable choir girls by the door screamed in rapture and fell to the sidewalk.

Once triggered, the effect spread explosively. All around, people in the crowd screamed and fell, and a few of the policemen, too.

The music surged to thunderous authority, drums and organ shaking the very buildings, sweeping through the crowd, making the entire block a place of worship. Some people stood; some knelt; some lay on the street. All were gazing raptly toward the nursing home and listening to the amazing sound.

“Who wert and art and evermore shall be!” Then the hymn ended, and the music died away in a fading roll of the drum and a trailing organ note, as if God were moving on to another station. Half the crowd and all the choir girls were on the ground, and the policemen stared wide-eyed at whatever personal visions they had. No one made a sound.

Zane turned to face inside again. The inmates were sitting dazed, as was the male nurse. The drummer and Lou-Mae were exchanging an awed glance. The preacher was gazing toward Heaven, his hands steepled before him, in silent prayer.

“Jeez,” the guitarist murmured. “We been wasting our time, all our life!”

“Who the H needs H!” the organist agreed. “I never been on a trip like that!”

Zane walked across to his client. “Now it is time,” he said, restarting his timer. “Are you satisfied?”

The old man was smiling. “I sure am, Death! I just had a vision of the Lord God Almighty! Anything else in life would be anticlimactic after that. I saw two of my friends here go already.” He collapsed, and Zane reached out quickly to catch his soul.

A slow recovery was beginning as he walked back toward the door. The preacher caught Zane’s eye. “Some folk think the Lord don’t intervene,” he remarked gently, as if aware of Zane’s own doubts.

Zane couldn’t answer. He walked on out, past the choir girls as they righted themselves, and through the quiet crowd to his horse.