The Resurrected Compendium (12 page)

“I know that you shouldn’t need to go through a couple of bottles of vodka and rum every week,” her husband said.
 

It was never that much. Never. And if it was, the only way he could possibly know it was by sorting through the recycling she was so careful to take down to the curb herself. By checking up on her.

“I don’t need it,” Abbie said. “It’s not like I…need…it.”

Ryan didn’t smiled or pull her close, didn’t kiss her. He stared. “Then quit.”

“Fine.” She poured the drink down the sink and glared at him in challenge. “See? There you go.”

“The rest of it too.”
 

“There isn’t any more.”

Ryan stared some more. “I know where you keep it, Abbie. The boys know where you keep it, for God’s sake. They know when you’re —”

“Don’t you say it! Don’t. You. Say it!”

She could see nothing like love in his expression. Ryan looked stern, unmoving. Like stone.
 

“You quit,” he said, “or I’m taking the boys and leaving you.”

She broke down then, sobs slicing at her throat. Tearing her apart. This was her life. Her husband and sons. This house. The bills, the cookies, the costumes, the conferences. This was everything she had become, and she could not bear to lose it.

“I love you,” Ryan said, “but you can’t keep going on like this. You’re tearing us apart.”

Abbie had taken his hands in hers, linking their fingers, and Ryan let her though he didn’t squeeze back when she did. “I would do anything, anything, not to hurt you and the boys. You know that, don’t you?”

She wanted him to say he knew it. That he believed her. That he loved her. Abbie wanted Ryan to tell her everything would be all right, that nothing had been ruined or broken.

Except of course it had been, because she didn’t give up the liquor. She just started being more careful with her lies. And one night, late, when she’d told her husband she was going out to the all-night grocery store, Abbie went instead to a local dive where nobody knew her and everyone minded their own business and the drinks came in clear plastic cups and the bathroom smelled of vomit and hairspray. Where the men didn’t seem to care if she was married with kids or drank too much or that she’d once imagined she might make a difference in the world.
 

And, late that night, when one man in particular had put his hands all over her and made her feel good about herself for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, it seemed like the best idea in the world for her to give him a ride home to his apartment, even though she had no idea where he lived. That night the road had bent and curved in front of her car, even when she squinted. Her passenger had turned the radio up loud and opened the windows and told her to drive fast, then faster as they both laughed and screamed along with songs she hadn’t played in a decade or longer. He put his hand between her legs and called her by another woman’s name, and none of that mattered because everything was fire inside her. Everything was smoke.

That night, she woke up in a ditch with her face pressed against the ceiling of her car, her seatbelt cutting into her, and the steady sound of someone else’s screams that eventually stopped.
 

That man, whose name was Darryl Evans, had died. Abbie had suffered internal injuries, including additional smoke damage to her lungs that would never heal. She’d spent months in the hospital, recovering. The accident had actually been ruled not her fault — the tractor trailer that broadsided her had run a red light on a back country road with two other sets of witnesses to testify. She could’ve done nothing even if she’d been sober.
 

It hadn’t mattered. Ryan had told her she was not welcome to come home. She’d gone from the hospital to a shitty, barely furnished apartment and then to the hardly better double-wide trailer she’d bought with the divorce settlement so she could have a place of her own with room for the boys when they came to stay with her. Which they never did.

It would’ve been easy to say she’d lost everything in a single night, but the truth was, she’d been working at losing everything she had almost since before she had anything to lose. Nobody to blame but herself, at least she knew enough to carry the full weight of it and not try to pass it off on anyone else the way so many people in her support group meetings did. She hated the meetings, a room full of sad-sacks moaning about how shitty their lives had been and that’s why they turned to drink, to bear it. Abbie couldn’t relate. She’d had a beautiful life. She drank because she liked it. Shit, maybe because she needed it, and yes, it was fuckery of the worst kind. Yes, it had ruined everything she had. But there was no excusing it behind childhood abuse or domestic violence or even depression.

She drank because she liked it.

With that realization, and calling the house where she’d once lived to have her boys refuse to speak to her, having her husband send her checks not because he was legally bound but because he felt obligated…well. Understanding that nothing she did would make her life better than the ruin she’d made of it, Abbie had sold her trailer and packed her meager belongings into her battered Volvo, the car that had saved her life.

And here she was in a ditch on the side of the road, breathing in the scent of dirt and grass and that faint, repulsive perfume. Wishing, not for the first time, that she’d died in that car. She rolled onto her back again. Stared up at the sky. From far off, she heard the sound of sirens, but they were moving away, not closer.
 

She closed her eyes and remembered the sight of Cal’s head exploding. The blood, the stink, the boiling black mass of…whatever the fuck it had been. Handsome Cal, good in bed, with demons of his own she would never know, had become a monster. All of them had become monsters, so why hadn’t Abbie?

Maybe she hadn’t become what they’d turned into, Abbie thought as she rolled up from the ground and forced her suddenly stiff legs to take her to the car, because a monster was what she already was.

14

All you have to do is learn to listen.

Listen with your hearts.

Listen to the still, small voice, if that’s what it takes for you. It doesn’t matter what book you follow. Which prophet. Doesn’t matter if you go to church or temple or mosque or if you dance around a tree.
 

It doesn’t fucking matter.

All you have to do is learn to listen.

Oh, the language. I see you out there with your wide eyes and open mouths. I hear you mutter. Some of you are getting up and walking out, and that’s okay. The fact you came into this tent in the first place tells me you’re seeking something. Oh, sure, you can tell yourself and anyone else who’ll listen that you were curious. Or that you came to scoff. Or that you came to prove me wrong, that’s fine too.

But you came here for a reason, and even if you go, what I’ve said here today is going to stick with you. It’s going to get inside your brain like an earworm, worse than any disco song or nursery rhyme that ever plagued you. You’re going to go home to your spouse and kids or maybe just your cats, and you’re going to think about what I told you up here today, standing up here on this stage in my white suit. You can make fun of it if you want, make fun of me too.
 

All that matters is that you learn to listen.

Because the voice of the fathergod is trying to talk to you all.

Now listen. I know what some of you are thinking, that when I pass this basket it’s for my own gain. That these white suits cost money, that maybe I’m spending your cash on hookers and drugs. Well, I wouldn’t be the first godtalker to do that, would I? To take what was offered on good faith and use it for his own bad intentions? And I won’t tell you that I don’t use any of it to support myself, because that would be a flat out lie, one of many I could tell you that would lead us all down a different path. Because you know, I’ve said, I see the results of my words and choices, and I know where it could go if I decided to cash your checks and buy myself a brand new car, a big old mansion. I could adorn my table with whatever I like, big screen TVs and drugs and women. Or men. But all I take is what I need to live, and to support my words and my work. That’s why I don’t tell you how much to give. A dollar is enough. I don’t need much.

See…pretty soon, once we all learn to listen, once we open our hearts and our minds to that voice that’s been trying to reach you for years, nobody will need money. It’ll be worthless. We won’t need money because everyone will work together, creating our paths, and we’ll all know how the results of our choices will end up, so we can all work together to make this world a paradise.

That’s right, I said it. I’m not talking about death. No Pearly Gates. No heaven, no hell. What’s beyond for us after we die? I have to admit that I don’t know. I’ve seen my own death a thousand times…I have lived my death that same number. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? Living your death? But the more you’re able to open yourself up to the fathergod, the more you’ll be able to experience, making your choices.

And of course, I did die, just that once.
 

And I came back.

That’s right, here I am folks, the man in white, the resurrected. Medical proof, I was dead for three days. If I’d been dead for just a few more hours, I’d have been cut up and in the ground. But instead, I came back. And what saved me? You want to know? What kept me from dying and being put in the ground, where it surely would’ve been an awful thing to wake up, all covered in dirt, nobody but the worms and beetles to hear me? You know in the old days, so many people were thought to have died from things like the plague that they’d actually rig a bell with a string over some graves, so that if you were buried alive you could ring the bell and be dug up before you died for real. That’s why we have that saying, saved by the bell.

What bell saved me, folks?

The short answer is…I don’t know.

I can’t be more honest than that. I just don’t know. I don’t know why I died, because I didn’t see it. All I can say is that every step I’ve taken in my life has led me here, to this place. To this point, this stage, in front of you all gathered here in this tent with open minds and hopefully, open hearts.

I can tell you what I think, though.

I think that I was meant to die, and to return, because that got your attention. Didn’t it? How many of you knew who I was one week ago? Two weeks ago? A month?
 

A few of you, and I thank you for your support. We’ve been traveling a long strange journey together, my friends. I see some familiar faces out there. Barry, hi there. Maureen, thanks for coming and for the casseroles. Maureen, everyone, stand up and let everyone take a look at you. Maureen’s been making sure I eat and get my sleep since I came home — that’s right, everyone, listen to her. I’m the worst patient in the world. She threatened to actually tie me into a chair and force-feed me macaroni and cheese.

See? You all can laugh at that. We laugh together, and isn’t that a much better feeling, sharing that laughter, than it is to face each other warily and without trust? Now listen, I want you all here to do something for me. I want you to turn and face the person next to you. Go on now. Don’t be shy, even if it’s a stranger. Face the person next to you, look into their faces.
 

Now, think to yourselves, what would I do to help this person in front of me?

Sure, we all like to think we’d help each other, wouldn’t we? But the truth is, we don’t always make the best choices for other people. We think of ourselves first, don’t we? There’s no shame in admitting that. I can tell you that when the voice started showing me all the choices I could make and where they’d lead, there were many times I went for the easier path, the one that benefited me. It’s the natural choice. It’s the…human…thing to do.

No, I’m okay. Just give me a second or two to catch my breath. It’s not easy, you know, coming back from the dead. Just let me clear my throat. Maureen, can you give me a glass of water, please?

Thank you.

Where was I?

What was I…

Oh…right.
 

Let me just catch my breath.

15

Nothing much about the house had changed. The yard wasn’t mowed, the flowerbeds not weeded, but that wasn’t terribly unusual. She’d always been the one grubbing in the dirt. Ryan had hired someone to come and do the yard work after she’d moved out, but the service had been sporadic, and nobody had been able to care about the hydrangea bushes the way she had…

“Stupid,” Abbie muttered. Stupid to stand here in the driveway, her car door still open like she might hop back in and drive away if anyone came to the front door, and think about the grass. The grass didn’t matter.

She didn’t want to remember the times she’d spent on this porch, waiting for the door to open for her like she’d never lived here. The screen door hung open a little, like someone had run out and not bothered to close it completely. She pushed the doorbell, but heard nothing from inside. Abbie waited a minute, then opened the screen door and used the brass knocker she and Ryan had bought on their honeymoon. It was in the shape of a pair of hands holding a heart. The claddagh. Symbol of love, loyalty and friendship. It rang against the metal with a hollow thud that made her fingers tingle.

Abbie waited another few minutes, craning her neck for the sound of running feet, the shouts of “Dad, someone’s at the door!” Nothing. She would’ve checked her watch, if she was wearing one. What time was it? For that matter, what day? She tipped her face toward the sky, but that was useless, clouded and gray with only a hint of sun.
 

She couldn’t remember the date. Were the boys at school or had they already been let out for the summer? Was Ryan at work? She took two steps back, her heels on the edge of the concrete porch, and studied the door and windows next to it. If she pressed her face against the clear design in the frosted glass she might be able to get a peek inside, but what would happen if someone was in there, watching her or waiting for her to go away? She’d look like a lunatic. Likewise if she hiked into the overgrown flower bed to look in the dining room windows.