Mark Rogers: The Dead

Only for a moment. The crushing pressure slackened. The bony hands melted away from his flesh as a great wind swept over him. Pain faded, and there was a fierce white fire rushing before his eyes.

He was out.

The flame dissipated. He could barely see his new surroundings; it was as though he were looking through a pane of dark glass. Slowly his fire-dazzled eyes adjusted.

He wasn’t in new surroundings after all, but lying in the main aisle of St. Bonaventure’s. There was no sign of the dead.

He sat up, looking at the places were the bullets had struck him. There were no holes, no blood.

He got slowly to his feet. As he did so, he noticed something lying beneath him, and stepped away, gasping. It was a faint semitransparent body, a gelatinous-looking image of himself.

It began to quiver, and sank in upon itself, dissolving into a slimy puddle, the carpet swiftly absorbing it. The fabric showed a silvery, mucoid stain for a few moments, but even that vanished.

What had he just seen? The end of his earthly body, or of something even more fundamental? He didn’t feel like a new creation, merely a repaired one.

Yet that wasn’t the whole of it, he was sure, and his curiosity began to stir…what was he was going to experience? Before, salvation had simply meant survival. Now his sense of wonder was aroused.

He walked up the aisle toward the door. The light outside was clear and pure, without the bloody tinge of a dying sun; the circular stained glass window above the arch was a marvel of brilliant colors, cool deep blues and greens, reds and yellows so unmitigated they seemed to burn.

He reached the threshold.

Linda and Father Chuck were sitting halfway down the steps, backs to him. His wife seemed to be crying.

“Linda!” he cried, bounding down toward them.

They looked round. Linda jumped to her feet, wiping her eyes. Gary took her in his arms, kissing the tears off her cheeks and lips.

“I thought you… that you didn’t…” she faltered.

“Went right down to the wire,” Gary answered. “But the Man Upstairs came through.”

Father Chuck came up, smiling.

“God bless you, Father,” Gary said.

“He already has,” the priest replied.

Gary sucked in a long sweet chestful of warm summer air. “July again,” he said.

He looked out over the bungalows across the empty street. Their pastel colors seemed almost manically cheerful. Even at its best, Brittany had never looked so good. And yet, somehow the town was still itself; Gary had a strange feeling that it was perhaps more itself than it had ever been.

“Not that I’m complaining, Father,” he said, “but why does everything look the same? I mean, it’s not the same really, but a lot of it is, actually most of it is…” He paused, trying to frame a coherent question. “Are we still on Earth, or what?”

“I don’t know,” the priest answered. “But maybe the answer is yes. A new Earth. The old one remade. Or split off from Hell.”

“But have we been changed?” Gary asked.

“Didn’t you see your slimy old self sinking into the carpet like a slug’s trail?” Linda asked.

“So that happened to you guys too?”

“Unappetizing, huh?”

Gary looked up and down the street; it was utterly deserted. “Doesn’t seem to be a very heavily populated place, does it?”

“This part, maybe not,” Linda said.

“Wonder what that glow is?” Gary asked, pointing toward a fringe of white light silhouetting the roofs to the north, pulsing faintly.

“We could go see,” Father Chuck said.

They headed down the steps and north along the street.

Before long they spotted two people coming around a bend in the road: Dennis and Camille. Linda whooped.

“We were sent for you,” Camille said after a round of hugs.

“Have you… have you seen my mother?” Gary asked.

“She’s back north. Up in the light. She wanted to come herself, but there’s a meeting, and they couldn’t spare her…”

“A meeting? ” Linda laughed.

“Does sound awful down to earth, doesn’t it?” Dennis asked. “But things are going to change. Slowly, so we can adjust.”

“Who told you all this?” Linda asked.

Dennis looked at his wife, as if for advice on how to answer. She shrugged.

“Now don’t laugh,” Dennis said.

“I won’t.”

“An angel, I think. An image of one, anyway. Looked human, but… it sure wasn’t one of us. Your mother said they’re only revealing themselves gradually. Showing us as much as we can take.”

“Remember what the ones in the dream looked like?” Camille asked. “I don’t think I could ever be comfortable around one of those. And they’re not even the strange ones. Your mother said there are ones like wheels. She hadn’t actually seen one, but-”

“Did many people get out?” Gary asked.

“More than I would’ve thought,” Dennis answered. “We’re actually late arrivals, as it turns out. But you’ll find all that out for yourself. Come on.”

They headed up the street, rounding the curve. Three men came into view, sitting on a sidewalk bench, apparently engaged in furious conversation. As Gary and the rest drew near, he realized joyfully that the one in the middle was Max.

Max looked up at their approach, grinning at Gary.

“Hey dor-” he began, breaking off before he could add the k.

Gary laughed. “I thought they got you.”

“Thought so too,” Max answered. “They were all over me. But I had to stay till the last second. You would’ve bought it. Or so say my buddies here.”

“Hello, Gary,” said Mr. Hersh, sitting on Max’s left.

“How are you?” asked Mr. Williams on the right.

“Fine,” Gary replied, finding the question a little incongruous.

“Get used to it,” Williams said.

Gary looked sidelong from him back to Hersh. He hadn’t seen either since the burial.

“Something wrong?” Hersh asked.

“You know, it might seem rude to ask this,” Gary said, “But what are you two doing here?”

“Came down with Dennis and Camille,” Williams answered. “Just stopped to talk to Max. Interesting fellow, your brother.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant,” Gary said. “You’re going to think this is really terrible, but…”

“Spit it out, young man,” Hersh broke in.

“Okay,” Gary began. “What I’m driving at is this. Unless I’m very badly mistaken, everything that’s happened to me in the last few days seemed to indicate we’re living in a Catholic universe-priests with supernatural powers, sacraments snatching people from Hell…”

“Go on,” Mr. Williams prodded.

“But if that’s true,” Gary continued, “if this is a Catholic universe, what are a… er, Jew and a Protestant doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Max asked.

“Was I talking to you?”

Max only smiled.

“You know, Gary,” answered Mr. Hersh at last, “That’s a very interesting story…”