Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

By this time, Joshua wondered if the destruction of Israel and all the Jews would be such a bad thing.

Raymo Scoth weighed three pounds and five ounces after having clung to life for three weeks. He had been the premature issue of a heroine addicted mother and no one knew who else.

According to the instructions of the secondary vision, Joshua managed to unplug the respirator in the nursery without drawing attention to himself. All the babies were asleep, and the attending nurse slept also, perched precariously on a padded chair by the door.

Somehow, Raymo Scoth had learned to breathe on his own. Not in the vision. The vision showed only the unplugging of the respirator, a brief struggle, then nothing.

Joshua picked up the sickly infant—feeling at the moment of contact how frail and infantlike his own father had become—felt the residual warmth from the incubator, and ran. He was gone before the nurse stirred in her chair. To get past the front desk, he jammed the soft infant into his jacket pocket—ignoring the sounds and tiny breakings as he twisted Raymo into the jacket. In the underground parking structure, he pulled Raymo from his pocket—such a little thing. Without thought, he threw him as hard as he could against the wall. Raymo hit slightly below the “e” in the “PARK HEADING IN” notice painted on the wall.

There was no blood. No blood that he could see. Only a quiet thud.

Only a quiet thud.

Thud.

Joshua ran. If Raymo was not dead, Jews would have to take care of themselves. This time it was over for Joshua. Nothing could induce him, no vision no matter how horrible could make him do this again.

And worse—this vision had been wrong in a detail! The infant had breathed on its own. The secondary vision had not shown that. Had been wrong! Factually wrong. What if it had been wrong in other respects? What if there were another way? His father had told him that there was no other way, but his father had been wrong before.

Thud.

Joshua returned to the house of his youth to speak to his father. He had not been home in over ten years. The house looked small and dark. The trees in the yard had grown, and one, a peach had died. The crack in the entryway tile had spread an inch or so.

A week had passed since his “trip” to Philadelphia. The quiet thud had only increased in volume. He heard it more frequently, wondered if he would ever be free of it. The tell-tale thud.

In the living room, his father sat in his favorite chair. This chair was a replacement for one which Joshua remembered. The chair Joshua sat in was old. He remembered dropping a lit match in it when he was eight. If he turned over the cushion, he knew, the burned spot would be there, a scorched hole the size of a walnut and shaped like the big island of Hawaii.

“So?” his father asked.

“How did you stop?”

“Stop? The visions? I see.” He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes.

Joshua waited for his father to continue. He looked over the knickknacks in the room. None had changed, not even in location. This room was a fossil, a museum. Just as his father was, a fossil of faith gone by. The past had been so comfortable and safe, so calm and innocent. His problems were with and in the future.

“God,” his father abruptly said, “when He discovers a good trick, He uses it over and over.”

If this comment was meant to illuminate, it failed. “And?” Joshua prodded.

“Why do you do these things?” Benjamin asked.

These things. These things? This neck yielding to a wire—the quiet thud! “What things?” Joshua asked.

“Let us not play word games. Why do you frustrate these visions?”

“Frustrate these visions?” Talk about playing word games. Let’s call a spade a spade here. “You mean why do I fly around and kill babies?”

His father was surprised or shocked by the brutality of the question. Maybe he hadn’t been prepared for not playing word games.

“No need to shout,” he replied. “Your mother… But yes, why did you… kill babies?”

“Because you told me I must,” Joshua said. Obey your father. He knew it was not true, even as he said it. He wanted to hurt the old man, blame him for what he himself had done.

“But why?” his father asked, nonplussed. “You could have sat on your hands and done nothing.”

Why is he doing this to me? Joshua asked himself. He’s the one who told me I couldn’t do nothing.

“Let me tell you,” his father said. “You do it to protect your own children.”

Without having to think about it, Joshua knew this was true. If not his children, then his children’s children. Unto the fourth generation. His children’s future. His own children, not the Jews of the world.

His father continued, “You remember the story of Abraham and Isaac in the land of Moriah?”

More Biblical cant, Joshua thought. But what other explanation could there be. Insanity? “Yes, when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. So?”

The finger rose into the air, the point was about to be made. “It is well that you remember your boyhood lessons. That was a good trick.”

There was nothing more his father would tell him, nothing about how to stop. Which meant that Joshua would have to continue. To find the strength to go on. Or the strength to stop without help. Where, he wondered, could he find the strength. In a belief in God? Did he believe in God now? Only God could make him do what he had done.

But did he believe?

Joshua’s last vision came when he was about to take a shower. He reached for the shower handles and stopped before turning them.

“Are you sure, sir?” a very young lieutenant asked. His voice was shaky.

“Yes. Input your code and turn the key!” It was an older man speaking. Joshua could only see the gray of the man’s hair and the general’s stars on his shoulders. When the lieutenant did nothing, the voice said, “This is a direct order from a superior officer.”

The lieutenant chewed his lip as he typed his code into the launch computer.

“Bear up, Lt. Mollar.”

“Yes, sir,” Mollar replied. He was unable to turn the key.

“Let me help you.”

“I’m sorry, General Yosevs, it’s mated to my fingerprint. I’ll be able in a moment.”

“Take your time, soldier. We can wait another thirty seconds.”

The young lieutenant waited another moment, sweat beading on his face. Then he turned the key.

Horrified, Joshua looked at the shower head and saw a mushroom cloud. He backed away and soon mushroom clouds filled the shower. Buildings on the tile melted. Cities crumbled. Forests burned away in seconds. Oceans evaporated. People disappeared in flashes of light. Not only Jews, but everyone, the entire future itself. Gone, Joshua knew without question, because of the madness of one man. A man who had managed to hide his insanity until it was too late.

Joshua had clearly heard the general’s name.

General Yosevs. “I’m sorry, General Yosevs, it’s mated to my fingerprint.”

Yosevs. I’m sorry, General Yosevs. Yosevs, the last name of Joshua’s father who was too old to be the general in the vision.

Naked, Joshua walked to the bedroom and dialed his father. He tried to think as the phone rang.

Yosevs was Joshua’s own last name. Joshua would never be a general.

“Hello,” his father answered the telephone cheerfully.

Yosevs was the name of perhaps one hundred others in the country. Maybe fewer.

Joshua did not know what to say. He held the phone and listened as his father asked, “Yes, who is there, please?”

Yosevs was the last name of Harlow and Kevin, both of whom, either of whom would be the proper age at the proper time. Another of God’s good tricks. Abraham asked to sacrifice his son.