Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

Elijah fell deeper and deeper into the muddy lake, giving me one last scornful leer before going to meet with his new coven to prepare for the second coming.

The baby cried and took in breath. Dad danced.

Gawain didn't come back with us through the dark. He sat in the dirt beside the body of Aaron, where the rock had been littered with playing cards and still glistened with the slithery viscera of Lowly Grillot Holt.

I kept staring at Uriel wondering if I should kill him, and do it with Aaron's sword. It might prove fitting. But it would be pointless. His role in these schemes and designs had finished playing out.

Instead I threw him down on Aaron's chest until his hands were covered with the blood of his brother.

Self had fun chasing down the plastic saints and stomping them flat.

Nip and Eddie still held hands. Eddie kept repeating, "I forget. I forget." The kid had been caught up in the maelstrom of confused men and even more confused gods, with his guts spilled out for everyone to poke through. I didn't know how to put him together again, but Nip and Abbot John would help.

I pulled the boy with no heart up from the murder hole, and Self followed cuddling the infant and singing French lullabies. My father stood at the pulpit and brayed like an animal or just a vicious sinner.

Abbot John had hanged himself in the chapel and swayed in the draft. He wasn't dead although he'd really been trying to kill himself this time. He just didn't have the affirmation for it.

I said, "Get off the rope, John. Your children need you. You'll like it in Cincinnati. Fane is going to show you how to sell shoes."

I helped him down from the noose and watched him shudder as he bowed in the pew. I handed him the jar with Eddie's heart and released the seven locks. He saw Uriel's wet hands.

When I told him the mount no longer had a reason to stand, he hissed with his ruined voice, "So now it begins."

I didn't want to hear a discourse on the conflicts of my life or his interpretation of events. My punctured lung grew worse until every breath rattled deep in my chest, exactly the same as when I'd arrived here seeking recovery. I slumped beside him into the pew and kicked up the kneeling rail.

"Meet him in the hills of Meggido," Abbot John whispered. "I saw it in a dream. Bring your armies."

"I have no armies. Neither does Jebediah. We're not the kings of the earth."

"Of course you are."

Of course we are , Self said. Jerusalem calls. And Golgotha .

It wasn't the truth-couldn't be the truth-but Jebediah believed it. Elijah and the new coven would reinforce his will and lend credence to his doctrine. He would not turn back for the sake of his rationality, not even on behalf of the world.

He'd drawn me into this war, and neither of us could carry on until our purpose was proven to be righteous or false. I sat thinking about Palestine and Mount Carmel, the ancient highways where invaders passed into the high point of the valley, built up over periods by the destruction and rebuilding of cities.

Self practiced his Hebrew, sounding almost happy. HarMeggidon.

Har Meggidon.

The mountains of Meggido, where the kings of the earth would meet.

Armageddon.

Like all wars, this one began with sacrifice.

Here, in a land of grudges and blood, Abraham had set out to murder his child. According to the Jews, the boy's name is Isaac. To the Muslims, it is Ishmael.

Untold thousands have died over such devotion to minor details and metaphor. Explosive devices are hidden under seat cushions because of mispronunciations. Entire families are poisoned for square inches at the back of a shrine or church. The Palestinians and Israelis fought over lines drawn in the dirt. Symbolism leads to suicidal missions inside wired trucks and boats. Women are stabbed for singing praises to a different god on a crooked street in the wrong quarter.

Where there is sanctity, there is Satan.

It's an ancient adage that fits the wide range of awe-inspiring faith and petty madness that is Jerusalem. It was easy to get preachy here.

The pink-haired lady, Betty Verfenstein, put it another way when she saw that I was watching the Muslims spitting on the Jews in the narrow alleys and labyrinthine bazaars of the OldCity. The Jews were throwing rocks and everybody was screaming while the Israeli border guards hung back with their machine guns pointed down at the street.

"I couldn't care less what these fanatics do to each other," she said. "Except when I see children getting involved. They shouldn't have to grow up in this turmoil, all in the name of God. This isn't religion. I don't know what it is. I've never seen anything like it in my life." She planted her meaty fists on her thick hips and looked ready to outwrestle any of the squabbling well-dressed men. "All I'm sure of is that I wouldn't want any of them in my home during Passover."

There were dead children wrapped around her throat, the silver psychic cords twining and whipping about her. Four miscarriages with broad flat heads and trans, lucent, vein-packed skin, and her daughter, Theresa, who'd been murdered thirty-five years ago at the age of twenty.

Theresa had given me all the bitter details, seething in my ear on the plane. She'd been a sophomore at Yardale, cutting across the quad at night with her roommate on their way to a Phi Beta Kappa party, when the pine brush behind them suddenly came alive with arms and gray gloves. She still felt an intense loathing for her roommate, who ran off and left Theresa behind. Right there on one of the nation's safest campuses, in a spot surrounded by the windows to a hundred empty classrooms, she'd had her bowels carefully cut from her while her dead eyes watched each stroke of the fine blade and witnessed the slow and precise removal of her own internal organs. Still, all she saw were arms, and those unstoppable gray gloves.

Theresa wavered close, her teeth champed and white eyes wide now that she had finally come face-to-face with me.

My name had been carved in thin large letters into her chest, years before I was born.

"You all right?" Betty asked. "You look a little sick."

"I'm fine."

She kept her gaze on the fighting. The sorrow etched itself deeper into each heavy line of her face, and the nervous tension kept her talking. "Manny's back at the hotel with heartburn. I wanted to go to Ecuador, but no, he wants to come see where the Bible was born. Except the water here is as bad for him as it was in Mexico. You and Manny, you're both going to be up all night."

Theresa continued to glare. Her open abdominal cavity showed that the butcher had only taken certain organs: the liver, the lower intestine, and part of her lower esophageal tract. The dried tissues could be used for divination. It reminded me of Eddie as everyone in the mount pulled together in order to replace his heart and put him back together again.

I could imagine Theresa's killer back then, with his gray leather gloves still on, surrounded with the burnt embers of her flesh and using a scrying mirror to stare into the future and see me at this exact moment. Why else would he have carved my name, unless he wanted to see my reaction?

I mouthed, You'll pay for this . I focused on him as well as I could, turning against the years that led toward Theresa's death. My mind roamed widdershins-counter-clockwise-against the natural order of time. He watched me from the past. I could sense him there, grinning, so slick. He held his scrying mirror and looked deeply within it, staring, watching. He wanted a connection and he got it. I drew forth arcana and hid my glowing fists in my pockets. I recited a thricefold Assyrian hex and hurled a curse, feeling the tide flow against the very current of time. Thirty-five years ago it should've shattered the glass and sent the shards into the bastard's face, leaving him blind in at least one eye.