Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's all right." She took my arm again, squeezed once, and let go, just as she had done in the church. "My father wishes to talk to you. Please come to see him. He needs you."

"Who is your father?"

"His name is Joseph Shiya. I am Bethany. He's-"

I nodded. "Dying."

Her father was on his deathbed, and the summons of the dying held great authority and command. Her entreaty had a potency with repercussions, just as my oath on MountArmon had.

"Yes," she said. "He is."

Again she swept aside her hair in that same gesture that made me think of Danielle. It struck such a resonant chord in me that I felt a painful heat rear in my gut. She stared at me with a puzzled expression.

I looked up and saw that Self and Nip were gone. I scanned the plaza and the Hassidim had turned back to their prayers, the near-frenzy broken.

"It's all right," I told her. "I'll come with you."

"I'm not sure that I want you to."

"I don't blame you."

"He will not even see a priest. I don't know who you are, or why he needs you so desperately."

"I'm not certain either, but your father is dying and he has something to say."

"That's true." Her gaze filled with a swarm of confusion. They were the eyes of my mother. "Please, follow. This way."

We walked through the city, down along David Street to the Christian quarter. A couple of times I spotted Self following at a distance, weaving into alleys and shop doorways. He wasn't quite hiding but he refused to come any closer. Nip was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if this was a new game or ploy of some kind, and I didn't know what to make of it.

Bethany Shiya lived near the Jaffa Gate. The sun was setting by the time we arrived, and my raw skin had started to cool. Shadows lengthened across the wall, scrambling along the stone. I looked at the road heading toward Jaffa, leading on to the Mediterranean, and I thought of the entire world beyond. Bethany took my hand and led me on.

She ushered me up a series of steps and into her home, and I knew who her father was even before I walked into the bedroom to see him sprawled shivering beneath several blankets.

I wasn't alarmed by the pattern these circumstances had taken, but I didn't find any comfort in them either. I had told Jebediah that you could not separate large events from the small, but I found myself trying to tug at this tapestry of misfortune and miracles and hold the detached threads.

On the bed lay the man who had led me from the fire.

The ragged plowed lines of Joseph Shiya's face had deepened and darkened even more. His ashen skin looked like clay that had been pounded by an insane child. He gasped horribly for air, the wet sucking sounds filling his chest.

And yet his resolve, force of will, and beatific nature came through, even now at the hour of his death. Such sanctity made him imposing and dignified even as he dwindled to nothing. Perhaps he truly was the reincarnate of John of Patmos, who kept the Christian faith alive during its harshest years of persecution.

"It's you," he wheezed. "I'd hoped to be dead before my daughter returned with you."

So it was going to be like that.

I took a breath and swallowed down my rising irritation. "She said you asked to see me."

"And so I did."

I sat in a chair beside the bed and waited. Bethany brought me a glass of ice water. I finished it quickly and she took it from me and returned with a glass of wine. She asked if I was hungry and I thanked her but waved her off, listening to the old man's labored breathing. She closed the bedroom door and left me with him.

Death spun its gray mask over Joseph Shiya's features. His fear was palpable but I knew he wasn't scared of dying or afraid of me. This all had something to do with Bethany, and the terror enveloped him like a shroud. His shallow breath clogged in his throat with a heinous rattle.

"It's a miracle you survived the flames."

"Yes," I said.

"There were many who died."

"Yes."

"And not a mark on you."

I'd have thought that a man who wouldn't live through the night might get to the point immediately, but he felt more comfortable avoiding his dread.

"How is it you were there?" I asked. "God is not finished with me yet."

"He never finishes with any of us."

"This is true," Joseph Shiya told me, with some steel entering his voice.

"You sound angry about it."

"Some men's destinies are larger than others," he said. "Their sacrifices greater and much uglier."

"I'm getting a little tired of all you guys telling me about my fate."

He attempted to sit up in bed but couldn't make it. I moved my chair closer and tried to help but he felt so brittle in my arms I thought he'd snap in half. His hand crept out from beneath the blankets and dropped to my leg. "Not only yours. All of us who do our duty. Men like Barrabas, Judas, and Pontius Pilate. Their lives were no less entwined than ours. Tell me, where would Christ's path have led him without these men?"

"To some place with less pain," I said. "And what would the fate of the world have been then?"

I let loose with a weary sigh and let it just keep rolling and rolling out of me. "Did you ever consider that we all would have been a lot happier?"

"No, God surely would have destroyed us by now, but … but-"

Men of duty, woven into the greater scheme of God like so many thin colorful strands. Even a retarded child could play cat's cradle with a piece of yarn. There, I thought, rested the destiny of the planet.

"What did you call me here for?" I asked.

Even before the words were out of my mouth the sickness abruptly skewered through me again. I grunted and nearly fell headlong out of my seat, shaking in spasms. The wineglass tipped over and shattered. There was no lamplight in the room, and now shaggy rips of darkness appeared and widened.

The door opened and Bethany stood waiting there, staring, surprised it had been me who cried out. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No."

Self appeared behind her, slipping past her whirling skirts as she turned away. He looked feverish, as if he too were fighting the pain. Joseph Shiya seemed to sense my second self's presence and glanced about the room, searching for the approach of death. Self closed in with a buoyant step, but the old man tilted his head, listening.

"'The day of calamity is upon the land,'" Joseph quoted from the book of Revelation. "The sons of light battle the company of darkness amid the clamor of gods and men.

It never ceased to amaze me that the Bible itself, taken as literal truth, makes so many references to there being more than one god.

Pretty catchy lyrics , Self said. Put it together with a backbeat .

Joseph Shiya perked up from his pillows. "Azreal . . . the angel Azreal comes."

"Not yet," I told him. "Why did you call me here?"

"There is evil here, now, with us."

Blow it out your ass, dude.

"It's all right, Joseph."

The old man grew more uneasy and excited until he clutched at my sleeve. "Only you can save her," he hissed at me. "I was wrong, I should not have obeyed my God. It is inhuman, what he asks. My daughter, you must save her."

"From what?" I asked.

"From you."

Sensible guy, I like the way he thinks.

"Joseph, listen to me. I swear I won't hurt her."

Self sat on the edge of the bed, sweating, holding his belly the same way I was. We both rocked a little, swaying, licking our lips. The heat was unbearable and there was no air. Streams of sweat slid down my chest. Self dug his claws into the sheets to hold himself steady, and he slowly ripped them to tatters.

"You must protect her from the evil that comes," Joseph Shiya cried, with tears flowing into the channels of his cross-thatched face. "From my sins. From my fears." He looked me in the eye, and I realized the terror he had was only for God. "I am a poor servant of the Lord."