I slept badly and awoke often. It was, however, a slight improvement over the alternative of not ever waking again.
During my fevered tossings and turnings I heard snatches of conversations ranging from the conditions of my chakras to the theological imperatives of free will. During the rarer times I was sufficiently conscious and cognizant, I was also ravenous: I essentially chugged the contents of three different bowls. Slept and drank again. Twice more.
I also picked up bits and pieces of my host's story during his visits and my occasional moments of lucidity.
He called himself Pat but that wasn't his real name. He apparently couldn't remember his real name any more than he could remember his former life. The specifics of his existence went back a couple of years and dead-ended in the Holy Land, where he had begun a new life and a new calling.
And, in a fit of rare humor, chosen a new name.
It wasn't short for Patrick.
It was shorthand, he said, to remind himself that there were no "pat" answers. And that, since waking up in a shallow grave in the Sinai wilderness, he had to physically pat himself, from time to time, for the reassurance that his existence was more than the flickering dream of a brain guttering out in its final, electro-chemical shutdown.
And then there was the matter of the giant hunchback, Brother Michael.
It was too good a synchronicity to pass up, he said: Pat and Mike. It seemed the perfect frosting on the cake of their peculiar partnership. Why not?
Brother Michael had found him wandering in the desert. It was the albino giant who kept him alive (if that was the operative word) and somehow got him to America. His memory was nearly as patchy of that first year out of the ground as it was devoid of all the years before. It was, he mused, like most lives in that we have no memory of a pre-birth existence and are hazy regarding our infancy and early childhood.
The only clues he had to go on were the remnants of semi-military garb that he had worn like a tattered shroud.
That and the violence of his original passing.
"Murder?" I asked.
He smiled that odd, thoughtful, slightly off-kilter smile that had caught my attention during our brief encounter near the holy water font. His resurrected body, he explained, not only bore the evidence of man-made death but suggested a prolonged period of torture, as well. Perhaps, he considered, his lack of memory was a side effect of the trauma he had suffered before his execution.
Killed by the Palestinians or the Israelis?
"Does it really matter which? Or which side I originally fought on?" he asked in turn. "There is enough wrong on both sides to push the balance scales up and down, back and forth. If I was a man of war before, then I lived by the sword and died by it, as well."
Now he claimed to be fighting a different kind of war, a spiritual war. A war for the souls of those who had been told they had none.
Why?
He felt that there had to be some unseen but meaningful purpose that had brought him back in the flesh to walk the earth when he should have been long gone to rot and worms by now.
I had to ask the question though he clearly had addressed the issue long before: "You're sure that you actually died?"
"Not only am I sure that I actually died," he answered, as Brother Mike gently raised me to a sitting position, "but I question the use of the term 'resurrection' as it applies to me. When one speaks of a resurrection, it usually connotes a return to life—the condition of life. With all of the applicable attributes."
The hulking, hunched giant tucked pillows behind me as gently as my mother would.
"I," continued Father Pat, "am still dead. I do not breathe unless it is to draw air through my chest to speak. My heart does not beat. I do not sweat, sleep, or eat. And so, since awakening from what should have been my final sleep, my eternal sleep—I do not dream."
"You're a zombie?" I suggested.
"Have you ever met any?" he asked with that same oddly wry smile.
"Well, actually, yes." I think my smile must have matched his for the moment.
"They continue to decay," he pointed out. "Their reflexes, thought processes, response times, are slow. They are poster children for entropy. The organic breakdown may be slowed in some cases but it is never entirely held in check." He raised a gray hand and examined his own, dead-colored fingers. "I, on the other hand, seem to remain perfectly preserved. Well," he chuckled, "not 'perfectly.' But I can run and jump and dance and even swim and pass myself off as a living man if you don't look too closely."
I nodded groggily. "A little makeup—a good foundation base—would solve that problem."
Massive Mike offered another bowl of blood to me but I dozed off before I could manage a single sip.
That night I had a dream that was most passing strange.
I dreamt that I was awake and watching an unearthly parade. Creatures that were half human and others far removed from that evolutionary tree passed by—shuffling, slithering, flapping, crawling—wending their way in a nightmare procession past a line of flickering torches and down into a great pit. Flames flickered down below, out of sight, but the treetops that ringed the pit danced in and out of the shadows, lit and darkened moment by moment by submerged firelight.
And when the nightmare horde had gathered, an assembly of death and damnation that congregated like the personified sum of humanity's darkest dreams, a voice rose from the pit as if from a dark general rallying his troops.
"The fourth chapter of Proverbs is particularly evocative for some of us," he called out in ringing tones. "The prophet writes these words: 'For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.' "
The congregation murmured at that and few voices bore resemblance to anything human.
"You, who crouch in darkness and shun the light, does your nocturnal nature make you evil?"
Faint growls formed a vague answer to the question.
"If so, then so must the bat be evil. And the owl . . . I'm certain that the owl appears quite evil to the field mouse."
Growls became throaty chuckles.
"And what of the firefly and the moth? Is the chorus of cricket and frog a dirge of death or a lullaby for sleep? We might as well follow mislaid logic to its extreme and declare the moon and the stars to be elements of immorality and wickedness.
"Man hates the darkness because he fears the unseen and the unknown. And, in like manner, he fears that which is not like him.
"But are we not like him? Do we not fear that which we do not understand? What we cannot see? Do we not fear living humans for their power to move about freely and fearlessly in the burning, blinding, killing light of day?
"We may say it is our nature to kill, our nature to do what men call evil because we are the spawn of darkness. But the eagle kills by day and the cavefish swims peacefully in eternal night. There is no line of moral demarcation between the darkness and the dawn.
"We may choose violence because we know no other way. We kill to eat. We kill to keep our enemies from us. Do we kill because it is our nature?"
I nodded, murmuring: "Nature, red in tooth and claw . . ."
Are God and Nature then at strife? quoted a soft voice off to my right. That Nature lends such evil dreams? Brother Michael stood stooped and hunched in the darkness beyond the torchlight.
"Tennyson, anyone?" I said with a small smile.
Brother Mike made no response other than to study me with gray, hawklike eyes.
" 'Who loved,' " I ventured, " 'who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just . . .' "
The giant hunchback just stood there, considering me with an expression that grew less human by the minute.
" ' . . . Be blown about the desert dust,' " I offered, " 'Or seal'd within the iron hills?' Then . . . something about dragons . . . too bad, I bet you'd like that verse."
. . . Dragons of the prime, he said. Only his lips didn't move. That tear each other in the slime . . .
"He likes it!" I said, remembering that this must be a dream. "Hey, Mikey!"
O life as futile, then, as frail! came the words inside my head. O for thy voice to soothe and bless! The crippled giant began to fade back into the deeper darkness. What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil . . .
Then he was gone.
" . . . Behind the veil," I whispered.
Then I was gone: the dream was ended.
I rose on the third day.
Let me rephrase that: I got out of bed after three days of rest and recuperation.
I unwound the bandage about my middle and contemplated the fist-sized weal of pink new flesh where a gaping hole had been blasted just four nights before. I should still hurt like hell but I felt marvelous.
Physically, that is.
The blood made an undeniable difference. After months of supplementing my waning diet with embezzled packets of refrigerated blood products and aperitifs of plasma, getting it fresh and undiluted was akin to walking out of Dorothy's monochrome farmhouse and into the scintillating colors of the Land of Oz. I felt more than alive, I felt vibrant. I felt younger. I felt as if I were radiating health like a space heater pouring out waves of infrared heat and light.
Was this how Erzsébet Báthory felt after draining one of her virgin victims? If so, I could understand the hunger and need that drove her down into her dark dungeons. I could still condemn—but also fully appreciate how going down into that darkness brought warmth and light of a different sort to the soul trapped in ice.
Every time I had tasted crimson nectar, hot and lively from pulsing veins and straining flesh, I could not imagine returning to a repast of cold remains. Only a decaying sense of morality and an unraveling guilt had succeeded in reining me in so far.
To keep from being totally swept away on this sensory flood of health and vitality, I tried to capture a thread of that guilt. The blood was given freely, Father Pat had said—no presumed guilt there. So I focused on my other victims: my wife and daughter, killed in the crash brought about by my first convulsive transformation; Dr. Marsh, murdered by New York's enforcers during their first attempt to track me down; Damien's death and Deirdre's suicide, the results of protecting me from Báthory's minions; Suki, possibly still paralyzed from my leading her into a confrontation with Liz Bachman last year; and, most recently, the deaths of Billy-Bob Montrose and Teresa Kellerman during the assault on my house.
My mere existence, alone, had resulted in so much pain and death to others, how could I even contemplate performing a conscious act that would bring further harm to an innocent life? Better I should have climbed into that crematory oven behind Mr. Delacroix and rid the world of two bloodsuckers for the price of one.
Except I promised to protect his daughter and avenge his death.
And, so far, I hadn't done anything to be proud of in that department. I might disagree with Father Pat's assessment of my role in the grand scheme of things but, perhaps, we could find one point of convergence: I owed Erzsébet Báthory a death. And if that made an ending to my own encroaching madness and monstrous transformation, then so much the better.
Someone had laid out clothing for me: jeans, boots, flannel shirt—a bit warm for Louisiana, even in late fall. Unless you exist on the edge of unlife and need a little help in the body heat department. I dressed and found that everything more or less fit though the boots pinched a bit.
I pushed the tent flap aside and walked out into the late afternoon twilight.
We were deep in the swamps and a propinquity of trees provided a dense canopy of interlacing branches that blocked the waning sunlight like heavy cloud cover. Beneath the leafy ceiling the world seemed submerged in a dim green-tinted ocean and I moved into its depths like a deep-sea diver exploring a strange new world.
The camp was a haphazard arrangement of tents and makeshift tables and chairs set out and about. I couldn't be sure about the interiors of the other tents but the general area appeared to be deserted.
"Feeling better?"
I looked again and saw what I should have seen before: my three Fates sitting in the shade of a lean-to. Number One was knitting . . . something—it was too soon to be able to tell what. Number Two was working an ancient spinning wheel, producing a stream of yarn for Number One's project. Number Three was carding wool in preparation for the spindle of Number Two's wheel. In the distance, down by the bayou, I could see a knot of sheep. A giant, hunched form moved among them, distributing food.
"Um, yes," I said, remembering that I had been asked a question.
"Do you still want us to work on your chakras?" Number One—Marilyn—asked.
"Uh, sure."
"You do realize that your energy fields are pretty close to being balanced right now," Number Two—Lynne—added. "If we change the spin on those chakras that are currently running backwards, it will throw you out of balance until the proper rotation is restored."
"And that's bad?" I guessed.
"Depends on how long you're out of balance," Number Three—Angela—explained.
"You're balanced halfway between being alive and undead," Marilyn elaborated. "Even though we're attempting to move you away from the undead state, you might start to wobble from the balance point as we adjust your centers."
"Meaning I might tip over into the undead zone?" Not the direction I was hoping for.
"That's not too likely," Lynne said reassuringly.
"That's ni—"
"More likely you might tip over into a dead state," Angela amended.
"Angela!"
"Well, it's true. And you said we should tell him so he could make an informed decision."
"Well there's such a thing as tact."
I held up my hands. "What are the odds?"
Marilyn's knitting needles paused. "I can't give you odds. Your condition is unique so I can only tell you what is possible, maybe probable. I think it's probable that we can do this but I cannot tell you how long it may take or whether it will require many sessions. It will probably be very uncomfortable. And you may not like it."
"May not like it?"
"The end result," she said, looking me hard in the eye. "Right now you have the best of two worlds."
"The best—" I almost choked.
"You're stronger, faster, more . . . attenuated . . . than a human being. I doubt you will age like one. You don't have the full limitations that afflict the living dead nor have you succumbed to The Hunger or The Rage."
"Yet."
"You should have more faith in yourself."
"Why? Because everybody else does?"
"Everybody has to put their faith in something, Chris. And someone. Where and in whom do you put yours?"
I didn't have an answer, smartass or straight. I just nodded at the threads coming off the Fates' spinning wheel and finding a pattern between the clicking needles: "Anyone I know?"
"Jack," said Marilyn.
"Jack?"
Lynne shook her head. "You don't know Jack."
Angela giggled.
"Jack is my grandson," Marilyn said.
"That's your grandson?"
"It's going to be a sweater for my grandson."
"Ah. Okay . . ."
Angela giggled again as Lynne and Marilyn exchanged looks.
"Would you like to begin tonight?" Marilyn asked. "We could meet in your tent after the service.
"When shall we three meet again?" Lynne murmured.
"In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" Angela chimed in.
"Girls!" scolded Marilyn.
"Um, yeah. Sure." I started to back away.
"By then you may have had enough time to make up your mind," Lynne said.
"I'll bring my scissors, just in case," Angela called as I turned and ambled off a little briskly.
I think they all giggled that time.
Wandering about, I noticed a row of extinguished torches, set into the ground on tall poles like some sort of fifties-style Tiki-patio-party theme. Beyond them lay a small clearing where the ground dropped away into a bowl-like depression that was ringed with descending rows of split logs, laid on their sides to provide bench seating. At the nadir of the concavity was an open grave, a mound of dirt piled high beside it. All that was missing was the coffin.
"Welcome to our chapel."
I turned and looked for Father Pat but he was more elusive than my three faux Fates.
"Up here."
I looked up and, after a moment, was able to distinguish his form amid the latticework of leaves, branches, and garlands of Spanish moss.
"I'm checking the bayou for boats," he said, starting to climb down. "Ivonna said there were people a couple of miles to the south, yesterday. It's rare anyone ventures into the swamps this far, but you may still be worthy of a search party or two."
"Ivonna?" I said as he stopped about ten feet above the ground to disentangle a binocular strap that had snagged on a branch.
"You've met. She brought you to us the night you were shot."
I considered that. "Green hair?"
"That's the one. She's a russalka."
I nodded slowly. "She's a bit far from home."
He dropped to the ground and shrugged. "Home is where you hang your shroud."
"I thought home was where they had to take you in when nobody else wanted you."
He laughed and began plucking strands of gray-green moss from his clothing. "That's good! That's very good! Because that's what we're really all about."
"Your little congregation?"
"Yes, Chris, though I'd prefer to think of us as a family or a community. Congregations tend to be so iconoclast."
I gestured toward the pit. "You have a chapel. You preach sermons. I know you Roman Catholics are always trying to reinvent yourselves but—"
Father Pat held up his hand. "I'm not Catholic. At least, I don't remember being a Catholic while I was alive. But then I remember less and less about being alive with every passing day."
"You wear a Roman collar and everyone calls you 'Father' Pat."
He fingered the white square at his throat. "Symbols. Symbols are very important in matters of faith, in the realm of the unseen and the unknowable. As important as they are to the people of the daylight, they are even more potent to the children of darkness."
"So the collar and the title give you some measure of control over them."
"Control?" He gave me a long, penetrating look. "Oh. Oh, I see. You think I'm some kind of snake-oil salesman. That I'm using religion as a means to power." He smiled but there was little humor in it now. "I certainly wouldn't be the first to find advantage in using theology to amass a following. It certainly has been profitable to those with media outlets. But look about you." He swept his arm about in a broad gesture. "Where is my wealth? And even if I had access, who's going to permit a radio or television ministry to the undeniably damned?"
"According to the sermon I heard a couple of nights ago, you don't seem to subscribe to the concept of damnation."
"Oh," he said quietly, "I wholeheartedly believe in damnation. Don't you?"
"Oh yes," I said, trying to match him for quietness and not nearly succeeding. "That's why I question your motives. Hope is a cruel message. And people will seek power over others for no gain but power's own sake."
"Power to do what? Raise an undead army? With messages of peace?"
I shook my head. "There's nothing unusual about a religious war. Every generation sees millions murdered in the name of God. Offering forgiveness merely sooths the conscience and makes it easier to pull the trigger or break the commandments."
"And withholding it motivates us out of hopelessness?"
"There's a thin difference between motivation and manipulation."
"Manipulation?"
"I had an interesting conversation with a Chicago enforcer a while back. He told me about the fears of the soulless. Of the fear of endless darkness that awaits them beyond this pale existence. They don't go gentle into that good night—they rage, rage against the dying of the light because they have no promise of salvation! It's a cruel, cruel circumstance that gives you your opportunity. Bad enough that they're damned—that we're all damned! But you come along and tell them there's a heaven after all. That they can be heirs of light and salvation, as well. Well, God damn you, sir, for that! Except there is no God and you are worse than any serpent in the Garden of Eden. You offer a false hope where there is no hope!" I stopped, stunned at the depth of emotion that had come welling up from that dark place down deep inside.
"A lie is a terrible thing," he agreed, "especially when it shapes whole lives to hopelessness and despair. You, you speak the lies so smoothly, so effortlessly, because you've been told those lies all of your life. They've blinded you to the simple truths, the pure truths, and made you a judge to shallow appearance and prejudice. How dare you, sir! Who are you to come and say to anyone 'You have no soul, you have no salvation?'
"You accuse me of manipulating these beings with a message of hope when you would smugly perpetuate a falsehood of hopelessness without the intellectual honesty to question your own borrowed suppositions. The problem, Mr. Cséjthe, is that you are damned. Damned by the hardness of your own heart. Damned for wanting to close the doors of heaven against those that don't seem to measure up to your standards of redemption. Damned for wanting to hold them down in the darkness to share your miserable companionship."
"So," I whispered, "you do believe in damnation."
"Of course I believe in damnation, you fool! I already said so. Men like you and I, we know a great deal about damnation. But I live in a larger universe and I know there are greater things, more powerful things, than damnation. Things like love and forgiveness."
"And you get to dispense them, right?"
"Yes!" he thundered, his face catching a patch of sunlight that had slipped between the latticework of leaves. For a moment he seemed to glow like an illuminated saint on ancient parchment. "And so do you! We can forgive the wrongs done to us! And if we petty, vindictive, imperfect creatures can find some measure of love and forgiveness in our own shriveled hearts, what wondrous, immeasurable treasures might be poured out of that great heart at the center of the universe?"
"What about the rules?"
"Whose rules? What claptrap, pinch-hearted preachers have you been listening to? Did you hear my sermon and miss the whole point? There's only one sin in the whole Bible that is unforgivable. And as long as you don't commit that sin, there's hope, Chris! Hope! There's still a chance to redeem the life you thought was past redemption!"
"Who are you to offer hope?" I asked bitterly.
"Who are you to suggest anything but?" he shot back. "You think there is no hope? You believe Nietzsche's 'we are all apes of a cold god' shit?"
"Marx," I corrected, "not Nietzsche."
"Doesn't matter who said it, only who believes it. If you believe it then maybe it is too late for you. Maybe you've crossed that line of no return, achieved that unpardonable state, and lost your salvation forever."
"Yeah," I said, "tell me about my salvation."
"That's not my place, Chris; and it's not my message. I don't tell people that the grave is a closed door. You think the cross represents the message of the New Testament? The true symbol of the Christ is not an instrument of torture but the empty grave! That's our message: we are the Church of the Open Tomb! If His resurrection was a miracle and a blessing, why should ours be a horror and a curse? If God created us, He would not condemn us without reason. If there are shadows upon our souls, it is because there is a light within us, as well."
He paused and looked away. "There's just one catch."
"Sure," I said, "there's always a catch. What is it?"
"Free will."
I just looked at him.
He looked back.
"Of course," I said. "You have to have free will or there is no guilt. If we're the puppets of some higher power then there is no real responsibility. Ergo, no sin."
"Very good, Grasshopper," he said, inclining his head. "And since God allows us our own agency, forgiveness is very tricky."
"Ah," I said, "at last: the hook. You've been tossing that F-word around like it was totally free."
"God's love is free, my brother. It fills our every day like warm, life-giving sunlight." He frowned. "Hmmm. Perhaps that's not the best analogy for you. Certainly not for most of my congregants. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is forgiveness is a gift. That's what makes it tricky."
"Beware of gods bearing gifts?"
"Poor Christopher—can't decide whether to wield his sarcasm like a sword or like a shield. Try again."
The thought finally crystallized: "You're saying the unforgivable sin is rejecting the gift of forgiveness."
He nodded. "It sounds like a catch-22 but it's really quite simple: forgiveness is a gift. And while a gift is bestowed freely, you have the power to accept or reject it. If you reject it, you choose your own damnation and God cannot interfere with that choice without making you His puppet.
"That's what's wrong with people always wanting God to destroy evil. To eliminate evil, He would have to prevent wrong choices."
I nodded slowly. "No wrong choices, no free will."
"Which would be worse?" Pat mused. "Apes of a cold god or puppets of a warm one?"
I stared off at the sunset reflected in the brackish waters of Bayou Gris. "It might not be so bad," I murmured after awhile: "if Shari Lewis was God."
Father Pat nodded. "And Buffalo Bob her prophet."
I went to Father Pat's macabre matins that night. Not as a supplicant or believer but more along the lines of a skeptic on vacation. It was an intellectual cheat to judge something I hadn't fully examined.
But how do you examine God? Hold up theological hoops and see if He (or She or It) jumps through them on command?
I was still thinking this whole swamp front mission was nothing more than a theological circle-jerk when Father Pat began the midnight sermon.
"Those of you who were here a month back," he said, standing in a ring of fire that would have impressed Johnny Cash, "will remember a series of readings I offered from the Qur'an, holy to Islam. For the past month we have opened the Old Testament of the Hebrews and the New Testament of the Christians. Tonight I'd like to begin with The Four Noble Truths of Siddhartha Gautama, better known as Buddha, the 'Enlightened One.' "
I was sitting up in the nosebleed section—the ground-level edge of the great pit—and so the late arrivals jostled me. I moved down the log bench to make room for some vampires as Father Pat continued.
"All life is suffering. That is the first Noble Truth. Any questions?"
The vamp next to me gave me a nudge. "The question is," he whispered, leaning toward me, "are you a sufferer or a sufferee?" His laughter was more like a spasmed wheeze.
"Noble Truth number two: Suffering originates in desire. Ah, I see some brow-ridges going up on that one. "
The rest of the congregation had joined my bench mate in muttering. I wondered if they had fed just before coming to the service. I could smell the blood on my companion's breath even half turned away from him. "When the desire hits me," he murmured, "you can be sure somebody's gonna suffer." Phew! If his breath were any stronger I'd be able to type and cross match his last meal.
"Well, we'll come back to that point in a moment," Pat said as another pair of late arrivals crowded me on the other side of the bench. "The third Noble Truth of Buddhism is: Suffering can be escaped only by complete suppression of desire."
The undertone of muttering became an undertow of growls and I wondered how savvy our Preacher Pat really was. Whatever faith or denomination, tell 'em God loves you no matter what and that feel-good vibe makes true believers of us all. Start in on personal responsibility and the pews start to empty.
If we were lucky they'd start to empty before it got ugly.
"So," continued the voice to my right, "does this creepy creed practice baptism for the dead?" Another wheezy chuckle.
"I think the Mormons have the corner on that franchise," said a new voice to my left. "Hey," I got nudged, "have you noticed how this scooped-out depression makes a great amphitheatre?"
I nodded, trying not to breathe: The vamp on my left had a worse case of hemotosis than the one on my right.
"Well, it makes an even better trap."
"Mmm," I answered, wondering where this was going and whether now might not be a good time for me to be going, as well.
"Now bear with me," Pat was saying.
"One man with a flamethrower could destroy half of this gathering before they could turn around," my new seatmate explained. "Only a handful would have any chance of getting out, at all."
"So imagine what four men with flamethrowers, spaced equally around the perimeter could do," added the vamp on my right.
I started to stand but powerful hands grasped my arms and pulled me back down. Another pair of hands settled on my shoulders from behind and held me in a grip of lead and iron.
"Desire," Father Pat said, "can only be overcome by following the Noble Eight-Fold Path of right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration."
"I think you boys are missing the point of the sermon," I said quietly.
His response was just as quiet but it echoed in my head like a shout: "The countess wants to see you."
I told them what the countess could do instead and it wasn't something I would normally say or anyone would normally do in church. Guess I wasn't not a total convert, yet.
"If you won't do it for her," said a new voice behind my ear, a familiar voice, "then do it for me."
I turned and studied the play of distant firelight across the features of Terry-call-me-T's face. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
From Jesus to Judas, my Sunday school lesson was just about complete.