Servant of the Bones

ambulance.

“Look,” I said. “That’s me.”

She picked up the magazine, stared at the picture and at me.

“Now I’m going to prove to you that I’m on your side, and I want to give that devil Gregory a good scare. You want something from your house? I’ll bring it to you.”

She couldn’t speak.

I realized that I had frightened her and silenced her. She was merely watching me. I pictured her body without clothing. The shape of her limbs was pleasing and firm. Her legs in particular had a muscularity to them in their slender form which was graceful. I wanted to touch the backs of her legs, her calves, and squeeze them.

This was quite a lot of strength for me, a lot, and I had to resolve the issue of my freedom now.

“You’re changing,” she said in a suspicious voice, “but you’re certainly not disappearing.”

“Oh? What do you see?” I asked. I wanted to add with pride that I hadn’t tried to disappear yet, but this was obvious.

“Your skin; the sweat’s drying. Oh, it isn’t much sweat. It’s on your hands and your face and it’s gone and you look, you look different. I could swear that there’s more dark hair on your hands, you know, just the normal hair of a hirsute man.”

“That I am,” I said. I lifted my hand, looking at the black hairs on my fingers, and I reached down into my shirt and felt the thick curls on my chest. I pulled at them, pulled them again and again. That was my chest, the rough scratchiness of the hair when it was flat, the silkiness of it when I tugged on it, and played with it. “I am alive,” I whispered. “Listen to me,” I said.

“I’m listening. I couldn’t be more attentive. What is it you see—about Esther’s death and this necklace? You were saying something—”

“Your daughter. She touched a scarf before she died. Do you want it? It was beautiful. She reached out for it right at the moment that the Evals surrounded her, the killers, I mean. She wanted it, and she died with it in her hand.”

“How do you know this!”

“I saw it!”

“I have that scarf,” she said. She went white with shock. “The saleswoman brought it to me. She said that Esther had reached for it, that Esther said she wanted it! How could you know this?”

“I didn’t know that part. I just saw Esther reach for the scarf. I was going to ask you if you wanted the scarf. I was going to bring it to you for the same reasons as this merchant woman.”

“I do want it!” she said. “It’s in my room, the room I was in when you first saw me. It…no. It’s in Esther’s room. It’s lying on her bed. Yes, that’s where I left it.”

“Okay, when I see you in Miami I will have it.”

The look on her face was a terrible thing to see.

In a whisper she said, “She went there to get that scarf!” Her voice was so small. “She told me she had seen it and couldn’t forget it. She had told me she wanted that scarf.”

“In a gesture of love, I’ll bring it to you.”

“Yes, I want to die holding it.”

“You don’t think I’m going to disappear, do you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Keep yourself in check. I am. Whether I come back, that’s the question.” I said something under my breath. “But I’ll try, try with all my might. This must be tested now.”

I leaned over and took with her the liberty she’d taken with me. I kissed her. Her passion passed through me completely. It burned in me.

Now in my heart I spoke the requisite words, Depart from me, all particles of this earthly body, yet do not return to where you belong, but await my command that you come together instantly when I would have you.

I vanished.

At once the body dispersed, sending out a fine mist to all the inner surfaces of the plane, leaving a shimmering spray upon the leather, the windows, the ceiling.

I floated above, free, fully shaped and strong, and I looked down at the empty seat, and I saw the top of Rachel’s head, and I heard her scream.

I rose up, through the plane. It was no harder than passing through anything else. But I felt the passing, I felt the shivering energy and heat of the plane, and then the plane shot onwards at such terrific velocity that I fell towards the earth as if I had weight. Down, down, through the dark until I swung free, spreading my arms, and moving towards:

Gregory. Find the Bones, Servant. Find your Bones. Look after the Bones.

In the wind, as always I glimpsed other souls. I saw them struggling to see me and to make themselves visible. I knew they sensed my vigor, my direction, and for a moment they flashed and glittered and blinked, and then they were gone. I had passed through them and their world, their horrid layer of smoke that surrounded the earth like the filth hanging over burning dung, and I sped forward, like singing, towards the Bones. Towards Gregory.

“The Bones,” I said. “The Bones,” I said into the wind.

The lights of the city of New York spread out in all directions, more magnificent and tremendous than the lights of Rome at its greatest, or of Calcutta now full of millions upon millions of lamps. I could hear Gregory’s voice.

And then before me in the dark, there appeared the Bones, tiny, distant, certain, and golden.

    20    

It was a large room, not in the apartments of Gregory and Rachel, but higher in the building. I realized for the first time that the building itself was the Temple of the Mind of God and it throbbed throughout its many floors with people.

The room itself glistened with steel and glass and tables made of manipulated stone, hard as anything mined from the earth; machines lined the walls, and cameras which moved as the inhabitants of the room moved. There were plenty of inhabitants.

I entered invisible, easily passing through all barriers, as if I were made of tiny fish and the walls were nets. I wandered among the tables, eyeing the video screens in rows on the walls, the computers set into niches, and other devices which I couldn’t understand.

Silently, broadcasts from all over the planet came in on these video screens. Some of them showed the news that all people can receive. Others were obviously monitoring particular and private places. The spy monitors were the most dull, greenish, murky.

The Bones lay in the very middle of the room on a sterile table. The casket, empty, lay to the side. The men surrounding Gregory were obviously physicians. They had the poise and attitude of learned men.

Gregory was in mid-conversation, describing the Bones as a relic, which must be analyzed in every conceivable way without bringing harm to it, X-rayed, carbon-dated, minute scrapings made for contents. Attempt at aspiration if anything inside were liquid.

Gregory was shaken, disheveled. He wore the same clothes as before but he was not the same man.

“You’re not listening to me!” he said fiercely to these his loyal court physicians. “Treat this as priceless,” he said. “I want no mishaps. I want no leaks to the press. I want no leaks within this building. Do this work yourself. Keep the jabber-mouth technicians away from it.”

The men took all this in stride. Not fawning like lackeys, they wrote notes on their clipboards, exchanged glances of agreement with one another, and nodded with dignity to the man who paid the bills.

I knew their kind. Very modern scientists who are just learned enough to be certain that nothing spiritual exists, that the world is completely material, self-created, or the result of some “big bang,” and that ghosts, spells, God, and the Devil were useless concepts.

They weren’t by nature kind. In fact, there was a peculiar hardness which they all shared, not a sinister