became manager of a shoe store and spent most of his time gambling away his paychecks until his wife walked out and moved in with her lesbian lover. He'd been dead for twelve minutes on the operating table after his Harley back-ended a flatbed trailer and he went wheeling through the plate-glass window of a pizza parlor, killing three people and crippling a cheerleader.
Now he went to great trouble in order to properly portray the enigmatic, all-knowing monk furtively prowling the corridors. He wore a severely pointed Vandyke so that his beard angled and split into two sharpened prongs, the way he must've thought the druids kept theirs. He always wore his black habit, scapular, tunic, and cowl together, subverting the identity of the man he'd once been. There was a corrupt scent on him I recognized but couldn't quite place. He'd recently bathed in heavy oils and had made splints from freshly cut pine. He broke his own legs two or three times a year hoping for a touch of redemption or admiration for his self-pitying martyrdom.
Fane was perhaps the one man in the monastery who had not come to appreciate the totality of the dead past. He believed that experiences could be sliced and sorted, with certain events taken as truth while others were cast aside. It's how the Gnostics had piecemealed the Bible, choosing alternate versions of chapters and abandoning others, which led to such confusion and absurdity over the millennia. He didn't have the conviction of a soldier of God, and didn't have the arrogance a vessel of hell required. He had no familiar because no familiar would have him. Like most of us he'd lost and found God-and his soul-several times over already.
He carried several of Eddie's poltergeists in his hands. He reeled them across his fingers like twine and threw them at my chest. Nip turned to glare at us for a moment, then went back to sighing at the waters below. Self mumbled at me and dropped his head to my shoulder, snuggling.
Fane staggered closer. The poltergeists clung and swirled around us, and for the first time I noticed they were all women, and they were fading.
He said, 'They're free to leave and die elsewhere but they don't. They trust you, even though you're not worthy to be here.'
'Fane, you're a shoe salesman from Cincinnati.'
In the last few years he'd devoted a good deal of time and a portion of his essence to his studies. I could feel the straining effort of his will in the structure of his spells. He had a separate well he was drawing from, a depth outside himself-perhaps love, perhaps perversion. Even the poltergeists sensed it, and wavered wildly.
'Do you wish to confess and do penance?' he asked.
'More than anything, but you won't hear it.'
When he put his mind to it and recited his evoking prayers in a whispered litany, his face receded into shadows beneath his cowl and it looked as if his clothes emptied and drifted aloft. He drew strength from the weakness of his legs. His voice sounded as if it came from somewhere high near the ceiling, bearing down, with the hushed noises of shattering glass and his out-of-control Harley resonating distantly. A nice effect, and probably a lot of fun at a birthday party for a six-year-old. Mental fibers of his angry unconsciousness pressed outward.
'Is there a particular reason you're starting this?' I asked.
'Of course there is.'
At least he was honest. 'Feel like letting me in on it?'
'You've done damage.'
'I could say the same about you.' The noises of the men dying and the cheerleader getting her legs crushed dwindled.
'You've much to account for.'
Not only had he been training, but in the past few years he'd picked up a superiority complex somewhere. 'Try to hide that judgmental tone a little better, Fane, or someone might think you were beginning to grow smug.'
Down the hallways several doors shut at once and the sheep bleated in perfect harmony with the wind. Just another part of the production-pitiful in a way, but also empowering. Even so, I sensed a certain sincerity in him that didn't fit with the attitude he was throwing. Perhaps I was merely jumping to conclusions.
'Why are the Kinnions supposed to die?' I asked.
Without any face he answered, 'So another might live.'
'What do you people care about Elijah?'
'I care as much as you.'
'No,' I said. 'You don't.'
'The prophet Elijah ascended bodily to heaven-'
'Jesus, Fane, I don't need a Bible studies refresher from the likes of you.'
'-the only man to do so besides Christ.'
'The prophet Elijah didn't die, he ascended alive.'
'And according to Jewish faith he will return to usher in the coming of the true messiah.'
I squinted at him. 'You people don't really believe this is the prophet Elijah returned, do you?'
'Some might,' he said, his voice above, behind, and in front of me. 'And they might do anything to protect him.'
Or kill him, I thought.
There wasn't any anger here. No righteous wrath or petty intolerance. His grin shone through the blankness like that of the Cheshire Cat. He thought he was being honest and proud, but I could see his fear as the air warmed again. 'Abbot John would like to speak to you in his chambers.'
Fane eased away limping back down the hallway, smiling almost giddily to himself. He was, somehow, a man full of hope.
'Wake the beast,' he said. 'You're going to need it.'
The stink on him was bad milk.
Chapter Eight
Unlike Uriel and Aaron DeLancre, who'd always been destined for Magee Wails, Abbot John had been born into the typical world and hurled against the mount by his own crimes.
He gave the impression of being almost as wide as he was tall, a solid block of mortal mortar who'd once enjoyed twisting the heads off dogs, raping geriatric women in their nursing home beds, and tracking families relocated by the Witness Protection agency. He'd suffered from visions and garnered a taste for the carotid. When he met my father his hallucinations ended, and in one overwhelming surge Abbot John's sanity engulfed him. Perhaps it was actually my dad's own finite rationality that had been given up, since a short time later he gave in to the rush of his madness.
The years hadn't been kind and neither had Abbot John's atonement. He hanged himself daily and the rope burns had been raw and wet for over a decade now. The graceless angles of his face folded in on themselves as if he couldn't swallow enough of the man he'd once been.
His bald head shone in the candlelight. He'd shaved off his eyebrows and plucked out each of his eyelashes. It made him look foolish, which was the whole purpose. His hands clenched and unclenched, and the veins in his wrists squirmed like centipedes. He still had the haunted appearance of a man who knew that no matter how much good he did in his life it would never equal the amount of harm he'd caused. His eyes were still clear and merciful, but when he smiled I knew his course wouldn't be swayed. He trusted me but that wasn't nearly enough. If he had to, he'd crush my skull in his fist. If he didn't kill himself first.
After all of his hangings he had hardly any voice anymore. It trickled out between his lips in a guttural whisper, like the hiss of water on a heated tablet of granite. 'You've made a significant oath here.'
'Yes.'
'That was foolish in this place.'
'Not as foolish as your believing that Cathy's child is the true prophet Elijah.'
'You don't know that it's not.'
'I do know, but you won't believe me.'
I could tell he was eager for the rope. 'You've made a heinous error that's endangered us all,' he wheezed. 'You have no concept of what wheels you've allowed to turn.'
