Seize the Night

brighter than mere eyeshine, as if inside his skull was not merely a new creature becoming but the elemental nuclear fire of an entire new universe aborning.

I retreated, gasping for breath, stupidly groping for the gun that Manuel had taken from me.

Sasha was holding a bed pillow, which she evidently had jerked out from under the head of one of the suicides. This seemed as crazy as everything else that was happening, as if she intended to smother Father Tom or to batter him into submission with a sack of goose down. But then, as she ordered him to back off and sit down, I understood that the pillow was folded around her.38 Chiefs Special, to muffle the report of the revolver if she was forced to use it, because this bedroom was at the front of the house, where the sound might carry to the street.

You could tell that the priest wasn’t listening to Sasha. Maybe by this time he wasn’t capable of listening to anything except to what was happening inside him, to the internal hurricane-roar of his becoming.

His mouth opened wide, and his lips skinned back from his teeth. An unearthly shriek came from him, then another, more chilling than the first, followed by squeals and cries and wretched groans, which alternately seemed to express pain and pleasure, despair and joy, blind rage and poignant remorse, as if there were multitudes within this one tortured body.

Instead of ordering Father Tom to desist, Sasha was now pleading with him. Maybe because she didn’t want to be forced to use the gun. Maybe because she was afraid his crazed shouting would be heard in the street and draw unwanted attention. Her pleas were tremulous, and tears stood in her eyes, but I could tell that she would be able to do whatever needed to be done.

The shrieking priest raised his arms as if he were calling down the wrath of Heaven upon all of us. He began to shake violently, like one afflicted with Saint Vitus’ dance.

Bobby was standing in the corner where Father Tom had left him, both hands pressed to his left flank, as though stanching the flow of blood from a wound.

Roosevelt blocked the hall door, holding one hand to his face, where he’d been hit by the bud vase.

I could tell from their expressions I wasn’t alone in believing that the priest was building toward an explosion of violence far more fearsome than anything we had witnessed yet. I didn’t expect Father Tom to metamorphose before our eyes, from minister to monster in one minute, like a shape-changing alien in a science-fiction movie, half basilisk and half spider, slashing-snapping-stinging-ripping its way through the four of us, then swallowing Mungojerrie as if the hapless cat were an after-dinner mint. Surely flesh and bone couldn’t be transformed as quickly as popcorn kernels in a microwave oven. On the other hand, such a fantastic change, pastor to predator, would not have surprised me, either.

The priest did surprise me, however, surprised all of us, when he turned his rage against himself; though in retrospect, I realized I should have remembered the birds, the veve rats, and Manuel’s words about psychological implosion. The cleric let out a wail that seemed to oscillate between rage and grief, and though it wasn’t as loud as the preceding cries, it was even more terrifying because it was so devoid of hope. To this marrow-freezing lament, he repeatedly bashed himself in the face with his right fist, and also with the semblance of a fist that he was able to make with his deformed hand, striking such solid blows that his nose crunched and his lips split against his teeth.

Sasha was still pleading with him, though she must have realized that Father Tom Eliot was beyond her reach, beyond the help of anyone in this world.

As if trying to scourge the devil from himself, he began to claw his cheeks, digging his fingernails deep, and with those pincers, he went at his right eye as though to pluck it out of himself.

Feathers suddenly whirled through the air, spinning around the priest, and I was briefly confused, astonished, until I realized that Sasha had fired the.38. The pillow couldn’t have entirely muffled the shot, but I’d heard nothing other than Father Tom’s wail drilling my skull.

The priest jerked from the impact of the slug, but he didn’t drop. He didn’t bite off that skirling lament or stop tearing at himself.

I heard the second shot — whump — and the third.

Tom Eliot crumpled to the floor, lay twitching, briefly kicked his legs as if he were a dog chasing rabbits in his sleep, and then was motionless, dead.

Sasha had relieved him from his agony but had also saved him from the self-destruction that he believed would condemn his immortal soul to eternal damnation.

So much had happened since the priest had thrown the chair at Roosevelt and the vanity bench at Sasha that I was surprised to hear Elton John still singing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”

Before dropping the pillow, Sasha turned toward the television and fired one more round, blowing out the screen.

As satisfying as it was to put an end to the inappropriately uplifting music and images of The Lion King, we were all alarmed by the total darkness that claimed the room following a shower of sparks from the terminated TV. We assumed that the becoming priest must be dead, because any of us would be worm food, for sure, with three.38 slugs in the chest, but as Bobby had noted the previous night, there were no rules here on the eve of the Apocalypse.

When I reached for my flashlight, it was no longer snugged under my belt. I must have dropped it during the struggle.

In my imagination, the dead priest had already self-resurrected and had become something that an entire division of marines couldn’t kill.

Bobby switched on one of the nightstand lamps.

The dead man was still nothing more than a man, and still dead, a ruined heap that didn’t bear close inspection.

Holstering the.38, Sasha turned away from the body and stood with her shoulders slumped, head hung, one hand covering her face, collecting herself.

The lamp featured a three-way switch, and Bobby clicked it to the lowest level of light. The shade was rose-colored silk, which left the room still mostly in shadow but bright enough to prevent us from succumbing to an attack of the brain twitches.

I spotted my flashlight on the floor, snatched it up, and jammed it under my belt again.

Trying to quiet my breathing, I went to the nearer of two windows. The drapes were a heavy tapestry, as thick as an elephant’s hide, with a blackout liner. This would have suppressed the sound of gunfire almost as effectively as the plush pillow through which Sasha had fired the revolver.

I pulled aside one drape and peered out at the lamplit street. No one was pointing or running toward the Stanwyk residence. No traffic had stopped in front of the house. In fact, the street appeared to be deserted.

As far as I can recall, none of us said anything until we were all the way downstairs and in the kitchen again, where the solemn cat was waiting for us in the light of the oil lamp. Perhaps we simply didn’t say anything memorable, but I think that we did, indeed, make our way through the house in numbed silence.

Bobby stripped off his Hawaiian shirt and black cotton pullover, which were damp with blood. Along his left side were four slashes, wounds inflicted by the cleric’s teratoid hand.

That was a useful word from my mom’s world of genetic science. It meant something monstrous, described an organism or a portion of an organism deformed because of damaged genetic material. As a kid, I was always interested in my mother’s research and theories, because she was, as she liked to put it, searching for God in the clockworks, which I thought must be the most important work anyone could do. But God prefers to see what we can make of ourselves on our own, and He doesn’t make it easy for us to find Him on this side of death. Along the way, when we think we’ve located the door behind which He waits, it opens not on anything divine but on something teratoid.

In the half bath adjoining the kitchen, Sasha found first-aid supplies and a bottle of aspirin.

Bobby stood at the kitchen sink, using a fresh dishcloth and liquid soap to clean his wounds, hissing between clenched teeth.

“Hurt?” I asked.

“No.”

“Bullshit.”

“You?”

“Bruises.”