|
---Jake
had driven by her house before, and recognized it. It was just off
North Park Boulevard on the northeast side of Horseshoe Lake. In
any other neighborhood, it would have been a mansion. It was brick
and stucco, with leaded windows. The house stretched across the
wide yard, from the drive lined with elms that formed a canopy over
it, to the dogwoods and Japanese yew that bordered the other side
of the house.
---“Martin is home,” Bonnie
said. “That’s his light on.”
---“Good. I’ll get to meet
him. Might as well do it now.” Jake started to unbuckle his
seat belt.
---“Jake, maybe we could do this
tomorrow. Or—”
---“Tonight. I’m here,
and there’s no extra charge,” Jake laughed.
---“It’s late. I just don’t
think that we—”
---“Bonnie, no day is a good
day for some things. If you want my help, if you trust Father McNamara,
then let me meet him. Now.” There was the edge of command
in Jake’s voice that she had not heard before.
---She took a deep breath. “Okay,”
she whispered. “Let’s go. I just hope he’s not
in one of his moods.”
---In the foyer, Jake stopped to open
the two doors, on one side was a small half-bath and on the other
a large cloak closet. Inside, the house sprawled, from the living
room to the left; down a hallway to the right were a library, dining
room, and family room on one side, and the kitchen opposite.
---The house felt comfortable to Jake,
in spite of its size. Most of the furniture was antique, simple,
functional, family pieces. Above the fireplace in the living room
hung a remarkable portrait of Bonnie’s great, great . . .
great-grandfather on her mother’s side, painted in 1721. Her
family had settled in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1617.
---Bonnie went upstairs.
---“Martin?” She tapped
on his door. “Martin, may I come in?” There was no answer.
Bonnie opened the door.
---“Christ!” Martin said,
tossing his headphones onto the floor. “What?”
---“Honey, there’s someone
I want you to meet.”
---“I’m busy,” he
said, flipping an empty CD case across the room onto his bed. “Tomorrow.”
---“He’s here specially
to see you.”
---“I said I don’t want
to see your asshole friend.”
---“You don’t talk to people—”
---Martin put his headphones back on.
---Bonnie spun around to go downstairs,
to tell Jake that Martin would not come down. Jake was standing
behind her. She had not heard him follow her up the stairs.
---He moved past Bonnie, pushing her
back into the hallway and closing the door. Martin was tall, several
inches taller than Jake was, and thin. He wore his long, light brown
hair in a ponytail. There was a small diamond earring in his left
ear. His tight black jeans and black tee shirt were the uniform
of his age.
---Martin scowled as he yanked his
headphones off again. He mumbled something Jake could not make out,
although the meaning was clear.
---Jake smiled. “The door is
closed. Say it.”
---“Who the fuck are you, fat
man?”
---“My name’s Jake.”
---“Then, fuck you, Mr. Jake.”
---“That’s it?” Jake
taunted.
---“It?”
Martin asked, feeling challenged and embarrassed. “You mother
fucking son of a bitch,” Martin yelled. He threw his schoolbooks
at Jake.
---Jake grinned.
---“Shit! Fuck! Dammit!”
Martin grabbed anything near him: pens, books, CD’s, papers,
and threw them.
---Jake never moved out of the way.
He matched his breathing to Martin’s. “Tired?”
They locked eyes.
---“Shit. Damn,” Martin
tried to yell. The words sounded soft, hollow, and meaningless.
He reached for things to throw that weren’t there, and he
fought to keep from crying in front Jake.
With every breath, Martin calmed a little more. Downstairs, Bonnie
heard the tantrum, then the silence. She wondered who Jake was.
---Jake joined her in the kitchen.
“I smell coffee.”
---She poured him a cup.
---“He’ll sleep well tonight
and tomorrow. Let him stay home from school.”
---“What happened?” Bonnie
asked. “What about him?”
---“Martin needed sleep more
than I need information. If you don’t mind, I’d like
to stay here for a couple days. You have the room. I want to be
here when he wakes up.”
---“What did you do to him?”
---“I made some adjustments.”
---“I want to see him.”
---“Let him be. He’ll sleep,
peacefully, as long as—”
---Bonnie ran from the kitchen. She
went up to Martin’s room. It was a mess, but he was asleep
on the bed. Jake had covered him with a blanket. She leaned over
him, adjusted the blanket, and gave him a kiss on his cheek.
---“Okay?” Jake asked when
Bonnie returned to the kitchen.
---“Yes. What did you do?”
---Jake ignored her question. “You
were right; his friends are bad. They will feel my presence, and
they won’t like it. His friends won’t want to give him
up. Martin will need protection.”
---“He’ll need protection
from what? Now you are scaring me. If he’s in danger, why
don’t I just call the police?”
---Jake couldn’t help recalling
his initiation.
---“Protection
from what?” he had asked his Master. “Ghosts and goblins?
I’m not the ignorant son of an ignorant farmer willing to
do anything to get into a monastery. I don’t need to be taught
what’s real and what isn’t.”
---“What do you know?”
his Master asked, as he tied Jake to the tree. “I’ll
be back in the morning. Whether you perform the Rite of Summoning
or not, you will spend the night tied to this tree. You will be
tested regardless of what you do.” Chemmg Tse Lu turned, and
walked silently into the dark.
---“Protection from what?”
Jake asked, as he calmed himself through ritual breathing. He had
a feeling that it could be a long night.
---Bonnie was staring at him. “Are
you all right?”
---“I’m fine. I was just
thinking of a time when I asked the same question. It’s late,
but I need to explain some things to you.”
---Jake explained his theory of individual
realities: the accommodations children make while growing up and
trying to conform versus the oppression of society’s constructed
reality.
---“Would Father McNamara approve
of—”
---“Yes. We’ve talked about
it often. He knows my opinions,” Jake smiled and poured some
cream into his coffee, “all too well.”
---He talked about Good and Evil. He
denied the Biblical heaven and hell. “There’s no Devil
waiting with outstretched hooves to steal your soul. It’s
worse. The Beast is Man.”
Bonnie started to make the sign of the cross. She stopped and scratched
her forehead, embarrassed at her fear.
---“It’s Jung’s racial
memory gone berserk. The Beast is a colony: the sum of many individuals.
It feeds on chaos. There are people who attract evil; they give
it dimension and direction. This collective evil posits in them.
Such an individual becomes The Beast, whose driving force is to
create and feed on fear, violence, rage, and destruction: the manifestations
of chaos.”
Jake paused. He poured another cup of coffee. Before he finished
with it, it was more cream and sugar than coffee. There was a twinkle
in his eye.
---“Every generation has a few
who don’t see what others do. They may become artists, or
mystics, or they may squelch their sensitivities and try to adapt—there
is a lot of pressure to conform. Out of each few thousand who have
this extended vision, a few find their way to mysticism, and a few
of them have special abilities. If they are lucky, they find a Master
who recognizes those skills and can give them focus. I am such a
person.”
---The night
of initiation was longer than Jake had thought it would be. It was
cold; the top of a mountain was not where he wanted to be. It started
to rain at about one o’clock. At first, he had to concentrate
on producing body heat; Chemmg Tse Lu called it dumo. He would die
of exposure if he failed. The rain turned to snow. He took pride
in his ability to stay warm; his underpants were not much protection.
---He decided to chant the Rite, summoning
up the demons of the world and commanding them to devour his body.It’s
silly,
he thought, but I can tell Chemmg I did
it.
---Jake was tied to one of the few
trees at the edge of the timberline; there he was exposed to the
elements. At first, he was afraid of lightning, which seemed to
crash all around him. Jake’s fear died as he realized that
if he were hit by the lightning, it would all be over very quickly.
That would be fate.
---He had just started the chant when
there was another crack of lightning. In that flash, his life was
shattered. He felt everything drain out of him. For the smallest
part of a second, time enough to burn itself into his memory, he
saw Evil grinning at him. There was no question of continuing with
the ritual. He was in a fight to stay alive. The ropes that bound
him, that held him captive to that tree, saved his life. They kept
him from running in blind terror. They also reminded him that the
face of Evil was within himself. The battle waged was invisible
to the world. The fight took over an hour.
---Jake laughed. The coffee was too
sweet. He never could get it right.
---“What?” Bonnie asked,
startled by his laugh.
---“I’m sorry. I’ve
fought so many battles. It’s not funny, but I’ve had
to learn everything the hard way. Looking back, I can see why my
Master used to laugh at me. I fought hard to stay blind.”
---Jake looked at the kitchen clock.
“It’s late. Go to bed. I’ll sleep down here. I’ll
be okay.”
---“I’ve got a guest room.”
---“No, I don’t want to
be any trouble.”
---“It’s made up. Please,
I feel—”
---Jake laughed. “Go on up, or
we’ll be arguing till dawn.”
---“At least let me get you a
pillow and some blankets.”
---Jake sipped the last drop of coffee
from his cup. “No, thank you. Go to bed.”
---Bonnie went upstairs. Even as she
closed her door, she thought she could hear Jake’s laugh coming
from the kitchen. It was soothing. Everything
will
work out, she thought as she fell asleep.
From Sometimes
in Shadow, © 1993 Walton Mendelson
|
