The Messenger (8 page)

He slid from the booth, avoided John's eyes until he was on his feet. “Look, I gotta go check some things out.”

“Sure you do.”

The quiet words swung Manny's gaze up. Finding the big guy just sitting there calmly, watching him with that same level gaze, like there wasn't a single solitary thing about Manny he didn't know. “Yeah, well, look, it's been great and all that.”

Roskovitz nodded once, twice, three times. “Hard to take it all in, ain't it.”

“No, hey, I really appreciate it and all, but you know, I got a lot of stuff to take care of.”

“Big world out there,” John agreed. He pulled a pen and paper from his pocket, scribbled, handed it over. “That's the name of the church where I'll be. You don't find me, ask for the assistant pastor. Guy by the name of Hale.”

“Hale. Right. Sure.” Stuffing the paper in his pocket. At least until he was out the door and around the corner. “Hey, good luck with the kids.”

“Hard as it is, you need to remember that the turning in the road won't be there for long,” Roskovitz said. “Chances like this come and go and leave you trapped worse than before. You need to grab it while you can.”

“Yeah, hey, this is really fascinating,” Manny said, feeling the itch build until his feet were ready to fly, with or without the rest of him. “But listen, I gotta take off.”

“Make the turning while you still can,” John Roskovitz said, the words flying after Manny in his race for the door. “I'll be praying that you do.”

****

Manny did not walk the streets. He paraded. His steps were a fiery dance of independence. Free from the worries and the pushing and the crazy talk, his own man again. Free.

Washington, D.C. He already loved this place. The avenue he walked seemed to split the town like a knife. On one side was wealth, and all the possibilities such riches brought a guy like him. On the other side was ghetto city, drugs and gangs and homeboy turf. The perfect place to hide when he had netted the wares and needed a place to chill.

He pushed through a cluster of pigeons, looked at them standing there; they seemed afraid that one small turn would bring them face-to-face with their worst nightmare. He grinned to himself. Yeah, he was all right again, his head back on straight. All that time, what he had really needed most was a change of scene.

Manny did not watch where he was going, did not need to, not now, not while he was cruising, taking the air, getting the feel of his new home. Every once in a while a little drift of what he had been hearing and thinking about those past few days would pop into his mind. He would push it away even before the thought and the feeling could form and congeal, shoulder it out, and just walk a little faster. Shoving out all that crazy stuff and the strange way it shook him.

He danced along the crowded sidewalk, decided without thinking that he could take the next turning, get on a side street where the going was easier. Taking the corner by half-climbing a street sign, swinging up and around and away, drawing gasps from the passersby, out of sight before the people fully realized what they had just seen.

The side street led away from the glitz and toward the ghetto, the change sudden. He had a feeling a lot of the city was like that, battle lines drawn almost everywhere. His dance was a strut now, showing the locals he was a man in the know, somebody they didn't want to mess with. Taking another turn, feeling the tension and the anger and the hardship and the drugged-out stress, drawing it in like he did his air, feeding on it. This was his world, the place he could call his own. The same in every city, a dark jungle even at noon, a tangled, fear-ridden strip where only the strong survived. Another turn, not really seeing, just moving with the flow and reveling in the power that seethed with this sense of rebellious freedom.

Suddenly he halted, the world drawing back into focus. He found himself standing in front of a storefront doorway. Manny looked around, had the sense of abruptly coming awake. Bizarre, like he had been heading here all the time, which was impossible because he hadn't even been looking where he was going. Angry now, pushing at the thoughts and the door at the same time, not paying attention to the words written on smoked glass in pointy, flowing gold letters:
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
.

A voice from an alcove to his right suddenly said, “Ah, Manny, excellent, excellent.”

Manny spun about. “Eh, whatsthatyousaid?”

“We've been looking everywhere for you.” A delicately slender man pushed through the curtain and walked toward him.

Manny took a step back. Then he realized he was moving
away
from the door, his carefully honed survival instincts failing him in the clutch. “How'd you know my name?”

“Oh, you have quickly become quite famous in our circles.” He was elegantly turned out, his dark hair caught in a silver ring and well-trimmed beard flecked with gray. He wore a flowing red silk shirt over black trousers tucked into fold-down boots. “How on earth have you been?”

“Swell.” Manny gave the room a quick scan. Dusty old tomes rose to the ceiling, stacked in careless abandon, some of them bound in metal and embossed with strange symbols. The same symbols decorated the ceiling and hung from the walls in ornately scrolled frames. Maps that made no sense were framed alongside the symbols, with great dragons spouting fire and faces blowing stormclouds and edges inscribed in strange script. Brass instruments were arranged under the counter glass and stacked behind the register, all of it beyond weird.

The fellow reached out a ring-encrusted hand. “We've been so terribly worried.”

“Yeah?” Manny watched the hand like he would a snake, making no move toward it. His skin crawled like it had that day in the pawnshop. “Who's we?”

“Why, everyone.” The man masked the retreat of his hand by smoothing down his slicked-back hair. “We had absolutely no idea where you had gotten to. It was like you had dropped off the edge of our little world.”

Our
world. The word grated on his nerves like steel fingernails dragged down a mile-long blackboard.
Our
world. “Somebody's been following me. I knew it all the time.”

“Oh, if only we could have.” The eyes glittered and stretched with the thin smile. “But you moved away from us, you naughty boy. You vanished. Now how on earth did you do that, especially when you had something we needed so badly? You can imagine how
worried
everybody has been.”

“Yeah?” Manny felt the eyes drilling him to the spot. There was neither time nor space to pretend he didn't know what the man was after. He had no choice but to go back to his old palaver. No choice at all. “So I'm here,” he bluffed. “You gonna pay, or is this just all hot air?”

“Oh, my dear young friend, we will pay
anything
. Name your price. Riches, fame, fortune, it's yours. All of it.”

All of it. Everything he had ever wanted. Somehow he knew the fellow was telling the truth. But the promise brought him nothing but a chilling doubt. “So what's so great about this thing?”

The fellow misread his hesitation, and took a step toward Manny, his voice a sibilant hiss. “You do have it, don't you?”

Manny shrugged, worked to keep the quaver from his voice. “Yeah, sure. I might. Somewhere safe.”

“Of course. My, or perhaps I should say
our
superiors will be so relieved.” The tension rose a notch. “What the card is, hmmm, I think you know. A young man of your many talents would certainly have tried it by now.” Another step, the glittering eyes so close that the dark center points opened to become bottomless wells. “You cannot imagine how long they have sought this key. It is the
bridge
, my young friend.
The
bridge. Now the banner of war can be raised against all we despise.”

“Hey, that's great.” Struggling to get out the words. Feeling a band tightening across his chest. Wanting to turn and flee. Knowing he had to. But unable to move. “I kinda figured it was something like that.”

“Of course you did.” The pools of his eyes opened further, reaching out to encompass the entire chamber, drawing him in, pulling him down farther and farther, sucking the life and the will and the ability to think right from Manny's body. “Now tell me, won't you, where is the card?”

Manny teetered on the brink, ready to fall into the pit, more terrified and trapped than he had ever been in his life. He heard it again then, the hungry growl, and knew without any doubt whatsoever that the beast was there, and hungry, and waiting to devour him whole.

Suddenly Manny glimpsed something. An image came and went so swiftly he scarcely realized it had been there. The image was of John Roskovitz's gentle gray eyes. And in that same instant there was the sense of half hearing softly spoken words. A prayer. A prayer spoken for
him
.

The fellow jerked back as though electrocuted. One hand clutched his chest, the other reached for the countertop for support, and he shrilled, “What was
that?
”

With the power of a lightning bolt, Manny was freed. He gasped a single breath as the room sprang into focus. Then he leapt for the door, clawed for the handle even as he heard the fellow scream, “Wait!” But Manny was waiting for nobody. Not now. He flung open the door and was gone.

Only when he had fled down block after block and stopped in a doorway to scan all directions did it hit him
hard
. A realization so strong that it could not be denied. A
knowing
. The whole time he had been running away from one thing, he had been running toward another. One or the other, just like Roskovitz had told him. He had to choose.

A second bolt of
knowing
blasted him, a voice so strong and commanding it was heard even though it was silent, the impossible made real. It spoke just one word, but a word that shattered his entire world.

Choose
.

****

“Arise, my soul, arise,” were the first words Ariel heard the next morning. She turned over and saw Clarice standing by the window, her arms lifted to the rising sun. Her eyes were closed, her voice calm and quiet and full of joy. “My God, my God, for this day do I give you thanks.”

“Amen,” Ariel said quietly as she sat up in bed, swinging her feet to the floor. She bowed her head, and in a quiet sweeping gift of peace, she felt the sun rise within her own heart.

“With confidence I now draw nigh,” Clarice said. “With heartfelt thanksgiving I shake off my guilty fears. Before the throne I stand and give thanks for the eternal offering.”

“Amen,” Ariel intoned, and in the growing strength of day felt the silent bonds of worship join the two of them together. This was more than a prayer for her. This was a
lesson
. She both heard the prayer and felt the sense of growing harmony. All was being brought together through this act of private communion. The confusion that had marred her every experience since arriving dispersed, and once again all was being brought together through eternal love, eternal light, eternal healing. She intoned once again, “Amen.”

“Your pardoning voice I hear, O Father. Your grace reaches out to embrace me, the fallen child. Your welcoming herald calls me home.”

“Amen,” Ariel whispered, and knew a longing so fierce that her memory suddenly flashed alert.

When Clarice finished her prayers, she smiled a warm greeting and said, “I can't recall the last time I have slept so long. The trip must have tired me out more than I thought.”

Ariel nodded and announced, “St. Mark's Hospice for the Dying. That's where Miss Simpkins is working. I've remembered.”

****

The old gypsy dreamer rose from his trash pile and straightened his battered fedora. Manny glanced up from the crumpled paper he had pulled from his pocket, but was too caught up in his thoughts and his hurry to notice as the crooked-featured man fell into step beside him.

Bad to the bone. That was the way he had always thought of himself. A song by that name had been a theme he had chanted through long nights of carousing. Bad to the bone. The utter
wrongness
of it all now left him feeling so twisted he had to fight not to stumble.

Manny retraced his steps the best he could, his growing inward vision spurring him to hurry despite the weakness in his limbs. All that time, all those years, chasing after a good time, fueled by anger and bitter cynicism, certain he was strong enough to be his own man, unfettered by all that held the rest of the world down.

What a joke. What a
lie
.

His anger had been a trap. His so-called independence had left him nothing but blind. His good times had been the grease lubricating the slide to doom.

Then something caught his eye.

He stopped and realized that he was gasping for air. His legs felt encased in lead. He swung about, saw the gypsy drunk leering in his direction, one arm reaching out, begging for a dime. Then Manny felt the hair on the nape of his neck prickle upward as he caught sight of the man's shadow. It crawled along the earth behind the drunk, but instead of holding to the outstretched form it weaved and beckoned, drawing other shadows to come and join and grow and strengthen. The shadow linked with others hauled from alleys and cellars and doorways until its arms began to lengthen and grow and stretch across the street and along the sidewalk and over the building like two great crablike claws reaching out and around where Manny stood.

Manny turned and tried to run, but his footsteps were faltering and slow. He felt as though the very earth were trying to draw him deep inside. He craned and searched but could not find a sign he recognized, nor any indication of where he might be. His panic-stricken mind held to that thought as he fought and struggled onward, his legs carrying him in stumbling half-steps toward the corner. He
had
to get to that church where Roskovitz said he was working.