Dead Things Read online

  Dead Things

  A novel by Matt Darst

  Copyright 2012 by Grand Mal Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address www.grandmalpress.com

  Published by: Grand Mal Press, Forestdale, MA

  http://www.grandmalpress.com

  Dead Things, Copyright 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grand Mal Press

  p. cm

  Cover art by Matt Hale. www.ablerock.net

  I dedicate this book, with love, to Dad.

  Thanks for teaching me to wonder.

  Contents

  Chapter One: Of Nightmares and Neckties

  Chapter Two: Baggage, Emotional and Other

  Chapter Three: Plane in Vain (or, the Clash)

  Chapter Four: Knock, Knock...

  Chapter Five: Vintage Van

  Chapter Six: Walk Like an Egyptian

  Chapter Seven: Look Who’s Coming to Dinner

  Chapter Eight: The Reluctant Doctor

  Chapter Nine: Shopping Mall or Shopping Maul?

  Chapter Ten: History Derailed

  Chapter Eleven: A Bottled Message

  Chapter Twelve: Escape

  Chapter Thirteen: Footprints and the Prince of Darkness

  Chapter Fourteen: Run for Your Life

  Chapter Fifteen: Bathroom Break

  Chapter Sixteen: Everyday is Halloween

  Chapter Seventeen: Bait and Switch

  Chapter Eighteen: The Accidental Spelunker

  Chapter Nineteen: Van Wars – The Return of Brom Sybal

  Chapter Twenty: History Lesson

  Chapter Twenty-One: Ill-Starred Indeed

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Head Off (or a Dog’s Tale)

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The End...Well, Almost

  Epilogue

  “The sun…

  In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

  On half the nations, and with fear of change

  Perplexes monarchs.”

  Paradise Lost, John Milton

  Chapter One: Of Nightmares and Neckties

  They stream like army ants, climbing and clawing through the jagged mouth of the shattered bay window, ripping their forearms and torsos into ribbons.

  Something competes with his fear, stealing his breath. Something sickly sweet, pungent like decay, tumbles over him like a churning wave. Fetid, it suffocates him, makes him choke.

  A man’s hands, trembling but strong, shield him and his mother from the encroaching horror. The man rushes them into the closet, the heavy down coats cushioning their impact. The door slams behind them, locks. A key slides under the half-inch gap beneath the door.

  The shrieking begins.

  Shrill shrieks. Blasts from the alarm.

  Ian spastically searches for the clock, his hand pitching about the nightstand, a pale perch out of water. His fingers find his wallet, then his keys. One last convulsion, and he locates the snooze bar. Just ten more minutes—

  “Ian!”

  —or not. His mother bursts into the bedroom. Rise and shine, she sings, and give God His glory. She tears the curtains open wide, and his room explodes in sunlight.

  Ian winces. The sheets do not offer him sanctuary. He is caught like an escaped prisoner, pinned against a wall, encircled by the guard tower’s spotlight.

  She says something in her southern lilt about not being late for church. Again. Today is special. Today people will want to say their goodbyes.

  Oh, and one more thing: he should wear a tie, perhaps his father’s. It makes him look…distinguished.

  She emphasizes her impatience with one word: Seriously.

  Ian feels his mom standing at the foot of his bed. The color behind his eyelids turns from orange to cool purple as her long shadow passes over him. She is not leaving, so he submits, flipping his sheets and sitting upright in a fluid motion. “Happy?” he blurts, huffily.

  He sees her nod through eyes that are little more than slits. He thinks he spies a smile spreading across her apple face. Her hazy outline glides from his room.

  Ian stretches and yawns, groaning like a bear waking from a long winter of hibernation. He clutches at his Stranglers tee, wrestling it over his head. He wads it up and hooks it, Doctor J style, toward the hamper in the corner.

  The shirt sails through the air in a high arc, the final seconds of an imaginary shot clock ticking away. This is still Kentucky, after all, and basketball, like life, finds a way. The shirt dances on the hamper’s edge and falls to the floor, taking up residency with a drift of socks and jeans. Shit, he mutters, a goat once more.

  His mother raps on his brother’s door. “Josh, rise and shine…”

  **

  The tinted window of the butcher shop is his mirror.

  Ian watches his dark twin attempt the Windsor knot for a third time. The beige and navy stripes bulge and wrinkle as he pulls the knot tight. He hopes like Goldilocks that this time it’s just right.

  His stepfather never taught Ian how to wear a tie. Bobby Joe does not own one. Fashion is as foreign (and, technically, as dead) to him as Paris, Milan, New York, and all of those other far off places associated with haute couture.

  Bobby Joe calls neckties “nooses.”

  The front of the tie hangs just above Ian’s navel, the rear falling like the tail of a kite below his waist. He sighs, starts to untie the knot.

  From his perch on top of their horse-drawn cart, Ian’s brother regards him with a mixture of fascination and derision. To Josh, Ian’s fixation is alien and too…adult.

  Josh says to forget it. Let’s go. Mom’s going to get pissed.

  The horses secured, Ian’s mother and stepfather are already walking. They are several paces ahead.

  As if on cue, she calls for him to stop fussing. He looks fine. He is beautiful, just as God intended. So puleease get a move on.

  Ian grimaces. Yes, the Lord intended many things, but he is fairly certain He never intended “please” to have three syllables.

  Josh snorts. “Yes, let’s go, Beautiful.”

  Ian abandons his mission, and jogs sluggishly past their twin horses toward his parents. He delivers a light elbow to Josh’s shoulder as he passes.

  Josh hops to Ian’s side. “What’s his name?” Josh asks in a whisper.

  Ian looks confused.

  “You know,” Josh caws. “The guy you’re getting pretty for!”

  Josh is crude, but clever. Ian knows and loves his half-brother for it. But, there are limits to publicly recognizing Josh’s wit. Paying his brother such respect would be viewed as weakness.

  Like canines, siblings smell fear, and there can be only one Alpha Dog. If Ian subverts this universal dogma, he’s certain the space-time continuum will fold in upon itself. So Ian never acknowledges Josh’s teasing. He does what any brother does. He escalates, just as the canons of diplomacy and flexible response require.

  Ian knuckles Josh in the shoulder—something his buddies call a “frog.” It’s immature. It belies his twenty-two years, but he can’t help regress as all brothers do when a sibling pushes a button. And Josh knows all of Ian’s buttons. Josh may as well be tapping out A-C-T-space bar-J-U-V-E-N-I-L-E on the keys of Ian’s mental typewriter.

  They laugh.

  Bobby Joe is annoyed by these boys, by their commotion and by their lack of respect. They pass the empty stockade, the wood of its frame, and the gravel in its shadow, dark with dried blood. It is a constant reminder of the law of God as prosecuted, applied, and adjudicated by men. It should be a reminder to these boys that they must behave…or el
se.

  Bobby Joe hisses at them to control themselves. They are just steps away from the weathered brick façade of the cathedral.

  The Third Church of the Tribulation and Second Coming of Christ, Established During the 3rd Year of the New Order, is not a church. For Ian, it is a prison sentence meted out in two-hour increments, fifty-two times a year, more if including Christmas and Easter.

  It is also a compound comprised of a rectory, a school, a community center, and a small cemetery. The cemetery is a remnant from a time before the New Order. The church is built on an “L,” an allowance for the twenty or so worn headstones that remain.

  Church elders govern day-to-day matters, spiritual nurturing, gospels, sacraments, and infrastructure. Ian knows most of the elders by sight, if not by name.

  It is what Ian doesn’t know that concerns Bobby Joe. The power of the elders is illusory, for supporting them is a dark network of buttresses, shoring, and struts known commonly as the church court. The church court, or synod, convenes in the compound as well. It is the law of the land, judging all matters brought to them for resolution, including matters of discipline. Disputes are resolved privately just as Matthew 18:15-16 dictates. That is, unless, someone wants to “tell it unto the church.” Then the questions start, and all hell breaks loose.

  The synod hides behind Deuteronomy and the Quaestores, inquisitors acting with the church’s full authority. If a denouncer accuses another of sin, the inquisitors can call secret hearings. But they rarely bother. They have other methods. Their methods are shadowy…but effective. Acquittals are rare.

  The guilty are paraded before the parishioners. The lucky ones are penanced, tortured or locked in the galleys only after publicly renouncing their sin. Or, they are reconciled, whipped, imprisoned, and stripped of property. Relaxation is reserved to the worst offenders, witches and heretics, like scientists and teachers who make the mistake of giving voice to Darwin’s ghost.

  “Relaxation” is, of course, a misnomer. Sinners rarely find being burned alive “relaxing.”

  In the church, Ian’s mother rejoices. There is an open pew.

  An hour later, the wooden bench has cut off Ian’s circulation. He cannot feel his lower extremities. His right leg from just below his buttock is asleep, buzzing like a hive of honeybees. The choir sings, “Christ My Very Peace Is.” At least my ass is at peace, Ian thinks.

  But there is no peace for Pastor Statten. Statten is agitated this Sunday, as he is every Sunday. He wrings his hands, like a mad scientist contemplating the end of the world, and paces furiously before a great oak dais. Then he freezes as if becoming aware of the congregation for the first time, as if they have surprised him. It is an oft-repeated dramatic gesture, but Statten is a gifted thespian, and he sells it every time.

  He tells his “friends” that they are in their final days.

  Ian can almost mouth the words of the lecture in unison. He’s heard it all before. The spiel has been a staple of Statten’s for more than a decade. By now the concept has lost much of its imminence.

  Statten drifts from the anchor of the dais, his small frame moving to the foot of a vast, stained-glass window. He is silhouetted by shards of ruby, cobalt, emerald, and violet.

  Images of angels…

  The vibrant colors look as radiant today as when Ian first beheld them as a child. The colors of hard candies, he is lured by their brilliance, if not by their subject matter.

  …Angels descending upon the Earth…

  Statten’s tone is brimming with tension. He tells his friends that they stand at precipice of time. They stand at the end of—

  The end of the world, Ian finishes. If so, Ian begs, please let it happen now. He cannot take any more of this sermon.

  Statten says they are at the threshold of Christ Almighty’s triumphant return. Soon those reborn in His light will go home. His arms are outstretched. He is bathed in the glow of the windowpane.

  …Angels, their great wings spread wide, eclipsing the sun…

  Statten drifts back to the podium and recites from a massive Bible. He quotes Saint Paul, Thessalonians 4:13 through 17. “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds…and so shall we be ever with the Lord.”

  Simply taken, it is the story of the second coming of Christ. That is, should these wretches dare take the word of God simply. Like a horse to water, St. Paul is leading them to salvation. But they must drink and drink deep. Only those who drink shall survive the tribulation. Only those who drink shall meet those who peacefully sleep. They will meet them in the sky and be saved, leaving the walking dead to their damnation.

  Here it comes, Ian reflects. Here comes the fear. Served to us like colorful plates of Chinese food.

  Week

  after week

  after week.

  But the course is hollow and empty, and it will always leave our bellies aching for more.

  Armageddon is here, Statten declares, as if on cue. For those who have already felt Satan’s steely grip, it is too late. They will never pass through heaven’s gates.

  Ian’s cheeks flush with growing anger.

  It is too late for the people of New York. It is too late for the heathen of Chicago. Eternal damnation, a living death, awaits those who dare to allow Sodom and Gomorrah to be built in their backyards.

  …Angels armed with great, flaming swords…

  Statten tells a story of a time before the New Order. Just eighteen years before, the heretics used labels to describe themselves, labels like civilization, nation, and society. All worthless. All meaningless.

  Statten brings a single boney finger to his chin. He acts as though a new thought, planted by God Himself, is germinating in his skull.

  Even as a child, this homily poked at Ian. Like the prodding of a rotting tooth, it grows more painful…

  Week

  after week

  after week.

  Sometimes it takes everything Ian can muster not to jump from his seat. He wants to denounce them all as liars, scream down at those who purport to know.

  Civilization? Statten spits the word as a query, an indictment, for no civilization can exist if the civil teachings of God are forbidden in public schools.

  Nation? No nation can be great if it pays homage to God in word only. “In God We Trust?” Eighteen years past, just an empty promise, just an advertisement on the green face of shreds of paper once called currency.

  Statten’s hand strikes heavily on the pedestal, more heavily than it should be able, his strident voice starting to crack.

  Society? How can there be a society if the social tenants of the church are subjugated to the demands of a purely secular electorate?

  Nothing but words devoid of all sense when the influence of the church is absent.

  …Angels, expressions serene and heads bathed by the glow of halos, battling the throngs below them…

  Choices and evil intent set the plague upon the world, but the parishioners are survivors, and they have one last opportunity. They must pray. Pray to be kept safe to the glorious rapture. Pray to stay in the minority that will meet the Spirit in the sky.… Or else walk the Earth damned like hundreds of millions of souls lost before them.

  …Angels destroying a world of ghouls…

  Ian’s head spins with thoughts of his father—not Bobby Joe, but his birth father. He grits his teeth. The homily is nearly over.

  **

  Yellow, Ian considers. The Fellowship Hall is bright yellow. The deacons painted its cinderblock walls with stock salvaged from a crumbling Home Depot.

  Some once might have called the color maize, or goldenrod, or even sunflower. But those designations lost their usefulness in this world, a world without quarterly catalogs, global shipping, or a demand to supply. So, despite what the dead and buried buyers for J. Crew, Res
toration Hardware, or Ralph Lauren may have once thought, the Hall is, simply, yellow.

  Ian is sweating. But for the rainbows, stars, crescents, and other scrawled likenesses of second-rate Lucky Charms added by youth groups through the years, Ian swears he’s standing on the surface of the sun.

  Churchgoers mill about, a disorganized colony of bees. Instead of curious antennae, they greet each other with firm handshakes, wide smiles. They bite into homemade donuts and muffins, not scones or paninis, and slurp coffee, plain coffee, not frappes or dopios, from bland ceramic mugs.

  Ian and Josh observe the hive of activity before Ian puts a hand on Josh’s shoulder. He’s ready to face the gauntlet. “You first,” Josh challenges. Ian takes just two strides before Pastor Statten impedes his path, and Josh quickly disappears into the veil of parishioners.

  Statten says Ian’s name and extends a tiny hand. Ian clumsily takes it, offering compliments for a great sermon. Statten does not hear the lie in Ian’s hushed words. He says something about “onward Christian soldier.”

  Yes, Ian ships to the northern front in less than a month. The pastor invites Ian to pray with him next Sunday. Ian respectfully declines. No, he has other plans.

  Statten greets this revelation with silence. He glowers at Ian.

  The seconds seem like an eon, the quiet deafening. Ian grows increasingly uncomfortable. He fills the void: Vacation. On Padre Island. Near Corpus Christi. In Texas. For two weeks. With Van Gerome.

  It is the last bit that stuns Statten. “Roger Gerome’s son?” he asks.

  Ian nods, cranes his neck, looking for Josh to toss him a lifeline.

  Statten ponders this. His lips purse, and the sides of his mouth go white. Roger Gerome does not come to church. His work—“missionary work,” or so the elders call it—takes him outside the realm of the church’s influence and into the wilderness. It is work deemed as too important to require his attendance at one of Statten’s masses.