The Book of Feasts & Seasons

  Then, too late, I remembered where I had heard him speak that way before. He never talked to me in that tone. He only got that hard note in his voice when he was confronting something from the darker world. Something from deeper in the twilight than humans can go safely. Something nearer the night.

  Suddenly, I stopped, and got hold of myself. The papers fell to the ground, and the lamp toppled, but slowed for no reason before it hit the floor, and did not break.

  It was me doing it. I was the cause.

  “Mary, mother of God!” I shouted. “I am not a monster! I am not haunting you! You just feel guilty because you stole Lorelei from me!”

  But it was too late for talk. Not bothering to wipe his face, he held up his hand, and in it was something he had hid in the silver cigarette case. It looked like a small and delicate flower from the blackthorn tree. The little flower throbbed and vibrated with more life-heat than any living human could hold.

  “Not all the weapons of the work are gone.” And he said the name of the Big Black Cat.

  Of course, I knew what flowers like that could do, what they could summon up, so I spun and dove below time even before he spoke. That just barely saved my life. Or my whatever I had just now.

  I struggled, diving, swimming, rushing away from mortal time as fast as my fear could carry me. The Cat was a silent black shadow, immense, powerful, dark, and he came at me silently, swift as a comet. The glinting gold eyes of the cat were behind me, growing larger, pitiless and proud, two full harvest moons.

  The Cat struck once, missed, but the current stirred up by that blow sent me tumbling head over heels. Then he swelled up to twice his size like the black cloud of some explosion in a powder magazine.

  As huge as a building now, he swatted at me with a paw like a black tree felled by a lumberjack, and claws like a squad of fencers swinging their sabers in unison. I felt my imaginary coat pull on me, and felt my imaginary back get ripped from my spine in long, thin slices of flesh. And the pain was not imaginary at all. Once when I was a kid, my older brother Al hit me in the back with a rake. This was not like that.

  There was no blood in the water around me, or whatever the fluid of time is made of, but then, as suddenly as I realized there was not, there was. It was not colorless, but red as a Christmas berry. I screamed in pain, except this time, my imaginary voice would not work. There was no noise. I had forgotten what my own voice sounded like.

  Then, just as suddenly, the Cat gave one last disdainful look over his shoulder, and was gone. Cats don’t like water in general, and this one did not like getting very far into the sea of timelessness.

  I floated in the deep, deeper than I had ever been before, trying to let the panic subside.

  I was very far down by the time I stopped descending. The images get more cloudy and more fragmentary the deeper you dive, but I could still see glimpses of the modern cityscape directly above me. To one side, I saw a horse and buggy passing down a cobblestone street lit by a gas lamp; and to the other, a figure in a gas-mask trudging past a fallen skyscraper lying on its side.

  I did not look closely at the future shadows of the city in years to come. Somehow, I did wish I could warn the living to enjoy what they had now, to give thanks, and to cherish what they were so soon to have never again, not even as memory. The people and things living and not living in times to come would make sure no undistorted record, no uncorrupted memory, would remain. There were no steeples in that future, no church bells, just thin, wailing cries from thin, ugly minarets.

  I turned my gaze to the past. How to find anything, a dream, a bloodstain, a fear or hope that would draw me to it? A ghost cannot simply step into any scene he likes, any time he likes. There has to be something like an invitation.

  Then I saw it. The one building that was much the same. There! Sly said I was interred there, the Cathedral built after the Civil War. Could I not step into a place where I was buried, even if I arrived a century or so before I was?

  I soared upward toward the image. Some power was helping me, because I never felt myself moving through the timelessness so effortlessly before.

  I surfaced not in the crypts, as I was expecting, but in the nave of the cathedral. At first I thought I was in a crowd. But it was not the living heat from a hundred people that beat and thundered and pulsed all around me. The pews were empty. There were a few lit candles in a stand against the far wall. The heat was coming from the statues to the left and right, from the stained glass windows glinting in the moonlight, from the baptismal font, from the altar, and most of all from a locked golden box at the far end. That was hotter than the summer sun.

  It was glorious, warming, making me wish I could remember how to make my dead eyes weep. But it scared me.

  I slowly raised my hands, like you do when someone points a gun at your heart. I suddenly remembered that was the exact posture I was in when I died. If this furnace of living energy I had foolishly stepped into the middle of was hostile, then I would die a second time in just this same pose.

  Nothing happened. I stood there with my back torn and aching, dripping bright red blood on the wooden floor. I was not sure if the blood were real or not. I could not tell any more.

  Then I felt something. Another source of living heat. There was someone in the booth to my left there. It felt like male rather than female heat. I cannot explain that; but imagine someone throws a pine log rather than an apple log on the fire. You can smell the difference.

  He wanted me to enter the other half of the booth.

  I could not open or close the booth door, but I could step through it. I went in and knelt down, wincing at my wounded back, and crossed myself. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been — wait a minute — I am guessing about a hundred years and change since my last confession, but it is a hundred years in the future. What year is this?”

  “I am sorry, my son,” came the voice from the other side of the screen. “I cannot quite hear you. There is no need to be afraid. Speak up.”

  I tried to imagine my voice more clearly. “I am from Terryglass, the land of the twin streams.”

  “That is no sin, my son. As it happens, so am I,” he said with a chuckle.

  “I know, Father. That is why you can hear me.”

  There was silence from the other side of the screen. Maybe I heard him whisper a prayer. I made the booth walls look transparent to my eyes, and really wished I had not.

  The figures coming out of the statues and images were bright and terrifying, and the shape that stood up from the image of the Virgin above the altar was terrifying and beautiful, bright as the sun, clear as the moon, and crowned with seven stars. And the moon was under her foot.

  I closed my eyes, but that made it worse. I could feel the heat from the living powers gather behind the old priest in the confessional booth. One of them leaned down and breathed on the old priest, and he ignited with living force like an oil-soaked pine log going up.

  I put my imaginary hands over my eyes, and tried to make the booth solid to my vision again. There was no place to run. Even in the waters of eternity, outside of the mortal world, the lamps and lanterns of living beings, beings immeasurably greater than us, had gathered.

  There was also a force standing at the right hand of the priest. It was not a saint. I could tell that the saints had once been alive, had once been ghosts like me. I was an empty sack, and they were filled up to overflowing, but they were like me. They were human. They could be pictured with faces and robes and eyes and smiles. The living creature at his right hand had never been alive, never occupied flesh, never entered fully into mortal time. I did not know what it was, but the force that flowed from it was harsher and more solemn than a judge ordering a criminal to hang. The saints were like flames. This was like a lightning bolt, if you can imagine a lightning bolt standing still, making no noise, just looking at you.

  I wondered if that being was his guardian angel. My mom told me we all had them. They live in the baptismal wate
rs and came out when we were washed as babies. I believed her as a child, but not after the day she went into the hospital for some routine operation, and never came out again. My Dad and my brothers told me not to worry, it would be okay, that I had only had a nightmare. But the nightmare came true and my Dad had lied about there being nothing to worry over. So after that, I sort of assumed it was all lies. I still believed in witches. Eventually I killed the old granny who had cursed my Mom to her death. I just did not believe in guardian angels any more.

  Once again, I wished I could tell the waking world, the stupid sunlight people, the blind ones, what wonders were around them. Did everyone get a bodyguard like that? I thought angels were supposed to be small cute little babies with dove wings, not this silent and inhuman tornado of divine energy.

  The priest said, “Did you receive extreme unction before you went to sleep, my son?”

  I did not understand what he meant at first. Then I got it. “No, Father. Death came suddenly, and I had no time to confess. Is it too late now? I mean, I haven’t reported in anywhere, or seen a Judgment Seat or Pearly Gate or anything.”

  He sighed. “That, I do not know. It is not a point covered in my instruction. I wonder what Saint Thomas Aquinas would say on the matter. We are allowed to pray for the dead, of course…”

  Saint Thomas was standing right there. He was wearing a crown of light, so I could not read his expression, because it was too bright for me to see his face. But he spread his hands, and held up two fingers. I have no idea what that gesture meant.

  The old priest said, “But, nonetheless, I am sure our Heavenly Father would prefer to have all His little ones come to Him, soon or late. You are a little late, but maybe not too late. I think Trajan was baptized after his death, and he must have heard confession before entering communion, so there is precedent. If I must err, let it be on the side of generosity. I will hear your confession, my son. Of what do you accuse yourself?”

  “I am a poltergeist.”

  “You should not think so small of yourself, whom God has created…”

  “Sorry, what are you talking about, Father?”

  “Did you say you were a paltry ghost? Maybe I misheard. A poultry ghost?”

  “I was a–” I did not know how to explain I was a detective. I am pretty sure the word did not exist yet. In fact, I am not even sure if Robert Peal had organized the police force in London yet. “I was a married man. I was murdered. And now I am discovering that I am a type of ghost who is full of wrath. Ghost who makes objects fly around the room. I found myself doing it without being aware of it. Because my subconscious mind–” No, wait. That would be also a word no 19th century man would know. “I think I am possessed by a spirit of anger. I just saw the spirit of anger act through me without my knowing, without my say-so.”

  “A spirit possessed by a spirit?” the old priest sounded amused. “Well, to make a good confession, you must vow to amend you life — ah, I mean, ah, existence — ah — are you truly sorry for this sin?”

  I remembered seeing Sly’s bleeding face. “Yes,” I said. “But I don’t remember the words. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell; but most of all…most of all…I forget what I dread most of all…”

  “You detest your sins most of all because they offend Our Lord, who is all good, and deserving of all your love. But my son, you have not confessed all your sins.”

  I wondered why he said that. But something made me blurt out, “She is still mine!” So maybe I was possessed by a spirit after all.

  “No one can possess another,” he said serenely. Then I heard a smile in his voice, “Except, I suppose in your case. But, ah, of whom do we speak?”

  “Rory. My wife.”

  “No, my son.”

  I felt the anger in me again. “What do you mean no?”

  “She is not your wife, but your widow. You have been sundered from her.”

  He said nothing and I said nothing. A space of time went by as I heard him breathing, and not me.

  The old priest broke the silence, “Who murdered you, my son?”

  “She did.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t sound surprised, Father.”

  “One hears many things in confession, and, after a time, one gets a sense for how the heart works. But you are certain it was she? The minds of ghosts sometimes wander….”

  That was a scary thought. Suddenly, I was not sure if I could trust myself, or what I could trust. “No, it had to be her. The door was locked. She had the key to get in and out. The top drawer of the filing cabinet was also locked, and I have the only key to it, a key sunlight men cannot even see. She could have taken it out of my trouser pocket at any point. She was crying and crying. You would think a woman like that would be as hard as stone, as hard as flint. Mrs. Flint. Heh. The bullets were silver, so the charms woven around my life did not work, and the gun was made of special metal, so that ordinary humans could not see it. It was something we used for killing werewolves.”

  “Do you forgive her?”

  “That is the crazy part. After I was dead, I was pulled up toward the mouth of a maelstrom of light, but I turned and looked back, and I saw her hugging me. Hugging my corpse, I mean. She took the bottle of pills out of the drawer. The Mickey Finn pills, but I guess you could call them Fenodyree pills. She cleaned up the evidence before the pill took effect. She left and locked the door behind her. She does not remember the crime. She killed me and collected the insurance and got away with it.”

  I tried to heave a sigh, but it did not work. It just sounded like a thin, sad whistle of wind. Creepy.

  “Father, she regrets nothing because she remembers nothing. I don’t think it was planned. For all I know, I dropped the elf key, and she was coming by to return it. And then we quarreled…”

  “About what?”

  “Money. What else do couples quarrel about? I made a joke about Sly, about how dumb he is, and she just exploded like a …”

  “Who is this?”

  “Sylvester Steel. My partner.”

  “Whom you have hated for years, and belittled, and cheated of his wages?”

  “Yes, of course. I could take money from the kitty, and put the blame on him for… Hey! I did not say any of that! It’s not true! I was like an older brother to….to him…and he…”

  “No? Then why are you still here on earth, poor shade? What sin is keeping you here?”

  “I …. I am here b-because I …. want to be …. I am not trapped ….”

  “You are trapped like a bird on a limed twig, with lime you set yourself. Ask for release, my son. I cannot grant you the forgiveness and peace of Christ until you admit your sin, and ask it to be cleansed.” He voice was getting dimmer and dimmer like the voice of a man calling from the caboose of a train receding into a dark tunnel. I could barely hear him.

  And I did not want to hear him. I had leaped to my feet, astonished and aghast that this little priest, this mere mortal, this dim-sighted fool who could not see the gathered saints behind him, that he would dare speak to me that way.

  What the hell did he know about me? What gave him the right to stick his nose in my business? He would be lucky if I did not break his nose off for sticking it where it did not belong!

  Had not I always been good to Sylvester? Treated him like a prince, gave him a job when no one else would hire such an idiot?

  The winds started whipping around me before I realized what happened. Yes, I was angry, and I saw my jaw drop down to my belt buckle and my cheeks grow longer and longer to let that happen. My hair was standing up on end like the floating hair of a corpse underwater, and the wailing noise, weak and yet full of hate, that came from my throat I barely recognized as my own.

  Through the walls of the confessional, I saw the little candles shake and fall, and the stained glass windows rattled in their frames. The glass images of Saint Peter with his keys a
nd Saint Paul with his sword turned and frowned at me with sorrow mixed with sternness in their eyes.

  The guardian angel struck.

  The angel was brighter than a drawn sword, louder than the crystal music of the spheres. I fled before its deadly, inhuman beauty destroyed me entirely. The glance of the angel burned my skin and hair away with a thousand lashes of fire, and I was less than a shriveled mummy in a half of a second. When I came to myself again, I felt like the peach-pit left over after the peach is gnawed to bits.

  Deeper I was than the Cat had chased me. It was like another layer of the sea where other forms of life dwell, luminous shapes of translucent blind fish with teeth like knives, so deep I did not even know where.

  Even here a few dream clouds caught fragments of images from mortal time. At this depth the landscape to one side was all forest, and the skies filled with passenger pigeons, and nary a man in sight, not even a figure in buckskins. To the other side, the moon was black, the seas were blood, and nightmarish shapes stalked amid the burning ruins like warhorses with scorpion tails and human faces, long fangs and long hair, crowned in gold and wearing iron vests.

  The whole span of time, from America before Columbus, maybe before the Indians, to whatever horrid future was waiting for us—I could see it all. Eden to Apocalypse. Alpha to Omega.

  It made me dizzy, like I was a groundhog trapped in the wheel of an airplane during takeoff, and instead of seeing my shadow, I saw what had been my whole universe like a dark carpet falling and falling away below. The little hidey-hole where I hid my life was lost in clouds and distance.

  In one or two places, I saw events that were not to one side or the other. They were not inside time at all: a bright and invulnerable figure, more beautiful than anything human, being shot by a blind archer whose arrowhead was a mistletoe; a harpist dashing his harp to the ground in sorrow and wrath, while behind him a bride was being pulled backward into the cave from which she will never emerge; a huge, bearded man dressed in a lion skin and maniacal grin wrestling a fifty-headed dog to the ground with his bare hands; a dead man wrapped in bandages and crowned like a king, holding up a balance scale, and in one pan, a beating heart, and in the other, a feather.