He held it toward me in both hands. “Bow and take the blade.”
This blade was probably worth more than the tuition would be for whatever college had not accepted me yet. I bowed and took it. It felt oddly heavy in my hands, even though, in reality, it was lighter than the hardwood practice sword I had been using since I was seven years old.
“Let it dangle from the baldric when you have to sit, but clip it to the jacket belt when you have to run, otherwise it will bark your legs. Treat it just like a gun. That means you do not draw unless you mean to kill someone. Remember to store the blade face up, and not to let the edge touch the saya when sheathing and drawing. Push the tsuba away from the throat of the scabbard with your thumb. And keep your gear clean.”
He tucked the sword cleaning kit into my pocket. This was a flat wooden case containing sword oil, cotton cloth, polishing powder and a powder ball to apply it, and rice paper for both fine cleaning and polishing. I felt a chill. How long was Dad expecting me to be gone?
“Dad—you can’t—uh—Grandfather’s sword—it is too important! Let me use your Springfield—”
He said, “If you see someone who looks like he is wearing a costume for a science fiction convention, don’t try to shoot him. A really convincing costume.”
“Father? Of course I would not shoot a…”
“Better to slay him with the edge of the sword.”
“Uh?”
“Remember your footwork and maintain your distance. You are trying to stroke, not chop, because you want to bite deep and open a major vein, not make a shallow slice. Let his blood loss work for you. Head, abdomen, hand: Decapitate, disembowel, dismember.”
“But not shoot him? If … he is in a costume.”
“If the area around the Museum is still crisp and clear-looking, not foggy, it is normal reality, and you will have time to go get your squirrel gun from the shed there. Only use the gun on people who look human. Got it?”
It struck me for the first time that not every kid’s father trains him in deadly weapons, modern and ancient, and expects such training to be used. For that matter, not every kid’s father orders him to kill science fiction fans, which struck me as a bit harsh.
And, anyway, science fiction fans look human. Some of them. Sort of.
“Slash the freaks. Shoot the mundanes. Got it. Tell me why? Or, rather, why the hell?” I said.
“Watch your mouth. Gunpowder does not ignite in the Twilight region.”
“No gunpowder in the Twilight Zone. Wonderful.”
He nodded.
I kept my voice steady. “Dad. Seriously. Who are you?”
“Me? I am going to the motel to stop Achitophel Dreadful before he wraps himself in the Twilight again. It is a side-effect of the Uncreation, and a dangerous one. A practitioner can use it to excuse himself from certain laws of nature in a limited way. I assume that's how he walked out of the asylum. I have to stop him before he brings the stars down. Otherwise I’d go with you.”
“Chyort! I didn’t ask you where are you going. I figured if you weren’t calling the cops and weren’t coming with me, you’d go to him. I asked you who are you?”
“I am the Father that loves you and raised you. And a good Father will kick your tailbone up your spine and out your foul mouth, if you use foul language, Ilyusha.”
“Okay, Mister Loving Father. How about a little straight truth? I am still not moving until you tell me—”
“Three questions. That’s all. Then you move. First question!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Some things are men’s business only. You’re too young for the burden. I was going to tell you everything on your birthday, the day I start charging you rent. Wasted question. Ask better.”
I wanted to ask if the reason why Alexei seemed to go a little crazy when he came back from his year overseas was because of something he was told on his eighteenth birthday. But not if I had only two questions left.
“Where is Mom?”
He drew a deep breath and looked at his watch, which is a big instrument strapped to the underside of his wrist, waterproof, shockproof, probably A-bombproof, and shows military time on a big 24-hour dial.
Dad took out the large yellow envelope that had been locked in his desk, and hefted it in his hand a brief moment, as if it were weightier than it seemed. The words FOR ILYA on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday were written in Dad’s crisp, angular handwriting on the outside. His eyes were those of a man staring into a vast empty place when he looked at it.
“What’s that?” I said. “A birthday card? I don’t turn eighteen until next year.”
He stuffed the letter into my jacket pocket. “I wanted you to be older before this day came. The letter tells you where your mother is. She is trapped in another universe, on a dead world where no leaf grows and no water runs. When I lost her, she was the sole survivor of her mission. She was not captured, but was forced to retreat into an underground refuge to escape the enemy. The only doors are buried beneath the toppled ruins of a holy city, and a monster that neither eats nor sleeps crouches on top. She has a means of seeing visions from other world, including ours, but I have no way to reach her. I was not lying when I told you your mother was still watching over us.”
“If she’s still alive, you can…”
“I can do nothing! The Dark Tower stands in the way, and all the portcullises are destroyed and all the doors are shut. That is why I held a memorial service.”
He shook his head impatiently, and his eyes returned from an empty place and focused on me, sharp once more. “Last question! Make it snappy.”
“Who are you? What are you?”
“Get in the Jeep. Start the engine. You know who are the Sovereign Military Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon?”
“Sure. The Knights Templar. They were wiped out in the Dark Ages.”
“Gah! Only someone who learned his history from watching reruns of the Time Tunnel would call the Twelfth century the Dark Ages.”
“They were tortured and killed by some French dude who wanted their money.”
“Philip the Fair wanted more than that. He knew the Knights of the Temple had possession of the Ark of the Covenant.”
“The Ark? You mean the magic box that melts Nazi faces?”
“I mean the sacred vessel for carrying the tablets of Moses, the living rod of Aaron, and a jar of the bread of heaven. It also has power over the Twilight, and over the Dark of Uncreation. We used it to find and open a portcullis of twilight in the Forest of Broceliande, and fled from Philip the Fair to the only world the Dark Tower cannot destroy. Only the Visible Fellowship of the Templars was martyred. The Invisible Fellowship continues to this day. The Congregation and the Holy Father protected us.”
“We? Us?”
“I am in service to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ of the commandry of Archbishop Alexander, assigned to the protection of pilgrims and wayfarers in the Ultramundane Realms, the Outreterre.”
He held up the oversized and ornate high school ring he wears on his right hand, and he fiddled with the collet like he always does when he is nervous or contemplating something. This time it was not just a nervous habit, though. He was turning the collet of the ring the way he had just turned the dial of a safe.
With a click, the face changed shape. I don’t mean the ring had a secret compartment, I mean the class ring morphed like a special effect on TV: the face changed shape and color and grew larger.
Now it was no longer a class ring but a signet ring. The seal was white and gold, and engraved with two crusaders with shield on one horse and around them the legend written in raised letters: Sigillum Militum Χρisti.
He held it toward me so that I could see it.
“As in ancient days, our mission is to protect pilgrims and fight the enemies of Christendom. I am one of those who can withstand the Twilight surrounding Uncreation. I am an Ostiary, a door-warden. Not far from
here is the door I watch.”
He passed his fingers over it, and I heard it click, and then it was a class ring again.
The idea that there was a supernatural and inter-dimensional portal hidden in Tillamook, Oregon, made me snort, trying to smother a laugh. If I started laughing, I would probably never stop. I forced my wobbling brain to follow what Dad was saying.
“You know about the prehistoric ossuary beneath the Monastery.”
I did. My brothers and I, many a midnight when we were younger, tried to keep each other sleepless and terrified with speculations and ghost stories about it, or by pretending we heard scratching noises approaching the house. There were ancient chambers, walled and roofed with kiln-burnt brick, too small for a child to stand erect in, connected by narrow crawlspaces only a child could navigate, filled with clay pots full of bones.
I knew there had been tribes of a darker, smaller people inhabiting North and South America long before the ancestors of the American Indians migrated across the Bering Strait and displaced and wiped them out. Northwest Indians hunted game and gathered nuts in woodlands that grew and swallowed up the pastures their predecessors had farmed.
Before they vanished, these lost people erected monoliths and standing stones that measured the stars and seasons of their planting, and buried their priestesses and holy slaves alive in chambers beneath.
Spanish explorers had discovered the bloodstained stones and skeletons below the rocks. A Mission, walled like a fortress, was erected on the spot, to remove the curse on the land. The monoliths were pulled down by mule teams and hammered to bits. No adult could crawl into the crooked opening down into the dark well of bones, so they sent a drummer boy whose name is not recorded, and, later, according to the Mission chronicles, young novices. (Those boys had been the stars of the horror stories my brothers and I concocted to give each other nightmares.)
In later years, an order of monks built a Monastery on the Mission grounds, and steadfastly prevented any antiquarians or archeologists who otherwise might have learned of the find and been curious from digging up the site. That Monastery was abandoned not long after the Oregon territory gained Statehood, and became an antique itself. But the Church still owned the acreage over most of the mountain. It was land too steep for logging, so there was no incentive for the State to claim it by eminent domain and run us off. It was officially part of the Archdiocese of Portland and my dad was allegedly the Deacon assigned to maintain the grounds, and people were kept away.
I said, “I am assuming the Monastery was abandoned for the same reason it was built here. Whatever scared the prehistoric people into putting up their monoliths scared the abbot, right?”
He smiled, pleased. “Correct. The Congregation ordered the Monastics away once the real nature of the danger was known. A man who was allegedly a Deacon of the Order of The Most Holy Savior was placed here as a watchman.”
The Order was also known as the Brigitines. Founded in 1370, they were wiped out in Europe during the Reformation. The only ones left in the whole world were here in Oregon, in Amity, where they baked fudge between prayers. It was tasty. As a member, Dad got a free supply on feast days and name days.
Only he was telling me he was not a member. I said slowly, “The Brigitine monks are a front group for the Templars?” The fudge-cooks? The idea was laughable, but I was not laughing.
Dad nodded.
I said, “Then you are telling me Deacon Derfel…?”
“He was actually an Ostiary of the Templars, a Knight: Sir Duellus. And Deacon Eustace after him was also Sir Eustachius.”
Deacon Derfel Gadarn was the man who lived here before us, and built our house, or, rather, built the main part, what is now the den and kitchen. Deacon Eustace was the man who kept the house before us, and installed modern wiring and plumbing. We had to tear out and re-do the entire septic tank because he installed it wrong, and it had been leaking into the foundations. So I had always had a personal grudge against Deacon Eustace my whole life, even though I had never met him.
My eyes were drawn to where, through the small windows in the back wall of the garage, the leafy silhouette of the treetops and the rugged silhouette of the cliffs could almost be seen against the stars and clouds.
Dad said, “The way between worlds opens in places where the walls are thin when the stars are right. The ancient peoples erected their stones to mark the spot and measure the times. We have also made measurements, using modern tools, and believe that the twilight door on this mountain here should remain quiescent for another two centuries. But there are forbidden methods that can force a door open where and when there shouldn’t be one.”
“Methods like Professor Dreadful’s machine?”
He shook his head. I saw embarrassment and shame on his face, which is a terrible thing for any son to see. “I underestimated him, or perhaps he fooled me. His machine could not possibly work.”
“I think he is from another world. I saw a note.”
Dad looked stricken. “That’s — impossible. Or, no, that’s something I cannot see how it could be possible. Unless —” He squinted. “He is not from the Vatican, and not from the Tower. Why would the gypsies do something like this? Have they betrayed us? I should tell the Congregation immediately.”
These were apparently his bosses. I said, “What Congregation?”
“The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.”
“Wait—what? Are we talking about the Inquisition? As in, nobody expects the …”
He made a curt motion with his hand. “Listen up! I have been fearful of this day, but now that it is here, there is no time for fear.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you have a chore to do,” His eyes rested on mine. His tone of voice was no different than when he ordered me to do yard work or something. Just his normal voice. “Now, as of today, you are an Ostiary. You are going to help me in my duty. There are things on the far side of the door that must be kept out of our reality. If your girlfriend opens the door into twilight, the Dark Tower will know.”
I started to open my mouth, but he cut me off.
“Now bow your head for my blessing, and say these words.”
He put both his hands on my head.
The Jeep was rumbling and muttering, warm under the seat of my sweatpants, and the smell of gasoline mingled with the smell of the pre-dawn night coming from the garage door, which, groaning, had pulled itself upward and out of my way. Our front yard is a sharp slope impossible to mow with the riding mower, and the driveway dives down so sharply that riding a bicycle or sled down its length was like being dropped from a bomb bay. Every light in the house was lit, and windows splashed slanted rectangles across the lawn. Beyond, darkness.
Something in how steeply the driveway just dove into that darkness seemed to stare at me as I spoke my father’s words:
“At any moment I may find myself in battle. However rigorous the task that awaits me, may I fulfill my duty with courage. If death should overtake me on this field, grant that I die in the state of grace, forgive me all my sins, those I have forgotten and those I recall now: grant me the grace of perfect contrition.”
I wanted to ask him if I was going to die, and never see him again. But I had used up my three questions.
For those were the words of the Soldier’s Prayer, said only on the eve of engagement. There was something in those words that made it hard for me to breathe. Fear? Awe? I don’t know. What am I, a psychologist?
So I was speeding down a deserted road that rose and fell across the hilly slopes like a rollercoaster, in a weird world of green shadows, the night-vision goggles keeping the wind out of my eyes, hair blowing, and was already a mile away from the house before I could catch my breath again, and before I realized three things.
11. Three Things
Jeep motors are really loud, and they seem much louder when your headlights are off. The dark road sped by under my roaring wheels as I fretted.
First, I had messed up on my first question. I should have asked him: Am I human? What world am I from?
On the other hand—“Ah, forget about it,” I growled to myself over the noise of the wind. “Every kid my age wants to know that answer.”
Second, I had not had the chance to say, “But she’s not my girlfriend!”
On the other hand—Hey, maybe if I saved her from some murky danger, who knows? She might be really grateful. And that thought made me stomp on the accelerator under my leather slipper flat to the metal.
(Yes, I was in moccasins, because I live in the Amazing Uncarpeted House o’ Cold Floors, because I had not had time to put on my shoes. Different rules apply during the End of the World, you know. Different dress codes, too.)
Third, how could the Roman Catholic Church come to know such a thing?
I wondered how many of the old legends of witchcraft or monsters were garbled tales of travelers who had stumbled unwittingly into our world from another, perhaps a world with different technologies, techniques, or laws of nature, which here were indistinguishable from magic. The Churchmen in the old days were the only scholars, the only scientists, and the only organization with branches in every land. I could easily imagine that, during the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition would be the only ones investigating tales of otherworldly visitors and visitants, during their searches for witchcraft and heresy.
But that just led to the next question: Once they knew, how did they keep it secret? Could anyone really keep such a thing secret? It would be as if someone had made a moonshot on the sly. The Pentagon cannot even keep its private papers safe from the New York Times.