Garden of Evil (26 page)

‘All hail to the great Ba'al!'

The wave of sound from the crowd grew louder and louder. It was more of a reverberation than the sound of human voices, and Jim felt as if his teeth were buzzing.

Very slowly and jerkily, like some kind of mechanical automaton, the hooded figure started to unfold, and to climb to its feet. Underneath its wet gray robes it appeared to be skeletally thin, but when it had reached its full height it was nearly fifteen feet tall, and it towered over all of them.

It turned its hooded head slowly from side to side, as if it were relishing every moment of its reincarnation, and the huge crowd that had assembled to greet it. What impressed Jim more than anything else was that none of the crowd appeared to be frightened. Instead, they were all staring up at the figure with something approaching adoration.

The Reverend Silence sang, ‘O great Ba'al! I am your servant and – here! – I have brought you the only man who can call back the children of Lilith from the realm of death.'

The hooded figure looked down at Jim, who was still holding hands in a circle with Special Class Two. Jim could just make out its eyes, glittering inside its hood. It seemed to stare at him for ever, not moving, not speaking, but then it reached out its gray, bony left hand toward him, with the silver snake ring shining on its ring finger.

‘Take it,' the Reverend Silence coaxed him. ‘Take the master's hand, and all of the power that you need will be yours.'

Jim released his hold on DaJon Johnson and Rebecca Teitelbaum. He knew that this was the critical moment. If he refused to take the hooded figure's hand, then all of this huge assembly would have to disperse without the gift of Paradise they so desperately wanted. The Reverend Silence and Simon Silence would have to return to their church and pray that they could find somebody else in the world who could really call spirits from the other side, like he could, and who could guess how many years that might take?

But if he refused to take the hooded figure's hand, the three sacrifices of Bethany, Santana and Ricky would have been nothing more than pointless butchery, and how could he live with that?

The Reverend Silence came up very close behind him and murmured, ‘Go ahead, Mr Rook. Remember what Khalil Gibran said. “
Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people
.” Take the hand of Ba'al, and you will defeat death.'

J
im took Ba'al's hand. It was surprisingly dry, like snakeskin, but it was intensely cold, and he could feel every bone in its finger joints. Unlike his father's hand, on the beach, it was real, and solid.

He thought to himself:
I can hardly believe this. I'm holding hands with one of the legendary kings of hell.
This is almost like holding hands with Satan.

The students kept up their low, resonant humming; and the sheet lightning flashed again and again, giving the clouds the appearance of a cheap stage-set.

From inside its hood, in a deep, muffled voice, Ba'al said, ‘
You are indeed the one. The only one. I never believed the day would come. I can see through your eyes. I can see so many of the dead, waiting to return
.'

‘Just wait up,' Jim challenged it, although his throat was constricted with fear and he was so breathless that he could hardly speak. ‘The Reverend Silence made me a promise.'

‘
The Reverend Silence
?
Ha
!
That is a most ironic name for one who has never been revered, and who is rarely silent
.'

‘Maybe. But I'm not going to help you until you give me back the three people who were sacrificed to set you free. You know – nailed to the ceiling, with the cats. I want those three back first. And my father, too. That was the deal.'

‘
Then call them
,' said Ba'al. ‘
Call them, summon them, and I will give you the power that you need to bring them back to life
.'

Jim tried to steady his breathing. His heart was thumping hard against his ribcage. He thought of Bethany, standing at the end of the corridor, in a blur of sunlight.

‘
Think of all the things we could do together, Daddy. We could go for picnics. We could walk on the seashore. We could read a book together, on a windy hill. We could talk and talk and talk and never stop
.'

He thought of Santana, looking up at him from his gopher-hole digging in the back yard at Briar Cliff Apartments.

‘
Hola, Señor Rook
!'

He thought of Ricky, sitting in front of his easel, trying to paint The Storyteller.

‘
I used to think the sixties were weird. Then I thought the seventies were weird. But today . . . whoa. The whole fuckin' world is weird
.'

Finally, he thought of his father, standing on Santa Monica Beach, still wet after thirty-three years of drowning.

‘
How can I be a ghost
?
That doesn't make any kind of sense at all
!'

As he thought about them, he felt a soft, cold, rushing sensation up his arm. It was like being given a blood transfusion, except with blood that had been taken straight out of the fridge. It flooded up his arm and across his back and down his other arm, and then it quickly filled up his whole body, so that he shivered uncontrollably.

He looked up into the shadows of Ba'al's hood, and he could see that its eyes were glittering even more intensely than ever.

‘
Do you feel it
?' said Ba'al. ‘
Do you feel the power
?
This is the power to defy death. This is the power of immortality. The Lord God thought that
He
was the master of life and death,
but He forgot that we used to be angels, too
,
and that we used to
execute sinners and idolaters at his command
.

‘
Together with your gift, we can bring back all of those who died so unjustly, and we can sweep away all of those who should never have been
.'

Jim was about to ask Ba'al what it meant by that, when he heard a voice calling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!'

He turned around, although Ba'al kept a painfully tight grip on his hand, so that he couldn't tug himself free. Hurrying toward him through the crowds of students was Bethany, her light-brown hair tied up with a ribbon, wearing the same gray dress in which she had appeared to him before, in college. Her face was bright with delight.

Even before she reached him, Jim saw Ricky and Santana coming through the crowds, too; and not far behind, he saw his father, William ‘Billy' Rook. This time, his father was not wearing the suit in which he had drowned, but his favorite brown corduroy bomber jacket, and his khaki drill pants.

Bethany came running right up to him, her arms outstretched, but then she saw that he was holding Ba'al's hand, and she immediately came to a stop.

‘Oh, OK,' she said, trying to peer inside its hood. ‘You haven't finished the summoning yet? It's incredible.' She didn't seem to be at all unnerved.

‘You know what this is?' Jim asked her. ‘It doesn't
scare
you, even a little bit?'

‘It's Ba'al,' she said. ‘I used to belong to the Church of the Divine Conquest, too. They were always talking about Ba'al and setting it free and what it was going to look like and how they were going to take us all back to Paradise.'

‘The Church of the Divine Conquest killed you,' said Jim. ‘They beat you and killed you and that's what they did to set it free.'

Bethany glanced across at the Reverend Silence and Simon Silence. ‘They said I had to make a sacrifice. They said that you would bring me back. They promised and I believed them. And – look – you have. And I'm alive again. And I feel perfectly fine now. And I love you.'

Ricky was shaking his head and holding up his hands so that he could show Jim that the nail-holes had all closed over. ‘I don't know how the fuck you did that, man, but I feel OK too. Not that I forgive these Silence bastards. You just wait, you two. One of these days when you least expect it I'm going to catch up with you, and I'm going to beat the living crap out of the both of youse, and you won't be so silent then.'

Santana put his arm around Ricky's shoulders and said, ‘
Sostendré capa, señor, me creo
– I will hold your coat, sir, believe me.'

Billy Rook came up and stood beside Bethany. He didn't yet realize that he was her grandfather. ‘
There
, Jim!' he said, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. ‘I told you I wasn't a ghost, didn't I?'

Jim looked down at Ba'al's hand, still tightly gripping his. The snakes on its silver ring had come to life, and were twisting and writhing as if they were in agony. He raised his head and looked up into Ba'al's eyes. Ba'al stared back at him for a moment and then lifted its free hand and drew back its hood. Its gray, sharply sculptured features were exactly like Ricky's painting, including the two knobbly horns that protruded from its hair. Haughty, aristocratic, with a hooked nose and very thin lips, and a chin as sharp as a chisel.

‘
You
,' said Ricky. ‘It was
you
who was messin' with my paints, then? And messin' with my mind, too? It wasn't that Peruvian shit after all. Look at you. What the fuck
are
you? Half a man and half a goddamned
goat
?'

Ba'al ignored him, but Jim said, ‘Cool it, Ricky. Please. This isn't the time.'

‘Half a goddamned goat and half a long streak of piss, that's what he is,' grumbled Ricky, but under his breath this time.

Ba'al spoke directly to Jim. ‘
Now that I have fulfilled my part of
our bargain, you must fulfill yours,
' it said. The expression on its face was triumphant, but its voice had lowered to a menacing whisper.

‘All right,' said Jim. ‘What do you want me to do?'

The Reverend Silence approached him. He dipped his hand inside his shirt and pulled out the large gold medallion with the woman's face embossed on it. He dangled it in front of Jim's face so that Jim could inspect it more closely. The woman had a finely boned face, and she could have been beautiful if she hadn't been glaring straight ahead of her as if she were seething with rage.

‘This is Lilith,' said the Reverend Silence. ‘When the Lord God cursed Lilith's progeny for all eternity, she had this medallion made. It was fashioned out of the rings which God had given her to prove that she was Adam's wife and servant and to decorate her naked body for Adam's pleasure.

‘She said that as the centuries went by, this medallion would be invested with the souls of every one of her descendants whom God had cursed and condemned to die. Like an ancient version of a solid-state memory, I suppose.'

‘So . . .
what,
exactly?' said Jim. He was becoming aware that the sky was growing lighter, and the thunderstorm was already rolling away to the east. It had stopped raining, too. The crowds of students were beginning to grow restless, and their hopeful humming was becoming more ragged.

‘Press this medallion
hard
between your finger and your thumb,' explained the Reverend Silence. ‘When you do so, you will summon out of it every one of the millions of Lilith's children who was cursed by God. With your ability, you should see them as a great multitude; and with Ba'al's unlimited power, you should be able to call all of them back to the world of the living.'

‘Excuse me, you're talking about
millions
?'

‘If you had the opportunity to resurrect every one of the millions who were killed in two world wars, would you not do so?'

‘Jesus . . . how can you expect me to answer a question like that?'

‘Because it's very similar to what you're going to be doing now, Mr Rook. And – if you don't mind – don't use the J word like that.'

‘Daddy,
please
,' begged Bethany. Jim looked at her. He couldn't quite come to terms with how calmly she was taking all of this – her death, her resurrection, the appearance of Ba'al. But like so many young people who become seduced by religious sects, she had been brainwashed by the Silences to the point where she had allowed herself to be taken as a sacrifice, and he couldn't blame her for that. She was still a believer.

If only I'd known about it
, Jim thought.
I would have gotten her out of there so fast
. But how could he feel guilty? He hadn't even been aware of her existence. Now, however, he did, and he couldn't allow her to die twice.

‘Please, Mr Rook!' said Hunni Robards. ‘I so want that Paradise!'

‘We
all
do, sir,' Joe Chang put in. ‘You say no to doing this, what do we have to look forward to then? No future. Nothing. Staying down the bottom of the shit heap, forever.'

‘It's true, Mr Rook,' said Rebecca Teitelbaum. ‘And it's not only us in Special Class Two . . . it's
all
of these students. You're a mentor to every one of them. You know what it says in the Talmud . . . “
Every blade of grass has an angel bending over it
saying ‘grow, grow'!
”'

To add to all of these entreaties, Dr Ehrlichman called out, in what he obviously thought was his most authoritative voice, ‘Come on now, Jim! Let's get this show on the road, shall we?'

Jim hesitated, and while he did so the sun came out. He looked around, at more than eight thousand faces, all of them shining, all of them pleading with him to bring them Paradise.

He nodded, and the Reverend Silence lifted the Lilith medallion from around his neck and gave it to him. Jim held it in his left hand, smoothing the ball of his thumb over the raised features of Lilith's face.

‘Now, squeeze it very tight,' said the Reverend Silence. ‘Feel the souls inside it. Feel all of the people who have fallen, over the centuries. In tombs, in caskets, in cemeteries. Feel them, call them! They are slumbering now, but you can wake them up again!'