Lightfall (6 page)

But when he reached the altar, ready to sink to his knees, the blank indifferent look of things was wholly undiminished. Nothing but his rattling breath, the tail end like a whimper, rose and fell in the incensed air. Dead silence was the name of God. The drowning candles were small as fireflies, now that the first light gleamed in the long arcade of amber windows. The room took a tint like whiskey.

Wait. If this was so—if it wasn't the hand of judgment on him, and there
was
no God, not even now—then what? Why did he feel he had just come under someone else's power?

Just then he felt a break in the region of his brain. Go north, he thought. And when he turned, he remembered only that. He didn't miss—didn't care—whatever else he used to know. Now he must go north. The whole vast other structure of his self had vanished, sloughed off like a snake's skin.

“I thought you'd left,” said Danny Merritt, coming up the aisle.

A bearded man about his age, with wire-rim glasses and a cowboy hat. Michael had no notion who it was. He had just embraced amnesia like an addict. In a flash, it had made him young as a boy again and blissfully alone. Why had this sweet-faced amiable stranger turned up now to trouble him with smiles?

“I'm going,” Michael replied in a guarded way, as the two came face to face. He kept the point of the compass to himself.

“I just talked to Kansas City,” Danny announced, quite matter-of-fact. “We're upping the dose of the men to thirty milligrams, twice a day.”

“I see.”

“It's just an idea I have. You triple the men and cut the women back to aspirin. We'll see what happens.” He shrugged and grinned. When he walked, he lumbered like a bear. “Where's Clarence Darrow? Upstairs?”

“I guess so,” Michael said.

He must not care. He must not stay. How many lies could he tell, before this man saw through him? He would have bolted, except there was an echo here he could not seem to shake. What if the tall and bearded stranger turned out to be his brother? He had a sudden longing to embrace him. Perhaps he could cry it all out if he could cling to someone long enough.

“You better take a Bible, Mike. It'll look good, honest. Over here.”

Not stopping for an answer, Danny led the way down the side aisle past two stations of the cross. Michael trailed in his wake, looking out over rows and rows of pews without a clue as to what a place like this was for. Oh please, he prayed to the darkness—but could not find the words to ask. So little was left in his head, he couldn't imagine any bargain they would meet. The two men reached a low arched door that opened off the nave. They ducked through this and down a narrow hall. If only we could switch, thought Michael. The man with the beard knew all the secret passages. He was surely better suited to a journey with no end in sight.

“Remember, ask for Alan,” Danny said, as they turned into a small chaotic office. Flyers and broadsheets littered every surface. Bales of Covenant tabloids waited to be shipped. “He's your inside man,” continued Danny, rooting around in his second-class files. “He'll get you whatever you need. Don't worry—you'll have a bodyguard with you whenever you're not in your cell. So don't take shit. Anyone you want to have hurt, just say.”

He turned with the book in hand and gave it over. Michael cracked it open to a page, but of course he could not see to read. The blur in his eyes was a law laid down. As Danny shuffled past and out the door, a small pathetic thought took shape in Michael's head:
If only I could stay and do it here.
He turned to follow, certain that this kindly man would let him clear a little place to sleep. In the attic perhaps. A place this big must have an attic. Absently, he pulled the coil of wire from an untied bale of leaflets. His own round face, in a slit-eyed trance, stared out at him from every handout. He did not see the resemblance.

When he came back into the church, Danny was down on his hands and knees at the altar. Michael drifted up the aisle, thinking he would help him. He remembered nothing, not his name, but he knew this was the source of him, where Danny Merritt crouched and peered into the dark.

“The cupboard is bare,” said Danny wryly, reaching one hand in. He seemed to sense when Michael was behind him. “Or have you already checked?”

Michael didn't even have to think. Carelessly, he tossed the Bible on the altar. He took up the other end of the wire and hunkered down in the shadows, close to the man who seemed to love him. It looked as if the prophet meant to gather him in his arms. But no—he slipped the wire over Danny's head and stood and pulled it taut. The thin-gauge wire dug into his hands, as deep as it dug into Danny's throat, but he gritted his teeth and would not loosen his grip. The strangling man squirmed and pawed the air. Michael lifted his foot. He braced it against the back of Danny's head and used this added leverage to yank the wire twice as tight.

Why am I doing this?

Who could say? It was over before he knew. Perhaps he would have been almost sorry and mourned the brother he almost had, but for the fact that he felt such vast release. He was rid of the claims of people once and for all. His mind reverted to blank. The carcass slumped at his feet wasn't dead in any way that really mattered. Dead was not a concept he had gotten to yet.

He possessed instead this sense of perfect emptiness. Though he'd had the occasional glimpse of it before, till now it was nothing more than a shine he saw on the face of things. Today it burst inside him like a bomb.

Once more Michael wandered into the alley. He climbed again into the old black car. The staring woman beside him seemed content to let him do the driving. She must have friends up north, he thought. When the time came, she would have to tell him where she wanted to be left off. She probably lived with her widowed mother, he thought as he drove down Market, smiling, lost in a cloud of misperceptions. Perhaps she had a garden on the sea.

“You know, I never really learned the names of all the flowers,” Michael said, waving a hand at a small park that perched on a knoll above the piers. He seemed to mean he had failed to catch the feeling of the place.

He crossed the Golden Gate at ten minutes after six. The hills were so gold they were white like fire. The road was in sweeps, through vales of fog. Though suburbs lay on either hand and the sound of hammers rang in every valley, it seemed to Michael the way was built exactly here just for him to follow. This late November morning was the reason it went north.

Of course there were other cars. Caravans of them, already coming in the other way, to reach the city and get to work. Michael's side of the road was almost empty. The blood on his hands from the cut of the wire had greased and slicked the steering wheel. He played the Caddy from lane to lane, not bothering with lines. He paid no heed to signs or posted limits. Trucks that passed too close rustled his hair and made him grin.

When the bedroom towns were done, he rode through endless pastures, thirty or forty miles without a break. The wide view to the ocean opened on the left. He had never longed for country life. He had no talent for landscape. Only a certain dread of the ocean that he couldn't put his finger on. He felt no urge to run down onto these beaches, though they linked like beaten gold beneath the cliffs as far as he could see.

“I wouldn't live on an island, you know,” he said with conviction. He offered her a cigarette. She declined. “Frankly,” he said, “I'd be afraid of it sinking.”

He could not seem to leave the coast. Hour after hour he trailed the high bluff road. A light rain fell. He had never been quite so close to the sea and yet so high above it. Here, the lay of the land itself appeared to be set down by design, to accustom him to the vantages of power. He saw how one could command these coves and headlands without ever getting near the water. He breezed along as lofty as a general. It seemed a fortuitous thing, to have the object of one's dread so near at hand. The dreadful part wore off.

Above Albion—it must have been about noon by now—he had not seen another car in fifteen minutes, so he noticed when a small sedan loomed up just behind him. He could tell they meant to overtake, as soon as the road uncurled to a quarter mile of straightaway. Michael studied his rearview mirror with barely a glimpse at the zigzag turns he took across the bouldered downs. Two kids in a hurry rode in the car behind, and they seemed to think Michael was moving too slowly. They honked and weaved and sat back laughing. Michael took his foot up slightly off the gas. In response, they careered ahead and bumped the Cadillac, blowing out one of its taillights.

Michael laughed out loud. As they came around a crag, the road looped back on itself in a steep and slippery grade, going down to a tiny harbor. A low-gear truck with a load of cement was chuffing up the hill. Michael put his hand out the window and waved the boys' car by. He slowed another fraction. The little sedan, blind to what was ahead, shrieked out into the oncoming lane and lurched past Michael into the path of the truck. The Caddy pulled up neck and neck, so they couldn't veer away. The moment gleamed like diamonds. With a useless squeal of tires and a lot of screaming, they hit the truck head-on and crumpled like an eggshell.

Michael glided off unscathed. In the mirror, he watched the sedan go tumbling end over end, through the rust and olive meadows. Then it went up in a shoot of flames. The truck had simply ground to a halt, as if it couldn't make the grade.

“It's wonderful, isn't it?” Michael said, with a gesture that took in miles of rugged dunes and cypresses. “We have it all to ourselves today. I'm a hermit at heart, aren't you?”

The rain got worse before it stopped. He did not think to roll his window up, and soon his whole left side was soaked. His teeth began to click with the cold. Every fifteen minutes or so, they passed through the outskirts of a weatherbeaten town. Mostly these were minor ports, abandoned now for years, with rotting wharves and two or three dozen tarpaper houses. Relics of the lumber boom, lately fallen into a sort of ghostly flimsiness. Any one would do, he thought. But he also seemed to understand his chances would improve the further north he went. Thus he refrained from turning off at a couple of jewel-like villages tucked in half-moon bays. He held himself back and kept on going. The dazzle grew till the sea was bright as quicksilver.

He rocked from side to side, all drowsy and uninvolved. He crooned a half-wit song about shipwrecked sailors to the sad, unapproachable woman on his right. It was not till after the road turned in that he had his second chance. The coastal cliffs had become too steep. The highway took to the woods, where it hugged the south fork of the Eel River. Redwoods stood in colossal ranks. He seemed to be in a tunnel, riding through the earth.

When the yellow car appeared behind him, tooting to get the right-of-way, he felt a sudden shock of recognition. He'd never yet done a thing twice, it seemed. He loved the idea of a nice new car exploding into these trees. Too bad he could see no trucks ahead. He would just have to engineer it some other way. Instinctively, he slowed so she could pass—he'd seen it was a woman. Now, as she drew up parallel, Michael did a slight acceleration. He turned the wheel a hairbreadth to the left. The two cars slammed and scraped their sides.

It was so easy. For some reason people trusted each other. They threw themselves in the way of danger with curious abandon. No wonder they died like flies. He pulled the Cadillac over to score a second point. He happened to glance across, to gauge the competition. The woman stared back wide-eyed, bringing her hand to her mouth to cover a scream he could not hear. This wasn't the least remarkable: anyone would have been full of horror. Yet he could have sworn he saw it double when she looked him in the eye. Then the two cars bashed, and the moment broke. Somebody's bumper tore away. He was suddenly all caught up in the beauty of the duel.

The road did not have shoulders. Trees had crowded right to the edge of the pavement. However she tried to speed or slow, he stayed right with her, nose to nose. He battered her fender, then her door. He sent her right front hubcap sailing into the woods. Over and over, he thrilled to see how artfully she recovered equilibrium. As the tension built he grew quite giddy, and wished they could ride a thousand miles before this fight was won. He looked over at her with a delirious grin.

She did not return the gallantry. Her face was frozen solid. She looked possessed by a terror worse than what could happen here. The two cars crashed like cymbals, and it dawned on Michael: she
knew
him.
Wait
—

She pumped her brake and slowed to a limp before he could think what he ought to do. At first he was too stunned to stop. Then he jammed the pedal so hard, the woman beside him teetered forward and slid to the floor. “Oh, good,” he said gently, “you stay down.” The Cadillac stood in the road. In the mirror, just behind his haunted eyes, he watched the yellow car lurch through a three-point turn and flee. He decided not to follow. How could anyone know him if he didn't know himself?

Besides, he thought with icy calm, once he'd got to where he was going, they wouldn't be able to touch him.

Even so, he could not forget her face. By the time the road had wound its way to the sea again, he'd convinced himself he must have been mistaken. It wasn't him—he'd
reminded
her of someone. This, he thought, must happen all the time, since people took such care to be so much alike. They sought out mirror images to cut the world in half. He was just as glad that he hadn't hurt her, frankly. She reminded
him
of someone, too, though he couldn't pin it down to name and circumstance.

He reached Eureka at four o'clock, and the north began in earnest. The stretch of coast between here and Point St. George was as thinly peopled as the moon. The cliffs rode higher still above agate beaches thick with wrack and muzzy timbers. Here and there the sheer walls fell to a rocky lowland pocked with bottle-green lagoons. The raw Pacific currents threshed without end on the stark pine shores. You could hardly guess the high tide from the low. The redwoods stepped right to the water's edge.