Prospero's Half-Life (26 page)

He was dragged
into an empty room and held down. One pair of hands kept him in
place while another pair of hands fastened what felt like a silk
tie over his eyes. Blindfolded, he was dragged back to his feet and
hauled away. They dragged him for a long time, going outside and
down the street, cutting across weedy patches at times and hustling
down cracked pavement at others. He was brought up a series of
small steps at one point and it clicked in. He was being taken into
the building where he had originally been abducted and taken into
Bentley’s cult.

He began to
struggle but it was completely in vain; the two black robes had him
in a tight grip. They frogmarched him in through the doors and he
felt them drag him off to the right. He was soon being dragged up
the stairs, and he stumbled badly over many of them. His feet and
ankles were masses of bruises by the time they got to the top of
the stairs. He was paused at the top of the stairwell, and then
from above him there came the complaining screech of a metal hatch
opening. His hands and feet were guided onto a ladder and he began
to climb very slowly up, feeling numbly for each rung. When he
neared the top he felt large, strong hands grab his wrist and haul
him up into the night air. Those same hands threw him onto the
ground, which was rough and covered in jagged gravel. He winced
painfully after he landed, and curled up reflexively.

The gravel crunched around him, as though groaning under the
weight of many heavy pairs of boots. There was another scuffle, and
a similar thrown
crunch
as another body hit the ground with painful force.
This other unfortunate person tried to crawl away from their
assailants, at least from what Richard could hear, but it was a
vain attempt at escape. There was a heavy
thud
, as from a boot digging into
flesh, and the sound of struggle ceased. Richard remained curled
up, praying to whatever deities might be listening to let the agony
be brief.

There was low
muttering around him; in Richard’s current state he could not make
out what anyone was saying. He ached all over and his head was
throbbing with a nauseating headache. He wanted to sob but made
himself keep quiet, gritting his teeth until it hurt. There was the
crunch of a boot right next to his ear; he could feel the sole
brushing his skin. The person next to him squatted down; he could
hear the creak of ligaments, barely imperceptible amongst the
volume of the night-sounds. A hand grasped the collar of his robe
and he was dragged to his knees.

“
Please,” he whimpered, and then bit his tongue. He wouldn’t
let them drive him to begging. He refused to go out like
that.

A hand ripped
the tie off of his eyes and he blinked rapidly, his eyes feeling
burned by even the small amount of light given off by the hard,
glittering half-moon. He was on the roof of the former university
residence, and the stars littered the sky above him, thousands of
pinprick holes shining through a field of velvet black. He
remembered not being able to see as many stars, even a year ago.
They seemed to be everywhere, and they made him feel strangely
claustrophobic. He looked away and saw the other person whom had
been dragged up onto this roof. It was Jacob, he saw, a beaten,
submissive Jacob with deep bruising and cuts crisscrossing his
face. He looked over at that same moment, saw Richard’s face, and
spat.

“
What do they have
you
up here for?” he asked, his voice incredulous.
“You’re one of them!” Richard started, feeling confused.

“
Shut up,
koulangyet
manman’w
,” the man behind Richard told
Jacob. He realized with a growing sense of unreality that it was
Chris. “This isn’t the place for a
coco
santi
to drop shit from their
mouths”.

Jacob darted
forward on his knees and was brought down with a kick to the side
of the head, delivered by one of the men standing near to him. The
man’s face came into the light as he did so and Richard realized
that it was another member of the conspiracy. He stared around, his
mouth agape. As he got a good look at everyone on the roof (seven
or eight in all) he saw that they were all members of his
conspiracy.

“
Bambaclaat
,” Jacob gasped from where
he had fallen. “Whore-fucker”. He spat, and it shone red in the
moonlight. “You’ll all hang for this”.

“
Probably,” Chris admitted. “You won’t live to see it, though”.
He stepped around Richard so that he was standing in front of
him.

“
Have they caught up yet?” he asked, directing the question at
one of the other men on the roof.

“
They just have, yeah,” a man with a deep, gravelly voice
replied. “They just entered the front doors”.

“
Good”. Chris paused. Then, in a much quieter voice, he spoke
to Richard.

“
This is our only chance, Richard. It should have been easier.
It should have been you. So, let’s try this again”.

“
They’re coming up the stairs,” another voice said urgently.
This voice seemed reedy, scared. Richard bowed his head, confused
and unable to process any of the sensory details that were
filtering into his brain.

“
Let’s do this,” Chris said to this bulletin. He walked to
Jacob’s side and kicked the fallen man squarely in the ribs. There
was a muffled groan from the man’s prone position. The man whom had
kicked Jacob in the face squatted on the opposite side of
him.

The clatter of boots on the stairs below became much louder
and within a moment the hatch squealed open. Richard twisted his
head and saw a large number of black robed men coming bubbling up
from the stairwell. Chris and the other man waited until there were
a large number of them through the hatch, and then they hauled
Jacob to the side of the roof. Many of the black robes shouted
warnings to stop, but Chris and the other man paid them no mind.
Jacob was thrown over the side of the building and he uttered a
long scream. A few moments later there was a damp
thump
from the plaza
below.

A split-second
after the sound of Jacob’s last, Richard was overrun by men in
black. They swarmed him, throwing him to the ground and wrestling
him into a submissive position. A rag was put to his face and he
knew no more.

When he awoke
he was in the small utility classroom that he’d been kept in before
receiving his new name. He blinked, his vision blurred and refusing
to unblur. His entire body felt like a mass of ugly bruises, and
some of his teeth felt loose in their sockets. There was blood on
his hands, and after feeling around his scalp gingerly he realized
that his head was cut in three places. He winced and wiped his
fingers on his filthy grey robe. His head ached abominably and he
wished that someone would just decapitate him.

After an hour
there was a shuffle at the door. It swung open and admitted four
men: two in black robes, and two in clean-looking white robes. He
recognized the two white robes, of course, and he saw with sick
amusement that one of the black-robed men was Alexander, one of the
men that had escorted him from purgatory what seemed like a
lifetime ago. All of them seemed agitated; the white-robed men in
particular looked as though they would rather be anywhere else.

“
Just grab him,” one of them said, “make sure you get him
cleaned up. Bentley will have all of our heads if we present him
looking like that”.

“
Can we not just strangle him and tell Bentley that he died
suddenly?” the other white-robe asked. Brother Alexander shook his
head.

“
Brother Bentley has made his wishes quite clear in this
matter,” the man said, his voice as cold as the grave. “Any attempt
to circumvent his wishes will be dealt with
accordingly”.

The two
white-robed men glared at Alexander for a moment and then wilted.
Alexander and the other black-robe grabbed Richard by his elbows
and hauled him to his feet.

“
Come on,” Alexander said, rough but neutral. “We’ve got a lot
to do”.

They led him
away towards another room that was quickly emptied out. He was sat
down and for the next twenty minutes he underwent a bizarre sort of
makeover. His face was washed, his cuts were treated, he was given
a new grey robe, and his hair and beard were trimmed to a much more
even level. This procedure was undertaken by a man and a woman that
Richard recognized as other grey robes. Their faces were
frightened, although their hands were nothing if not competent.
When they finished, Alexander and the other black robe looked him
over critically.

“
It will have to do,” Alexander said doubtfully, and dismissed
the two grey robes. “We’re running late”. They grabbed Richard by
the elbows once again and led him away. He was taken, with no
accommodations for screaming muscles, into the basement and then on
into a low-ceilinged, cramped room that might have once been a
locker room. He was dumped unceremoniously into the middle of this
room and left alone; Alexander and the other man left through the
door that they came in by. Darkness swung over him and he was blind
in pitch blackness.

Muted
footsteps rumbled overhead; the community was being herded into the
bench seating, or so it sounded to Richard. Dust settled down on
him, and he shifted uncomfortably. He heard a voice mumbling on
from above; the layering of floor served to cut out any
understanding of the words. Presently there came the sound of
footfalls on the stairs just outside of the locker room. The door
swung open and light flooded in, blinding Richard temporarily.
After his eyes adjusted, he saw that he had been joined by the same
pair of white robes from before, the ones that had casually
suggested murdering him. He went cold all over but forced himself
to wait to see where the situation led.

“
Come on, then,” one of them muttered, and their soft, clammy
hands gently took his arms and brought him to his feet. They stood
off from Richard awkwardly, waiting for him to do something.
Richard stared from one to the other and one of them gestured
grandly with a swing of his hand, as if to say
right this way, your highness
. The
scowl on his face belied the sarcasm. Richard shrugged and walked
past them into the stairwell. They had been given ample opportunity
to kill him; they weren’t going to stab him in the back walking up
the stairs now.

He was brought
out at the top of the stairs into the much brighter, much more
expansive confines of the gymnasium. He shielded his eyes to cut
the excess light and saw that they had gathered what appeared to be
the entire community into the gym. The place was packed tightly
with grey-robed people, with the black robes forming a human
barricade six deep against them. They stood between the crowd and
the wide stage that took up most of one wall in the gym. On that
stage stood the rest of Bentley’s inner council, and a line of
twelve men kneeling at the edge of the stage in front of them. They
were kneeling with their heads bowed but he knew them. The last one
on the right was Chris.

Bentley was
walking back and forth across the street like an old televangelist.
He was shouting a mixture of brimstone and bible quotes,
gesticulating wildly with his hands as he did so. The grey-robed
crowd watched in silence, their faces carefully set into sober,
neutral expressions. Richard was brought up onto the stage and
placed in the shadowy corner behind everyone. His two escorts told
him to stay where he was and left him to join with the rest of
their number. Bentley kept preaching as they did this; he seemed
enraptured with his own speech, letting the essential rhythm of his
voice rise and fall with masterful strokes. Richard could not
concentrate on the actual words that Bentley was saying, but he was
spellbound by the way it was being said.

Bentley began
to gesture towards the men kneeling at the edge of the stage and
this was when Richard began to pay attention.

“
Before you are those who attempt to poison and destroy you!
Brothers and sisters, here are twelve men whom have committed the
mortal sin of murder, and a more treacherously dark murder you will
never find, no matter how long you search! These men have not only
plotted against our great enterprise here, not only turned their
minds and souls from the Lord, they have even gone so far as to
callously beat my apostle, the saintly Brother Jacob, and throw him
from a roof to his death! There is no earthly punishment that can
bring justice to these men! None at all! Only the divine hand of
the Lord can properly judge these men! We must commend them unto
God! Hallelujah!”

“
HALLELUJAH!” the crowd responded. Richard felt his skin crawl.
Bentley seemed to feed off of the crowd response.

“
These men have committed vile acts against the entire
community. There are twelve of them, and there are twelve of our
great apostles, leaders all. Therefore, each apostle shall take a
gun and bring the earthly chapter of one of these sinful fools to a
close”.

One of the
white robes stepped forward, a police-issue Sig Sauer in his hand.
Richard watched numbly as the man stepped forward, pressed the
barrel of the .40 calibre gun against the back of the kneeling
prisoner’s skull, and squeeze the trigger. The report was
deafening, and the conspirator’s brains flew out of the hole that
had been blown out of the other side of his head. The newly dead
man pitched forward and fell into the empty strip in front of the
stage with a wet thud.