The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (65 page)

Blam!
He went down like a rock. Then he rose from the floor like a winch pulled him up by the shoulders, with no visible use of muscles.

Doesn’t anyone stay down around here?
I wanted to scream, so scared my whole body was shaking. He was only six feet away.
Blam!
Another gel cap exploded across his shirt as he closed the gap between us. He still wasn’t falling down! I fired again.
Blam!
Another direct hit and still no reaction. I pulled the trigger one last time as he was almost on top of me.
Click
. Oh shit. He grabbed my collar and the belt of my pants, lifting me over his head like a stuffed doll. He slammed me on the altar with a thud that nearly knocked me out, dropping the empty pistol to the floor with a loud clatter.

Paul ripped open my shirt, exposing the glowing implants to his hungry eyes. He picked up the sacrificial blade, raised his hand up high, while I raised my arms to stop him.

“This is how you do it, boy. You always liked to talk too much!”

“The same could be said for you,” I replied, my fearlessness suddenly returning. Paul was stiffening in his knife-held pose like a block of carved glacier ice. Then he fell back to the floor the same way he had risen.

Without any effort at all.

I sat up on the altar, buttoning my shirt again. There were only two left at the bottom. “Thanks so much for all your help, by the way,” I grumbled to Martin and Rose.

Martin didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at the angel.

“No thanks necessary,” Rose replied. “I was hoping he’d kill you.”

I ignored her remark. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring at the cross too, at the way Loren was attached to the base of it, his eyelids nailed-open, his unmoving eyeballs devoid of animation—as far as she could tell.

“We’ll be getting some visitors after all that gunfire,” I said as she huddled under Martin’s arm in their cowardly outpost by the doorway. “You’d better get out of here.”

I knew any police intrusion was unlikely, given Paul’s control over the house staff. Judging from Martin’s non-reaction, I guess he knew it too. Still, I was anxious to be rid of them and have some quality time alone with Pop…and Loren…and my newly claimed legacy.

“He’s not dead,” Martin said, leaning over Paul’s body.

“I’ll take care of it,” I assured them, prying the knife from Paul’s stiff hand, tossing it across the room. As I bent over, I noticed Rose’s key dangling freely from my ripped shirt. I straightened up quickly, turning away from them, hoping they hadn’t seen it.

“As if!” Rose yelled, clenching the Beretta. “Why should we trust you? Just when I thought that maybe you weren’t a total lying piece of shit you disappear with him in here and lock the door!”

“I saved your life!” I shouted, hoping she’d back off so I could pull my shirt together and hide the key. “And in case you didn’t notice, Paul was trying to kill me too!”

“Too bad he didn’t,” she shot back, undaunted. “You never told me about the cocktail trays. You’re a sadist. A killer. Just like him.”

“I didn’t tell you about the trays because I wasn’t sure they’d work. I knew Martin was coming, that he had the remote. I was protecting you until he got here!” I shouted, pointing at her—and inadvertently exposing the necklace on my chest. Rose was staring at the key. I should have known better. It’s not polite to point.

“You fucker! You stole my key!”

I didn’t defend myself. What was the point? There wasn’t time anyway. Martin was coming at me like a steamroller. Rose grabbed his sleeve to stop him, not because she didn’t want him to hurt me, but because of what she saw behind Martin’s back.

Paul was rising from behind the altar.

“I’d rather discipline Billy meself, if you don’t mind. And I have to say, that potion of yours sure packs a whollop! Too bad you don’t have a few more shots left. I’m beginning to like it better than Bushmills!”

Martin wheeled around in a blur.
Blam!
Blam!
Blam!
Paul ducked below the altar with unearthly speed the instant Martin fired, like a reverse jack-in-the-box. Then he popped up again just as quickly.
Blam!
Blam!
And down.
Blam!
And up and down and up and down until the final sound from Martin’s gun was a ghastly, echoing
click.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” Paul said, waving his finger, not the least bit fatigued from his lightning-fast gymnastics. “I’ll be expecting a bit more respect from you, now that you know I’m your ever-lovin’ da.”

PFFFFT!
PFFFFT!
PFFFFT!
Martin hurled his throwing knives in quick succession. Paul caught one in each hand. The third one hit its mark, burying itself to the hilt directly below his clavicle, barely an inch above his left lung. Paul stared at the haft and at Martin. Then he flung back the knives in his bloody hands, followed by the one in his chest, even faster than he caught them. Martin somersaulted toward the altar and the knives whooshed past him, sticking in the wall behind him one after the next, vibrating like tuning forks. He huddled behind the altar next to the books, loading a fresh clip as fast as he could, then leapt on top of the altar, ready to make his final stand.

Funny thing what happened next. Paul was making the very same leap at the very same time. He grabbed Martin in a choking bear hug so brutal that his pistol fell from his grip, dropping harmlessly behind the altar.

Martin wheezed as all the breath was squeezed out of him. Rose fumbled for the Beretta, but even she had to pause in her loyal defense as Paul rolled his eyes backward and began chanting in the deepest, eeriest voice she had ever heard:

“Never alive…and never dead. Never alive…and never
dead!
”

It had been a bad day. A bad two days. Now it was getting worse. Rose pointed the Beretta squarely at Paul’s broad back. But she couldn’t pull the trigger. Something was stopping her. She tried to speak, to call out to Martin, to scream with all her might, but as the word left her mouth it seemed to crystallize in the air. “
Maaaaaaarrrr
…”

Why was everything moving so slowly? Her feet were glued to the floor. Her finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger. And now her eyes were slowing too, locked on the blackness of Paul’s shirt, unable to move, to turn even a fraction of an inch toward Martin’s face, his chin nestled in the crook between Paul’s neck and shoulder. What was happening? She thought I shot her with the tetrodoxin, but it wasn’t anything like that. I was in the same boat as her, staring at the altar in wonder, not blinking, not moving, not able. Wisps of smoke from Martin’s gunshots hung motionless in the air, like gray cotton candy clouds suspended by wires from the ceiling.

“
Never alive…and never dead…”
Paul chanted again, still moving, though barely. Martin was moving too, immune like Paul to this new source of gravity. He hugged Paul back just as hard, his breath and heartbeat slowing with each crunching squeeeeeeze.

If Rose were able to move, her expression would have changed from bafflement to horror as the sound came out of Martin’s throat from a place as deep and hollow and ghastly as Paul’s:
“Never alive…and never dead…”

Rose wondered how her mind could still be working but not her body. She felt like she was in one of those nightmares that keep getting worse, the ones you can’t wake up from even though your heart is racing so fast it feels like its going to explode with your very next breath. And what made her horror even more extreme, what made it absolute, was the sound coming from somewhere behind the altar. From the angel? No. From the man she thought was her friend, but was in truth, her mortal enemy.

“
Never alive…and never dead…”
The Striker droned, over and over.

Johnny the Saint sat in his cramped cell and watched the ceiling and walls disappear. He spoke the ancient phrase and flung his body to the floor, in the same pose as Loren, but in the opposite direction. He lifted his hands to the blue sky, not the gray stone ceiling above him and joined the choir.
“Never alive…and never dead…”

Loren tried to resist. Johnny shouted his command again. This time Loren obeyed.

“
Never alive…and never dead…”
they chanted as one.

Only a handful of souls had been able to accomplish this task unassisted. Johnny was one of them. Loren was another. But now they toiled together, bound forever by their vow. No, not forever. For life. When the crack opened and they jumped inside, no one was there to greet them. Good. Just in time.

Johnny groaned in agony as the Great Wheel turned, grinding his head and bones and body into dust. Loren groaned in pleasure. Together they moved through the swirling mass with all the silent souls…all the angels…always dying, always being born. Together they moved…one person, one being, one mind…to the Axis.

Martin remembered everything. He knew where they were going and what he could do there and how much it mattered. He remembered the rest of the stories. Not only Paul’s…but Kathy’s too. He remembered that he was the only one who knew both sides of the tale. He remembered what he could gain with that knowledge.

His eyes opened wider. Not his remaining eye. He was whole again, seeing first with both eyes, then with none…seeing with his entirety, his luminous self.

He saw it coming. The light. The darkness. It was so beautiful. They were past the portal, moving inside…to the place where they had always been…always here, always near, always just beyond reach, beyond sight and sound and breath. Beyond death. Beyond life.

He remembered what would happen next. He welcomed the transformation. His heart wept with joy, and he smiled. It was a real smile this time, unencumbered by all the memories that seemed so trivial in the glory surrounding him. None of that mattered anymore, not the pain, or the sadness, or the fear, or the lost hopes and dreams.

Nothing mattered. Nothing ever mattered. Except this.

When Paul yelled,
“Jump!”
he jumped gladly…off the widest, deepest cliff from which any human could leap. He never landed. There was no other side. And when he exploded into his once and future essence, he smiled again with a shudder of gratitude.