THE SUMMONS

    

    Shortly after midnight Easter morning, while Jordan Thayer Chase made his sad way home from the church in Athens, while Lelia Narkisos lay in her well-made wooden coffin, while Billie Durant and Robert Dodgson made love the second time that night, Gerard Sadlier lay in his tent at the campground off Paradise Beach, dreaming.

    He had gone through a door and it was the wrong door but he was unable to go back and now it was night upon the mountain, and he was Chosen.

    He climbed through a throng of people. All of whom were his subjects.

    Some were small, weak-human clutter that blocked his way, that tested his will and resolve.

    Others were huge, even bigger than he was and from these he received a passionate, proud obedience. His slaves. They pushed the others aside for him as he passed with no concern for bloodied bodies or broken limbs. Yet he sensed a vivid danger from them too. Should he show the slightest weakness they would crush him.

    A beautiful woman with long blonde hair approached him. Like all the others the woman was naked. Don't you know me? she said. He reached out and recognized her by the heavy ripe weight of her breasts. Then she gestured, Follow me.

    He knew her.

    His victim. His sacrifice to the Other.

    At the top of the mountain lay a bowl of fruit, still on the vine, surrounded by white flowers. His robe was white too and the woman lifted it off his shoulders while he peeled the pearlike fruit and tasted it. It was sweet, rich, flowing with nectar.

    He turned to her naked, his penis erect and throbbing. He thrust her to her knees. She opened her mouth, ready to take him inside.

    He was the true Son. All this night to be treated as the Living God.

    Her mouth closed over him. The men bowed. The women gnashed their teeth and slathered with lust.

    The dream shifted.

    He stood before a woman dressed in black.

    He knew her face. And knew he had no power over her. Quite the contrary.

    The woman held a knife like the ones that shepherds carry, a curved sharp blade. She swung it in a slow reaping motion down across his body as she told him what it was he had to do and he nodded.

    The dream shifted.

    He became a common laborer, digging with a spade.

    The dream shifted.

    He was back atop the dark looming mountain, his cock thrust deep into the throat of the first woman while behind him stood the Other, dressed in black, reaping.

    A cry of adoration burst from all those gathered there.

    The world went to its knees before him.

    Sucking him dry.

    

***

    

    He woke with an erection and the sense that he was not quite well, an ache in his bones like the flu.

    He could not clear away the images of the dream. In every other dream he could remember the images had faded quickly. These grew clearer. He looked around at the tents on the hillside and they all seemed unfamiliar, distant, strange. Superimposed over all of them was the mountain, the woman in black, the dream.

    When at last Dulac awoke and crawled from his tent Sadlier sat in front of his campfire feeding it twigs one by one and staring into the flame, at the flickering image of himself in flowing white, and the immense obeisant crowd, at the breasts he could see through the veil of black.

    Dulac was annoyed.

    That dumb hulking Sadlier had not even bothered to start the coffee.

    “You might have thought of us for once,” he said.

    Sadlier said nothing.

    “Prick.” He squatted before the fire, rubbing his hands to warm them.

    “The woman,” Sadleir muttered. 'The one who died.”

    “Yes. What about her?”

    The rasp in Sadlier’s voice surprised him. Was he ill?

    “We need her.”

    “What?”

    “Get her.”

    “Go back to sleep, Gerard.”

    “No. You don’t understand.”

    “No, I don’t. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you later. With some coffee.”

    Dulac watched him turn from the fire. It seemed to him that his eyes weren’t focusing properly. He opened his mouth as though to speak and the lips hung slack for a moment, gleaming wet. It was not like Sadlier to be sloppy. Filthy, yes, but not sloppy.

    Then he did speak and Dulac thought, of course, he’s still asleep. He’s talking in his sleep. Either that or crazy. Because what he said was, 'She’s alive.'

    Dulac merely looked at him.

    He said it again, with force this time and leaning close.

    “She’s alive. She’ll give us everything-"

    His eyes were red, his face perspiring. His breath smelled horrible.

    Dulac had not seen him this way since Pakistan.

    Since they’d killed Henri.

    He’d realized at the time that it was not over the hashish that they’d killed a man but simply because they had the opportunity and the reason. He’d seen that on Sadlier’s face then and he saw something much like it now.

    He sighed. “What do you want from me, Gerard?”

    The thin lips parted in a smile.

    Ah, yes, thought Dulac. Sadlier stared and smiled and Dulac knew that look very, very well.

    And he thought, We’re in for it now.