Apparitions, page 21
Fugg, Felix said.
Is that your house? I signed.
Felix turned to me, biting his lip.
Three men came out of the house, all of them tall with brown shirts and black coats and round black hats with yellow bands. Felix’s father stood at the door.
Felix pulled on the silver stick above the steering wheel, and we rolled away.
We parked in another alley and went to a restaurant that was empty except for us. We sat in the corner near the window. A woman came over to us, and Felix pointed at words on a piece of paper. Soon she brought us sandwiches and fries.
Stellan’s, Felix said. I used to come here a lot when I was little. When my mom was here.
We ate two sandwiches each. Felix played with his fries and his ketchup.
I went to use the toilet and came back to see the sun had shrunk away from the street outside. The light over his head made him look tired.
Maybe Jesus wasn’t a miracle birth, he signed as I sat back down. Maybe he was just a man who loved people and wanted the best for them, and his love for his father distracted from his true journey and got him crucified.
Maybe, I signed.
Felix’s mouth drooped, like he wanted to talk to someone who understood what he meant.
What’s the new year? I signed.
That’s how we tell time.
Like a clock?
A clock measures minutes and hours. A year is thousands of hours. It’s 1980 right now, but later tonight it’ll be 1981.
Big numbers.
Felix’s fingers skittered, making the table hum beneath my hand. He breathed slow and deep as though trying to calm something struggling inside his body.
Human beings have been around a long time, he signed. A lot of beauty, a lot of death, a lot of pain. We keep going in circles, thinking the same ideas and hating the same people, ignoring the bright sparks of light, killing people who help us love better. That’s our greatest tragedy, that all this time we could’ve done better.
Are you okay? I signed.
Tell me you believe in me, he signed.
I believe in you.
Tell me you love me.
I love you, Felix.
Felix sat straight. Do you have your knife? he signed.
No.
My father stands in the way of our journey. So does your father. They swim in our blood. They want us gone. We can’t be free unless we get rid of them, so we need to open a door that I told myself I’d never open again.
What do you mean?
Felix glanced toward the kitchen. I need you to help me kill my father, he signed.
Why?
Because.
I don’t want to. I don’t like hurting people. Or anything else.
It’ll be over before you know it. People die all the time. It’s as simple as walking from one room to the next.
Won’t we get in trouble?
If people don’t understand when we act with love, we need to speak their language and send a message. We need new rules. Understand?
I’ve never killed anyone.
All that anger you have, everything wrong that was done to you, we’re healing that tonight. We’ll pull it out of your head and throw it all into the world through the knife. You have the right to get rid of your pain.
Why don’t you kill him yourself?
This is the next part of your baptism, a show of devotion. Your pain is greater than mine. You have the chance to exorcise it. Forgiveness doesn’t work. Forgiveness makes that pain stay still. There’s no relief. Those faces never go away.
I don’t know forgiveness.
Letting people get away with hurting you. Do you think that’s good?
I don’t have a knife.
Use mine.
I picked Felix’s butter knife off the table. He smiled and took it back.
My other knife, the sharp knife. I’ll give it to you later.
I don’t want to kill him.
You’re my apostle. If you love me, I need you to show it. I will love you forever.
Felix stood from the table and pulled on his coat and took a few pieces of colored paper from his pocket. He left them on the table.
I followed him outside. The street was even colder in the dark. The green light from the restaurant’s sign stuck to Felix’s back until he stepped around the corner. He walked slow for a moment, then sped up, like he was excited.
👁
Felix parked the car on the edge of a cluster of trees. A mess of metal objects stood in strange formations nearby: L-shaped bars sprouted out of a large metal disc, a long metal beam tilted over another bar, and half a globe made of crisscrossing silver rods rose up from the snow, its other half seemingly buried under the ground. The moonlight and frost coated them blue. I pointed to them.
Playground, Felix signed. Kid stuff.
Can we play on them?
Not now.
He returned his hands to the wheel and turned off the car lights, and we sat in darkness. He stared at the trees, through the trees. I blinked and tried to focus. The metal objects tilted a little and seemed to move closer even though I sat still.
My head, I signed.
Me too. We didn’t have our medicine today. Pray with me.
He squeezed my hand, then bowed his head and shut his eyes. I bowed mine too. I kept looking sideways at him to see if his head was still down.
A red light burst in the air above the car. Felix snapped straight up, his head jarring against the seat. More red lights blinked and quivered, lighting up the snow and the metal playground objects and the car and the wall of trees. A green light burst, then blue. The sky filled with blossoms of light, long drooping strings of red and glittering bushels of yellow and flowering bursts of blue and green.
What’s that? I signed.
Felix kept his eyes on the trees. I watched the lights. Forceful, brilliant, like worlds coming into being then immediately dying out.
The lights stopped. The darkness seemed even darker without them.
Felix signed to me, his hands like a colorless flame: Happy New Year. Time for a new beginning.
He kissed my hand, then held it open and placed his knife into it, closing my fingers around its handle. He stepped out his door and walked slowly into the trees.
I followed him; he quickly became a shadow, a soft shape on the snow. I strained to see him. He walked with certainty, knowing where to put his feet. I tried to put my feet in the same place, but I slipped on the ice a few times and had to hold myself up using the trees.
The trees started thinning, and soft lights began to glow. Houses stood in a long row, their windows lit up, the lights above their doors stretching into the yards. I lost Felix for a moment then found him off to the side. He stood still. Before I joined him, something pressed on my back. I glanced behind me. No one was there. The shadows seemed to bend like someone had left their shape on the air.
We stayed within the trees, working our way down the row of houses. In one of the windows people drank and hugged and smiled and laughed. I stopped to watch them.
What’s happening?
Felix pulled me after him, and we soon came to a house with no lights on. Felix stepped over the short fence and approached the back door. He took his knife out of his coat pocket and handed it to me.
Stay there, he signed.
I backed up against the wall near the door. Felix crept to the corner of the house and peered around the corner toward the front, then he darted over to a small wooden building in the backyard and reached under the roof’s overhanging part. I studied the trees just past the yard, searching for faces between the thin trunks. I felt dizzy. My stomach ached like I’d swallowed a rock, and I struggled to focus. Sharp teeth and black holes and my father’s grinning gray face all swam and collided in my head. I didn’t understand what Felix and I were doing or why we were there. My only anchor was his promise that my father would no longer be in my head.
I gripped the knife hard, pressing its handle into my palm and waving it at the trees. I missed George and Bernice.
Something silver flashed in the moonlight, and Felix came back holding a key. He stuck it in the door and turned it, slowly pushing the door open. He licked his lips, his eyes narrow and glittering.
His gloved hands flickered in the moonlight. Hold all your pain in front of you, he signed.
He waved me along, and I stepped inside. My boots knocked shoes over. Felix shut the door behind us, took my hand, and led me up a short set of stairs. My toes stubbed against each one as my eyes settled in the darkness.
I tapped him. Where’s the light? I signed.
No. His fingers like a crow’s beak in the shadows. No light.
We reached the top of the stairs and entered a kitchen. Felix went to the counter and broke a small piece off a loaf resting there. He put it in his mouth, then handed me a piece. I ate it and hardly tasted it—the room smelled like shit and piss.
Felix stepped into a small square of moonlight coming in from the window and held up his hands, his face barely visible. His room’s down the hall, he signed. I’ll open the door, and you take that knife, and you stab him for every time your father hurt you. For every scar you have.
I nodded toward the back door. Someone’s watching me, I signed. I feel sick.
As I signed to Felix, whatever had followed me outside and all across the prairie rushed into the house, surrounding me, thickening the air like rubber, gripping my shoulders as though prepared at last to swallow me. Something like a knife edge rang up my spine. I cringed and shuddered and took a step toward the door. Felix pulled me back. I could hardly focus on what he said.
You’ve survived so much, he signed. You can survive this. It’s almost over.
Don’t you feel the air? There’s something here.
There’s nothing here. It’s just you and me. Simple. I’ll push open the door, you run to his bed and get him. His bed’s three steps from the door.
Felix ate another bigger piece of the bread and offered another piece to me. He hasn’t made this since I was a kid, he signed.
He stood on his tiptoes and kissed my forehead, then led me out of the kitchen, gripping my hand.
We inched our way down the hall, deeper into the darkness, our feet scuffing along the carpet. The shadows were so dark they seemed like entries to other places. My stomach lurched. The taste of the bread bubbled up. The thing hovering around me had wrapped itself around my neck. My heartbeat filled my head, and I could see it on the air, a thin gray pulse. I made a noise and rubbed my eyes; I forgot I’d been holding the knife, and I almost cut my cheek. Felix stopped. The shadow of his face turned, and his hand reached out to touch the wall. My hand shook. My whole body shook. He seized my wrist and jerked me forward.
We stood outside the door at the end of the hall. I could just see the outline of the door. He squeezed my wrist hard. I raised the knife, swallowing to keep my stomach quiet. My head filled with dogs and small rooms and sickness, screaming men and thick blood and walls full of monsters. The disgusting reek of the basement room blared through my nostrils.
Felix put his hand on the doorknob. My body clenched. I shook my head. Felix nodded and shoved the door. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe. I couldn’t tell if it was actually open. Felix grabbed my coat and hauled me into the room. I slashed the knife back and forth, more protecting than attacking. I hit my leg on the bed and started swinging the knife down like a stick, beating the blankets and pillows.
The light came on. The room was empty.
Felix’s shoulders sagged. He must be out, he signed. He rocked his fists up and down: You hesitated.
I what?
You didn’t walk in.
I couldn’t see. My head feels weird.
I sat on the bed and put my hand on my chest and tried to control my breathing. The thing clinging to my body had relaxed.
Felix bowed his head and touched his forehead with his clenched hands. Give me the knife, he signed. He was right. We’re just alone. You don’t love me.
I love you.
Give me the knife.
I couldn’t see!
His head turned, like he saw something down the hall. Shid, he said. He stepped into the bedroom and swiped off the light and shut the door.
What? I signed.
He’s here.
I stood up. A light glowed under the door. Felix’s fingers whipped through the darkness. I caught shreds of what he said: Wait. Open door. He get you. Kill him you. Love me you. Last chance.
My father’s face swelled up into my head like pus, blocking out everything else. My stomach hardened.
Ready?
I felt a grim presence on the other side of the door. The thing, the ghost, was there now—had become flesh and blood. I raised the knife over my head. Felix stood against the wall. Everything I’d ever felt balled up in my heart and coursed up my arm into the knife.
I love you.
I love you.
Under the door a shadow stepped into view. The door opened. Felix slunk away. The shape of a man stepped into the room, and shadows and light blended together and for a second I saw my father’s grinning face. I screamed and ran at the shape and started stabbing, my arm whipping downward, the knife thunking into skin. I kept my head down. Didn’t want those eyes settling on me. I stabbed randomly, in the arm, in the chest, in the shoulder. Once I looked at the holes I made and saw blood seeping through. I thought the holes were too thin. They had to be bigger, more blood had to come out. The shape had to die. The shape fell onto its stomach and tried to crawl away. I stabbed its back. Its blood became my need; I needed more of it. My hand and arm grew sore. I thrust the knife into the back of its head. The knife scraped bone. It stopped moving, then it moved only when I stabbed it.
I stopped, holding the knife still. I looked at the shape. The knife was sunk halfway into its back, and the skin on its back had turned to shreds. Parts of its spine and ribs poked up. The knife and my fist were completely soaked. My hand shook.
I stood up quickly. The shape’s body gripped the knife, and I jerked it out. Splotches of blood arced onto the walls and carpet. The shape was now a glistening hunk of torn clothing and hair and meat.
I dropped the knife. Felix touched my shoulder and eased me away from the body, lowering his head against my back. My legs lost their strength—I slumped down against the wall. I couldn’t think. It seemed I’d been knocked out of my body and was now hovering in the air looking down at myself and Felix and the dead man. My language and memories had all been scraped away. Blackness completely filled my head.
Felix knelt beside the body, his eyes sweeping over it. He touched the blood on the wall and stared at the blood on his fingers, then stood up and wiped it on his leg and remained still, staring, getting used to the body, its non-movement.
I wanted to cry, scream, react somehow. But I couldn’t react. Not in any way that felt right. The ghost had quieted, as though satisfied after a meal.
I snapped back into my own head when I noticed Felix had left. I braced myself on the wall to stand up and then ran to the back. The door was open, and I stumbled down the stairs, searching for him in the darkness. The moonlight caught his white-blond head bouncing toward the trees. He’d tossed his hat. His jaw moved—I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying.
I sprinted through the trees, slipping on the ice but never stopping. I caught him just before he opened his car door. He smiled, his eyes full of tears.
We did it! he signed. We’re free! Let’s do the priest now.
What?
Come on. You and me!
No!
I reached for him. He shoved me away. I grabbed him by the coat, and he spun and slapped me. I held onto his coat and grabbed his hair and slammed his head into the window. He went limp. He stared at me, his face innocent and questioning.
I slammed him against the car, his small body like twigs. My body boiled with everything that had chased me, my arms and legs and hands crammed full and charged with ghosts. I tried to sign, but my fingers shook too much; the only way I could speak was by hitting him. As I raised my fist again, he snapped straight and clawed my cheek and kicked my knee. I buckled. He drove his knee up into my face and knocked me backwards, then got into the car and backed it away. I ran toward him. Hot blood spurted from my nose and spilled onto my chest. He aimed the car at me, the lights filling my skull. I tried to move but my foot slipped. The car slammed into my hip and threw me into the spindly stick globe. The car’s lights swung away and in the mirror I saw him smile and spit words through his teeth. He held up his tightened fist, his eyes wide and totally black. Soon the car faded into the darkness and became part of the road, its back lights like two faceless red eyes.
GOSPEL OF THE NEW PROMETHEUS
Pastor Felix Jimson
31 December 1980
Some people are designated to feel more than others, they feel all the emotions think all the thoughts absorb all the pain scream all the rage embrace all the joy. Normal society can’t or won’t listen to them so they have to be put away in horrible places even though these people share more truth than anyone. A mental ward is the most truthful place in the world—they try to hide truth but it always escapes.
I carry my truth, my gospel, always in my heart, I wish the world nothing but love—
If the body is language then our every act is a way of speaking. Breathing, eating, sleeping, sex, nothing speaks clearer than the body.
I am again and always a holy ghost among the unenlightened. I carry light in my hands.
God is an absent father who forsook his only son; thus, I achieve my final form upon severance of blood ties.
To love is to lift others.
[EXCERPT FROM VOIR DIRE HEARING, SASKATCHEWAN COURT OF THE QUEEN’S BENCH—PRINCE ALBERT, SASKATCHEWAN—3 JUNE 1988]
