Margaret's Ark (3 page)

She understood none of it, neither the type of wood nor the joints holding them together. Terminology passed into her nonetheless, dancing around like flies, and she knew when she awoke it would all still be there, lingering as the last dream had. The dimensions outside, the details inside. Storage within. Ballast. Harnesses. Rope. Thirty people. No more. Thirty people saved inside. No room for animals.

Thirty people.

The ark was gone. David stood beside her. “And everyone else will die,” he said.

The wind stopped. Margaret sensed a massive presence approaching behind her. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to
wake up, wake up!
It was evil, this thing growing closer. Massive. She wanted to run. The fire chief must have still been in his window, because she thought she heard him shouting.

A car drove around the corner along Cambridge Street at the outer edge of the common. For a moment its headlights scanned the grass. The driver didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary, for the car continued on.

*     *     *

“Jack, snap out of it.”

Jack looked up from the grass. He didn’t want to look up and face his failure. As soon as he’d seen this place again, the green dream-lawn of long ago, he remembered. The Angel of God had chosen him, and all Jack did was walk around Boston, lost, trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing, eventually getting a few bucks from a compassionate soul to get a meal. He hadn’t been able to find his way back to the shelter.

“You have to eat, Jack. I understand that.”

Even his thoughts weren't a secret to this creature. When Jack gazed finally on the face of the angel, its power poured over Jack's skin like it had done the last time, nearly burning him as it had at breakfast. Energy, eating him alive. He tried to stand, but fell back to his knees on the soft grass.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I'm really sorry.” He wanted to grab the angel’s feet, but couldn't tear his gaze away from the dark, scarred face.

Michael smiled and said, “Don’t apologize. But you need to get to work, my friend. Time is running out. God has chosen you. In less than two months, the flood will come, and they must be warned.”

He offered his hand. Jack took it. Michael pulled him up so they stood facing each other. The angel was a few inches shorter, but his presence in this long-ago world was so much larger.

“At the risk of sounding like a cliché,” Michael added, “God works mysteriously. He's chosen you as part of this plan.” His smile worked around the thick scar lines on his face. “He hasn't forsaken you.”

Michael’s face then seemed to disengage from the rest of his head and float in the air. Jack stepped back. The other’s smile faltered. “Jack?”

“Yes, sir?”
Michael
, he remembered.
The angel’s name is Michael
.

“Are you ready to begin?” The face hovered before him. Like earlier, Jack was reminded of the snake he'd seen in a movie from his youth, eyes spiraling, swirling. Evil snake.

“Yes, sir.” He swallowed, wanted to run. The face held him captive. Maybe this wasn't a vision. Maybe he was being attacked in the alley where he’d holed up for the night, when he’d realized he wasn’t going to find his way to the shelter. Held prisoner while some monster's fingers wrapped around his throat. Jack made a noise. Everything was confusing. He turned away, wanted to stare down at the grass.

The grass was gone. Everything was black.

The voice was close behind. “God bless you, Jack,” it said. “I'm not a monster, I promise. You need to understand, as so many others have needed to understand, but in your own way.”

An arm reached past him, open palmed to the darkness.

“Behold,” the voice whispered.

Something stirred in the void, a mist, swirling, taking form. Jack felt weightless, hanging in the middle of nothing, staring at a vague shape taking form an eternal distance away.

When the vision became clear, Jack opened his mouth to scream. Any sound that might have emerged was swallowed by the darkness. He hung there, staring at a nightmare.

The angel whispered, “They must hear His pleas, heed His word, before it's too late.”

Jack screamed and thrashed in the narrow space behind the dumpster.

“Hey, Man! Calm down!”

He opened his eyes. The nightmare was gone. In its place, a wrinkled white man peered in behind the blue container. He squinted to see better into the early morning shadows. “You okay, Guy? I heard you yell-”

Jack jammed his sneaker into the man’s throat. The monster coughed and fell back. The angel's vision still played out in his brain, over and over, burning him from the inside out. Jack clambered out from behind the dumpster. The power of the vengeful God Almighty coursed through his veins, nearly ripping them open. He was the Chosen One. He was Jack to Spread the Word. No one could get him now. Another part of him tried to take control, the
rational Jack
who tried to come forward when his emotions got to be too much, the fear of forgetting who he was, where he was. In these moments, other memories flooded in, a beautiful woman’s face moments before the world fell apart, something heavy falling on top of him, dust and heat, too much. Now this, now this calling, the energy. Rational Jack remained pinned, trapped under a million pounds of steel and concrete, long cleared away, long forgotten.

The old man gripped his own throat with both hands and fell against a pile of trash bags beside the dumpster. He tried to run but tripped over a bag and stumbled sideways. Jack lept past, looked around in a frenzy for a weapon, a rock or brick. The alley was closing in above him, the daylight snuffed. He couldn’t breathe. Another voice, Michael’s maybe, calling him. Too much. He couldn’t hear what it said.

The old man squirmed into the narrow corner where the dumpster met the wall of the building, kicking his legs like a frightened animal. Jack’s hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, felt God's energy coursing through him from the Blessed Angel. He looked behind the dumpster, saw only the man’s torn sneakers kicking. Jack ran down the alley, not looking back until he reached the opening onto Beacon Hill. No one followed.

“Jack...” a voice, faded by distance but strong enough to bring the morning light back into the alley. Jack leaned against the corner of the building, breathed deeply. No dust, no choking heat. The air was cool on his skin, calming. Jack remembered then; he was a preacher, free to carry out his calling. To find his congregation, spread God's word.

He turned his back on the alley and emerged fully onto Beacon Street, pulse slowing, calming, heading now where his senses carried him. He walked randomly, waiting for an appropriate spot to present itself. The smells of the waterfront eventually wormed between the buildings, from Fanueil Hall, Quincy Market. What better place to warn people of the coming flood than the piers?

He passed through Government Center, a ghost lost in the morning light. The smell of seafood was overpowering now, but Jack felt no hunger. He would live on God's Good Graces now. If he eventually remembered how to get back to the shelter, he could probably eat some mashed potatoes. For now, though, he had work to do.

*     *     *

Across the country, Margaret lay in bed, wet with perspiration. She stared with longing at the morning sun streaming through her bedroom window. With some hesitation, she turned her head towards the nightstand. Six-forty-seven. She was late. Breakfast in the car this morning. Getting Katie next door in time was out of the question. She clambered out of bed and pushed the dream as far back into her mind as possible, focusing on the routine of banging on the girls' bedroom door and getting into the bathroom first. Her lesson plan was set. Monday's were usually light in the morning anyway. She had the Seniors at one-fifteen. Bad enough they only had a month to go until graduation. Maybe she'd do another
Ms. Wizard
lesson, get their hands busy at making something fizzle. Anything to keep them occupied until the Big Day.

I should call Marty at the fire station. Maybe he saw...

She cut off the thought. What was she doing? She wasn't
at
the town square last night. The fire chief had merely been an extra in an overly-vivid dream.

Spit into the sink. Rinse. Grab the floss. Don't think.

Focusing on routine came easier at the sound of Robin's and Katie's footsteps shuffling down the hall towards the bathroom.

*     *     *

Marty Santos stood on the grass, across the street from the station. The air was warm though it was still early in the day. It would be a hot one. He wished he hadn't put on a sweatshirt. He looked around at scattered pieces of paper, caught against the legs of benches or an occasional shrub. No sign that anyone had been here recently. No flattened section of grass where the two people had been standing earlier this morning, let alone the massive dark shape that seemed to grow out of the man.

Marty hadn’t recognized him, but the woman... she was familiar. Even in the pale light cast from the street, Marty recognized Margaret Carboneau. She’d been wearing a nightgown. When she moved, it flowed in the breeze around her, catching the vagaries of the street lights, shining through the gossamer material....

No
.

Lavish’s fire chief walked some more, staring at the ground, then up at the blue morning sky. What did he see, really? It had been four-thirty in the morning. At that time everything had a grainy texture. The eyes could be fooled. He hadn’t been sleeping. Though the nightmares ended over a year ago, they sometimes came back. Flames melting windows in the third-floor apartments, Vincent Carboneau's muffled voice, choking,
no air
.

In reality, when his respirator failed in the middle of a four-alarm apartment building fire in Greenfield, Vince wasn’t equipped with a microphone. Marty never heard his best friend’s voice the night he died. But he dreamed about it. Now he was dreaming about Vince’s widow.

But he hadn’t been asleep. Sleep didn’t come easily to him, not when he was at the station. Four days on, three days off. Four nights of restless turning in his bunk, until he got up and paced the common room away from the others. Waiting for an alarm to justify his nocturnal vigil over the Lavish town square. Praying for it, dreading it. He smelled smoke wherever he went. This morning, he'd eventually gone back to bed, after the two figures and the boat -- it
was
a boat -- simply disappeared in the headlights of a passing car.

There was no one there. He'd even opened the side window and shouted Margaret's name, hoping to see her face more completely. When he called out, the headlights passed over them, and they faded away.

Shadows, burned away in the light.

Marty stood on the spot under the warming April sun, much like he'd done hours ago in the dim starlight of early morning, when he'd gone out to confront the man standing outside his window with the half-naked widow of his best friend. No one had been there. No one was here now. He stood on the grass, alone, eventually walking back to the firehouse and wondering if he was finally losing his mind.

57

The dream didn’t return. One night of solid, undisturbed sleep.

Margaret awoke with renewed energy. Ready for the world, to forget dreams about angels wanting her to build an ark. Just some unconscious memory of a reading from Exodus on some previous, forgotten Sunday. Her mind simply processed the story of Noah and played it out.

Classes had gone well. The Seniors were riveted by the haphazard experiments she offered, charging up batteries, trying to reverse the polarity, building up static electricity between swatches of felt. Margaret knew theirs was an exaggerated interest in these simple time-killers, making what would normally be ten minute exercises into forty-five minute Grand Experiments. Even Carl Jorgenson had put off his usual strutting among the girls to hunker down over the center table.

She turned the car onto the 101, merging her Taurus wagon between cars driven by more over-stressed commuters. Someone beeped his horn but she continued into the fray, letting the droll of the angst-ridden callers on a talk-radio show drown out the horn-song.

Katie's lacrosse practice was ending in twenty minutes, had just enough time to have stopped at the store for milk and a jar of overpriced spaghetti sauce before heading back to the fields then get Robin out of preschool. She stayed in the right lane, heading for the next exit.

“... build an ark...”

The three words on the radio sent a shock through her. She swerved the car, uncertain, feeling like she was supposed to do something but couldn’t decide what.
The exit
. She took it.

More words from the radio, this time from the show's host, his voice dripping with disdain. “...said God himself told you this?”

End of the ramp. Her directional was still on, but there was only one way to go.

“I know this sounds nuts,” the caller said, “but it was such a vivid dream. I mean, {beep}.. I...”

“Sorry, Joey. Not allowed to use those words.”

“Ok, sorry. What I'm saying is I don't even
believe
in God.” He laughed. “Well, maybe a little, but not like in church.”

“You don't believe in God when you're in church?”

“No, Dude, I don’t go to church. That's not why I'm calling. Listen, I think this -”

“All right! Enough of this. Ah, Spring is here, and brains are getting fried already.”

A horn blared behind her.

The green light turned yellow. Margaret stared at it. The car behind her cut to the right to pass, but was hindered by the off-ramp's concrete barrier. The driver settled into a steady tirade of honking. The light turned red. Others joined in.

They sounded like angry demons. Her ears were plugged up. What had the caller said? The host had a new caller now, asking whether she should tell her parents she was gay. When the light changed again, Margaret moved forward. She got half-way through the intersection when the car behind her, a dented white Camaro veered around her. Margaret almost rear-ended it. Another car worked its way around. This time Margaret followed.