The Crooked God Machine (6 page)

"I'm leaving this town first chance I get," she told me, "I'm going to go to the capitol city or to the ocean, somewhere with lots of light and warmth. One day God is going to wipe Edgewater off the face of the planet, and I'm not going to be around when it happens."

“What about the swans?" I asked, though what I really wanted to say was, “what about me?”

“They'll live," she said, "they always do. But I'll die if I stay here."

I clung to her neck and I buried my face in her hair. Our skin was pale and our eyes red from staying inside, staying in the dark for so long. My fingers slid down into Jeanine's collarbone, slipped down into the cold, viscous skin that the sun could not heat.

"I'm going to be an archaeologist when I get out of here," Jeanine said, "uncover what we've lost. Unearth our history. What are you going to be?"

I thought of Sissy and Momma back in the house bordering the swamp, crashing through the rooms in angry insect patterns. The two of them trapped in the rictus of a spell woven by God in his black mask, by Daddy's ancient taxidermy, by the space my dead baby brother left behind.

Jeanine touched my cheek.

“What is it, Charles?” she asked, “What's wrong?”

I wanted to say, I want to be the murderer of the monster who took away my baby brother's spine. I want to be the one who finds a home so I can keep us all safe. I want to find the crystal breathing mask that will resuscitate the dead and bring them back to me.

But dear God, I am only so much dirt, so I said nothing at all.

Chapter Seven

The shiny sphere on the back of Ezekiel's head resembled a warm bottomless pool, an empty eye with a rapacious gleam. God whispered through it to Ezekiel in the long nights. Its tiny, insistent voice slithered from the back of his brain down the wires to his cerebral cortex, through his basal ganglia with its jump hiss bundle of nerves, all the way to his temporal lobe.

“What’s God like underneath his mask?” I asked Ezekiel once.

"God is a wide black line," Ezekiel said, "this line that springs out from the center of the earth and won't stop running until it’s covered the entire planet. Until the entire planet is black."

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m tired of talking about God anyways,” Ezekiel said, and then he picked up a stack of resurrection pamphlets by the door, “I’ve got the resurrection in a few hours. Let’s go hunting.”

‘Let’s go hunting’ used to mean that Ezekiel took me out into the woods with a bow and arrow to shoot stray dogs or explore the ruins of abandoned houses. But as we grew older it meant walking the downtown streets in search of sinners to condemn.

I walked with Ezekiel as he passed out resurrection pamphlets to the people left out on the street that night. He walked with a snap, spine like a pressed leaf. I tread a few steps behind him, dragging my feet in his bristled shadow.

“Resurrection at midnight, watch a legitimate miracle of God and have your faith renewed,” Ezekiel repeated several times to no one in particular, in a flat, rehearsed tone as we marched down main street.

Ezekiel held a pamphlet out to a man standing underneath a light pole like he was trying to meld into it. The man wouldn’t reach out to take the pamphlet. Ezekiel rolled his eyes, tossed the pamphlet onto the ground, and continued on his way.

“Sorry,” I said to the man as I passed him by. The man’s hands clenched and unclenched. Dried vomit encrusted his fingers.

“Just my luck, to get stuck with the grunt work,” Ezekiel said to me. Then, waving the pamphlets above his head, he shouted out, “get your salvation here! Make God happy! Come to the resurrection!”

He continued on like this for several blocks, throwing pamphlets at the people that crouched on porch steps, the groups of ivy-skinned boys drinking mash underneath lights, girls like needles hiding behind steel grates. After a while Ezekiel handed a few of the pamphlets to me. I glanced at one. The cover featured block print that spelled out “RESURRECTION,” right underneath a skeleton dancing behind a heated shiny sphere. I stuffed the pamphlets in my jacket pocket.

At the end of the street Ezekiel spotted a group of girls talking outside the liquor store, dripping over passersby to ask for change and smokes. He tossed the rest of the pamphlets into a trash can and motioned for me to follow him. He walked up to a silver haired girl with punching bag eyes, skin the color of chitin. He took her head in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth.

“Ezekiel,” she said, “where have you been?”

“You’re a sinner,” Ezekiel said. He smiled and held out his arm for her to take, “come with me, baby.”

I followed Ezekiel and the girl past the liquor store, into an alley, and out into the woods underneath the big faced creeper trees. Ezekiel took the girl’s hand and they ducked behind a tree. I listened to them undress each other with clumsy and frantic motions as I sat down on the other side of the tree and curled my legs tight against my chest. I waited for a long time there as they whispered and laughed. I cooked in the heat of their sex. Then I ruptured in their climax, the moment when that smell like a lightning strike sunk into my bones.

"Do you want a turn?" Ezekiel asked.

"No," I said, “aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”

“We’ve got time,” Ezekiel said, “And why not? What are you afraid of?”

A moment’s pause. “Oh, right. It’s because of her. Jeanine. That girl with the butterfly wings made out of meat.”

He laughed.

“One day you’re going to wake up in a bathtub full of ice and watch her escape with all your organs underneath her arms. She’ll make pets out of them. Give them new names.”

The girl laughed with him. Even her laugh was silver.

"Her dad was a serial killer, you know," Ezekiel said.

"Isn't her brother a prophet?" the girl asked, "Jonah, or something. Wasn't that his name?"

"I don't remember," I said.

“Hey, Charles, you know I'm only kidding you. Jeanine's a good girl. She's good for you. Come on over here to our side of the tree. Come have a smoke with us."

I sighed.

“Charles, don’t feel bad. I’m sorry. Come on over here.”

I went to join them. Ezekiel and the girl were still naked. The girl pulled her silvery hair behind her shoulders while Ezekiel fished in his pants in the branches above for a pack of cigarettes.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl, trying to distract myself from the raw space between her legs.

“Chicory,” she said.

“She’s twelve years old,” Ezekiel said, “her parents just died.”

“Light my cigarette for me,” Chicory said.

He lit a cigarette and slipped it between her lips. She sucked on the end but didn’t inhale, crossed and uncrossed her legs. The monsters in the woods nearby screech hollered and shook the trees.

“What was that?” she said.

“Don't worry, baby, those monsters aren't going to come after us. I'm the chosen of God.”

He tilted her chin back and took a kiss and promised another miracle.

"Get dressed," he told Chicory, "I'll show you something special. Charles. You come too."

Ezekiel led us out of the woods past Edgewater. He and Chicory walked arm in arm, almost skipping as they walked, laughing and telling jokes. As usual, I walked a few paces behind them with my hands thrust into the pockets of my jacket.

When Chicory figured out where we were going she stopped laughing. She tugged sharp on Ezekiel’s elbow and dug her heels into the grass.

"Let's go back, come on, Ezekiel. Let’s go back," She said.

“What did I tell you before?” he said, “don’t worry about a thing.”

We stopped at the edge of town, at the sloping, knuckled hills that looked out beyond the fields of the machines.

I couldn't see the machines in the dark because of the gray miasma surrounding their faces and limbs. Yet I smelled the clean plated metal of their inner workings. I heard the thud of their shredded organs bearing down on us.

“What are we doing here?” Chicory asked.

"Watch this," Ezekiel said, and then he fell down into the grass in an epileptic fit.

Chicory fell to her knees beside his writhing body.

“Don’t touch him,” I said to her, “he does this all the time.”

She shook his shoulders.

“Chicory,” I said, “stop.”

“I don’t want him to choke on his tongue,” she said.

Ezekiel entangled her arms in his fit of epilepsy and they rolled together on the ground. He crushed her body beneath him. She grasped clumps of grass between her fists and pulled and pulled until the ground turned bald.

“Stop please,” Chicory kept repeating, her voice muffled underneath him, “let’s go back.”

Ezekiel couldn’t speak. Strained, burbling noises hit the back of his throat. The shiny sphere in the back of his head glowed so bright and so hot I thought it might peel back all the layers of his skull.

Down in the field the machines spewed a flash of fire into the darkness. The miasma cleared. The soil squirmed and a mass of dirty white material shot up out of the ground. It writhed in the air, tumbled the soil underneath it until the ground itself seemed to be alive. But soon the dirty white was given definition, the soil receded. They were bones of our dead.

As they pulled themselves up out of the soil those bones spit out their teeth and straightened their spines. They uncurled their clutching fingers. Their stiffened stomachs unfurled, their arms and legs rolled out from their sides and smacked the dirt. Silent, they filed past us and marched out of the machine fields toward Edgewater.

Ezekiel stopped convulsing and Chicory uncoiled herself from his limbs. He gripped her wrist but she kicked away from him.

“Get off of me!” Chicory cried, but Ezekiel had already let go of her wrist and wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. He tilted his head back toward the fields and laughed.

"Isn't that something?" he said, "Look at what God did. Look at what I did."

The dead filtered out of the machine fields in stark white rows as Ezekiel lay in the grass and laughed and laughed. As they approached us the fog peeled from their faces and revealed in detail all the empty spaces between their bones, the sockets of their elbows and knees pulled apart in an invisible suspension. As they got close Chicory was the first to recognize them.

"I know that girl. That's Reverend Elli's sister." Chicory said, as a creature wearing a black funeral dress dragged herself past us. "And look over there, that's Jenny Sikes. You know, the crazy English teacher that had sex with all those underage girls. God, she walked like she was dead even while she was still alive."

Chicory was right - these were people who had died in Edgewater in the last twenty years, maybe even longer. I found myself searching for the face of my father.

"I think I saw my parents up there," Chicory said, "Didn't you see them?”

Before Ezekiel or I could tell her to stop, she ran ahead of us and disappeared into the folds of the marching dead. Ezekiel and I trailed behind.

"Where is she going?" I asked him.

"I have no idea what that girl's doing," he said, “come on, let’s follow them out. God tells me they're going to the capitol,” Ezekiel said.

"For what?"

"Why, to join God's army and go kill heathens and heretics of course," Ezekiel said, and he smiled a big, bloody, dinner steak smile.

We left the machine fields behind and followed the path the dead made through Edgewater. I called out Chicory’s name several times. No answer.

“Stop worrying about that girl,” Ezekiel said, “she’s fine.”

We walked past the derelict houses and chiaroscuro streets of the night, past the closed shops, the monster holes and preaching zones and blood spattered execution platforms. They dead always stayed a step ahead of us.

We passed Jeanine's house. Jeanine sat outside on the porch in a pink nightie, her black lion’s hair pinned to the back of her neck. She smoked a cigarette with insomnia cracking her eyes. When the dead passed her house in their silent formation she raised the cigarette to her lips without a moment’s hesitation, or surprise. Then she saw me and Ezekiel. Ezekiel waved at her. She stubbed her cigarette out on the porch balustrade and walked out into the street toward us.

"What's going on?" she asked me.

"Ezekiel raised the dead," I said.

“Again?” she asked.

We continued walking. Jeanine followed us. We found Chicory up the street, tugging on the desiccated arm of a woman, calling out for Mommy.

"She's my mom," Chicory said, "look at her face. Mommy. Mommy, it's me. It's Chicory."

"Let her go, Chicory," Ezekiel said, "your Mommy's dead."

The skeleton tried to drag itself forward with Chicory clinging to its hips. After a few moments the woman raised her fist, hit Chicory against the face, and knocked her on the ground. She kept moving forward and soon disappeared up the street. Chicory lay on the ground where she fell, curling her body into a cloister, covering her face and crying.

"Get up, silly girl," Ezekiel said to Chicory, "come on. You're making me miss out on all the fun."

As if in response to Chicory’s cries, lights flickered on all up and down the street. People came out of their houses to search for their dead relatives. They called the names of people we used to know. They ran up and down Edgewater in a heated riot, screaming and setting fires and breaking windows and clinging to once familiar bones. All the while, the dead remained silent.

Chicory continued to cry. Ezekiel shrugged and walked off, leaving the three of us behind.

"See anyone you know?” Jeanine asked.

"No," I said, "not anyone important, I mean."

Chicory picked herself up off the street. Her face looked like a chunk of bone, a hard white shell.

“Hey, are you all right?” Jeanine asked her.

In response Chicory ran off into the night.

Jeanine and I went after Ezekiel. Ahead of us people continued to scream and cry, calling out the names of the people we used to know. We came across decayed faces dropped onto the asphalt, peeled and clawed and distended from the bone, as well as bits of finger bones and leg bones, the clawed away shreds of funeral clothes.