Deadlines, p.10
Deadlines, page 10
“It means the light hurts me.”
“Oh,” she said awkwardly as she turned and grabbed the coffee pot, refilling his cup.
“How far away am I from Big Stone Gap, Virginia?”
“Not but so far. Bus’ll get you there by this afternoon if you catch it.”
He nodded.
She glanced up at him, at the wide sunglasses that sat perched upon his narrow face. The frames glinted shiny gold in the morning light, though their lenses were black as the diner’s coffee and betrayed not even a glimpse of the eyes behind them.
“I like your glasses,” she said.
“Thanks,” he smiled and nodded.
“They remind me of—”
“Elvis?” he interrupted.
“Yeah!” her face lit up. “You like Elvis?”
“Oh yeah,” he replied, “big fan of the King.”
3
His head lying against the winter-cold glass of the window, the bus snaking through the mountains, Levi softly hummed the tune of Mr. Sandman by the Chordettes. He watched the landscape slip by through the curves and hills and gaps. He would soon be in Big Stone Gap, where he would visit with Mr. Gannon, whom he first saw in a dream some time ago. As was his way, Levi waited for more visions and dreams to explain to him the details of what was to be done. Weeks went by, as dream by dream the thread of action to be followed revealed itself to him. Then the day came when he knew it was time to set upon this new journey. He’d been sleeping in a homeless shelter in Memphis, when he awoke one morning and found laid aside his pillow the tender stem and bud of a Boneflower. The messenger who had delivered it by then long-gone, he rose, left the shelter that morning and began working his way by leg and by thumb northward across Tennessee. He’d met Shawn in a “gentleman’s club” just outside of Chattanooga and upon the condition that Levi spent the night with the man, allowing him to satisfy some of the perversions he had entertained only in his mind up until that afternoon, Shawn had agreed to take him to the Virginia line. He’d kept his bargain, and had even given Levi some money. Levi was no stranger to this way of traveling about the country, as he had no other means and nothing to offer besides what pleasures might be culled from the sexual oddity nature had made him. Such was the burden he bore for his purpose in life; being a seer and a messenger. This way of living meant that Levi was often in the company of the perverse, which suited Levi just fine, for the nature of his business was most often unpleasant to say the least and was best kept from the untainted eyes of the wholesome. Steering clear of those folks had never been a problem either, owing perhaps to his milky and odd appearance or simply by some instinct of self-preservation they possessed. He was always shunned by those who walked in the world of normality.
Normal. Wholesome. Levi reflected on these concepts.
He drew a small velvet sack from his coat and untied the string, reached inside and removed the Boneflower. He stared long at it. It was reaching full bloom, so beautiful. He smiled, and behind his golden sunglasses his eyes closed, picturing the mountains outside covered in the flower’s bloodbone hues.
4
Caleb sat in silence, reading scripture as he did every night after dinner. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the remnants of dinner. A solitary plate bearing the bones of good fried chicken, swimming in a sea of red juice left over from the stewed tomatoes, with bits of corn scattered about the plate. Seeing this, he cared not to think of the pans he had yet to wash. Such work, although necessary, was tedious, and he would much rather immerse himself in the Word than scrub plates and iron. He drew his eyes away from the kitchen area of the trailer and back to Book of Job. He’d read this book of the Bible perhaps a hundred times or more as a child. As a man, he had read it a thousand, finding particular relevance to his own life, especially after the loss of his wife and children in a terrible storm that toppled their cabin home one August night so many years ago.
And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Thrice he read the verse, searching for meaning and comfort as he always did. As always none came to him. His eyes welled with tears, and he looked over to the kitchen, the unwashed pans now seeming like sweet relief. He grumbled the lump out of his throat as he slipped the bookmark between the pages and set it down on the coffee table. Gathering his dish and utensils, he stood at the kitchen sink and ran the warm water over his hands, feeling the ache of coldness that dwelt within them disappear. He washed the dishes carefully, placing them in the drying rack beside the sink. Looking up at the den, he noticed his boots sitting at the edge of the rug, dust and chunky mud as black as night spilled around them onto the simple green rug.
“Lands sakes,” he muttered, chiding himself. “Evelyn would be shamed.”
Caleb finished the dishes and dried his hands with the dishcloth. In sockfeet, he strode into the den and removed his coal-blackened work boots to the corner by the door. He started back toward the couch to sit and resume his reading.
Then there came a knock at the door.
His brow wrinkled in confusion and he glanced at the clock above the kitchen window. 9:17 it read. Caleb rarely received any company at all, especially not this late at night. Thinking on it, perhaps it was the widow Bensley searching for her dog, a noisy hound named Rocky, who was prone to escaping. He snorted. Hell of a night to be tramping about, he thought to himself as he switched on the porch light and opened the door.
The dim light illuminated the shape that stood in drab, dark clothes with the heavy white snow swirling around him like thousands of falling stars. As the door opened, the figure looked up from its stare at the threshold and from beneath the shade of his hood, Caleb saw a face so pale as to be outdone only by the layer of winter that lay thick on the porch. The man’s steel blue eyes were wide against the long narrow canvas of his face, his pupils as black as the mountain night. He was weirdly tall and thin, standing more like a scarecrow than a man. A half smile crept across his cheeks as his pale lips parted.
“Caleb Gannon?”
“Yes?” he replied, taken aback by the familiarity.
“We have business to tend to, you and I,” spoke the pale man in a slow and sultry southern drawl.
“Well, I …” Caleb hesitated for a moment, but staring into the dark pools of the pale man’s gaze melted all fear, all apprehension, and contrary will. Strangely, he was happy to welcome the stranger.
“Come on in, then,” he muttered and stepped out of the way as the pale stranger ducked his head and slipped through the doorway like a shadow of snow and night.
The very second the door closed shut, Caleb’s wholesale trust in this stranger began to dissipate and he turned to watch the pale man shake the snow from his coat, removing it and laying it on the floor along with his shoes, which Caleb had not even realized the man had removed.
“You have a pleasant home, Mr. Gannon,” the man uttered, turning to face his host, who stood awkward, the doorknob still in his grasp.
“Yes, well thank you …” Caleb stammered, suddenly aware of his awkward way. The stranger said nothing, made no motion whatsoever.
Caleb composed himself. “What can I do for you?”
The man smiled. “Indeed, Mr. Gannon, it’s what you can do for us all.”
Caleb looked at him, questioning.
“But then I’m getting ahead of myself,” the man said, offering his hand. “I am Levi.”
Caleb took his hand and shook it, the chill of the night spilling from one palm to the other. He found something about the tall man repellant, and not solely because of his odd look, though there was a certain warmth to him, an unlikely likeability. Still he was a stranger and Caleb felt unsure as to why he’d so readily allowed him entry. Caleb glanced to the shotgun leaning up against the TV.
“You a union rep or something?” Caleb asked in his short, stunted accent. “Eh … no, no I’m not,” the man replied. “But I am here about the mine.” Caleb motioned for the stranger to have a seat on the couch.
Caleb leaned against the wall. “Oh? How’s that?”
“Well, the fact is I need you to stop that mine. Shaft 43 anyway.”
“What the hell are you talking—” Caleb began, but paused as he again found himself locked in the stranger’s deep black stare. It was not that Caleb felt threatened, not at all, but more that there was no resisting the man’s firm resolve in being here and being heard. Underneath that was the innate knowledge that the pale stranger could snap Caleb’s mind like a twig if he so wished.
“You like coffee, Mr. Levi?”
The man nodded and bowed his head, “Please, just Levi. And yes, I would love some coffee.”
“Will do,” Caleb replied, turning his back and pulling a couple of cups from the cupboard. He poured the hot coffee into the cups.
“Take milk or sugar?” he asked, his back still to the stranger.
“Lots of both,” Levi replied. Caleb set the pint of milk, sugar bowl and two spoons on a TV tray along with the cups of coffee and brought it into the den. He set it down on the coffee table and came around, taking a seat next to the man on the couch.
“So you say we need to shut down Shaft 43 …”
Levi nodded.
“And how would that help anybody?” he asked, tending to the milk and sugar, pouring both generously into the stranger’s cup. He handed it over and took a sip of his own lightly sweetened coffee.
“Anybody …” the pale man uttered after his first sip, then turned his head to stare at Caleb with his great, blue-black eyes. “It would help everybody, Mr. Gannon.”
Caleb scoffed. “Like who?” he retorted.
“Everybody. Everybody in the world.”
A snort escaped Caleb as he heard these words. The coal mine was the lifeblood of this community, what little there was left of it.
“Beg your pardon, Mr. Levi, but us who live here don’t see it that way. Hell, that shaft’s one of our oldest and deepest, yielded a lot of good coal over the years.”
The stranger set down his cup and sighed. He then fixed Caleb with his stare. “And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.”
Caleb sat in silence, his arm frozen in the midst of setting down his cup, which now trembled in his faltering grip.
Levi reached up and pried the cup from the man’s fingers, set it upon the table.
“You know the scripture of Job, Caleb Gannon?”
Caleb nodded, struck and mystified at how the pale man could have plucked from his mind the very lines of scripture that haunted him always.
“Then know this, and heed what I tell you,” Levi claimed.
Digging into his coat, the man produced a small sack and drew from it a flower the likes of which Caleb had never seen. Its bloom was in its infancy, the petals just beginning to draw away from their center, but it was stunning nonetheless; its staunch, ivory petals rimmed on their edges by the deepest red, its center a dark color that was nearly incomprehensible to Caleb, not green nor black, not red nor flesh, it was all and it was none.
“You have been chosen as Job was, to be a messenger. And like Job, further sacrifice will be demanded of you to carry out what must be done. From one of the chosen to another, I bring to you the Boneflower.”
Fascinated with its beauty, Caleb felt the silken touch of the flower as his fingers clasped its stem.
5
Caleb was roused from a dark sleep, the tendrils of dream slipping away reluctantly as he opened his eyes and shifted, sitting upright. Levi sat next to him, staring into the shadows of the den. He reached out and drank of his coffee, now cold.
“You dream?” Levi inquired, speaking to him but never breaking his empty gaze.
“I … I don’t know,” Caleb replied. Dream? He didn’t even remember falling asleep. How strange.
Levi turned to look at him. “You will.”
“I’ve felt like Job for a long time now … but thinking of it that way, seems blasphemous.”
The pale man snickered. “I suppose it could be, if it didn’t ring true,” Levi retorted.
They sat in silence for a long while, Caleb turning over and over in his head the night’s events, the dreams which he did not remember, but that seemed so familiar.
Caleb reached to the table and cradled the bloom of the Boneflower in his cupped hand as he studied it. It was entrancing, much like the stranger himself.
“What is it, this Boneflower?”
Levi smiled and leaned in. “It is a gift from the Elder Ones. Some say it’s the flower that grows at the foot of the tree of life, some say it is made by the Elders themselves, and grows by divine will. It is given to all those who are chosen to be messengers of the light, to serve the cause.”
“There are others?” the old miner asked, his voice trembling.
“Oh, yes,” the pale man smiled. “Yes, indeed. Many others, not all like us, though. Some play their part willingly, knowingly. Others do not. But from the sacrifice to the Seraphim, all play their part in the cause.”
“What cause?” Caleb turned his hollow eyed gaze to the pale man.
Levi rose quickly from the couch, giving Caleb a bit of a start. He strode quietly to the window and drew back the curtains. There was naught to be seen but his own ghostly reflection and the sprawling mountain darkness.
“The cause … to drive back the relentless march of the horde, terrible things that don’t belong in the world as it is; things that would dwarf the atrocities that man has witnessed and has yet to dream of. To keep at bay the agents of these things, its foul servants. And in the matter of Shaft 43, to deny a vile thing entry to this surface world.”
“Something evil?”
Levi turned and looked at the fragile man, whose suffering and loss were burned forever on his countenance, etched into the wrinkles of tired skin stretched over failing bones. He could feel his pain, as was part of Levi’s talent. He felt a heart gray and weak with despair, now waking to the miracle of being given the chance to become the tip of a righteous sword.
“Evil? Perhaps,” Levi replied, then returned his gaze to the window. “For certain, that which lies at the unplumbed depths of Shaft 43 would ravage this world if given the chance. And today, Caleb Gannon … that is the only cause you need be concerned with. To keep locked away in the earth things that have learned to walk, which ought to crawl.”
Levi returned to the couch where he sat and read silently the Book of Numbers. Caleb shook his head and blinked his eyes, trying to understand but finding himself to be suddenly overcome with weariness. The music of the pale stranger’s words seemed as a lullaby and he leaned his head back on the couch and rested his eyes.
6
Caleb saw. He saw what was for the first time in his life. All the moments of his pious life, all his prayers, all his guarding against evil … nothing had ever so embedded itself as this. It was as if the great evil had pulled back a bit of its curtain and allowed him a look. In that glimpse, he saw many things. Puzzle pieces of sin that grew to make sense. He saw his own sins from childhood, he saw the sins of his wife and his sons, though some were hard to bear witness to. Ultimately he was afforded a look at the dark and sinister evil that lay at the foot of mankind, its many tentacles winding their way through every aspect of human life. Black, writhing, grasping, sucking the life that God had given. It froze his limbs and he stared at the floor as the visions receded. His eyes, wide in astonishment, drifted up to the guise of Levi. The pale messenger looked stricken and his eyes followed Caleb’s.
“Your eye is open, Caleb Gannon,” he uttered, reached out and took Caleb’s hand in his own, squeezing hard.
His mind was filled with vision once again. He was suspended in the air, looking down at a majestic mountain range full of tall, craggy peaks covered in tall pines and virgin green growth. Slowly the mountains shrunk, crumbling through the seasons of centuries upon centuries until it became the smooth, weathered humps of earth and rock that are the Appalachians. Then he saw the mine, the mountainside full of machinery and bound with structures of steel and iron, watched it wax and wane from spring to winter and back again … over and over. Then there was Shaft 43, that pinhole in the rock through which mankind sought their wares. He flew down deep into the darkness, deep down beyond the extent of their excavation. The deep earth revealed to him a darkness which man could not know. Then slithering, grasping. A stinking-ill world enveloped him. Pure God damned evil, demonic in the way it chilled the heart and squeezed the breath, a venomous thing driven by the lust for consumption and to sing inhumanly to the cold stars. It was caged, contained, imprisoned. Realizing this, there was a moment of free breath. In the darkness, he heard his own heartbeat, though terrible, slithery things played about it, waiting to constrict life.
Then there was an explosion. Far above. And for a moment the black things around him were equally stunned. For there was utter silence in the black. Then scrambling and slithering the likes of which he could never have imagined. The sensation of the black wings stinging his cheeks as they flew upward and outward. Toward the shaft. Toward the surface. Hunger unchained.
Then out of the deep came a familiar face. The pale stranger, though this sight gave him no comfort. The look on his face was aghast and full of sorrow.
“Look around, Caleb.”
The old miner did so and his face morphed into the guise of his predecessor as he saw the ravaged world, bleak skies full of dark, winged shapes swooping about the still, thick air. The mountain was full of grotesquely moving things with limbs like trees, but were not trees at all. Squirming tentacles like roots slashing through the black earth full of beetles and worms. Then he heard their carrion song. In awful tones and cadence that Caleb had never known, they chanted alien words certainly borne of Hell. He heard, though he did not understand. ia, ia, ia, kuthooloo, ia ia shub, ia ia … and on and on it droned. It seemed Caleb could feel the stars tremble inside his heart and the earth quake with fear in his bones.
