Mobius blvd, p.15
Mobius Blvd, page 15
The Reverend’s hands clenched the pulpit.
“You are dry timber in a holy wind. Repent.”
And then he fell silent.
A long pause.
No benediction. No closing prayer.
He stepped down and walked past the pews without looking at anyone. I stood quickly and followed him out into the cold. When we reached the horses, I asked him what I thought was a simple question.
“Did you mean to say that part about the ridge remembering?”
He looked at me for a long moment, the kind that makes you feel like you’ve already said too much.
“Remember your question,” he said. “Sometimes the answers present themselves when you ride.”
Then he mounted, and we rode on.
The House with No Cross
We didn’t stop for lunch.
The Reverend said little as we rode. His mare moved with certainty, as if she knew the path better than he did. The trail narrowed again, shouldered in by pine and birch, and the mist that had lifted for the sermon returned...thicker now, clinging low to the ground like something alive.
I tried to shake the feeling that had settled over me after the chapel. It was the silence, I told myself. Too long. Too clean. Like the forest had been listening, and now it needed time to think.
It was near dusk when he pulled his horse up short and raised one hand.
“There,” he said.
I followed his gaze. Just ahead, half-buried in snowmelt and shadow, was a house...barely more than a shack. The boards had gone silver with age, and the roof sagged in the middle. A chimney leaned crooked at one end. The windows were dark.
There was no cross on the door.
No sign of blessing. No charm. No pine bough. Not even a horseshoe nailed over the lintel.
“This is the one,” he said.
“The one what?” I asked.
He dismounted. “The house where the Word hasn’t walked.”
As he approached the door, it opened...not all at once, but slow, like someone didn’t want to be seen doing it.
A young woman stood there.
She looked maybe seventeen. Barefoot. Her dress was thin, her hair tied back in a loose braid. Her face was white, not with sickness but with something like fear. Her eyes found mine, for just a moment, and in that second, I saw something I didn’t want to name.
She looked at the Reverend, and then...quietly, like someone surrendering...she stepped aside to let him in.
He didn’t look back at me. The door shut behind him. But before it did, something moved in the darkness within. It was large.
I stayed where I was. My hands clenched the reins tight.
It was fully dark now, except for a single line of orange firelight slipping between the bottom of the door and the warped floorboards.
Then I heard it.
Not talking.
Not a struggle.
But a sound with rhythm.
A wet, snapping crack.
Then a pause.
Then again.
Again.
The sound of a belt or a switch against skin. Muffled gasps between. And then...hisses.
I slid from the saddle but didn’t move forward. I couldn’t. My legs locked up.
Inside, another blow landed. Then silence.
The door opened.
The Reverend stepped out, adjusting his coat sleeves. His face was sweating. He took deep breaths, the actions of a man who had run a long course.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just looked off into the trees. I could hear the faint trickle of a creek somewhere beyond the ridge.
“The darkness had settled deep,” he said finally.
I stared at him.
“She’ll sleep now,” he said. “And when she wakes, she’ll be clean.”
He mounted his mare and looked down at me. “Some houses,” he said, “you don’t preach to from a pulpit. Some doors open only to the rod.”
He turned the horse and began to ride.
I stood there a moment longer, listening. But the shack was silent again.
Then I followed.
The Confession
We rode until near midnight.
Neither of us spoke.
The trail turned jagged after the last ridge. Stones jutted from the earth like broken teeth, and every few yards one of the horses stumbled, shaking its head as though something unseen was clinging to its ears. Above us, the moon hung behind clouds, offering light but no comfort.
Eventually, we made camp beneath a stand of spruce, their roots braided deep through the frost-hardened soil. The Reverend built a fire with practiced hands. I unrolled my bedroll and sat down, the chill still in my bones.
He said grace before eating, as he always did...slow, measured, like he was speaking not to God but to someone sitting just outside the circle of firelight.
Afterward, he lay down and folded his arms over his chest.
He fell asleep fast.
But sleep did not come to me.
I watched him. Watched the firelight flicker against his face, carving shadows deep into the folds of his skin. His lips moved, almost imperceptibly. I leaned closer, thinking he was praying.
But it wasn’t prayer.
It was whispering.
Low. Broken.
I heard phrases...some from Scripture, others... wrong.
“The blood shall cleanse...”
“The wilderness makes no promises...”
“She asked for the rod. She did. She did.”
I sat back. The skin along my arms was prickled, my breath shallow.
I reached into my pack for the small leather Bible I carried. I hadn’t opened it in days. I wasn’t sure why.
The cover felt colder than it should have.
I opened it to the first page.
Something was wrong.
The names were wrong.
Where it should have said Matthew, it said Matron. The Beatitudes were garbled...half of them rewritten in unfamiliar phrasing:
“Blessed are the silent, for they shall not be heard.
Blessed are the watchers, for they see the thing behind the veil.”
I flipped faster. John was there, but it wasn’t the gospel I knew. It had verses I’d never read before. Things that didn’t feel like misprints...they felt older. Hungrier.
I shut the book and held it in my lap, my heart pounding.
The fire crackled once, sharp and sudden.
The Reverend opened his eyes.
“Reading?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
He sat up slowly, as though waking from something heavier than sleep.
“The Word is alive,” he said. “It speaks. Sometimes it speaks back.”
I forced my voice to stay level. “My Bible has... errors.”
He nodded, like that was no surprise at all.
“The Word isn’t paper,” he said. “It’s not ink. The page is only what the Word wears, like skin. It can change its clothes.”
I stared at him.
He stood and walked to the edge of the firelight.
“The circuit doesn’t just go over hills and towns,” he said. “It loops through time. Through sorrow. Through judgment. Each ride changes the rider.”
He looked back at me.
“Some things you can only learn once you’ve carried the Word long enough.”
He let that sit. Then he lay back down. And this time, when he whispered, I didn’t lean in. I turned away and watched the trees.
Somewhere in the dark, an owl called once.
But no wind blew.
And sleep, when it came, was thin and fevered and full of hollow-eyed figures standing at doorways with mouths full of fire.
The Final Circuit
The last chapel stood at the edge of the world.
We reached it by a trail so narrow we had to dismount and lead the horses single-file. The trees here leaned away from the clearing, their roots half-exposed, as though trying to escape. The air was brittle, sour with iron and smoke, though no fire burned. Beneath the smell was something worse...mildew and marrow and something like wet hair.
The chapel squatted low, roof slumped like a beast at rest. No windows. No cross. Only a ring of black earth where nothing grew.
The Reverend didn’t hesitate. He walked straight to the door and placed his hand on the wood.
“She’s been quiet,” he said. “But quiet’s not the same as gone.”
I didn’t ask what he meant.
Inside, it was cold. Older than cold. The kind of chill that comes not from air, but from time. The only furniture was a slab of iron in the center of the room, black with age. Around it, carved into the floor, a spiral of words:
“Speak, that the flame may sleep.”
The Reverend lit a lantern and hung it. Then he turned to me and said with a grim smile, “As fine a place for an end as one could wish.”
I looked at him.
He smiled, faintly.
“You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The weight. The watching. The Word scratching at the corners of your mind.”
He stepped toward the slab. “Twenty-seven years ago, I came here. My preacher stood where I stand now. I watched him open the Book. I watched him speak until the blood ran from his nose. I watched the earth open and the fire speak back.”
I swallowed.
“And I watched him step down into the hole.”
I said nothing. My breath was shallow.
The Reverend placed his Bible on the slab.
“I preached that night. I preached until the crack closed. Until her voice fell silent again.” He paused. “But not forever.”
He stepped back and gestured for me to take his place.
“Speak,” he said. “Let the Word settle her.”
I stepped forward, knees shaking. I opened my Bible...but the pages weren’t right. The words shimmered and bent. Verses twisted into something darker.
Still, I began.
“My God is a fire...”
A groan beneath the floorboards. The spiral pulsed red, slow as breath.
“...and His flame burns the dross of the world...”
The slab of iron shifted. A line split down the middle.
I faltered. My voice broke.
The Reverend didn’t move.
From the crack, a sound rose...wet, whispering, like a voice with too many mouths. The lantern flickered. The spiral glowed.
And then he stepped forward.
The Reverend.
He stepped onto the slab, into the widening crack.
He looked back at me. His eyes were black.
“The flame chooses,” he said, but it wasn’t his voice.
Something inside him spoke now.
It smiled with his teeth.
I stumbled backward. The air swirled around him, thick and hot.
“Speak,” the voice said through him. “Bind me again.”
The Reverend reached for me.
His hand cracked at the wrist. His skin bubbled like old varnish.
And I knew.
This was the inheritance.
This was the end of the circuit, and the beginning of mine.
I raised my voice. Not scripture. Not verse.
Just words.
Fierce, raw, desperate.
“Be silent, beast! You are named! You are known! You are not welcome here!”
The slab shook.
The Reverend screamed...one long, spiraling howl.
I kept going.
“Return to the dust, to the deep, to the silence that bore you!”
His body bent backward, arms wide. His chest split with light.
It took a long time before he was fully consumed.
The world outside was still, the cold biting deeper than before, as if something beneath the soil had awakened and was watching. I dragged the Reverend’s body to the edge of the clearing and buried him shallow, the earth reluctant to open, the roots twisted and black. I marked the grave with a stone, but even as I did, I felt the gesture was empty. The land here did not remember the dead kindly.
I saddled my horse and rode out alone, the circuit now mine.
Each town along the route seemed smaller, the faces in the pews more hollowed, their eyes fixed not on me, but on the chained Bible I carried. I preached, as the Reverend had, but the words no longer felt like mine. The scripture shifted beneath my tongue...verses bent, promises soured. I spoke of burdens and cleansing, of fire and silence, and watched as the congregation’s fear deepened, their hope curdling into something like dread.
At night, I dreamed of the spiral carved in the chapel floor, of the iron slab and the crack that split the world. I dreamed of the Reverend’s voice, now warped and echoing, urging me onward: “Speak, that the flame may sleep.” But the flame did not sleep. It watched, hungry, patient.
I began to notice changes in myself. My prayers grew shorter, my silences longer. The Bible’s pages grew slick and dark at the edges, the ink bleeding into strange, hungry shapes. Sometimes, when I spoke, I heard a second voice beneath my own—low, insistent, promising that the circuit would never end, only change hands.
The people grew wary. Some stopped coming to the chapel. Others lingered after the service, eyes wide, lips moving in silent pleas. I could offer them nothing but the Word, and the Word was not what it had been.
One morning, as I prepared to ride the last leg of the circuit, I caught my reflection in a window. My eyes were rimmed with shadow, my mouth set in a line I recognized from the Reverend. I understood, then, that the spiral had already begun to turn within me.
The road led, inevitably, back to the lonely chapel at the world’s end. I felt its pull—a promise, a curse. I knew, with a certainty that hollowed me out, that I would stand on that slab again. That I would speak the words, and that the flame would choose.
And as I rode through the thinning mist, the Bible heavy in my saddlebag, I realized the truth the Reverend had carried in silence: the circuit does not save. It only feeds. And someday, when the spiral closed, I too would split with light, and another would inherit the burden.
The Word is a sword. Speak with blood.
The flame never truly sleeps.
THE ENTANGLED
Brian C. Mahon
The rustling packet of wasabi cashews barely gets a headshake out of Curtis. His eyes stay bleakly locked on the camera’s feed, an unlit cigarette bobbling between his lips. Joren shoves the cashews into a breast pocket and rolls alongside on a black-cushioned stool.
“How are you holding on?”
Curtis shrugs, plucking the cigarette to place it behind his ear. He glances up at the ticking, brown wall clock, then murmurs, “Didn’t realize it was time already.” Joren smiles and pats him on the back.
“It is time, yes. Has there been any change?”
“Jor, I would’ve called up to the palace if there were any. Told you and Lem before, if I’m on, no news is no news.”
“No news is good news is the phrase, friend.”
Curtis clicks his tongue seeing Joren’s good-natured grin. He wonders if the Dutch’s cheery nature wasn’t proof he was the first to resign to the situation. “Yeah, usually is. Not down here though, and not from me.” Curtis slaps his knees and stands with a groan, pointing to the camera screen, “No changes,” then to the computer screen to the right, “Everything still green, for now.”
Joren tips back a red-billed Boston Red Sox ball cap and pushes his glasses up as he leans in to take stock of the neutron detector’s hard water tank: temperature, monitoring equipment supply voltage and temperature, signal output current, and the rest of the data cavalcade. Curtis could see that Joren’s eyes kept flitting back to the camera.
“Any questions?”
“No, um, no questions. I brought a crossword puzzle down, and a dictionary, so I should be a-okay.”
“That’s fine. Just...,” Curtis sighs, “Just please don’t get distracted. Don’t hesitate to call up if you need something. I’ll make sure Lem’s up before I go to sleep.”
“Thanks, Curt! See you in eight!”
“See ya.” Curtis gives one last look to the remote monitoring room’s lower access hatch, which opened to a ten-meter ladder descent. At the base of the ladder’s was the two-hundred-and-fifty-meter underground corridor leading to the tank. In the opposite direction, the electronics room housed power conversion modes and server cabinets, which Curtis starts wedging past to access the service elevator connecting to the surface. Without looking back at Joren, he tugs hard on a canvas strap poking out between the elevator’s guillotine doors, shutting them with the loudest noise he expected to hear that night.
The clear midnight Montana sky shimmers with a sheet of stars Curt would never have known if he’d stayed in Birmingham. Instead, he growls internally, lighting his cigarette, I’ve got to deal with this. Trails of smoke and misting breath lazily wind in his wake as he passes the nitrogen farm toward the stacked trailers that is their home.
Clint Eastwood’s signature squint eyes Curt from a TV in the corner of the team’s dining area, and the sharp scent of burnt over black coffee stings his nose. Unamused, he looks at the figure sitting at the main table. “Nice to see you’re up, Lem. Couldn’t bother making a fresh pot?”
Lemuel, lead researcher when research was still their focus, pauses the DVD. “We still had half a pot from last night. It’s a lot stronger when it’s reheated. Less water, more taste,” he says, yellowed teeth flashing from behind a snow-white beard. Curtis shrugs in response and digs through the cabinets to find a box of crackers. “Besides, we probably need to conserve the coffee we have. Got a hold of Burkhardt finally,” Lemuel continued, taking a melancholy tone on mentioning the name.
Curtis’s eyes open at that, and he rushes over to Lemuel, spinning a chair around to sit in, “Yeah? What’d he say? They coming to get us?”
Quiet, hesitating anxious twitches of Lemuel’s mouth, an unmet gaze; Curtis leaned in further, “Lem. What did Burkhardt say? You convinced him, right? Got him to understand what’s going on here?”
Lemuel licked his lips and hit play. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly fills the quiet space between them. “Curt, I can’t. Well, no, I was not able to convince him. Again.”
