the morgue towards the utilities plant. He’d brought a penlight, but turned neither it nor any other light on as he advanced, his pace dignified but unhesitating, a priest’s advance towards the shrine.
Without light, not even down the blackness of the iron staircase, nor across the restless, buckled concrete floor, he moved blind as any mole, navigating towards the aperture by the scent of its cool, rank updraft and, when he was quite near, by the pull of it, the dizzying gravitation it exhaled.
Only when he had painfully knelt beside it, touched its ragged concrete lip, did he switch on the penlight. He was holding it at his chin, though, lighting only his own face. Leaned his lit face over the vent, self-presenting, and said, “I am here.”
What he had expected, had come: a dizzy downward sagging of his body, a pulling of his heart towards his master. Come down , Jack told him… .
But Harst’s terror had mutinied and taken back his will. He aimed the beam down the vent then. The fissure’s wet throat had widened farther down there, a hungry gullet of ribbed clay and, still farther down, some movement dully glinted.
Harst had reared up, staggered back, and on fear’s rebel legs marched back to the stairs and up them. The light beam, like a shaft of sanity, led him, and his shaky, coward’s body followed until, coming back into his office, he saw this desk, the center and sanctum of his priesthood for nearly thirty years. All the power he’d had here, all the lust gratified… here, he found his better self again.
No further retreat. He took his chair, turned on the lamp. And murmured, “I yield, Jack. I do not flee farther than this. But I just can’t meekly enter my own grave.”
Thus he sat there through the hours. If he was summoned, let the summoner prove his power. He was sincere, believed the summoner would come, and so he sat here in good faith, in obedience. But there was also, sneaking at his mind’s rim, a baser thought: that the summoner could not literally come, and required his self-delivery, his assistance, and in that case, the green hills, the sunlit sky, the sweet breath of the breeze… all these things might— just might— be his again tomorrow.
And so he studied his hands and, with a certain sense of ceremony, embarked on a journey of memory through the long years of his love for Jack. Jack was that rare thing, innately a hero. He’d always gone first into the Hard Places, was born to walk point. Harst thought again of that two hundred meters of jungle, the torn leaves spitting on all sides.
And how much farther than that Jack had carried him, through all their succeeding years together! Along a path both dire and miraculous. Harst’s eyes filled and ran over. So much he owed Jack. All those raptures in the wild night when Harst, red-handed, had known the presence of Power Undying in his spine… .
But always underneath it was this unthinkable point: that immortality meant transmutation , into something so Other that the passage loomed like death itself. And again Jack had walked point! Had taken leave of his body with the brusque, imperative gesture of a king doffing his crown to seize up a greater diadem.
There was a sound from the morgue behind him. A sound? Yes: a drawer unlatched. And then… the steely whisper of a drawer sliding out. Shedding his resolve that he would not move from this spot, Harst willed himself up and away, but discovered he could not move. Could not stir the smallest muscle.
The drawer clicked and rattled delicately in its frame. Next, a soft smack, bare skin touching concrete. The drawer gave a last rattle as its burden left it. Just before Harst heard the next faint, naked footfall, a waft of air tardily touched the back of his head and flowed softly around to his face: a scent of cold and the beginnings of decay.
The moist chafe of foot soles on floor.
Could. Not. Move.
The cool waft teased him more insistently. He was already floating in the
Without light, not even down the blackness of the iron staircase, nor across the restless, buckled concrete floor, he moved blind as any mole, navigating towards the aperture by the scent of its cool, rank updraft and, when he was quite near, by the pull of it, the dizzying gravitation it exhaled.
Only when he had painfully knelt beside it, touched its ragged concrete lip, did he switch on the penlight. He was holding it at his chin, though, lighting only his own face. Leaned his lit face over the vent, self-presenting, and said, “I am here.”
What he had expected, had come: a dizzy downward sagging of his body, a pulling of his heart towards his master. Come down , Jack told him… .
But Harst’s terror had mutinied and taken back his will. He aimed the beam down the vent then. The fissure’s wet throat had widened farther down there, a hungry gullet of ribbed clay and, still farther down, some movement dully glinted.
Harst had reared up, staggered back, and on fear’s rebel legs marched back to the stairs and up them. The light beam, like a shaft of sanity, led him, and his shaky, coward’s body followed until, coming back into his office, he saw this desk, the center and sanctum of his priesthood for nearly thirty years. All the power he’d had here, all the lust gratified… here, he found his better self again.
No further retreat. He took his chair, turned on the lamp. And murmured, “I yield, Jack. I do not flee farther than this. But I just can’t meekly enter my own grave.”
Thus he sat there through the hours. If he was summoned, let the summoner prove his power. He was sincere, believed the summoner would come, and so he sat here in good faith, in obedience. But there was also, sneaking at his mind’s rim, a baser thought: that the summoner could not literally come, and required his self-delivery, his assistance, and in that case, the green hills, the sunlit sky, the sweet breath of the breeze… all these things might— just might— be his again tomorrow.
And so he studied his hands and, with a certain sense of ceremony, embarked on a journey of memory through the long years of his love for Jack. Jack was that rare thing, innately a hero. He’d always gone first into the Hard Places, was born to walk point. Harst thought again of that two hundred meters of jungle, the torn leaves spitting on all sides.
And how much farther than that Jack had carried him, through all their succeeding years together! Along a path both dire and miraculous. Harst’s eyes filled and ran over. So much he owed Jack. All those raptures in the wild night when Harst, red-handed, had known the presence of Power Undying in his spine… .
But always underneath it was this unthinkable point: that immortality meant transmutation , into something so Other that the passage loomed like death itself. And again Jack had walked point! Had taken leave of his body with the brusque, imperative gesture of a king doffing his crown to seize up a greater diadem.
There was a sound from the morgue behind him. A sound? Yes: a drawer unlatched. And then… the steely whisper of a drawer sliding out. Shedding his resolve that he would not move from this spot, Harst willed himself up and away, but discovered he could not move. Could not stir the smallest muscle.
The drawer clicked and rattled delicately in its frame. Next, a soft smack, bare skin touching concrete. The drawer gave a last rattle as its burden left it. Just before Harst heard the next faint, naked footfall, a waft of air tardily touched the back of his head and flowed softly around to his face: a scent of cold and the beginnings of decay.
The moist chafe of foot soles on floor.
Could. Not. Move.
The cool waft teased him more insistently. He was already floating in the
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