BEDLAM

Holy Thursday – 12:30 PM -- EST  

Unevenly lit and thick with dust, the attic smelled of mothballs, mold, and desiccating rat shit. The intruder bent close to the middle pane of a mullioned window in the gable and inhaled these odors deeply through flared nostrils. He exhaled from the back of his partially closed throat through a mouth shaped like an O and produced a "Haaaah" sound, delivering hot, wet breath to the glass. He rubbed with his fingertips, mixing the longstanding dust and the new moisture to a thin mud, then rubbed again. A high-pitched squeak rose. 

When he'd achieved satisfactory clarity, he bent to look out so close he contacted his own cold image reflected in the pane. He appeared suddenly like twins conjoined at the forehead, sharing an unruly shock of thick red hair. Two translucent blue eyes looked in; two, only a little less ephemeral, gazed past the lip of snow on the sill outside the window. There were similar lips, longer, fuller ones, plowed up and bordering the icy gravel driveway that ended at the back of the Victorian-style mansion, of late a home for the few Discalced Carmelite Sisters of Mercy that resided here on the grounds of the Ashkore Hospital for the insane. But the driveway, cleaned by the rains, was shiny black and empty. Most definitely sans the auto, he was so eagerly awaiting. So, he sighed a long, slow sigh before returning to the denuded leader of this, the sterile cloistered outpost he had so recently hijacked. 

"What do you want?" The Mother Superior asked vacantly from the chair to which she had been secured, her bloody upper lip quivering, her naked body straining against the tape that held her fast.

"I am seeking the death of an angel," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. Then he raised his wiry red eyebrows and added convincingly: "You would be, too, if you knew what I know." His rich Belfast brogue was thinned by two decades in a Campania morgue, a place where a particular brand of Italiano was the favored dialect of the locals and those of his ilk, which is to say those with less than a native Napolitano tongue, were barely tolerated professionally and socially vigorously shunned. 

This fact somewhat irked him still... 

The Mother Superior stared at him incredulously for a long while, then spat out angrily, "Get out of my house!"

He laughed at himself, for the force of her bark had momentarily set him on his heels. Her sudden and altogether random explosiveness and the contempt in her voice reminded him that she possessed a powerful will to fight, which was surprising for a woman of her diminutive stature. Not to mention vocation. So much for "turn the other cheek." It was, in fact, that pugilistic disposition that had led him to drag her bony ass up here in the first place, so he could keep an eye on her.

"I am afraid that is just not possible, Mother," he replied, observing that her eyes had drifted to the floor before he had even finished his reply.

He'd seen this before. It had been, in others at least, a sign of the resignation they'd felt upon concluding (however mistakenly) that they were in the hands of just another escaped lunatic, one who was simply amusing himself outside the asylum until the police came and nabbed him and dragged him kicking and screaming and struggling against one of those damned white straight jackets all the way back to...

A chill climbed his spine, and then a disquieting scratch cut into his throat, and he hacked and swallowed hard or tried to but found himself too parched. 

Still at the window, and there, hoping for a sign of the arrival of his one, actual prey, Byrce realized that the inside sill, coated with dust as it was, must be the culprit. The source of my discomfort, he mused. And with his fingertip, he dragged a line into the powder. Oddly, the fingertip, so coated, reminded him of a fuzzy dandelion he'd plucked from a crack in the sidewalk upon leaving the first funeral he'd ever attended. And then, not so oddly perhaps, he thought the dust could pass for ashes. Yes. Ashes to ashes, he thought. "Dust to dust!" he said aloud, causing the Mother Superior to turn sharply. 

He held the fingertip up for closer inspection while thinking fondly of the parent he'd buried that day, back when he was but a boy and the world held so many alluring mysteries. He closed his eyes to see her in his mind. He made a wish for her, as fine as the white powder that flew as he blew away the imaginary fuzzies from the recollected flower that had gone to seed in his hand so long ago... 

He looked at his captive again now and felt strangely as if he was seeing the Mother Superior for the first time, though they'd spent the better part of the night together. 

But had he really seen her? 

He was excited as he crossed the attic, sauntering to her as a professor might to an inquisitive favorite student he hoped to seduce. He looked her over again and found her in fair physical shape, looking rather tasty for a woman of over sixty years. The decades of severe intermittent fasting, a practice peculiar to her Order, and lots of hard work had evidently done her some good. Still, her skin had begun to sag a bit, especially under the chin, and she was a little too age-spotted and thin for his liking. But then again, her freckled legs were nicely toned, firm even, white, and shaven smooth...

It's too bad we'd not met under different circumstances.

Just now, he realized that though stripped naked and secured fast to her chair, she had, just like a dutiful teacher's pet, been quite accommodating in a way: she'd given him the opportunity by asking for an explanation of his presence here to pass these otherwise dull moments by delivering a favorite speech on a favorite subject. Doing so in long form, rather than just dropping the short, curt answer he had thus far given, seemed now just the thing to do. 

Mustn't miss the opportunity to bond...

"Yes, I say again, my dear Mother Superior: I am seeking the death of an angel." He pronounced her title with care this time as a sure sign of his respect and spoke in an intimate tone and at a level of volume usually reserved for the bedchamber of one's own confidante. "You would be, too, if you knew what I know." He continued, "You see, there is an angel at the shoulder of everyman. Not, as your pretty fables would have it, a "guardian" angel. Oh, no. Not at all that. This one is a reporter of sorts. A reader of souls. A keeper of a book of secrets, of acts unwise and unwarranted, damning even." He leaned in close and whispered. "And, dear Mother, what my angel has seen of me... Well. Let's just say it will keep me out of Heaven."

                                                                                 ***

                                                                    continued below...

“Min du xun do ba wé, gbe kan nan vó.” Andre Kutome said the words aloud slowly, turning them repeatedly on his tongue. He had spent his entire adult life searching for proof of the existence of God. In each of the two previous years, he had returned here, of all places, to make progress on that quest. But progress remained elusive. He had heard this cryptic rejection of his petition for an audience with the prince flowing from a mouth hooded by stubble as dense and black as the charred grasses of the fire-scorched Serengeti plains twice now. Andre expected to hear the Fon dialect slurred again this blistering afternoon by Henri Mamiwata, his friend, emissary, perhaps even brother in some fractured fragment of ancient African blood. Translation: If you want to plumb the secrets of Voodoo, you will have to wait for the end of the world.

Andre had left the red sand road that led to the coast from the city of Ouidah to wait for Henri, who had gone to the prince again for an answer. The once bloody way to the shore was marked now by stones commemorating the abduction of slaves by fellow countrymen. Betrayal for profit of brother by brother began here. Betrayal was Europe's first export to the heart of darkness. 

Benin was a place important to Andre's investigation and to history. He needed to see it himself, walk it alone, and be immersed in it. 

Savoring the fresh salt air while walking far into the shallows, he paused and watched the surf surround his ankles in swirls that wrapped around him and clapped together like a slaver's shackles. 

He stopped, stood still, and scanned the horizon. 

A star streaked earthward. 

A lone gull screeched, white wings arching against the china blue sky. It floated now, wings wide, over the cresting dunes. 

Andre followed it with his eyes. 

No sign of Henri there. 

He thought about his trip. How little things had changed this time.

He had arrived two weeks earlier in the middle of Lent and driven into Benin from Nigeria. Bloated bodies clogged drainage ditches alongside pot-holed roads that buzzed with plump green flies. The living staggered west, fleeing plague and famine, fully aware actual escape was impossible: the border was closed, secured by the Benin militia against their passage, but they walked, nonetheless.

Andre had offered the last of his water to one of the Nigerians: a woman who had collapsed beside the ditch. Three heads poked out of her yellow waist sash, each carved like one of her dead children. As is the custom of the Celestial Christians, a new age sect that competed with the hundreds of other religions here now, all of which, taken together, had not a third of the power of the old ways, she would carry these wooden images of her children with her every remaining day of her life; take them to her own grave. 

After sharing his water with her, Andre had returned to his car and driven around her, for she'd refused his offer of a ride. He then weaved between many others like her, focusing on their bony feet to avoid the trap of their hollow, pleading eyes. He knew he could not save them, so Andre did not wish to see them. He had told himself that since he could not keep them all alive, there was no moral obligation to save any of them. 

"Bull shit," he said to himself. He knew it was.

And he was not proud of this sin, a sin of omission. His wife would not have permitted it. "Tess," he said, and the hiss of her name fell into the sound of the sea. If only she were still here to stop it, he thought. He turned over a large, white, empty shell submerged in the clear water, toying with it with his bare toes. 

The gnawing guilt he felt about his inaction in the world consumed him in quiet moments like these when he was alone with his thoughts. Nature looked so lovely and reminded him of the beauty now missing from his life.

He pushed the shell deep into the soft sand. Buried it.

He thought back further to his very first trip to Ouidah. How the rain had suddenly hammered the corrugated iron roof of his hotel bungalow in the middle of a parched and sleepless night, ending three years of drought. The villagers had exploded into the gloriously muddy streets and proclaimed it a miracle. Children danced to the clapping of thunderclouds while some paid homage to the fetish of the laughing Voodoo goddess of water. Others claimed the rains and end of the drought were due to the intercession of a beatified Carmelite nun, one Sister Zweena Kundi, whose cause Kutome had, in fact, come to investigate. There was such a wild commotion, so much vital joy; Kutome had spent the entire night caught up in the celebrations. By week's end, he'd learned that the rains were unrelated to the deceased nun's intercession. Not at all. Quite to the contrary, in fact, and the miracle's story only drew him deeper into a new, bigger mystery.

The village men had slaughtered their livestock's last long before he arrived. Goats and chickens had been drained of life over the fetishes of Sakpata, the god of plagues, as a sacrifice. But Sakpata had not relented. Proud warriors had then been reduced to hunting rats. Pythons feasted on these, fattened on the swept floors of temples, even as children's empty bellies bloated from malnutrition. The rodents were an offering to an even higher Voodoo authority, another of their gods who had not yet been appeased. 

And then the prince had arrived, a Voodoo master who fought with gods, bought them off, or simply went over their heads. Andre was repeatedly told that this prince worked magic that night and commanded the rain to come hammering down. 

Kutome sought out this prince, followed him, and observed. That same week, he personally witnessed the Voodoo legend heal a woman sick with AIDS. With but a single word from this man's lips, she went from bedridden and dying, muscles atrophied, consumed by fever and pneumonia and raw with bedsores, to rising up from her mat, standing when commanded to do so, and walking into the sun. In the span of one more day, she regained her health. Kutome had sampled her blood afterward. She had no trace of the affliction, no trace of any disease, and not a single antibody to any disease – something no doctor in the world could explain. He watched, too, as the prince blessed seeds and had his men scatter them in a long barren field, then command nature to bring forth its bounty. And nature obeyed. Within one short month, manioc plants had sprung up and fully matured, being harvested to feed the starving villagers. Other crops came forth, too. Unlike neighboring Nigeria, this village of Benin on the outskirts of Ouidah had not known drought or plague in three years. It was the children who were fat here now. Not wooden and stuffed into yellow waist sashes, but smiling and contented, while those in the bordering countryside still clamored in the dust and starved. 

These miracles were as close as Kutome had come to finding proof of the existence of God or gods or, for that matter, of Satan or of anything genuinely supernatural, even though it had been his life-long quest to do exactly that. 

Yes, this was as close as he'd ever come to believing in anyone since... 

Since...

He curled his toes in the soft ocean bottom. They found the empty shell again. With each passing backwash, he sank more deeply. He was losing his balance. He had to get out of these waters. 

It had been three years, and he still had not gained access to the prince. He had to learn the secrets of his power. He had to know if God were real, and even if he found only proof of the presence of actual spiritual Evil, that would prove its opposite: Good, and so, God. Either way, he would know that there was more to his life than just this pain...

He pulled his foot from the sands and splashed through the waters towards shore. 

Three years and no closer to deciding about the case that had brought him here, the cause of the Catholic nun who had been put to death on this very beach one hundred and fifty years ago, burned alive in a bonfire for her efforts to stop the slavers.

"Sister," he shouted to the sky. "Zweena Kundi! Are you really still here? Are you watching over these poor, superstitious Africans, even now? Or are you just another of the little gods who reports to this 'prince' of Benin?" He laughed, for it was ironic to him that he had always thought all religion superstition... and yet, here he was in Africa, calling out to a dead nun! And yet, too, he thought, here he was seeking an audience with a man who represented the antithesis of her religion and of his beloved wife's religion: a Voodoo prince who had healed the sick and made it rain... and some even claimed, raised the dead.

But how?

How?

His temples tickled from the flow of tumbling perspiration, and he shook his head vigorously, casting off droplets that hit the thin surface of the shore in a tiny shower. 

He stepped onto the hot, moist sands, and the ocean behind him sang: 

Sssssss...

Sssssss...

This land held many secrets.

He looked for Henri again. 

No sign.

And it wanted to keep them all.

The heat of the sun seared his thick shoulders.

He thought about his daughter, Alala. She flashed into his mind looking so little like him, except, as her mother had once said, for the darkness he'd put into her. He was to take the jet back tomorrow and see her, hold her again in his arms, and feel her mother's presence inside their child. And now his mind flooded again with thoughts of her mother, thoughts he could no longer successfully suppress, of loving her, too, and missing her, and having missed the chance to say goodbye.

He marched across the red sands and retrieved his shirt. 

The white cotton felt cool and made him feel blacker somehow. 

He rolled down his trousers, turned up his shirtsleeves, and crossed to the dunes. At the crest of one, he paused and looked down on the village and the compound at its center. 

The beat of a distant drum entered his body. Shook him.

He was tired of waiting, running out of time, and might be unable to return here again. Not for a long time.

No. Andre Kutome would not leave without an answer.

He would not.

He left the crest and got into his car. It groaned, coughed, and stalled, but he cranked it repeatedly until it came alive and stayed running. No sum of money could secure a decent car in this place.

He felt the drums in his chest again. 

A funeral march? 

He pushed the accelerator hard and gained speed. 

He raced toward the compound. 

"Today," Andre Kutome said aloud. He looked at the file of the Cause of Sister Zweena Kundi on the seat beside him. "I will see the Prince today."

***