Down And Dirty

XII

If the young preacher had given the matter a serious thought, he would have gotten down on his knees and prayed. Instead he ran as fast as he could toward the Werewolf and knocked him down. The hood's tentacle snapped like a whip, flinging Belinda May to safety. She landed on the hood of an automobile. At the same time the Werewolf and the young preacher struck the ground, the two members of the Calvino clan pulled the triggers of their machine guns.

Surprisingly the young preacher felt no anticipation for the next life to come. Instead he felt a curious sense of regret, along with a particular, only slightly contradictory sense of relief. He drew his mind in upon itself and tightening it up into a psychic ball, hurled it to a place where he had once dared not look.

The gunshots were like thunderclaps magnified to an infinite power, and he almost visualized the bullets speeding through the barrels. If this was to be the last nanosecond of his life, well}hen, he would live it gladly. It was still a long time.

Enveloped by cold, he felt himself going down. Going down, down, down into a hell colder than any polar nightmare. He felt his soul dissipating. Was this what death was like? Would he soon envision himself lying on the street, surrounded by the others who had died before him? Would he then be inexorably pulled toward a beckoning white light, where the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ stood side by side with his own mother, awaiting him with outstretched arms? Would he know at last what Heaven was like?

Why then did he feel as if his mind were being ripped apart in a thousand directions? A hundred flashes of intense heat alternated with a hundred flashes of absolute zero. He suddenly believed all his concepts of eternity were just timepieces glimpsed in a dream, his concepts of infinity motes in a sandbox. The young preacher couldn't escape the notion that he had merged, somehow, with all conceivable times and places-a prelude to merging with the inconceivable times and places that lay just beyond the confines of reality.

Death was turning out to be a more complicated experience than he had ever imagined. He wondered if the bullets had already penetrated his body, if his skull was being shattered, and his heart and lungs perforated.

Thankfully there was no pain. Yet. Perhaps he would be spared that one unpleasant aspect of his death.

It was strange, though, to feel so whole and complete when he was actually coming apart.

It was strange still that the nothingness, at first incomprehensible and indescribable, suddenly became just an expanse of concrete, lined at varying intervals, just like a sidewalk.

It was strangest of all to think that instead of lying in the street beside the dead tentacled Werewolf, he found himself still alive. The sidewalk was drenched with blood, none of it, thankfully, his.

But what was that weight on top of him? How had it gotten there?

The weight slid to the sidewalk beside him. It was the hunchbacked joker he had spoken harshly to earlier. Only this time the hunchback lay face up, as haggard as a corpse, and was sinking half an inch into the concrete. The young preacher could only guess how, but he was certain the hunchback was paying the price for saving him.

Suddenly someone jammed a microphone in his face. He looked up to see the television reporter, flanked by his remote team, leaning down. The sound man had a bloody, makeshift bandage over his wirst, and the reporter a fresh wound across his forehead. The camera was on. The sound was on. And the reporter said, "Hey, Reverend Barnett, how are you feeling? Do you have any words for your-"

But before the young preacher could answer, a policeman yanked the reporter away. Another policeman grabbed the young preacher and tried to pull him away from the hunchback. The wail of sirens blasted the air with shrill vibrations, and a horde of rotating red and blue lights added an entirely new level of surreality to the scene.

"Get the fuck away from me!" the young preacher shouted, breaking away from the policeman.

He was vaguely aware of the newsman saying softly into his mike, "You heard it on Channel Four first, folks-a minister using an expletive in public. I'm sure a lot of Reverend Barnett's constituents are wondering what this world's coming to…"

The young preacher felt a flash of anger at the impertinent bozo, but he decided to be patient and beg God to curse him later. Right now all he was concerned about was the ace, or joker, or whatever, who had saved him. He knelt beside the man, who was already sinking deeper into the sidewalk. A paramedic with a confused expression knelt beside the pair.

"Save him!" the young preacher implored. "You've got to save this man!"

"How?" asked the paramedic helplessly. "I don't know what the matter is-and besides, I can't even touch him!" It was true. The paramedic's hands had penetrated into the hunchback's body. The paramedic yelped and jerked them out and stuck them beneath his armpits. He shivered as if he had been immersed in a deep freeze. The young preacher remembered feeling cold while he thought he was dying. A small, dark part of that cold still resided in his soul like an unwanted friend.

He realized nothing the paramedic or anyone could do would help the hunchback. The hunchback was gradually becoming just an outline of his former self. Even as he watched, the hunchback sank another half inch into the concrete. The poor man's glazed eyes stared at the sky, and his breathing was tortured, as if whatever kind of air he was gasping at was unsuitable for the job at hand.

"Who are you?" Leo asked. "How can we help you?"

The man blinked his eyes. It was hard to tell just how lucid he was. "My name is… Quasiman," he whispered. I've never jaunted with so much weight before… so hard… so hard even now to hold myself together…" He coughed. The young preacher looked up to see Belinda May kneeling down beside him. "Are you all right?" he asked curtly but not without feeling.

"Yes," she replied. "What happened to you?"

"I'm not sure, but I think this man was responsible."

"My God-I remember him! Leo, you've got to help him."

"How? I can't even touch him."

That old mischievous light returned to Belinda May's eyes. "You're a preacher," she said in a tone greatly resembling the one she had used when she'd said she wanted to go to bed with him. "Heal the poor bastard!"

It had been many years since the young preacher had performed an act of faith healing. He had refrained from the activity, having been advised that it didn't look good on videotape, especially for a man planning a presidential bid.

Even so, he coudn't let this noble spirit be snuffed out. Not if it was somehow in his… in God's power. He looked up to the sky. The clouds, pregnant with rain, were occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning; their thunder was only a soft rumble. He breathed deeply. He reached out to those clouds, to the earth beneath the concrete of this city, to the dark forces of creation. He gathered it all into his spirit, and into a single ball of energy.

Then he reached inside Quasiman. The spectrum of sensations in his fingers clearly originated someplace he would never know-at least during this lifetime.

He forced himself to be calm, to ignore the cold, to disassociate himself from the itching of his hands, and the overwhelming numbness of his fingertips. And when he believed he had succeeded, he said with all the passion he could muster, "Heal, you goddamn son-of-a-bitch! Heal!"

Finally it began to rain. The thunder erupted directly overhead as if a nuclear device were ripping the sky apart.