Father
by Matthew Lee Bain...and on that prodigious day, the day of His return, He will come for me, and we shall reign like a virulent black storm over this place. We will be grand denigrators of the sky.... He will manipulate the atmosphere as He sees fit. The people of this place will be his puppets - they will dance for Him, writhe for Him, like worms, if he wishes; the fauna will become abject with fear; and Nature, in her totality, will yield herself up to Him.
He is towering like a tree - a dendriform being with many a crooked, far-reaching, limb - and His flesh is thick and rough like bark. His black cloak hovers like a pall. He is the giant-tall crooked thing which will soon undulate down our street and the other streets of this town. And to see His face will be to know the unknown...
All of this and more I've told to Mother, of the father I never knew; the father she claimed I never had, so how could he have begotten me; the inseminator who left me a bastard. "But Mother," I've argued many times, then who was, the one, if not He? And why would He come to me in twilit visions to bestow His arcana unto me? Why I, if I am not His?
Mother has tried nothing less than to pacify my darkling suspicions with LIES. "You pacified me in the crib with faerie tales, Mother - in my youth with fiction; but now that this most important time grows near, stop your deceit, Mother - no more myths...unless they pertain to Him."
My arguments disturbed her. She could not understand my paternal monomania, my "grim obsession with knowing," as she termed it. Good Mother has left me to myself, left me alone, to do the things that mothers do to ignore their sons; a mother's work is never done. But I'd rather be alone because only then would He speak, unveil Himself to me.
So I stood in my predestined place, before the picture window - my favorite place, my only place - in our old, mucedinous home, waiting and watching; in the garb of my great-grandfather, who was a priest; I smelled like a shroud. Mother has reproved me for wearing such things, found in aged trunks from the attic. "But they fit," I told her, "they fit all too well." Indeed they were a fitting garb in which to welcome Him, to welcome...
...Father took me under - took me from the waking life into the undertow of dreams - before He spoke; in a trance where only black can be seen; there was an earthy smell; and a scarcity of air, so my breaths were infrequent.
She was only a vessel, he susurrated, a means to an end.
"Yes, Father. But we mustn't disregard her undying loyalty, her sacrifice, must we?"
She will have her place, on a throne of rock which I shall carve into the mountains not far from this locus - My locus. When I allow it, the sun will crest the peak and blaze the town a new day, and her place will be in the cool rock - in the cloak of shade.
"You are most benignant to us father, your constant ones."
But I will be pure malignance unto them!
"Them, Father? Those of the town?"
Yes! I will torture their hides with nightmarish episodes. I will corrupt their organs into ooze. I will dry up their blood, and I will grind their bones beneath their suppurating soul cases - I will fill their mouths with dust...if they will not have me as their master. And the sun will only be allowed to shine on this place after my dark siege is done, only after the town and its inhabitants are subjugated unto me.
"They will have you, Father; they will; they must!"
So I told Him many times. But He feared His wrath would yet be incurred, and He bided His time while I waited faithfully in seclusion.
Soon, it will be soon, I told myself. They will all kowtow or face a grave reprisal...
Mother was a constant intruder on my musings; her questions were always querulous; and her conversations were nothing short of interrogations: "Why are you still dressed in your great-grandfather's clothes - all in black like a priest?"
"Because, Mother, He will need an arch priest to officiate His domain; who better to preach His Word than I? Have I not correctly prophesied His return?"
"These are delusions..." I saw her scornful face, circumscribed by the black scarf that constantly covered her straight, graying hair, shaking itself back and forth in the reflection of the picture window. I did not turn to look at her - as was my wont - preferring, instead, her disembodied face.
"I am far from deluded, Mother, and you shall soon see Him, just as everyone else will. You shall all be made well aware of His presence at the time of the homecoming."
"It's all you do anymore...speak about morbid things and stand in front of that window and stare into the street...it's not good for you - it's not good for your constitution. Come away from the window. You're starting to take on the grayness..."
"I like the grayness, Mother. And it's not all I do. Father and I have daily communion. ...He says that He will come back on a day when the sky is the color of slate, when the clouds look like the vault of a dank cave, and a light rain descends - a cleansing rain - and no bird will sing, even when the rain stops. In fact all manner of nature will grow silent in homage to the homecoming - "
"Stop this!" she begged.
"One cannot stop what is imminent, Mother," I answered.
"But you must!" she almost howled. "You're digging my grave - I can't take this. I can keep the secret no longer." Until that moment, our minor exchanges had been nothing short of apathetic. Our dialogues were meaningless, passionless, routine even; I found myself giving wooden answers to hollow questions...but that time was different...
Something in poor Mother's voice broke.
"What is it you're prattling on about?" I said, feigning unconcern.
"I have something to tell you about, Him, your father. I - "
"A secret - you have kept a secret from me about Him! How...audacious of you, Mother." For once I was compelled to turn and study her face.
"You must calm yourself first..."
"I am calmed, Mother...I am equanimity incarnate. Go on."
"Your father died before you were born." Whether I believed it or not at the time is irrelevant: it pained me like a dagger driven in between ribs.
"Died?!" I struggled to gain dominance over my emotions. "He would have to have been a mere man for Him to have died...and this, an admittance of your sexuality, Mother. But my father was more than a mere man - is more! I see Him in my mind's eye."
"That is all concoction - imagination! I thought you would grow out of these ill daydreams, but - "
"It's more than imagination; it's the image and the Word - conveyed to me by Him!"
"No! He was a wicked man, and you've inherited that wickedness. His head was filled with similar ideas of ruling over this place in another form. He claimed he could call up all manner of demon - use them as he liked...steal their powers. But he was sick! Sick! He was an enigmatic man who took up with me and bred me a son before I knew full well of his evil nature."
"Your deception is more than I can take, Mother - I warn you!"
"But it's not my fault; I am innocent...!"
"Then whose fault might it be? Was this stranger also a rapist?"
"No...but I didn't know of his nature. So - "
"So it's His fault - His! He is too perfect to be at fault! And if He's dead, how did He die? Who could've slain Him?"
"He slew himself...in this very house. And I never told you until now - I never would've told - but this grim obsession with knowing...this sickness," she hissed the ultimate word, "has overcome you and become more than I can bear." I turned away then.
"...more than I can bear..." she reprised under her breath.
"This is quite the farce you've concocted, Mother."
"I swear on my life that it's true!"
"You swear it!? Until today you swore He didn't exist; you completely denied the fact of His being - that which I'm immanently aware of...and tomorrow I suppose it will have been a virgin birth! So tell me, after so much untruth, how can I possibly trust anything you have to say now?"
"Because...I can take you to his grave."
Mother led me to the graveyard where she directed me to a pauper's grave. A despicable grave which bore not even a tombstone but a rotted wooden marker; just within the pall cast by a loathsome, leafless tree - a crooked towering thing - its skeletal branches tickling the wind.
"If it were truly His grave, then it would be nothing less than ignominy on the part of those who interred Him."
"But it is his grave; you must believe me!"
"Believe?! How can I possibly believe you now? You ask me to believe in my own ruin, Mother. For, don't you see, if the prophecy is false, then my life ceases to have a divine purpose, and I will only add to the minor population of ne'er-do-wells and nonentities in this town. No, Mother, if it's true, this new history...then my future has nothing in store for me but oblivion. Nothing."
I didn't want to believe her, but I knew her eyes.
"You are still young, you..." But my look of utter dejection must have stopped her from trying to console me - my face a disconsolate mask. "Son," she finally said, taking my arm, "let us leave this place, these shadows. You must think of these things no more. The dead are buried for a reason."
The week to come was filled with my screams of presentiment - my personal horror of thinking I had no august future...no ascension to look forward to...no coming priesthood. In time I became catatonic, cast with ague-like fevers day and night - given to blank-eyed stares. Mother would sponge my face with warm water and feed me, as I was bedridden. I was dimly aware of Dr. Pagis - the only doctor in our town - standing over me, committing a battery of tests; his face a bleary, gray-bearded phantasm. I could hear him speaking to Mother of my condition on the other side of the closed door; their voices were sibilant, agitated, like two vipers in mortal contest. But I could hardly be concerned with them. There is no doubt that I would've died of abandonment, of disillusionment - my world having been rived apart - had Father not made his final, psychic contact:
She has deceived you once again, my son. His voice came like the deep creaking of timber. Suicide was never a possibility. That's what the people of this town wanted it to look like! They feared my exponentially growing powers, and they formed a pact against me. They murdered me! They buried me in a beggar's grave! And they will bow in the wake of my resurrection or be razed. Their godling has come! For you see, all this time I've planned my rebirth, and their machination will be well repaid. I've found a way to return; I've taken a stronger vessel than my first case of flesh and bone; and this time my power will be unmatched. Come to the graveyard, son, the time is nigh! The creaking timbre rose to a deafening pitch.
I awoke with a start, wiping the fever-sweat from my forehead; how long ago had His communication come? I dressed haphazardly and took off at a run for the graveyard.
My discalced feet plodded over the spongy earth, my priest's gown skirting the ground. Mother had followed me; I could hear her pitiable cries at my back. "Leave me to myself, Mother! You've caused enough trouble!" But she wouldn't, so we ran a feverish race to the burial grounds where we came to a dead stop at His grave. There was a moment of perfect quiescence; I became aware that all of nature had gone silent.
...and then came Mother's ululations, which were more than horrid and quite painful to listen to - as were her facial contortions to behold. I on the other hand was taken with transport. Before us lay a gaping hole where only a week ago a crooked tree with bark like calloused flesh had stood. And looking down into the earth, one saw a hole that could very well extend to His casket - and it was no leap of the imagination to conceive that there, its roots had found sustenance and something else all together.
"The time is upon us, Mother!" I said triumphantly. Mother ran screaming toward the house. "It has begun," I said to no one but the dead themselves, and began to walk in the wake of a slithery trail directed toward town.
©Matthew Lee Bain
Matthew Lee Bain is thirty autumns old. His avocations include the study of psychology, German (language and culture), and philology. In his free time, he enjoys strength training, viewing avant-garde cinema, and rolling around on the floor while screaming in agony.His most recent poetry credits include: The Missing Fez, Penny Dreadful, Haz Mat Review, Images Inscript, Children, Churches, and Daddies, The New Mirage Quarterly, Experimental Forest, Pegasus, Nomad's Choir, Matchbook, The Nocturnal Lyric, Scavenger‚s Newsletter, and The Storyteller. His most recent short fiction credits include: Happy, Art:Mag, Liquid Ohio, 2001 Killer Frog Contest (1st place in short story category), Dark Moon Rising, and a four-piece series in Black Petals Magazine. He is also currently a column writer for Circle Magazine.