After The Flesh Read online

  After The Flesh

  Colin Gallant

  Copyright © 2020 Colin Gallant

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Art Painter

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  To all of you who keep the lights on.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Ch1. Genesis

  Ch2. Awakening

  Ch3. Those Summer Days

  Ch4. The Humbling of John Cartwright

  Ch5. Some Call It Murder

  Ch6. Summer's End

  Ch7. On Murder and Making Love

  Ch8. All That Came After

  Ch9. Points of Light, Points of Darkness

  Ch10. The Coldest Winter Night

  Ch11. Bear-Baiting and the Hedonist at Large

  Ch12. The Light, The Tunnel

  Ch13. Reawakening

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Prologue

  'Words like violence,

  Break the silence,

  Come crashing in,

  Into my little world'

  - Depeche Mode

  'Sex and sleep alone make me conscious

  that I am mortal'

  - Alexander the Great

  In From the Cold

  Footsteps echoing through the dark, empty streets, slick and black from the first snowfall of the year. More snow is falling. It falls thick – fat as peas and grapes. It falls heavier with each passing moment. It melts as it strikes, twitching like butter in a pan on the leather-worn sidewalks and the cracked and tarred, cracked and tarred streets between them. It melts still. But the temperature is dropping.

  He hears his own footsteps, a broken staccato beat, scraping and stumbling through the night. He hears the sirens. Closer now. Always closer. The cry of the sirens pulses through the Beltline like a scythe through wheat. They are hunting him. Soon they will have him. They will finish him.

  To his left, across a black expanse of parkland, the cross on its spire is calling to him. He sees it and is drawn. Flickering light still shines through stained glass cautiously placed deep behind ornate wrought iron bars. He senses warmth there, within – warmth and safety. Sanctuary.

  He turns and crosses the street; empty at so late an hour save for the molten glow of city lights pooling on the wet asphalt beneath his feet. The clack of his heels becomes a soft squelch, a sigh, a crunch. Here, on the autumn-hard grass, the snow sticks. Skeletal claws of copse wood, birch and alder, young poplars, reach for him with cold, brittle fingers. They tear at his face, at his clothing. He fights through. He knows if he falls, he is done.

  Ahead the grand building, a relic of a recent and unremembered time, rises up out of the concrete and steel surrounding it. It blots out the hot aura of the city at night, the sky above. He feels it, a palpable sense of awe. His pain and his fears are banished in an instant. Before his hand reaches the door, he knows it will open for him. He knows there cannot be any locks on the doors on the house of God. Inside is warmth. Even the deepest shadows, dancing and flitting around halos of soft candle light, are comforting. The darkness here is not the same as it was out in the streets. There it is blackness, cold and cruel. Here is the darkness of a soft blanket he can just recall from his earliest childhood. Here the darkness clutches him snugly in its folds.

  The door closes. The world falls silent. The rushing, hissing sigh of falling snow is gone. The sirens are gone, hushed to nothing as the vast oaken portal whispers closed at his heels.

  “I belong.” His voice is an unrecognizable croak, barely vocalized but still his words echo back to him from the vaulted darkness. A hand slips into his coat. It’s Freddy’s coat – he knows that now. Scottish wool worked as smooth as silk. It is far too expensive for his own modest budget. His side is numb, a clotted, sticky mess. The pain is gone, for now. Feverish heat replaces it and pressure under his ribs that is more disturbing because he knows what is in there. Only when he breaths deeply can he feel any real discomfort, but even then, it is little worse than a jogger’s stitch.

  His shivering slows, stops. The warmth of the cathedral is working its way into him, creeping over his body like the smoke of scented candles. Purposefully he steps forward. He knows he is staring, his eyes seeking out everything there is to see, unabashed as only virgin eyes can be.

  The center aisle stretches away from him. Rich, purple carpet floats like mist in the shadows of flickering light. Candelabras run its length. A thousand tiny flames push back the darkness. More candles are burning at the altar, illuminating a mantle of pure white linen. All around him, in rows of pews half-hidden in the shadows, hunched forms mutter their prayers. Down the aisle, he feels his feet shuffling forward, passing the murmurs of prayer one by one. The chapel swims around him. Halos of light tug at his vision. Even as his heart is lifted his strength wanes. He fights to hold on. If he loses, he knows he will lose himself. All will be lost.

  Again, his hand finds its way into the coat. Deliberately he bares down and grits his teeth as fresh, hot blood soaks his fingers. The sudden pain is a brand on quivering flesh. The darkness is gone, the candlelight. The church vanishes, blotted out by the pain. A strangled cry escapes him. His knees buckle. He is falling. A flare of heat on his cheek, on his palm. The nearest candelabra falls with him. Impossibly loud in the entombing silence, flame-lit metal crashes into stone. Muttered prayers become gasps and cries of surprise and outrage.

  His world returns in a deluge as he struggles to rise again. There is no strength in his limbs. The pain is now a clawed fist fighting for purchase beneath his ribs. His heart beats in his skull, a hollow trip hammer nearly matching the pace of approaching heels on stone.

  A comforting hand finds his shoulder, helps him to stand. “My son.” A priest. He is tonsured by age rather than piety. The holy man’s face is pale and thin. The candlelight lends it a robust shine until he moves and the shadows return. Concern is gone. Horror remains. Yet the supporting arm does not waver. “You can’t be here,” the priest declares, “the police are looking for you.”

  “No, Father.” He raises his hand. It is slick and wet, glistening in the warm light. “I believe the police are finished with me.” He clutches his side again and would have fallen if not for the aged priest’s support. “I am nearly finished.”

  His consciousness floats. The familiar caress of fear grows in his stomach. Not of death. Not that. The unified voice of a choir rises in song, faintly, heard through stone and wood. Just for a moment he believes they are the voices of the angels coming to collect him. But he knows better. He knows no angel of heaven will be waiting for him at his death. Unless...

  “Father. I’m afraid I don’t have long.” He pulls himself upright with tremendous effort. “Will you hear my confession?”

  The priest’s eyes soften. He licks his lips and glances around. The veiled eyes of parishioners stare back in silence. Looking back, he nods. “Come. I’ll help you.”

  Moments blur. The scent of dust and mildew. A heavy curtain brushes over his face, his shoulder. The light dims then swells again. Cold fluorescent tubes hum overhead. The choir is louder here. Pine-sol and Pledge. H
is eyes adjust. The architecture here is different than the cathedral. It is newer, but still it is old. Run down. Worn out. The layers of paint on the walls are blistered and peeling like sunburned flesh. The wainscoting heaves like a mouthful of bad teeth.

  “Where are we?”

  The priest shushes him. “Save your strength.”

  The hallway turns twice. A short flight of stairs opens beneath them. He keeps his footing – just. Points of light swim in front of him. The choir’s song fades, is heard underwater. The hallway tilts. The wall rushes up beneath him.

  “Rest here.” The priest eases him to the floor. His touch disappears. His footsteps recede like tumbling stone.

  Darkness swims behind the light. All he can think is that he has failed. In the end, he has failed. The thought is enough to bring anger when before only despair would rise. “Fuck you, Freddy,” he spits through clenched teeth. “Not this time.” It is enough to keep him holding on.

  The priest’s muttering voice returns down the hall. His footfalls are joined by a second, heaver pair. A massive form looms over him. The arm that circles his shoulders is immensely powerful. Even through the thick coat and the man’s cassock he can feel the inherent strength in the limb gripping him. The man’s other arm loops under his knees and lifts him with ease. Like a child in his father’s arms, he floats.

  The man’s steady breaths and the priest’s muttered prayers are his only company between the darkness and the splotches of red light beyond his eyelids. He never truly faints, but his consciousness does recede. He is looking down at himself, free. The sense is the edge, the moment before sleep, possibly before death. Tingling warmth. Staring up through the waters of a deep lake, slowly sinking into its depths.

  His eyes open. He is on his back staring at a plaster ceiling stained yellow from years of cigarette smoke. He smells it still, a clinging thing laying just beneath dampness, mildew and dust. The pain is diminished again, returned to the distant ache it was when he entered the church. The dryness in his throat is gone. A cup rises to his lips. Warmth, the earthly aroma of Chamomile and honey. Something else.

  The priest’s face appears over him. “You need a doctor. You’ve been shot.”

  He nods and shakes his head just as quickly. “No.” The old, leather couch, patched with duct tape, creaks as he tries to rise. His side protests, but the pain is minor. A brief glance around the room and he takes the cup from the priest. A spare sip and he eases himself back down. The heat from the tea is filling him with a pleasant warmth.

  The priest has sat back on a folding metal chair. His eyes are wide and incredulous. “You will die if you don’t see a doctor.”

  He ignores the priest. The old office has the look of a place with no set purpose. It is waiting. Long years of vacancy give it the feeling of abandonment. The desk is steel framed with a chipped, black Formica top. There is nothing on it save twin bins marked IN and OUT. Both are empty of everything but dust. An old swath of utility grade orange carpet covers most of the gray-green checkered linoleum floor. More duct tape holds it in place. The only adornment on the walls is a print of Davinci’s The Last Supper hanging in a dusty aluminum frame. The couch he lies on might once have been a brilliant lime green. No longer. It has faded to the color of autumn grass. Even the light fixture above him is a relic. Amid water stains, like the concentric rings on a tree, the globe is amber, mounted to a base of tarnished brass.

  The small room is waiting, but time did not wait with it. It has been left behind. Forgotten. The priest has the look of a man who has seen that passage of time and has escaped with his scars and memories.

  He recalls his father’s rumpus room where he used to play with his cars, plowing through heavy shag as if through new snow. The smells of slow decay, of dust and of mice in the walls, of old Naugahyde and older cigarettes, of beer spilled in ages past and of cigars left to smoulder. How long ago was that? How many years has it taken for the memories of innocence to fade and become shades of themselves, leading him down the road to this?

  “You need to get to a hospital,” the priest urges. “By rights, you should be dead already. The wound-”

  “Fuck the wound!” The voice that explodes from him is barely his own. He clamps his lips shut and looks away. The giant in the corner, the man who carried him here, stirs and is still. The rage will not die. Not yet. Three breaths. He settles into the beaten leather couch and breathes again. His heartbeat ticks, a metronome under his ribs. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says at last. He cannot look at the priest but he reaches out, grasping his soft hand in one hard and callused, crackled with dried blood. “You must listen to me. My confession is ... difficult.”

  The priest’s face is cast down at the floor. Yellowed light shines on his bald head. He is torn. That much is obvious. His faith on one hand, everything else on the other. The larger world outside is waiting, wanting this stranger he surely can only conjure up in his darkest nightmares. The priest’s eyes flick up to him. There are tears there, and a great sadness. No matter the consequences, the priest’s faith is triumphant.

  “Very well.”

  He sips his tea, the mug cradled to his chest. His mind flows back over the gulf of years as the pain in his side continues to recede like the tide. His pain sinks beneath the waters yet his mind remains afloat and lucid. He knows it must be the tea. Something they put in the tea. He knows he could speak all night. But never before did he have the strength he now feels – or the sense of peace and of safety.

  A breath. Two more. How does it start? Oh, yes...

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” With a sigh, he leaps.

  Ch1. Genesis

  Genesis

  “Freddy Cartwright was not like other children. He knew this. I knew it from the start. Most of his teachers had their suspicions. They shared what passed for gossip around their smoke-hazed lounge scented with eons of burned coffee and spilled whitener. They did not truly know anything about what they said. If they did, I would not be telling this story. I likely wouldn’t even be here now. They would say nothing save in the confines of their sanctuary and even then, only to each other – never to an outsider. Here they were safe to draw their conclusions about their charges without fear of reprisal.

  Robert Hartman was dyslexic.

  Suzanne Marks was smoking. She would be the first of her classmates to get pregnant – likely while earning the funds to pay for dope in the future.

  Frank Dellucca did not bathe regularly because his father couldn’t always pay the utilities bill.

  Amidst these conclusions came Freddy. He was different. No one could pin it down. No one could describe what they saw in him. Others would nod and sigh. They would sip their cheap coffee or diet cokes while sagely gazing down at the floor. But never would they offer their own explanations. Freddy Cartwright was not like other children and no one knew why.

  In a town like Prince William Falls – population 2348 – these little tidbits where all that kept people going. The cities had their gangs and their drugs. The cities had their big political games and horrors. The cities had no need to concern themselves with who was starting to smoke or who would become a parent before their autumn year at Prince William Falls senior high. Big things simply didn’t matter here. It was the little things they hung onto with all the zeal and dropped winks they could muster – little things like Freddy Cartwright being different. If only they could have understood.

  Perhaps those left alive still can’t understand. Certainly no one at the time tried. They were too consumed by the fear of strokes, heart attacks and poetry – or whatever it was that eventually claimed the body and soul in the years following disco’s death and fiery cremation. This was a period of darkness and light, without muse or emotion, charged with both. It was when big shoulder pads and bigger hair ruled and extremes in fashion and art were more than the norm. They were custom. We looked passed the vulgarities of the time and accepted them simply because we had nothing else.


  But I knew about Freddy. I had known for years. His uniqueness was not lost on me. His uniqueness was as much part of my little world as the Atari 2600 and Duran-Duran. We were close. We were very nearly inseparable. And yes, in those days Freddy was just a child. He played with Lego and watched Transformers after school. He preferred hot dogs to T-bones, French fries to baked potatoes and occasionally fussed about eating his vegetables. But even still he was as unlike his peers as, well, apples and oranges.

  Youth is where we begin. Our youth is what we become. What we do and what we learn in our childhood echoes through our lives like ripples on a pond. No matter what we learn later in life nothing we were taught in our childhood is ever left behind. Much of this we don’t even think about. Do we give back the extra change the cashier at the grocery store gives us? Do we keep the tiny windfall for what it is? Should we blow through a red light in the middle of the night? It ultimately comes back to the ages-old question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The tree is us. The tree is our lives. Do our actions impact those around us or should we care? Is something sometimes right or is it only right if it is done all the time? These questions are answered for us by observing the world around us, by learning the ways of those who have come before us and including them into our lives.

  We are herd animals. We learn from each other but also from something deeper and greater than the actions and words of our parents, our teachers and our friends. There is within us some understanding even at a very young age of the way things are. I believe we come into this world with the basic program already installed and ready to go. Me – Beta. Version one-point-oh. The upgrades come in time. Later we learn the intricacies, the nuances of life amongst the herd. We learn how to behave. We learn how to be part of the greater whole. To flock when the others flock.