Revelations
This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.
-The Book of the Law
“We left that boy with Dan,” Lewis said as he stepped out of the shower in their suite in the Midland Hotel, towel wrapped about him, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“There wasn’t much else we could do,” Chris said, “And Dan is safe.”
“True, but, I felt like Levy should be with us. Seeing as I named him, and well…” Lewis shrugged.
“I killed his stepfather.”
“Yes,” Lewis said, “and spirited him off from his mother. And who knows what the hell she’ll do? Call the police? Put out a report.”
“Lewis, I don’t know exactly what you’re capable of. I honestly don’t” Chris said from were he sat on the large bed, nude—he never wore pajamas or anything like that, “But we’re more than capable of hiding a child from the authorities. We are more than capable of hiding anything from the authorities.”
“That may make school enrollment difficult,” Lewis said. “A boy ought to go to school.”
“I thought you said school was overrated.”
Lewis stood up, drying himself and placing the towel on the bed as he reached for the Vaseline, then the lotion, and began to open both and rub them into a mixture.
“Well, a boy should have the chance to be normal.”
“You always say normalcy is overrated too.”
Lewis began to massage his arm, and then Chris crawled over, and began to rub lotion and Vaseline in his own palms. As Chris began massaging his back, Lewis said, his eyes closed in enjoyment, “It is overrated and yet, he should have the chance to choose it or reject it.”
“If he stays with us,” Chris’s hands stopped on Lewis’s shoulders, “He’ll never have anything like a normal life, and I want him to stay with us. I know if he did our lives would change. We would have to get out of that apartment, or at least get a larger one, and you might not—”
“No, no,” Lewis said, “I was thinking the same thing. When we return from this, we can get back to the boy.”
“When we return from this?”
“You know,” Lewis said, turning around and gesturing for Chris to turn around so that he now began to oil his long white back, “going to visit Augustus.”
“You say it so lightly,” Chris said.
“Why shouldn’t I? At the end of the day I am the Master, not him, and though he is longed lived, I am many lived? Lifed?”
“But still, you said at first, not when we come back from a visit, but when we come back from this.”
“Christopher,” Lewis said, “what the hell are you getting at?”
“Just what you said, and not many days ago, for the first time, witches and vampires and drinkers are all together, people who knew so little of each other. Kruinh knows of Augustus, and apparently so did Pamela, and it seems to me that going to see Augustus will really only be the beginning.”
“See,” Lewis said, “I don’t think that this is the first time witches and vampires and werewolves have been together.”
“But even Kruinh doesn’t know of another time.”
“And even Kruinh doesn’t know everything.”
“And Seth?” Chris said.
“Yes.”
“Is he with that Jim guy?”
“I would guess that he is.”
“Then is he still with us?”
Often, Chris was infuriated by how hard Lewis was to read, and as Lewis answered: “I really couldn’t say,” this was one of those times.
They talked all night.There had been lovemaking, but the talk lasted so long, was so deep, it eclipsed it.
They were awakened by a squawk.
“What the fuck is that?” Jim murmured.
Seth did not laugh as he watched Jim rising, and Jim blinked and cried, “My God!”
A Canada goose walked in from the living room, and was standing before them. It lifted its black bill and squawked importantly.
“How the fuck did that get into my apartment?”
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Seth said. He sat up in bed, and wrapping the covers about his waist so that, only for a moment, Jim saw the loveliness of his naked body.
Seth said, quite formally, “Yes, friend?”
Raising its wings so that Jim feared the bird might shit on his rug, and honking, hoarsely, the bird gave whatever report it had and then Seth said, calmly, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
The bird gave another noise, which Jim fancied to be a sort of your welcome, and then, in a waddle, turned and left the bedroom.
“Do I need to….” Jim began. “let it out?”
“No, Jim,” Seth said, laying a hand on him. “They don’t like you to know how they get in or out. It’s a peculiarity of theirs.”
“Do you think he…?”
“Shit on your carpet? No. He wouldn’t do that. Geese do that outside because it’s outside. They wouldn’t do it in their home, and they certainly wouldn’t do it when visiting yours.”
Now Seth is dimly aware of what a pinhead and or nutjob he sounded like. It makes him laugh. He was so very serious about the whole thing, about a goose walking into Jim’s apartment, and Jim had been so blown away that he didn’t even ask what the goose had said.
“Does this happen… a lot?”
“Not a lot,” Seth said, shrugging.
“But it does happen. More with squirrels. Once with a groundhog. I do love groundhogs. They’re so… serious. But funny and cute all at the same time. I’m going to stop talking now. I sound sort of mad.”
“No,” Jim disagreed. Then he said, “Well, yes. But this whole thing is mad. It’s only that I never knew the world was like this.”
“How do you feel, knowing that it is?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jim confessed. “I think, though, that I like it.”
They got up and had breakfast and Jim said, “Let me take you to your family.”
“You want to see them?” Seth offered, and then he said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“Of course I want to see them,” Jim said, squeezing his hand. “You’ve seen ours.”
“I just want them to see you,” Seth said, “and maybe you think that’s silly.”
“I don’t think anything you do is silly.” Jim said.
“I’d had a dream,” Seth said.
“That’s right. I remember. You were murmuring something about it when we were half asleep. Before…”
“The goose came.”
“Yes.”
“My father came to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Seth said. “And… you don’t mind this, do you?”
“Mind what,?”
“Me talking about my father coming to me.”
“No. Hell, my uncle came to you. And I never really knew my father, and I don’t know what I’d do if my mother came. Did he ever come to you before?”
“Yes. I was twelve. I was living with my Uncle Owen. I went out one day to bring the trash cans in, and there was this man. I wasn’t sure at first. My father, my dad, Kyle, would be younger than me now. He stopped across the street. He didn’t come up to me, maybe he couldn’t. I don’t know, and he just pushed his hair out of his face, because he had dark hair like mine, but it was wavy like yours, a little longer. He was mostly white, you see. His grandfather had been Owen’s brother. Anyway. He looked at me, and he waved at me. He whispered, ‘I love you.’
“I was so happy I didn’t even feel like I wanted to cry. And then I told him I loved him too, and he kept walking. I went back inside and I told my uncle. As soon as I told him I thought he might tell me I was crazy. Or I was wrong.”
“He’s a witch, right?”
“Yes, but he’s not crazy. Anyway, I told Uncle Owen, and he was washing the dishes and he just sighed. Now, you’ve seen Lewis, and Owen is a lot like him, and Owen is kind, but not emotional, you know. But then he just began to cry. Tears ran down his face and he said, ‘I miss your father so much. I wish he had been able to come to me.’
“He told me, ‘Next time you see him, tell him I love him too.’
“It was really… you know, up until then I had known that I loved my father, and I understood that I had lost him, but I never understood that Owen had lost his nephew. I feel like that was the one gift of his first visit. Whenever Dad comes it’s not just to say hello.”
“Does your mom ever come?”
“No,” Seth said. “There was a time, a long time, when I couldn’t dream of them, when my dreams were filled with nightmares and Lewis had to come with me into my dreams to clear them.”
“That’s possible?”
“Not for everyone.”
“Maybe he could clear out my dreams.”
“He is a witch. He is the head of our Clan.”
“What is a clan, exactly?”
“The Clan,” Seth began, then said, “Well, that’s a whole other explanation. That’s a lot of explaining, I don’t even know if I understand it, myself. And right now, I just want to eat.”
