A week later, the second meeting convened like the first. Everyone except for Mare and Frank again sat spaced around the table like strangers. The golden shrine had been placed in the middle. No one paid it any attention, though, now that its spell was gone. Galen eyed it suspiciously. He hadn’t abandoned the possibility that the thing might be radioactive.
“All of you were nervous last week. This week you’re tense,” Meg observed. “But no one stayed away.”
“Curiosity wins over doubt,” said Lilith, seated again in the lieutenant’s chair to Meg’s right.
“For the time being,” Frank remarked curtly. “My week was a total waste, nothing but waiting. Aren’t we supposed to do something?”
“I’m with him,” Jimmy chimed in. “We’re not going to sit around like in school, are we?” He dreaded school as much as he resented it when his father forced him to drop out.
Not that anyone cared. They had all gone through strange experiences they couldn’t explain, but it didn’t draw them closer, perhaps the opposite. They wanted to keep the strangeness private.
Frank and Mare had found excuses not to spend much time together. The first meeting had somehow made them shy around each other—shy or wary. Frank tried to charm her on the phone.
“I’m calling from God Anonymous. Does anyone in your family have a religious addiction? We can spray for that.”
Mare wasn’t in a joking mood. “Have you heard from anyone in the group?”
“Not a peep. You sound worried.”
Mare moved on to another subject. Frank knew better than to try to be funny again. His own life wasn’t going that well. He hadn’t slept. It was hard to concentrate at work. He thought he was keeping it together fairly well until his buddy Malcolm, the kid reporter, stopped by Frank’s cubicle.
“Want to see something hilarious? Like weird and hilarious?”
It was a jolt when Malcolm held up a photo of Galen, looking slumped and sullen in the police station.
Frank’s stomach was tied in knots. “How do you know him?”
“I don’t. Do you? You look kind of peculiar.”
“He just looks like such a sad sack. Was he arrested?”
“Yep. It happened a while back. I forgot to tell you.” Malcolm laughed. “This old dude tried to spray-paint a masterpiece. I bought him a burger, and he told me all about hating God. Something to do with his wife dying.”
“And you find that funny?” asked Frank.
Frank’s disapproval puzzled his friend. “I thought you’d want a laugh. This guy’s a nut case. I’ll show you my write-up.”
“No rush.”
Frank buried his head back in his work. Malcolm walked away with a look of, “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
When he picked Mare up for the meeting the following Saturday, Frank was right about her being worried.
“Aunt Meg’s been out of touch all week,” she said. “She told me she’d handle everything about the family, but then there was no word.”
“Maybe she just needs time to adjust. She was in a convent for ten years. Be thankful she’s not totally bats,” he said.
Mare couldn’t be talked out of her anxiety. Even when they entered the meeting room and saw that Meg was there, calm and faintly smiling, Mare was unsettled. When Frank reached for her hand, she drew it away.
Now everyone was venting their frustration. Galen said, “Whatever we do, no more Q and A about the ghost in the box. It’s like a quiz show with imaginary answers and no prizes.” He rocked back in his chair and waited.
Buddy, if you were five feet closer, I’d kick that chair out from under you, thought Frank. But he kept quiet. Last week’s arguing had gotten them nowhere.
No one was happy with Galen, who was determined to keep stirring the pot. If Meg was annoyed, however, she didn’t show it.
“I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Blake.”
“Use my first name. I’m not your boss,” Galen growled.
“Indeed.” Meg regarded him with an unperturbed smile.
The rest of the group exchanged puzzled looks. Why was Meg kowtowing to an obvious troublemaker? She and Lilith wore the same suits as the week before, but the air of authority had faded. They could have dropped in from a knitting circle, Frank thought. Or a spinsters support group. Lilith gave him a sharp sideways glance, and Frank suddenly recalled her unnerving ability to read minds when she wanted to.
Meg went on. “We went around in circles last week, but we agreed that the presence in the shrine knows we’re here. What else does she know about us? Let’s find out.”
“What if she knows our dirty little secrets?” Jimmy asked nervously.
“Don’t be scared,” Galen jibed. “Being a stooge isn’t a secret. You jump when Lilith says jump.”
Jimmy turned red. “Take that back.”
“Why? You carry out her dirty work. I know that for a fact. Try thinking for yourself.” Galen enjoyed watching Jimmy squirm. They were both as timid as mice when it came down to it, but at least Galen was top mouse.
Meg ignored them. “I imagine the presence knows us at both our best and our worst. That’s what God sees. So if she belongs with God, we can expect no less.”
This was the first open declaration about God that anyone had made except for Galen’s sarcastic outbursts.
After an uneasy silence, Jimmy said, “I believe in God. Is that a crime here?”
“Stop it,” Lilith said sharply. “We need to stick to business.”
Galen shot Jimmy a look that said, “I told you so.” Jimmy’s face began to color again.
Before the spark was fanned into a flame, Mare raised her hand. “I have an idea, and I think it will work.”
She had been so quiet that stepping forward came as a surprise. The stares she received made her uncomfortable, but she pressed on. “I propose that each of us touch the object, being open to whatever happens. Let it communicate that way.”
She gave Frank a meaningful look. They both knew that something was bound to happen.
“Good suggestion,” he said. ”Let’s find out exactly what the presence wants to tell us.”
“I want to go first,” Jimmy said eagerly. He had lost confidence during the week. He wanted the room to be filled with a golden glow again. The light made him feel that he belonged in its shimmering aura. There was another thing too. What if a disciple of Jesus really lived in the shrine? It wasn’t impossible. He heard stories in the neighborhood, where a ghoul, a demonio necrofago, crept into someone’s body at night while they slept. When Jimmy was a child, the windows in his bedroom had always been shut after sunset, no matter how sweltering it became in August.
“The first to go will be Galen,” Meg announced, to Jimmy’s disappointment.
“I’m not touching that thing,” Galen protested.
“Then don’t,” Jimmy said, seeing a chance for himself.
Mare took a deep breath. “I haven’t told anyone, but I’ve touched it before, and I had an experience, so maybe I should go first.”
Meg shook her head. “It has to be Galen.”
Everyone looked puzzled, but Galen felt her words pierce his heart.
Behind his polished Trotsky glasses, his eyes were exhausted, and if you looked deeper, he felt defeated. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push the memory of Iris away. He was tormented by images of her body buried in the ground and the grisly process of decay. A doctor had prescribed sleeping pills and an antidepressant, which sent Galen into a chemical haze. Worse, the pills made the images in his dreams more intense and harder to bear.
After the funeral her father had sent a long note to Galen, basically a kiss-off, declaring that the marriage to his daughter had been a sham. Galen skimmed over the caustic accusations. As immature as he was emotionally, he recognized that Iris’s father was using blame to disguise his utter helplessness after she died. But a phrase, one of the few that didn’t take aim at Galen, read, “She was a saint, but none of us recognized it.”
Tears welled up in his eyes. Galen didn’t believe in saints, and he loathed sentimentality. He had shut himself off from feeling anything—this had been his habit long before Iris got sick. He had turned to science to keep from sinking into the swamp of emotions. No one ever told him that tears are a release, after which something better comes. To him, tears were a crack in the dam, and unless you patched the crack, you would be washed away in the flood.
So the group didn’t know the courage it took for him to suddenly say, “All right, I’ll go first. Just don’t blame me when nothing happens.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Have some faith, bro.”
Lilith said, “If God is God, a little skepticism won’t stop him. Have at it, Mr. Blake.”
If using his last name was meant as a little jab, Galen ignored it. The golden chapel was within his reach, and he pulled it closer until it sat squarely before him.
“See? I touched it. Nothing happened.”
“Great, pass it on,” Frank said. Mare wasn’t the only one who had experienced the shrine’s powers.
“Wait,” said Mare, putting her hand on Frank’s arm to quiet him. “I know you’ll probably hate this word, Galen. But there has to be a communion between you and her.”
“What garbage!” he snorted. “Either it works or it doesn’t.” He was already regretting being put on the spot, and by his own doing. It had been foolish and stupid to volunteer.
“He’s losing his nerve,” Frank taunted. “Predictable.”
Jimmy’s fear of confrontation came up. “Nobody should do what they don’t want to. Can’t he just come along for the ride?”
Frank shrugged. “Sure, let him be ballast in the boat. He’s not good for much else.”
By now Frank was annoying people as much as Galen. But no one disagreed with Jimmy’s point. It wasn’t compulsory for any of them to participate.
Galen felt his heart thumping, and it began to grow sore again. Against his will, he gave in. With a cryptic smile he closed his eyes and folded his hands around the shrine. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he framed a wisp of hope that Iris might speak to him. He didn’t believe in communion, but who knows? Maybe this could turn into some kind of séance.
Behind his closed eyelids, he became aware of a faint light. At first he didn’t notice it, because there is always a residual glow in the eyes—no one is literally in the dark. The glow began to swirl and grow brighter. Within seconds a woman’s face was starting to form. Galen’s heart skipped a beat; his stomach was in knots.
But as the image became clear, he saw it wasn’t Iris. The woman had dark hair and eyes. Galen could hear her speak to him, even though her lips didn’t move. You have been suffering so much. There is no need to. Find a way out. I will show you.
By rights his heart should have sunk when it wasn’t Iris. But the woman, who looked no older than a girl, sounded so sympathetic that Galen was drawn to her. She had such a radiant smile. He wanted to speak to her, but he didn’t know how.
What should I do? he thought.
A moment passed in silence that seemed like an eternity. He was afraid to open his eyes, certain that she would disappear.
Kill God.
Galen was too dumbfounded to respond. Had he heard wrong, or was this some weird, spiteful mockery? Without changing her smile, the woman communicated again.
Kill God.
A single word sprang to Galen’s mind. Why?
It can end your suffering.
With a start his eyes opened on their own, and he squinted at the light as if he’d been asleep for an hour. People were staring at him with expectant looks on their faces.
“Did you see her?” asked Mare, who had an intuition that this would happen when anyone touched the golden shrine.
Galen nodded, still speechless. The woman in his vision hadn’t faded away gradually like Marley’s ghost or the Cheshire Cat. She was there one minute and gone the next.
Lilith looked askance. “Something’s wrong. He could be in shock.”
“I’m perfectly all right,” Galen tried to say. But nothing came out, and the room started to swim. A veil lowered over his eyes. The next moment, he was lying on the floor, and Jimmy was holding a cup of water to his lips.
“You fainted, man. Good thing there’s carpet.” Then, with a conspiratorial smile, “This is the second time. Maybe you should stay away from me.”
Apparently Galen had slipped slowly off his chair and wound up on the floor. “I’m all right,” he mumbled. When he glanced to his left, Mare was there kneeling beside him.
She asked again, with quiet urgency, “You saw her, didn’t you?”
Galen waved away the question. “Let me up.” He accepted the water and gulped it down before getting to his feet, still unsteady.
“You were brave,” said Jimmy, patting him on the shoulder. “So tell us.”
Galen waited until they had all taken their seats again. “I got a message. But you’re not going to like it.”
“Just spit it out,” Frank said impatiently. He wasn’t entirely buying the little scene Galen had just put on.
“I saw a face. It was a young woman, and she said, ‘Kill God.’”
Instantly Frank exploded. “I knew it! This guy’s nothing but trouble.” He jumped to his feet, pointing his finger at Galen. “Tell them about the crazy stunt you pulled. You got arrested, right? It’s time we heard all about it.”
“Kill God,” Galen repeated, in a firm, steady voice.
A wave of confusion ran through the group. Lilith told everyone to keep calm, but no one could hear her above the building chaos. Frank weighed the idea of punching out the obnoxious little twerp. Mare was downcast, which stirred Jimmy’s heart. For a fleeting moment he thought he should be with her, not Frank.
Galen looked on, at first with a dazed expression, as if he didn’t really know what he had just said. In fact, two impulses were fighting inside him. One was awe that he had encountered the presence in the shrine, actually seen her and talked with her. The other was triumph—he was back in control of the group, just like at the first meeting. The mixture was intoxicating.
A voice inside him exulted. You’re not weak. You’re powerful. Go for it.
So he did. “I can only tell you what she said to me. You’re all believers, at least you pretend to be. Now we have something to believe in together. Let’s kill God. I’m ready.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Lilith scolded.
Galen saw fear and revulsion in the eyes of the others. He felt the rush that comes when you’ve been deprived of attention all your life. Even bad attention is better than no attention at all. More! the voice inside told him. His other feeling, the one of awe before a looming mystery, couldn’t compete. Galen was about to open his mouth, ready to crow louder. Yet a flicker of the woman’s image returned, and he stopped himself.
In the general outrage, it took a while for anyone to notice that Meg had kept silent. She didn’t even look distressed.
“Kill God. Yes, maybe that’s a good idea,” she murmured.
Frank exploded anew. “What? This guy went on a rampage to manipulate us. He’s got an agenda. If you don’t believe me, I can give you proof. Another reporter wrote the whole story up. There was a crazy plot, but it fizzled, and Galen weaseled out. Go on, tell them.”
Galen fixed him with a cold stare and said nothing. So Frank told the story himself, of the botched act of art terrorism, as he dubbed it. He was so worked up that the incident spilled out in a garbled fashion, but they were all transfixed.
“Now you have it,” Frank said. “Vote him out, and be done with it.” He didn’t dare look over at Mare. Even this worked up, he knew her eyes would make him feel ashamed of himself.
The first to reply was Lilith. “Those who hate God are sometimes the greatest seekers.”
“What? Not this character,” Frank exclaimed.
How would you know? thought Galen, without speaking up for himself.
Then Frank felt Mare’s hand touching his, and he deflated, slumping back down into his chair.
They waited for Meg to speak. She and Lilith were the only ones who seemed to know the territory. Quietly she said, “If we are a mystery school, we’ll be guided in ways we don’t understand.”
“But isn’t God the mystery?” Mare asked. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Meg shook her head. “I never said that. We’re here for the truth, and we have to have the courage to go where the trail leads us. If the message is ‘Kill God,’ I can’t change it. I’m sorry.”
This was no way to calm the group. Lilith stared at her in amazement.
“There is no reason for me to disbelieve Galen,” Meg continued in a steady voice. “We all saw how shaken he was. Unless he’s the greatest actor in the world, he wasn’t following an agenda.”
“His hate isn’t acting,” Frank protested.
“I don’t see hate,” Meg said. “I see someone who has suffered a great deal. If he did something extreme and reckless, it was only an expression of pain.”
Galen felt exposed, his momentary power grab fading. If he agreed with Meg, the truth would be out. Then what? He’d return to his mouse hole. He wasn’t going there without a struggle.
“Nobody at this table has a license to shrink me,” he snarled. “You think I’m the only one in the whole world who hates God? Wake up.” Now he felt some juice returning. “Why are you people so afraid of two little words? ‘Kill God.’ If God can’t protect himself from someone like me, he must be pretty pathetic.”
“No argument with that,” Frank muttered to himself.
Meg didn’t budge. “The message wasn’t for the whole world. It was for you personally, Galen. If I were you, I’d take it seriously.”
He couldn’t wriggle out. She was a better player at this game than he was. Galen realized this with a sinking feeling; his sense of defeat began to creep back in. He tried a new ploy.
“It’s a trick or some kind of code. No one can kill God. He’s already dead,” he said.
“What if he’s not dead enough?” asked Meg.
Galen looked confused.
“There was something you hated enough to get arrested over. You must have thought God was alive then,” she pointed out.
He shifted uncomfortably. “I wasn’t myself. I did something stupid.”
Meg remained dogged. “You can’t escape the fact that you hated God, so there had to be something or someone to hate. Maybe that’s who you need to kill.”
“All right,” Galen sighed. “I hated the God that kids are brainwashed into loving and worshipping. That God is a fraud, a cheat. He doesn’t exist.” Galen felt himself getting emotional. “That’s the real truth, more than saying God is dead. He’s a figment of our imagination.”
“Which you set out to destroy, so that people wouldn’t be fooled anymore,” Meg prompted.
“Someone had to stand up. My only mistake was thinking I could lead the charge. I’m too insignificant. I’m a nobody.”
Running himself down like this came easily to Galen, once he decided to be perfectly candid.
“Then I’d say the presence you met knows you quite well,” said Meg. “She’s telling you to finish what you set out to do.”
Galen turned his head away, and while his stubborn silence lasted, Meg addressed the others. “Why not destroy a God you hate? No one here is naive. Horrible things happen every day, unspeakable things, while God stands by and does nothing.”
No one disagreed with her. Their faces looked anxious and guilty.
“Don’t be afraid to attack such a God,” Meg assured them. “It’s time to kill him if that’s what it takes to get at the truth.”
Galen wanted to sulk, but something new hit him. “Is that why you left the convent?” he asked. “You saw through the hoax?”
Meg’s reply was cryptic. “I left for the opposite reason, but this isn’t about me.” She looked around the table. “When the disciple gives any of you a message, you become the mind and heart of everyone in the group. We look to you to uncover the next piece of the puzzle.”
Her little speech caused a shift. Galen was no longer the fly in the ointment. Hostile as he was, at that moment he was holding the flashlight whose beam could melt the darkness. This wasn’t the same as respecting him, but it wasn’t outright disgust anymore.
He felt the change and said quietly, “I’ll try.” He paused. “This is the damnedest thing, isn’t it? A wimp leads the pack. I promise to let you down.”
For the first time he got smiles from the others, even a tight, begrudging one from Frank.
Meg was pleased. “‘Kill God’ means eliminating everything false about God, all the images and myths and childish beliefs we never bother to really think about. Get rid of that God; wipe him out.”
She turned to Galen. ”That’s why you went on your rampage. So keep going.”
Suddenly Galen’s anxiety returned. He was being led into the unknown. His old wounds would be reopened. At that very moment he could feel them starting to seep, their black poison oozing out.
Meg saw the pain in his face. “Be brave,” she whispered. “Can you destroy forever the God who hurt you?”
The room grew deathly quiet, waiting.
“I don’t know,” Galen mumbled, all but inaudibly. He wanted to clutch at his heart and close up his wounds again.
“You can. It’s only an image,” she urged.
But he knew otherwise. An image can’t be the source of so much pain. An image can’t turn someone’s life into a desert devoid of love.
He managed a choked laugh to keep himself from crying. “This is harder than I thought.”
“I know. It wouldn’t be a mystery school otherwise,” said Meg. “It would be kindergarten.”
You have to see what I lost, Galen thought. He willed Meg to see Iris in all her beauty. Without hating God, he’d be left with no ties to her, no way to keep her with him, even in a shriveled, pathetic way.
Now it wasn’t possible to hold back his tears.
“You fear your own emptiness,” said Meg gently. “Everyone does.” She gave the group a meaningful look. “Why else would they cling to images so desperately? They don’t want to tumble into the void. Who will catch them—God? But no one else can. That’s the mystery.”
Everyone in the group held their breath. They had been fixated on watching Galen unravel before their eyes, but this was a total surprise. Meg’s gaze went from one to another.
“When you destroy everything that is false, whatever remains must be true.” She waited to let her words sink in. “Do you all understand?”
There were a few nervous smiles, but no one replied.
“To meet God as a reality, you have to reach the zero point, where there is faith in nothing. It’s frightening, but totally necessary. At the zero point every false idea about God has been abandoned. You cry with all your heart, ‘Show yourself as you really are. I’m finished with fakes. Either show yourself, or I am lost.’
“When you can say that, God hears you. He knows your search for the truth is serious. If God is truth, he has no choice but to reveal himself to you. That’s what Galen has guided us to today.”
Galen felt a wave of emotion on hearing this. It was as if a tangled web had been transformed into a luminous path. Iris’s love was part of the path, and so was his despair after she was taken from him. Every blow had brought him closer to the zero point. Galen had never had much faith in anything, but even the shreds had been stripped bare.
I’m clean, he thought.
“Scraped to the bone,” said Lilith, picking up what he was going through.
Galen didn’t spare a thought for how she was able to tune into his mind. He was too grateful to be emptied of the poison that had been eating him alive.