13 • WALLOW THE LEADER

WELCOME TO GRIZZLY MALL: FORMER HOME OF THE STATE’S SECOND-LARGEST BEAR-THEMED MARSHMALLOW STATUE! read a banner draped above a massive charred crater, the last place that Milton and Marlo Fauster had stood together on Earth as living, breathing human beings.

Next to the scorched bruin-shaped shadow was a small plaque: COMING SOON: CHRISTO’S SOFT PRETZEL GRIZZLY BEAR TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF MILO AND MARGO FOSTER AND DAMON RUFFINI.

Above the mall commons on the second floor, just outside of the Grizzly Mall Food Court, was one of those seasonal stores. Only, instead of switching out storefronts every Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and so on, Mazel Top-to-Bottom—owned by Michael and Marcia Smilovitz—catered to a very targeted audience, namely the Chosen People of Generica, Kansas (which, at last count, topped out at just over a dozen … slightly more if you include nonpracticing).

Mrs. Smilovitz took down the Rosh Hashanah decorations in the window to prepare for her big Yom Kippur display.

“This will really knock them on their tuchases,” she said with a Day-Glo Yahrzeit candle in her mouth. “Could you hand me that neon Star of David, Warder Chango?”

A tanned man with a scraggly goatee wearing a blue robe stood at the base of the ladder.

“What? Oh yeah … totally, Mrs. Smilovitz. Here you go.” Warder Chango handed her the electric six-pointed star. “And, like, thanks so much for letting us rent the back of your store for our … club,” he added.

Mrs. Smilovitz secured the Star of David at the top of the display with some spirit gum.

“Well, you seem like a nice enough bunch of goyim,” she said as she scrutinized the star’s placement with a scowl. “Except for that big mean boy …”

“Yeah, well, Damian has been through a lot,” Warder Chango replied cautiously. “You know, dying, coming back …”

Mrs. Smilovitz climbed down the ladder.

“That’s still no excuse to be so rude. But at least he’s not as skinny as the rest of you. Skin and bones! I’ll drop you off a plate of blintzes as soon as I’m through.”

She plugged in the star, which radiated to vivid, crackling blue life. Mrs. Smilovitz clapped her hands.

“Joy vey!” she cried.

Warder Chango looked at the clock on the wall. The big dreidel pointed to five.

“Whoa, I gotta go, Mrs. Smilovitz,” he said as he rustled to the back of the store. “You know, almost time for … choir practice.”

“You kids have fun,” she called out as Warder Chango parted the thick curtains leading to the store’s stockroom.

Inside the room was a congregation—if you could call six men, two women, one little girl, one big boy, and a ferret a congregation—all wearing blue hooded robes and somewhat lost looks upon their faces.

“How nice of you to join us, Warder Chango,” said the Guiding Knight, a tall, rat-faced man positioned in the back of the room behind an altar. “Now, at last, we may begin.”

“Sorry,” Warder Chango muttered as he joined his fellow cult members. “I was just helping out our landlady.”

The Guiding Knight cleared his throat.

“O, Lord, we—the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship—beseech thee, fuel our humble labors in the promotion of truth and power, unity and control. Enrich our hearts with that most excellent gift of entitlement so that our acts may be full of the spirit of smug, secret self-knowledge. Give us strength to overcome our setbacks….”

He paused as he surveyed his shabby, makeshift church, crowded with boxes of Hanukkah candles and bar mitzvah favors.

“And at last,” he continued with a sigh, “may we enjoy the blessedness of the eternal realm that you have tastefully furnished for us, and us alone….”

A large cruel-looking boy lazing on a dark brown Barcalounger at the back of the altar burped loudly. The Guiding Knight gritted his teeth.

“So may it ever be.”

“So may it ever be,” replied the small group of spooky acolytes.

The Guiding Knight banged a gavel against the altar and nodded his head to a dotty old African American woman sitting before a pipe organ. The woman sent her arthritic fingers to work across the yellowed keys, filling the stockroom with oozing waves of warped, crooked music.

The boy on the Barcalounger clapped in a slow, sarcastic way. The old woman smiled in misinterpreted gratitude. The Guiding Knight stiffened, straightening his purple velvet scarf affectedly.

“I, your Guiding Knight—whose purpose is to superintend all procession—will hereby commence this meeting of the subordinate chapter of the lower Midwest sect of the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship!”

The enthusiastic gavel-banger banged his gavel enthusiastically.

“First item,” he declared, “and last, not to mention everything in the middle.”

He turned to address the boy on the altar behind him.

“O, Damian Ruffino, our most valued Bridge to the other side, the one—”

“Second one, actually,” chimed in Necia Alvarado, a bony girl with gleaming black eyes who languidly stroked a sleeping white ferret. “If you count—”

“We don’t,” snapped the Guiding Knight.

Damian sighed as he finished his bag of sunflower seeds. For some reason, ever since he was brought back to life using the etheric energy of twenty-seven sacrificed chickens, he had developed an intense craving for seeds and Gummi worms.

“You mean Milton Fauster?” Damian said with a smirk. “Good ol’ Milquetoast? It’s okay. You can say his dweeby name. I know he was your first choice to … to …”

“‘To better prepare for our imminent arrival in the Next Life and hasten the Last Days, which serve as our new beginning,’” concluded the Guiding Knight with the offhanded authority of something recited so many times that it had become second nature.

“Yeah, yeah,” Damian said as he pecked at a seed in his hand. “The one who dies first to make sure everything is ready for you on the other side, then calls for you and the other 14,216 people who believe in your—our—Omniverse, or whatever.”

The robed congregation bowed their hooded heads as one.

“The everlasting everyplace where everything is possible,” they murmured reverently.

“Right,” Damian said, sitting up and dusting off his hands. “But the big diff between Milquetoast and me is that he didn’t want to be your Bridge and I do.”

The Guiding Knight held his fist to his mouth and gave a fake cough.

“Which brings me to our next item in our spiritual itinerary,” he continued tentatively. “And that is the question of when …”

“When?” Damian asked.

“Yes, O, Bridge. When will you, exactly … be our Bridge? To the other side.”

Damian—the reigning bully of Generica who had devoted his life and brief death to the art of intimidation, thuggery, and malevolence—glared at the man.

“I’m sorry,” he said unconvincingly. “I don’t follow you.”

“Yes,” the Guiding Knight said as his forehead beaded with sweat. “Right, that’s the point: we follow you. I—we—would just like to know when you will be sacrificed so that we may all be saved?”

“Oh,” Damian replied with a yawn. “That. Short answer: when I’m good and ready. Long answer: when I have more … believers.”

The congregation murmured.

“The problem with you people,” Damian said, pulling the lever on the side of the Barcalounger so that he catapulted forward, “well, one of your problems, is that there just ain’t enough of you. If I’m going back to Heck—I mean, the Omniverse—then I want to arrive with a real bang. Lots of followers. Enough KOOKs—”

“We prefer ‘Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship,’” the Guiding Knight interjected.

“Whatever. I just want to have my own built-in army of devout do-whatever-Damian-says-ers with me so that I can really shake things up down under.”

The white ferret on Necia’s lap stirred awake.

“Ooh, look who’s back from his widdle nap,” Necia cooed as she scritched the animal behind its tiny ears. “My Lucky.”

Lucky looked up at the girl, his eyes glazed with sedatives, and hissed.

“Someone got up on the wrong side of the cage,” she said.

Lucky—Milton’s beloved pet who had been left in Necia’s twitchy hands ever since his master had been “popped” in a tub of popcorn in a funeral home furnace—sniffed the air groggily and trained his burgundy eyes on Damian. The hair on his back raised as stiff as a brush made of porcupine quills. Lucky hissed and spat.

“Junior Knight Necia,” the Guiding Knight commanded, “please do something about that disagreeable creature.”

Damian shuddered as he locked eyes with Lucky.

“I have a few suggestions,” he said with disgust. “Like maybe a charitable donation to an animal testing lab …”

Necia scooped up the animal in her dark, spindly arms and walked toward a cage in the back of the stockroom.

“He’s so sweet when he’s not awake,” she said. “Looks like my widdle fuzzy wuz needs more of his special sleepy snack.”

Necia stooped before the cage, opened its squeaky door, and forced Lucky—who, even when sedated, could still put up a formidable squirm—inside. She took a small eyedropper from a vile next to the cage and gave a few squirts into a bowl full of scrambled eggs and liver. Necia put the bowl in the cage, and Lucky, ravenous with hunger, went at the bowl like, well, a starving weasel-like animal presented with its favorite food. After a few lusty bites, Lucky’s gobbling grew sluggish. He valiantly snapped up one last morsel of liver before passing out cold.

The Guiding Knight grew impatient.

“Damian—”

The brutish boy waggled his finger at the wooden, self-important man. The Guiding Knight sighed.

“O, most revered Bridge,” he corrected. “How do you propose adding to our flock? We’ve always preferred a low profile, for sanctity’s sake, not to mention tax reasons.”

“Well, all that’s about to change,” Damian said, looking at his watch. “I’m taking this second-rate cult to the top. We’re talking Damiantology! You know, fame, fortune, celebrities, lots of dues, hardly any don’ts, using negative energy for the public bad—”

“I believe you mean—” interrupted the Guiding Knight.

“I am mean—and I want everyone to be able to harness that awesome nastiness and take it straight to the top. Well, not actually the top, because that’s where I’ll be. But right below.”

Mrs. Smilovitz parted the curtains. The Guiding Knight shot the organist a look. The old woman nodded and began to play. The congregation joined in.

“Oh, Lord, Kum Bay Yah.”

Mrs. Smilovitz grinned and clapped. “Such beautiful voices! Though I never could understand that mishegas song. So sorry to interrupt, but you have a visitor …”

“Not the FBI!” exclaimed the Guiding Knight with alarm.

The middle-aged woman folded her arms and glared at the man suspiciously.

“Um … no. You should lay off the cop shows, Mr. Nervous.”

A man with thinning ponytailed hair popped his head in through the curtains.

“Excuse me, but I only had fifty cents for the parking meter, so I really got to get this party started….”

Damian rose.

“Fellow KOOKs, I’d like you to meet my lawyer, Algernon Cole.”

The man swished past Mrs. Smilovitz, straightening his Hawaiian hula-girl tie.

“Mr. Ruffino,” Algernon Cole said with a toothy grin, “always a pleasure to see you … especially when you’re alive!”

Damian galumphed past the confused Guiding Knight and off the altar, crunching discarded sunflower seed husks underneath his boots.

“Thank you, Mrs. Smilovitz,” Damian said as he shook his lawyer’s hand. “You can go now.”

The woman scowled as she turned to leave.

“That big shmendrick makes me want to plotz!” she groused as she left the room.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Guiding Knight asked with a tinge of outrage. “We don’t need a lawyer—there is only one true law we adhere to … apart from those necessary to maintain our nonprofit status.”

Algernon Cole studied the small flock of peculiar parishioners.

“Is this a social club for those excluded from other social clubs?” he remarked. “I kid. Nice place. Understated.”

Damian turned and faced his followers.

“Mr. Cole here is in the process of getting me a righteous settlement—”

“Two, actually,” Algernon Cole interjected. “One from Generica General Hospital for fatal negligence when you died after being in that coma from the exploding marshmallow bear incident, and the other from the Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor for egregious incompetence with intent to inter; that is, lay to rest someone who was—obviously because I am talking to him!—still restless. So we’re getting ’em at both ends, so to speak: one for letting you die and the other for trying to kill you! Most lawyers—and I’m a real one now, thirteenth time’s the charm as far as BAR exams go—have to start off with boring cases. Not me! Though I’ve always been cursed with an interesting life!”

The Guiding Knight stepped off the altar and glided toward Damian and Algernon Cole.

“I still don’t understand why he’s here! I run a lean operation, I mean, congregation, with things kept on the down low.”

“And look where that’s got you,” Damian sneered, his beady black eyes shiny with malevolent glee. “In the back of some crappy store in a lame-o mall.”

The Guiding Knight stiffened.

“We were fine in our basement church at the funeral home, until things got … complicated.”

Damian shook his blocky, freckled head.

“You’re thinking about this all the wrong way,” he said smugly. “My settlement is going to buy us a proper home someplace. Really big with lots of free parking. And publicity. Maybe even infomercials. If you want people to believe that you’re the one who knows the ‘answer,’ then you’ve got to shout it the loudest.”

The Guiding Knight rubbed his sharp chin, mulling over Damian’s words like an old computer chewing on new code.

“Well … we could use some more room—”

“And new robes,” Algernon Cole said with a grimace. “Polyester, by the smell of it. You need a natural fabric that can breathe. Organic cotton really uncorks your chakras.”

The Guiding Knight smiled. “Perhaps good things really do come to those who wait,” he said with a look as self-serving as an open vending machine. “Looks like the all-seeing, all-powerful keeper of the Omniverse was really looking after us when he took Milton Fauster away without a proper sacrificial ceremony and gave us you.”

Algernon Cole cocked his eyebrow.

“Did you say Milton Fauster?” he asked.

Damian bobbed his head at the mention of Milton’s name. “What about him?” he clucked.

Algernon Cole shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, really. Just a case of the ‘small worlds.’ Synchronicity and all. I had a meeting with the poor boy, in between his first and last deaths.”

The man snickered.

“It’s like you two are joined at the spiritual hip or something….”

Damian’s eyes narrowed. His feathered hair seemed to stand on end.

“Anyway,” Algernon Cole continued. “We met at the Paranor Mall—a place that makes your KOOK church here seem as exotic as an unfinished furniture shop!”

“What did you two talk about?” Damian asked.

Algernon Cole smoothed out the lapel of his secondhand suit.

“Well, I really shouldn’t divulge the contents of a meeting between client and counsel. But considering the client has passed on and I wasn’t licensed at the time, I’m sure it’s no big whoop. He wanted to talk about a book idea of his—”

“A book?” Damian interrupted.

“Yes,” Algernon Cole continued. “Called Heck.”

Damian began to vibrate like a big living pager.

“You don’t say,” he said with fascination.

“I do say … and I did,” Algernon Cole laughed. “Ridiculous, I know. Not like my book, Chicken Pants, about a boy—”

“So, about this Heck book,” Damian interrupted again. “What more did he say about it?”

“Milton seemed quite interested in certain contractual loopholes … ways of rendering a contract with—who did he say?—oh yeah: the Principal of Darkness, null and void. Isn’t that rich? Apparently this principal is a woman.”

Damian shook his head and snickered.

“Barely,” he said under his foul breath.

“It was the queerest thing,” Algernon Cole went on, replaying the event in the second-run theater of his mind. “He insisted on meeting in this weird mirrored booth. It must have been some kind of television, because inside—after we started talking—it was filled with the most horrific images. Demons, mostly.”

Damian’s jaw dropped open. Several spit-slick sunflower seed husks fell from his gums to the floor.

“You need to take me there,” he declared.

Algernon Cole gave Damian a crooked grin. “That’s funny … not as in ha-ha but as in strange. Milton, I recall, wanted to come with me to see you after you had been, um, unplugged by that mysterious Get Butter Soon messenger.”

Necia fidgeted in the back of the room.

“Damian,” she called out meekly. “There’s something you need to know….”

“Not now!” he spat. Damian placed his hand on Algernon Cole’s shoulder, not in a warm sense of fraternity, but tightly, as if he were trying to manipulate the man’s will by toggling the joint connecting his arm and trunk.

“I need to go … there!” Damian stated forcefully, coiling the words slowly, then giving them a verbal tug as if tightening a leash.

Fear flashed in Algernon Cole’s eyes.

“Sure,” he said weakly. “Perhaps tomorrow after—”

Damian squeezed the man’s shoulder.

“Now.”

Algernon Cole swallowed and carefully—as if dealing with a vicious, predatory animal that he had stumbled upon while hiking—moved Damian’s hand away.

“Of course,” he muttered calmly. “I’m still on the clock. We can just take our meeting to go. But … why is it so important?”

Damian stared off into space, rubbing his cheek. His finger picked at a small white whisker growing out of his jawline. He plucked it out and examined it. It was a tiny feather. Damian blew it away with a puff of breath.

“It’s time to let the feathers fly, like at a juvie pillow fight,” he murmured spookily. He locked his birdlike eyes upon Algernon Cole. “Let’s just say I want to look up an old fiend.”