THEO
PEARL’S “MOON OF SHAME” kept me awake, kept creeping into my thoughts.
It was often late at night with only the moon’s light that we scoured for food on the north side of T’aebaek Mountain, outside our caves. We harvested alpine mushrooms for soup, even found a burnt-out farm where potatoes had survived the blazes of the North Koreans. We thanked that murdered farming family for their crop and other supplies: blankets, silverware. At Sister’s insistence, we buried them beneath a moon that I imagined was not unlike Pearl’s moon of shame.
My bedroom was dark. Only shadows, sounds, smells, and tastes that no longer existed outside of my mind. Then a car squeeled down Laneda Avenue. I jumped up, turned on the lights, grabbed my .38, and rushed outside. Searched the front porch, yard, out the gate, then across to Imogene’s. Down the carless street. Everything was dark—no moon, only the one streetlight’s vanilla glow and silence. He was a ghost. But he was there, like those Daubenton bats, veiled in some crevice, waiting. I searched up and down Laneda, staring into the night.
When I returned home there was an envelope tied to my mailbox. I yanked the rope free and went back inside, opened the dining room curtains so I could watch the street, and read yet another of his prophetic letters with my flashlight.
Your Manzanita is right out of the Bible. Demons, angels, holy places and heathens. Your old Indian, Solomon, like Azazel, climbs his mountaintop each day, a gathering place of demons, like Mount Hermon. Azazel was leader of the rebellious giants in the time preceding the flood; you know this stuff. That’s what I like about you. Oh, and didn’t you just have a flood? My, my, my, His wrath begins.
Azazel taught the art of warfare, made knives, swords, shields… taught his chosen ones secrets of witchcraft; led innocents into wickedness. Tisk, tisk, tisk. Weren’t you once his apprentice? Isn’t that young tulip now his little scholar? Innocent lambs to the slaughter…
Well, as you know, finally at the Lord’s command, Azazel was bound by the feet and hands—Bound by archangel Raphael and chained to the jagged rocks, to abide in utter darkness until the Day of Judgment, when he’ll be cast into an inferno, devoured by hungry flames. Amen! Amen! I say it twice to make it twice as nice. But you know all this, don’t you, Father Riley. And you know I’ve chosen the perfect place for our final battle. Soon.