The Everborn Page 15

  “Maid service skipped the room yesterday. The weekend night attendant wrote it as a stayover to insure himself a free room in case he sold out, to sneak in a little private romance with some chubby chick after he finished his reports. Their plans got screwed early this morning when they walked in on this mess. We got a positive on the girl...Alice Bradshaw of Lawndale. You heard of Jacob Bradshaw, the reverend guy?”

  “Yeah,” Matt nodded. “I’ve already been informed. He’s with the Church on or of The Rock in Lawndale, the one with the homeless program that actually works.” Matt turned to Max, “Alice is the reverend’s daughter I mentioned over the phone.”

  The homicide detective glanced at his watch, then at Max and Max’s tape machine, then at McGregor. “I trust your good friend won’t fuck this case up, Lieutenant. Anyone with the same name as that wacko UFO science guy I hear about and who takes down what you say is just like goddamn media to me.”

  And together with Mrs. Clipboard, he stepped past them and out the doorway.

  “Nice guy.” Max shut off the recorder and returned it to his pocket. “I still don’t get it, Matt. I get some of it, but where’s it leading to?”

  “Let’s step outside.”

  Max followed his friend once again and emerged from the room, greatly wondering, thinking, and brewing over Hugh Updike’s parting words.

  ....wacko UFO science guy...

  ***

  “Simon BoLeve.”

  “Of course.” Max knew this name. He found himself stunned with his own absent anticipation of the mention of it. Simon was by far the most elusive and dangerous of all the suspected non-humans Max focused on; it made sense to expect he played a role here. Scenarios and possibilities of where this was all leading to began to surface within Max’s mind. But he desperately needed to understand more, even more desperately than before.

  Max and McGregor both faced one another at the perimeter of the parking lot, both enjoying a new smoke. The amount of spectators around them had dwindled considerably. The paramedic crew lifted the Hefty-bagged body and its gurney into the ambulance, signaling a random chorus of motor-hum from police vehicles readying to leave.

  “Does Mel know you’ve taken up the habit again?” Matt remarked.

  Max shrugged and flicked his ashes.

  McGregor said next, “The nature of this morning’s slaying, the condition of the victim...is identical in every relevant way to the condition exhibited by Nigel’s body when it was found, excluding of course the supernatural elements. And this time we have a missing young female. With that said, there’re a few things I need to be sure of. You sent Melony to Ralston Cooper’s gig at The Crow Job to stake it out for familiar faces; Bradshaw and her boy-toy happened to be there, but Mel didn’t know them from Adam and Eve. Someone else knew them though...and knew what he wanted to do with them. Max, did Melony see Simon BoLeve that night? I’m sure he still looks just as handsome as ever....”

  Max cleared his throat. “Simon BoLeve has unfailingly proven to be the most crucial link between Erlandson and the outstanding phenomena surrounding his life and Cooper’s, and played a role in a majority of unexplained murder cases involving the bizarre sightings of beings like the one you saw when we met. But I’ve been nothing but shit-out-of-luck in trailing him, everyone who tried has, and he would pop up when you’d least expect it.”

  “Like Mr. McGee with The Incredible Hulk and David Banner.”

  “Yeah, which made Melony’s assignment a golden opportunity, because I was certain BoLeve would be there.”

  “She saw nothing then.”

  “Nothing at all. But she and Erlandson....”

  An officer interrupted them and McGregor excused himself and accompanied the cop back to the building, telling Max he’d only be but a minute.

  Melony didn’t see him, Max whispered to himself, turned to face the direction of where he parked and then back again. But they were all supposed to have been there. All three of them.

  An added thought:

  BoLeve had been there.

  Max had been right.

  And then: Church On The Rock, Lawndale. Homeless program....

  By the time it occurred to Matt McGregor that Max had up and left him, he had yet to realize the urgency which sent the UFO detective away, nor what Max had set out alone to do before anyone could dissuade him.

  “Awe shit, Maxy....”

  17.

  Scratch and the Church on the Rock

  If one were to drive west from Andrew’s neighborhood, preferably down the Redondo Beach Freeway until it narrows to form Artesia Boulevard, he would soon find himself on the borders of the cities of Hawthorne and Redondo Beach. Taking the Inglewood off ramp and hanging a right towards LAX through a sliver of the city of Lawndale, one would eventually come across a chalky-white stucco building that could inadvertently be mistaken for an auto service center with its oblong characteristics. In fact, the building at one time had been just that.

  These days, one would not expect to find grease monkey mechanics laboring under the hoods of indisposed Fords. Instead, the mechanics here were feverishly laboring under the hoods of lost and ailing souls.

  The Church on the Rock was founded five years ago by the Reverend Jacob W. Bradshaw under the authority of the Assemblies of Christ Foundation. Not more than several months afterwards, the church broke away from the Foundation unexpectedly due to major disagreements concerning Bible philosophy and the needs of the poor, thus becoming non-denominational. The Church on the Rock, consequently, grew to become a renown haven where the needy and homeless could seek spiritual solace and material support. Eventually, additional rooms were constructed to the auto center building’s rear and the sanctuary was extended from one side. Congregational funding and contributions abroad made possible the purchase of a handful of surrounding homes previously evacuated for demolition; run-down homes hence reconstructed as Bible classrooms and temporary homeless shelters.

  Jacob Bradshaw resided with his wife Ellen and three sons, not including one particular daughter, across the church parking lot diagonally from the sanctuary, sharing a duplex with his fourth and eldest son, Jacob Bradshaw Jr., whose wife had recently given birth to twins.

  If one were to venture deep within the hearts of each member of the Bradshaw clan, saunter straight right smack forward past their pasty-white English Anglo-Saxon identities and along the straight-and-narrow ramparts of their souls, one would come across an inspiringly wide breadth of space in which dwelled the simple yet earnest philosophies of their hearts. These were good people, the Bradshaws. And unlike the lords of the stereotypic evangelical world, a world, which they loved and prayed for but could not respect, the clan never bit off more than their fair share of offerings and contributions. To make a full and honest living, the Bradshaws owned a reputable landscaping business which also provided a place of employment for homeless bodies willing to work.

  If homeless bodies were not willing to work but proven nevertheless capable of doing so, they would soon find themselves to be homeless bodies back on the streets and it would be their own damn fault. The Bradshaw philosophy was both simplistic and unclouded: they shared the deeply pervading responsibility of tending to the needs of the poor, and as long as they reached out in doing so, their ambitions were appeased. But in accepting the Bradshaws’ helping hands, the poor shared a responsibility also, the responsibility of catching a firm grip and lifting themselves up and into new and stable lives. It went beyond the old saying that God helps those who help themselves. It went more on the lines of God helps those who need His help, but limits help for those who abuse it.

  The Church on the Rock’s example of servanthood and devotion to God and to neighbor had spawned an aura of foremost reputation, drawing members from as far as Burbank and the San Fernando Valley. Food and shelter was abundant and in heightened spirituality there was even more profound a wealth. Through experience and conviction, the Bradshaws were convinced that a relationship with
God proved a deterrent against irresponsibility, homelessness, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and even illness. There was something about the power in the goodness that hid behind the traditional scheme of things and although the Bible was by all means a source of explanation, the power itself was admittedly a mystery not entirely solved.

  Then again, a good thing going should not be questioned too much, once it gets going.

  As for bad things....

  ...they are another story.

  ***

  The last several years had seen the wretch of a man who now called himself Scratch as a mere street vagrant, a vagabond of sorts, a fellow American who’s down on his luck and would like to borrow a few quarters for a cup o’ coffee. Everything before this, even to himself, was nestled under the umbrella of enigma and uncertainty. This past was something he cared to share with no one; he was not the kind of person loose-lipped over what kind of a person he was and the past had a great deal to do with all that. He was introverted and secretive. He always had been.

  There was a certain section of the sanctuary building, an extension of what had been the auto center, constructed along the flank opposite the parking lot and facing the street. This extension was composed of two floors and a storage attic. The first floor served merely as an expansion for the sanctuary, a necessity evoked by a thriving service attendance rate. The floor above occasionally provided sufficient space for choir practice, particularly when the sanctuary was occupied by other interests, such as rental space for Korean Baptist services. This room was otherwise used as storage space.

  The attic was structured by the same basic dimensions as its lower predecessors, with the exception of the fact that it was half the size. The inner stairway situated at the sanctuary’s rear led clear through to the second floor and then ended at the door of the third. The only other access to the third floor attic was from the outside, a white-rock backyard of rooftop terrain, of aluminum air vents and a caucus of telephone cable hookups, laid flat between the deactivated rear emergency exit door and an opposing steel fire escape ladder scaling the building’s side.

  Hazy afternoon sunlight filtered into the bowels of what had been once the church storeroom, beams stretching to join with the brownish tile floor like the ground ropes of a carnival tent. Each of the four solitary window panes hung at the side wall facing the street, projecting rain-speckled images at oblong angles. Outside, the morning showers had ceased; inside, showers of a dismal nature, a dark and silent nature, issued incessantly into the dreary ambience.

  Scratch, nude and slumped, contorted by shadow, welcomed the ambience, thrived in it...had fashioned it, tamed it, bathed in it. The dim lucidity of an overhead light bulb dangled in the open air between him and the rectangular mirror. Strands of spider web clung from the bulb and neighboring chain, casting a shady network of disjointed lines across the grim features of his face, and upon his neck and shoulders.

  There was a spider there and it caught Scratch’s attention. It had caught his attention a while ago and he was still trapped within its awe and spectacle, as though it were nestled there just for him.

  That spider....he thought.../I’m like that spider. That spider...a black widow...I’m like it...I’m a black widow. Only in reverse. I’m the male, not the female. The king, not the queen. For me, there is no queen. There never has been. There never will be. Bradshaw’s daughter is my whore. She’s using herself for me. And I’m using myself for her. I have to, because I’m a black widow...it’s in my nature...it’s in my destiny, my right to live...my right to live free again, my right to live whole again. And her right has been given to me, because I am special.

  Because I can be reborn....

  ***

  Each Sunday, the former auto center garage was filled to maximum capacity with more varieties of humanity than the varieties of vegetables in a victory garden and The Crow Job combined. The music...the music of the Rock...was like every soul was in harmony and together with the vibrant preaching, the passionate preaching, the loud and radiant verbs and commands, the rich organ and vibrant soul of the piano, and even the saxophone...the scene was almost like a backwoods gospel extravaganza.

  In the farthest row to the rear on the left side facing the pulpit, where the padded plastic seats dwindled to metal multi-colored folding chairs, the hunched and bearded figure of Scratch had wedged himself between a young black woman miserably attempting to hush her Power Rangers-studded infant to sleep and a leather-clad pimply-faced teen. In joining the congregation in a jazzy rendition of When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, Scratch found himself wishing to hear more of the infant rather than the music, completely contrary to the other fellow souls around him. Whereas other people became profoundly annoyed, Scratch took a certain delight in the infant’s screams.

  At least someone else is in misery besides me, being here, he thought.

  And oh, how he loved the screams.

  But the infant had ceased as the woman began to sway the child to the beat of the music, slowly to its rhythm, slowly to its rhythm, slowly to the music’s own mesmerism. The child was soon busily sucking the tips of its fingers, amused eyes directed towards a threesome of skinheads over and beyond his mother’s shoulders, passers-by pausing to take a lengthy peek at the scene.

  Scratch then reverted his attentions back to the front.

  At the front of the church, several chairs sat in a half circle to provide seats for the clergy Jacob. Behind these chairs were two dozen more, taken by choir members clad in gowns of tan and red, hand-me-down gowns donated by a church in a neighboring city.

  In the midst of praise and worship, Scratch suddenly spied one of the ushers, an older black man garbed in a rather tacky thin yellow jacket, hastening through a crowded aisle towards the front, where the clergy sat facing the congregation. Scratch swung his view towards the rear, in the direction where the man had emerged, at the far left entrance. A uniformed policeman stood momentarily in the center of the opened doorway before he disappeared outside. Curious heads darted from the doorway to the usher as Mr. Yellowjacket quickened his anxious speed, conscious of the attention drawn and slowing awkwardly because of this, fearful to alarm anyone. Clearly, he was doing a bad job of that. He arrived at the chair of Pastor Jacob, knelt and whispered into his ear.

  The whispered words of Mr. Yellowjacket were few and to Scratch it seemed as if the pastor was spared the gory details of the news itself of the apparent discovery that morning. Pastor Jacob was escorted towards the rear church entrance, where the awaiting officer reappeared and then disappeared with Mr. Yellowjacket and the pastor out into the cloudy Sunday morning air.

  How nice, how delightful, Scratch mused, and like Mr. Yellowjacket, the congregation turned to one another, whispered into the ears of one and then the other. How reeeeally delightful that events should all come down this morning, right smack in the middle of Sunday morning service. They could’ve come down yesterday, but they didn’t. They came down today. They came down now.

  Scratch knew what was coming down.

  And he smiled a razor-scared, bearded smile.

  ***

  Later in the service, the assemblage of taciturn worshippers listened with distress and disbelief as their associate pastor, a pasty white man with a tacky thin black jacket, released the news of the calamity: Pastor Bradshaw’s daughter, twenty-one-year-old Alice, had left for an evening out with her boyfriend Friday night and hadn’t returned since. She was by now officially declared missing, leaving only her boyfriend’s blood-ragged body behind in a motel room several cities away.

  The thing that Mr. Blackjacket failed to mention, or rather, what the authorities had failed to mention to him, apparently, was that the boyfriend’s eyes were missing. Scratch had hoped in the announcement that he would include the eyes. He longed to hear about the eyes. He craved to feed the anticipation of the congregation’s reaction to the eyes.

  Oh, well. No goddamn big surprise.

  ***

  After th
e service, alone in the church attic...

  ...well, almost alone....

  He continued to stare in the rectangular wall mirror at his rough nakedness beneath the dim web of light, into his own eyes and beyond. His self-inflicted scars trailing his face and brow, creating blackened furrows beneath his growth of beard, were now absent in his mind’s eye. In his mind’s eye, he was a newborn baby, readying to emerge into the world once more, to emerge anew. His ambitions, his dreams, his realities of what was meant to be swelled from within his soul and they had done so since he was revealed the mysterious secret of who he was and what he was supposed to do to be who he was.

  Ever since a handful of days ago...

  ...when he woke from a deep sleep and his typewriter spoke to him.

  He never had been much of a writer at all, although the desire to write had swept over him time and time again; he was always into other things, his typewriter had been old and dusty, had been that way for a very long time.

  But that all changed not long after the little black boy had come along for the last time, for the last of several dozen times, had come to haunt him, to taunt him, and about a week ago he had taunted and haunted his last. Scratch never dreamed he would catch him, would put him out of his own wretched misery, but he had. And it was not long afterward when his typewriter came to life, after never having been used for so many years...it came to life, it spoke to him, and gave him the gift of a script, a guideline for the present, the past, and the future, however inconsistent and incomplete.

  Yet it was complete, in a way, despite its many missing pages and deletions. It was complete, because after he managed the black boy’s death, finally the boy’s death, it arrived not long afterwards. It was like the boy’s death was the end of a long haul and the script was a magical trophy, a revelation on paper, in black and white.