World War S 3

Chapter 3

“Phil, I’m a very famous medium. I’m not saying I didn’t rely on some outside instruction at the beginning of my career, but I’ve been doing without it for a long time …”

“We only posed some questions to the audience arriving at the gate disguising it like a game. It’s only in case something unexpected happens,” Phil said timidly, holding a long list in his hand. “Names, favourite colours, the happiest moment in life, family occasions …”

Sue jumped from the chair, right at the moment when the makeup girl picked up the lipstick. The small cylindrical object spun twice in the air, made a long red mark on the wall, fell onto the floor, and then rolled behind one of the vent grills.

“This damn place! Do all caravans have a lipstick graveyard?” she lifted her hands indignantly and grabbed for the other lipstick in her handbag. “And forget that list! I don’t want to look at it—I would be struck dumb!”

Phil nodded and crammed the paper into his pocket.

“All right,” he said calmly. “I just wanted to secure the show.”

“You wanted to secure yourself. But, believe me, this is a totally unnecessary struggle,” she answered and stormed past him. She didn’t even know why she said that. Maybe due to the strange feeling she always felt when she looked at this man, as if … no, nothing, she brushed the dark, bizarre thoughts aside. She must have felt this because Phil had a different style than Jim. Jim was more relaxed, cool with the production.

But the producer of this show was not Jim anymore. This was patronized by Tim Cristen and his New Age Church of the Subconscious Evolution.

When Sue left the caravan, the two helpers were already waiting for her, clad in the church’s floor-length colourful robes. They welcomed Sue with a long bow, pressing their palms to each other in front of their chest, which made Sue sick. She hated this continuous bowing and scraping since they had already greeted each other half an hour ago.

“I warmly greet you, Sister Sue, the helpers are waiting at their places for you to begin,” the older one said politely, which also repulsed Sue. She didn’t feel that she needed to have any kind of spiritual relationship with this obsequious, demure man, but she must play their games …

Only for Kathy! the returning, obsessive promise came again. Get out! she tried to cast it away. Kathy is okay, and I am keeping the covenant!

She rushed up the long staircase leading backstage. She set a good pace for herself to throw off the two serving clowns, those two elderly monkeys who believed in some kind of galactic power, some intangible bullshit.

But she—she was connected to the living spiritual realm. That invisible, unseen world, which hummed around her and had helped her to take her biggest step ever …

Only for Kathy.

*

John got so bogged down in the mud that he couldn’t move anything below his waist. The mound of debris blocked his way to reaching any branches of the still-standing tree. Any of the limbs he reached immediately broke when he pulled on them.

He decided to dig deeper; he removed the loose debris from the top, hoping he would find a trunk below. But he didn’t find more than the dead body. The corpse looked vicious, like a swollen hedgehog; splinters stood out from every inch of his body.

“Oh, nooo …” John whispered to himself. “Why, why do I need to do this?”

He slowly freed the upper body, and he scraped down the mud with a thick branch. Finally, he reached the man’s waist, but he could not continue. The man’s leg had become hopelessly wedged between the two forks of the tree trunk in front of him.

“I need your belt,” John murmured and reached across the man’s head with his hand and grabbed the belt; it was highly decorated with heavy mountings. “You don’t need this anymore, mate, but it could help me out of this problem …”

First he tried gently, than he pulled with greater force while he tried to move his legs. The mud had become so solid that he could only move his toes in his shoes.

“Damn it!” he shouted into the jungle and pulled himself more to the front. His chest pushed the dead man’s head down into the soft sludge on the surface, so he could only see the edge of his nose again. “Bastard!” he shouted when the belt finally loosened and slipped out of the dead man’s trousers. A holster came with it, and the weapon too, which slid out and flew past John’s head, sledging into the mud.

“Yes … damn it. Go to hell! Agrrr!” he swore in despair. He knew his guardian angel would not be proud of him for that.

Then he calmed down. He realized that if he continued this useless fight he would be really tired before he accomplished anything, and then he would really be damned and on his way to hell. The night would be long, and they were not alone in the jungle. From the noises around him, he knew that even the beasts were angry about the landslide. And soon they would come back to see if any prey had survived the devastation.

The gun, he thought. That decorated revolver, covered with gold and diamonds, that jewelled killer could protect him against the beasts of prey.

He tried to reach that long branch he’d used to dig out the body, which he’d thrown away afterwards.

“Where are you now?” he shouted, looking up to the sky. “Where are you now, you famous guardian angel?”

He finally reached the branch with the tip of his finger. He turned around to reach the gun, but he couldn’t see it. It must have been below one of the bushes.

“I know you’re not showing up because you want to see how I find my way out of this. You had your part, and it’s my turn now,” he murmured and raked the ground where he suspected the gun lay. The pistol slowly approached him, and he was finally able to put the branch down and grip the gun.

“Yes!” he shouted victoriously. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so happy about something. But his happiness disappeared when he realized there was only one bullet in the barrel; the magazine was empty.

The magazines could be in the belt, he thought. He pulled it closer and searched through it, but he could not find any more bullets.

“Where are they? Where on earth are they?” he shouted angrily and threw the belt at the dead man. “How could you come into the jungle with only one bullet?”

His nervous gasping returned a hundredfold stronger. But he also heard some excited baying, snorts coming from the nearby trees and mixing with his panting. He had to regain control of himself so he wouldn’t attract all the carnivores of the jungle.

He closed his eyes and took the gun into both hands as if he were praying.

Only one bullet, he thought. What would happen if he shot into the air to signal Julie and the two helpers of the dead guide?

*

Salome Sue Richardson was worthy of Great Granny’s fame, but she was still filled with the excitement of a beginner when she stepped out onto the huge stage from the wings. The space was truly enormous and empty, and she had to fill it all by herself, the space normally filled by a rock band—with its five or six members. The lead singer would run up and down the stage; sometimes the twenty-five-metre width was not enough for him, and the concert producers would make for him a long mole stretching into the crowd so he could gallop up and down freely.

So, she had the same type of catwalk.

Of course, she had been greeted with a storm of applause, which pushed her through the standstill and made her stronger. Phil even created theme music, some kind of marching song, which seemed quite captivating. It was a tune that motivated the crowd, something everyone would hum easily. It turned out to be good; hands flung in the air, waving to the tune, and even Sue could not hold her legs still. She moved to the end of the long mole in dance steppes. It could be my trademark, she thought, the new key movement of the new show!

She underestimated Phil. He had organized this event very professionally.

“Welcome, dear friends!” she shouted into the mic leaning in front of her lips. “All of you, seekers, curious people who can’t wait to see the call of the other world!” she pointed to the crowd in the stands. A rumbling murmur followed her movement. “You’ve come to the right place!”

The loud outburst of applause came on schedule and almost pushed Sue back to the big stage. It was a perfect introduction; Phil must be overjoyed in the director’s room.

Then the thirty thousand people were silent. Sue started her preplanned steps. The knocking of her high heels could be heard even in the microphones.

“I wouldn’t think that connecting spiritually with a dead soul is a bad thing. Don’t believe the superannuated prophets, those discharged clergy! Many of them are envious of us now. They are jealous of our freedom, that we had the courage to break with the former thousand-years-old traditions. We don’t need a god who expects us to beg in the solitude of a back room until he finally graciously takes care of us!”

We don’t need, she could hear from many sides.

“Because you, right in front of me, or you there, in that light sweater, don’t need to wait for the answer of this new god. Because we must speak up and say that we’ve had enough!” she shouted, her voice echoing around the stadium. Her heart pounded like the heart of a racehorse, she felt that the veins in her neck were swelling.

And she sensed the flow again. Noisy, rustling pictures with thousands of blurred figures ran to her from the prominent end of the long stage, holding different objects or making various movements—these spirits helped her to be herself again, the celebrated medium, the worthy successor of Great Granny Salome.

With great confidence, Sue brushed aside the attempts of the helpers when they tried to bring up some people from the audience who were on their list. She chose without restrain, even she struggled to separate the relevant information from the huge stream of pictures and connections to the people. I have to get used to this, she thought, I have to find the right method to practice my profession on a scale like this.

It will be okay, though, since the big silence has ended. Grace to the Master, Great Granny Salome, and all spirits!

*

Depressing gloominess fell over John. The moon hid behind the clouds, only a few vibrant fireflies chased each other in the distance. Meanwhile, the mud set hard around him; at the deepest part around his shin and ankles, it was still warm, but near the surface it felt to him like cold, moist hands due to the descending mist.

He dug for twenty-five minutes using a wide, split branch, but he could not get any deeper than his belly button. The mud was not the problem—he could remove that. But he could not do anything about the plant fragments. It made the whole structure like a strong mud wall.

He stuck the digging stick into the ground and took the guide’s highly decorated gun in his hand. How useless this is here, in the middle of nowhere with only one bullet, he thought and couldn’t help laughing. This guy won’t need it either. He couldn’t take his wealth to the grave.