The Shelter Cycle Read online

“You must have had a lot to talk about, plenty of memories.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder,” Mrs. Stiller said. “Would you join us this afternoon? A few friends of mine—we meet at my house around three o’clock.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll still be here, later today.”

  “Think about it. No, don’t think—see how you feel. We study the Teachings, decree, raise our voices together, listen to taped dictations. My house, you know which one it is. A yellow door, the diamond-shaped windows. Even yesterday I could see all your energy, all the Light inside you. I can feel it now.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Francine said. “Right now, I’m freezing.”

  “Of course. Go inside now, dear. Eat something. Drink something warm.”

  •

  The hearth was slightly rounded, of polished stone; a broken wagon wheel was etched high above the flames. Francine sat watching the fire, her feet up near the metal grate. She ate a bowl of oatmeal, sipped at lemon tea. She imagined how it would be, if she went to Mrs. Stiller’s house. Would she remember the decrees; would she be able to keep up? The speed of the voices had always risen to a hum, like insects vibrating, leaving hardly time or space to breathe. A swarm of words. Perhaps the decrees would return, the Teachings still inside her, waiting to be brought into practice, to surface.

  A man with bifocals and a gray mustache sat across from her, reading the New York Times. He kept glancing up, as if about to say something; she’d noticed this, the friendliness of strangers since she’d been pregnant, her pregnancy a reason to engage her. It was a little like walking a dog, how it brought strangers close. She thought for a moment of Kilo, either circling the back yard or asleep under the kitchen table. Or maybe Wells had started to let the dog sleep on the bed, since she’d been gone. Wells, worrying now, wondering. Francine laid a hand flat on her belly, her shirt warm from the fire. Your daughter will be the mother of a daughter of great Light indeed. To think that the woman who wrote that was now the woman feeding apples to horses, the path from one to another running at the same time as Francine traveled around the canyons as a girl, in and out of the shelter and away, far away, to another life, until here she was again, circling back, a person with a person inside her.

  How would I even go about teaching you, being a mother in that way? Perhaps I would tell you to think of yourself as a radio station, sending forth good thoughts, peace and goodwill. Would that be too much? Would I believe it? Perhaps I will ask that you tell your mind to act with decision, alertness and quickness, not to waver; when you have a sudden feeling to do a certain constructive thing, stick to it and do it, whatever the outcome. That is something that the Messenger taught us, and I would like to believe it, to be able to act without wavering. I would like to believe that we are not these lower bodies, but that we are beings using these vehicles to accomplish an end. I will say, I will tell you that whatever happens, don’t make matters worse because you’re afraid of looking foolish. I will say to forgive yourself, to forgive others, to learn while your body sleeps.

  16

  WELLS STOOD in the middle of the living room with the pages Francine had written in his hands. It was morning again, and the only light came from the windows, the whiteness outside, the snow still drifting down. A day had passed, and Francine was still not home, had still not called.

  A loose page glowed white, under the couch, catching the light from the window. Wells bent down to pick it up, then went into the kitchen and set the pages in a ragged pile on the counter, next to the phone. He called Maya—at home, at work, on her cell; he listened to the ringing, the recorded greetings, but he did not leave a message. As he listened, he shuffled through the pages: Francine playing with Colville in the broken foundation of an old cabin, long grass torn out for beds; chanting at a forest fire; falling from a tall tree and not being hurt; passages of reflection, explanation.

  When I tell people I grew up in Montana, they start talking about cowboys and ranches, when for me it had nothing to do with that. It was the world and the universe, the visible and the invisible, not a state in a country. I had chosen the family I was born into, and I was here for a reason, and it was a matter of living up to the path I was born with.

  At the sink, he splashed cold water on his face, then started the coffeemaker, listened to its cough and hiss. Cold wind blew in when he opened the side door, just long enough to glance at the empty driveway.

  He wasn’t hungry, but he toasted a piece of bread, drank a glass of milk. The phone book lay open on the counter. He had been thinking of calling the animal shelters, to check for Kilo. A black dog, medium-sized, wearing a leather collar. Was that too vague a description? He picked up the phone, set it down. If Francine called while he was dialing, would she get a busy signal? He didn’t call. Instead, he set his empty glass in the sink and went back down the hallway, into the baby’s room.

  There were no more documents to find on the computer, nothing hidden or new. Sitting at the desk, he slowly cycled through photographs of their honeymoon, up in the Sawtooths, along the Salmon River. Francine, the fine blond hairs of her arms catching the sun. The braid on one side of her head had come undone. Kilo lay in a patch of sunlight behind her, raising his head to snap at a fly. Far below, a bright green lake, looking so cold and deep, in the crater of an extinct volcano; beyond that, the ragged edge of the mountains. They’d joked about the Sawtooths, about turning the whole range over, sawing the world in two. Later they’d counted the mile markers, found the hot springs, close to the highway, along the river. Wells had had poison oak, so he couldn’t get in the hot water; instead, he stood watching Francine throw her clothes to one side and scrabble along the riverbank, the full moon shining down on her broad white back. Headlights wheeled suddenly overhead, cars and trucks on the highway, so close. He told her he’d stand there, warn her if someone was coming. What are they going to do? she’d said. See me naked?

  The phone rang from the kitchen; he stumbled to his feet, tripped on the computer cord.

  It was only Stuart from work, wondering if he was coming in.

  “I should’ve called,” Wells said. “It’s my wife and everything, you know, the baby—no, it’s not here, not yet.”

  “That’s fine,” Stuart said. “It’s slow in here anyway, what with the weather.”

  Wells hung up the phone, wiped the toast crumbs from the counter. In his peripheral vision then he saw motion—a dark shape out in the street. It was the neighbor girl, on her bike. Sliding, kicking up snow behind her, she cut back and forth, the light blue of her coat and her bright yellow hat surrounded by all that whiteness.

  Dialing quickly, he called all three of Maya’s numbers again. She wasn’t at work, no one knew why, and there was no one at her house, and she didn’t answer her cell phone.

  He could not sit still. He circled the house, sweeping floors, straightening furniture. His cell phone in one pocket, Francine’s in the other. The bright snow shone in through the windows.

  When he passed through the kitchen, he slowed, read a page or two again, thought of them as he circled. He liked to imagine Francine doing all these things, a girl so long ago. And reading about her parents—it was as if he were finally meeting them, and they were the same age as he was now.

  He paused. A car in the driveway? A car door opening, slamming shut? Footsteps? No. Had this house always creaked like this?

  Colville said snow insulates sound, which makes it hard to hear anyone following and also makes it harder for them to hear us. I asked him how come sound carries across water and he said that snow is frozen, that it doesn’t weigh as much.

  Wells read in the sharp light that slanted in through the window. He read about Colville’s parents, practicing survival skills, setting up a lean-to of sticks with a silver foil blanket over the top, a shelter that fit across the mouth of a cave.

  A knocking, a soft knocking. He slid a little in his stocking feet as he turned the corner, into the living room.
r />   When he pulled the front door open, no one was there. Cold wind blew in, and there were footprints in the snow, and something—he bent down to pick it up; it was Kilo’s leather collar, the metal tags jangling—and then the neighbor girl running away, back toward her house, her dark hair now loose.

  “Hey!” he said. “Wait!”

  The phone was ringing again. He hurried backward, inside; Kilo’s collar, stiff and cold, was still in his hand as he picked up the phone, as he listened.

  “Wells,” Maya said. “You need to be here. You need to get here as fast as you can.”

  Standing there in the kitchen, listening, he watched snow drift through the open front door, collecting white on the hardwood floor of the living room.

  On All Saints’ Day we dressed up as Ascended Masters, as Sylphs and Undines and Salamanders, all the Elementals. We paraded in front of the Messenger and she announced the best costume. The men built special rooms to look like the retreats of the Masters. They took one of the rooms in the shelter and covered all the walls and ceilings and floor with pink insulation, so it was like a strange cloud. We couldn’t have sugar, so we didn’t get any candy. That year of the shelters, the men carved these little hearts out of rosewood. Instead of candy we were given these perfectly smooth hearts to keep.

  17

  COLVILLE KNELT IN the darkness, before the small, hidden door. Stretching out the heavy bolt cutters, he took hold of the padlock between the pincers and squeezed. The lock dropped to the plywood floor with a heavy, hollow knock.

  He moved backward a few feet, waited to see what would happen, if the door would open by itself. Then he closed his eyes, did his visualizations, and began to decree:

  “Beloved I AM Presence bright,

  Round me seal your Tube of Light

  From Ascended Master flame

  Called forth now in God’s own name.

  Let me keep my temple free

  From all discord sent to me.

  I AM calling forth Violet Fire

  To blaze and transmute all desire,

  Keeping on in Freedom’s name

  Till I AM one with the Violet Flame.”

  He opened his eyes, took a long breath, exhaled slowly. Then, on his hands and knees, he eased himself forward.

  The door scraped as he pulled it open. Darkness, silence, the smell of mildew. He switched on his headlamp, crawled through; he ran his hands along the floor to each wall, the space only a few feet square. He reached up and felt nothing. He tilted his head, the light’s beam, and saw the ceiling ten feet overhead.

  As he lifted his hand from the floor to kneel, he felt something else—a shelf, two steps. To his right, almost behind him, were two, three wooden steps and a small, porchlike landing. He turned around, the beam of his headlamp shining on a door, a purple door that looked like it belonged on a Victorian house. He stood, climbed the stairs. The door had a brass knocker shaped like a fist bolted to its middle, and a round glass peephole, and two heavy padlocks bolted above its knob.

  Colville backed down the steps. As he turned, bending to reach back through the tiny door for the bolt cutters, he saw light in his peripheral vision: a round spot of light in the darkness. He switched off his headlamp, turned to face the purple door again. Light shone through the peephole; the same flickering, bluish light lined the bottom of the door.

  He cut the locks, set them gently on the floor.

  “Kilo,” he said.

  Colville knelt, but the dog only whined, backing up, lying down again with his head resting on his paws.

  “Fine. Stay behind, then.” He pushed open the purple door and stood still for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the lights, the long fluorescent tubes humming in the low ceiling. Then he took one step inside and paused, uncertain whether he should go farther. Silence; he felt buffeted, as if he were standing close to a huge machine, an engine of some kind pounding the air.

  The room was almost fifteen feet square, and it was a bedroom. He stood next to a queen-size bed, a four-poster with a pale violet comforter resting on top of its mattress. A bookshelf along one wall, the bed, bedside tables holding framed photographs of children. He stepped closer; he recognized the children—they were the Messenger’s sons and daughters. This was her room, where she would have been safe, planning for the future, consulting with the Masters.

  For a moment he felt the weight of the forty feet of earth overhead, felt how these rooms without windows seemed to contract. He slowed his breathing. Inhaled, exhaled. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the lights, his body adjusted to the pressure in the air. He walked around the bed and his footsteps echoed, the built-up floor hollow beneath him. Storage.

  A long desk ran along the back wall. Atop it, two old computers hummed; green and red lines, still visible through the dust, bounced across their screens. Dust covered the papers, too, and mouse droppings, tiny footprints. A pile of mimeographed decree inserts were stacked to one side; he read the top one: I demand a bolt of lightning into the cause and core of the beast of sensuality dominating the motion pictures of this year as well as the beast of horror and violence in The Alien, Prophecy, Nightwings, Dracula, The Amityville Horror, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, Phantasm, Nosferatu, The Shining, Love at First Bite.

  Further down the desk, a gnawed yellow pencil rested on a sheet of paper that was covered with flowing handwriting:

  It might seem like a paradox that our Activity, so set on ascending beyond this earth, escaping this material plane, would work so hard to stay alive and in our bodies, on this earth. The thing you must understand is that we need this world to do our work, to transmute darkness to Light. We need a place to stand while we do this. It’s the same as the way our souls need our bodies, as a temporary place to reside. The Masters reminded us of this. In 1982, Saint Germain himself said that the ancient manuscripts of another world prophesied that the victory of the cosmos would unfold on our planet. This is the struggle that we’re engaged in, that we’re leading.

  A sound. A scratching at the door. Turning, Colville crossed the room and let Kilo in. The dog sneezed, then entered gingerly. He circled as if he would bite his tail, around three times, almost settled, then moved over by the desk, circled four more times, and finally collapsed with a sigh.

  Colville stepped close to the bookcase. Here were photos of the Messenger; frames also held images of Marie Antoinette, Nefertiti, Queen Guinevere—some of the Messenger’s earlier embodiments. Here, too, were the green books of the I AM activity, and volumes about theosophy, and plenty written by the Messenger herself.

  On the lowest shelf, tinfoil caught the light, wrapped around something the size of a toolbox. He knelt down, reaching out to touch it. Some of the silver came off against his finger; he realized that the foil had been wrapped around books—first individually, then seven or eight together. Carefully, he lifted them as one, almost set them on the floor, then swung them over to the bed, rested them on the comforter. The silver flaked away, brittle with age.

  The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, by Arthur Edward Waite; Hypnotherapy, by Dave Elman; Necronimicon, by Ed Simon; The Satanic Bible, by Anton LaVey; Memoir on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism, by Franz Mesmer.

  Colville opened this last one, slowly, hearing the old glue of its spine crack. Scrawled across the endpapers, the same handwriting, in pencil: I call for the legions of Archangel Michael. Lord Michael descend! Michael descend! Michael descend! We call for the flaming sword of blue flame. Encircle all demons. Encircle the fallen ones. Encircle the legions of darkness. BLAZE the light of Cyclopea. BLAZE through! Blue lightning bombs descend from the heart of Hercules.

  There was no dust on the comforter, nor on the bedside tables, which gleamed as if they had been oiled. There were sheets on the bed, starched white pillowcases. Colville realized he was crying, tears on his face. He closed the book, glanced over at Kilo just as the dog raised his head, ears up.

  A knock, the metal sound of brass, three times.

 
; Kilo leapt to his feet, tail wagging, and ran to the door.

  Still on the bed, Colville watched the door, less than ten feet away. Dead bolts lined one edge; he hadn’t locked them.

  Now Kilo let out one happy bark, his tail cutting back and forth through the air.

  Another knock. Silence.

  Standing, moving as quietly as possible, Colville leaned close, squinted through the peephole. The light was so dim; all he could see was a dark silhouette. A man’s shoulders and head, smooth hair, standing tall. And all at once the deep voice: “You’re going to invite me in?”

  Colville stepped back, almost tripping over Kilo.

  “Are you going to open the door?”

  “It’s not locked.” Colville reached out and swung it open.

  “Hello, I’m dreaming,” the man said, ducking slightly as he stepped into the room, squinting his bright blue eyes. Kilo leapt up, and the man bent to kiss the dog on his snout, to scratch behind his ears. Then he straightened again, smiled.

  “Colville,” he said. “Surely you’re not surprised to see me?”

  The man was tall, six foot four or five; the fluorescent lights were close to the top of his head, his blond hair shiny and solid-looking, darker at the roots. His beard, too, was blond, its edges sharp, comb marks visible in the whiskers. His eyes were so blue, unblinking, and he wore a white robe somewhere between a bathrobe and a karate outfit. Colville’s mother’s blue knit scarf around his neck. Barefoot.

  “See you got into those books.” The man laughed, waved one large hand to the bed, where the old tinfoil shone dull and cracked, ripped into fragments, the books scattered.