On the Fourth Day You Will Rest

Tom lay naked in the dark in the cold.

Hello, he called. I can’t see anything. I need help. Hello.

Silence.

He waved his hand in front of his face.

Nothing.

He sniffed. The smell of must, not foul. The mattress upon which he lay reeked and his bare feet hung off the edge. It was the bed of a child.

He listened. Breaths of air conditioning and spits of water in the corner of the room.

He was as Jonah resting upon the rancid tongue of some stone leviathan.

Hands patting, knees stubbing against the chilled concrete, he made his way toward the spits of water. The mattress was his anchor, his 12:00 o’clock. He found the leak in the corner between 7:00 and 8:00, and a bucket lay half-full underneath. A scoop. A sniff. He drank and then drank again. Cold and bitter.

At 9:00 he found a ladder and pulled himself up and counted each rung. Twenty in total and a steel hatch above. He pushed. No give. Then he climbed down and explored the wall across from the mattress, 5:00 to 7:00, lined with shelves and jugs upon them. He pulled one down and twisted the cap and sniffed. Water. He drank. He found more shelves on the wall to his left between 2:00 and 4:00. There, he pulled off a polypropylene bag but lost his balance and the bag gritted across the concrete. He sat there in the dark and caught his breath. He searched for the bag with clumsy hands and found it and dragged it to the corner of the shelf. He pressed the bag against the corner until the plastic gave and grains spurted out. He ran the kernels through his fingers. Rice. He ate them raw, crunching loudly. He dragged himself back to the filthy mattress, where he counted the seconds between spits of water. Three minutes. He counted again. Three minutes. Then he counted the drips themselves. Three. Four. Five. Then he slept.

He woke and needed to pee. He crawled over to the bucket and relieved himself. In that sightless darkness he counted drips again. His beating clock. He heard a groan of steel. The hatch above him opened. Blinding electric-blue light bloomed through the opening. Tom shielded his eyes. The light belonged to a lantern. And it hung on the belt of a man descending the ladder. Two followed him. All wore white cloaks and porcelain masks without eyes or ears or mouths or noses.

Greetings, Tom, said the Lantern Bearer.

Tom sprang for the ladder but the men caught him and pinned him. The Lantern Bearer straddled him and Tom saw his nakedness in the reflection of his white face. Hearken to my words, said the Lantern Bearer. Tonight will be the first of three gates. Tomorrow the second. The third thereafter. On the fourth day you will rest. The Lantern Bearer flashed a vial and a syringe. Tom thrashed and kicked. The Lantern Bearer lost his balance, catching himself hard against the wall.

He fumbled the vial and needle and they skittered across the concrete.

Son of a bitch. Hold him down, he gritted. Again, Tom kicked at him crazily. The Lantern Bearer stepped forward and kicked Tom’s side. You wicked man, said the Lantern Bearer. The natural man is alive in you. Be still. Have you no ears to hear? Be still, I say. Tom flailed again but the Lantern Bearer sat on his chest and drew the hatchet and held it against his nose.

Cease your senseless violence. Don’t you see that you live only by the grace of God? Had he not revealed to me the hope of your salvation, I’d send you to your immortality. But hear me, man. God will not allow you to continue heaping sin onto your divine ledger. Remain unruly and I’ll dash your skull and your blood will stand as a testament against you at the last day.

Tom stilled. The Lantern Bearer lifted himself and picked up the needle and vial and pulled the plunger and flicked it and expelled the air.

Release him, brethren. Tom is the steward over his own creature. Salvation cannot be forced. So it is for every man. The men released him and stood behind and rested their hands upon Tom’s shoulders.

The Lantern Bearer held out the syringe. Tom stared at him.

I will not wait much longer, said the Lantern Bearer.

Tom took the syringe.

Very good. In the crook of your elbow. Hurry up now. Yes. Every drop. Very good.

The three men backed away and the Lantern Bearer unfastened the lantern and placed it at the base of the ladder. Another replaced the slop bucket with one he had carried down. Then the three wraiths ascended together and the hatch clicked behind them.

Tom felt the burn of cold rush through him. He tried to stand. He stumbled and fell. God, have mercy on me, he whispered. His teeth chattered. He drew his knees to his naked chest and gazed upon the electric lantern. The light strobed. The bucket ticked. And with each pulse the color changed. Electric-blue. Navy. Ultraviolet. The light around the lantern congealed, spinning like a disk, and in the pulse of the lamp the bones in his hands loomed visible. The ticks in the bucket grew louder. More rapid. Loud as gunshots. Just beyond the reach of the light two eyes hot as embers. The thing stepped into the light. Bipedal and naked as he was. Great weeds of blonde hair grew from its body. Hair that tugged and scabbed its flesh. Hair that invaded its eyes and nose. Hair that hung in great greasy knots. Only its gaping mouth was spared. It opened wide. Its hum was the drips of the bucket. A final drip droned forever and Tom closed his eyes and clasped his ears but he could still see it and hear its call. Whatever Tom had thought himself to be stretched beyond recollection. His mind like yearning hands stretching for purchase in the void. Alone but for the thing that waits in the dark.

A sudden rush of light and Tom vomited into the slop bucket. Black as soot.

He carried himself back to the mattress panting and shaking with cold, then he slept. He woke to the sound of the hatch reopening. He waited for the white boots of his captors. He heard a voice. Rambling and unintelligible. But no white boots.

Anyone there? he called out. Anyone?

Tom crawled to the ladder and looked up.

Hello, he called again.

The lantern dimmed. The water jugs refracted the navy light strangely like cracked windows of a sunken submarine. Eyeless fishes swam about. The peristalsis and the rhythms of their gray hearts visible through their translucent flesh. He held the bottom rung and felt a frigid current pull past him. The metal bending beneath his hands. One step. Then another, and he emerged from the depths.

He took a great breath of mustless air. The dry wind shuddered the tin roof above him. Spruce wood-paneled walls with one-inch gaps. Bands of gray moonlight that shone through them. Light of the kind man was made to behold, not held nor made by man. Near the hatch was a single line made the day the concrete was laid and it shimmered in the light of the moon. Tools hung on a wall: a rake, a shovel, and next to them a hatchet, the Lantern Bearer’s. Tom stole it down.

Tom looked through the wood slats for some ambush on the other side. Nothing. Hatchet in hand, he pressed outside. A stone's throw from the shack Tom spied a spacious and lightless cabin with a dirt road that extended endlessly into the desert. Clothing lines were hitched between the sidewalls of the house and shack. Upon them hung a pair of jeans. Tom drew them on. Then he turned from the house and wandered into the wilderness.

Tom came upon the outskirts of an ashen forest. Shells of juniper, pinyon pine, and Joshua tree. Hoodoos covered in soot. Barefoot, he walked the ash and charcoal and spied a bighorn spoor and followed it by moonlight up the side of a mesa. He crossed the mesa as the sun rose and found a small cove and rested there until the night came.

In the final sediments of sunlight, red and orange and yellow, Tom surveyed the desert floor and spied wisps of fire near a slot canyon. He wandered the mesa table until he found a scree apron and descended. The campfire drew near and he fell to his belly and crawled prone. He heard the screeching of some baleful hymn. Figures in porcelain masks and white robes danced around the blaze. One beat a drumhead. One cranked a hurdy-gurdy. Another turned the skewered body of a lamb above the flame. And the rest pranced and spun and laughed and bellowed. They sang of their goodness and the flame danced with them. And in its ballet, Tom was mesmerized. For it foretold Armageddon.

Then it all stopped. The hurdy-gurdy died with a screech. The drumbeat, silent. And the flame lost its rhythm.

Tom, said the one at the spit, we are so glad you are here. Our prayers have been answered.

Tom stood, and for a moment all stood as statues, the flame burning low in the dim desert and the masks of the celebrators pearlescent in the camp-light.

Get him, one said.

So into the slot canyon he ran. Half-naked. Like some hermitic prophet chased by a crowd of horribles. He slid down a slickrock chute and his hands burned as he tried to find purchase.

Get him, they said again.

Tom hit the bottom and caught himself on the stone wall. He looked behind and saw his pursuers atop the slide. He scampered through the sediment passages and cavities. The chute narrowed, an esophagus of sandstone. He turned sideways and shimmied. His pursuers gained ground. One grabbed at his shoulder but he sucked in and jerked and ripped away, slipping further into the crevasse.

Tom, please stop. Please, said a woman behind him—her voice straining in the squeeze of the shriveling narrows. Her hand reached for him. She missed. Grunts and heaving breaths. At last the canyon broadened and Tom freed himself. Once more the pursuer grabbed for Tom’s shoulder. Tom turned and drew the hatchet from his belt and she saw and shrieked and drew back into the gritty gullet. Too late. Tom cratered her skull.

Ally, the one behind her yelled. But Tom didn’t linger. He turned and fled.

It was well past sunup when Tom emerged from the slickrock canyon. Eyes sunken deep in their sockets, head swirling with nausea, lips scaled. He surveyed the arid land. Melting air slurred what it submerged. He vomited into the desert crust. Clear and putrid. Tom shaded himself under a juniper and pulled goatheads from his feet.

Only men without souls or thirst dwelled here, he thought. Only men without souls or thirst.

He followed a dry-river bed until he came unto Sipapu bridge. On the abutment he saw stone-bones of some ancient creature forever iced within its walls; bones the color of ember. Tom drew his fingers across it. Just above the creature: two claw marks. Long as a man. Scraped into the rockface for a million years.

In the late of the day he napped at a sinuous sandstone ridge. In his dream, he was with Jenny and the kids. They sat at the dinner table and ate. Jenny asked about the kids’ day and they discussed school. Sarah relayed news of her after school club. Some new-age thing he wasn't sure about. They went out for ice cream. That night, he and Jenny lay in bed and he held her and she began to sob.

What’s wrong? Tom said.

I’ve been waiting to feel like a family for so long. And tonight felt so good.

Then why are you crying?

Because I know what tomorrow brings.

Tom stirred, face covered in sand. He brought his knees to his chest. A great heave. A hitch in his throat. He sobbed tearlessly. Then, he waited to die. His eyes unfocused, destined to remain that way until their dissolution or consumption.

Look into the drying pools of those vacant eyes.

Behold the reflection of the arid plain.

Look closer.

Spumes of dust from a Jeep. Six-wheeled, trail tires, gray and monstrous and roaring. Bearing down upon the man in the shade. Tom’s pupils bloomed. He stood and turned, then stumbled and ran. Tom rounded a stone fin and slipped out of eyesight. On the other side of the embankment he saw a shelf twenty feet above. He climbed it. He found the narrowed mouth of a rock shelter obscured by a serendipitous stone. He looked inside the gullet and it was dark and deep and ran at a decline. Three dashes of white paint marked the entrance. Tom pulled himself inside and lay twenty paces from the mouth. With his axe he waited for them in the dark. But they never came.

The engine of the Jeep grew distant and Tom pulled himself from the cave.

In the cool of dusk, in the purple hues of the desert sun, Tom ascended the ridge, bloodied and shirtless, the axe at his belt. Damned if they heard him, he cried loud and shrill across that parched wild and the vegetation immune to the dry powers that be, across sacred datura and evening primrose and yucca blossoms, toward crowns of mountains that breached the horizon. It was then, in that bloodthirsty rage, that Tom danced at the cliffside. Mad and dazed by thirst. He slipped. Over the edge and to the barren floor, cracking his neck.

Tom woke at the dinner table. Chicken and potatoes and soda. Tom’s eyes were drawn to a fly. It rested on the chicken. The chicken was cold as ice. Jenny sat opposite him. Sarah sat on one side, a pink bow in her hair, wearing a Stan Oaks Elementary School shirt. Andrew sat in his high chair on the other. His face covered with food. Concern swelled in their eyes.

Honey, are you okay? You fell asleep at the table and started thrashing. We tried to wake you but you just wouldn’t, Jenny said.

Tom rubbed his eyes and took a deep drink from a water glass. He walked to the sink and filled it again. And again. Tom coughed and gagged harshly. He felt as if his belly were full of sand.

Jenny held him at the sink and scratched his back till he was done.

Daddy, are you okay? Sarah asked.

I’m okay. I just had a bad dream.

In bed that night Jenny asked him about his dream. Tom couldn’t explain it. Damp but dry. Ocean depths and barren wastes. A Jeep and a hurdy-gurdy. Sleep, she commanded. And he did.

Daddy, Sarah’s voice echoed in the blackness of his dreamless sleep, like some distant drip. The little girl shook Tom’s arm. Daddy.

Yes? Tom said, his eyes closed and heavy with sleep.

Wake up.

Do you need something, girly?

Daddy, you forgot the fourth night.

What?

The fourth night.

Tom opened his eyes and his daughter stood before him. She wore a pearlish mask. A purple light came from the hallway. In the corner of the dark room stood his wife and their infant son.

Faces hidden. Eyes red as coals.

Daddy, said the little girl. Do you feel rested?