Robert W. Walker
Blind Instinct
PROLOGUE
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil to crazy Ahab were visibly personified and made practically assailable…
Below London, England, in an underground catacomb September 4, 2000-Approaching true millennium
She could not remember her own name, not even when the man who'd brought her to this excruciating moment-to die here-chanted her name in her bleeding ears. Neither could she recall her very sex, age, race, or religion, for the burning, searing pain washed so completely over her mind and blotted out all clarity of thought. Clarity ran before this blinding pain, banished from the realm of consciousness, sending the angels of specificity and nouns and adjectives spiraling away from this place. Now on the brink of death, she felt utter disappointment, having all her life believed that when she looked into the eye of death, that she'd find some answers to life's grandest questions: Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Where have I been, and where do I go?
If there were answers, they remained blurred, dulled, and finally lost to the pain of this death-the pain of a crucifixion death… Not even St. Michael and all his legion can help me now, she realized. Or had he said that in her ear? Bile and spit and gall. 1 must prepare myself to sleep, prepare to sleep forever. Answers and resolutions all blurred.
Crucifixion does that to you, to me, she told herself, here in this cold, dank coffin of “consecrated ground,” as he'd called this place. Now, she realized this was no dream, no nightmare she might claw herself out of. In that realization her mind cleared for one crystal moment to tell her. Yes… yes, you are actually dangling on a cross about to greet your Maker.
She had been tied and staked to a cross, and she would soon die Katherine O'Donahue, at fifty years and some odd months-either a saint or a wretched fool, she knew not anymore. Part of her cared not; part of her simply wanted the pain to go away, to sleep eternal.
She'd reached a plateau in the agony; she no longer felt the pain at the bloodied feet-feet held together first by coarse hemp and next a large stake hammered through them and into the splintering massive cross. Nor did she any longer feel the stinging pain at the core of each palm where bone and flesh had made peace with each great stake sent through each hand where they'd been held against the crossbar. No, the pain in her hands and feet had mercifully ceased, but that suffering now stood replaced by a worse pain, the pain of a slow suffocation she hadn't expected.
The drug given her hadn't been potent enough to send her into merciful peace, and so she'd felt the three stakes as each had been driven through the flesh, cartilage, and bone.
She'd yelped at the flinty, striking blows caused by hammerhead against stake and its resultant rending of flesh. The man with the hammer had been startled. She feared making any further outcries would only bring on more pain and loss of breath and consciousness, only to hasten her crossing over… Yet she wanted to cross over, didn't she? Crossing over, her schoolteacher's mind mused. How lovely the euphemism, and how apropos to her unbelievable situation: her life ending in such a manner.
She wanted a last look at his face before she died; she wanted to implant it on her memory. Take it into the next life-take it to her God.
Her arms, flung out on each side of her, remained immovable, save for the incremental, steady pull of gravity that brought her chest caving in on itself. Trying to breathe had become a laborious effort. Her own weight snatched her breath from her like a ravenous animal, devouring it before she could have even a slight taste. The oxygen deprivation caused dizziness and a ringing in her ears.
Still, little snatches of inhaled air also fought like clawing animals to get through to her lungs.
No, she no longer felt any pain in her hands, bleed as they might into the ancient wood, wood that he said, “Has the advantage of having been blessed by the Holy Roman Church.” Her mind screamed Evil liar! But there came no breath of air, which would be necessary to mold and fashion a word, much less a serviceable curse. She'd spent a lifetime fashioning words in diaries and in private poetry, but now her words, like a ship on a windless sea, had no life force to propel her stranded thought.
Her body gasped again and again for her life's breath, while her mind insisted, “Give it up.” At once she wondered at the depth of her faith, matched as it was by her killer's own. At the same time, she remained unsure of the soundness or brokenness, fragmented-ness, frag-men-ta-tion-which was it? — of her own mind, or even if her mind remained hers anymore, if it had not somehow already transmutated into the pure soul? She mused about the evil man's faith-whether it was perhaps the most beautiful or the most twisted faith she'd ever encountered, or whether the very sincerity with which he now practiced it made the fact of it undeniable.
She felt certain of one fact alone: His faith and not her own had everything to do with why she was being literally crucified by him. She wondered if his commitment meant anything to God, who allowed so much suffering in the world. But even these, her private, final thoughts, she could not be sure of. She could not be sure they were cogent-were they driven by hallucination or the torturous agony or the numbness now in her soul? How could she even trust her own mind with her body involved in a concerted attempt to destroy what remained of her… her?
What is my name? she mentally asked again, having no breath left to form the question aloud.
However, at the moment, the war continued to rage, the war for life coming down to a slow and painful fight for breath due to the gravitational pull. Gravity kills, she thought. My own weight is pushing the life from me. That's intense, overpowering, excruciating, literally heartrending, and mind numbing. But the numbing is good, she told herself-a blessing in horrid disguise. It must soon be over. Through such pain and such a death, perhaps I shall find final peace, even redemption. He had said so even as the stakes were driven in. Redemption in a place alongside my Maker, an end to all suffering in this life.
And for the moment, this hope sustained her soul, representing, as it did, her only reprieve.
She clutched at it.
Tearfully she decided, despite all pretense, that she had little or nothing to show for all the years she'd put in. Nothing beyond a pension amounting to so little she couldn't make her monthly rent. No children of her own; no family. Even at fifty, she had never been with a man, had never known any real, true desire or passion. Until now. Now she passionately wanted to either live or mercifully die. Against the advice of her doctor, against the wishes of a neighbor in St. Edmunds, she'd uprooted and gone fishing in search of something-anything-to give her life new meaning. She'd thought to find it in London. So, she'd moved to London, from the cottage community of Bury St. Edmunds. Taking a flat, her schoolteacher retirement pounds helped out along with her life's savings, but only so far. She had a few stocks and bonds, and while only the rare commoner held ownership to land in England, she had managed to make some money on real-estate exchanges over the years-all quite modest.
All having led to what? To this. Meant to be, perhaps. Fated, perhaps. Her only and just karma?
Had she remained in Bury St. Edmunds, she surely would have lived out her years to be buried there. Everything would have ended differently-unless he had come there for her, and that she could not say would not have happened. The man she'd put her fleeting hopes into, after all claimed he'd seen her death on the cross in a vision, and had since been driven to find her and execute this death. So perhaps he would have sought her out in St. Edmunds had she remained there. She only knew he was a driven, determined being, no matter where he may be lurking.