The Old

Loreal

Conclusion

Back in the house, Seth was scooping potato salad onto a plate and he said, “You alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“You wanna take a walk or something?”

“Not really,” Loreal said. “I don’t want to be sad right now. I was wondering if you would help me with something else.”

“Anything.”

“Help me to dream. I want to find out some things. Go into a trance with me and help me dream.”

Seth stood there with a clump of yellow potato salad hanging from a fork and Loreal realized what he’d wanted to say is, “Anything but that.”

“Okay,” Loreal said. “Howabout we wait for Lewis to come back tomorrow and then we try it.”

“That,” Seth said, picking up a piece of fried chicken, “I will do.”

“Great,” Loreal said.

She could wait a day, and if Seth wouldn’t want to do it at all, Lewis would. After all, he was going to be her Master.

“Do you understand?” Chris asked.

“I understand that you have certain ideas,” Lewis said. “Traditions, I guess. And I can respect them.”

“That’s sort of a cold answer.”

“Well, it’s sort of a cold feeling when the person you love sits in the backyard in November while you are in the house with your family mourning.”

“The cold doesn’t bother me,” Chris said, placing a hand on Lewis’s shoulder.

Lewis removed the hand.

“That is not the point.”

“I have never entered a house of death.”

“You are a house of death,” Lewis said, unsympathetically.

“You kill people. You are always walking away from dead bodies. Are you telling me you are afraid of them? Of dead bodies?”

“Fear has nothing to do with it,” Chris said, sounding a little impatient. “That’s not what it’s about. I cannot die. Not easily at least, and for one such as I—”

“It sounds so poetic when you say it like that.”

“Would you stop interrupting? Fine. For someone like me to walk into a house of death, where a death is being mourned, where a spirit is passing on… It just seems unfitting. We were always taught it was unfitting to do so lightly.”

“Well, you’re not doing it lightly, and I’m not spending every night in a hotel while we stay here. I can’t afford it.”

“You’re not paying for it. I am.”

“Well, you can’t afford it either.”

“I can afford it more than you.”

“You know what?” Lewis said, “I’m about done with this conversation. I’m not going to force you to do anything. I can’t really do that.”

Lewis turned over and turned out the light.

“Lewis,” Chris said. “Lewis, we never go to bed this early. We don’t even go to bed until almost morning.”

“I’m tired,” Lewis said.

Chris lay on his back for a while, his hands folded over his chest.

“Lewis?” Chris said, at last, “it’s been a very long time since I’ve had someone in my life.”

“Yes.”

“Since I’ve had to change. To rethink things. You know?”

“Yes.”

“I will, I will go into the house with you. If you wish.”

“You don’t have to. I just want you to know you can. I just want you to be able to stay there the night. With me. You know?”

Chris nodded, but did not speak.

“Thank you,” Lewis said.

Seth imagined Lorealwas in bed if not asleep. He didn’t think it appropriate to wake her. Down the hall, resting in her own room, the candles out now, was the deceased Suzanne Dunharrow. Lewis was gone to bed, and Owen and everyone else, and Seth thought, I am tired of being afraid, tired of being the only member of this family who is always terrified. I’m tired of hiding behind Owen and Lewis. And now it seems I’ll hide behind Loreal.

“I’ll do it,” Seth said, pushing the sheets back. He’d known little sleep. “I’ll do it tonight. There is no night better. There’s no time like the present.”

It had stopped raining for about a half hour when he trusted the clouds enough to go out. It was almost as if something had known that this was the night he had planned, and chosen this night to open the heavens and chill the air. It was so close to the year’s end, and for the last few weeks, the green leaves had turned yellow and red and brown, and begun their fall. When the rain began, he had been irritated, and then, as it went on, he was resolved, and now that it stopped, he did not wish to go out, but knew that this was not the time to break his commitments. His commitments had brought him here.

“And what if it was You who brought the rain? What if You wanted to know that my word was not light.”

Your word is all you have. He remembered hearing. Your craft is a strong as your word.

But the air was fair, warmer than it had been as he left the house and went down the main street and out into the fields. The high grass bent, wet as he passed through it, and beads of water came from the limbs of the trees, but the air did not possess the near November chill. As he went to the trees he thought, The time will come, The time will come, and the time will come.

Over the dark night, pictures of the trees against fire, their limbs branching, changed to the light on the antlers of a stag.

His eyes were used to the darkness now, and by darkness he took from his bag, five tallow candles, not cheap, saved over time, and placed them in a ring. One by one, after having made a spark, he lit them, and then stood in the circle, stripping till he stood naked, and even this night’s warmth of the air was a little chilly. Under the trees, and in the light of the fire, he lay himself down on his back, the grass wet on him, wet under his buttocks and thighs and between them, wet all along his arms as he stretched out arms and legs like a starfish, like a star, like the star, and looking up to the black limbs and to the black grey sky above, he began to sing, “I give myself to you. I give myself to you.”

Before any formal ceremony, before any great initiation, he must offer himself to the Outer One, the Fearful One, the Unnamed One. No one built a temple to Him. His places were not the walled and inner places, but the outer ones, and this night was His. No baptism but to come alone, and lie alone, right here, in this darkness.

He turned over long enough to sniff the poppers he’d used for sex sometimes that burned his nose and sent fumes through his head. They made the bones of his skull elastic and lifted him out of his body. Seth lay, feeling the poppers pulse through him, heating his veins. He lifted a little out of his body.

I give myself to you! he sang, and he could almost feel… No. He could feel, the presence of his Lord coming, the weight of His feet on the earth, now the heaviness of His torso’s shadow stretching over him. He could nearly feel His breath, and was it the breath of a man with horns or a great goat with the body of a man? He did not open his eyes, and it did not matter.

“I give myself,” he murmured.

Now, as he sniffed the drug again, it came to him, as his whole body warmed, that to truly give yourself, as a man, you must turn over, and he turned over on his stomach, feeling terrified and vulnerable because, at that moment, he was offering himself to not only the God, but to whoever came and saw him, whatever came.

“I give myself,” he murmured again, and the wind upon him was the fingers of Pan on the pipe, and Pan was one of the names the God was given.