The Tao of the Thirteenth God

The Tao of the Thirteenth God

 Chapter One

At what hellish auction

Can I sell my soul?

To what devil dealer

Will the hammer fall? 

Mid-Winter – East London

          “Amadeus.” The limp body turned over onto its side and retched into the bowl on the floor. Spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth and he tried to wipe the moisture off the note pad he had placed at his side. The man opened his eyes then quickly shut them tight. “That’s all…That’s my name, the name she knows. Please! Please don’t ask me anymore.” The man could sense the question but could hear no voice. He turned back and buried his face in his hands.

The clang of a streetcar bell echoed from a distance then the whole room shook as the machine lumbered past the small house. For a brief moment, a headlight filled the dark, empty space – empty, except for the man on the sofa and two wide bowls – one for the vomit, the other half-filled with a murky, brown liquid. His last gasps had filled the larger vessel and the acidy contents had breached the rim, spilling over onto the wool carpet.

Amadeus opened his eyes and spoke to his teacher, a gray shadow, a vague silhouette in the darkness. “No…I can’t drink anymore. No more… Just…Just let me see her again. One last time, please…Just once more.”

A bare-chested, muscular African stood up and shook his head, his dark eyes wide, angry. In one hand he held a sheaf of grass, in the other, the twisted root of a small tree.

Another car rumbled past and its headlamp lit up the room again, revealing its stark, barren emptiness.

But the man on the sofa could see him. In the dark, he could see the muscles of his shoulders, smooth, sinewy, rippled. The African stepped forwards and shook both fists.

Amadeus nodded, reached down and, with trembling hands, lifted the smaller bowl to his lips. He sipped on the acrid fluid then gagged.

The shaman’s eyes became narrow slits and his jaw clenched.

The man on the sofa sat upright and nodded again. He looked past the dark figure, took a deep breath and poured the rest of the liquid down his throat.

Amadeus felt the trickle pass his tongue then slide into his chest. At first, there was a flush, rising from his shoulders, up the sides of his neck and over his face, two warm hands gently caressing his cheeks. But with each swallow and with the bowl finally empty, the ache in his stomach grew, each sip of poison adding, drop by drop to the visions he knew he was about to see.

The view grew foggy, the image of the tall black man cast behind a pane of translucent glass. Amadeus fumbled between the pillows then closed his eyes and, blinded to his world, positioned his glasses across his nose. And with his eyes closed he could see. He could see, far in the distance a man, a priest, white robes flowing in the breeze, railing at the crush of people – his flock – that sat, silent in the grass at his feet.

Amadeus scanned the crowd, his eyes shut tight, not wanting to miss one moment, one small clue that would show him where she was. He knew that she had to be there, one small face in the crowd of a thousand – one innocent little girl entranced by the preacher, their messiah, their god.

He shuddered, opened his eyes then stared straight ahead. The man, the priest had disappeared but the cloudy image was still there. He tried again but, eyes open or eyes closed, the hazy shadow of the African loomed over him. The walls, the floor, even the windows of the small house had transformed into stone. No light from the street, no clamor of the trolley. The two men, student and teacher, stared at each other, locked in the bowels of the deep earth.

Amadeus stood up and looked past the African. A crowd had gathered – noiseless shadows lingering behind his black teacher, stepping forwards then back, always present but never fully real, something…Someone he could feel but could not touch.

The parade of shadows continued for what seemed to him hours, perhaps days and, all the while, he could sense his name being called – a soft serenade, a sweet collection of numbers…Like a song, chanting out his name.

“Sophia! Sophia!” Amadeus jumped to his feet and pushed the African to the side. His arms passed through the tall man like a warm breath through a cold, dense fog.

The shadows behind the man vibrated, shifted then spoke without saying a word. “Amadeus. I’m here. I’m here for you, Amadeus.”

Amadeus stared into the mist. The shadows had lifted. The teacher was gone. A lone figure stood before him, her head bowed, fingers clasped at her waist, her long fair hair draped across her slight shoulders.

She looked up and, for the first time since she had died, he could see her, his one sister, his only sister. “Sophia…I have one…One last chance.”

Sophia looked up, her deep, blue eyes hollow with sadness. She whispered soundless thoughts – thoughts only for her brother’s ears. “Westward…Westward, Amadeus…To the land-“

“Speak words to me! Let me hear your voice!” He stepped forwards then stopped as she held up her hand. “This time…This time I will stop him, Sophia! And he won’t ever…Ever do to anyone else…What he did to you!”

His sister nodded, the sadness still in her eyes, and she repeated the message. “Westward…Westward. To the land of the justice. I am-“

“Sophia!” The man rushed forwards and clutched at the image. He felt her soft touch, breathed in her gentle warmth then he hesitated and gagged. He could smell the distance, the death that separated the two of them. Amadeus groaned. His arms fell through dust and his sister disappeared into the blackness.

He stumbled then blindly grabbed at the note pad on the sofa and tried to wipe the vomit from the paper. Amadeus groaned again, felt the loss pierce his heart and collapsed to the ground.

 Chapter Two

 Western Caribbean – Coast of Belize

One Week Before

                The sails of the schooner hung wilted in the dead still of the summer heat. The sun had vanished behind the dark green shore and the moon had already started its ascent, triumphant after chasing its daytime cousin from the cloudless sky.

“Jack.” A soft voice echoed from the open hatch. “Shouldn’t we be setting anchor? It’ll be dark soon.”

Jack Ketch leaned back in his wicker chair and pulled back on the last ounce of his cold beer. “It’s so quiet, Alice. The kids are asleep.”

“We don’t have any kids, Jack.” She laughed. “We just got married on Tuesday.”

Alice rubbed her right temple, still sore from the fall on the foredeck that afternoon. I could have drowned she thought…So easily drowned.

“Yes you could have drowned.”

“Jack?” She stared at her husband. “I didn’t…I didn’t say anything.”

“We’ll just take it slowly then…Life…Love…Drift very slowly…” Jack reached up and slid his rough hand along the mahogany boom. “Weather reports say there’ll be no wind – a calm night and a full moon. How could it be any better? The tide will take us in and we can set anchor by moonlight.”

Alice shook her head again, placed two fingers on her temple then looked into the distance. The sea was calm. Not a cloud in the sky. “There’s something… Something not right.”

“What could not be right, babe?”

“I remember…I’ve seen this.” Alice shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something…”

Jack combed his fingers back through his dark, salt-curled hair then stood up and opened the storage box at the stern of the boat. He reached in then gently laid a sheepskin onto the wide wooden surface that covered the engine hold. He smiled. “This is the honeymoon you’ll remember forever, babe – beats Europe any day.” He pulled her down to the ground and felt her warm breasts against his bare chest.

Alice kissed her husband hard then pulled off her shirt and slowly began to untie the knot of her belt. The skin on her back and her chest felt tight, turned dark by the sun, seared to the edge of a burn within their first few days on the boat. But her muscles, her mind were relaxed, soothed by the sun and the ocean, loved by the man who had come with her to paradise.

She let her long sun-bleached hair fall across her tanned breasts, arched her head back and gazed at the faint light of distant stars. Jack’s hand brushed gently across her thigh. Alice took a deep breath then slowly turned towards the rising moon. She gasped. “Lightning! I saw lightning!”

“No you didn’t, Alice. The reports say no weather system for three hundred miles, no wind for the next forty-eight hours. There can’t be any lightening.”

“There it is again! And the clouds! Out of nowhere! Jesus, Jack! It’s coming fast!”

Jack Ketch jumped to his feet and stared due east. Swarms of sooty, black haze were roiling against the low-lying moon and within seconds they had snatched the last shreds of light from the darkening sky. An electric flash shimmered against the blue-gray fresco that the moon had only started to paint and a deep growl reverberated across the ocean, shaking the boat in the still water.

“Quick! Get below. Tie things down! Everything!” Jack looked up at the sails. The dead canvas had started to come to life – the innocent shiver of a young girl touched by her first kiss. Before Jack could take another breath, that kiss had struck like a heavy fist.

The mainsheet drew taut and the large sail billowed, twisting the thirty-foot yacht broadside to the wind and tilting the leeward side into the water. Jack pulled on the rope and untied the knot he had used to secure the boom when the air had died that afternoon. The rope whistled through the cleats and the sail emptied its load of air.

The boat pitched and a crash echoed from below. Alice yelled. “We gotta get to shore! The propane! It’s rocked loose and the valve won’t shut off!”

Jack jumped down the short staircase and grabbed the tank of gas. “This damn thing shouldn’t have been inside!” He pulled the canister up the stairs then pitched it into the rolling surf.

“Alice!” Jack steadied himself against the edge of the cabin. “Grab the helm! Keep her straight as you can!” The wind howled across the water and spat salt through the open hatch. A ragged sheet of electricity lit the heavens and a cold torrent of water poured from the sky. “It’s too rough! Too rough to sail her! I’m going to pull down the sails and we’ll take her in on power.”

She shook her head, deafened by the storm.

“We’ll take her in on power!” He hauled at the base of the mast and the mainsail collapsed heaving its burden into the storm. The boat pitched to starboard. A dark wave scoured the deck and blasted the glass out of two round portals. The schooner keeled to its side and the frothing ocean poured through the open holes.

Jack staggered across the deck and pulled down on the foresail, pinning the smaller canvas under his bare feet just as the wind tried to whip the fabric back into a wild animal. “Start the engine! Start the engine!” He lurched his way towards the stern and grabbed the mast. A flare lit up the night and a knife of fire stabbed at the boat.

For Jack Ketch, the lightning strike seemed like a choreographed dance, slow, measured – a well-planned movement: the wind, the cutting sting of the rain against his cheek, the roll and pitch of the boat to just the right angle, his hand grabbing onto the metal shaft at that precise moment and then the jolt and the pain of a thousand needles stabbing through his soul.

The mast splintered and Jack’s body flew across the boat, landing against the knobby helm and throwing his wife onto the wet deck – the same spot where they had almost made love.

His body shuddered and his lips mouthed voiceless words. Jack clenched his eyes tight then looked at his bride. “Get on the radio! We need help. Let them know where we are then…”

Alice had already descended into the boat. “Mayday! Help! This is the ‘Hunab Ku’. Alice and Jack Ketch! This is the ‘Hunab Ku’. We’re chartered out of Cozumel. We’re just off Belize and we’ve been struck by lightning! We need help! We need…”

Alice bit down hard on her lower lip then pulled the plug out of its socket and dropped the half-melted wire to the floor. “Radio’s dead!”

Jack had pulled off the cover from the stern deck and had lowered his weakened body into the engine hold. He propped his shaky frame against the steaming motor and shook his head. “It’s fried. The surge must have knocked out a fuse. We’ll have to sail her in.”

He motioned with a feeble hand. “Can you raise the jib? Sail in on the jib.”

Alice pulled her slight frame across the wet deck, clutching at frayed rope, balancing herself against the cabin as the boat was pushed shoreward by the tide, broadside to the wind, riding sidesaddle on the white horse of the boiling sea.       The mast had collapsed and lay dead across mid-ship, the heat from the lightning strike melting a trough in the fiberglass and scorching the amber mahogany trim to a dark cinder. She reached down and pulled on the crumpled sail, feeding the latches along the forestay until the soaked canvas stood to its full height, twisting and struggling in the storm, outraged that it had been brought back to life.

A seething arm of ocean crashed over the bow, wrapped its arms around her legs and pulled her down to the deck. Her head crashed onto the edge of the gunwale and she sensed herself flow as if she had become part of the sea, her body sliding – unhurried but unstoppable – sliding into the open jaws of the savage water. Everything – the wind, the rain, the tortured waves – Everything seemed so slow. She was walking…Walking on the ebb of the wave as it washed off the boat…To the edge of the gunwale…Time stopped and then…She grabbed the flapping corner of the sail and pulled herself back onto the deck.

“Jesus Alice! Hang on! I’ll fill the sail and she’ll straighten out! We’ll have more control.” Jack pulled in the sheet and the jib billowed with wind. The boat twisted and the hull groaned, whipped by the onslaught of waves in the froth of an angry ocean.

“Where!? Where!?” Alice had made her way back to the stern. “There’re no towns, no harbors on this part of the coast. Remember? We were going to anchor and take the dingy to shore.” She looked behind them but the small boat that they had been towing had disappeared, its link to the yacht now just a short frayed, cable slapping the waves like a dead rat’s tail.

Jack threw a rope around each of their waists and lashed them to the helm. “We can cut them if we have to.” He patted the knife clipped to his belt. “There!” He shouted above the din of the wind and the rain and pointed at the coast.

Alice shook her head.

“When the bow comes up…At the next surge.” They were riding the waves like a surfer, pitched to the right then the left, the captain leaning into the helm, trying to keep the nose of his vessel pointed at what he thought he had seen; at what he knew he had to see if they were to survive. “There it is again!”

The ship’s nose bit into the waves and the stern shot skywards like a bucking horse then came crashing down as the bow broke through the surface, gasping for air. At the top of the pitch Alice saw the light – one lonely glint in the dark night – a single ray encircled by a shimmering halo of rain.

“It could be rocks, a lighthouse.”

“Not here!” Jack shook his head. “Only sand. Maybe it’s a fisherman’s hut. There’s nothing marked on the map…But we may have to beach her if there’s no dock. We might lose the boat, babe.” He squeezed her hand. “I’d say we’re three maybe four miles from shore. In this wind we should be there in ten or twelve minutes.”

The gusts of the storm had transformed into a steady howl and the wind packed the foresail, blasting the yacht across the surf, pointed at the blinking light.

“I can see it now! There’s more than one light – five, maybe six. There’s a building. And it looks like a dock, a couple of boats, scuttled on the beach. The moorings have been washed out.” She wiped the rain from the lenses of her binoculars. “And there’s a rocky breakwater – it’s big, like a commercial marina but it’s been torn up by the storm, too. If we could get around it – on the inside – we might be able to secure the boat. Take a look.”

Jack gave the helm to his wife and peered through the mist of the eyepiece. The breakwater had started to fall apart, pulled to pieces by the surf and the tide. Truck-sized boulders of granite and jack-shaped pieces of concrete had been shaped into a lazy-L but the undercut of the storm had pulled the feet from beneath the man-made wall and a thirty foot breach had opened to the sea, flooding the small lagoon behind it and flinging over twenty small boats onto the beach. “We can make it if we go around the north end, away from the rocks. Then we’ll be out of the surge and we can ease her up onto the sand. I’m tacking to starboard.”

Jack pulled on the tiller, the sail luffed then filled with the storm, pulling the boat at a forty-degree angle to the shoreline. The hull screamed, and the yacht heeled away from the wind.

As they reached the tip of the rocky pier, Jack twisted the wheel to the left and the vessel moaned. For an instant, the craft stood still, caught in the indecisive doldrums of an equal tempest on each side of her body. She lurched forwards then starboard then made a dash to the port side as the gale blasted into the canvas.

The young couple watched the faded white of their sail swallow one final gust. The fabric convulsed, seized by the jagged wind that ripped a hole into its bowels then gnashed the remnants of its body to threads. From deep beneath their feet a drumbeat echoed, a churning rumble at first, then a final crescendo as the dying ship shrieked and its keel slammed into a sunken concrete jack. The boat turned onto its side and the two sailors were thrown into the water.

“Untie your rope! Jack! Untie your rope!” Alice pulled at her husband’s waist but his unconscious body wouldn’t respond. She lifted his chest, turned his face to the sky and saw the deep gash on his forehead. “Jack!” She felt beneath the surface and grabbed the knife from his belt, lashed at the cord around her waist then freed her husband’s limp body.

Alice balanced on the edge of the sunken concrete breakwater then plunged into the surf, her arm around her husband, her eyes fixed on the flickering lights fifty yards away.

Within the broken lagoon, the seas were calmer but the surf pulled like a riptide through the breach in the rocky pier. Alice’s exhausted body was launched forwards towards the shore only to be dragged back as the heartbeat of wild water pulsed back to the open ocean, back to land then back out to sea.

_________________________________________________________________

“Alice! Oh my god, Alice!”

She groaned and opened her eyes.  The white sails of the boat towered above her like a giant angel spreading her wings. “Where?”

“I thought…” Jack shuddered and pulled her wet body tight against his chest. “When I saw you hit your head and fall in, I thought…A thousand words flashed through my head, a thousand pains like knives.” He dabbed the cut on his wife’s forehead with the torn sleeve of her soaked shirt.

“I wanted to follow you but…Everything seemed so slow. So painfully slow. And then you were back, climbed right back up. How-?”

Alice sputtered and coughed up a handful of salt water. “Where?…Where are we?”

“On our boat, Alice. It’s mid-afternoon and the weather is perfect, the world is perfect and you…” He gasped and pulled her close. “You scared the hell out of me.”

For a moment, she stared at the sail then turned east towards the rising moon. “Jack…There’s a storm coming.”

“Not today, babe. No weather system for three hundred miles. No wind for the next forty-eight hours.”

“You’re wrong. The weather report’s wrong…It was blue. It was all so blue but now…Look.”

The two sailors stood up and watched dark clouds mottle the evening sky as the first breath of cold wind stroked the bleached sail and the giant white angel began to flutter her wings.

synopsis

 Amadeus and Theo Savoie are twins, the products of a childhood torn apart by religion, abandonment and suicide. Theo has long ago disappeared and now, Amadeus is at the end of his career. He is in his mid-forties, diabetic and with failing vision. Amadeus has ‘contacted’ his long-dead sister Sophia using ibogaine, an hallucinogenic plant from West Africa that allows the user to see the dead. As a detective with expertise in religious cults, Amadeus has been hired by a congressional committee to investigate the loss of thousands of American lives in a mass suicide in Belize. Dr. Angelica Pali is a specialist in pathology. Her quadriplegic brother Emmanuel, has achieved academic success as a chemist and spiritual success, probing the differences and common features of religions past and present. Amadeus, Angelica and Emmanuel sift their way through a maze of religious rituals; all signs point to the convergence of religious and scientific apocalypse. Benedict Gottlieb is a politician who knows that an earth-changing event is near and he has decided to use that event to establish a new order where religion is the tool of the ruling class, and power will be wielded by the politician with the knowledge of science. Amadeus and Angelica follow a trail that leads to the interior of a mountain where Gottlieb’s new beginning is about to be announced.