The Congregation of the Dead

“What are you saying, Father?” Alexsandr moved to stand at the porch railing. He put his hands on the rail and hunched over. “Are you saying give up the fight?”

Father Wyman smiled; it was weak and resigned. There was a certain melancholy reverberation in his voice. “We have overlooked another possibility, Alexsandr. We’re too old, too set in our ways to accept it. The good guys lost a long time ago, but we refused to believe it. After all these years -- what progress have we made? Maybe nobody wants anything to change -- maybe they’re content to let Nohartinit rot from within. Maybe they like it just like it is, Alexsandr. Our cause is just as dead as their souls -- and has been for decades.”

Alexsandr listened, without comment.

“Do you think you could mobilize enough people to make any changes, Alexsandr?”

“I doubt it -- nobody cares, do they?”

“Oh, a tiny few, Alexsandr. But times have changed. There’s no sense of unity -- no sense of shared purpose. Those are by-gone things, like you and me. The old church, the old faith, the old moral codes are dead, Alexsandr. What I see every day on the backside of Main is what there is. That’s all there has ever been.”

“Have you given up hope, Father?”

“For Nohartinit? Yes. We’re done here. There’s no love here.” He frowned. “There’s a time to get real, Alexsandr. We’ve met it. We should have seen it years ago.” Father Wyman stood, walked to the porch railing, and he put his hands on the rail and hunched over. He looked absently into the storm. Misty remnants of blown rain blew against him. Then, calmly, he looked back at Alexsandr, his dark eyes shining. “Did it ever occur to you, Alexsandr -- we are the ones living in the illusion -- the dreamland -- the new never-land? What you see out there is all you get, Alexsandr. Face it, old buddy -- the good guys lost -- a long, long time ago. We simply held onto the struggle because we could not live with the idea we lost our Holy War. We let the struggle justify and define our existence. It is time to move on. We don’t fit in anywhere any more, Alexsandr. Read Proverbs 21:16, and think about it.” Father Wyman extended a hand. “I better go now, Alexsandr. There’s probably a drunk or an addict waiting for me somewhere on the backside of Main. You ought to give serious thought to joining Rachael as soon as possible. Leave town, Alexsandr.”

Alexsandr clasped the huge hand. “You be careful.” Then Father Wyman walked into the storm, and Alexsandr watched until he got into his car and drove away. Low-level thunder, extremely loud and threatening, shook the house. Alexsandr shook his head in disbelief, lowered his eyes toward the floor. In a moment he raised his eyes again, and looked blankly into nowhere. “Proverbs 21:16?” he mumbled. He remembered the many hours he had spent as a boy trying to memorize Proverbs. “Ah, yes, I’m sure it fits, Father.” He went inside, and he picked up his Bible. He carried it to his bedroom, where he laid down upon his bed. He opened his Bible to Proverbs, and he read the passage quietly: “ -- the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain --  in the congregation --  of the dead.” And to that he said, “Amen.”

He put the Bible aside. Then he fluffed his pillow, laid his head back; he was determined to meditate, storm or no storm, come what may. He knew he would not rest easily, for he had a problem: By presence alone, the powers had a hold on him; he had fought them for so long, it had never occurred to him until now he had removed truth from his own equation. Now, he knew, with certainty, he and the others had won a few battles -- but they had lost the war.

The thunder and the pounding rain reverberated through the house, rattling window panes and shaking the house, and it seemed to Alexsandr the storm was increasing in severity. The thunder seemed to be rolling, like a continuous roaring beast. “This storm’s going to do some damage somewhere,” he mumbled, as he closed his weary eyes.

If he had gone back to the porch, had he stared into the sheeting rain, had he listened to the thundering noise a little more closely he would have been drawn to the sounds of a mighty blast and explosion, and he would have seen a huge fireball boiling up hundreds of feet into the stormy sky -- from the chemical plant. If he had watched a little longer he would have seen secondary explosions as they leaped from tanker car to tanker car, right through the middle of town; the tanker cars exploded one by one, taking out everything for hundreds of yards on either side of the tracks by concussion, by huge shards of steel plating streaking through the darkness like fireworks, and by rivers of fire -- cars, homes, buildings, people -- as if the train had supernaturally transformed in a matter of minutes into a huge groaning and bucking fire belching serpent hell-bent on a wild undiscriminating rampage.

It was only when the warning system was tripped at the fire station did Alexsandr realize something was wrong -- terribly wrong. Wrapped in the pitch black and noises of the ferocious flailing storm, straining to hear against the blaring seemingly desperate wailing of the warning sirens, against the puny sounding sirens of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars, against the earthquake-like trembling and groaning of the ground, Alexsandr struggled to comprehend what was happening. He got up to go outside and see for himself.

At the same time not far outside of town, standing akimbo on an overlook, silhouetted by the raging flames, Father Wyman looked down upon the spectacular inferno.

Had Alexsandr been at his side, he may have concurred with Father Wyman’s terse assessment. Father Wyman’s face was aglow with a certain satisfied feeling that reached deep inside. His eyesight was blurred by tears -- of joy. He was drenched but seemingly oblivious to the rain that pelted him. It was a moment of bittersweet triumph for Father Wyman, one of those singular moments in a man’s lifetim