Read Online Little Doors by Paul di Filippo - Free Book Online Page B

was deeply puckered, as if she were continually biting down on the inward-drawn flesh. Part of her jaw seemed to be missing. The man on Andy’s other side carried a big boxy hearing aid in the pocket of his plaid shirt. The cap of the plug in his hairy ear was big as a quarter. A tic twitched at the corner of his mouth like a creature leading an independent existence.
    The reverend stood at the end of the table farthest from his audience. A big Bible was splayed open on the table to aid the reverend in his interminable sermon, although he seemed not really to need it, so thorough was his mastery of its contents.
    Andy was not really listening to the reverend’s words. He was too nervous among these strangers to concentrate. It was his first time at the reverend’s church. He had come to ask one simple question, and now awaited the opportunity. While waiting, he stared at the reverend.
    Demure was a bulky man with a big nose and skin spotted with blackheads. His dark hair was slicked back with pomade whose scent carried to Andy across the room. He wore a red shirt, a wide white tie with a waffled texture, and a brown suit-coat of some synthetic material. He seemed full to bursting with words, which he had to vent for his health. Andy failed to listen to any of them. They went right through him without registering, like wind through a bed of bullrushes.
    At last the reverend finished. He closed the Bible with a mighty thump and folded his arms across his chest, as if daring any of the congregation to challenge him. None accepted the challenge. The people rose and began to file out, each meekly shaking the reverend’s hand and offering a word or two of praise or agreement.
    Andy stood back from the “Amens” and “Praise the Lords”—which seemed to hang around Demure like a cloud—until everyone had left. Only then did he approach the preacher.
    “Well, son, did the spirit move you tonight?”
    Andy declined to answer. “Reverend Demure, I got a question I’m hoping you can answer for me.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Who is Moloch? I been trying to find out for myself outa the Bible, but the way I read it, he seems like two different things. One time, it’s like he’s God, and other times it’s like he’s Baalzebub or something.”
    Reverend Demure cupped his chin in one hand and his elbow in the other, signifying the ponderous nature of the question. “Well, boy, you have hit upon a conundrum all right. You see, Moloch was the name the ancient Jews invoked when they was preparin’ to sacrifice one of their offspring, immolatin’ the infants upon Tophet Hill, as they continued to do elsewhere right up to the Middle Ages. Now, the word ‘Moloch’ don’t mean no more than ‘king,’ and as such was just another name for Yahweh, Him of the Old Testament. So in one sense, Moloch was the Lord. However, later prophets done renounced Moloch, twistin’ the way they pronounced his name so as to sound like ‘shame,’ and claimin’ he was some heathen god like the Golden Calf. As near as I follow it, the jury’s still out on who was right.”
    Andy thought a minute. “So you’re telling me that Moloch is just another name for God.”
    “Well now, boy, you wasn’t listenin’ right. I said that was one interpretation of it—”
    Andy thrust out his hand with some excitement and the reverend bemusedly took it. “Thank you, sir, thank you very much. You told me all I need to know.”
     
    5
     
    Since the night when the Reverend Demure had confirmed Moloch’s identity, Andy had found he no longer had to speak aloud for Moloch to hear his reply. Just as Moloch’s voice resonated in his head—and perhaps nowhere else, Andy was now forced to admit—so did Andy’s replies seem to find reception in the sun-hot stomach of Moloch without actual utterance.
    This was all to the good. Andy was able to preserve the appearance that he had abandoned his “delusion” while still conversing with the being who called himself