Morgan never wonders why nobody else can see Her. He’s a prophet, after all, and prophets see things other people can’t. Things like the cruel face the sun hides behind its corona, the secrets scarred into pavement bearing witness to a city’s sins, voices of souls that twist and writhe and press up against the walls of their bodies in pain, the meaning of their screams. All these things are his, and his sight is Hers, a gift from when he was sworn into Her service. He never wonders why She chose him, either. His obedience is absolute.
She sends him visions, mostly while he sleeps, and if he’s lucky the ecstasy of Her presence is enough to numb the pain of waking, the pain that’s etched into his palms by the fingernail She forbids him to cut until they break off and bleed. He keeps a journal beside his mattress, symbols etched into the dark leather by repetition, and he writes Her revelations in red, and in ink when he can afford it, his thin script trailing frantically across the pages. Sometimes reads the journal by the light of a small, high window, hands reverent, shaking, as he turns the pages.
The perils of the world are fourfold: the water, the ice, the fire, and the dark. These are the hands that bind the flesh and free the spirit, and in each there is nobility.
The first of the perils is the water, and the nobility of the water is surety and force. The sin of the water is deception. This unbinding befits the liar, the unfaithful, the false. May their falsehoods be swallowed in the Great Concealer that their spirits may be unburdened.
Every day Morgan walks by his father’s house and the house of his mother along the river, close enough for a child to walk between them or to the water unaccompanied. He turns his Sight to both; today, waves dance around his father’s house, crashing over it in great gasps of spray that dust Morgan’s cheeks. Thank you, he whispers to Her, and he feels the touch of Her on his shoulder, giving her blessing. Thank you, he sobs, wading through the vision-waves that brush the tops of the magnolias along his father’s sidewalk.
The screen door clicks shut behind him, and there is his father, sprawled on the couch, napping in the sluggish afternoon heat. Insensible to the sun beating down outside. Only his head and feet show above the dark blanket pooled around him. Trapped. Drowning. Morgan will save him, and that is his service to Her. The man deserves this, the poisoned life he’s stolen for himself, but She wants him freed from it, and Morgan will deliver. It will be too easy. His father will not stir, sunk into sleep and whisky, while he binds the weights to his ankles and wrists and neck, gently, reverently, with the self-assured grace of a holy man. Nor will his father awaken as cloudy river water fills his nose and mouth and lungs, although maybe he will open his eyes as his heart stutter-stops and feel the river weighing on his chest with the weight of recompense for his lying.
It will be easy to watch, standing on the riverbank, while his father’s soul jars loose of its prison, feels the adulterous deception that drew him away from Mother dissolve into nothing.
Morgan will never love the man, but She bids him forgive, liberate, drown.
So he does.
The second of the perils is the ice, and the nobility of the ice is purity. The sin of the ice is impermanence. This unbinding befits the traitor, the coward, the craven. May their treachery be shattered into stillness that their spirits may be unburdened.
Morgan’s shack sits in a grove of longleaf pines, just past where the town melts into wilderness, as befits a prophet. A storm one summer tore shingles from the roof, and the tar paper shows ripped in places. The inside is bare, lit by smoky tallow candles whose shadows jump at each other with each flicker of a wick.
His brother Harmon visits every day, trims the candles, sweeps the floor. Doesn’t speak as Morgan writes in his book, mutters prayers to Her. She likes Harmon. He’s quiet. He’s there.
Morgan Sees Harmon’s halo and wings sometimes, and he always smiles to himself. Gives his brother a roasted gopher or squirrel to show his appreciation. Harmon only nods, gives no further acknowledgment. Morgan beams at him as he exits each evening without saying goodbye. Harmon is cold, and Harmon is pure, and Morgan loves him. Harmon doesn’t believe in Her, thinks she’s just a fantasy, but Morgan overlooks the blasphemy at Her bidding.
She is not so forgiving of Andrea. Andrea, the oldest sister, who is not only a blasphemer but a traitor to Her prophet, Andrea who lives far away now where it snows in winter and refuses to return, who tried to dose Morgan with those pills that made his soul dim and flutter and his Sight grow weak. Andrea who left them all to Mother and ran.
She hates Andrea.
So at last, when Andrea appears at his door one January bearing a colorful quilt and a teary smile and a thousand (insincere, he knows) apologies for leaving him, She shows Morgan his sister’s tears freezing into her skin, cracking the paper flesh until it flakes off like rotted rubber.
Andrea’s old friend Carie brings him a new bottle of those pills every month, smiles approvingly when she sees they’ve all disappeared. Morgan pours them into a hole under the floor.
While Andrea’s tucking the quilt around his mattress, he pries up the floorboard and takes a handful, shoves them into her mouth and holds it closed, stroking her throat until she swallows. Holds her down until the pills still her limbs, then walks out to the packing store for dry ice. Holds it against her skin until it turns black and slushy, until the ice evaporates, cries as the rest of the warmth steals out of her body.
The third of the perils is the fire, and the nobility of the fire is life. The sin of the fire is consumption. This unbinding befits the wrathful, the tyrant, the sadist. May their malice be purged away along with the instrument of their anger.
Morgan cooks his dinner over the firepit a ways out from his shack, far enough that a stray ember doesn’t catch in the saw palmetto around the tree trunks. He has enough burn marks dotted across his skin, clustering around his shoulders in neat bundles. Some of them are Hers, and some of them are of his Mother. Those are the faint ones, the ones that sometimes wouldn’t scar and so Morgan has to go over them with a hot nailhead to preserve them. She is always there when he does, whispering encouragements and curses and ‘good, good boy’ until his nerves scream from the ecstasy. Sometimes he begs Her to stop, stop making him press the nail down and feel it searing, but She just laughs and laughs and hums like She’s laying him in his cradle and rocking him to sleep, so he goes quiet like She wants.
He douses his cook fire as soon as he’s finished roasting, smothering every coal and stamping out the remains.
The house of his mother in August is beautiful- cream-colored siding and climbing trellises of ivy growing wild and tall unpruned shrubs with their leaves of bright scarlet. The front steps are cracked and crumbling, and the back porch creaks and shivers with rot. Morgan doesn’t hesitate across the soft boards, or throwing back the screen door so that it clatters . His Mother is humming as she stirs a simmering saucepan, radio up loud. She pauses to swallow some pill, washes it down with something out of a bottle. Morgan shivers, a visceral reaction, then remembers there’s no need for that now.
Morgan frowns- he Sees nothing around her, not so much as a flash. He asks Her what he’s to do, why She’s waiting to give her blessing. His hands burn- the lighter in his pocket weighs on him like gold, and he begins drizzling gasoline over the dingy threads of her carpet.
No, Morgan. You are not to free her. Leave this house immediately.
Morgan stifles a whimper, stomach boiling. He turns, slowly, drags his feet back across the doorstep, out onto the porch…
He hears the creak of the board, then a second later the pump of a shotgun. His Mother stares down the barrel with glassy, unfocused eyes, and Morgan jumps, trembling.
Morgan, you little brat, now you listen to me…
Clenches his fist in his pocket…. Feels the lighter.
Prays for forgiveness.
The last of the perils, and the most deadly, is the dark, and the nobility of the dark is absolution. The sin of the dark is sacrilege. The dark takes blasphemers, and for them release is no certain thing. May their disobedience be visited upon themselves by their own hand that it may be put to death in them.
The power of the dark is the knife, and the seat of repentance is the heart.
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