Links to previous installments are at the end of this chapter
Radu-Chapter XXXXIV (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
4 pages approximate
For the first time in such a long time that it felt like the very first time in Edward Akito’s life, the unthinkable occurred. His well-laid plans had fallen apart. He could not access the Defense Department website he needed in order to initiate an immediate missile assault on the localities he surreptitiously had installed on the DOD site. Someone somehow had accessed the site and changed the code.
He had failed, precisely because he had followed his plans to the letter. The technician he had paid handsomely for his traitorous and subversive act was now long dead, as per Akito’s instructions-Eddie felt this was necessary in order to protect the operation. Unfortunately, now that he was dead, there was no one to repair the damage to the plan almost certainly perpetrated by a Negro gang lord who was little more than a glorified street thug. Letcher’s home on the outskirt of Baltimore was, as Letcher himself, completely obliterated. Nothing remained of the home and the property on which it once sat was now a large crater. Whatever the late rapper had done was, therefore, irreversible.
Akito chuckled bitterly at the irony as he donned his costume and his Noh mask. To the background of his native Japanese music, he simulated the dance steps of the Japanese theatre from which he began his long career, a career that took him from the inner circles of the Tokyo elite into which he married, to a spoiled princess of the ancient Japanese feudal nobility. From there he ascended to the corridors of power in Washington itself.
Although nominally a Shinto, Eddie was never truly a religious man. Yet, when he inadvertently stumbled upon the existence of the obscure little Romanian sect that traced its origins to the days of Vlad the Impaler, and on back to the earliest days of Christianity itself, he studied them intently and learned all he could of them, until that day they finally accepted him within their inner circle.
Where most might consider them dangerously deluded fanatics, Akito saw them in an entirely different light. He knew they had the wherewithal to accomplish the goals to which they had dedicated their lives-that of bringing about the Kingdom of God as they saw it and as they interpreted the prophecies of their sacred collection of ancient books-the Holy Bible.
Although they were a cloistered sect, long ago driven underground, and yet dwelling secretly on the fringes of the Romanian Orthodox Church, they planned for the day when they would unite the world-or, what would be left of it, that is, after they ascended to power. He joined them and became one of its most important and powerful members over time. What began as an alliance of convenience changed Edward Akito. He was, in truth, one of the more devout among them, and had been for some time. He would do anything to further their cause.
Unfortunately, he had failed them, and felt greatly ashamed for his failure. It was a matter of honor, which was something else into which he had married. He always strived to live up to that ancient code of honor, and his failure was unthinkable. Even in the unlikely event that his part in the conspiracy to bring about the end of modern day civilization remained concealed, his secret shame would be unbearable.
The Order of The Dragon, the so-called One True Christian Church, The Way, would, he realized, continue after his life ended. If they were ultimately successful, this would come about long after they all were gone. It would come about gradually at first, as the generations would arise and fall, until the time was right. Perhaps they had been too eager. It is not appropriate, he realized, to rush God’s prophecy. He would decide when the time was right, and in fact had long ago done so.
Although Edward Akito was nominally a Shinto, he was also a searcher, and experimented with different spiritual paths, but all of them had left him empty and unfulfilled. When he met Grace Rodescu, shortly after his initiation into the sect, he knew he had come face to face with God’s unknowing agent of change. When she survived the attempt on her life, as a young girl barely into her teens, he knew he was right. From that time forward, he oversaw her growth and development from afar. He could not be too heavy handed. He had to allow her to live her life and to grow and develop on her own, at her own pace. It was difficult at times, even excruciating, but he could not allow himself to interfere other than watching and monitoring carefully.
His patience and effort finally paid off. Now, she lay within his specially equipped guest room, ready to give birth at any minute, to the child that would itself herald a new epoch for mankind, a new golden age that would see a return to faith, and yet to reason. Man as a whole would turn back to God, and the old prophesies would find fulfillment in a new heaven and a new earth, joined in an eternal and naturally harmonious marriage. The Church would truly become, at last, the Bride of Christ. It would become the entire world.
He created a Noh drama precisely to celebrate the coming birth and what all that it portends. Unfortunately, the new world would be a limited one for yet some time to come. It would grow and prosper, albeit more slowly than they all originally conceived. Patience was the true companion to faith, Eddie reminded himself.
Edward Akito examined his new, specially created and lovingly crafted Noh mask in his mirror. It looked, appropriately enough, like a dragon vampire, its fangs protruding from a blood red mouth surrounded by a green, scaly face. He smiled in satisfaction and, as the music played, he danced, but the ringing of the doorbell interrupted his reveries. When he looked outside the peephole, he recognized the woman immediately. He opened the door, not even thinking of taking off the demoniac Noh mask.
“I take it that is you, Eddie?”
“You don’t know how good it is to see you again,” he said as he removed the mask. “It has been a long time indeed, but I would certainly know you anywhere. Please come in. Grace will give birth soon.”
“I am sorry I could not make it sooner,” the woman replied. “It is not often I get the chance to be a midwife for a birth of anything nearly as consequential as this. This is truly a great honor. Alas, the airport lost my luggage temporarily. I took it as an omen that the time was not quite right.”
“She is certainly enduring a long, painful pregnancy,” Akito affirmed. “No one but our Grace would possibly have the strength and the fortitude to endure such agony. Will you go to her now?”
“I most certainly will, if you do not mind seeing to my belongings. My bags are just outside the door.”
“Of course,” Akito replied as he ushered his guest toward the guest room. Standing at the door, they could hear the loud breathing and barely restrained groans of Grace. When the midwife entered, she was aghast at the obvious agony Grace Rodescu displayed.
“I was beginning to wonder-if you would-make it here in time.” Grace gasped as she pulled herself out of bed. She approached not the woman who came to guide her through the final stages of her delivery, however, but the mirror that hung upon the wall.
She looked at herself in the mirror dispassionately, as though looking not into a mirror, but through a window at some unknown person. Her face swelled to twice its normal size and puffy sores on her face drained a greenish pus that stank of decay. Her skin cracked, displaying an appearance much like spider webs. She removed her gown only to note that her entire body displayed the same symptoms. She was bloated beyond the normal appearance of a pregnancy. She could not see her legs past her enormously protruding stomach, which extended well past the nipples of her breasts, which drained what seemed more like menstrual fluid than normal mammary secretions.
“Your sweat is like blood,” the midwife said. “You are drenched in it.”
“It’s more like bile of some sort,” Grace said as though she were an attending physician, and not herself the patient. The midwife, silently impressed by her courage and stamina, advised her to lie down.
“I can’t lie down,” Grace protested. “Who could lie down at a time like this?”
“I wonder if I could do anything but that,” the woman replied, but Grace did not hear her. She suddenly groaned in horrible agony and began to shake. She simultaneously urinated and voided her bowels as the stench filled the air. Grace collapsed in agony onto the floor, as her water broke, and she went into the most violent convulsions the midwife had ever seen. She knew at that point that her presence here was of no benefit beyond providing the necessary witness to this divine event-until the moment the child was born. Then, her presence would be vital. Until then, all she could do was wait, while making note of the fact that, as she said, “it is time.”
Grace could feel her skin cracking open and the fluid draining from every opening, from every orifice and skin pore, conscious throughout the entirety of her convulsions, which seemed to drag on forever, and in fact ended up lasting well over two hours, every minute of which seemed like an hour in itself. She had been through some violent heroin withdrawals before, but even they were nothing compared to this. Never had she felt such pain, such helplessness-and yet, such unbridled joy and serenity.
Eddie told her earlier how their plans had failed, but Grace now transcended all thoughts of failure. She had found her own destiny, her true purpose in life, at last. Finally, the convulsions were over, and she rose, from the blood and the vomit she rose, from the feces and urine, she rose, from the stench of the sweat that yet bathed her, she rose, and looked down upon the ground and the death and decay from which she rose. The child was now born, and the child cried with assured triumph, its conquest over the forces of earthly restraint settled.
Grace looked upon the child, and then looked upon the midwife, and she smiled at the midwife, who gasped in shocked horror.
“Oh my God!” she said as she turned quickly toward the door. Grace collapsed into the bed, oblivious now to the blood that soaked the entirety of the small room and its furnishings, including the bed upon which she lay, and onto which her sweating skin and matted, oily hair now seemed pasted. She breathed deeply in relief and thankfulness for the freedom from the pain, now left behind on the bloody mass on the floor beside her. She was for now exhausted, but triumphant. The child was born at last, she realized, as the bedroom door opened.
Yet, no one appeared at the open door toward which Grace looked expectantly, until a gloved hand appeared from the other side, as the strains of Japanese music drifted inside in calming, somber, yet somehow at the same time joyous tones that made her forget her pain and all of her previous cares. She knew somehow that she had given birth to a new life. She was in fact the mother of all creation. Everything else seemed to fade into an unknowable void. Nothing else mattered.
She was however exhausted from her ordeal, and weakly made her way over to her bed. Yet, the child called out to her, though not aloud. The child’s thoughts filled her head, crowding out her own, until they became her own. For a few brief minutes, she no longer had any perspective in so far as direction, or time and space. She just hung suspended in what seemed an eternal void. Yet, the sensation was not an unpleasant one. She felt an infinite peace, the wisdom that dwells hidden within the seeming chaos of creation. There was no sense in offering resistance, nor in fact was there truly any need to do so. Soon, she felt the child’s life and its needs overwhelming her. Never had she been so aware, or in fact so much alive, so much as one with the universe. She was now a goddess-the mother of a new cosmos, a new heaven and a new earth, both become as one.
Grace rose slowly, and as she did so, a figure appeared in the doorway. It seemed to be the figure of a man, though with his face hidden behind a painted mask as he lurched his head forward into the room. He jumped inside and moved in exuberant fashion in a wildly ecstatic dance as he shook a rattle in his right hand. Grace watched him curiously, as he approached her.
“BUGGADY BUGGADY BUGGADY!”
Links To Previous Chapters
Part One
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Part Two
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
PartThree
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XXXX
Chapter XXXXI
Chapter XXXXII
Chapter XXXXIII
