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Although Benny’s stomach fluttered and his heart knocked hard and his vision blurred, he gave Spike two thumbs.

Adjusting her pink cap, Harper said, “Hey, clue me in. How come not me, but her? What happened to her?”

Having plucked the frightened whippet from its stool, holding it in one arm and against his chest to comfort it, Spike said, “She shot herself. Llewellyn Urnfield has been shooting herself all her life.”

BENNY’S RETURN TO BRIARBUSH, PART TWO

When it came to things biblical, Benny didn’t know whether he took Revelation seriously or not, but he knew the book claimed that, in the End of Days, the devil would comedownunto the earth with great wrath, rather than up unto it. Now, over Briarbush, the heavens swelled ever darker and more malignant, as though the depths of Hell had been raised overhead and, when the storm broke, blood would fall instead of rain, or a plague of scorpions.

In the quadrangle, seeming to glow in his white vestments even as the day darkled, Brother Sunshine raised his staff and shook it at the sky, and again he cried,“Fulgur Prohibeo!”

“What is that about?” Benny asked.

“I am forbidding lightning to strike us,” said the pope of the Church of Earth.

“Oh. Good. Thank you.”

Brother Sunshine swept his staff in an arc as he said, “Here they appear from time to time. Not in their full reality, but mere projections.”

“Who does?”

“Those who haunt Briarbush but are not ghosts.”

“What are they if not ghosts?”

“I believe the headmistress almost opened a way for them to come from their world, not by journeying hundreds or even thousands of years in their ships, but by a more expedient form of transport. You may call it a gate, though it is not a gate, and I wouldn’t call it a gate if I were you, because educated people might laugh at you, and being laughed at is a painful experience, as I’m sure you know too well. It’s more like a wormhole thana gate. Not a wormhole built by worms, you understand. That is even more ridiculous than calling it a gate. In this context, a wormhole is a hypothetical structure in space-time that connects two points that are separated by an enormous distance in space and time. You may think of it as a tunnel through space-time, although it is not anything as simple as a tunnel. I wouldn’t call it that aloud, if I were you, and make a fool of yourself all over again. I believe the wormhole had to be opened from this end, between Earth and some foul planet revolving around Regulus, but Mrs. Baneberry-Smith blew herself up before she quite achieved that breakthrough. I have seen them! From time to time, they manifest like spirits at a séance, shadowy horrors, as though peering into one corner of Briarbush Academy or another from the far side of a looking glass, yearning to be here but unable to pass through the incomplete portal, one final membrane defeating them. That membrane, that lens, is clouded. The Regulons can’t be seen in the fullness of their monstrousness. Thank God for that! What can be seen of them would drive me mad if I weren’t already functionally insane. I have often seen them! Even seen through a glass darkly, they are hideous beyond imagining.”

Benny said, “That’s disturbing.”

“‘Disturbing’?” Brother Sunshine said. “‘Disturbing’? Is that what you said? Did I hear you right?‘Disturbing’?”

Benny’s life had been an eighteen-year-long dark carnival aswirl with eccentrics, cranks, freaks, sociopaths, and maniacs—among them Big Al, Grandma Cosima, Mordred Merrick, Bugboy, and Catherine Baneberry-Smith. None had been safely light-years away, held off by an impenetrable membrane. All had been up close and personal. He had survived them. He’d thus far also survived his mother, who perhaps had stabbed his stepfather in an alleyway inCairo, Egypt, or hired someone like Omar the chauffeur to stab him. After all that, Benny just couldn’t get too worked up about evil extraterrestrials who were grinding their mandibles and stamping their eight clawed feet in frustration because they weren’t able to open a gate that was not a gate, travel along a tunnel that was not a tunnel, and conquer Earth.

Nevertheless, he made a concession to placate Brother Sunshine. “Worrisome,” he said. “It’s very worrisome.”

“‘Worrisome’?” The clergyman looked aghast. “‘Veryworrisome’?It’s fucking terrifying!Do you think my hair was white when I came to Briarbush? It was not! I was functionally insane, but my hair was chestnut brown and beautiful.What’s wrong with you?You are not a serious person. Get out of here with your ‘disturbing.’” In less than a Christian spirit, Brother Sunshine shook his staff at Benny. “Get out of here with your ‘very worrisome,’ you callow young fool.Get out!Go sell whatever it is that stupid, unskilled people sell to make a living. Go sell used cars or gym memberships, while the Earth is ever on the brink of alien Armageddon. Go sell shoes, sell your soul, sell guns to babies, sell real estate that monsters from another planet can build their hives on.Get out, get out, get out!”

And so Benny got out of there.

The darkest vein in the sky ruptured, and fierce light burst from it—again, again, again. With those sudden flares came sudden shadows, and the one shaped like Benny repeatedly tried to leap away from him, as though he had embarrassed it. He ran to his Honda as thunder crashed onto the mountain with such power that the fibers of his bones reverberated with it.

As Benny got behind the wheel and started the engine, rain fell in torrents. He switched on the wipers and the headlights, put the car in gear, and drove away from Briarbush, never to return.

On the way south to his motel room in a suburb of Los Angeles, with long hours of driving ahead of him, he didn’t want to dwell on memories of Jurgen Speer and Mengistu Gidada and thereby mourn them; he preferred to pretend they were alive somewhere. Instead, he pored through many other moments of his strange and storied life until, south of San Francisco, he began to think about the future. Because he had a bankroll, he didn’t need to sell his soul, a transaction to which he was opposed on principle. Even if babies had money and a desire to purchase guns, he would not have sold firearms to infants. Nor was he of a mind to traffic with hive-building monsters if they should ever open a gate-tunnel thing between planets. However, there was something appealing about selling homes to nice people, places where they could raise families, be safe, and be happy in a world where safety and happiness were in short supply.

Seven months later, he had moved to an apartment in Costa Mesa, obtained a license to sell dirt, landed a sweet position at Surfside Realty, under the mentorship of Handy Duroc, and was mere weeks away from meeting Jill Swift. He had turned a page, opened a door to a new life, found a path to prosperity. All was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

THE GARAGE

So with Harper Harper contentedly ensconced in the back seat in the company of Lily Lapin and Virginia Woolf, they cruised away from the charming cottage that was a shrine to soul-shriveling art in a suburb of San Diego.

Spike said, “With Urnfield dead, Theron likewise, and Oliver Lambert humiliated as well as discredited, the other conspirators who call themselves the Better Kind will scuttle for cover and lie low for a while, waiting to see if the rest of them will be taken down. Like all bullies, they’re cowards. Eventually, they’ll crawl out of their holes and get on with the destruction they enjoy. They might let you alone, Benjamin. In fact, I think they will. And they better. But there are others like them. Many others. You are and always will be an irresistible target. So we will be vigilant as we get on with your life. Yours and Harper’s. It won’t be all going to movies and bowling and playing with the cat, if in fact we all agree on adding a cat to the menagerie. There will be crises and dangers, stress and sadness. But because you now possess a wise variety of niceness and will listen to my advice in moments of peril, your risk of being murdered horrifically is much lower than it was.”

The origami time-fold trick pleated them from the San Diego area to Corona del Mar, and as they pulled into the driveway of Benny’s house, he said, “I like selling homes to people, but maybe I’ve done enough of that. I mean, I got into it because the pope of the Church of Earth suggested it, and I didn’t want to sell guns to babies—or my soul, for that matter—or shoes, or gym memberships. I’m only twenty-three. I’m sure there’s something I can do that will be even more satisfying than what I’ve been doing.”

While Spike just stared at Benny, Harper said, “Why would you even consider selling guns to babies?”

“I didn’t consider it. I never would. Not even to elementary school kids, let alone to babies. I’m just saying it was suggested by the pope, Brother Sunshine. He was functionally insane, able to do his job, you know, but the second part of ‘functionally insane’ is ‘insane,’ which I always kept in mind.”