He reread his favorite books, the classics that had brought him joy and an answer, but neither Ahab nor Gatsby nor Holden Caulfield nor Hamlet nor Bilbo held the key to the door. He turned to his comic books; perhaps there he could discern the way out—among the friends he had made years ago when he first learned to read. So he escaped with Clark Kent, slipping into phone booths and emerging powerful and all-knowing; he followed Bruce Wayne, and he too need only change his clothes and put on a cloak to mask him and give him honor and nobility.

His loneliness led him into careless and loveless liaisons with men who cared only for his youth, and though he pretended not to care, he worried more and more for his soul, and his increasing confusion took on a harsher guilt and self-loathing.

Word came to him that Gideon had taken his place in the group. Gideon had won this scholarship, and Gideon is being courted by that university, and Gideon has won thus-and-such award. And Horace’s grades mysteriously slipped. Why, Horace? Why? All you do is sit at home and read. You were such a good student, such a promise. All through school your grades were excellent . . . how could you make a D-plus in History? a C in trig? you failed Spanish?—Horace? What can we do? Why are you doing this?

He sat and read and in his reading sought a way out. And while reading the Bible one day it suddenly came upon him. Sorcery. Had not the prophets battled magicians in the courts of kings and pharaohs? Didn’t Saul die in the tent of the witch of Endor? Had not Jesus spoken of such things as demons and conjurers and men who walk in the way of magic? Why would witchcraft not work for him? He rushed after the hope like a man into quicksand after a will-o’-the-wisp. He had one hope, one faith, one reason, and would warp and distort and realign endlessly to fit his purpose.

He stepped through the trees into the sunlight, now yellow and sparkling off the dewy grass, and at the opposite end of the lawn, for he was behind the Tims Creek Elementary School, was Jimmy. But Horace did not know it was Jimmy. Horace was no longer there.

“It is time,” he said.

Old Gods, New Demons

Old Gods, New Demons

Subjunctive ( sǝb jungk´ tiv), Gram.-adj.

1. (in English and certain other languages) noting or pertaining to a mood or mode of the verb that may be used for subjective, doubtful, hypothetical, or grammatically subordinate statements or questions, as the mood of be in “If this be treason.”

Horace Thomas Cross Confessions

Horace Thomas Cross

Confessions