Apex Magazine Issue 43 by Alethea Kontis Mari Ness Jeffrey Ford Vylar Kaftan

Author:Alethea Kontis, Mari Ness, Jeffrey Ford, Vylar Kaftan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Two days later, Father Walter realized he’d taken Sister North for granted, and she was right, he had killed the driver just as he’d described in his sermon. Without her there, in her shack, in the shrine, in his bed, the loneliness crept into the sand dune valley, and he couldn’t shake it. Time became a sermon, preaching itself. The sand and sun and sand and wind and sand and every now and then a visitor, whose presence seemed to last forever until vanishing into sand, a pilgrim with whom to fill the long hours, chatting.

Every one of the strangers, maybe four a year and one year only two, was asked if they brought word from Sister North. He served them whiskey and let them preach their sermons before blessing them on their journeys to the end of the world. Sometimes an old man, moving slowly, bent, mumbling, sometimes a young woman , once a child on the run. None of them had word from her. In between these occasional visits from strangers, lay long stretches of days and seasons, full of silence and wind and shifting sand. To pass the long nights, he took to counting the stars.

One evening, he went to her shack to fetch the second bottle of her whiskey and fell asleep on her bed. In the morning there was a visitor in the church when he went in to shovel. A young man sat in the first pew. He wore a bow tie and white shirt, and even though it was in the heart of the summer season, a jacket as well. His hair was perfectly combed. Father Walter showed him behind the altar and they sat sipping whiskey well into the afternoon as the young man spoke his sermon. The father had heard it all before, but one thing caught his interest. In the midst of a tale of sorrows, the man spoke about a place he’d visited in the north where one of the attractions was a fish with a human face.

Father Walter halted the sermon and asked, “Lord Jon?”

“The same,” said the young man. “An enormous Plum fish.”

“I’d heard he’d been killed, shot by the father of the girl whose leg he’d severed.”

“Nonsense. There are so many fanciful stories told of this remarkable fish. What is true, something I witnessed, the scientists are training Lord Jon to speak. I tipped my hat to him at the aquarium and he said, in a voice as clear as day, “How do you do?”

“You’ve never heard of a connection between Saint Ifritia and the fish?” asked Father Walter.

The young man took a sip, cocked his head and thought. “Well, if I may speak frankly….”

“You must, we’re in a church,” said the father.

“What I remember of Saint Ifritia from Monday Afternoon Club, is that she was a prostitute who was impregnated by the Lord. As her time came to give birth, her foot darkened and fell off just above the ankle and the child came out through her leg, the head appearing where the foot had been.

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