The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [50]
The Lost Tribe.
In the dream, he came upon a tribe of people—in the logic of the dream that seemed to be their essence—gathering in an open plaza, all in white, worshiping something mounted on an elevated platform that gave off a tremendous amount of light... but each time the object of their veneration remained frustratingly just out of his sight.
Other now familiar images:
An immense black tower casting shadows over waves of white sand. An underground chamber, a crypt or temple carved out of rock. Five other people, faces and forms obscured. An ancient leather-bound book lying in a silver casket. The book in Hebrew. Reaching toward its pristine pages, a hand: talons, scales.
The phrase in his head.
We are Six.
For now that was all he had to go on.
Jacob had no plan. His body felt frail, his skin hardly durable enough to hold every ailing part of him together, but his mind remained clear and his strength of purpose had grown more resolute with every passing mile. Why Phoenix? What was guiding him in that direction? Pure instinct: The dream took place in a desert so he kept moving toward the biggest one anyone seemed to know about—western Arizona, they told him—and he would continue on until he came across something that conformed to his vision. Then... who knew? Undoubtedly something else would happen. Or perhaps not. Maybe he would have a nice vacation and the desert air would do wonders for his lungs.
"... we played an entire week in Minneapolis, in front of packed houses, every night; they appreciate fine theater in that town, a hearty Scandinavian people, used to sitting for long periods of time—it's the winters, you see, the long winters pacify 'em—that has been my experience many times over, a most patient and receptive audience...."
With Rymer lost in his self-absorbed monologue, Jacob was able to rest and feel his heart settle into rhythm again. He was forced to admit that, for a man in such miserable condition, he felt surprisingly good. After fifty years cooped up with his books, to travel around in such a spontaneous, unrestricted way felt like a revelation; eating sandwiches, watching the spectacular American countryside roll by outside the windows of the train. How exhilarating! Fields and rivers, evergreen forests, the sunset-red Rocky Mountains in the high distance; he'd never been near such exquisite natural beauty before. The world seemed so huge, expansive, and made all his attempts to philosophically encompass it seem laughingly inadequate. A sense of humiliating foolishness about his journey came over him, but he had regularly suffered the same feelings while standing on a street corner or walking to the butcher. Generalized shame is an inescapable part of the human condition, he reminded himself. May as well keep moving forward.
And if the whole mishmash turned out to be born from some crazy defect in his mind, with no horrific calamity awaiting him at the end of the trail, why then, that qualified as good news, didn't it? This spur of the moment train trip to the Wild West would simply pass into the mythology of his circle of friends as the most celebrated example of Jacob Stern's already well-certified eccentricity.
He was certain of only this: Within the hour, the conductor would whistle them onto the train to Phoenix. The actor would continue to talk about himself, unprovoked, until their train arrived or the world ended, whichever came first. And to pass the time until then in the company of such a beautiful woman as this one across from him was not such a terrible fate.
Maybe she would sit next to him. He could think of worse things.
"Deerstalker hats have