The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [98]
Jack stood straight up, jolted from his seat. He moved quickly to the screen and studied the faint image; moments later the film ended, the screen trailed off in a congestion of lines, sprockets, motes of dust. Edison turned off the projector and the room went silent. Jack turned to Doyle, eyes wide with alarm, caught for a moment in the stark white light on the screen.
"I must see it again," said Jack.
"I'll have to rewind the reel first," said Edison.
"No; let me see the film plain, in my hands, one picture at a time."
"Of course," said Edison.
"What is it, Jack?" said Doyle, watching him closely.
Jack didn't reply.
Minutes later, in Edison's lab, the length of film spread out across a glass panel lit from below, Jack pored over its individual frames with a magnifying glass as the others stood quietly by.
In one of the frames, between his constant movements, Jack found an image of the humpbacked preacher that caught the outline of the man's features nearly distinct.
Jack went instantly pale: Doyle noticed his hands shaking.
"We know this man, Arthur," said Jack gravely.
"Do we?"
"We know him all too well," he said, handing the glass to Doyle.
BOOK THREE
CHICAGO
chapter 9
Eilleen tried to steal a glimpse of the sketch pad in Jacob's hand, but he shooed her away with mock annoyance. She sighed and continued to stare wistfully out the window as he instructed, only too accustomed to following a man's directions, watching his pencil working furiously out of the corner of her eye but unable to see the results. Oppressive heat shimmered the horizon line as the train pulled its way through a winding arroyo and began to climb from the flat, sandy landscape into broken promontories of rock.
What went haywire inside a man's head when exposed to a woman's physical charms? Eileen had been bedeviled by the question for years: Put an otherwise sensible man in the company of an uncommonly attractive female—she had enough perspective untainted by wishful vanity to include herself in that category—and the poor fellow was either rendered speechless or consumed by an impulse to possess and dominate her.
She rolled the issue around in her mind: Is this madness a reaction to something I'm doing or the work of invisible biological mechanisms? Either way, short of entering a convent there didn't seem to be a thing she could do about it; nature did not yield to logic. Sex itself wasn't the problem, anyway; it was these damn mating rituals. Better to be born a cat or dog and confine all the torment over who sleeps with whom to quick seasonal frenzies. Part of her sentiments looked forward to getting past the breeding years so she could be treated like any other human being.
On the other hand, old girl, she corrected herself—remembering her worn face in the mirror that morning and how welcome were the full thrusts of a man's attentions when she felt receptive—let's not be too hasty.
"Let me see if I understood you," she said, resurrecting a recent conversation. "You're a certified member of your clergy, doesn't that give you the authority to communicate directly with God?"
"Oh, thank heavens, no; only Moses and a few other Old Testament Jews were saddled with that responsibility, and even their conversations were usually filtered through some sort of intermediary; an angel or a burning bush," said Jacob, bent over his drawing.
"But there must be hundreds of Christian ministers in this country who believe they receive the word of God straight from the horse's mouth."
"Yes," said Jacob, with a sad smile, "I know."
"But if you have no contact