The Book of Matthew
Jessica M. Stilling
His entire body trembled right along with the tremors of the train. He seemed to hang suspended, crucified and Christ-like as both hands clung to the metal pole above his head. He tried to stay focused, his head jerking back and forth like a weathervane, his body whipping side to side, obediently following every snap of the subway. At that moment he was one with the train. He wasn’t thinking about work or his brother whom he was on his way to see. No busy streets, bustling passersby, lights blaring like a summer carnival, saxophonist carrying on like he’s Miles Davis in the next car over. No thoughts, no frantic Penthouse fantasies playing out as the hot blond chick enters no worries about what mom would say if she saw his rough tired eyes. No thoughts, no noise. Quiet. His mind was empty, focused entirely on every jerk of the subway rushing through him filling his lungs with the rich taste of oxygen.
A man came crawling towards him. He looked Casey right in the eye. His clothes were all torn up and Casey could see through the man’s torn pants to the open wounds, red and sticky, like a fine wine glazed over an animal carcass. Casey strained to make out his features but everything blurred. He stopped in front of Casey and dropped to the ground in one soft eloquent motion that stumbled into eternity. There was no struggle, no frantic last-ditch effort; he simply collapsed dutifully, quietly, like a mother bowing out after baseball practice. Casey watched reverently as the man’s chest began to convulse, calm itself and then simply stop. A moment so still, so precious, Casey couldn’t help but stare. His job as a journalist had taken him into many dangerous situations. He had seen men go down in showers of gunfire and crowds trampled in protests gone bad. But they had all struggled, were all taken by surprise unlike this man who simply gave in.
Casey jerked forward suddenly, his head rushed back as he took one swift breath. His hands were red and his clenched fist had left an indent in the side of his face. It was almost time to go home when he awoke with a start to find himself alone in his office surrounded by papers and memo pads. He had been researching an article for the morning news when he had fallen asleep. He tried to go back to work but his mind just wouldn’t focus. He kept watching the man stop, just stop in front of him and then that was it. Gone. When he looked down at the sheet of paper he had been absentmindedly scribbling on he was startled to find that he had written in huge black letters, “Go see your Brother!!!”
Casey stared up at the immense stone walls of the church. He gazed intently at the bright purple and yellow stained glass windows looking down on him with heavy, disapproving eyes. Matthew greeted him warmly with a kind genuine smile. He reached out slowly, grasping his brother’s shoulders as Casey stared into his brother’s tranquil, lost boy eyes. Matthew had always been different. He had the face of a child, bright-eyed and innocent. In the summer while all the other boys were out playing Matthew would simply pace back and forth talking to himself near the front of the house. When someone would approach him Matthew would hide until his brother ushered them away. For a while Casey was convinced his brother was a zombie. “Should I call you Father?” Casey asked nervously as he scanned his brother’s attire. The black slacks and proud Roman Collar sent shivers through him.
Casey had snapped the last time he had been in a church. It was after the services had ended and everyone was up mingling. The thick stuffy air and the mass of bodies, which spoke in hushed whispers as they bent down to hug Casey, suffocated him until Casey instinctively felt he had to fight his way out. He ran for a ways until he saw Matthew the zombie child, still and submissive as ever, waiting patiently in that hot stuffy cage. A hot trembling rage suddenly ripped though Casey. “Get up and do something!” He had screamed in his brother’s face. “Run around!” He had screamed before he was ushered out. Matthew did not flinch, he stayed perfectly still throughout the assault. “He’s not my brother,” Casey had called from the open doorway of the church before his father carried him to the car and drove away with him.
“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Matthew said, shaking his brother’s hand. “It’s good to see you. I’m glad you came. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”
“What’s going on, Matthew?” Casey asked, suddenly feeling foolish that his dream had seemed so important up until a few moments ago.
“Do you remember that tennis match your senior year, the one when they stopped the match for a few minutes because the ball retriever got sick on the court? You stood in the sun a while and watched a moth walk by you as you waited for the game to resume.”
That had been Casey’s last big tennis tournament of his senior year. He had been standing off to the side, clutching the fences as the heat pressed against his soaking wet t-shirt, when a large Monarch butterfly had caught his eye. He observed it for several moments before it stopped dead in its tracks on the baking concrete courts. After a while Casey lightly tapped the Monarch with his racquet. The crisp brown bug did not flinch and finally crumpled like dry parchment against his racquet.
“I never told you about the bug,” Casey began. In fact he had made it a point to tell his brother as little as possible while growing up. “But now that I think of it I had a dream like that a little while ago.”
“Things bother you that don’t bother other people,” Matthew said suddenly, as if he had been trying for several minutes to change the subject. “I want you to think about the world from now on, Casey.”
“What do you mean, think about the world? Don’t you like my brand of journalism?”
“I didn’t mean it like that at all. I just think that…I just know that if you thought about the world for a little while you’d see something bigger than what they see. There are messages sent through the universe all the time and it doesn’t take a man of the cloth to understand them. There’s something inside you, brother. Remember when they found out the Attorney General was stealing public funds? You saw that before anyone did and broke the case.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing, Matthew. There’s nothing inside me, I just know how to follow my gut.”
“Yes, you follow your gut. I follow my gut too, but my gut didn’t tell me that if you tear up housing downtown it would lead to a mass exodus.”
“No, Matthew, my brain told me that, now get off my case.”
“No one else’s brain told them that. Then why did it happen anyway?”
“I think you should visit Mom more,” Casey stated defensively changing the subject. His brother’s naiveté had begun to get to him. Matthew looked hurt.
“You should visit Mom tonight, Casey. She’s going to need you soon.”
The water felt cool and fresh upon his face as Casey twirled around near the bottom of the pond. The mud squished slowly between his toes. It clung to his feet like the thick paste on the walls of their new house. Casey was five years old. He was full of pent-up energy from the long drive into town from the city and ran straight for the pond the moment he was let out of the car. His older brother followed timidly behind, bashfully dipping his feet into the icy cold water. It took a while to get Matthew to swim, but once he was in Matthew seemed at home.
“They turned off the phones last week, that’s why I haven’t called you,” Casey’s mother said as she put out a cigarette. “It’s nice to see you, though. I would have called when you moved back to town but the phone was off. So, how’s work been?”
“Work’s been fine. Here, Mom, take my cell, just in case there’s an emergency,” Casey said as he casually tossed the phone to his mother underhand. “I’ll get your phone back up as soon as I can. You should have come to see me. I could have fixed this.”
“I’m doing all right. It’s nice that you came to see me, though. I haven’t heard from you since you got that big promotion at the station.”
“Things have been pretty crazy there lately. They’ve been sending me all over the place, but that should settle down soon.”
“That’s good to hear. It’ll be nice having you back; perhaps now I’ll have some company around here.”
“Of course, Mom,” Casey said as he took his mother’s hand. “What about Matthew, Mom. Has he been around? ‘Cause he’s been acting kind of strange.”
His mother stared at him for a moment with worried, questioning eyes. “You think he’s acting weird. How would you know?” she asked angrily, throwing his cell phone at him with a tired, lifeless arm. Suddenly Casey’s mother fell forward. She hit the floor with a thump as Casey rushed to catch her. “Call a doctor!” She cried. He dialed 911 with his cell and stayed by her side until the ambulance came.
Casey gazed down at a timeline he had written out in the waiting room of the hospital. His mother had had a mild heart attack and would be in surgery for some time. While he waited Casey began a timeline chronicling every major event that had happened from the end of World War One to the present. “I want you to think about the world from now on, Casey.” He then clumped together the events directly before and after a war and compared them to the events going on in the world. The terrorist attacks, the small “invasions” and civil wars suddenly came together like the pieces of a giant cosmic puzzle. “There’s gonna be a war soon,” Casey pondered mater-of-factly.
All of a sudden the television caught his attention as Charles, a collogue from work began a report. “Breaking news, there has just been a deal struck overseas which will allow certain hostages to go free in exchange for classified information dealing with the arms programs implemented elsewhere.”
“Nuclear weapons,” Casey whispered as he stared down at the information before him. “There’s going to be a war and its going to bring about an unprecedented spread of nuclear weapons.” Suddenly a vision of two men in black suits shaking hands against a backdrop of rows upon rows of dark green missiles flashed before him. The weapons were endless; they went on forever in a march of power and order. And then he saw chaos. And then he saw black. Casey began to shake uncontrollably as he ran out of the hospital and into the flashing New York night. The streets seemed to be calling him. He could feel his feet pounding across the concrete as New York City lay sprawled out before him.
“Remember when you were little and I used to tell you stories while we were swimming in the pond?” Matthew asked as he let Casey into the church.
“Do you have a room or something, a place where you live where we could talk?”
“I live here,” Matthew responded as if Casey should know better. “Remember Cassandra? She was Apollo’s lover. She was just a mortal woman until Apollo blessed her with the gift of foresight granting her vision into the future. But after Cassandra left Apollo he tried to take her foresight away. When he realized he couldn’t he decided to curse her another way, by making it so that no one would ever believe her when she predicted things. Cassandra foresaw wars and traitors, she even saw her own death and the deaths of those she loved but there was nothing she could do to stop it because no one ever believed her.”
“Matthew, Mom’s in the hospital. Her phone had been turned off and she had a heart attack while I was with her. She needed me, just like you said.”
“Nothing she could do to stop it cause no one believed her,” Matthew seemed a bit angry as he repeated the last lines of his story. There was a glare in his tranquil blue eyes Casey had never seen before. “But seriously, I’m glad you were there for her. Obviously if you’re here she must be all right.”
“We’ll see. She’s still in surgery, but the doctors said it looks good. Still, it would be nice if you came back with me.”
“She’ll see me later,” Matthew replied reverently.
“What kind of priest are you? You won’t even see your own mother after she has a heart attack?” Casey asked, infuriated.
“Do whatever it is you need to do. We’re at a threshold, Casey, and you can see it. You know something’s going to happen.”
“I highly doubt that I have any control over what goes on in the world. You need to be thinking about your mother, not Cassandra the prophetess.”
“Most people need cameras and flashing lights in order to figure out what’s going on. Most people see only what is spoon fed to them. No one will believe the country’s planning on getting into a corrupt war unless it’s spelled out in nice, neat, easy to understand phrases. Not even when it’s too late.”
“Yeah, well what are you going to do? I don’t have a spoon. Now, common Matthew, come with me to go see Mom. She should be out soon. She needs us.”
“No, she needs you. You go to her.”
Matthew slipped when he started splashing with his brother in the pond. His feet slid with the thick slippery mud and he flew backwards as Casey rushed to the other side of the pond to catch a frog. He didn’t see that his brother had hit a rock. He didn’t notice that Matthew never came up for air. It wasn’t until he heard his mother’s screaming that Casey realized something was wrong.
“I need to talk to you,” Casey’s mother said as she clasped his hand. Her face was pasty, covered with a thin film of sweat, and the harsh fluorescent light reflected a sickly yellow glow upon her face.
“Its okay, we don’t need to talk about him,” Casey said as he grasped his mother’s hand.
“You haven’t spoken of your brother in seventeen years. You were so young when it happened and after your outburst at the church you completely denied his existence altogether. We took you to doctor after doctor but they only made things worse for you. You just stopped accepting that he was ever real. You told me I was crazy for making up an older brother you never had. Perhaps we shouldn’t have given up so quickly, but it was just easier to let you believe nothing had happened.”
“What are you talking about? My brother lives in a church and thinks I’m a prophet.” It was as if the subway tunnel was closing in on him and the bright lights of the city were becoming closer and closer, coming at him like a bullet on a battlefield. All at once Casey could see his brother, splashing with him inside the pond. He saw his brother, cold and stiff lying inside a box of blue silk. He looked like wax sculpture all nice and neat in a black suit with neatly folded hands. “That’s not my brother,” Casey had said as his mother tried to explain to him why Matthew looked so still. “My brother doesn’t look like that.”
“Honey, what happened? What made you think of your brother after all this time? Maybe it’s being back home?”
Casey looked hard at his mother. He stared her down John Wayne style as she lay in her bed. She looked weak and frail for the very first time. “He’s not my brother,” Casey said slowly and then bolted out the door.
Casey spent the night at the station, working on a piece that had to be in for the evening news. His hands shook as he took notes. They felt like ice, his entire body felt frozen solid. He couldn’t write a thing and so finally he closed his eyes. He began to see pictures of men in battles, still-life’s of crisp uniforms laid out on blue cotton sheets. Casey looked down at the sheet of paper in front of him and realized he had been writing again.
“You’re a little young, don’t you think?” Casey’s station manager said to him the next day.
“Yes, but I’ve done so much for you already. I’m the one who tore the lid off the Credence Case. I exposed the Fillmore scandal on a hunch and figured out how to get into the mayor’s office for an interview. I get the most fan mail. Our audience loves me.”
“I could send you overseas, kid, but there’s really not much going on over there right now. Just a few civil disturbances and that new treaty they just signed. I don’t understand why you want to be over there right now when there’s so much more going on right here.”
Casey laughed. All of a sudden it seemed ridiculous that his boss couldn’t see it. “Something’s going to happen soon. I want to be there when it goes down.”
“Well, kid, I can’t say I believe you but I’d like to prove you wrong anyway. Are you sure you’re up to the challenge? You’ll be overseas for a long time.”
“I have a hunch, sir. I think you should let me go with it.”
“Look kid, I don’t want you doing anything crazy over there, or saying anything stupid or miscalculated, you understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’m fully aware of the consequences.”
“Alright. You’re damn lucky we need your face on that screen no matter where it’s coming from. Be careful over there. We can’t lose our best reporter.”
War had come sooner than expected. It caught everyone off-guard. Casey gazed out at the battlefield. It seemed as barren and dry as the biblical wasteland where Cain slew his brother. Soldiers ran about him hurriedly, their tanks following in slow pursuit. The sun baked down upon the desert. It was a harsh sun, a bully sun unlike the soft Connecticut rays he had felt as a child. America entered the war a couple of months after Casey arrived. Bombs went off every few minutes, but he paid little attention to them. He just wanted it to fade away. He didn’t want to stop anything anyway.
Casey glanced over the notes he had been taking. He had given up on investigative journalism one morning and had begun sending his boss bad poetry and jumbled journal entries in the middle of a war. “I have truly been dying since the day I was born. The headaches are real, the dizziness is never psychosomatic. All of it’s a death march. Isn’t there always a possibility that my head could explode? Perhaps I’ve already passed and I’m experiencing memory now in some kind of flash. A three hundred and sixty degree tunnel just pulling us in at a million miles per hour. Perhaps right now, we’re just rushing through our memories. No wonder everything seems to go by so fast. As I get older it all seems to fly by quicker, like it’s going into overdrive. Maybe the plane’s going down, or the air supply’s lessening. I wonder what it feels like, this heavy moment with its heavy air and heavy thoughts circling about like a mid-western tornado. The universe, it’s got me, just like it got my brother. I can feel it all around me, in tiny whispers and roaring waves…it’s like thunder.”
The rains came down about the same time the gunfire began. Bullets intersected the pouring rain, they flew through the atmosphere like a train in a subway tunnel headed for the bright lights of New York City. The ground seemed to cave under him as Casey fell to his knees, his head spinning. His legs slid through the earth as he tried to move himself out of the shower of gunfire. His legs were numb and heavy, it was no use to try and stand. Slowly Casey fell forward. The mud felt like a blanket against his skin. It covered his lips and climbed up his nose. He laid there for several moments with his fists clenched, his mind racing as his legs struggled briefly to be free of the grasp the thick heavy mud had on him as he sunk further down. Suddenly he could feel the quick sharp tremors of the subway, the bright blue saxophone notes spraying him with cosmic vibrations, the lights flashing walk/don’t walk as he watched his brother slide slowly beneath the water. It all came together, colliding in a mesh of molecules, sound waves permeating his skin, colors blinding him through the darkness. It was all so busy, pointless and real as his breathing slowly, peacefully stopped.
