The problem is you can’t unsee a thing. You just can’t. It’s just not possible. It’s not going to happen. You can try all you want.
The more you try to unsee something the more you see it. There’s no delete button in your mind. Once you see a thing, it’s there. In your head. Floating like that triangle-sided thing inside a Magic 8 ball; it’ll just float up like a dead fish now and then so you have to see it again and again, even if you don’t want to. Especially, if you don’t want to.
It’s best never to look in the first place, Gordy thought. I should have never opened my eyes.
And he almost cried, standing in the dark of night behind a 7-Eleven in downtown Provo struggling to get the pack of cigarettes he just bought out of his pocket.
And dammit if cigarettes weren’t harder to open now than when he was fifteen. If only his hands would stop shaking. Gordy thought to pray that they’d stop, and the irony made him chuckle.
Involuntarily, he saw the Morgan boy again. All of a sudden, there the boy was in his mind and it made him tear at the pack of cigarettes with renewed vigor. Gordy had loved smoking when he was a teenager. He’d successfully quit when he was seventeen in order to go on a mission but he’d never forgotten, not even for a second, the relaxing calm that a cigarette could bring, and he fumbled to flip open the pack of Camel Lights in his hand, because if anyone ever needed a moment of peace, deserved some calm, it was him right now.
Gordy shook out a cigarette and lit it with a cheap lighter he’d bought with the pack. He took a long, deep, drag into his lungs and exhaled, and it was just as he remembered. The thoughts racing in his brain settled like silt and he had one last pang of guilt. If Josie and Hiram and Harry could see him right now, what would they think? I’m doing this for them, though, he told himself. I need to calm down enough to think, to come up with a plan, to know what to do.
The first time he’d opened his eyes it was a blessing.
Or at least it was for the infant involved.
Robby and Kathy Page had had their first, a baby girl they’d named Esther, and the second counselor asked all those invited to participate in the ordinance to come forward. It was just like any other blessing on any other Fast Sunday, except Gordy had volunteered to hold the microphone.
If Gordy had had it his way, he and his wife would never have sat so close to the front. That was Josie’s idea. It helped the twins be reverent and concentrate, she said, but who was she kidding? Twin five-year-old boys are incapable of concentration if they sit in the first pew, the last pew, or a lawn chair on the moon. He didn’t say a word to Josie, though, partly because she was amazing, and partly because in six years of marriage he’d learned the value of keeping his mouth shut.
If only, Gordy thought, knocking ash off his cigarette, he knew how to keep his eyes shut.
The counselor had held out the microphone out in front of the entire congregation like it was free cotton candy, and when no one else moved a muscle, Gordy finally got up to end the awkwardness. He strung out the microphone cord behind him as the men got up and made their way to the front.
After the circle formed, he leaned over Brother Reinhardt as best he could and held the microphone a couple inches from Robby’s face. Brother Reinhardt was half a foot taller than Gordy so he had to get up on his tippy-toes. He felt like a day-time talk show host—one of those guys who prowls the audience, straining to reach them with the microphone so they can scream at the people on stage and tell them how idiotic they are.
Before Robby had even given his newborn daughter the name Esther Sariah Page, Gordy’s calves began to cramp. But he shoved it aside so he could listen to the blessing with his eyes locked tight. His parents, his mom in particular, had always emphasized reverence, and keeping your eyes closed during prayers. “Eyes shut during Prayer Time,” she used to always say. And Gordy took all his childhood lessons to heart, so much so that opening your eyes during a prayer became a transgression, if not an outright sin.
At one point, before he just accepted it as The Way It Should Be, he got caught up wondering why you were supposed to keep your eyes shut. Was it to help you pay attention? Did it even matter to Heavenly Father? Soon his seven-year-old mind went past curiosity to obsession and Gordy decided to do an experiment in his Primary class.
Sister Rogers’s lesson was actually on prayer that day—Gordy remembered that. He waited patiently until the closing prayer, and once Lisa Carter got past “Dear Heavenly Father,” he opened his eyes wide, just let them snap open like the shutter of a camera. What he saw blew his mind. Billy Thurston and Jimmy Baines were making silent monkey faces at Lisa. Billy had his mouth stretched so tight and wide Gordy could see new silver fillings in his molars, and Jimmy was so close to Lisa’s face Gordy thought he might lick her cheek. The best part was little Lisa was completely oblivious and just kept on praying, thanking God for drops of dew and her My Little Ponies.
For some kids, Gordy realized, Prayer Time was actually Fun Time.
Billy and Jimmy weren’t the only one with their eyes open. Mandy Featherstone was examining a booger on her finger and Jarom Johnston was putting the finishing touches on a wicked-looking paper airplane. Jarom saw Gordy staring at him and simply nodded to him as he put a final fold into his Sunday program. Prayer Time with eyes open was sweet. It was like joining an exclusive club, like discovering a delightful new world, a private wonderland he never knew existed. It was the first time Gordy had felt the intoxicating thrill of a shared secret.
But not everyone had their eyes open. Most of the class had their eyes shut tight, and heads bowed, and arms folded. They had brow-furrowed expressions of concentration on their faces—the kind only little boys and girls are capable of. Gordy looked at Sister Rogers and her eyes were closed too, her brow was knit, and her lips were pursed. Her mouth was sewn up so tight it looked like a big white raisin. Gordy couldn’t help it; he thought Sister Rogers looked like she was trying to pinch back a fart.
Gordy didn’t laugh though, because that would be rude. He just turned away, and immediately felt the vise-like grip of a female hand with long, sharp nails on his arm.
Sister Rogers whispered, “You shut your eyes.” And Gordy obeyed, but before his eyelids shut all the way he saw the monkey faces, the paper airplane and the booger all disappear out of sight.
After class Gordy waited until all the other children had left and then sheepishly approached Sister Rogers.
“I’m sorry I opened my eyes, Sister Rogers,” he said.
“I expected better from you, Gordon,” she said. “You’re a CTR. And you know what that means. It means you’re supposed to choose the right.” And she left him standing there alone in the classroom, a picture of praying kids surrounding Jesus on the wall.
And that’s why Gordon Patterson Brown did not open his eyes during prayers. Lesson learned. Eyes closed was The Way It Should Be. Seven-year-old Gordy figured his fast-approaching baptism was going to wash clean his misguided experiment in CTR A, and he would never open his eyes again, a commitment that remained largely untested until he found himself uncomfortably straining on tiptoes listening to Robby Page bless his daughter with everything but the kitchen sink.
Gordy couldn’t even focus on the words of the blessing because sometimes they were annoyingly loud and sometimes oddly soft. Then he realized that was his fault. He couldn’t hold the microphone steady due to the awkward position he was in. Gordy had his arm stretched up and over Brother Reinhardt’s back while trying not to touch the man, and at the same time he was trying to keep the microphone in the proximity of Robby’s face without being able to see.
It can’t be helped, Gordy thought, but then baby Esther cried, and the men collectively started bouncing her, and soon every third word of the blessing was punctuated by the thump of what Gordy quickly surmised was the baby girl’s body hitting the microphone. Better move the microphone up, he thought, but when he did he heard the amplified scrape of the microphone moving across the stubble on Robby Page’s face.
All right, this just won’t do, he thought; he wasn’t going to allow poor microphoning to mar the blessing of Robby’s first born. Not on his watch. So Gordy moved in closer to Brother Reinhardt. Let the old man think he was gay if he wanted to. And he opened his eyes so he could see where the microphone was in relation to the baby, the other men in the circle, and most importantly, Robby Page’s face.
Gordy blew smoke out of his lungs as he remembered it behind the 7-Eleven. The baby must have stopped crying at that point because his memory was a silent one. After making sure the microphone was a safe two-inch distance from Robby’s mouth he saw Wayne Michaels on the opposite side of the circle. Wayne Michaels’s eyes were wide open, as if they’d been open a long time, almost as if, and Gordy instinctively knew it was impossible but couldn’t help thinking it, he was waiting for Gordy to open his eyes.
Wayne Michaels looked him in the eye and Gordy made eye contact right back. How come your eyes are open? Gordy was thinking. I need to see where the microphone is. It’s my job. But there wasn’t a hint of embarrassment on Wayne Michaels’s face, or even a suggestion that having your eyes open was out of the norm. In fact, Wayne Michaels looked like he might think closing your eyes during a baby blessing was a weird thing to do. He was looking at Gordon unflinchingly, smiling a big, broad smile. It wasn’t a disarming how-funny-we’re-both-here-in-this-situation smile. It was a this-is-who-I-am smile.
But it wasn’t the open eyes or the smile that Gordy couldn’t shake. It was the forked tongue that flicked out of Wayne Michaels’s mouth and ran across his teeth.
Oh, God, what am I going to do? Gordy thought, remembering the forked tongue in all its bizarre detail—wet and pink with moss-green spots that could have been taste buds—the way it flicked at the air as if it were capable of smell.
Gordy dropped his cigarette and crushed it out with his shoe. One more, he thought, I need one more cigarette, and he dug the lighter out of his pocket.
“And all these things, and many more things,” Robby Page had said, heading into the homestretch, and the tongue, the teeth, the open eyes, all of it was replaced by an expression of reverent piety on Wayne Michaels’s face. It was like a mask had appeared on the man in the blink of an eye.
And Gordy was actually blinking. He would have rubbed his eyes, but one hand was holding the mike, and the other was on Brother Reinhardt’s shoulder.
The circle broke up and the men returned to their families. Gordy lingered a second longer. A deacon or teacher must have taken the microphone out of his hand. He didn’t remember.
Wayne Michaels had been in the circle when he blessed Hiram and Harry. Wayne Michaels was widely known for doing yard work for widows.
He didn’t remember any more details from the services that day, but he did remember sitting down next to his wife.
She said, “That was nice.”
His rational mind kicked in. Did its job. Told him he didn’t see what he saw, that it could be dismissed as a daydream, an illusion, a trick of light. Maybe Wayne Michaels, the fifty-something former first counselor currently serving on the stake high council, just happened to have a forked tongue and this was the first time he’d ever seen it. Never mind that Brother Michaels used to be his Scoutmaster and helped him become an Eagle. It was still possible. Remotely possible, but possible.
No. It wasn’t.
In an effort to keep functional, Gordy’s mind was taking him down paths to scenarios and possibilities just as unlikely, and equally absurd.
He pondered just straight-up asking Brother Michaels about what he had seen, but the mere thought of actually uttering the words, “Do you happen to have a forked tongue?” was too much for him. So Gordy took what is often the most rational course: He decided to ignore it and move on. A prudent decision, really, if only Gordy had had the willpower to never open his eyes again.
Why? Why had he opened his eyes again? Gordy honestly, desperately wanted to know. He tried to suck all the assistance he could out of his second cigarette. It was like a canker sore, he reasoned. Why do you keep poking it with your tongue? To see if it’s still there. To see if it still hurts. To see if it’s gone away yet.
A week went by, and you better believe that his eyelids did not open, not even a crack during any prayer that whole time, but the following Sunday he was sitting behind the stand with the choir—Gordy had a lovely tenor voice and wasn’t ashamed of it—he decided to take a peek during the sacrament prayer.
His intention was to prove that everything was perfectly okay. Normal. Copacetic, as they say. He would simply prove that in the unseen world of Prayer Time there was nothing going on. Nothing to see here. Isn’t that what cops always say at the scene of an accident? Nothing to see here. He opened his eyes and scanned the congregation. From his vantage point far behind the pulpit he couldn’t see one pair of open eyes and it was a huge relief. Wayne Michaels was right there, perfectly normal on the third row, no forked tongue in sight. It was as if a weight fell off his shoulders, and then, whipping into view about five rows from the back was what looked like a giant earthworm. It was pink like fresh scar tissue, with sectional rings, but narrow like a garden hose, and at its end Gordy saw a heart-shaped, cartilaginous fin. A tail, he realized, and fought back the urge to vomit. It waved and undulated over the heads of the congregation.
Gordy did not want to see who, or what, the tail belonged to. No, he did not, and so when Sister Henrietta Banks started to raise up her bowed, blue-haired head he ripped his eyes away.
But his gaze fell on Davey Keen who was standing behind the sacrament table next to the priest offering the prayer. His hands were resting on the table, but they weren’t hands. Shooting out from the cuffs of his white shirt and onto the white lace sheet covering the water were bright orange-yellow talons. They reminded Gordy of the chicken feet he saw hanging in butcher-shop windows during his mission in Argentina.
A claw on the talon at the end of Davey Keen’s arm tapped impatiently, and Davey slowly began to turnaround to take a look at him.
Gordy shut his eyes.
He kept his eyes shut through the rest of sacrament. He waved off the deacon who coughed politely to alert him that he had brought by the bread, and the young man was smart enough not to offer him water. By the time the choir stood up to sing, Gordy was covered in cold sweat.
After church, Gordy tried to help Hiram and Harry set the table, but all he could think about was how when Davey Keen was a deacon Gordy used to straighten his clip-on tie.
“Gordy?” Josie said, “You’re putting all the knives on the outside.”
Gordy laughed and set about putting things right. “Knives on the inside, boys,” he told his sons. “Forks on the left.”
Josie put a comforting hand on his back and asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, “You know, just thinking about one of the lessons today. It was . . . thought-provoking.”
Behind the 7-Eleven Gordy watched his cigarette burn down and thought about Josie and Hiram and Harry.
The night after he saw the tail and the talons he couldn’t sleep a wink. He couldn’t even close his eyes. He stared at the ceiling and thought about what he’d experienced, the sheer undeniability of it. They weren’t visions. There was a physical reality to what he’d seen: the claw tapping on the sacrament table. His mind, the rational part still hanging in there, told him he had to give these events a name. Gordy couldn’t. The closest he came was to conclude they were the opposite of miracles. Was there a word for that? Anti-miracles? If miracles were a use of physical laws to create something formerly thought impossible in order to promote belief, then the things he’d seen in Prayer Time were anti-miracles, aberrations in physical laws meant to shatter faith. Had he unknowingly ingested some psychotropic drugs? Was he to believe that members of the Fairmont Fourth Ward were demon-like creatures and that he was seeing their true nature? Forget it. He’d rather just admit to being insane.
Gordy held it together at his job underwriting insurance policies during the week as if nothing had changed. Time helped his rational mind get a better grip on his thoughts. If the things he had seen were physical realities, they had to be subject to rules, Gordy decided, and he thought of a way to discover what the rules might be.
It became a mantra for Gordy. If it is real, it has to have rules. Repeating it to himself gave him motivation and comfort. By the end of the week he was looking forward to Sunday. He’d been asked to substitute in Primary and it provided him with a perfect opportunity.
Before his class, Gordy roamed the halls spying on another ward, peering into classrooms through the windows. Young Men. Young Women. Gospel Essentials. Family History. He saw class after class in the middle of Prayer Time, and saw nothing the least bit unusual. It was comforting to see groups of people calmly gathered round, kneeling, standing, sitting, heads bowed, arms folded, eyes closed.
The Way It Should Be.
It made him wonder if he hadn’t just experienced a temporary bout of insanity. Then again, maybe there was nothing to see because he wasn’t part of those prayers. He wasn’t a participant. He’d put it to the test as soon as he taught Valiant 9 where he planned to participate in a big way.
He told the children that he was going to say the opening prayer. He didn’t tell them he planned to offer it eyes wide open, and look around to see what there was to see. There was nothing. If anything the kids were disturbingly reverent. Gordy found the experience to be a bit of a letdown. He stumbled his way through the beginning of his lesson on the Creation because he was thinking about whether the difference might be that his eyes weren’t closed at the beginning. They were open from the start. Was that what it was?
Gordy explained God resting on the seventh day and offered to pray again. A couple of the kids thought it was weird, but they folded their arms and closed their eyes all the same. He opened his own eyes right after he turned the corner from thanking to asking.
For a second he thought he was seven years old again and back in CTR A class looking at Billy Thurston and Jimmy Baines make monkey faces behind Lisa Carter’s back. It wasn’t Billy and Jimmy this time. It was Caitlin Franks and Bradley Morgan and they weren’t making faces at Missy Benton. Caitlin was quietly sniffing Missy’s sandy blonde hair with the wrinkled, wet, flat snout of a hog that had appeared in the middle of her face.
Bradley Morgan was beyond sniffing. His lower jaw had dropped open and distended and extended so that two boar-like tusks poked up from his mouth. His mouth was so huge the tusks couldn’t reach his upper lip. And he was salivating.
“In the name of Jesus Christ, amen,” Gordy quickly finished the prayer.
In the blink of an eye all the kids were reverently bowed with their eyes opening as if nothing had happened, as if Gordy would forget what they really were, as if Prayer Time hadn’t nearly been Snack Time.
The kids filed out and Gordy stood there making a show of erasing the chalkboard. How could he ever pray again knowing that the person next to him might be wearing a different face? Might even be thinking about devouring him? It was eyes open for Gordy from now on. After the first sentence of every prayer Gordy was going to open his eyes and stare whatever it was right in the face.
In elders quorum they reorganized the presidency and when they were setting the new men apart, Gordy, who was sitting in the front row of chairs, opened his eyes to take a look. Mike Reynolds, the future secretary, went first, and Gordy was relieved that none of the three men laying their hands on Mike had changed in any visible way. Mike, however, stared straight ahead, right into Gordy’s eyes. His irises were orange with black, narrow, vertical slits—like a jungle cat. That was bad enough, but then they slowly began to roll back into his head like the last number in an odometer. Soon all that was visible was the white sclera of his eyeballs. They looked like wet ping-pong balls wedged in his eye sockets, but then two tiny pinpoint pupils crept up into view and looked straight at Gordy. Mike blinked. There were no irises surrounding these new pupils, but they were dilating just the same, and Mike was just sitting under all those hands smiling like a shark.
Mike Reynolds who was kind enough to drive Gordy’s entire family to the airport for a five-a.m. flight last Thanksgiving.
It was too much. Gordy walked out of elders quorum before they even said amen. He told himself he was going to be done with church for a while, but by the end of the day he’d decided to talk to the bishop.
Josie overheard him when he called Bert Winters, the executive secretary to make the appointment. He’d taken the phone into the laundry room, but she went in to take a load out of the dryer.
She couldn’t hide her concern. “You need to talk to the bishop about something?”
“It’s nothing,” he lied. “I’ll tell you all about it when it’s over.”
“You’re not—addicted to pornography, are you?” She said it jokingly, but there was true worry beneath it. After all, Gordy had been a bit off lately.
“No. Seriously, it’s nothing. Trust me.”
“Okay,” she said, walking away with a basket of warm clothes. She even rubbed his back on the way out. Good ol’ Josie, he thought; she’d always trusted him so much. And he’d trusted her right back, he thought, watching her walk away.
One thing about smoking that Gordy enjoyed was watching the cigarettes burn down, turn to ash. They weren’t just nicotine delivery devices, they were little timers. In fact, he’d heard explosives experts sometimes used them as makeshift fuses. As Gordy watched cigarette paper turn to ash, he knew his time was running out. Fast approaching was what Josie always called Decision Time.
Gordy’s memory of meeting the bishop was vivid, like wet paint in his mind. He almost didn’t show up because he had no clue what he was going to say. Ahem, Bishop, half the ward is part animal. Or, Bishop, I have reason to believe the Primary children might try to eat each other. Outside the unseen world of Prayer Time, it all seemed so absurd and unreal, but he’d seen what he’d seen. Gordy knew what he knew. He felt like Horton the Elephant. He was sure there was this other thing, reality, dimension, whatever. And what Gordy now felt in his gut was more disturbing than anything he’d seen. What he now believed with almost every fiber of his being was that what he was seeing wasn’t another reality. It was the reality.
And that’s why he wanted to see the Bishop. He had to know how far and deep it went.
Before Decision Time.
Gordy had always liked Bishop Cunningham because he had a gentle way of letting the ward members do most of the talking. He made you feel listened to. It made things easier. And so after Bishop Cunningham invited Gordy into his office and asked him to take a seat, Gordy started speaking. It was incredibly awkward, but Gordy did the best he could.
He found he could only talk in the vaguest terms. He said that some members of the ward weren’t exactly what they said they were. A lot of them, active members in good standing were harboring secrets. Gordy told the Bishop that he felt like he didn’t know who they were anymore. He didn’t know who anyone was anymore, and that was the worst part.
The bishop looked back at him with warm, understanding eyes—blessedly human eyes. He smiled patiently—a practiced smile, Gordy could tell—a smile that was quite accustomed to people waltzing around the bush, working up to an unpleasant truth.
“I can tell you’re quite upset, Gordy. I don’t know what to say though, unless you feel comfortable being more specific.” Gordy thought about spitting it all out: Mike Reynolds has cat eyes! Wayne Michaels has a snake tongue! The kid who blesses the sacrament has chicken feet! He just couldn’t. To say it out loud seemed ridiculous and blasphemous all at the same time.
“No. I couldn’t—” Gordy stammered.
“Well, is this hearsay? I mean Mormons love gossip more than their Jell-O.”
“No. It’s definitely not hearsay.” Gordy was surprised at how adamant his voice sounded.
A pause ensued as the bishop thought it over.
“You know, Gordy, I think you’re doing the right thing in not telling me more details. What’s troubling you will probably come to light sooner or later. I’ve been bishop for almost five years now and I know that there are people in the ward that need to come and talk to me, but unfortunately they don’t feel ready. I wish they did, but in most cases, not all, but most cases, it’s wrong to force the repentance process.” The bishop sighed. “And,” he added, “lucky for you, you’re not really expected to bear the burden of knowing what people are really like, or what their secrets are, for that matter. That’s my job.”
Gordy couldn’t explain why, but with the bishop’s words a weight lifted off his shoulders. He felt, for the first time since the blessing of the Page’s baby, that he was capable of holding it all together. His eyes welled up and Gordy started profusely telling the bishop that he was right, of course, and thank you, and he was a little embarrassed for taking up so much of his time.
The bishop said to think nothing of it, and urged Gordy never to hesitate to come and talk to him. Gordy put his hands on the arms of his chair to get up, but the bishop said, “Do you mind if we end with a word of prayer?”
“No.” Gordy said, and it was the first prayer since he’d sung with the choir where he didn’t break into sweat and his stomach wasn’t in knots. He didn’t pay that much attention honestly, but it was as if his mind relaxed during all the thanking.
But then he heard the bishop say, “And please bless Gordon that he might accept our true faces.”
Gordy’s eyes snapped open. Wide.
The bishop’s eyes were shut. There was nothing wrong with him. He looked totally normal. The bishop was a perfect vision of reverence and rectitude. Of course, the bishop wasn’t one of them. Never the bishop. Relief rolled over Gordy like a wave. His vision of Bishop Cunningham blurred and Gordy realized he was looking through tears. The tears fell when he closed his eyes and listened to the bishop close the prayer in the name of the Savior.
In the doorway to the bishop’s office Gordy and the bishop shook hands and the bishop said, “I want you to think about what I said, Gordy. You’re always welcome here.”
“Thanks, Bishop,” Gordy said, and he thanked God for good men like Bishop Cunningham, and the peace that had finally come to him. “I will.”
The bishop smiled and the smell of seaweed assaulted Gordy’s nose. He felt wasp stings all over the back of his hand and he looked down in a panic. In place of five fingers wrapped around his hand were five purple throbbing tentacles the color of eggplant.
Gordy ripped his hand away and heard a ripping sound like Velcro.
He ran straight out of the church, knocking over a Boy Scout on his way.
He drove straight to the 7-Eleven hyperventilating the entire way. Light from the streetlights came through the windshield as he drove, illuminating his right hand, the knuckles white on the steering wheel. Round suction marks from the bishop’s tentacle hand were all over his flesh. They were visible. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I can see them. There they are.
The marks were real. It was real. But what were the rules?
The bishop had looked normal. He’d looked right at him. Why? Was it because his eyes were shut? Do they need to have their eyes open in order to be seen? Was that it?
And the prayer was over!
Then he remembered. At the door. That was his mistake. He had been grateful to God for good men like the bishop. He had had a prayer in his heart.
“Dude, what’s wrong with your hand?” The pimple-faced clerk had said when he handed over the lighter and cigarettes. Gordy nearly dropped the lighter, but he said nothing.
He looked at the marks, the rows of red, round circles like he’d been branded by Cheerios. The absurdity of it made him chuckle, but the chuckle turned into a sob.
His cigarette burning down between his index and middle finger. One more drag and it would be finished.
Decision Time.
Gordy knew what he had to do. He sucked the last bit of life out of the cigarette. He dropped it and crushed it.
He bought a bag of Doritos from the 7-Eleven and ate it on the way home. It was a trick he learned as a teenager. They’re perfect for covering up smoker’s breath.
As he drove, he rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock on the dash, hoping the twins would be asleep already. That would make things easier. He thought of Hiram and Harry asleep in their beds. He liked to peek in on them when they were asleep. He also liked to peek in on them when they were sitting next to each other in Primary during Singing Time. Gordy remembered the words to a Primary song:
Humbly now, gently now, our arms we fold, our heads we bow.
Humbly now, gently now, sincerely say the prayer.
Humbly now, gently now, our silent thoughts we share…
He found it comforting and let it play in a continuous loop in his head. It helped distract him from the task at hand.
Gordy pulled his car up in front of his house. The lights were off in the twins’ room. A good sign. After he turned off the car engine, he rummaged through the glove compartment. He found something he kept there in case of emergencies: a multi-tool. It came with pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a bottle opener, and a knife. He put it in his pocket.
Gordy closed the door to his car and walked up to the front door of his home.
Humbly now, gently now.
He quietly closed the front door behind him. Gordy could see through the living room into the kitchen where Josie had her head bent over the sink, doing the dishes, like she dutifully did every night of the week.
Our arms we fold, our heads we bow.
She was glad to see him. He called her over to talk, being mindful not to be very loud. She put the last dish in the dishwasher and dried her hands. Meanwhile, Gordy put the multi-tool under the couch with the knife blade out.
Humbly now, gently now.
Just in case.
Josie came over and sat next to him on the couch and Gordy was ready to tell her everything. He took her hands in his, but she noticed the burn marks on his hand right away and asked what happened.
“That’s what I need to tell you,” he said, “what I need to explain.”
“Okay, but first we need to put something on that.” She got up and came back with an aloe vera cream that she started to rub gently and slowly into the back of his hand.
Our secret thoughts we share.
He unburdened himself and told her all of it. He slowly laid out all the details, including everything he’d ever seen, starting with the blessing of the Page girl and finishing with the visit to the Bishop. He didn’t tell her about the cigarettes. He didn’t want to disturb her.
She listened. Mouth slightly agape. Eyes open wide in dismay. Josie always was an excellent listener. She only interrupted twice.
She said, “I don’t understand,” and Gordy kept going with his story, getting it all out there.
Again, later, Josie said, “I don’t understand.”
By the time Gordy was done he was weeping, and Josie was weeping too. She wasn’t sure why.
“Are you sure all this happened, that you’re not seeing things, or maybe temporarily—”
“I know it’s real.”
His conviction stunned her. He could tell it was going to take time for Josie to process all this new information. That was fine as long as she did what he told her to. “It’s all just so unbelievable,” she said. Gordy looked at her expectantly. “I don’t know what to say. What do you want me to do?”
“Will you pray with me?”
Humbly now, gently now.
“Of course, I will,” she said. Who would refuse a request like that?
“I need to get something first,” he said, and got up. He went to the bathroom and came back with an old brass hand mirror. “Hold it in your hands, towards me, right beneath your face when you kneel.”
“I don’t—”
Gordy showed her what to do and held her hands around the mirror’s handle. “During the prayer I want you to listen very closely, and when I say, ‘and please bless that we might always be together,’ just open your eyes and look at me. I’ll be looking right back at you. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded and they knelt down to pray, right next to the couch.
“When I say, ‘that we might always be together,’” he reminded her.
Sincerely say the prayer.
They prayed together.
As he offered the prayer there was one moment where thoughts intruded into Gordy’s mind seemingly from nowhere, interrupting his concentration on the words of his prayer. Don’t do it. Don’t open your eyes, Gordy. Keep them shut. He heard Sister Rogers’s harsh whispering voice.
You shut your eyes.
And his Mom’s too:
Eyes shut during Prayer Time.
He ignored all those voices.
“…that we might always be together.” He heard the words coming out of his mouth.
And he opened his eyes. They both did.
It took a second.
Josie’s face unzipped. Shark-like teeth appeared in a vertical mouth that ran down her face from forehead to chin. The mouth split wide open shoving her eyes wide apart. And a black tongue the size of a fist fell out. Tiny yellow worms came spewing out with it.
Gordy screamed like a little girl. He tried to scramble away so fast that he forgot to look in the mirror, but it didn’t matter. The thing that was his wife hit him across the face with it so hard, the glass shattered.
Gordy fell over and felt something hot and wet on the side of his head. He crawled for the couch and the multi-tool beneath it.
In his peripheral vision, Gordy saw Josie rise up to full height. A pair of giant leathery bat-wings unfurled behind her.
Oh, God, please help me, just a few more inches, he thought. The multi-tool was in reach, but a shard from the mirror lay on the carpet in front of him.
And Gordy saw his true face.
The Way it Should Be.
*
Hiram was the lighter sleeper of the twins. He woke up sure he had heard something, but wasn’t sure what.
He crawled out of bed and rubbed his eyes.
He took his blanket and stepped out into the hallway.
“Mommy? Daddy?” he said, still groggy.
Then his dad appeared in the hallway with his hand on his head. It was hard for him to walk straight, and he bumped against the wall.
“Daddy? What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothing, son. Everything’s okay now.” Gordy fell to his knees and gave Hiram a big hug. “It’s all going to be okay.” Hiram hugged him back.
“You two!” a voice scolded. “You should both be asleep.” It was Hiram’s Mommy.
She walked down the hall and put one hand on Hiram’s shoulder and another on Gordy’s back. Gordy froze. “C’mon, off to bed,” Josie said. Gordy remembered the words to his prayer: that we might always be together.
“Mommy?” Hiram asked. “Can we say a prayer first?”
“Of course, we can,” she said.
This time Gordy kept his eyes shut. He didn’t want to know anymore.
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Brian Gibson lives in Provo, Utah, where he produces television for BYUtv. “The Eye Opener” first appeared in Monsters & Mormons in 2011. His other three ideas for that anthology had, as preliminary titles, “Elder Hodges Vs. the Beast,” “Gray Envelopes,” and “Margaret’s Board.” As we still wish to read these stories, we encourage you to encourage him to finish them.
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