Sunday serial novel JESUSLAND chapters 1 & 2

1. THE STAKE.

It was a bright cold day in April, but not too chilly to attend the burning at the stake.

To the south, a bank of clouds pressed close to Wall Street and grazed the top of Freedom Tower. Its slender height connected the concrete of Manhattan to the oblivion of the sky; the glass spire at the top sparkled like a clean knife thrust into the belly of heaven.

Even after more than twenty years it was still impossible for native New Yorkers of a certain age to look at this building and not be reminded of why it was there; what it had replaced; and the ashes in which it stood. Adam White counted himself among them. Somewhere under that glass-clad tombstone lay his portion of 9/11 pain: a handful of dust: the remaindered atoms of the snuffed-out love of his life.

To the north, Central Park’s Great Lawn lay unnaturally empty. Police commanded the entrances to the park. People were lining up there, eager to attend the torching of the fiend. As one of the invited VIPs, Adam went to the head of the line, his eye passing over a newspaper in a vending machine: “Satanic Rituals Alleged in New Daycare Case.” A tabloid had another take: “Satan Raped Me.”

At the east end of the Lawn stood a circular stage, built not of wood, but of solid red brick. From a distance it looked like a spot of dried blood on the cultivated expanse of grass.

In the center of the stage stood an upright wooden pole, somewhat thicker and shorter than a flagpole -- the focus of a second grief even larger than the one piercing the cloud formation at the southern tip of the island.

This pole, painted bright red and only fifteen feet high, was packed with more meaning than the skyscraper five miles to its south. It stood for the death of only one man -- the fiend -- but his approaching end measured the deaths of hundreds of thousands caused by him in the year of the Great Attack, some decades after the shock of 9/11.

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