Touched

By Walter Mosley

Intergalactic visions, deadly threats, and explosive standoffs between mostly good and nearly completely evil converge in an alternative fiction novel that could only be conceived by the inimitable Walter Mosley, one of the country’s most beloved and acclaimed writers.

Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And that he is the Cure.

Martin, his wife, and his two children are the only Black family on their neighborhood block in the Hollywood hills of Los Angeles. Suddenly, Martin is both father and Antibody, husband and Cure, occasionally slipping into an alternate consciousness – equipped with unprecedented physical strength – to violently defend them.

The family is stalked by Tor Waxman – the pale, white-haired embodiment of death who wears a dapper suit, carries a cane, and seeks to destroy all life with his fatal touch. Martin must convince his family of the danger and get them to engage with him in a battle beyond all imagining. Mosley effortlessly marries the sublime and the pedestrian: from monumental battles with truly universal stakes to the banality of standoffs with neighborhood police patrols, and the quotidian yet joyfully intimate conversations the family shares at home while gathered for dinner.

With his boundless talent and skilled range, Walter Mosley brings an ethereal, incisive look at a primal struggle driven by the spirit of the universe, in the vein of masters Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, and Jeff VanderMeer. Expansive and innovative, sexy and satirical, Touched brilliantly imagines the ways in which human life and technological innovation threaten existence itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9780802161857

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is the acclaimed author of more than forty books, including the internationally bestselling Easy Rawlins series. His best known Easy Rawlins novels include Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty, and Little Yellow Dog. He is also the author of the collection of stories Always Outnumbered. Always Outgunned featuring Socrates Fortlow, which was the basis for an HBO feature film. A former president of the Mystery Writers of America, he was named a grand master by the organization in 2016. He has served on the board of directors of the National Book Foundation and is a recipient of the PEN American Center Lifetime Achievement Award. A native of Los Angeles, he now lives in New York City.

Book preview

Also by Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins Mysteries

Blood Grove

Charcoal Joe

Rose Gold

Little Green

Blonde Faith

Cinnamon Kiss

Little Scarlet

Six Easy Pieces

Bad Boy Brawly Brown

Gone Fishin’

A Little Yellow Dog

Black Betty

White Butterfly

A Red Death

Devil in a Blue Dress

Leonid McGill Mysteries

Trouble Is What I Do

And Sometimes I Wonder About You

All I Did Was Shoot My Man

When the Thrill Is Gone

Karma

Known to Evil

The Long Fall

Other Fiction

Every Man a King

The Awkward Black Man

Down the River unto the Sea

John Woman

Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore

Stepping Stone / Love Machine

Merge / Disciple

The Gift of Fire / On the Head of a Pin

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

The Tempest Tales

The Right Mistake

Diablerie

Killing Johnny Fry

Fear of the Dark

Fortunate Son

The Wave

47

The Man in My Basement

Fear Itself

Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

Fearless Jones

Walkin’ the Dog

Blue Light

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

RL’s Dream

Original Ebooks

The Further Adventures of Tempest Landry

Parishioner

Odyssey

Nonfiction

Elements of Fiction

Folding the Red into the Black

The Graphomaniac’s Primer

Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation

This Year You Write Your Novel

Life Out of Context

What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace

Workin’ on the Chain Gang

Plays

The Fall of Heaven

TOUCHED

A NOVEL

WALTER

MOSLEY

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright © 2023 by Walter Mosley

Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler

Jacket artwork © Tigran Tsitoghdzyan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: October 2023

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-6184-0

eISBN 978-0-8021-6185-7

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

I awoke on a Saturday morning with the Plan fully formed, but fading, in my mind. Nothing else had changed. It was as if I had gone to sleep years before, contemplating a tricky conundrum, and remained in that doze until the knotty question had been completely disentangled—at least mentally so, at least for a while.

But when I awoke it was merely the next morning, as if time had folded back on itself, depositing me where I was before.

Tessa was in bed next to me, sound asleep. Her hair was wrapped in violet nylon netting. She’d sleep for two more hours. Brown would certainly be asleep in his room and Celestine, whom everyone called Seal, was probably sitting in her bed reading a library book.

I sat up and took a deep breath that felt like my first inhalation in a very long time.

Cells began to fire in my body. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was as if my physiology had also undergone some kind of transformation. I could feel my organs and glands pumping out chemicals, altering tissue and even bone.

There had been an azure plane where beings, not human, had poked and butted me, fondled and fucked me in ways that made no sense in the earthly realm. I was there and others were too, other people, human beings, being prepared for something, for some things. It occurred to me that we were not all in accordance. Our Plans were different and sometimes even at odds. There were 107 assigned to the Great Change, but our tasks often seemed to contradict one another.

One hundred and seven human beings conditioned and trained to prepare for the Transition. But there were other creatures too; other earthly life-forms that were there to complete us—or maybe we were there to complete them or, even more accurately, to complete a circuit, a turning, a revolution.

It was only on that Saturday morning, with Tessa sleeping next to me and the sun slanting in through the seam of our heavy curtains, that I understood the Plan in its totality. And even then, while I was rousing from my centuries-long sleep, the lessons I had learned were receding into the shelves and cubby­holes of my unconscious mind.

I can remember only some of it now, after the first skirmish in an intergalactic invasion. There was a place that gave the impression of many shades of blue, but I can’t say if my eyes were working there. I was aware of different beings from a vast range of planes and realities. They spoke to me but in ways that transformed rather than informed me. They were like a congress that met only once, decided on the fates of worlds, and then disbanded when their words, their annunciations, had been received and digested.

My world, they said, was wrong. It, the planet itself, had spawned a disease of which I was a part. This contagion had begun to multiply and it had to be rendered impotent—by any means necessary.

I was to be an antibody in the eradication of this rampant syndrome. I was the cure or, more precisely, a cure.

And there were others who were being modified, as I was, to rid Earth of the danger of the genetic disorder of humankind—107 men and women refashioned to save the universe from the biology and resultant technology of evil.

There were 107 different plans, some radically diverse.

As I climbed out of bed the memories began to retreat. I knew that everything was different but I could no longer name the various other treatments (106 human beings), our agreements, and our therapeutic conflicts.

Throwing open the drapes, I forgot these serious issues and grinned broadly at the flood of sunlight.

I slid open the glass door to our second-floor deck and walked outside feeling that I was entering the world, committing to a battle like any foot soldier given his orders, obeying because that was my conditioning and my duty.

Mr. Snyder’s oak tree swayed in the morning breeze. There was the smell of fuel in the air and of food cooking.

Mama, look! a child shouted, but for me, at that moment, it was just one of the myriad sensations of this old/new world.

I had been a petty human when I had fallen asleep a thousand years ago but now I was something else.

One hundred and seven ways to change the world and no two of them in exact accordance. How could this end well? Beyond the chill on my skin and the chemicals in the air, I could feel the vibration of souls all around. Errant and leaky, confused and ­starving—the souls of insects and trees, humans and other mammals all drawn to the impossible hope of unity.

This notion of harmony arrested my worries. I had been in a place where there had been agreement among differences, something beyond love and understanding. I closed my eyes and imagined this pristine moment as if maybe it was a gaudy, rainbow-colored barge sailing off, leaving only the hope of something that had always been an impossible dream.

Standing out in that early morning, I knew it was my job to recall that amazing notion and to make everyone in the world aware.

I don’t know how long I stood like that, with the notion of the absolute fading from my mind but at the same time exhilarating my heart.

Marty, she said.

I turned to see my wife of a millennium ago. She was dark brown in a blue-and-green kimono. Beautiful, almost forgotten, it seemed impossible that she stood there.

What are you doing? she asked.

Today? I inquired.

Did she know what my mission was? Was she one of the crusaders? I realized then that I had never had a physical impression of my fellow missionaries.

Standing out here naked, she said, and look at your, your thing.

I was naked and had become aroused sexually when I saw Tessa. The wind and sun felt good on my skin. The air in my lungs was rich and