Aberrations

of

Reality

Also by Aaron J. French

Up From Soil Fresh

Dreaming in Darkness

The Chapman Books

Works Edited:

Monk Punk

The Shadow of the Unknown

Songs of the Satyrs

Omnibus 2.0 (reprint volume of Monk Punk and The Shadow of the Unknown with additional material)

Aberrations

of

Reality

Aaron J. French

Crowded Quarantine Publications

Copyright © 2014 Aaron J. French

This Edition Published 2014 by Crowded

Quarantine Publications

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

form or by any means without the prior

permission in writing of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-9928838-7-4

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Crowded Quarantine Publications

34 Cheviot Road

Wolverhampton

West Midlands

WV2 2HD

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank everybody I worked with over the duration of writing the stories for this book, particularly Eric J. Guignard, Jeani Rector, Adrian Chamberlin, and Michael Bailey, who all helped with individual edits on several of these stories; to John Palisano, my HWA mentor for much of the time; to Adam Millard with Crowded Quarantine Publications; and especially to Martha Swanson who helped edit this entire book and made it much better. And a HUGE thank you to Mark Valentine for writing the brilliant introduction, as well as to Tanith Lee and Storm Constantine for their wonderful assistance.

“Mystery is the abyss

which ceaselessly attracts

our unquiet curiosity

by the terror of its depth.”

—Eliphas Levi, The Key of the Mysteries (Aleister Crowley translation)

“A sense of the uncanny can be activated

in the average mortal under various conditions.

Principal among these conditions

are those which cause us to feel

that we are not what we think we are…”

—Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race

“Wisdom had been born, not a deity:

a deity which slew with one hand

while healing with another…

that deity was not the Savior,

and I said to myself,

Thank God.”

—Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Man shall conquer death,

not by submitting to it as you teach,

and not by avoiding it in a mere prolongation of life,

as certain wise yet erring masters have taught,

though this may be a necessary step towards conquest,

but by entering into and annulling it.”

—Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy

“The sad fact was that every sad fact in the world

was the raw material for a story.

Fiction thrived on desperation, on dejection, on violence.”

—Walter Jon Williams, This is not a Game

I’d like to dedicate this book to my former self, now gone and lost forever. Also to Veronica, for her endless love and support. Finally to Ron, for his wealth of spiritual insight and clarity.

Contents

Introduction | Mark Valentine

Here & There… | Page 13

Doubting Thomas | Page 15

Dwellers in the Cracks | Page 31

Rebirth in Dreams | Page 45

Horror Fiction as Mystical Didactic Experience | Page 55

A Storm of Lightning | Page 69

Whirling Machine Man | Page 79

The Graffiti Ghosts | Page 101

What Lay East, Lay West  | Page 111

Golden Doors to a Golden Age | Page 123

Paladin | Page 143

The Christ | Page 147

Tree of Life | Page 159

When Clown Face Speaks | Page 165

My Stalk | Page 175

The Four Transitions of the Soul upon Death by David P. Reichmann | Page 183

{(California Sea + Cosmic Man) - Humankind} + Anadyr, Russia = Apocalypse | Page 199

The Lake | Page 213

Flame of Freedom | Page 225

Ramifications of Embrace | Page 233

Marked as Urgent | Page 245

The Year of Our Lord | Page 255

Introduction

Mark Valentine

Do we always walk in two worlds? Our own we know, or think we know, and another we only glimpse? There are many things that may tempt us to believe so. The supernal awe we can encounter as the dying sun descends in violet and scarlet embers on the horizon: or as great trees sway in the wind, like gates parting to reveal another realm; or as the silver chargers of the sea storm once more upon the shore. Then there are the quieter hints: the way we might turn a corner in a deserted street and sense we have known this unvisited scene before; the clues and trails that seem to seek us out when we are pursuing a rare story; the recognition we feel when we look into the bright eyes of a stranger.

And sometimes we may be oppressed by the nearness of infernal regions, the antithesis to those celestial worlds. We enter a place, ordinary enough in all outward seeming, and some element in the fall of shadows or the angles of the stones sickens us: we cannot leave quickly enough. Or the signs of natural decay in a blighted leaf, withered grasses, warted fungus, swollen fruit, may make us suddenly turn away. And there may be figures too, wearing faces that seem composed of the right human features, unexceptional in their gaze and the set of their mouths, yet to us inexpressibly hideous, like masks carved out of vile longings.

These impressions haunted the work of the past masters of supernatural fiction. It was Arthur Machen who encapsulated them most succinctly: ‘Sorcery and sanctity,’ he said; ‘these are the only realities.’ For to him and to the many other celebrated workers in this field, the visible world, the one where we usually walk, is only the outer husk: the world that lies beyond, or alongside, the one promised or threatened by those curious uncatchable glimpses, is the ultimately Real.

Older ages than ours were perhaps more accustomed to the nearness of the numinous—and the malefic—in their lives. Miracles, omens, visitations, converse with angels and possessions by devils, were a part of their spiritual vocabulary. The task for the acolyte of the literary Mysteries today is to convey strange possibilities in a modern tongue, one which responds to the ceaseless now with news of a different eternity. They must have a need at least to suggest that there are aberrations in the world we usually take for reality.

And, as the title of this book suggests, Aaron J. French is one of those willing to respond to that task. At the outset, in ‘Here & There’, he gives us a vignette of the two dimensions, moving deftly from a shimmering cosmic moment to a young (but also very old) couple alive to wonder on our own Earth. That same unearthly beauty is also more fully achieved in ‘Tree of Life’, a Kabbalistic prose poem which achieves the difficult challenge of using mystical language in a way that still reaches out to the reader.

By contrast we witness, in the grittier ‘Doubting Thomas’, what happens when an occult student begins to realise that a holy book might be the biggest occult text of them all, if you take it seriously and try it out. The author compellingly conveys, in a vigorously contemporary setting, the sense of frustration and spiritual longing that must have been felt by certain other votaries two thousand years ago. It’s a feat he pushes further still in another bold story, ‘The Christ’.

‘Dwellers in the Cracks’, a rich tale of metamorphosis, reminds us of another of Machen’s convictions: that the forms we think of as fixed may really be fluid. The Fall is really a myth of the descent from infinite possibility, constant changelessness, into a single, limited identity. But there may be ways to reach back into that possibility of change, even if the process is difficult, cruel. In this story and in the eerie ‘The Lake’, the author imagines with brittle lyricism how such episodes might erupt into this world. This theme is explored further in ‘Flame of Freedom’, where the Thing of the story resembles many desperate things, but is yet not quite any of them, until it becomes the most awful thing of all. And perhaps hallucinations, accessed by experiments in the athanor of Nature, are another hazardous way back, as explored in ‘Rebirth in Dreams’.

The Glastonbury priestess Dion Fortune was another prophet, like Machen, and Charles Williams, using the form of the supernatural thriller to explore esoteric dimensions. She worked with many of the strongest archetypes in the field, including the classical gods of Greece, Celtic deities, and even Babylonian images. Aaron J. French offers a homage to her in ‘Horror Fiction As Mystical Didactic Experience’, which is both a reflection of her work and a vaunting extension of its messages.

But it isn’t only the magical allure of the old world that the author evokes. To my mind one of the finest pieces here is ‘What Lay East, Lay West’, set in the deserts of the West. Its atmosphere reminds me of that very curious song ‘Horse With No Name,’ recorded by America, in which a ride out into the wastes leads to visions amid the desolation. It’s as if Zane Grey had got into conversation with Carlos Castaneda over a billy-can fire in a gulch in some far terrain where the spirits of the first peoples still linger. Most of all, though, it’s a fine meditation on spiritual loneliness and our desperate quest for a true encounter with the Other.

However, these stories also tell us that you don’t always have to go out into remote territory in pursuing that quest, nor does it always involve esoteric exploration. The same longing is conveyed with human warmth in the world of a rundown coffee shop and a failing relationship, in ‘Ramifications of Embrace’, where the message from beyond turns out to be written on a brief note stuck to a fridge. What happens in the everyday happens also in the eternal.

Throughout this fiery modern grimoire of mystical horror, we’re conscious of the restless urgency of the writing, as if the author is working against time to conjure onto the pages a sequence of transformations that must be seized and fixed before they dissolve again. Through the potent spells he has cast we sense always the vast workings of the ultimately unknowable, what Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the Invisible Prince, that great Irish writer of spiritual thrillers, knew as ‘the machinery of Hell.’

And indeed Aaron J. French’s book of contemporary visions and modern rituals ends fittingly with a vividly-limned apocalypse, crackling with erotic energy, faithful to the intensities of true prophecies, and reaching out to strange eidolons in the skies, a passionate eschatology for our times.

HERE & THERE…

The moment they nailed you to the cross, you forgot almost everything you knew. And once they erected the Y-shaped boards on Calvary, you did forget. But, over time, you were able to recover bits and pieces, experiences frozen onto the cosmic memory field like photographs, and here and there your images returned…

Here:

The starburst in the sky last night. The blooming ring of reds, blues, yellows, and golds had seemed so real… and yet so dreamlike.

The beauty of the moment—standing outside in the cool autumn night, my arm clasped around you, staring up at the glowing orb with the trees surrounding us and the neighborhood homes—was like the forming of the one perfect thought. The small stars twinkled but none could match the rich luminosity sent forth by the supernova.

The Fourth of July.

We were kids again.

“We left all this a long time ago,” you said, and I squeezed you tight. The cars on the road honked for us to get out of the way, but we ignored them. We were in no danger of getting hit, so I didn’t want to move, plus the moment was so thick that I couldn’t imagine breaking it, not even for death.

“Which do you mean?” I asked. “Our world or their world?”

You chuckled. “Both, I guess. I feel, lately, like we’ve departed from each. But what does that mean? Where do we end up outside of both worlds?”

I thought about it. “In a world of our own, I guess. Do you like that?”

“What—a world of our own?”

I nodded.

“In France?”

Now I laughed. “Yes, France could work. Those people sure seem like they’re from another planet.”

“But we are from another planet,” you said.

“Yes. And now we can’t go back.”

You scoffed. “Like I’d want to. The lugs and slaugs and drugsiz, all that rubbish they take part in over there, what they consider their reality, their existence. What a load of crap. Even Earth—here, in the United States, not in France—is better than there. I don’t want to go back.”

I squeezed you tighter. “Neither do I.”

There:

We were dreaming. The two of us, you and I—and yes you are the woman—lost in the desert, in a landscape of cacti and wavy blond sand dunes, and shrubs like tiny little rodents. One of the shrubs was burning. We approached it. I bent down and put my face close to the flames, bright orange, leaping toward me.

“What is it?” you asked.

“A messenger.”

“From?”

I pointed up.

“Oh.”

I listened with more focus and intensity. I had discerned something of significance in the small burning bush, some underlying sound, something like a voice, but not a voice.

A sound.

With words.

I AM THAT I AM…

“What?” you said.

I shushed you, listened a moment longer, then replied: “It is coming.”

“What is?”

“Wait… no, not what. Who.”

“Fine—who is coming?”

“The man from the stars.” I looked up at your face and saw you were crying.

“He’s already here,” you said.

I knew at that moment that France was a long ways away.

DOUBTING THOMAS

When I opened the brown packaging—addressed to me and postmarked San Jose, California—the first thing I saw was the King James Version of the Holy Bible. I set it aside, grimacing, sure there was some explanation.

In addition to the Bible, Dr. Vernon sent me a letter, eleven pages or so, hand-written and folded strangely to resemble a pyramid. I supposed it was the reason for his cautionary packaging, although it seemed silly to waste a whole box on one elaborately folded letter and a book.

Unfolding the pages I plopped down on the couch, clearing a space in the trash and booze bottles. I opened a window, the sounds of Manhattan filtering in as I kicked up my feet and read.

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your note and words of praise. I don’t know that I, in good standing, can accept them. However I do appreciate your sincerity, and I hope my response will provide what you are seeking.

While I’m flattered you got so much out of my earlier writing, I wonder if you’re familiar with my recent books. I’m willing to wager nay, based on the content of your commentary. This puts me in an awkward position, for much of what I’ve written recently flies in the face of what I wrote before. It may seem to some—to folks like yourself, perhaps—that I’m being hypocritical. But I assure you that is not the case. Allow me to explain.

On Tuesday, December 28, 1999, three days before the dawning of the New Millennium and, according to the Y2K problem, the end of modern civilization, I had a profound religious experience. I was in the City you call home, at a drug party on the Upper East Side, surrounded by drug-addled Bohemians and gibbering intellectuals: the crowd that had become my mainstay, even at fifty-six.

It was going on midnight. Truth be told, I was standing on the balcony overlooking most of the City, thinking about committing suicide. I’d just finished getting a blowjob from a twenty-four-year-old art hipster who simply hopped up off her knees, swallowed, and went back inside to the party when she was done.

Zipping up, I stared into the moonlit darkness. I felt like a fool. I didn’t understand how I’d wound up here. I was a full-grown adult, but I still acted like a teenager. I had painted myself into a corner—through building an image of myself, and through my written works. This idea of being anyone other than who I’d been the last forty years terrified me. The fame, accolades, and reputation—hell, even the money—turned to dust in that moment. I felt estranged and unhappy. My life was a lonely tomb.

The only way out seemed thirty stories below. I climbed up and sat on the railing, letting my feet dangle over. This was both terrifying and exhilarating. The wind blew against me, rocked me back and forth, and I nearly fell.

I felt something come to life in me. It sprang from my chest, a scalding freezing burning, as if I’d swallowed dry ice. I broke out in sweat and started laughing uncontrollably. The wind kept up and pretty soon I was clutching the rail in sheer terror.

A space of sky before me began to shimmer. I mistook it as a trick of clouds or illusion of moonlight, but when it didn’t dissipate, I observed more closely only to discover the phenomenon was real.

Still laughing, I focused my attention. The peculiarity of the thing helped to rebalance my organism, jettisoning my shackles of fear for genuine scientific inquiry, because I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing.

I watched, awestricken, as the shimmering space turned into currents of air which one by one began lighting up. They were beautiful, reminding me of parade streamers or colorful ocean eels. My mind kept trying to put the enigma together, give it form, but all I could make out were the weird movements.

Then something clicked over in my brain and what was once formless and obscure now gained shape. A face, eyes, nose, and mouth; hair, torso, stomach, and limbs. All of the proper aspects coalesced until a full-fledged humanoid floated out there in midair. Something female.

I saw white feathered wings unfurl and stretch back, flapping with slow rhythmic pumps, creating a sound like a dragon.

I was looking at an angel!

The being approached, hovering inches from my face. Her white robe wavered about me, displaying that undersea quality. Her skin was snow-pale and her eyes glowed the deepest blue. Her hair was jet black. She raised two fingers, placing them against my lips.

“Depart ye not from these lands,” she whispered, “for thoust still have much work to complete. I, the countenance of Sophia, have descended on the guiding hand of God to intervene in these matters. He desireth of you to make holy the dregs of your life, to preach the new Gospel of His Son, Christ Jesus. Your soul hath bowed down to the dust, and your belly doth cleaveth unto the earth. So go now. Return, and lay down your life within His faith.”

These words I will never forget. They seemed to drift around me in a cloud, dense as ice. I could make them out in the air—glaring shards of symbols and patterns. Then they were gone, and I hung my head and cried.

The angel put her hand on my shoulder, but soon she was gone and I got a hold of myself and climbed down onto the balcony. When I looked, the strange phenomenon, and the angel too, had vanished. The city skyline met my boyish gaze with lights of indifference.

I’ve been a student of the occult half my life. Angels are not new to my thinking. However seeing one in the flesh is. And what the angel said… Of all the magical texts I’ve poured over, all the scandalous satanic dribbling, all the ceremonial rituals—never once did an angel, spirit, or demon show up.

Never once.

It was suddenly so clear to me. I felt like a fool looking back over my life—though I never would’ve reached my realization had I not endured everything else first. I was raised a Catholic, and had departed from the Church for what I thought were good reasons. Coming back around again, to feel very “catholically inclined,” was strange. Lines from Eliot’s “The Four Quartets” came to me…

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

And so I have returned to my place of origin, my Catholic roots. My faith is invigorated and my life feels restored. God smiles on me every day. I will soon be an ordained priest. My writing, too, has been Christianized, and I have left the horrors of Bohemia behind.

I tell you this because I know from your note that your and my life are similar. Yet I don’t expect any of this to change your mind. You still haven’t returned to your point of origin. And so therefore you don’t know who or where you are. I can hope that my story will have an impact on you; if nothing else, cause you to reflect.

Please accept my gift of the Holy Bible. Look it over, read it, hold it in your hands. You too can find your way home.

Good luck,

Dr. Philip P. Vernon

I got up immediately and stood for a long time looking at the stack of creased papers. My hands shook, the fingertips perspiring. I could feel the blood pumping in my head, a throbbing pulsating baa-bump which felt like a migraine.

Who does this bastard think he is?

Dr. Vernon had been my occult hero, going back to when I was a leather jacket-wearing punk in Michigan listening to Danzig and smoking cigarettes behind the cafeteria. I had meant to send him a letter sooner, expressing my admiration for his work, but life got in the way. Not until my fortieth year had I suddenly found myself in the right mindset to do so.

The good doctor had always written a mix of things, all esoteric and fringe-spirituality in nature, ranging from bestselling thrillers to New Agey self-help books to the serious occult treatises. His writing had safeguarded me through the rough patches, continually revitalizing my rebellious attitude toward my parents and society. A true iconoclast and a member of several magical groups, as well as an activist for human and animal rights movements, Vernon railed against neo-conservatives and spoke out against government corruption. He had a reputation for being paranoid and fanciful. However the media always paid attention, if only for the sake of ridicule. I thought of Dr. Vernon as the punk rock version of Hunter S. Thompson mixed with Aleister Crowley.

But now it seemed he had changed. It made me want to scream. I was hungover from a binge drink the night before. Maybe that was why I couldn’t stop myself from ripping the pages in half and hurling them into the air, overturning my dining table, knocking some pictures off the wall by the window, then collapsing back on the couch.

Was this the kind of reaction the good doctor wanted? Had he engineered this whole thing, like some kind of psychotherapy mind fuck—like all those crazy existentialist novels from the sixties and seventies—magic theaters, The Magus, devils and witchcraft, Freudian madness?

I wish.

No, the good doctor had let his fears and inadequacies overcome his good sense. He’d had a midlife crises, and then turned to the Bible for recourse. And I had been dumb enough to venerate him all these years. What did that say about me?

That you’re as stupid as he is.

I hated that. My old man used to call me stupid every time I got a bad grade in elementary school. He’d spend hours lecturing me as to the right answer, proving how much smarter he was. Then he’d call me stupid and say I was a waste.

“Stupid people never make a name for themselves,” he’d say. “They become bums.”

You never made a name for yourself, Pop.

I always wanted to tell him that. But it only would’ve gotten me a right cross to the face. It was true, though. He was a janitor at the local university where he mopped the gymnasium and emptied trash cans. The students ignored him or laughed at him and said he was a dumb old man. He’d never attended college himself. Mom did, but Mom was dead. That was why he pushed me so hard, I think: because of his shortcomings. A noble endeavor in theory, but I swear it made me want to kill the old bastard.

I went into my backyard to think about the doctor’s letter. Not much of a yard: less than five square feet probably. But the management loved to tout that each apartment came equipped with “Its own backyard!”

The space felt like a prison to me now. The wooden fence was the concrete walls of Alcatraz. I scooted my only patio chair over to the fence so I could stand on it, then peered over. I surveyed the other backyards, a labyrinth of fence-forged cubicles.

A man wearing no t-shirt with blubber like a whale was barbecuing some hamburgers and hotdogs. I thought I had smelled burning flesh. Light trails of smoke lifted from his yard. He lit a fat cigar, hacking on phlegm, and saw me gazing over the top of my fence. He did a double-take, his fatty jowls jiggling.

“The fuck you looking at?” he said.

“An angel,” I replied.

I got back in my yard and sat on the patio chair.

Fat asshole, I thought. Worthless piece of shit.

Liar.

Idiot.

Fool.

I’d stopped thinking about my neighbor and was back to Dr. Vernon. I couldn’t believe what I had read. I was beginning to feel something strange, though, something like jealousy. Did I envy the good doctor?

I went back inside and closed the sliding glass door. The smell of burning processed animal flesh was getting to me. I went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer, and retired to the bedroom. It was only eleven in the morning, but hair o’ the dog bit whenever it bit.

I lay on the bed, drinking, thinking. My walls were black with posters of the death metal bands I loved, my bookshelves lined with esoteric titles. One of my other heroes, Aleister Crowley, hung from a cloth banner over the dresser. The Beast wore his traditional ceremonial garb, including his magician’s hat displaying the All-Seeing Eye inside a golden, radiating triangle. His own eyes glared into the room.

After burning some incense, I drank my beer and recited my prayers to The Master, Lucifer. Before long I was snoring in the gloom.

* * *

Later that night I crouched at the computer, investigating the recent religious developments in Dr. Vernon’s career. My head continued to ache, but the long day of napping, dreaming, and going in and out of consciousness had restored me a little. I vowed not to hit the whiskey for a while. I presently contented myself with Camel non-filters and a bottle of Bud.

What Vernon said in his letter was true. Sometime around the turn of the last century there had been a dramatic shift, not only in his work, but also in his public persona. He was featured in many interviews during that time, espousing his return to God, Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church. He was even on the cover of Time Magazine, sitting with a Holy Bible in one hand and an upside down picture of Aleister Crowley in the other, beneath an emboldened red headline that said DR. PHILIP VERNON FINDS GOD.

How in the hell did I miss that one?

Vernon responded to critics in these venues, but mostly he promoted his new books, a six-novel “pseudo-fictional” history of the life of Jesus Christ entitled “The Chronicles of Nazareth.”

He caught a lot of flak for this and pretty much estranged his entire audience, but his Christian series was picked up by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., and in no time the first book was a New York Times bestseller. It seemed the good doctor had been well-received by the Christian community. They made up the bulk of his fan base.

They would love a reformed Satanist, of course.

I powered down the computer and wandered back into my living room. The lights were off and a full moon pierced through the curtains. I felt like I was on another planet. Nothing made sense. I had gone beyond anger to find myself back at simple confusion. What the fuck happened to you, Dr. Vernon?

Switching on the lights, the first thing I saw was the leather bound Bible sitting on my dining table. Crowley had read and referred to the Bible on multiple occasions, but I had never gotten into it. It reeked of my father, all those Sundays he dragged me off to the Methodist Church, and the harsh judgments he had placed on my friends and me during high school. He said we were all Satanists and unprofitable servants of the Lord.

He was probably right.

I picked up the book and inspected the leather cover and the pair of gold words. Other than the horrible memories of my father I really had no reason to eschew this book. It was usually considered in bad taste as an occultist to slaver over the Holy Bible as a magical text. That was for the Christians and what was referred to as RHP, Right Hand Path occultists—Right Hand because they presumed to one day sit at the right hand of God, perhaps?—while we of the LHP journeyed to the Left and followed our own inner divinity.

Fortunately my mental illness and generally awkward social presence had forced me to give up Group Work a long time ago. And so there was no one to see me, no one to crack jokes or make unfair presuppositions. I was basically free to do what I pleased.

I opened to the first page and started reading the Book of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was

upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon

the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the

light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called

Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

The words brought up childhood memories of sitting through Sunday school and Sunday morning service. It reminded me of the pain, hate, and humiliation I felt during that time. Which I still felt. I would never forget the moment I learned about Hell, the place for which I was destined if I didn’t keep my act clean and do as I was told. If I didn’t listen to my father, do my school work, and stay out of mischief, I would be sent to a netherworld of eternal damnation and endless torture.

Creepy!

Even at a young age I sensed I was being told a great and inglorious lie. Come to find out, years later, this Hell was nonexistent, and that he who I was meant to fear—namely, Lucifer—was really the savior of mankind, the being who would eventually restore my ability to enjoy sensual pleasures, rather than stifle them.

Then how come I feel so alone? Why am I poor? Why do I hate my life?

Oh, no. I wasn’t about to have the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. I’d made my decision. I’d chosen LHP. I wasn’t going to reevaluate now.

Or was I?

Dr. Vernon did. He pulled a one-eighty and now he’s rich, redeemed, and successful.

“Bullshit,” I called to the empty room. “He was successful before.”

The sound of my voice spooked me. My apartment was a void, a place of silence and inactivity. I scarcely worked up the energy to perform the rituals anymore. So maybe I was disillusioned. Maybe I was having my doubts. Maybe things were going to change.

Like Vernon changed.

I opened the Bible and picked up where I left off. This time I felt less repulsed by the text and was not as easily diverted. When the morning sun peeked through the windows, I was still reading, and I didn’t pass out until ten o’clock, the book lying open on my chest.

* * *

Life continued this way, with me reading and reading. Who knew the Holy Bible to be a bona fide page-turner? Of course I didn’t read everything. All the begetting crap and the Thou Shalt Not Do This and Thou Shalt Not Do That, I skimmed over. Those passages were an insult to my occult sensibilities.

My principal interest turned out to be the New Testament and the story of Jesus of Nazareth. I skimmed, jumped around, but I got through those scenes which I felt were most important.

In another week I had read all the way past the crucifixion and Pentecost and arrived at the Book of Revelations. Here was material I certainly had read before, with respect to my occult practices; in fact, material those of the LHP considered most crucial to their traditions. But I read it again anyways, for it is a lively piece of writing.

Then I sat on my couch with the book closed. I did it, I thought. I read the entire fucking Bible. Does that make me a Christian?

I chuckled. I didn’t feel like a Christian, but something had changed. Weeks had passed. I hadn’t left the house other than to work at the ampm, which was the bane of my existence. I’d stopped drinking. Even the smoking I’d cut down on. I felt like a million bucks. I also felt as if I was wakening from a long dream.

Strange.

What was happening?

I shook my head. One thing was for certain: I’d read the damn thing and now the entire vision that was the Holy Bible streamed through my body like a living entity. I didn’t hear the normal nagging inner voice telling me I wanted to smoke a cigarette or grab a strong drink. My mind was eerily silent. I felt numb, confused, and shell-shocked. Like I could sit on my couch forever and just stay there—molder into the cushions and become a statue with vines weaving about my head, forgotten and alone, but at peace.

There was a knock at the front door.

* * *

Three days later I stood before the towering Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, just off East 57th Street. It was early, probably not yet nine o’clock, but the City was alive with traffic. The weather was cool for the end of summer, owing to the slightly overcast sky which hovered above everything. Clearly, a not-fucking-around thunderstorm was on the way. I checked my wristwatch again. Then, ignoring the doorman, I entered the glass doors and stepped into the lobby.

It was business as usual. I walked to the front desk and checked in with a peppy young woman wearing a pantsuit. Her nametag announced her as Gemma. I’d made my reservations the day before. The busy season wasn’t over yet, but I managed to get a room.

I’ve always had difficulty interacting with people on a social level. At work, with the defense of the cash register, I could fake it, but mostly because I had a role (that of cashier) to hide behind. But in the wild everything seemed primal. I constantly felt pulled between hope, fear, and anger—a dizzying cycle.

Keycard in hand, I turned and headed toward the elevators. But Gemma called out to me. “Mr. Everson?”

I swung around. “Call me Thomas, please.”

She pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled nervously. “Of course, Thomas. Would you like some help with your things?” She glanced around my legs, indicting the absence of any luggage, and then met my eyes.

Think you’re smart, eh?

“Thank you, Gemma, but my bags are in the car. I will get them myself after I’ve had a nap.”

Her nervousness shifted to relief. “No problem, Thomas. Enjoy your stay at The Four Seasons.”

“Thank you. I will.”

I rode up in the elevator alone, thankfully, and looked at myself in the silvery reflection of the metal walls. I wore a deep blue business suit with my long black hair pulled back. My face, though pale, was washed and shaved, and I thought I looked much younger since I’d cut down on drinking.

I wondered if Gemma had found me attractive. I felt like I had handled our exchange okay, but my charms with women usually turned on with a fifth of Jack in me. I’d kept my cool. I’d acted normal. That’s what counted.

When selecting my room, I opted for one of the Panoramic City-View Tower Rooms located in the Upper Tower. Way more than anything I could afford, but I charged it to my credit card and hoped to pay it off eventually… if it turned out I needed to. For once in my life I was acting like a king, even if it meant financial ruin.

After a while the elevator dinged at the 49th floor, and the doors slide open. I stepped out into a silent, chic, stylishly carpeted hallway. My heart beat like a kettle drum. I found my room and used the keycard to open it, went inside, closed the door, and leaned against it.

Breathe, I told myself, breathe. For a split second, I thought I was falling through the floor.

The room was good-sized, but I was slightly disappointed as I’d expected something bigger. I did a walkthrough, marveling at the brass bed, the leather sofas and armchairs, a kitchen any housewife would adore. The counters were marble, the sink enormous, and the cabinets were forged from fine oak. Even the bathroom was furnished in marble.

Casting pearls before swine.

I passed the ornate bathtub and stopped to take a piss in it. Then I turned on the hot water, stripped, stepped in, and had a bath. I lay with my eyes closed for a while, listening to the silence. I could almost feel death closing in.

I toweled off and threw on my pants. When I’d called to make my reservation yesterday, I had specifically requested a room with a balcony; however the woman on the phone informed me that only a few rooms came thus equipped. Luckily I scored the last one.

How’s that for divine intervention?

I made my way out, opening the sliding glass doors and emerging into the wind and sights of Manhattan. This side of the Upper Tower overlooked Central Park, a sweeping expanse of trees, grass, wrought iron gates, and black fitness paths surrounded by tall buildings. Storm clouds piled high, growing darker into the distance.

I fished the pack of Camels from my pocket and lit up. I thought about what my visitor had told me. I wished I had written it down because I was starting to forget the details. The experience was becoming dreamlike, merging with my thoughts and memories, becoming subjective. Pretty soon I’d only remember a hint of it, a flavor of the things I’d been told.

That’s why I have to do this now.

Would anyone believe?

Do I believe?

I recapitulated the events, hoping to cement them in the elusive fabric of my mind. I had answered the door and there he was on my doorstep, the man I had worshipped and idolized for much of my life. The good doctor himself, the one and only Dr. Philip P. Vernon.

My initial response was to burst out laughing. I thought maybe I was going insane. But he introduced himself cordially and came right in. I, stunned, closed the door behind him and asked him to sit.

He looked much older than anything I was prepared for. Had so much time really passed? He wore a casual dark blazer with slacks, a brimmed hat, and—the kicker—his clerical collar. He seemed so smug in that, so self-satisfied and reborn. I knew from his letter what had become of him. But it was shocking to see it.

“You received my letter?’ he asked. “And my gift?”

I nodded. “What are you doing here?”

When he smiled, I saw he was missing a lot of teeth. “All things have their time, place, and meaning. I’ve thought a lot about the note you sent me. The more I thought about it the more I realized we are the same. So when my agent had me flying out here for The Late Show with David Lettermen, I jotted down your address and brought it along.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re on Late Night?”

He waved his gnarled hand. “Forget about that. It’s actually secondary to why I’m here. You see, you and me—and I know I hinted at this in my letter—we are the same; we’re one. I’m merely a rung higher on the ladder.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said. “Am I dreaming?”

Still grinning, he replied, “Oh you’re dreaming, all right. And years from now you’ll look back on this night and wonder, ‘Did that really happen? Was Philip Vernon really in my house?’ And then you’ll be tortured because your memory will prove elusive, the way memories do, and you’ll be forced to surrender to the fact that you don’t know, that a section of your life remains a mystery. It’ll drive you insane.”

“But this—this is insane!” I laughed haughtily. “It’s undeniable I can see you with my own two eyes, but still…”

“Oh those things! Haven’t your practices taught you anything? William Blake said, ‘The eye altering, alters all.’ But if you don’t know that the line between mind and sensual perception blurs, perhaps you know nothing.”

“Of course I know!” I started getting annoyed. There was an edge to my voice which hung awkwardly in the room. The advent of the good doctor on my doorstep had clearly unbalanced me. I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. “You’ve been my only real teacher,” I said. “For as long as I can remember.”

He nodded, venting this sort of dim-witted gaze. He was like a small child as he absently surveyed my living room, tilting his head. I imagined him making judgments about my lifestyle.

“There’s an old tradition in the Mysteries,” he said, “that spreads its roots from the Hindu religion—and it speaks of the relationship between the student and the guru. It asserts that there are truly no gurus at all, that the vessel into which the student peers when he says ‘Guru’ is really just a mirror reflecting his fears and desires.

“That is why, to the student, it seems like the guru is inside his head, that he knows all his thoughts and feelings and dreams—or that he’s similarly aligned with the student’s philosophical beliefs. This isn’t true because there is nobody inside the guru to begin with; there is only the student, and the student is the guru. The guru is merely the reflection of the student’s Higher Self or Personality. Does that make it any clearer, friend Thomas, when I say to you that we are one?”

It did, but I felt too afraid to admit it.

At that point my memories distorted as if my memory banks had gotten effaced. Later the images regained their focus, and the good doctor was asking me about the Bible.

“I read it,” I told him. “Nearly the whole thing.”

His brows rose. “Impressive. What did you think?”

I considered a moment. “Well, it was different than I remembered. What I mean is, I was told a lot of this stuff back in church school, when I was a boy. The story is intense. I felt like I was on an acid trip, to be honest. But I liked it. However I fucking hate all those, mmm, parental admonishments, all the morally self-righteous bullshit, trying to tell people how they should live their lives. Morality, in my opinion, stands in opposition to freedom. The Master, Lucifer, teaches us that.”

I eyed him gravely. “As you well know.”

He grunted, sounding amused. “But what about the Christ? The crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost—that’s what interests me.”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Can you honestly say he rose from the dead? Never once in the entire history of mankind have there been any reports of someone actually rising from the dead. But you expect me to believe this one guy—this one and only guy—he did it?”

“That is what separates you from those that have faith. And yet your inquisitiveness is notable and not unvirtuous. Events ought to be questioned, and the world ought to be scrutinized. Thereby can things be proven: the goal of modern science. After all, what is it that distinguishes a scientist from a Christian?”

“Common sense?”

“Experience,” he said. “The man of science can experience the effects and results of his experiments, and gain cold hard solid facts about the natural world. All faith-based prognosticating and theorizing is done with the emotions, with the heart. Their results and effects transpire in the invisible realm. And yet the faithful ever strive toward the same goal—experience—in order to prove the reality of their claims. Is that what you require, friend Thomas, to accept the validity of God?”

“Yes,” I told him.

So now here I was, six hundred and twenty feet in the sky.

* * *

Smoking, I stared out into the gray. I concentrated. Hard. Whatever Dr. Vernon had told me—whatever his advice had been—it wasn’t in a place where I could access it. It was lost to the swirl and fugue of my subconscious.

All I had to aid me was the story from his letter—which I had brought along, the Bible too, the one folded inside the other. The other I had set by my feet. I checked his words, reminding myself.

“I can do this,” I murmured, replacing the letter. I stared, focused, and held my breath. My eyes tried to blink but I fought them. They tried to tear, but I wiped them.

God, this is stupid!

Despite my frustration, I resisted any impulse to stop. I was determined, even if I had to stand in the cold all night. I could see much of New York City spread beneath me, gray buildings mirroring the grayer sky. Central Park and its carpet of green, a natural haven amid urban fields.

This place didn’t feel like home to me. It felt like an escape. I got as far away as possible from my old man and the backwoods shady lanes of Michigan. But as I looked out from the 49th floor balcony I realized all my running had taken me nowhere. I came to Manhattan looking for a fresh start, but I feel more out of place here than I ever did back in Michigan.

Suddenly the edges of the sky began to glimmer. Pulled from the gloom I absently flicked my cigarette off the side and narrowed my eyes. I gripped the railing, my hands squeezing metal.

Come on…

I had to keep my gaze steady or else I would lose it. The lights shimmered in and out of focus—as if my attention fixed them. I glared, gazed, and fought blinking. I let tears stream un-wiped down my cheeks. I was refusing to let this experience pass me by.

The patch of sky, of air, directly before the balcony had become a blur of colors and light. Tiny, darting pinpricks and light-filled motes. They blew all around each other, creating a cloud, sometimes there, sometimes gone.

Come on… hold steady… concentrate…

“You will not escape me,” I hissed, teeth clenched.

I focused and yes, yes!, the lights remained visible. They existed, were colorful—they were there—whirling about like a storm of molecules. The more I watched the more they gathered form, coalescing into a tangible shape—something like a winged feminine angel.

My heart jumped. My head spewed adrenalin. My pulse raced. This is it! Just like Dr. Vernon said. Everything he told me is true. Holy shit, it’s true!

Yet just as this glorious form was about to manifest, the lights and cloud faltered. Boring, ordinary sky threatened to return. For a moment, all I saw was my own insignificant existence.

“No!” I cried out, not caring who heard. This was it, the final show down. Life or death. I was on the brink of madness and discovery, but either way nothing could ever be the same.

The cloud of lights shimmered back to life. Suddenly, large flapping wings appeared. I was breathless.

“Yes!”

The wings vanished.

“Ahhh!”

I pressed against the railing, leaning dangerously close. The light cloud streamed toward me, as if responding to the movement. I reached out with my hand.

If only I can touch it, I thought, straining with all my might. I felt the muscles ripping in my underarm. If only I can touch it… then I’ll know…

Then…

I can believe…

DWELLERS IN THE CRACKS

“Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.”

—H.P. Lovecraft

(The Rats in the Walls)

I got the cat on Tuesday.

By Wednesday Rebecca was dead. She’d been dead a couple hours when her boyfriend discovered her in her apartment. I saw him talking with police in the hall. He looked shaken up.

I didn’t get the story until later, but apparently Rebecca was found strung upside down in the bedroom, ankles tied to the rafters with a bed sheet. A tall woman, so her arms rested against the floor below her head, palms up. Each hand clutched a solid brass pentagram, her neck bent so that she appeared to watch the boyfriend as he entered.

I’d have been shaken up too.

My girlfriend Suxie arrived later that night, following her restaurant shift. The cops were still filing in and out of Rebecca’s apartment, while some loitered downstairs in the lobby.

Suxie hailed from New Jersey originally. She was tough—the sight of cops didn’t scare her. Plus she was Italian. Her uncle had died of a mafia hit (or so she claimed), and her father was a Catholic priest. She’d grown up in the housing projects of South Newark, where her two brothers taught her to shoot a pistol before she was nine.

All she said coming up the stairs was, “Who died?”

For as long as I’d known her, which admittedly was relatively limited, she’d never shown me much more than a tough, Jersey Girl exterior. I was kept in the dark as to what went on inside her, what she was thinking. Fortunately, her killer body and seductive, cat-like eyes assuaged any dismay this might’ve caused.

I propped up the doorway of my apartment and said, “Rebecca.”

That stopped her. She glanced at the policemen. “Jesus, you’re kidding?”

“’Fraid it’s true, check it out. They got that Fernando guy over there, asking him all kinds of questions.” I pointed out Rebecca’s boyfriend.

“Did he do it?”

“Sorta doubt it.”

She gave me a weird look. Her eyes, darkened with eyeliner, gorgeous beneath a mane of brown hair, sometimes reminded me of Isabella Rosaline’s. I had no idea why she was looking at me like that, almost with a playful smile on her lips. What she said threw me for a loop.

“Did you do it?”

I guffawed. “Are you crazy? Of course I didn’t do it. Get out of here.”

She shrugged. “Hey, you know my family. Anyone can be a killer.”

I told her she was being overdramatic. I knew some big, bad criminal shit had gone down in her life, but still I suspected she overplayed it.

One of the officers was going door to door, questioning all Rebecca’s neighbors. Like me most of them stood halfway in the hall; and, like me, they were scared. Death in the building was serious.

The officer made it around to Suxie and me. Young Latino fellow with slick black hair. Had a pen in one hand, a clipboard in the other. “This your place?” he said.

I nodded.

“Both live here?”

“Just me. But my girlfriend stays over a lot.”

He took a minute to write down our names and some personal information.

“What happened?” Suxie asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Were you here today? Last night?”

She shook her head. “Not today. A little while last night.”

“Sleep here last night?”

Shook her head again.

He turned to me. “You?”

“Slept here. I was here all day, actually, but I was mostly working.”

“On?”

“I’m a financial consultant for small businesses. Most of my work is online.”

He grunted. I could tell he didn’t consider that real work.

“Hear anything out of the ordinary? See anything odd, any strange people? People who don’t belong in the building?”

“Nah. Like I said, I was working.”

He scratched the back of his neck with the pen. He seemed to search for something to say. Abruptly, he said, “What about rats? Got rats here?”

“None that I know of. Why?”

He heisted, then offered: “The victim had some bite marks on her face; probably occurred postmortem.”

“Gross,” Suxie said.

Just then, the cat I had gotten the previous day darted between my legs and ran across the officer’s shoes.

“Shit,” I said.

“I got him!” Suxie hurried out into the hall, calling him. “Here, Anubis! Here!”

“New cat,” I told the officer. “Still getting used to having it in the house. Gotta remember to keep an eye out when the door’s open.”

“You named your cat Anubis?” he said.

“Not me. Former owner. But he looks Egyptian, like the cats you see on those Queen of Sheeba and Nephrititi History Channel shows.”

He chuckled, then handed me a business card. “Tell you what, if you remember anything give us a call.”

I accepted the card. “Sure.”

He moved on to the next apartment—Anton’s place. I watched him speak with Anton for a moment. Then Suxie came back, cradling Anubis in her arms.

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

I let her and the cat go before me, then followed after, shutting the door. As I walked into the living room I thought of what the officer had said about rats in the building and bite marks on Rebecca’s face. For the first time, I felt happy about taking Anubis.

* * *

Friends of mine were moving to San Francisco. Two lovers: Crystal and Adeena. They had lived on Long Island for going on five years. I used to watch old French sin-uh-muh with them, drink wine, and eat cheese. After I met Suxie, she started coming along with me.

Anubis had been Adeena’s. He liked to sit with us while we watched, cruising from lap to lap, purring, searching out strokes. Adeena was fond of him, and I was surprised to learn she was giving him up.

“Anubis is old,” she told me over the phone. “Too old to move across country. He’s spent his whole life on Long Island. Seems right that he should finish it here. That sound sentimental?”

“Nah. He’s probably comfortable at his age. No sense upsetting him.”

“So you’ll take him?”

“Wait a minute, I didn’t say that. His living with me might come as a greater shock than moving to San Francisco.”

She laughed. “Oh please, don’t flatter yourself. You’re no party animal. You work on the computer all day. You must be lonely.”

“I got Suxie.”

“I mean when Sue’s not there. Think about it: a nice furry fellow brushing up against you, meowing excitedly when you get home, curling up with you in bed—”

“—and stinking up the apartment with kitty litter, demanding food, water, and covering the furniture with cat hair—”

“Please?”

Of course I said yes.

* * *

On Thursday, Suxie and I watched her soap operas in my living room. She claimed to love soaps, that the heightened melodrama really turned her on—or something like that. I permitted this vain indulgence under one condition: that if she wanted to sit around watching bad acting and wanted me to watch with her, then she had to take her top off. That way we both were happy.

While we watched, somebody knocked at the door. It was the super. I forced him out into the hall, shutting the door behind me. I didn’t want him catching a glimpse of Suxie, making her uncomfortable.

He started talking about Rebecca’s death. Told me about her body, the brass pentagrams. With a cringe, I glanced at her apartment. Cops were gone. Spider web of yellow tape sealed the door.

“This is bad,” he said.

I had the sudden urge to snoop around inside her apartment. It came right out of left field.

“Fuckin’ bad,” he said again. My super masqueraded as one of the Sopranos but really he was harmless.

“You don’t know nothin’?”

“Not a thing,” I said. “Shame, though.”

“Yeah, a real tragedy. Here’s what I don’t get. You wanna hang yourself, you tie a rope around your neck, not around your feet. What the hell is that?”

“Dunno. Maybe somebody else killed her.”

“Bullshit. She did it herself, cops even said.”

“What about the bite marks?”

He gave me his De Niro face. “Don’t you start that. There were no bite marks, don’t you start that fuckin’ rumor. I ain’t payin’ no exterminator.” He wheeled, his coat fanning out like a tutu, muttering to himself in Italian as he passed Rebecca’s door. He descended the stairway and was gone.

I gazed toward Rebecca’s apartment, knowing I would sneak in. I went back in and Suxie was on the couch, head propped up with her palm, stroking Anubis and watching soaps. Sunlight from the window threw shadows across her shoulders and breasts.

“Gotta talk to the super in the lobby,” I said.

She looked up. Anubis did too. “What, why?”

I shrugged. “Said he needs to speak with me about Rebecca.”

“You tell that Goodfellas clone to piss off.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“Please do.”

“Be right back.”

“Hurry up. You’re missing the best part.”

I crept down the hall, which smelled faintly of urine but also of cigarettes from the police. I stared at the matrix of yellow tape, ran my fingers along the smooth surface, tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Making sure no one was watching, I pulled out my lockpicking tools attached to my keys. That was my one claim to criminal fame: being a fairly accomplished lock pick. Mostly a hobby; had been since high school. I’d gotten fairly good at it.

I maneuvered until the tumblers and teeth lined up and the lock popped. I ducked beneath the tape, leaving the door slightly open behind me.

I’d never been inside Rebecca’s apartment. I hardly knew the girl, except as a neighbor. We’d chatted intermittently, borrowed sugar, gotten each other’s mail by accident, exchanged pleasantries, etc.

Now she was dead.

I felt like an intruder, and a certain juvenile rush came along with that. She’d apparently loved ducks. Ducks all over the place: framed on walls, on curtains, stuck to the fridge; sewn on pillows, blankets, rugs; Donald Duck mugs, dinnerware, pots; a set of Ugly Duckling children’s books. She had much nicer stuff than I did. As I admired her plasma screen television, I thought to myself, who’d really miss it, right?

I crept toward the bedroom. So far nothing out of ordinary. Just a middle-aged woman’s apartment. First weird thing was the central air vent. It was big, about two feet above my head in the hall, and it wasn’t working for some reason. Apartment was hot. As I passed underneath it, I swore I heard whispers coming from the duct. Neighbors? I strained my ears to listen, but heard nothing.

Second weird thing was her bedroom. As I entered, a gust of cold wind swept me over. A strange smell, fecal.

Cops had half the items in the room circled, bagged, marked off, and labeled. The bed sheet was still lassoed around the rafter (this was the top floor so the ceilings had rafter beams). Creepy, dangling there, coiled partly on the floor like a snake. I couldn’t tell if those red spots were blood, or part of the pattern.

More ducks. Stuffed ones. A whole gang of them on a beanbag chair. A huge one turned away into the corner. Bright yellow, a massive bill. The kind of thing you win for your girlfriend at Coney Island.

I didn’t like the big one. Something odd about it, how it faced the corner—as if it’d seen something unspeakable and was now afraid to reenter the world.

A glimmer of light from the floor caught my attention. I stooped, ran fingers through the carpet. Hair: fine, thin, black.

Rat hair? I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure rat hair was either white or brown. It couldn’t be Rebecca’s hair: she was blonde. To be honest, it looked like—and I didn’t know what to make of this—cat hair.

Anubis’s hair.

An icy chill passed over me. I stood and brushed my hands on my jeans. I was about to turn and leave when I noticed the duck staring at me. The big duck, who, moments earlier, had faced the corner. I was positive it had faced the corner. It had these huge black eyes, ink-black, void, dead. Its bill was folded into a smile, though it looked more like a savage grin. Grotesque object, sitting there, gawking at me, with murder in its eyes.

I fled in a hurry.

As I crossed the living room, a small black shape darted under the sofa. It startled me, and I nearly shrieked. Suddenly Suxie came sauntering out of the kitchen. “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.

I was a terrible liar and hated lying to people I cared about. All I managed was, “What are you doing here?”

“Getting your damn cat.” She bent and scooped up Anubis. “I was tired of waiting for you. I was coming to find you but when I stepped into the hall the cat ran out through my feet and slipped in here.”

“Come on,” I said, remembering the duck. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, tell me what you’re doing here? You’ve been gone for an hour.”

This shocked me. “No way. It’s been ten minutes.” I checked my wristwatch and saw an hour had passed. Weird, I thought. What the hell have I been doing?

She shot me a furious glance. “The super called and asked for you, Frank. I told him you should be down there, and he had no idea what I was talking about.”

I hung my head. I was caught.

“Did you lie to me?”

“Not a lie—a fib, really. I wanted to sneak in here and take a peek, but I didn’t want you to worry. Look, I’m sorry, can you forgive me?”

She thrust the cat into my arms. I knew right then she was going to make a big deal out of it, even though it wasn’t a big deal.

“You know how I feel about deception,” she said. “My dad lied to me about God. He said I’d go to Hell if I hung around my uncles. My uncles lied to me about their mafia ties, and when my brothers got involved, they also lied about it. Daddy then lied to the neighbors, to his church, about how our family had nothing to do with the mafia. My whole family is a cluster-fuck of lies and hypocrisy. I don’t need you pulling the same shit, Frank.”

She spun, opened the door, and ducked beneath the yellow tape.

“Hey, wait. I said I’m sorry. Where you going?”

I already knew her answer.

“Home,” she yelled; then, footsteps down the stairs.

I sighed. Anubis meowed, rubbing the back of his head against my chest.

“I know,” I told him. “I deserve it.”

Blowing a sigh, I returned to my apartment.

* * *

Adeena had been right: I did like having the cat around. I wasn’t as lonely. Anubis hung out in my office while I worked, sat next to me on the sofa, slept beside me in bed. It was like living with another person, one that didn’t complain or ask for things.

Suxie wouldn’t return my calls. Each time I tried her it went straight to voicemail. I knew how stubborn she could be. I also knew she’d give in eventually. But after a week I got annoyed. It was one little fib. She had no right to make me feel this guilty. I stopped calling and resolved to let her contact me whenever she felt like it.

As depression set it, I grew more and more appreciative of Anubis. I was drinking a lot. After spending a day on the computer, I’d sit before the tube with a bottle of wine, sound muted, just sitting, drinking, and thinking.

I thought about Rebecca, about what had happened, about the damn duck. More cops had come and gone. By now they pretty much left the place alone, although the yellow tape stayed on the door.

Crystal and Adeena called to tell me they had arrived in San Francisco. I was glad to hear from them. Spent an hour talking on the phone. They asked about Anubis, and I said he was fine. The cat’s ears pricked up when I mentioned him. It was a nice conversation, but when I hung up I felt even lonelier. I realized I missed my friends.

—Now

… I don’t remember which night it was… one of those nights. Things were getting pretty bleak there. Too much drinking… visions of the duck swimming around in my head… recurring nightmares. Suxie had called while I was passed out, and she left the strangest message on my voicemail… something about being a strega—an Italian witch—claiming she had been the one to kill Rebecca… that the whole thing was part of some elaborate ritual, which had been the reason she had come into my life in the first place… then when I tried to call her back… the number was suddenly out of service—

—But one of those nights, the cat started talking to me.

I had no trouble accepting this. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I had already come to think of Anubis as another person and so the fact that he suddenly started talking made perfect sense. Maybe because my head was so far gone by then. Maybe because I’d sunken into depression.

Whatever the reason, when the cat started talking, I listened and started to talk back. We became roommates, pals. I had a new best friend. My depression gradually eased up.

Then one day as we sat watching a Yankees game, Anubis turned to me and said, “How come you never asked me about the woman next door?”

“What woman?” I asked. I was half drunk on Pinot and it was barely noon.

Anubis, bathing himself, through long tonging strokes, said, “The one who died.”

I looked at him. He was changing. I’d noticed it over the last couple days. Getting larger. Hair getting shorter. His face had lengthened, and he had a prominent chin. Eyes were bright blue and eerily human.

I’d also noticed a change in myself, but I was refusing to accept it. If I ignored it, it would go away. Denial, denial, denial. And more booze.

“Why ask about her?” I said, reaching up to scratch a fur patch on the back of my neck.

He shrugged. “Thought you might like to know what happened.”

I cut myself. Wincing, I looked at my fingers, saw blood. No matter how often I trimmed my nails, they kept growing back longer. I didn’t understand, but I had to remember to be careful.

I went back to scratching. “They itch,” I said.

Anubis chuckled. “Claw at the sofa, that’s what I do.”

I took his advice, got on the floor, started scratching. Strings of fabric tore away. He was right, it did ease the burn. “I knew you had something to do with that,” I said. “Tell me, what did you do?”

“It’s not what I did,” he said. “It’s what we did—me and my master, the strega. She has been preparing this since previous incarnations. All behind the scenes, of course. None of you’d ever know about it. This is what takes place in the background of the world—the spirits and their alien agendas.”

Then I fell asleep and it was suddenly the next day. Sunlight streamed into the window. I was still beside the sofa. Had pissed myself. Smelled awful. I took my clothes off and piled them over the wet spot on the floor. I went into the bedroom to get dressed but realized I didn’t need to; a fine layer of black hair covered my body.

I smelled bad and wanted to shower, but the idea of water repulsed me. I itched, my ears itched, and for thirty minutes I lost track of time scratching. I took a fresh bottle of wine from the cupboard, opened it, eschewing the glass, and went back to the living room. Walking upright was becoming a pain. I dropped to my hands and knees.

Anubis paced before the television up on his hind legs. Nearly all his black hair was gone. He was three times his normal size, much taller than I was. His chin and facial features were distinctly human. He was still growing, right before my eyes, sprouting inch by inch. And he looked vaguely familiar.

Noticing me, he turned and said, “Ah, there you are. Up from your nap, I see. How are you feeling?”

“Not so bad. A little stiff. Itchy. Hungry. How come you look so weird?”

He smiled, “You’re finally paying attention,” and holding his arms out, began spinning in a circle. “See anything you like?”

“What’s happening to you?”

He stopped. “To us, Frank, to us. Open your eyes, isn’t it obvious? I’m becoming you, and you’re becoming me. The strega has performed her ancient rite.”

I dropped the wine bottle, which clattered to the floor. I tried to pick it up, but found that I couldn’t. I didn’t have hands; I had paws. Little ones with sharp claws, covered in fine black hair.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

He walked over and was so tall, towering overhead. He was becoming me. That’s why he looked familiar. Strange to see myself from the outside. My whole life, I had only seen images of myself in reflections, never the real thing. I thought I’d be thinner.

“Are you ready to listen?” he said.

I nodded, following him to the sofa. I hissed, my tail fluffed up, and my hair stood on end. The duck from Rebecca’s apartment was sitting there. The big creepy one. It, too, had changed. Was taller, thinner, and had long brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes. Breasts and hips and a coke-bottle waist. It looked like Rebecca.

It started talking, moving.

I retreated. “What the hell’s going on?”

“It’ll be better if I show you.”

Anubis—well me, actually—sat beside the Rebecca-duck on the sofa. Time seemed to pass outside the window like streaming colored ribbons. Lights, suns, moons, planets, and stars wheeled in the sky. Were we floating? I couldn’t tell. I was too damn short to see.

Shadows swooped across the ceiling. The TV flickered uncontrollably, then fizzled out. I felt extremely light, like my brain was shrinking, and I felt my memories fading away, but when I tried to speak all that came out was meow.

When I looked again, Anubis and the duck were killing each other. That’s what I thought, but then I realized they were making love—lost in the cushions, straining, pumping, moaning.

This went on for some time. Hours. Shadows and light glided past the window.

When they finished, they had completely changed. Anubis and the duck were gone. Rebecca and Frank sat in their places.

Frank uncoiled from her arms and sat up. “There are other places than here,” he said.

I tried to respond, but couldn’t. Just more meowing.

Rebecca slid behind Frank wrapping her legs around him and buried her face in his back. They looked so strange. I didn’t understand what they were doing. They appeared to be a single being, arms and legs and strands of hair lifting up, coiling outward.

“Other places,” he went on, “other times. As mankind carves out its existence here on this material plane, we—my brethren and I—carve out ours on another. We live in the cracks of your world, the spaces in-between. We are in the animals, the plants, the minerals. You know nothing of us. That’s the way it’s always been.

“There are even those who dwell in the cracks and spaces of our world, and in the cracks and spaces of their world, and so on, and so on. Sometimes there’s a breech in the membrane and spiritual substance flows through. This is the function of ritual.”

I wanted desperately to speak, but all words evaded me, and despite what was happening, I could think of nothing but food and naps and exploration.

Frank sensed my frustration and, with a chuckle, said, “Just think what you want to say. I will hear it.”

I concentrated on my thoughts. What’s going on here? What really happened next door?

“Functioning as agents in this world, the strega and I prepared a breech, in order to bring the other one through.” He glanced askance at Rebecca. “Together we performed the ritual that allowed the three of us to enter.”

Not Suxie. I don’t believe it. Why would she do this to me?

“Your involvement is arbitrary. We could have set it up anywhere, at any time. The place is not important. You are not important.”

Suddenly they disjoined, their flesh pulling out of each other, and they stood, stood naked like Adam and Eve. Leaving me on the floor, confused and frightened and alone, they went into my bedroom and dressed in my clothes. When they came back out, they looked almost normal.

“We’ll send someone for you,” Frank said, his hand on the doorknob. Rebecca was at his side, cold and rigid, staring into space with reptilian eyes.

Wait, I said. What’s going to happen to me? You can’t just leave me here! You turned me into a fucking cat! A fucking—

They both grinned as Frank opened the door. “Don’t worry, little fella. We’ll send someone. I put out food and water for you, so you won’t have to worry about that. Relax, take a load off. Soon you won’t remember any of this.”

They stepped into the hall, closing the door behind them. I heard it lock. The apartment seemed to darken, and I suddenly forgot what I had just been thinking. I went in search of food. Later, I would have myself a nap.

* * *

The next day, Suxie showed up at Frank’s apartment. She unlocked the door, let herself in, and found Anubis napping on the sofa.

She reached out, gave him a pet behind the ears. He purred. She lifted him off the cushion and took him to her breast.

“Come on,” she whispered. “It’s time for us to go home.”

REBIRTH IN DREAMS

Dreams have much to tell us about the existential condition of being. The native peoples, which some foolishly refer to as savages, know this well. The Aborigines of Australia, the indigenous tribes of the Americas, the shamanistic wizards of the Caribbean Islands—these cultures ascribe transcendental knowledge to their dreams, and rightly so. They even built this knowledge into their grand ancient cities, whose crumbling ruins now remain like esoteric signposts, pointing us toward the origins of the universe.

I became obsessed with the subject during my teenage years. My fascination drew me into the realm of rare books and bizarre records. Away from my fellow human beings, I retreated into a world of symbols, pagan rites, and paths better left untrod. Even after I graduated from college, my appetite remained unsated. This lingering interest in dreams affected my work life, ensuring that I remain a bachelor indefinitely.

Each night was an opportunity for me to conduct some new experiment, which I meticulously recorded in my dream journal, not knowing what to make of the strange visions. Through study I learned of certain individuals who had found a doorway in their dreams, an escape from endless suffering, a portal to their higher selves.

This I wanted.

But where to begin?

I had one idea. Some of these individuals employed substances—narcotics—specific herbs and plants which possessed consciousness-altering capabilities, to achieve their end. Cannabis was among these. Also absinth, opium, and peyote, as well as a vine from Amazonia called Ayahuasca.

According to The Living Torah and various other sacred Hebrew texts, the cannabis plant was first found growing on King Solomon’s grave, and was therefore reputed to impart godlike wisdom to anyone who ingested it. Peyote, a cactus, apparently took its eater into the spirit world, and the session of the opium eater was akin to that of a waking dream.

I inquired about getting my hands on some of these, and was told of a shop on the edge of town, purportedly run by a local Mexican witch.

I decided to visit her shop on a Tuesday.

It was a shabby tenement half-submerged in shadows, located in the back alley behind two derelict buildings. I arrived just past noon.

Pushing through the front door, I disturbed a set of bells, prompting their chiming. I took myself past dusty shelves, taxidermic animals, mason jars storing herbs and powders, into a chamber alight with glowing candles.

Strange painted effigies, whose origins evaded me, occupied various altars and shrines. The idols had large whitish faces and oversized black eyes. And teeth, too: square, yellow, beaver-like teeth. In some, I noticed a hand-wrapped cigar poking from their mouths. In others, glasses full of foul yellow liquid sat at their feet, collecting mold.

I perused the shelves and display cases, my intellect fully engaged, astounded at the variety of occult relics cached here. Many were accompanied by folded white papers, on which was written the item’s price. Even the cost seemed relatively agreeable.

In one corner, I came across an effigy four feet tall, dressed in numerous pairs of pants, shirts, scarves, and a huge hat. This slightly grotesque idol—grotesque because of its severely emaciated body and grinning-bone smile—puffed on a cigar and even had a drink in its hands. More cigar packs and drink glasses cluttered its feat, as if they had been discarded there on purpose. Like offerings.

I discovered the witch by the cash register, fussing over a set of bones and stroking a gangly cat.

“Excuse me,” I said.

She looked up; her hair, tangled around her shoulders, was black with gray streaks. Pockmarks covered her face and boils festered on her neck. Something was amiss in her eyes—they were too white, almost pulpy. Swatting the cat, she shooed it from the counter and turned to me.

“It’s you,” she replied.

This was a surprise. “You know me?”

“You came once before. You’ll come once again… though never in the same incarnation. What do you seek this time?”

“Sleep—and dream—inducing potions,” I said, maintaining my air of authority. “I am interested in escaping my smaller self through dreams.”

She placed the set of bones into a burlap sack, shoving them under the counter. “You’re in luck, boy. Today I received a shipment of special potions from Mexico. You want to lose yourself into dreams? This drink will get the job done.”

Intrigued, I let her lead me to a dark room choked with books and strange devices. It was something like the greenhouses recently made popular. Glass windows lined the ceiling, green vines dangling therefrom. Plants in pots and plants in troughs, some uprooted and strewn across the tables, scattered soil like blood. A constricting smell hung thick in the air, like moist dirt. It reminded me of the cemetery after it rains.

In the center of the room, displayed on a flat piece of stone, was a grotesque idol. A skeletal figure wearing a white robe, carrying a scythe in one hand and a small globe in the other. Its face was like the devil in female form, with the grinning rictus of a weasel.

“How about this?” I asked. “Is it for sale?”

“You want nothing to do with that, Señor,” the witch said. “That is Señora de las Sombras—Lady of the Shadows. She is death. Her scythe represents the killing. Her globe, Death’s dominion. No, not unless you are looking to kill or be killed do you need that.” She glared at me, eyes like ice under a night sky. “Come along. What you seek is over in this direction.”

We came to a big wooden crate with a black cat lying on top. Beside the cat, the word Oaxaca was stamped in bold black letters on the lid. The condition of the crate implied that it had endured a long journey.

Shooing the cat, the witch pried the lid with a slanted iron bar, revealing a treasure trove of glass bottles filled with amber liquid. The bottles had been packed along with a slew of dried corn husks.

“What is it?” I said.

“Mezcal.”

“Hm?”

“Agave brewed from the rugged fields of the Oaxaca Valley. Guaranteed to drive your mind from realty. And look,” she held a bottle to the light as she spoke, “a grave-worm with every purchase.”

The little drowned invertebrate floated up through the liquid as she shook the bottle; it crested for a moment, swirled, then dropped and resettled on the bottom.

“Grotesque,” I said. “What on earth is it? An opiate? Why include the rancid worm?”

She grimaced at my words. “This is the finest, most mystical alcohol the New World has to offer, amigo. And as for the worm, each one was hand-dug from a cemetery in Oaxaca. They’re what put the magic into the potion.”

“I’m not much for drinking.”

“How do you plan to escape your smaller self if you can’t indulge a little experimentation? I assure you, a robust glass of this before bed and you’ll be whisked to faraway lands.”

“Then I’ll take a bottle, thank you.”

She grinned, displaying a maw of misaligned teeth, and clasped her hands. “Excellent.”

* * *

That night, I sat looking at the gold bottle on the table. A fire crackled behind me. A soft breeze wound through the smokestacks outside the window, producing a monotone howl. My cats, Faust and Fauna, lolled on the shaggy gray hearthrug. I got a glass from the cabinet and poured myself two fingers of mezcal.

“Here’s to consciousness alteration,” I said, without really knowing what I meant.

The cats peered up from the floor. I swallowed my allotment in a gulp and began to cough and gag. The burn was severe. I rushed to the sink for water. The bloody stuff tasted like a graveyard: earthy and damp. I decanted another glassful, just for good measure, and retired to the blankets of my armchair. I read for a while by firelight, then fell asleep.

The visions came hard and without mercy. My dreams had never been so vivid. I lost all concept of material existence, thoroughly convinced I was in another land.

It started with a group of us climbing a mountain range. We had been nomads for a time, but somehow I knew that we now traveled toward our new home. Families toiled across rocky terrain. We soiled our clothes, as wild trees extended around us.

After cresting one hill, we dropped into a ravine, only to find ourselves climbing another hill. The presence of oak and pine trees seemed to mark our progression through the unyielding landscape. At length, we stopped to make camp.

As the stars came out, I stood by the edge of a cliff, the sprawling campsite at my rear. Little fires glowed between canvas tents. I heard people talking and laughing. Someone was playing a violin. Yet their merriment did not concern me, for my sight had been arrested by a looming presence in the distance. I first thought it to be a great beast lumbering toward us, but with time it became clear that the image was stationary.

I realized it was actually a pair of images; two dark blotches probing the sky. Twin towers erected on the horizon, whose architecture appeared bizarrely alien yet unquestionably human. Silvery columns mounted up and up, faceted with innumerable pane-glass windows, with stars circling around their dreadful apexes.

Were these towers our destination? And was that smoke I saw rising?

I awoke in the armchair, sweating, entangled in blankets, oblivious as to my whereabouts. Slowly, however, the vision uncurled from my mind and I regained composure. The fire had died down and the cats had scooted closer to retain the heat. The room glowed dimly. My mouth still tasted of the mezcal and I was exhausted. Quickly, before suffering a fugue, I recorded the vision in my journal and retired to the bedchamber.

The next day I reread the entry but felt wholly detached from it. It was like something someone else had written. I had no memory of it. Though glad to have achieved the vision, I lamented that I could not remember it.

I supposed the journal entry was evidence enough. Still, the description of the towers sent shivers up my spine.

I repeated the process the following night. This time I took three glasses of mezcal. Was that too much? I had to admit, I was developing an affinity for the stuff. Only a quarter of the bottle remained… also that floating, wretched worm. Soon I’d be totally out. I decided it was good the witch possessed so many bottles, for I would have to return and purchase another.

Nestled in my armchair, I awaited sleep while listening to the hypnotic noises of the fire. Faust and Fauna had curled into my lap. Soon my head reclined and my eyelids drooped, and I was transported out to the sea.

I was alone on a thrashing ocean, with a carpet of blue spread out beneath me. Seagulls wheeled overhead, issuing their forlorn cries. Somehow I was perched atop the water like a messiah. A gold sun rode the sky, mitigated by groups of silent, scudding clouds. I saw no land, only row upon row of white, spuming waves.

I began walking across the water. It was strange to feel nothing under my feet. I bestrode fluffy currents of air and evoked God’s mightiness, taking great pleasure in each calculated step. If Jesus had done it, then I could do it: any man could do it. We were all created in His image and likeness—we were all part God.

I awoke in a state of peace, still sensing the undulant water in my stomach and the cushions of air beneath my feet. I remembered my vision and didn’t need to record it. I even translated it: all men (and women) are children of God, possessing the same powers Jesus Christ possessed. We must only wake and realize it.

Pleased, I stretched in the armchair and yawned serenely. Morning poured in through the uncurtained window. The fire was out, and the cats were meowing to be fed. I had slept the entire night.

* * *

When I returned to the witch’s hut, she was not glad to see me.

“What the devil are you doing here?” she snapped. “It’s only been two days.”

I chuckled. “You know exactly why I’m here.”

“You’re after more mezcal. How quickly you abandon your temperance.” She was stocking a jar of herbs onto a shelf, straining to reach its highest location. The jar slipped and shattered on the floor. A puff of smoke with a demonic image arose briefly. It was a face painted white, skeletal in appearance, with hollow eyes and square teeth, biting on a cigar and sipping a glass of mezcal. The image intensified, waved, then faded from sight.

“Maximón, take it,” she muttered.

I stepped forward. “What’s that you say?”

Her impatient hand gestures urged me away. “Is nothing. Is not for the likes of you.”

“I see. Well, I’ll have you know that I gladly indulge intemperance for the sake of altered consciousness.”

“Have you finished the bottle? Did you consume the grave-worm?”

Here I faltered. “No… not exactly.”

“I refuse to give you more until you do. The grave-worm induces the strongest visions. Return when you’ve experienced those.”

At that point she forgot I was in the room and went on with stocking her shelves.

As I headed for the door, turning on imperious heels, I replied, “Yes, I most certainly will. You needn’t worry about that,” and left the shop.

* * *

Night found me contemplating the bottle again. I watched the invertebrate grave-worm ascend and descend through the honey-colored liquid. My cats looked on from the hearthrug, heads cocked. At last I drew the curtains, and sat in mounting silence.

To eat a worm? Such a thing was unheard of! No cultivated gentleman would stoop so low.

But I was above cultivation, wasn’t I? I was on the brink of revelation, venturing into unknown landscapes possessed of amorphous kernels of true knowledge. I wanted universal wisdom. I wanted power and ascension. I wanted refuge from this dreary mortal coil.

I wanted escape from my smaller self. The part of me that felt lonely some nights, that felt like an outcast, and was bitter for having to live in a world where men had ceased to think.

If to learn the purpose and physiology of the universe meant biting the head off a grave-worm… then I was prepared to bite.

I lifted the bottle and depleted it, wincing as the worm bumped its way down my gullet. I started to cough, to become nauseated. I bent forward, resting my hands on my knees, but the feeling passed.

Then I was completely drunk. I fell into the chair, studying the ceiling, imagining the worm in my stomach. Soon the acids would take effect and break it apart, absorb it, filter it through the rest of my body. How long did the process take? I didn’t have a chance to wonder: in a minute I was asleep.

But something was different. I hovered above my body, observing the passed-out figure in the armchair. My head was back, my eyes closed, my mouth ajar. I didn’t seem to be breathing. My body looked so pathetic without me inside it, merely a… husk.

Because I was a specter, I phased through the roof rather easily and shot into the star-strewn sky. A sea of buildings and lights unfolded below me. Streets appeared insignificant and narrow. A gathering of smoke rose from every chimney, and a bulbous moon held up the darkness. In the distance, a string of mountains, dark but visible, cut the horizon in twain.

I could go anywhere; I was free. The world was mine!

The words came too soon, for the next moment I was soaring up at a mind-numbing speed. I tried to scream but nothing came out. The world fell away like a trapdoor—smaller and smaller and smaller, then bigger and bigger and bigger—until colors and topography had blended together. Deep blue ocean crept up at the sides, soon encompassing everything. The earth pulled away from me. I was carried into outer space, and there I saw the whole planet rolling slowly and timelessly in its lonely black void.

It reminded me of my smaller self.

When the mad journey ended, I remained suspended in place, the stars twinkling about me. The nuclear sun burned nearby, but I dared not seek it out. Instead, I turned the other way, away from Earth, toward the cosmos, and went insane instantly. The higher spiritual realms were too much for me to comprehend. They filled my brain, wiped it clean, and I forgot my name, my story, my life. I became a part of that Godlike blackness: empty, beautiful, alone.

A fire ignited within—flaming, flaming, flaming. Pain enveloped me and I exploded outward, bursting into ever-widening circles. Pieces of me scattered and were gone, but my core, my soul, remained intact, glinting like a fiery ember. I became aware of others burning around me, for now I was not so alone.

My transformation was complete. I had succeeded in killing my smaller self and was reborn in the fire like a rising Phoenix. I had become the triangle, the triad, the converging balance of the three, the fourth whole.

I am still here, riding my cosmic vessel through oceans of time. Drinking my perpetual glass of mezcal, smoking my cigar, displaying my square wooden teeth. Perhaps I am a star, you tell me. Go outside tonight and look for my painted white face, my black eyes, and my crooked clown grin. I promise to be blinking ever so brightly… just for you.

HORROR FICTION AS MYSTICAL DIDACTIC EXPERIENCE

Dedication: Dion Fortune

Injecting tenets of occultism into works of horror fiction isn’t new. Many great masters of supernatural fiction unabashedly employed concepts of Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and the Qabalah in their stories.

In my opinion the writer who most deftly mixed real magick (with a “k”) and horror fiction is Dion Fortune. Dion was a well know British occultist and author who lived from 1890 to 1946. Her first work of horror fiction, The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, a collection of interwoven short stories featuring a Holmes-like protagonist unraveling psychic mysteries, was originally published in 1926.

When I came across this book in my youth and read the first story, “Blood Lust,” I was blown away. I couldn’t believe the level of psychological detail Dion invested in her characters, and the veracity of her occult intimations. Plus the story made my skin crawl. From then on, my perspective concerning horror fiction had changed. I realized that horror stories, in addition to being creepily entertaining, could also be didactic.

* * *

Lying asleep in the middle of the night, a voice emerges out of the darkness. I hear it first as a kind of echo, for my ego has plunged down into the abyss of the subconscious, slithering around down there like a salamander, vacant and absent from reality.

I rouse slowly, the world and my bedroom fitting itself back together piece by piece, like a window shattering in reverse. Then I become aware of the voice, the alien chatter filling up the atmosphere about me, and suddenly I snap awake to sit bolt upright on the mattress, the chatter conveying itself to me in a series of images.

The images—such stupendous things—draw me out of bed with their luster, to the desk, to the bookshelf mounted above it—to the one opalescent book with a title inscribed in gold. The language is early Aramaic. I’ve never been able to translate it—consciously.

But when the book comes to me in the night, as though controlled by an unseen master, symbols are obliterated, and the text makes perfect sense.

It is the voice that does the translating. It echoes in the room, thunderous, but also in my head. Sitting at the desk in a trance-like state, the book outspread before me, I am shown things and told things. Great powerful truths that the rest of humanity knows nothing about. The veil of matter is rent for me and the words and symbols in the book are the facilitator.

And somewhere in my mind the questions echo: Is this why I’ve always felt so different, why everyone believed I was crazy? Was it for some higher purpose? Was it all just fate?

My ability to remember the nighttime experiences falters and fades, and yet I am granted fragments. I can see myself, after an undetermined allotment of reading, picking up the book and taking it out of the house. Into the yard. Down the path which my father once walked in a troubled, contemplative mood, smoking his pipe.

Did this really happen—

Standing before the eerie arrangement of rocks in the moonlight, clouds among the stars form faces overhead, and I am chanting. Listen, I am chanting. An old truth is preserved in the text, a rite, an incantation, a prayer really, and it’s a bit like music, this very old chanting, or at least it possesses poetic meter.

The chant is awakening something, something primeval and not of this world, a being beyond the veil of matter. I feel it coming forth from the well of madness that, since childhood, has permeated my existence on this earth.

I had always thought concepts like evil and wickedness existed outside of me, out there in the real world, and that they were perpetually trying to get inside of me. I had never considered the possibility that they lived within me… that they could stream forth out of me into the world.

* * *

And yet the book endures, buried out there under several feet of rocks and dirt. I can still hear it as plainly as when it sat tucked away with the other esoteric volumes on my bookshelf. Since I was a child—since my mother and father disciplined me about my exotic fantasies and brought me to the endless string of doctors, who, in turn, led me down the long path of medications—I believed I was crazy, believed what doctors and my parents said, believed I was defective with respect to the world.

I thought the voices and strange visions—which began after I found myself alone (after my parents’ car rolled on the way back from church one Sunday, swiped off the highway that bisects our little town by a speeding Mack Truck)—were a product of this defection. I thought demons had possessed me. With my parents gone, I no longer felt I had the right to go on living. The time had come to withdraw, to sink down into my voices and visions, into the crumbling country cottage I had inherited, and take up the small parcel of money they left to me. My plan was to vanish into the landscape like a branch clipped off a juniper tree.

The book changed all that.

* * *

There is a difference between feeling crazy, actually going crazy, and truly coming into contact with a divine spiritual reality. Severe episodic cases of psychosis, wherein the subject is suddenly granted vast paranoid fantasies and wanders about gibbering incoherently, are ofttimes the result of a failed elevation into this truth. Without proper training, and without sufficient guidance, the consequence of this tapping into the heart of reality can be a mental breakdown. Nightmarish hallucinations can arise, as well as a tendency to fall out of touch.

I believe this has been happening to me to some degree since my birth, but it came into fruition when my parents died. Up to that point I was merely flirting with psychosis. When the teachers used to send me home from elementary school for sneaking Elmer’s Glue into their coffees, they’d say to my parents quote Something really needs to be done about that boy of yours unquote—implying that something could, in fact, be done!

But that changed when they died and left me alone. Then I stopped believing something positive could be done; and the townsfolk and teachers stopped believing, too. They observed my descent into mental ruin from afar, like spectators at a zoo where some monkey’s just decided to bite its own leg off. They let me sink and plunge into my dreamlike psychosis.

Perhaps they didn’t want to get involved—out of fear. What sense is there in rescuing a drowning man if you might drown with him? Still, I think they extracted some sick satisfaction from observing my ruin. I’ll bet it made them feel awfully damn good about their own situations. And whenever they felt burdened, they could gaze upon my crumbling country cottage, with its nets of vines, weeds, and undergrowth, and say quote At least we’re not like him, at least we have our good sense unquote and in such a way my suffering comforted them. After all, what’s more advantageous than a Good Samaritan bearing water in a scorching desert? Only a Nazirite bearing his own crucifixion boards up a dry and lonely hill, upon whom one might spit and feel vindicated.

But either way it was happening to me, this plunge further and further into psychosis, and unless I did something drastic it was sure to be the end of me.

That’s when my nights with the book started.

* * *

The path leading to the bizarre rock formation where I buried the book begins where my property ends. I’m not sure who owns the rest of the land. My nearest neighbor, John Parkers, lives almost three miles away, and I suspect he may own the land, but if he does he makes no use of it, and so I’m free to wander as I see fit.

My father used to walk the path in the evenings smoking his tobacco pipe, while Mother stayed in the kitchen, preparing dinner, or sometimes sitting at the table crocheting. During that time I lurked in my room. Reading was the only activity which my parents thought was healthy, and I consumed many, many books. That path snakes from the foot of my property (I do say it’s mine now, and no longer my parents’) through the thick mass of pines and spruce, down several weed-choked ravines, where it crosses a babbling blue brook. Taken to the final stretch, about a mile into wilderness, the path dissolves into a wide grass clearing. Here, among the hard-packed soil, resides the arrangement of granite boulders and limestone rocks.

Did this formation have any significance before it became the burying place of the book? Well my father had brought me there on several occasions. He claimed the rocks were erected by ancient Indians, that they were sacred, and to stay away, to show a little respect. There seemed to me no other options for the interment.

* * *

Where did the book come from? It’s a good question. I’m all about truth: that it exists and can be attained is the sole reason I continue living on this planet.

Such a statement might seem harsh and overdramatic. But the content of it expresses my own inner truth, to which I must always be faithful. For to do otherwise would be a contradiction to everything the book taught me—that beyond the veil of matter, deep within my inmost being, lies the gateway of all that comes into being. By penetrating down to this portal, and having the courage to pass through, is to seek the truth actively. And by actively seeking the truth, I bypass the muck of psychosis and proceed straightaway to the divine knowledge of spiritual realms.

As you can imagine, this becomes rather complex. After all, I cannot convey everything the book taught me. It came into my hands at precisely the right moment, for that is the nature of such things. Perhaps it would be more profitable to you if I recount my experiences with respect to my nightly study sessions—since knowledge of this kind transmits poorly through exposition, and must be carried out using allegories.

PICTURE 1:

I meet a man outside in the forest, wearing an old brown suit and a brimmed hat. His face is blockish, stoutly chiseled, but kindly. His eyes are a deep, piercing blue. And he looks vaguely familiar.

As we stand beneath the canopy of leaves, the summer sun streams through the branches, and I know we are on the path to the rock formation, but don’t quite know how much farther it is to reach it.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a friend.”

“Are you a Rosicrucian?”

He smiles. “No, I am not.”

“Then who are you?”

“I already told you. I am a friend.”

I glance around and see that the forest has dimly changed, grown more liquidy, less sharp around the edges. Strange gardens and towers appear dimly beyond the trees. Castellated turrets, archways, and high ramparts.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“The Heidelberg Castle.”

I grunt, disbelieving.

“I know everything about you, ——.” He uses my first name, catching me off guard. “I have looked into your future, and your past, and I know what has happened, and what is to come. I look after you.”

“An angel,” I say.

He nods. Then he reaches under his coat and produces the book, hands it to me, the gold script of the title glimmering. “Take this with you,” he says. “Study it. You will know the truth.”

Like that the man snaps his fingers and vanishes, leaving behind a wisp of smoke where he had just stood. I stare at the vacancy for a moment, then look over the book. Intrigued, I head back up the path to my country cottage home, eager to examine its contents.

PICTURE 2:

A loner. I wander throughout the castle grounds, observing the processes of nature with a calm, penetrating eye. Many large, redolent grass plots gleam in the sunlight. Trees surrounding the castle lean their branches over the high stone walls. Many stone furnishings and structures, statues, fountains, courtyards, lush manicured gardens, even fields of complex geometric topiary.

Days are spent in my one special spot, behind the castle’s soaring steepled stone chapels, where grass spreads like a carpet with a single stone bench situated in the center. Leafy branches lean over the walls. Sitting on the bench, I read the book the man gave me.

Much strange wisdom is contained within its pages. Sometimes I think it all rubbish and am forced to close its covers and sit for a moment in the bird-chirping tranquility trying to regain my clarity of thought. It contains so many numbers and symbols that my brain reels, and it takes some time to recover.

A period of meditation follows any amount of mystical didactic reading. This settling of the mental state is unavoidable, for what is being delivered via the words is so intense and vastly powerful that without meditation one would inadvertently resist the content. The soul is opening of its own accord.

Thus I read a little. Stop. Let the time pass. Reflect. Read again. Truth is what I am after, and one thought resounds throughout the emptiness—I must know.

Saturating myself in this ancient primeval wisdom, grand, majestic thoughts pass through my consciousness. I have opened myself like a conduit to the divine spiritual inflow of the world. It is not a small feeling.

I am becoming wise.

PICTURE 3:

One day that man in the brown suit and brimmed hat returns. He is suddenly beside me on the bench. I look up from my book and smile at him. He smiles back.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.”

“I’ve been reading the book you gave me.”

“Yes, I know. What do you think of it?”

I find this question difficult to answer. The knowledge gleaned from the book is so vast, so comprehensive and world-shattering, that forming it into thoughts and subsequently into sentences seems impossible. But I try.

“Everything’s different now. The entire world—my whole reality and what I thought was real—has changed. I suspected that the world behind the senses is all an illusion.”

“Yes?” The man blinks zealously.

“Now I know, as mystical fact, that it is an illusion.”

He grins, pleased, and he looks just like a young boy. “How do you know? From the book?”

“Not just from the book. Also from my own experiences.”

“Show me.”

I turn my gaze upon the stone wall to our left, focusing all of my will on it. I sink down in the wall, settle my being into it—become it. The man watches, smiling.

Suddenly the stone evaporates like a fog bank in the morning sun.

“Good,” he says. “That’s very good. What’s next?”

Strengthening my will, conducting it as an orchestra maestro conducts his baton, and the image of the forest and trees, beyond where the wall had just been, begins to shimmer, and then bends outright, folding itself in half. Then all of it disappears, leaving a wedge of blackness.

“Good, good!” He is so excited he jumps to his feet. I stand beside him. “And finally?” he says; “finally?”—so intensely now that he’s infecting me with his enthusiasm.

“Finally… there is only the Word behind it all,” I say. “The Logos. The Sleeping God of Infinity.”

And for a single terrifying moment, the darkness beyond the darkness stirs, something the size of a gigantic sea monster, embedded in the underwater soil. Just a single shift—one palpable rolling over of the great god in his eternal bed—and then like that the darkness vanishes. And the stone wall returns, and everything slowly waxes back to normalcy, and there is silence permeated by bird calls and rustling leaves.

A drawn-out breath escapes my lungs.

“Good,” the man says, clapping me on the shoulder. “That is very good.”

PICTURE 4:

“I want you to meditate on this,” he tells me, just seconds before he vanishes into thin air. He has brought me to the rear wall of one of the chapels. Lofty crucifixes tower over us. There is a secret alcove in the stone here, a circular depression carved out of the chapel itself.

“What is it?”

“It is the image of your destiny…”

… and then he is gone.

The image is actually a complex marble/granite/bronze statue sprouting up from the stone floor of the alcove. Hard for me to decipher, to see with any clarity, for the whole of it is imbued with a radiant spiritual substance, and so viewing it is akin to looking directly at the sun. All that I can make out are contours, impressions—something humanoid in the center (a squatting thing like Buddha), a colored shield and a coat-of-arms, long protruding poles and rods, other various uninterpretable symbols. Being in its presence, I’m quickly overwhelmed and step backward out of the alcove, still staring at it, but then I collapse and fall on my back in the grass, staring up at the fluffy clouds forming faces in the sky. My eyes close.

When I open them again, the castle is gone and I am back at me ruinous country cottage, the book resting gently upon the center of my chest.

* * *

I don’t recall quite when the woman appeared. All I know is that she was suddenly there, tied up like a hog, in the closet of what used to be my parents’ bedroom. By then I had lived through one year, at least, of listening as the book was dictated to me in the wee hours of the night. I had also been practicing the exercises described for the past few months, and was beginning to reap the fruits of my hard work. For the most part, stepping in and out of the dimensional portals was becoming second nature.

I would stand in the bedroom, before the open closet door, with the sunlight streaming in darkly through the curtains at my back, and watch the bound woman on her knees, writhing with a sock in her mouth.

Whenever the sock was removed, she was known to utter the following: “You will never be able to keep the book from me—even if you kill me, even if you burn my body to ash, my corpse will return again and again, scratching at your windows and doors, and my spirit will float about in the air, taunting you. You were not meant to come by that book, it was a mistake, someone has committed a grievous error, we will take it back, it will return to our possession and you will be crucified on Calvary—”

And then my clenching fingers would slam the door closed in a seething fit of rage. She wanted to take the book away, my only source of truth. I would never let her. Where she’d come from remained a mystery, but she resembled a demon in all her form and appearance. Sometimes I thought maybe she had sprung directly out my head into the world, as Zeus birthed Athena, but by then I only wanted her gone, to disappear her from my sight.

At night, lying in bed falling asleep, I could hear her pernicious keening resounding in the house. Her cries inspired such hate. She had inexplicably developed the ability to ingest the sock shoved into her mouth and swallow it, and on several occasions I had sealed her lips with tape but she had somehow consumed that as well. Short of removing her tongue, I didn’t know how to silence her.

Fortunately, when I finally did fall asleep and the book drew me out of slumber, her voice would vanish as the recitation of the text took over, but always in the morning she’d return, and I’d smother myself with the pillow, trying to block her out.

It reached the point where I couldn’t take it. It fills me with revulsion to write this, but again we are concerning ourselves with the truth here, so I must be honest—with you and with myself. Besides, if you’ve taken anything in this manuscript to heart, then you will understand my motives.

It was just before evening and I was running out of socks and she’d been shouting taunts all day and I just wanted to get some sleep and have peace and quiet, so in a state of somnolent numbness I retrieved a length of bailing wire and entered the closet and twined the wire around her neck, tightening it, holding it there until her wicked eyes finally went vacant and her tongue protruded sickly from her mouth.

Upon the moment of death, I inwardly experienced the transformation of her being in the sense that she was changed, alchemically, from wholly physical into wholly spirit. She dematerialized right before my eyes, leaving me alone in the closet, holding the loop of bailing wire.

For a moment I became afraid of all she had said—that her corpse would come after me and her specter would haunt my abode—but as I crawled into bed to get some much needed sleep, the house was for once very quiet, and I drifted off without further disturbance.

* * *

After a number of years, and the contents of the book had become like a second skin to me, I first began having visions of the end. The word Apocalypse is commonly used, also Armageddon, but these concepts, for the most part, are misinterpreted. The common belief is that events that would bring about these concepts will occur externally, outside of us, and that we, as humans, would be forced to adapt to these external situations—that we are, in a sense, victims of quote unquote evil forces.

But my visions of the end of times, which streamed fully out of the dark spaces I vanished in the matter around me, revealed to me the truth: that the events of Armageddon, Apocalypse, in the vision of the Book of Revelation, occur within people, are developed there, prepared, and then released, as spiritual forces out of the person, into the world. And physical reality, and the events that transpire within it, reflect what has come out of the people, but it is a dead, wholly material expression of these forces, similar to how your own reflection in a mirror is the dead image of your living being.

Needless to say, this frightened me very much. Could I very well be the doorway of forces of the Apocalypse streaming into this world? The thought left me shaken. Although I kept hoping the visions would pass, they merely intensified, until I beheld the ruin of all humanity and even the planet itself by forces and beings which used me as an instrument on the physical plane, and acted out their atrocities on earth.

It got to the point where sleep abandoned me. I’d pace about the house in the dark, with the book clutched fast, muttering and gibbering my wild thoughts. Hosts of outré spiritual beings gathered about me in the night, shimmering in the air like mirages, whispering to me with their ghostly voices.

Visions bloomed in the center of my mind, of terrible future happenings, human beings in total bondage to strange mechanical machines, to which they’d voluntarily fused themselves, and of alien landscapes wherefrom thousands of invisible beings flocked toward our planet. Fiery and brilliant gold light filled my country cottage. I have even heard rumors of several neighbors in the town reporting seeing strange luminescences in the woods around my house. These lights would be described like spectral, earthbound stars.

My quickening decent culminated in a single night when, after days of tearing about the house, my body collapsed from exhaustion. Consciousness returned in a vivid dream. The text of the book, which was now utterly familiar to me, boomed like the voice of God. I was coaxed out into the moonlit night, into the trees and down the path, up to the site of the rock formation.

Then I awoke… or else I dreamed that I awoke. My memories cloud over here. I do know that I at least felt physical—that is I could feel, not only my own body, but the world around me.

Esoteric chanting poured out of me, in harmony with the omnipresent recitation—which I was wont to do during experiences of this kind—and in usual fashion the landscape then started to flicker, to oscillate from dark to light. I became conscious of awakening something in the dark spaces between the rock pieces, and I saw it stirring there, a terrible creature turning itself over in the dirt.

A face appeared high in the heavens wearing a brown brimmed hat, shaped amorphously out of clouds and mist, whose mouth was delivering the recitation of the book’s unreadable text. And I knew then that this had all been done in accordance with some higher power’s agenda, in which I played a central role, but that at this particular stage, there was no possible way to stop it from moving forward.

So I panicked. I didn’t want to be the instrument of the Apocalypse, and I didn’t want to bring about the ruin of humanity. It was not my will, I realized then, but some other’s will—one which had tricked, duped me, and played on my fears and depressions, and won me wholly over to its side.

Still panicking, I threw off my dreamy paralysis, rushed toward the leaning cross-sections of granite, and began digging in the dirt like a dog. The rocks glowed bright red in response, their shapes becoming embers in the night. The terrible sleeping presence churned within dark spaces, trying to capture my mind’s eye with sights of its truly horrific form, but I ignored it and went on digging.

Overhead the reciting voice had, for the first time ever, ceased in its reading/chanting and was attempting to persuade me back into my original condition. But this I also ignored. At length I managed a hole of several feet, into which I deposited the book then proceeded to fill it back in.

The world flew into a rage. Strong winds buffeted against me, the sky crackled with thunder and lightning, and trees shook their leaves like angry daggers. The ground rumbled under my kneeling body, and the red-glowing rocks began to smoke, as if somehow they had heated themselves to a blistering degree.

But despite all this I accomplished my own little act of will and succeeded in burying the book. When this had been done, the unnatural phenomena assaulting me abruptly stopped. The face in the sky evaporated, along with the booming godlike voice. The rocks cooled back down to their normal temperature.

I found myself alone once more.

* * *

Time has passed but I still hear it out there, whispering to me like a seductive lover. It’s buried in that spot, which can’t possibly be deep enough, and the voice gets louder every night. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the binding suddenly sprouted arms and legs, dug itself free, and came after me…

Am I going mad? —Perhaps I have already been mad for a long time. —Perhaps my poor dead parents were right to shut me up in my room as a boy. For what exists within me, and what wants to come forth into the world with the aid of that book, is something too awful to describe. It is an end to everything alive and good.

I’m leaving behind this manuscript in hopes that someday someone will find it, interpret it, and hopefully make sense of what has happened here. For last night I heard the most terrifying sound imaginable—an incessant scraping at the windows and doors and an intrepid female voice, calling for me… uttering my first name…

Darkness is dawning in the heavens now. I can’t imagine they would let me sleep another night. It’s time to prepare for the worst.

A STORM OF LIGHTNING

Yah did it again, tiger. You spoilt yerself.

The voice of his old man echoed with all the redneck charm he could remember. Harry set his axe against a tree and looked around at nothing but miles of forested hills. The sun permeated through the branches while clouds puffed over the horizon. Birds sang from all corners, notwithstanding the scene of brutal violence which had taken place.

Sighing, he lit a Winston and squatted on a large slab of limestone, letting his weight settle. Betty was a ruined woman, a puddle of torn flesh, organs and bones hacked apart. Blood saturated the grass. He glanced at her forehead—cleaved in twain, brains leaking out—and leaned over suddenly to vomit. The smell burned his nostrils as he rolled onto his back. Leaves and morning sky filled his eyes. He took a breath. Released. The sounds of the forest momentarily nabbed him. He smoked… traveling back to the Kentucky of his youth.

* * *

Mama knelt behind the refrigerator. She always did this after a fight. She had a blanket and a pillow back there, so she could hide away with the dust bunnies and the cobwebs. She had her Bible, too.

Harry inched out of the hallway and moved across the tiles. Brown gravy stains—what had once been their dinner—covered the floor, the front of the fridge, and the counters, from when his father had dashed his arm over the table, hurtling everything across the room. Now his old man sat on the back porch, passed out in his rocker. Been there a while. Probably fell asleep with chew in his mouth.

Harry peeked around the side of the refrigerator and found his mom on her knees, the blanket tucked beneath her. The Holy Bible lay discarded by her calf. Her eyes were closed and her lips moved soundlessly while she cried. She had her fingers steepled before her chest, making what she liked to call “Jesus Hands.”

“Mama?”

The sounds of the screen door slamming against the house, footsteps, grunting, labored breath.

In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Mama’s eyes snapped open.

* * *

Winston down to the filter, he flipped it away. Harry had the flashing image of a forest fire and sat up, a world of trees and trunks and bark swinging into view. Morning was now officially here, heralded by the increasing humidity. He scanned the ground, wary not to look upon the ruined woman, located the butt, though it wasn’t smoking, and after watching a moment longer, he let it be.

Murder Man stood near the bushes.

Harry ignored him at first; that is, he didn’t turn and look, but his body reacted: heart doubling in pace, skin chilling with gooseflesh. He blinked. Then, slowly, he raised his head.

Murder Man resembled the creature of any child’s worst nightmare—a towering hulk of leathery flesh the color of oil, long black hair like a soiled mop, and tree root arms ending in grotesque clawed hands. His face was long and sloping, almost horse-like, with a snout and long, sharp teeth. The eyes, dead orange things… portals to the other side of existence, through which, Harry knew, some demon peered out.

The creature did nothing but stand there. Watching. Waiting. Directing.

Murder Man finally said, “This one’s done. How about another?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Harry said, cold and sternly.

He no longer felt emotions, had willed himself not to feel them: feeling them meant the end of the Earth, meant death. He was one tough-armored sack of two hundred fifty pounds of flesh. Fear and horror and rage were things he twisted into knots of unknowing, forcing them deep into his soul.

“You have no choice,” Murder Man said. “Death is your purpose.”

He looked past Murder Man into the forest; he wanted another cigarette.

“How did this happen?”

It wasn’t a question he expected to have answered, but Murder Man, shambling into view, opened his horse-like mouth several inches too wide, revealing blackness and shapes and color… and Harry looked deeper.

* * *

He pulled his coat tighter and blew into his hands, wishing he’d brought gloves. There had been a time, back when Harry first started this, that the fear of getting caught would have forced him to go back. But he no longer worried over trivialities such as fingerprints anymore.

He peeked around the corner of the alley, across the parking lot where sodium lamps threw a greenish sheen upon the cars, to the back entrance of the bar. The door had been left open from the cook coming out for his smoke break. Blue and green neon filled the frame, and folks dressed in black and leather, the sound of a jukebox playing Johnny Cash.

Another thirty minutes before last call. Sometimes it took another thirty minutes for everyone to leave. Good thing he was patient. Harry sat against the brick wall and smoked a Winston. The night was silent but for the last of the drunkards in the parking lot. An hour later, they had all gone; the parking lot was clear. The neon signs powered down. Everything went silent.

Where is she?

Grinning, Harry lost his cigarette and rose to his feet.

The back door cracked open a final time and there she was—the tall blonde he’d kept tabs on for the past month, Betty Goldstein. She was a divorced, middle-aged, hot-to-trot trail-blazer who either owned the Swingin’ Shack Saloon, or operated it for someone else. She crossed the parking lot toward her Dodge pickup.

Harry cautiously crept out of his hiding place and dashed across the street. He was nimble given his size, especially in these moments when his head was full of excitement, his heart pounding, and his cock nearly bursting through his jeans. He made it to her truck and hid.

She muttered to herself as she came around the side of the vehicle.

Harry crouched in a dark pool of shadows near the left front wheel well, a shadow himself. A sliver of moon shone briefly through the screen of clouds, and a glow appeared around the truck, spotlighting it. He froze, not expecting this.

She glanced suddenly at his bulk, eyes widened.

“What the fuck—”

Although he had the ability to throw his weight (he’d been an amateur boxer in his youth, junior varsity, back before he started gaining weight), she managed an elbow into his face, but his two hundred plus pounds forced her onto the asphalt.

“Get off me!”

Her knee came up to his groin, but he deflected and slammed down his fist onto the bridge of her nose where a geyser of blood erupted. She tried to scream, but Harry jammed his fingers into her throat, felt a couple of her teeth dislodge.

She started choking.

He applied his weight, pressing her against the asphalt, jamming his forearm against her head. Her eyes finally dimmed as she fell unconscious.

The parking lot was deserted.

Harry hoisted her body over his shoulder and crept back into the alley.

* * *

He left Murder Man standing in the trees and started up the trail. He had to get away from the body, needed to clear his head.

Sunlight streamed through the branches to glint on the maple and oak leaves. A few small critters darted across his path. The silence was immense—an ocean of possibilities—and he felt he could dissolve into it, as matter into matter, as the bodies of his victims had returned into the earth.

He found a towering old cottonwood with a massive trunk and stopped under its umbrella of branches. He caressed the gnarled bark. It felt good against his fingers.

Murder Man’s face materialized in the deeply grooved crevices running up and down the trunk. “Back that way,” he said. A few of the branches pointed down the trail.

Harry ignored the face and kept walking.

The swath of dirt sloped up and around the side of a hill into a clearing bordered by several tall pines. A ruinous one-story shack sinking into the ground endured in the center of the clearing. Composed mostly of rain-rotted boards, the sagging structure had a caved-in roof, which reminded Harry that time was always working, always doing its best to decay all forms of matter. The signs of age stained every splintered beam, in the blackened grooves and knots of the clapboards, and even around the empty window frames and crooked front door.

What time does to things, I do to women.

This was followed by the voice of his father: You spoilt yerself again.

Murder Man appeared beside him, a black splotch in reality.

“How about another?” he whispered.

Harry fought a wave of emotion. His whole body tightened.

I will not emote.

When the wave passed, he released its frothy spume in the form of a sigh, and stepped through the door.

* * *

Boom.

Harry under the bed.

Boom.

He winced and covered his face as tears streamed through his small hands. His parents were arguing again. It’d woken him, his eyes snapping up and staring into the darkness of his bedroom. Dad drunk, Mom scared. He wasn’t sure what they were yelling about. It was always something.

Boom.

After the hitting started, he had crept under the bed, clutching his teddy bear. He had closed his eyes, covered his ears, but still he heard it: the unmistakable thuddings of flesh against flesh. Mama screaming, crying, praying to the Lord to send a storm of lightning to take Daddy away.

Harry stared out from under his bed at the yellow light beneath the door, wondering if God could really send a storm of lightning to take his father away; then that sound echoed through the house—boom—and his heart nearly leaped out of his—

“Harry?” his father called.

Boom.

“Rise and shine… wakey wakey.”

Harry knew better. It wasn’t really time to get up: the sun hadn’t even risen yet. His dad was playing a trick. Daddy wanted to do to Harry what he had done to Mama.

Boom.

A shadow darkened the space of light beneath the door. The footfalls ceased. A moment later, the doorknob turned, and then the door creaked inward—“Harry?”—and then his dad’s terrifying, staggering form entered the room, moving toward him.

“Time to get up, Harry. Where are you?”

Harry watched his father’s legs from under the bed. When they reached him, he stole a breath and shot out wildly between the ankles, scrambling across the floor.

“Hey! Git yer ass back here!”

But Harry was already down the hall. He slammed the door, sped toward the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. His father’s footfalls struck behind him.

Boom boom boom.

Light in the downstairs rooms hurt his eyes. He ran into several pieces of furniture. He tore into the kitchen, expecting to find Mama behind the refrigerator on her knees, making Jesus Hands. When Harry saw her, he slid to a halt.

She was lying in the center of the floor beside the dining table. It didn’t make sense, what had happened to her, and yet he instinctively knew that she was gone and never coming back: the Lord had sent a storm of lightning to take her… instead of Dad.

Her clothes were gone and her legs stretched open. Welts and scratches and wounds ran along her thighs and waist, her bare breasts, and up to her neck—Harry screaming and sobbing simultaneously—and where her head was supposed to be, there was a puddle of gore like a watermelon smashed over the tiles. Resting in the center of the puddle was his dad’s hand axe, buried to the handle in flesh.

Dad bounded into the room—“There you are, you little shit!”—but he slipped on the blood, stumbled, crashed into the wall and sprawled on the floor.

Harry screamed and leaped over the body of his mother and out the back screen door. He jumped off the porch steps and into the grass, hurrying toward the dark wilderness beyond.

The screen door slammed again.

His dad’s footfalls on the porch.

“Harry! You come back here!”

Harry screamed through the trees without looking back.

* * *

The inside of the ruined shack churned with a darkness split only in places where sunlight seeped through broken boards. Harry fell to his knees and knelt religiously in the center, the jumbles of junk and old furniture surrounding him: a rusted porcelain sink, a crumbling chest of drawers, a dusty mirror shattered like gossamer.

Harry cried, but not for Mama, not for Dad, not even for the six-year-old boy of his younger self he had just witnessed fleeing into the trees. He cried for the intensity, for the sheer shock and horror of his memories, for the bloodstained world that was once his childhood. He mourned for a life he never would—never could—have. And he was bitter that his had not been a normal, peaceful existence, that he wasn’t able to go to school with the other kids and feel normal like they did—that he couldn’t enjoy playing with toys as they did—and most of all that, after six, with his mama dead and his dad sent off to Remington Prison, he had no family to speak of and had to live in a foster home with Mr. Creashak, a middle-aged black man with a hair-trigger temper and an afro the size of a Buick tire, a man who listened to soul music constantly and who beat the living whiteness out of Harry on a daily basis.

Murder Man stood by the wall, statuesque. He didn’t offer condolence or a single gesture of sympathy. Murder Man was a cold, uncaring creature who desired Harry to feel pain and suffering. He had no inclination to deal with Harry as a real person. Harry was an object to be despoiled, a tool, an animal to cage and torment. Murder Man abided in the inner sanctum of Harry’s being and did what Murder Men had done since the dawn of time and had always done so well: murdered his eternal soul.

* * *

The sun had fallen behind the trees by the time they returned to the ruined woman. Harry retrieved the shovel and dug. He’d wanted to be home by now. The entire day was gone.

After an hour, he had managed to carve a decent hole in the soil. Crickets and critters sang praise to the burgeoning twilight. Harry worked while Murder Man watched from beside the trunk of an old cottonwood.

Harry scooped the woman with the shovel blade, levering her anatomy into the hole. A disgusting job. The smell was awful. Even though he had acquired a stomach for death, he gagged on the stench.

Murder Man observed silently, his oily black hair strung down over his face, looking on with the implied authority of a construction foreman. Harry hated feeling that ugly black presence at his back, and fantasized about plunging the blade through its neck.

Harry filled the hole.

Murder Man lifted his head and said, “This one’s done. How about another?”

Yah did it again, tiger. You spoilt yerself.

Images flashed through his mind: his raging father, Mama kneeling behind the refrigerator, waking in the middle of the—

“No. I won’t do this,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to the police.”

He tossed the shovel beside the grave and turned to leave.

Murder Man materialized in his path: a snout face exposing teeth, hair thrown back over his head, orange eyes alight. “What?” he snapped.

“You heard me.”

“They’ll throw you in jail. You’ll be raped by another man. You’ll hate yourself and your life even more than you already do.”

“Are you kidding me? How could I hate my life more? I can’t stand who I’ve become. Do you hear me? I want to kill myself.”

Murder Man was silent, considering. “If you leave and you do this,” he said, “—if you turn yourself in to the police, I won’t be able to reverse it. I won’t be able to bring you back. If you kill yourself I can still remain with you and help fulfill your destiny.”

Harry fell to his knees, closed his eyes, and made Jesus Hands before his chest. He thought of Dad sitting drunk on the porch, chewing tobacco and complaining about the spooks and jigaboos taking over the town. He saw a quick flash of Mama nestled in her secret place in the kitchen, drinking a glass of whiskey, and praying to the Lord to send a storm of lightning to cleanse the souls of the wicked—and in the next image she was lying dead on the floor, Dad’s hand axe buried in her face.

“I’ve got your lightning storm, Mama,” he whispered, crying again. “And I’ll bring it down on the wickedest heart of all.” A pause, a sob, a breath, and then—“Mine.”

In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

He rose and opened his eyes.

Murder Man blocked his path.

“Death is your purpose,” the demon said.

Harry took a militant step forward and passed through the demon’s incorporeal form. His entire body shot through with horror, and when he passed to the other side, Murder Man flickered like a television with bad reception and vanished.

Harry lit a Winston and kept walking.

One step at a time.

“This is for you, Mama,” he said. “You never quit your prayin’, so I’ll never quit mine. A storm of lightning’s gonna come, Mama… like a sword of apocalyptic justice.”

He continued to his car, down the mountain, and back into town. He made his way slowly toward the police station as night spread its mantle of darkness over the town and its inhabitants.

There was peace, once again, for a time, in Harry’s eternal soul, as he stepped through the glass doors of the police station.

Whirling Machine Man

The Jeffrey Hogan case had been all over the news. Various reports were being run on a poor kid who was found in a puddle of his own excrement—white-haired and drooling—with many of his teeth missing and his tongue torn out…

That was the most horrifying part of the whole thing—at least in my opinion—the bloody gaping hole in his face. I had the unfortunate pleasure of viewing the medical photos in his case file.

His parents found the eleven-year-old boy one morning, muttering about being lost in the woods. Jeffrey was blank-eyed, staring into midair—a condition he maintained thereafter, even once they got him to St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital. And even now, up there in the Serene Hills Mental Facility, where, presumably, he’ll be spending the rest of his days receiving “treatment.”

I want to tell you also that the Hogan case ended my P.I. career, failure though it might have been, for reasons which I will go into later. To this day I hold a position at the Department of Motor Vehicles, sitting on my ass issuing license plate numbers and I.D. cards. Not the most exciting work, but digging in the Hogan case produced a desperate need in me to feel safe…

And, what pursues me now, since the case, well… it’s caused me to feel like I’m going crazy, and to believe my life is in danger.

So that’s what my DMV job is: safe.

Way I saw it, if I didn’t procure some safety fast I was liable to end up in Serene Hills alongside Jeffrey. Because the empty space where my right arm used to be ever antagonizes me with its absence. Simple things like riding a bicycle—unless I get fitted for the prosthetic, and them things ain’t cheap, though I have been considering it—will forever remain unavailable to me. That’s something I’m learning to deal with. But allow me to fill in some of the details so you can have a better understanding.

* * *

I don’t recall the exact day Maria Hogan came into my office, but I do know it was some time after the hubbub surrounding her son had died down. The county gazettes had pumped several weeks’ worth of sensationalism onto their front pages at her son’s expense but had since returned to running their usual dribble. I had pretty much forgotten about it, and so when the tired-looking blonde with large breasts and larger hips appeared opposite my desk, it took me by surprise.

I recognized her from the news reports, but now she just looked terrible. I said, “Please, have a seat,” and signaled to the vacant leather chair; nodding, she installed herself accordingly.

“My name is—”

“I know who you are.”

She blinked. “You know what happened to my son?”

“I do.”

“You know where he is?”

I presumed she meant Serene Hills, so I nodded. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Hogan?”

She was quiet a moment. Then: “I want you to find who did this to Jeffrey.”

“Ma’am, the police are doing their best—”

“No, they’re not.” She glared at me and there was a flicker of ferocity in her eyes that I found briefly attractive. “Jeffrey can’t speak and he won’t write, and the cops must’ve combed through the woods behind our house two dozen times, and nobody knows a single thing, and I know—I just know—that it’s gonna fall off their radar soon. They’re gonna box up my baby’s case file and go about their business.”

She ended with a burst of emotion, and I sat there feeling awkward while she wept in her hands. I lit a cigarette, and Maria Hogan raised her face disapprovingly to me, but I didn’t care: I needed the nicotine.

“Mrs. Hogan,” I began, “I understand all of your concerns but I’m just not sure what I can do about it. From what I’ve heard there are absolutely no leads, no motive, no evidence, and no blood in the forest. They’ve got nothing, which means I’ll get nothing. I’m sorry, but it is what it is.”

She arched her eyebrows. “I thought you ran a business here?”

“I do, it’s just…” I blew smoke out my nose. The truth was that I was scared. And not just scared: horrified. I couldn’t imagine the kind of person who could remove an eleven-year-old kid’s tongue and teeth, and didn’t want to, either.

Sensing my distress, she said, “I’ll let you in on a secret.”

“I think you’d better go to the police if you have new information.” Watching my own ass was something I excelled at, thankfully.

But she tossed her head. “Nope, they won’t listen, not to this. I can only tell someone who has an open mind…” She glanced at the nameplate on my desk.

“Morgan Summers, and call me Morgan,” I said. “I suspect I have an open mind, but—”

“The person who did this to Jeffrey lives in a cabin in the Mintano Wilderness behind our house.”

My eyes widened. “You told that to the cops?”

“No… it’s not really there—not physically.”

“What?”

She sighed, struggling with the words. “I’ve never actually seen it. Only Jeffrey saw it. He saw it a few times. He said a mad scientist lived there.”

I chuckled. “Yes, I did hear something in the news about your son having strange episodes in the woods.”

“I told them that. And you know what? The police didn’t do a thing about it. That’s why I never told them about the cabin.”

She reached in her flower-patterned handbag and withdrew a small manila envelope, the kind of thing in which you might receive a piece of jewelry in the mail. She placed it on the desk and slid it over to me. Stamping out my cigarette, I picked it up and opened the flap.

“I found that lying on the back porch when I went outside this morning.”

I frowned at her. “Does your husband know you’re here?”

She didn’t answer. I knew it was probably evidence that I was potentially contaminating, but I was too intrigued now not to proceed.

The first object I pulled out was a small gold old-style key; the second, a folded sheet of paper; the third, a small hunk of metal that I thought was just metal, until I realized there were several human teeth wedged into it.

“Jesus!” I shrieked, dropping the object. “Are those…?”

“Yes. They’re Jeffrey’s.” She picked up the sheet of paper and unfolded it. “This’s a letter intended for him.” She read:

“To the one speaking for the dead:

I realize you experienced great pain and suffering during your transformation. But still I do not understand your departure from the lab. I warned you that crossing over would be… uncomfortable. Of course there was physical pain. Illusionary though it may have been, I know it seems very real in the moment. But it is for the good of science. We’re pioneering a new frontier. I’m enclosing a key, so that you might return to the lab at your leisure, as well as a portion of the prototype in hopes that looking upon it might entice you back.

Yours,

The Amputator”

Maria Hogan put down the paper, looked at me. I wasn’t sure if she was giving me shock, disbelief, or just plain rage. “Well?” she said.

“Totally nuts. I think you need to pack up your stuff and take it over to—”

“No… No! You’re not getting it.” She slammed her palm down on the desk. “Even if they did hear me out they wouldn’t believe any of it, which means they won’t look in the right places, which means nothing will happen. Which means this bastard”—she waved the paper—“goes free.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” I said. “All I know is that several human teeth wedged into a metal harness are lying on my desk. I have half a mind to call the police myself. The D.A. is a close friend of mine, and so are a number of boys on the force.”

She sat back, her eyes going cool as she reached into her bag a second time. “Guess I should make this more worth your while, huh?” She dug out her checkbook and pen, leaning on my desk to write, glancing at my nameplate again. She tore off the check.

I took one look and had to light another cigarette. “That’s a lot of zeros,” I said. “You have this kind of money?”

“My husband does.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“What does that matter? He’s sunk so far into his morbid funk after what happened to our son that I’m not sure he’ll pull out of it. Besides, he knows about the hidden cabin. Jeffrey told us both.”

I smoked and sighed and felt like a rusty railroad spike was being dug into my side.

My salary at the time was measly to say the least, and I’d even had to let my secretary go in order to maintain the business. I desperately needed money.

I thought: What’s the worst that can happen? I take the key and rummage around in the Mintano Wilderness, find nothing and come back empty-handed, then tell her I told you so, take the money, and run off to Cancun. Piece of cake.

But of course there was the whole conscience thing, and not to mention the possibility, be it slight, that she was telling the truth—in which case I could find myself face-to-face with some psychotic criminal. But even that had its egoistical perks. And it wouldn’t be the first time I had squared off against something violent. I’d been in the private investigator business for over eight years, and had seen my share of fights.

I took a long deep drag on the cigarette and sat back in my chair. “I’ll take your case, Mrs. Hogan, but on one condition.”

She brightened. “What?”

I flipped the check with my index finger. “I’ll be cashing this before I get started, which is not my usual policy, but what you’re asking for is dangerous, could even get me into trouble with the city if they found out I’m withholding evidence on an open case. That means I’ll have to use some of this money to pay off cops and detectives in order to get my hands on the file. Understand?”

She nodded, smiling. She seemed extraordinarily relieved, and I even noticed a portion of her weariness evaporating. “Do what you need to do,” she said. “And thank you, Morgan.”

“You can thank me once we get through this without landing our balls in the grinder.”

She made a face, and I nearly burst out laughing. Leaning farther back, I kicked my boots up on the desk, closed my eyes and smoked, and said in my best Perry Masonesque voice, “Now, Mrs. Hogan, tell me everything you know about the incident involving your son.”

* * *

I waited in the rain at 10th and 63rd, secreting myself under the awning of an Italian bistro. My long coat was drenched, but I kept wrapping it tighter, hoping to keep out the chill. The cars on 63rd moved spectrally through the mist, flinging water from their tires, their headlights looking like passing souls.

When Detective Browning pulled alongside the curb in his sharp blue Pontiac with the white roof, windshield wipers flapping, I pushed through the rain and slipped in the passenger door.

“Summers,” he said.

“Howdy, Robert.” I took this opportunity of dryness to light a cigarette. Smoke filled the cab, but I knew Rob didn’t care: he customarily puffed cigars in the damn thing.

“I’m going ’round the block,” he commented.

“Why?”

He said nothing, but piloted the Pontiac into the storm of souls. He was a larger man, nearly twice my size, with rubbery skin and a face like a grizzly bear. His meaty forearms, poking out the sleeves of his coat, bristled with black hairs, and his muscles strained as he manipulated the wheel.

I had expected him to hand over the file, for me to pay, and then to be on our ways. It was how things had worked in the past. But now he was weaving through city blocks sluiced with rain, and there was something tense about him.

I chose not to speak until we reached our final destination: a nondescript alley behind this Chinese restaurant I’d been meaning to try. I thought of having lunch there and taking a cab back to my car.

“What’s the problem?” I asked, as rain drummed on the roof of the car. “It’s not like we haven’t done this before.”

He shifted his bulky weight and the Pontiac squeaked on its axles. His weary brown eyes observed me. “This one’s different, Summers,” he said. “Not to say it’s high priority, but just that it’s… different. Which is strange because nobody even died. Yeah, some eleven-year-old kid got assaulted, but last week we found a teenage girl in the dumpster with a hot curling iron shoved up her—and you don’t hear diddly about that.”

I grimaced. “Jesus.”

He waited, took a deep breath, then continued: “Yeah… Well, this Hogan case’s got some weird vibes about it. Everyone down at the station is going bonkers. But there ain’t a thing to go off of, so they’re all staying away from it. Not to mention the Jeffrey kid is completely nuts now, and his folks are right up there with him. Plus the media’s been all over it, don’t ask me why. There are even rumors of one of those Unsolved Mysteries shows running a spot on it. Christ, and because of this brouhaha, the chief and other detectives, not including myself, are hellbent on getting it solved, or at least putting it down to rest. Yet they won’t touch it! I think they just wanna believe the Hogan kid sheared his own tongue with a pair of pliers and knocked his teeth out with a rock. Meh. Who knows what really happened.”

He was silent. The back door of the Chinese restaurant opened and a thin Asian man dressed in white, carrying a trash bag, moved past the Pontiac. He glanced at us, knit his brows, then continued walking.

Rob grunted, withdrew a sealed manila folder from his coat. He smiled, showing coffee-stained teeth. “Thanks for letting me bitch.”

I took the folder. “Don’t mention it. And thank you.” I handed him the envelope containing his payment.

He nodded, disappeared it into his coat, but he still seemed worried.

“Listen,” I said. “The worst that can happen is we get caught, at which point I’ll contact the Chief Deputy District Attorney myself and get things straightened out. Howels and I go way back, so don’t fret. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

This placated him. He smiled and nodded again. “Want a lift back?”

“Nah, I’ve been wanting to try this place.” I hooked a finger toward the restaurant and got the passenger door open. The sound of rain emerged like a roaring beast. I flicked the last of my smoke into its gullet.

As I closed the door, he said, “Hey, Summers?”

I peeked my head back into the cab.

“Take care on this one. Something different about it. Got some bad vibes. I’d hate for either of us to get in trouble.”

I nodded, thanked him again, closed the door, and watched him coast away. Then I went into the restaurant and ordered egg foo young.

* * *

Later, back at my apartment, I uncorked a bottle of merlot and sat at my kitchen table under the harsh glare of the florescent and sipped, smoked, read. Inside the case file there were several stacks of photographs, the police reports, medical reports, some statements given by neighbors and the boy’s parents.

I read through everything, fueled by the wine and the increasing darkness outside the window. The medical reports I found significantly disturbing, with doctors being baffled as to how Jeffrey Hogan’s teeth and tongue had been removed, evincing that not a single tear or cut appeared in the flesh or gums of his mouth. There were no signs of trauma, which there would’ve been if the teeth had been yanked out. They’d been removed cleanly, as if by a master surgeon.

The photos mostly showed long swaths of empty wilderness and rows of standing pines. One showed a disgusting puddle of excrement in which the boy had been found. Various photos documented the extent of his wounds, some grizzly closeup shots of the severed tongue and the vacant teeth.

Finally—having pushed through innumerable chills and waves of unease—I got around to the statements given by the parents. Maria Hogan seemed the most adamant on the subject. Her statements made up seventy-five percent of the report. She went into explicit detail about several previous incidents in which Jeffrey had had unusual experiences in the woods.

The officer conducting the interview had jotted in his notes that Mrs. Hogan “appeared slightly unnerved, and although her story seemed fabricated, there was an aspect of sincerity about her. She believed she was telling the truth.”

The first time Jeffrey claimed to hear sounds and see lights coming from the Mintano Wilderness was a year or two before the incident. According to Mrs. Hogan, he had been in the backyard playing in the grass for most of the evening while she had been washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen. At one point, she glanced out the window and didn’t see him, but figured he was merely playing around the side of the house.

Later, he came in the back door looking pale and shivering with fright. When asked about it, he claimed he had followed some “whirling machine man” into the woods where he saw a ghost weaving in and out of the branches.

Maria, disturbed, put her son to bed, thinking he was coming down with something. Over the next year, however, Jeffrey claimed again to have contact with a “whirling machine man” and to have seen more spirits or ghosts in the trees. She grew unsettled, but when he came with his story a third time, she started thinking it was only his imagination; that he was playing a child’s game.

The boy’s father, Henry Hogan, when told of Jeffrey’s claims, dismissed them as mere imaginings and told his wife not to worry about it. His statement in the report consisted of two meager paragraphs in which he stuck to his belief that the boy had imagined it. He felt, begrudgingly, that Jeffrey had somehow done it to himself—though why and for what purpose, he had no idea.

In the final incident leading up to the terrible night when Jeffrey lost his tongue and teeth, as reported by Maria Hogan, Jeffrey didn’t show up for dinner. Maria was alone in the house and her husband had been working late at the office. Placing Henry’s plate in the oven to keep warm, she stuck her head out the window and hollered for Jeffrey. When he didn’t come, she put on her coat and went outside.

She’d only gone a dozen feet into the trees when she became enshrouded in a light mist, such as forms after a heavy rain. She pierced through the mist and found her son kneeling on the spongy sod, his hands clasped before his chest in prayer. A bulky shape hunched on a network of roots sat before him, which her fanciful mind took, at first, to be goblin or a squatting gnome.

But as she got closer she saw it was a collection of metal slabs leaned around a thick wood pole, with a series of old tubing hooking one to the other; draped over this bizarre junk was something long and stringy that resembled human hair.

She touched her son on the shoulder and he opened his eyes and was shivering. When she asked him what he was doing, he pointed toward the junk pile and said he was speaking with the machine man, who had showed him the “hidden cabin” in the woods.

Unnerved, she picked him up off the ground and led him back through the mist, through the backyard, and back into the house, installing him at the dinner table. They spoke no more, but when Jeffrey’s father came home and Maria told him what happened, Henry said that the boy had probably made a play toy out of some old junk. But he agreed it wasn’t safe, and assured her he would get rid of it in the morning.

However when morning came he searched the wilderness and found no sign of the junk heap. Maria even led him to the exact spot, but they found only an empty space on the roots. They told Jeffrey he wasn’t allowed to play in the Mintano Wilderness anymore, and Jeffrey accepted this new limitation agreeably. But one week later they woke to find him submerged in his own feces on the kitchen floor with a hole in the center of his face.

I had reached my limit at this point and put the file down, lit a fresh cigarette, and poured another glass of wine. Glancing at my wrist watch, I saw it was nearly midnight. The city lights twinkled in the darkness through my fourth floor apartment window. I thought of what I had read, recalling the grizzly photos and the “machine man.” My thoughts then wandered to the letter Mrs. Hogan had showed me, an absurd item signed by someone calling himself The Amputator. I shook my head and blew smoke: it all seemed crazy.

Reaching into my pocket, I took out the small gold key Maria had given me. The key to the lab, said the letter which had been left on her porch. Luckily Mrs. Hogan had agreed to hold on to the strange metal piece with the human teeth wedged into it. I wasn’t able to have something like that in my house; yet I stared at the key for a long time, wondering where it came from.

I called it quits and retired to bed but I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept seeing visions from the case file: the junk heap, the swirling mist, the lights in the woods, the empty cavities where teeth should have been.

Eventually I passed out, but sleep was poor due to nightmares, and I awoke in the middle of the night to a scratching sound coming from the wall. I sat up in the darkness, trying to unhear the sound, convinced it was some remnant hanger-on from my nightmare. When it didn’t stop, I got out of bed and flipped on the light.

It came from the opposite side of the west wall. Mine was the final-most apartment on the fourth floor, which meant that, unless it was a bird, the sound-maker was hovering in midair or perched precariously on the building ledge.

I moved closer, saw that the scraping was accompanied by an impressing indentation that moved correspondingly along the wall, as if something on the other side was digging through the bricks and plaster, the sharp tip poking through to this side. Of course that was ludicrous. Still, I watched in awe as the impressing groove moved up and down the wall, scribbling like a pen.

After several minutes of watching, the sound stopped, and I stood staring at the words etched onto my wall.

The

Amputator

I tried blinking them away but they wouldn’t vanish, so at length I grabbed my blanket and pillow and went into the living room, turning on the TV and the lights, smoking and drinking more wine until I fell back asleep. This time sleep was dreamless, and in the morning the words on my bedroom wall had disappeared.

* * *

I called Maria Hogan.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Hogan? Morgan. I finished reading your son’s case file.”

“And?”

“And… I’m starting to think maybe you’re telling the truth.”

A pause, then a sigh. “That’s a relief. So you’ll go?”

I knew what she meant. She meant go into the Mintano Wilderness and search for this lab mentioned by The Amputator in his letter.

“I’ll go,” I said. “But first I’d like to speak to your husband.”

“No, he doesn’t know about the letter.”

“Can’t we inform him?”

“I’d rather not. He seems so fragile lately. His belief that Jeffrey did this to himself is the only thing keeping him sane.”

“I’d like us all to be in on this.”

A longer pause this time. “Okay, he’s here right now. I’ll go and tell him if you want to stop by.”

“I’ll be right there.”

She gave me the directions and then I hung up the phone. I donned my coat and pistol and thrummed down the stairs, out into the overcast morning.

* * *

Henry Hogan was sitting in the armchair in his living room, staring out the window toward the dirt road leading to the highway, which I had piloted my Honda Civic up not five minutes ago. He was holding a coffee mug and had a section of the newspaper outspread on his lap. He wasn’t reading or drinking, just staring straight ahead.

When Mrs. Hogan had answered the door, she invited me in and then leaned her blond head beside my ear. “It wasn’t easy, but I told him,” she whispered. “I showed him this, too.” She held out the metal piece with the teeth wedged into it.

I walked over by the armchair. “Mr. Hogan? I’m Morgan Summers. You’re wife hired me to—”

“I know why she hired you.” His voice was gruff, and when he flicked his eyes at me for a moment, they appeared weary and drawn. “Don’t expect to find anything, there’s nothing there, she made it all up. No hidden cabin, no laboratory. Jeffrey went nutso, plain and simple. The rest, well… mothers get awfully attached to their children.”

“Stop being a jerk!” Maria snapped.

Henry sighed and his whole body seemed to deflate in the dirt brown suit he was wearing. “Well…,” he muttered, before trailing off. He looked so small, so defeated to me, shrunken, like a sailor drowning at sea, going down with his ship, and I suddenly understood there was nothing to be gained by speaking with him.

“All the same,” I said, cultivating my most neutral, most tension-dissolving voice. “Since she did hire me, I’m going to have a look behind your home.”

“Cops been all through there,” he muttered. “You won’t find nothing.”

I didn’t deign to respond to him. I simply bowed slightly, then turned and headed over to Maria. She looked on edge, arms crossed, chewing on her lip. “Satisfied now?” she said.

“I am actually, thank you. I’d like to see the spot.”

She nodded and led me through a narrow hallway lined with framed photographs, which I glanced at as we passed, catching Jeffrey’s baby-blue eyes staring back at me.

“We found him here,” she said as we entered the sizable kitchen. The floors were smooth and made of wood; a kitchen island encompassed the center of the room; the countertops, fridge, and sink were all made of stainless steel; several rows of oak cupboards adorned the wall.

Next to where Mrs. Hogan stood, a dark spot about four feet in diameter stained the floor. I recalled from the case file that Jeffrey had sat in a puddle of his own excrement all night. I was slightly nauseated. “What exactly is that stain?” I asked. “Is it…?”

“Most of it,” she said. “Blood, too. And something else, something the investigators said they’re unsure of—add that to a hundred other things they’re unsure of.” The bitterness of her tone cut into the kitchen air. “They said it would come out, but it didn’t, and no matter how much I scrub and mop, the stain remains. I’ve given up.”

I waited for the last of my nausea to pass, then told her I was ready to go into the Mintano Wilderness. She nodded and I followed her through the adjacent backdoor. The wall of trees and bushes seemed to rear itself forward right up to the back of the house. The density of the foliage was astounding, like an encroaching tsunami of leaves and branches that was going to crash into the porch at any second.

“Jesus,” I said. I reached into my pocket to retrieve my pack of cigarettes.

“The city has made a significant effort to preserve this section of the Mintano Wilderness. All the houses in this area border it. I believe there’s a bike path winding through it, several hiking trails… the rest is feral nature.”

“Amazing,” I said. And I meant it.

She turned and started toward the house. “Guess I’ll leave you to it.” She stopped on her way, glancing at my cigarette. “Make sure you dispose of that properly.”

I nodded. “You got it, ma’am.”

She started walking, then stopped again. “Thank you, Morgan. My husband… he…”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand this has been hard on both of you. Besides, I’m doing my job, and…” I suddenly recalled the scratching sounds of the previous night, and the pair of words that had magically appeared on my bedroom wall. “I have my own reasons for checking this out.”

“Oh?” There was a pause, and I knew she wanted to ask what they were, but instead I just turned and headed across the grass, denying her the opportunity. In no time I had been swallowed by the darkening wilds.

* * *

When I came across the first letter—the A—I stood looking at it, questioning the reliability of my physical senses. I did drink and smoke a lot, after all. But by the time I spotted the lowercase r on the oak trunk—the collection of nine letters coalescing to form the word Amputator—I was convinced I was going crazy.

I stayed for a while with the r letter, leaning against the tree. I smoked a cigarette or two, making sure to bury the butts properly. Finally I summoned the nerve to continue, telling myself I had to play this movie out to the end.

I hadn’t gone twenty paces when the mist appeared, the air hanging beneath the branches swirling and churning to life. I became immersed in it, groping blindly, certain that I was getting myself more lost. The mist grew thicker and I saw shapes materialize out of the softly billowing haze. Abstractly humanoid, they bent through the network of branches, weaving in and out of the treetops, bodies elongating and stretching like taffy, then shrinking down to their original size.

I stopped to admire the apparitions, ghosts, spirits, whatever they were, magical with their yawning mouths and hollow eyes. I felt a storm of emotions rising within me, admonishing me to release whatever resistance I was harboring as to whether or not this was real—and to just accept it.

I forged ahead through the bluish mist like some kind of hero from a fantasy novel, the spirits of the dead drifting around me, until at last I spotted the ominous cabin in the distance. I climbed the series of terraces leading to the grassy eminence and headed to the front porch.

It wasn’t very large; about the size of any other cabin you might find in the woods. Except that it was only one-story, which seemed odd, especially since this person—The Amputator—was supposedly conducting full-scale scientific experiments in there.

I drew my pistol. The weight of it, the cold of the steel, felt good, comforting. Each step had me sinking a little more into the soft mulchy loam. The porch boards creaked and crumbled beneath my feet, and I glanced behind me and noticed the mist had stayed back in the trees. I was grateful.

I felt in my pocket for the key. Was I just going to walk in the front door? Perhaps a little audacious, so I did a quick beat around the perimeter, searching for other doors and openings but finding none, only more darkened windows, begrimed to the point of opaqueness. I returned to the front, withdrew the key, and approached. I unlocked the door and pushed it creaking inward, gripping the handle of my pistol as I entered.

* * *

I immediately cursed myself for not bringing a flashlight. The darkness was so thick that I could only see the faint outlines of objects and the dim wood surfaces of walls. The farther I went into the cabin, the greater my fear became. My breathing accelerated, my heart pounded like a hammer, and I began to sweat.

I emerged from the hallway into a spacious room. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see hulking mounds all along the floor that I presumed were pieces of furniture: a mirror, reflecting back the silvery blackness; even gossamer webs clinging to the higher corners and ceiling.

In the center stood another large shape, still as lake water on a windless day. I approached with my fingers raised and extended. I felt drawn to it, and when I got close enough I touched the surface, which was cold and hard, like touching the skin of a reptile. As I moved my fingers higher I felt harder surfaces most likely metal, as well as rubber tubing and looping chains—and higher still until I felt something like stringy human hair. Suddenly I knew this was the strange “machine man” before which Jeffrey Hogan had been found kneeling. As my fingers neared the top, I somehow sensed it was going to move. In a panic, I raised the pistol.

It came jerking to life with a tremendous burst of motion that swept the darkness along with it. I dashed to my left, back around, behind me, out of sight, and screamed then whirled, flailing the pistol butt. The machine man was quicker. I noticed it resembled some kind of idol or tribal totem pole, as it danced around me like the Tasmanian Devil. A dark hunk arced out and down from the top of the pole, crashing onto my head with the weight of a tree branch. I screamed as it crushed me to the floor—then I was hit again, and my vision dimmed, and I felt myself hurled into a place of emptiness.

Then the world winked out.

* * *

When I came to, dreamy, gauzy ribbons of blue and white, like the auras of planets, swam before my eyes. My body weighed a thousand pounds. I attempted to move my limbs but met with resistance. And something else… some foreign metallic element connected to me.

I managed to re-illuminate the world through the faculty of sight. Darkness and blues and whites bled away. I saw that I was strapped in a corrupt wood chair, shackled with metal bands, like an antiquated electric chair. The room around me was crowded with huge pieces of buzzing, bulky scientific equipment, which my fuzzed-out mind could only begin to comprehend. Lights, circuit breakers, computer screens, keyboards, EKG readouts.

“You’re not the boy,” said a voice. “But you will do.”

It was not a nice voice.

I blinked again and saw a grotesque figure standing over me, and I knew at once it was The Amputator. He was tall, lanky, and wiry like a weasel, with beady eyes, a scraggly beard, and wearing a stained white lab coat, with greasy spectacles clutching his face. Behind him was a storm of misty spirits, like those I had encountered in the Mintano Wilderness.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“I…” But I could not speak. I felt crazy, delusional; nothing made sense.

“Speechless,” The Amputator murmured. He eyed me suspiciously. I did not like the feel of his gaze: it was as if a giant rat was considering whether I’d make a good meal.

“The left side of his brain has been successfully quarantined,” he continued. He turned to his right, speaking to someone in the darkness. “Bring me the mediumistic rod.”

The furious totem pole machine man came whirling into view. The shock of seeing it this close up and under the harsh yellow lights sent me into convulsions. My soul felt like it was going to burst out of my flesh.

The Amputator accepted a long copper rod from the automaton, that terrible assembly of wire and tubing and metal with a flat head of long, dark, horse-like hair. As it spun away into the blackness, I thought of Robby the Robot, a fictional character from a movie I’d seen as a child called Forbidden Planet. The bulbous robotic humanoid machine in that movie scared the pants off me as a child; seeing this weird totem thing now called up that same childhood fear.

The Amputator leaned over my right side. As I followed him down with my eyes I began to scream, and my hoarse cries echoed about the room. My body shook and sweat saturated my brow. I was convinced I was dying—would die—had died.

“Calm yourself,” The Amputator said.

But I couldn’t; where my arm used to be now extended a bloody metal appendage, looped with silvery wires and colorful blinking lights. It pulsed inwardly with a glowing orange fire as though it had a heartbeat. The fibrous metal materials of which it was composed stretched up to my right bicep, where the sleeve of my shirt had been cut away. The appendage itself was neatly squashed into the flesh of my arm.

I thought I would never stop screaming.

Very carefully, he placed the rod in my hand, and the fingers closed of their own accord, clutching it like a baton. The Amputator moved aside, allowing the misty wall of spirits to move forward.

Without warning, the metal bands retracted with a snap and I was free, and yet suddenly I was yanked forward by the metallic arm which was flailing and jerking, swinging the copper rod like a conducting baton. My teeth clenched and sweat poured down in my eyes. I was nearly blind as my feet, led by the insane metal arm, drew me out of the chair.

I began walking across the floor, while the swelling blue orb of spirits moved closer. The Amputator tracked my progress, a beady little creature at my right. Opposite him spun the madly whirling totem, which, I now realized, functioned as his assistant.

“It’s working!” he cried. “They are responding to your signal! This will connect us both to the spiritual world—them to you, and you to me—and together we can harness a power that science has always striven for, but never attained. Embrace them, you fool! Embrace them!” He slapped me hard on the back, and I pitched forward, nearly falling on my face.

Abruptly, the wall of spirits drew before me, flowing around me, enveloping me, pressing close. I could make out their hollow eyes and gaping mouths, as they darted about like guppies in a fish bowl. I sensed music from somewhere, a simple melody, but soon I was blind and lost, the laboratory obscured in the churning blue cloud.

The Amputator’s voice rose above the madness. “Do not fight it! Open yourself up to the experience—for the good of science! The body enhancement I implanted in you will bind you to them, so long as you do not resist. Then I can use you like my antenna—as an organic instrument attuned to the spiritual world. Let go, let them receive you!”

I almost laughed. I was well beyond fighting, resisting, or anything else. I had collapsed inwardly into a state of true madness. I saw only the misty spirit storm and furious thrashings of my metallic arm, and I heard only the weird discordant music and the excited ravings of The Amputator.

“Into the higher spiritual worlds!” he shouted. “Go! Let yourself dissolve into the ether!”

I felt so sick I thought I would faint. But just at the last moment before I went down, I felt a flurry of spongy limbs, like tongues, gather me up, lift me. The sensation was something quite magical, an inner burning of faith, desire, devotion, longing—as though I were caught in a religious reverie.

I evaporated into the ether.

* * *

I saw a flash of a world made of light, where I could make sense of nothing. A landscape of pure spirit, warbling and indistinct, which swarmed with storms of spirits, all of them looking at me, all of their inmost intentions burning into my mind. They turned like flocks of birds to converge upon my location, yet I was helpless against them. I felt them stream into me; worse, I felt them handing over their power, freely, as though it were a gift…

This frightened me. But luckily some force took me away, and then I was lying under the trees behind the Hogan house, sprawled in the dirt, my arm bleeding.

I opened my eyes and moaned, but was whisked away again, this time given a glimpse of myself lying face down on the sidewalk in the city, blood oozing out of my arm, a shocked group of civilians standing around me.

Then sirens, visibar lights, boots stomping and someone giving orders; a gurney ride, an ambulance, then white walls, white coats, white doctors and nurses.

The next memory I have is of Detective Browning standing hunched beside my hospital bed, questioning me about my experience in the Mintano Wilderness. I told him everything. And he looked at me like I was nutso, but said he would be the one handling my case, so not to worry. He would check things out. Meanwhile, take care of myself.

As he turned and vanished through the doorway, replaced by a dutiful nurse, I let my eyes sink closed, let my heart follow, and then descended into a deep, deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

About a month or so after things died down, I was able to leave the hospital and return to my job and my office. Maria Hogan stopped by to see me. She apologized for getting me involved in this mess, and said she hoped I wouldn’t wind up like her son.

I assured her I wouldn’t.

She seemed very happy that I too had experienced whatever it was that lurked behind her house; said it made her feel less crazy. Nonetheless, she said she and her husband were planning on moving soon. I told her that was a good idea.

She offered to pay me more money, even though I hadn’t necessarily satisfied her or conclusively solved her son’s case. I had satisfied some things. My missing arm was testament to that.

I accepted the money without hesitation.

* * *

The police, led by Detective Browning and backed by Chief Deputy District Attorney Howels Wates, combed the Mintano Wilderness repeatedly, exhausting a ton of resources, but they never found the hidden cabin. They never found The Amputator, either. Because of this, my credibility as a professional—hell, as a sane human being—went down the tubes. People gradually stopped talking to me, stopped seeking me out. I lost my law enforcement contacts.

That wasn’t the only reason I resigned from P.I. work, but it added to the load. There were, of course, other pressures… spirit pressures.

I closed down my office, packed my things, and retreated to my apartment. Several months later I came on at the Department of Motor Vehicles and have been there ever since.

At the start of this I spoke of needing safety after my experiences. Well, there’s more to it than that. My dreams have become increasingly nightmarish since waking up in the hospital, and recently The Amputator himself has been showing up. He looms in a whirlwind of spirits, and he tells me how proud he is of me and our experiment; how it was a total success, a total victory for modern science. That’s why I didn’t end up crazy like the kid. The spirits will soon enter into my reality, he says, and begin transferring their power into the physical world, at which point he will come and find me to collect his due. I always wake from these dreams in a cold panic, covered in sweat.

And they are getting worse. I can barely sleep some nights. I can’t go on this way. I hate to imagine encountering The Amputator again, but it may be my only hope. Perhaps if I save up the money to acquire that prosthetic limb, the reconfiguration of my body will serve as a means of severing our connection. Although I fear I may need to trek back out to that wilderness again, find the cabin myself, and burn it to the ground.

Something must be done. I must find a way to end these nightmares. Because until I do, the name of that terrible unknowable entity will remain etched on the fabric of my unconscious dream world, as it was once etched fleetingly, supernaturally, and indescribably on the inside of my bedroom wall…

The Amputator

THE GRAFFITI GHOSTS

Saturday the 11th was a haunted morning. Malique knew it was haunted because it marked the one-year anniversary of Toby Wilson’s disappearance. Before he went missing, Toby Wilson (a year older than Malique) had attended Canarsie High School. Now Toby was one of the Graffiti Ghosts, and the only class he attended was Spook 101.

The morning was exceptionally cold, and Malique shivered. His Rocawear jacket and matching beanie offered little protection against the freezing air. He was on the stoop of Building H, gazing over the grass through a sheen of mist toward the harbor. He could hear seagulls over there, but he couldn’t see the ocean because the haze was too thick.

It seemed like every other month there was one of these anniversaries. Kids went missing all the time in Brooklyn, and no one paid much attention, unless of course it was the kid’s family. The missing ones faded into the tide of milk carton ads and telephone pole fliers; there for a week or two, then gone. Once and a while the family papered the streets with the kid’s face but it never amounted to much: just more crumpled trash along the roadways.

But Malique remembered.

… Sandy Mayer on June 28th; Russell Bradley on Oct. 10th; Harriot Swanson on November 14th; Leroy Browning on May 3rd; Glinesha Meadows on August 8th; Teddy Smith on April 19th; Terrell Willow on May 2nd; Jamal James on November 22nd… and Toby Wilson on December 11th.

The names went through his head as he lay awake at night, but each time a date passed he acknowledged it, and he’d been doing it since he was seven years old. Today was the 11th, which meant Toby would be making his way to the surface soon.

Suddenly he wondered if his mama was awake. She had slept with one of her boyfriends last night. Darruis was this one’s name. Whenever she had a man over she usually didn’t get out of bed until noon. It was probably just as well that Malique had left the house when he did. His presence wasn’t appreciated.

He sighed and got to his feet as sunrays started to pierce the lingering mist. They stained the redbrick buildings of Bayside Projects the color of polished gold.

He caught a glimpse of the boy in his periphery.

Naked. Sleek. Shadow-like.

Malique followed him.

He made his way around Building J to where a large grass square had been enclosed within a wrought-iron fence. A tall maple tree sprouted up from the center. Toby was doing circles around the trunk.

Malique watched for a while. For some reason, the ghosts never had clothes on. This used to make him uncomfortable, but over time he’d gotten used to it. It actually made sense. Clothes didn’t die when people did.

With one hand touching the trunk, Toby dragged his fingers around as he went. He was bald with little brown eyes and white teeth. Apart from his nakedness, there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. He could’ve passed for any neighborhood boy.

Malique approached the wrought iron fence and stood with his hands on the bars. “Psst, Toby!” he whispered.

The boy looked at him. A car went by on Flatbush Avenue, blaring its horn. The ghost waved and signaled Malique to follow. He glided over the grass, through the bars, then vanished around another building.

They reached the westernmost edge of the projects. The oldest building of all, Building L, was located here. L was condemned, uninhabitable, and an ugly reminder of Bayside’s squalid past. No one had lived in L for years.

Except ghosts.

Malique hung behind and allowed Toby to enter through the secret space in the boarded-up doorway.

Building L was all ruin and rain rot, windows nailed shut, walls crumbling. The kids were told to keep away because once a brick had fallen from the roof and brained an old woman. That roof was a saw-toothed nightmare with crumpled chain-link fence spanning its edges.

The facade of Building L was covered in graffiti almost all the way up. A storm of multicolored paint that looked dazzling in the emerging sunlight, like a ghetto work of art.

Malique sprinted across the grass, pausing before the barricaded doors. He was about to enter when a hand grasped his shoulder.

“Look-y what we got here.”

His heart raced. He shot a glance around. Tike and Tio, the twin brothers who lived in Building D and who were a few grades ahead of Malique, stood there, faces fixed into self-satisfied sneers. Gold jewelry and black baseball caps dangled off of them, their thin bodies lost in the sea of loose clothing.

They were notorious troublemakers. Their father had died during an attempted robbery when they were five or six, and they’d been living with their mother in the same place ever since. She was a crack addict who could occasionally be seen stumbling up and down the street at three in the morning, barefoot, and smoking a cigarette. Not much hope was held for her sons. Their wild behavior came as no surprise to the residents of Bayside Projects.

Gold teeth shone from Tike’s mouth as he said, “What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you know little babies ain’t supposed to play around Building L?”

Malique wrestled himself free. “I ain’t no baby.”

“He went in there,” Tio said, pointing to the doors.

Tike took his attention away from Malique long enough to slug his brother in the arm. “I told you to quit that. You’re acting like a punk.”

“But I saw him.”

“Saw who?” Malique said.

Tike answered for him. “Bitch-face here thinks he saw that Wilson kid’s ghost going into the building. He’s full of shit.”

Malique’s blood went cold. “Really? You could see him?”

Tio met his eyes. It was a hard stare. “You saw him too, didn’t you?”

Malique, buckling under the intense pressure, nodded.

“I knew it!” Tio rushed past and peered through the dark space in the double doors.

“Where are you going?” Tike shouted.

“I’m going in. I wanna see if that spook is real.”

Despite the cold, Malique felt himself beginning to sweat. This is bad, he thought. If they go down there and see the cemetery, there’s no telling what they may do. They could cause some serious trouble.

He didn’t want anyone knowing about the secret graveyard. It was his slice of the world that nobody could take from him.

Tio suddenly vanished through the opening. Cursing, Tike followed. Malique had no choice. He had to make sure his cemetery was safe.

He knew the way better than they did, so he stayed back, watching. He could hear them tripping over debris, cursing, arguing with each other. Several times they stopped and Tio called out for Toby; other times they both called for Malique. But he stuck to the shadows and they never spotted him.

The air was so dark that Tike and Tio had to use their cell phones as flashlights as they made their way down the chipped concrete steps to the basement. Before long, the two brothers had located the hole in the west wall. They entered the vast high-ceilinged cavern, through which the sewage canal flowed on its way to the treatment center. Malique could hear them oohing and ahhing and complaining about the smell. He crouched in the shadows, waiting for them to cross over the rusty metal bridge. Then he went over.

They were close. It was just up ahead, past the cave rooms with rocks poking through the floors and ceiling, just through the two salt-covered pillars, then under the archway of slippery-looking limestone, finally down the last section of crumbling steps, where a crack had formed in the rock ceiling letting in a single shaft of filtered sunlight. It was once an entryway for the sewer workers, but was no longer used.

Malique decided it was time to reveal himself, so he stepped from the shadows into the sunlight.

Tike’s face became a mask of terror. “Yo, man, are you crazy?”

“I knew he was following us the whole time,” Tio said. “How come you didn’t say nuthin?”

Malique shrugged.

Tike struck him with a quick, straight jab in the shoulder, sending him back. “He didn’t say nuthin ’cause he’s a lil’ mama’s boy, always hiding under mama’s skirts.” He laughed and added, “Him and half the fools in Bayside.”

“At least she ain’t no crackhead,” he replied.

Tike’s eyes narrowed. Tio stepped beside him. Malique was cornered by a pair of jackals.

Tike sent another half-thrown fist into Malique’s shoulder, rocking his upper body. “You got somethin’ to say about my mama?”

Tio started punching his palm like an outfielder. Malique stayed quiet.

“That’s what I thought,” Tike said, giving him a last little push. “Punks like you s’pposed to be seen and not heard, or else they get socked up.”

The brothers turned in unison, and as they did their awareness of Malique seemed to wash away. They stepped through the jagged round hole punched in the limestone wall and entered the inner sanctum of the cemetery.

Malique stepped through, quiet, observant. He felt anxious, and he wanted to get this over with.

They don’t know anything, he told himself. They’re foolish and they think the world is one big joke, and it’s a bad joke, and they hate it. No wonder they want to destroy everything. They really don’t know any better.

He sat down on a chunk of old granite, making himself invisible. He was good at this. It’s what he did at home when his mom had her boyfriends over. He looked at the ghosts now, spread across the walls of the secret cemetery, outlined in paint. The graffiti seemed to swirl and churn: reds, yellows, blacks, blues, silvers, and greens, all mixed together.

He found it stunning, even though he didn’t know how it got there. Nobody knew about this place, and he’d never seen any evidence of taggers. It was like the ghosts themselves had done it, had made murals of themselves. The missing kids were depicted with striking realism, their black faces staring out from the walls.

Tike said, “Yo, man, what is this shit?”

Malique thought he meant the graffiti images of the missing children, but he looked at the boy and realized he meant the improvised gravestones. Malique had made them out of milk cartons, discarded brown sacks, fast food containers, empty bottles, and scraps of newspaper. He personalized each to fit the missing kids, had even set it in a “plot” and written the child’s name, along with the date.

There were dozens of these jury-rigged graves scattered across the ground, ringed by the walls, where the graffiti ghosts stood frozen in time. This was their shrine. Malique had built it for them, he had blessed the area, consecrated it, and now everything was holy. To disrespect the sacred cemetery was sacrilege.

“It’s a place where the dead rest,” Malique replied, “without being forgotten.”

The walls suddenly began to creak and swell. Showers of rock piddled to the floor. The graffiti came swirling to life, moving along the concrete like multicolored serpents.

“I told you I saw the dead kid!” Tio wailed. “This place is haunted!”

Tike was looking, not at the supernatural phenomena around him, but directly at Malique, wearing an expression of pure hatred. “You’re a freak,” he said. “Aren’t you? Like that kid from The Sixth Sense.”

“You’d better leave,” Malique replied.

“You’re going to tell me what to do? I don’t think so. Let me show you what I think about your freak-o shit.”

He moved to the nearest headstone, a McDonald’s bag filled with sand, ringed by several Coke cans with candles, and the name Jamal James written in black magic marker. He kicked it to ruins with his Nikes, scattering the sand.

When he finished, he looked at Malique. “You see? You ain’t nuthin special. You sure as hell can’t tell me what to do.”

He stepped to the next headstone, ready to kick it apart, but the walls of the chamber rumbled and groaned, and the graffiti swirled like an ocean tempest.

“Stop it,” Malique said, rising to his feet. There was a horrible ache in his chest, a feeling of dreadful anger. “Just get out of here. We didn’t do anything to you.”

Tio nodded. “He’s right, man, let’s go.”

Tike chuckled. “If you come near me, boy,” he said. “I’ll make you sorry.” He stared him down with cruel, emotionless eyes, and Malique shrank into his Rocawear jacket, backing away.

Tike swatted his brother. “And you. You’re gonna help me with this. I don’t want to hear any more of your bitch-talk about ghosts, got it?”

Tio nodded.

“Good. Let’s get this party started.”

He brought his foot down on Sandy Mayer’s Budweiser box headstone, flattening it and kicking it aside. Tio approached the headstone nearest him, which belonged to Terrell Willow. It was a collection of empty beer bottles wrapped together with a shoelace. A piece of old cardstock bearing the boy’s initials was balanced between the bottlenecks.

Tio closed his eyes, scattering the bottles like bowling pins. Broken glass flung across the floor. Tike glanced at his brother, pleased.

They went at it together, destroying everything in sight. The chamber echoed with sound. Malique cowered in the corner, hands over his ears. That feeling of anger and dread was growing inside him. He wanted to make them stop, to try and salvage his shrine, his wonderful creations, but he felt paralyzed. He was too scared. He wanted to disappear, to become invisible.

His eyes drifted to the walls where the coiling ropes of graffiti seemed almost to reach out to him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whimpered, snot bubbles forming in his nose.

The brothers moved in a line toward the rear of the chamber, kicking apart the headstones as they went. The floor was littered with debris. Some of it lay glittering in the sunlight.

They came to the final row, set up along the back wall, and stopped. Tio pointed. “Look, here’s that Toby kid’s grave.”

They stood looking at the empty pizza box with the flap up, the assortment of pennies, dimes, and nickels sprinkled inside. Their awareness moved up the wall, to the graffiti image of the missing boy. Toby was wearing the red shirt and blue jeans he went missing in. Lines of color moved above his head, swimming, swirling. His eyes, two white holes with brown dots, gazed down condemningly.

Tike lifted his right hand… and gave the image his middle finger. Then he bent over the empty pizza box, unzipped his fly, and urinated.

Tio stumbled back. “You almost got piss on me!”

Tike looked back over his shoulder, to where Malique was hunched in the shadows. “This is what I think about your cemetery,” he said, laughing.

But Malique paid him no attention. His eyes were watching the image of Toby which now appeared to be growing, swelling, pressing out of the wall. Tio noticed it and he screamed, but it was too late. Toby’s ghostly image had come forth into reality, naked and sleek, a shimmering outline of paint and fuzziness. The image hovered above the ground.

Tike turned, coming face-to-face with the apparition. The stream of urine coming from his midsection piddled out; he absently zipped himself up and stumbled back.

“I told you this was a bad idea!” Tio yelled, as they raced toward the entrance. A swirling wall of graffiti moved before the opening, blocking their escape. More graffiti fanned out above their heads, hanging in the air.

The brothers panicked, spun in circles, yelling at each other. Malique looked on from the shadows and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The ghosts are standing up for themselves, he thought, smiling. They’re making sure they won’t be forgotten.

The other missing kids came forth from the walls, all naked, all gliding through the air, and surrounded the brothers. They closed in on them, bearing tides of paint, wrapping them up. They were being swallowed. The graffiti was taking them out of this world, subtracting them.

“Hey, little freak-o!”

It was Tike. He sounded different, frightened, more childlike.

“Help us, call them off—please, do something!”

Malique didn’t budge. He stayed right where he was, watching while the missing kids and the swirling graffiti closed over the brothers’ heads. The graffiti ghosts merged with the paint, until there was only one giant throbbing mass of color pressing the boys tighter in a strange multicolored dome.

Malique shut his eyes as Tike and Tio started to scream.

When he opened them, the chamber was back to normal. The graffiti swirls were back on the walls; the images of the missing children were back in place, affixed to the pitted concrete. A strew of rubbish and debris (formerly the headstones) lay scattered across the floor.

Tike and Tio were gone.

But that wasn’t true… not exactly. As Malique rose to his feet, he noticed a pair of new images on the wall. A shiver passed over him, and his arm hair stood up.

Jesus Christ, it’s really them.

Painted on the concrete, realistically depicted and lavishly colored, were Tike and Tio as they had appeared a moment ago. They wore the same clothes, and their faces looked out sadly.

Malique suddenly pitied them. He sighed. They had gone on to join the other missing kids, never to return.

He shook his head. Now they’ll be forgotten, too, just like all the rest.

He glanced at the dust and debris littering the floor.

Unless I do something about it.

A wave of resolve swelled in his heart. He gave a little salute to the graffiti images of Tike and Tio, then bent and started gathering the remains of the headstones. He had a lot of work ahead of him.

What Lay East, Lay West

He’d been riding for several days when the grass, the stones, even the snake trails in the dirt and the cacti and the thorn bushes, the mesquite trees and the flowering Palo Verde—even the clouds in the sky and the blazing sun—everything pointed in one direction: east. Farther away from his wife and children, from the house he had built with his own two hands, from his role as the county sheriff. He had left all of it… and now the desert seemed to be pushing him onward—

Get away, cried every stone, every gulch, every looming saguaro. Leave it all behind.

But that was his way—to coast. He’d coasted out of his parents’ house at eighteen to go and work on the new railroad line. He coasted into his marriage with Isabel, coasted into having two baby girls (beautiful though they were), and into his law enforcement position.

Then it had hit him: the emptiness and meaninglessness of his life and everything in it. That’s when the voices started, the Get outs, Go nows, and Leave it all behinds.

He had tried ignoring the voices, but if there’s one thing he wasn’t, it was master over his own thoughts. He was driven into heated arguments with Isabel. Yeah, sure, and he even laid his hands on the little ones, and he roughed up a couple of fellas coming out of the saloon one night.

I think the town wants to hate me, he thought morosely. They want a scapegoat, someone to throw stones at—the fools, after all I did for em. I upheld the law. I chased out that group of Apaches when they rolled into town. I cleared out the burly wayfarers who done raped several of the whores…

He patted Fancy on the flank of her neck, then nudged her in the ribs with his boots. They started down the trail again. Sun stained the world and soaked him through with sweat. A granite landscape stretched in four directions. Not for the first time, he wished a hole to Hell would open in front of him so he could hurl himself down. If he could end this, there’d be no reason to travel east.

There’d be no reason to do anything.

* * *

Night.

He was good with fires. His father had taught him how to survive in the desert. They used to go on trips into the canyon when he was still a boy so they could sleep under the stars. Nothing but the two of them then.

The flames tore at the night like exotic dragons dancing for some pagan Oriental god. He watched them, throwing on a fresh branch every so often. The rocks he’d set up around the outer rim steadily collected ash. Fancy was tied to a juniper tree, sleeping.

He wondered if Isabel had realized he was gone by now. That was stupid; of course she had. He hadn’t come home for supper, and when was the last time he’d been absent at the dinner table? He was watching the smoke from his fire now, and which way did it drift? Why, no such way but east. Flames… like little orange arrows, pointing, pointing.

What lay east?

Meaning.

The whole desert seemed to transmit it.

He lay on his back in the sand, using his rucksack for a pillow. In no time he had fallen asleep.

* * *

Dreams were funny things. Couldn’t be trusted. However, he knew the Indians made a big deal of them. He remembered that time driving the Apaches out and listening to their medicine man talk about prophecy and spirits and dreams. Little Brown Jonathon from the general store had translated. Jonathon said the medicine man was there because the Apache chief—a larger fella on a pure bred—had dreamed about their town. In the dreams, his ancestors had instructed him to come.

At the time he thought it funny, all the talking about dreams; queer was the word he used. But now he thought maybe the Apaches were on to something, looking for the symbols in dreams to find answers, maybe even guidance. It made more sense to him now because wasn’t he going into the east based on pure intuition, pure hope, and wasn’t he always observing the signs in the desert?

Was he crazy?

He dreamed…

* * *

The world was made of fire and ice, spinning like a giant blue wheel in space, surrounded by the stars, the planets, and the sun. People like broken marionettes moved over the face of the Earth, arms linked, so many of them and it was clear they were involved in some task. The globe, meanwhile, churned in this infinite darkness, propelled round and round by the vile broken marionette-like people.

He spun this way and that, viewing it from all angles, until he realized they were rowing, as a team of oarsmen in the belly of a ship, and the Earth was their vessel and stretching from the twin points of infinity flowed a red river filled with blood, misery, and pain.

He recognized this as the river of suffering in which all unborn life was steeped, and out of it grew the beings who rowed the Earth like a ship. He looked closer and saw that flowers and plants, trees, bushes and vines sprouted up from the river, roots buried in the undulating waves. It made no sense to him, but it appeared that all life was brought forth from this river, this channel of blood and misery.

He wept silently hanging invisible in the unknown darkness. Sometime later the light of morning spurned his consciousness back to life.

* * *

The fire had died down, nothing but smoldering coals now. The sun was low but the temperature was rising.

After a quick meal of beans and bread and a quick toilet, he mounted Fancy and pointed her snout toward the mountains.

For some time he observed the phenomenon of everything pointing east. The saguaros extended spiny fingers; barrel cactuses grew diagonally out of the ground, crowns pointing aslant; plenty of those mysterious snake trails formed into arrows; even the rocks jutting up seemed to lean that way, and the wind, too, blew at his back, hurrying him along.

He stopped and peered as a scuttling monstrosity moved across the trail. He felt sure it was a mirage or a hallucination, but it got closer and closer and refused to go away. It emitted an irritating wheeze of labor as it crawled along the sand like some kind of crustacean. He didn’t see a head or even a visible torso, only limbs and clothes and boots, and finally it stopped a ways off as if sensing his approach. It was a kind of person-thing, horribly deformed and hunchbacked, with too many arms and legs and dressed rather strangely in oil cloths and rags.

He reined in Fancy and they both stood silently, one across from the other, the desert between them.

Is this real? he wondered.

Then another crazy idea: that he had never actually left his wife and kids, that he’d only been killed or some other tragedy, and that this was his journey through the Spirit World.

But what is real?

He suddenly remembered something the Apache medicine man had said that time they’d rolled into town. He had looked right at Little Brown Jonathon, speaking emphatically, and Little Brown Jonathon had translated his words as—We come because the spirits want us to come. You think this is your town, but it is not your town, neither is it your desert, but it is their desert, their town, and someday you will know this.

At the time, he had written this off as savagery, as ignorant superstition, but now with the desert bending eastward with him and the appearance of the bizarre creature standing across from him in the sand, there could be no doubting his words.

The question repeated itself:

What is real?

The bizarre apparition—undoubtedly a mirage, but wait no…—scuttled forward on its many legs, which were all bent slightly at the knees, kicking up a cloud of dust, and it began to wheeze again. But he couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from—for there was no chest, no lungs, no head. The thing came closer then, passed right beside him. Its arms, brackish-colored like water in an old pond, waved in the air, and its fingers curled and gesticulated, making curious signs and symbols, tracing patterns, and sometimes trails of golden light followed in the wake of these fingers. Many, he noticed, where pointing east, and pointing frantically as if to say Something is coming.

He watched, his hand poised above the butt of his revolver, ready for anything, but it just kept swishing and jerking until it had passed him. It scampered away and soon was gone. Eventually he rode on.

* * *

That night he built another fire, and he ate, and this time he didn’t bother tying Fancy to a tree. He sat staring into the flames, thinking about the red river bending through space and linking up with the cosmos at either end.

A shadowy figure emerged from the dark and sat opposite him.

“You come to a bad place,” the figure said. His voice was gravelly, but recognizable.

Indian. Apache.

He continued, “Bad spirits dwell here, bad spirits suffering and wandering and hungering for food—food like you and I eat—but where they are there is no food, no happiness, no sleep, not even words. They are lost, you see, and they want to get back to this world.”

To this he had no reply, nor did he really care to respond, for doing so seemed to validate the presence of the other, to confirm it, and if he ignored it then maybe it would stay a fake, and then it would go away and leave him alone.

“You are already in dream daze,” the figure said. “They are working on you. Why did you come, I wonder? But it does not matter. You are white man, and white man knows nothing of the Spirit World. White man sees only his machines and his sciences and his books. This is sad. This is why you can be influenced so easily. Because you do not know.”

“Go away,” he said.

The Indian chuckled. “I will go. I can fold into the sand like a snake. I can lift into the sky like a bird. Did you know that if you extend a line outward from yourself to infinity, it will come back and meet up again from behind you? That is because infinity is circular. So which way do you head? East? I can only tell you that east is also west. There is no end, and there was no beginning.”

He rose suddenly, pointing a finger across the fire. As he turned to leave, the flames threw light on his appearance. Gasping, he recognized the Indian as the Apache medicine man who had spoken to Little Brown Jonathon that day in town.

The medicine man glared at him before vanishing into the night.

* * *

He figured he’d been traveling for almost a week. He was still doing good on food, water, and provisions, but he would need to find a town soon. He wished he had brought along the map he kept in his desk in the study, but he had been so out of it when he left that it never crossed his mind. He hadn’t come across a single person yet, either, aside from the medicine man—and of course… that spirit.

He noticed a series of lines in the sand and halted Fancy. He sat atop the steed with the sunlight slanting at his back. It was a curious configuration of lines and shapes, drawn with what appeared to be a stick or a sharp-edged instrument. Their chaotic arrangement had no noticeable ordering and was instead scattered across the sand in horrible disarray, looking like something a child would draw.

He dismounted and walked among the lines and shapes, careful not to disturb them. In some he did notice a careful, almost painstaking pattern—if not a pattern then a deliberateness that was dreamlike, in a sense not really there, yet it was there.

Several rock piles were stacked neatly here and there, some in circles, others in triangular formations. They were spread among the gouged lines, in a way keeping them contained and also indicating a kind of perimeter.

He came across the most striking rock formation somewhere near the center of the lines. Four large piles were set into a square with smaller piles forming concentric rings inside the square. The smallest circle was formed by six stones. Inside that lay a photograph.

He bent to retrieve it and although he was aware of his disturbing the exact order (chaotic though it was) of the ritual site, he had to have a look. In the crumbling yellow frame, cast in monochromes of black and white, he saw Isabel and his two girls looking out.

But that cannot be…

In the photograph sat Isabel in a fine flowing white dress wearing her favorite hat and the two little ones (although not so little now) standing to either side of her in similar dresses and then, shockingly, standing just behind her with a hand on her shoulder, was some older gentleman wearing a suit and tie, not a cowboy either, but a university type.

Isabel and the girls looked older, then it hit him that the other man was her new husband. Then he even recognized him. He was Mayor Fronton’s youngest cousin who had come to town recently from New York City. He’d been given a place in the mayor’s cabinet, and his name was Ralph Fronton or something or other, and he’d only met the man once or twice—but as he stared into the photograph, paying close attention to Ralph’s hand placed intimately upon Isabel’s shoulder, he knew the truth.

He thought about that morning a week ago when he had packed his things without telling a soul and then slipped out of town like a shadow. Could Isabel have remarried so soon after his departure?

Maybe several years have passed…

This thought made him sick to his stomach. Casting the photograph back down, where it landed gently among the rocks, he turned his back on the scene and mounted Fancy again, and then passed by the great effacement of lines and rocks marring the desert and continued along his way, heading east.

* * *

Throughout the days he made steady progress across the miles of rocky terrain, up and down mountainous stretches, plunging through craggy ravines and over blistering stretches of sand and desert. The sun seemed to grow hotter each time it took to the sky. He discovered a number of streams trickling down from the mountains, which the parched earth sucked dry almost as quickly as they entered the desert. But Fancy drank her fill and he was able to replenish his canteen. It was quite disorienting to experience these watery veins gouged into the rough hard sand that always surrounded them, for it was like seeing the earth exposed. And he thought of the Sacrifices of Christ and the Eucharist, things he’d heard the pastor speak about, and he imagined the water flowing through the earth as the blood flowing down Christ’s arms on the cross.

He drifted further and further into what he believed was delirium. He saw no one. There was only himself, his mind, and the brilliance of the atmosphere. He tried speaking to Fancy as though she were another human being, but this fell short.

You come to bad place.

The medicine man.

White man sees only his machines and his sciences and his books. This is sad. This is why you can be influenced so easily. Because you do not know.

None of this did him any good—his thoughts did him no good. He was losing faith in thinking, and gradually this non-thinking ate away at his mind, dissolving it. He was then left with his automatic tasks: riding, fire-building, collecting water, staying hydrated, watching the desert for signs. He became conscious of the penetration of his thinking into the desert environment through which he rode. Before long, he was irretrievably lost.

* * *

The night he saw the lights in the sky was the night everything came to an end. He had set up and built a fire on the edge of a windswept bluff. He had gathered dried mesquite and stacked it into a pile beside his fire pit.

Fancy had wandered off into the desert—which she had done before but always returned, come morning—yet this time he was aware that she mightn’t return. The degree of confusion and absorption taking place was so high that he felt certain it could go no further. Since becoming aware of this great truth, he knew Fancy must also be aware, for he and the horse were now one and the same.

What had appeared in the sky was so mesmerizing, so awe-inspiring and so severe that he couldn’t possibly go back to his old way of riding, fire-building, and water-collecting. It occurred to him suddenly as he glanced around that at last all things had ceased to point east, that now they pointed in a new direction, toward the sky where the lights and cosmic phenomena had appeared.

He had come as far east as he could travel, and the desert would yield no further passage, for off the edge of this bluff dropped a sheer cliff wall of hundreds of feet. The lines of gold, like sunrays darkly illuminated, scored the heavens, arcing to and fro in a dizzying array of celestial splendor. He had witnessed several expanding bluish explosions, great round rings of color arcing outward from a single point like rings on the surface of a lake. Interweaving through those rings and sunrays dove a fiery red comet, a blazing hot missile carving up the night.

This he paid close attention to, for whenever it hovered in place momentarily, instantly it seemed to spring again into erratic flight. With each upward-downward corkscrewing movement, it appeared to get closer to the surface of the Earth.

Eventually it grew so large in the sky that little else could be seen, and then it resembled a tunnel or an opening, bright red and spinning, and it was accompanied by a sound, the harsh titter of steel rubbing on steel. The blooming cosmic bouquet above him, spreading dreamy petals in a fanning display, yawned toward the edge of the bluff, screeching and tittering and buzzing. There it set down in the sand and he found himself standing before an upward-slanting causeway to the heavens.

Beside him, the fire went out.

He felt pulled—roundup was the term that came to mind, the way cattle were done—and soon he was floating forward on a curtain of air into the throbbing red tunnel. His body suspended mid-flight, his feet dangling, his arms outspread and his head thrown back. He was carried toward a pinpoint of color, a little gouge in the fabric of the world, whence the red beam originated. He tried to think but there was no thinking and so he was carried dumbly into the center of that pinpoint, growing smaller, until the universe closed around him.

Heaving, he turned himself back in the direction from which he had come. What he saw crystalized his vision, and somewhere deep within he felt the wailing of his own suffering, his own meaningless existence, and it unfurled upward from his stomach, spreading through his limbs like growing vines which bore fruit and flowers, and even though he couldn’t recall the where and when he knew the familiarity of the vision. With eyes melting and mouth mute he howled tonguelessly at the horror grinding its tall mono-wheel across the cosmos.

There was the river, vast and red, flowing from end to end and filling up the universe with its bubbling waters of pain and suffering, sprouting florae unfettered in groping knots of vine and bush, sagging stalks balancing wide leaves and tapering petals, huge blooms of foliage like ferns, and within this jungle madness lay the thumping heart of the river—a beating, pulsating dimness.

Dead center, floating in the bubbling red waves, spun the Earth, a globe of colors: whites, blues, greens—and ringing the cylindrical crust was a host of shattered humans like marionettes, broken and despairing, and each being held an oar and each rowed time and time again, never in any particular fashion, and never any faster or slower than the rest, and the Earth spun round and round like a top.

He accepted his fate and felt himself drawn back down, back toward the Earth. He tried to find something recognizable (he remembered a good deal about a desert) but only the intensity of his vision remained. His hands found oars, giant flesh-things unlike any normal oars—and then they were even attached to his elbows. This last little mindplay, God’s final sardonic ruse, and then those strings of sanity to which he clung so passionately snapped and went reeling into the darkness.

He experienced only his non-thinking now, and yet he knew what he had to do. As he fell into place with all the rest, picking up the delirious motions with graceful ease, he rowed his oars mightily, and he heaved, and he pulled the Earth along on its great circuit of infinity. He soon found himself laughing. His oar-arms pumped up and down and he laughed even more, and it was not an amiable laugh, but the hysterical laughter of a madman.

* * *

For a long time he lay facing east, which was also west, observing again and again the births and deaths of the great sun, until his bones had dried and his skin had turned black… soon there was nothing left of him but sand.

GOLDEN DOORS TO A GOLDEN AGE

Thomas had been complaining since he’d joined them back in Boston. Short, bald, fat, four-eyed fuck that he was. He claimed to be an esteemed mathematics professor from… somewhere.

“I need the inhaler again,” he was saying. “I’m having trouble.” He took a deep breath, the wheeze rattling his chest.

Ron kept charge over the inhaler. He had found it lying in the road a few hundred miles back—a small blue disc with the word Advair written on the side.

“You just used it an hour ago,” he said.

Ron the philosopher. Ron the reader. Even now, during this time when nothing seemed to matter, he was devouring a collection of Russian short stories as he walked, occasionally peering over the top of his book. And still all of his academic learning didn’t matter out here on the road, where everybody was equal.

“The dose is supposed to last twelve hours,” he added.

“But I’m dying,” Thomas complained.

Ron sighed. “Wait a while, see if it kicks in.” He was older than the rest, the oldest in fact at sixty-five, but his age did not show. He had a lightness about him, and something of a carefree attitude. His skin was smooth, bronze colored, and almost entirely free of wrinkles. He still had a patch of brown hair on his blockish head—and if anything he appeared twenty years the junior of Thomas, who was in his fifties.

Elaine supposed things like beauty (which she still possessed), and hair color (hers being blond), and youth (which fled her in 2010 when she turned forty) didn’t seem to matter anymore. Aestheticism had gone out the window that morning in December when the sun rose on a world suddenly darkened by cosmic chaos. Nothing, nothing at all really, seemed to hold much beauty anymore.

Except Diana.

She looked at the woman. In the beginning it had been the two of them, the two girls. The men came later. That initial year, the most trying year, they were two frightened women looking out for one another, sharing each other’s hurts and pains.

“I can breathe fine and I had a hit same time he did… same time we all did,” Diana said. She turned to Elaine. “He may be twenty years older than me, but I don’t care. No senior citizen discounts on this trip.”

Elaine laughed, but her insides were melting. She felt them crumble apart, and then grow back together. Whenever she was drawn to Diana, drawn to her romantically—whenever she felt attracted to her—this happened. A combination of sexual excitement, romantic longing, and moral shame. It was strange to experience all three at once. It felt like her soul was shattering.

“If he’d shut up for five minutes,” Diana continued, “instead of being a windbag, it might let him breathe easier.”

“You should tell him that,” Elaine said.

Diana took her hand, yet her immediate reaction, in spite of all that had happened, was to shy away.

In Leviticus 20:13, the Bible states: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death…” The voice of her father, the pastor, condemned her even after his death. An absurd string of questions ran through her mind—Does loving Diana tarnish my reputation as a religious scholar? Have I committed career suicide? What about my eternal soul?

She pushed the questions from her mind and clasped Diana’s hand tighter. Her lover smiled, and she thought to herself, Some things are just meant to be.

* * *

By nightfall they were near the Michigan/Canada border. They had built a fire by the side of the road in a ditch beneath some decaying oaks. Normally it would be impossible to camp outside this time of year without freezing, but since the earth went haywire, the weather was anything but normal.

Thomas had stopped complaining about his breathing. The inhaler had finally kicked in, but it wouldn’t last. Elaine knew this as she sat alone with her back to the fire, gazing up at the sky. Green gaseous clouds, vividly colored like something from a Dr. Seuss book, moved over the countryside. Breathing had become increasingly difficult. People were dying because of it. If you couldn’t get your hands on a gas mask or one of the remaining inhalers, you were shit out of luck.

She was thinking about the Golden Doors. That was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about lately. The towns they passed through with their crumbling buildings, trash pile mountains, and fissure-spilt asphalt, had boasted handfuls of these neurotic, doomsayer types, lecturing to no one in particular about the mystery of the Golden Doors.

Elaine recalled a short and shriveled hag of a woman back in Philadelphia who stood on a park bench, dressed in trash bags, gray hair poking up, eyes feverish and wild. They sprang up all over the globe, she had said. Folks wanna say it ain’t true, that the Golden Doors are a myth, but I’ve seen one. I looked into its shimmering depths and I nearly went mad.

“What’d you see?” asked someone from the crowd.

But the hag had never answered; she only grinned mischievously.

Thousands were moving across the forty-eight states into major cities, spreading word of these Golden Doors, claiming firsthand experience. Many had embarked on pilgrimages in search of them. Elaine’s group, consisting of herself, Diana, Thomas, and Ron, were on this same quest.

She got to her feet, brushing off the seat of her pants. Lights in the sky, green and fiery, churned above her head. Strange, red, silken beings swam through the cumuli as though it were an ocean, paying little attention to the world below.

She went to join the others by the fire. “It’s night and I’m tired,” she said, taking out her bedroll and throwing it over the ground. She put on her facemask and got curled up in the covers, facing the flames.

Diana unrolled her bedding beside Elaine. She got situated and began stroking her hair.

“I don’t know how they can sleep like that,” Tommy said. He sat across from them on the other side of the fire, smoking a cigarette. “Those facemasks are damn annoying. It’s easier if we just take another dose of the inhaler before turning in. Don’t you think?”

“Enough already,” Elaine grumbled. “I can sleep fine.”

“So can I,” Diana added.

“I as well,” said Ron.

Thomas got up, flicked his cigarette, and stalked into the nearby woods. He typically slept by himself, so this wasn’t a big surprise.

“That settles it, then,” Ron said, gazing into the fire. Orange flames clawed the night. He laid down his sleeping bag and within moments all were asleep.

* * *

Elaine awoke to a sound. She’d been having a nightmare about her son. She hadn’t seen Jamie since it happened, since the world locked up like a bad computer screen. He had been attending undergraduate classes at Princeton University, had been living on campus and was even studying law. But now Princeton University was a giant seething sandpit, a liquid desert stretching for miles, with horrifically large dolphin-like insects diving in and out of the sand. She had seen it with her own eyes, but found no sign of Jamie.

The sound was coming from the trees. They could hardly be called trees, looking more like witches being burned at the stake, ashen leaves dangling from skeletal limbs.

Elaine propped herself up. Diana was next to her, snoring into her facemask. Beyond the fire, which had died down to coals, Ron lay in his sleeping bag.

It came again, drifting through the crooked branches, permeating the air. She got up and stretched her back. Sleeping on the ground was always painful. She skirted Ron’s sleeping bag and headed into the woods.

It isn’t safe to travel this far from the highway. I’m asking for trouble. But that sound… it’s got to be Thomas. What the hell is he up to?

The gaseous clouds gave off a light all their own, sickly and green, like the underside of a pond. Nevertheless, night was still night, darkness still darkness, and she had trouble picking her way through the terrain.

Taloned branches clawed at her. The ground beneath was shot through with spidery roots and pointed rocks. She nearly tripped several times.

By now she recognized Thomas’s voice. He was speaking nervously, tensely… But to whom?

She came to a wall of tightly growing tree trunks and peered through a V-shaped opening. There was a clearing down there, situated at the bottom of a small depression. A bluish glow, like the light of a black-light, swam about. Thomas was there, his Mad Hatter’s voice climbing up the embankment. He was kneeling before something tall and black.

Panic gripped her. What in God’s name is he doing, playing with himself? She suffered a wave of nausea. Once it passed, she located a space in the trunks and made her way down.

“Thomas? Is everything all right?”

He didn’t answer. As she got closer, she saw he was naked. His clothes were piled beside his bedroll. She’d never known Thomas to go around in the nude. His personality was something to the contrary of that. The sight of his body disturbed her.

He’s lost it. He’s finally gone mad. People seem to be going mad all the time now. Like that hag back in Philadelphia, and that toothless man we saw in Tennessee who wore coke cans for eyeglasses, and the preacher in Boston who lined the highway with animal carcasses and set them ceremonially on fire.

“Thomas?”

She passed before the fire pit and the flames resembled black and blue construction paper cutouts. Instead of logs there were piles of shiny rocks that seemed to keep burning, painting the forest with their weird blue glow.

“What the fuck…,” she whispered. “Thomas, where’d you find these?”

She advanced toward him, seeing only his fat naked back, hearing only his mindless cries. When she recognized what he was kneeling before, her heart stopped, breath caught in her throat, and gooseflesh erupted on her arms.

No. It couldn’t be that.

The giant black door stood attached to nothing. The corners poked into the branches. The bottom disappeared into the dirt. Just like the doors being described in towns all across America. Shiny, metallic, freestanding—only this one was black instead of gold.

Thomas looked over his shoulder and grinned, face sweaty. His glasses were cracked in three places. His teeth stretched out like an accordion.

Elaine recoiled. He looks savage.

Suddenly he was on his feet, his fatty naked flesh sagging off the bones, breasts drooping, belly flabbish and swollen, body supported on bony chicken legs. His narrow phallus hung down like a corpse’s tongue.

“I found it,” he said. “A Golden Door. Me—I found it. Not you, not Diana. Not that hippy philosopher, Ron. The door chose me.”

Images of demons danced through Elaine’s mind, cut from all the religious books she had read during her life. She recalled sitting through her father’s sermons, hearing him preach hellfire and brimstone. His voice spoke in her head.

The rapture took place December 21, 2012, when Jesus called His flock home. He judged those who would be saved, and those who would be damned. Those who would be damned were left on the earth to suffer. Now tell me, Elaine, why were you not chosen? Is it because you have sinned against the Lord? Is it because you are a lesbian?

Thomas approached the door. “Aren’t you jealous? I’ll be the first to go through, the first to greet whatever’s on the other side.”

“Get away from there,” she said. “You’re crazy. It’s not even gold; it’s black. It’s a fraud, Thomas. It’s something else…”

He wagged his finger. “As usual, your religion is a trickster. I won’t be fooled by a forked tongue.” Then his face grew sad. “Nothing makes sense anymore—nothing in this goddam world makes sense!”

He was close to tears. His naked body trembled with emotion, and Elaine suddenly had an insight into the psychology of Thomas Miller. She understood how hard this change had been for him. She actually pitied the man.

He had reached the black door. He was standing with his hand on the doorknob. “On the other side, I’ll have all the inhalers I could want,” he said. Because of the fire his reflection had become visible in the shiny black surface of the door. He stood looking at it, even reached up to trace the outline of his face.

“Thomas, don’t.”

But already he was turning, opening, and he slipped through, closing the door behind him. A heavy silence followed.

Elaine approached the door. But just as her reflection began to take shape in the shadowy metal surface, it flew open, releasing a strong, forceful wind. It shook the trees, blew out the fire, pushed Elaine onto her back.

For a brief second she glimpsed infinite space through the opening. Stars burned. Planets rolled. A cosmic dust was mixing with multicolored clouds to create a vast foggy web, out of which sprang Thomas—wild, alien, savage—horrifically mutated, and coming straight at her through the dark…

She screamed and shot to her feet, but he was already upon her, his soft fleshy limbs and lizard’s tail groping around her neck, legs, and waist, pinning her down. He resembled something that was both human and reptile, yet not completely either.

“Get the fuck off me!” she screeched. She couldn’t stand the way he gripped her, the way his skin felt: slimy, prickly, and rough, like a crocodile.

She kicked at him and drove her knees into his chest. When she got one of her hands free, she brought her elbow down on what might’ve been the back of his head. Strands of drool oozed down on her, but his grip loosened and she managed to scramble out from under him. She tore up the embankment, into the trees.

She could hear him snapping branches behind her. The only illumination came from the gaseous clouds overhead, and their greenish aura filtered down through the canopy, staining the forest floor.

She caught sight of the campsite. With relief she recognized two figures standing to either side of the fire.

“Help!” she cried. “He’s coming after me—help!”

She flung herself into Ron’s arms and buried her face in his chest. She was sobbing. From the corner of her eye, she saw Diana standing with legs apart, raising a handgun.

“Is it Thomas?” she asked.

“No,” Elaine replied. “Not anymore.”

Then she closed her eyes, recoiling when the nine loud thunder-bursts echoed through the night. Finally she lifted her head and turned to face her lover. “Where the hell did you get that?”

Diana was about to say something but Ron answered for her. “I gave it to her. To carry, to keep charge over… to use if it became necessary.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want Thomas knowing. At the same time, I didn’t want all of us knowing about it except Thomas. Understand?”

She laughed at his explanation and shook her head. Then she was transferred to Diana’s arms. Ron took the gun and went to investigate the body.

* * *

When she awoke the next morning, curled in her sleeping bag, the fire was out. It looked like someone had been digging in the ashes. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Ron wasn’t where he usually was, but when she looked again she saw him coming out of the woods.

“What happened?” she asked. Diana stirred beside her.

He tossed something into the fire pit. Instantly, a thick black cloud wafted into the air. Elaine covered her nose and mouth.

When it cleared, she peered into the ashes. A rubbery hunk of bright green flesh lay on its side. She knew it was part of Thomas—well, part of what he’d become.

“I dragged his body into the trees,” Ron said. “Burned it.” He pointed to the line of smoke twisting toward the sky.

“Did you see the door?” Elaine asked.

He frowned. “What door?” Then his eyes widened. “A Golden Door?”

“Not a Golden Door. Something else. A black door.”

Diana sat up holding her sleeping bag. The nipples on her small breasts poked through the fabric of her shirt. She was looking at Elaine.

“Tell us,” Ron said.

Elaine sighed, then proceeded to tell them everything that had happened since last night. When she finished, she looked to Ron for validation. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”

Ron was in his thinking pose, stroking his chin. He said, “Every action in the universe has an equal but opposite reaction. I’d say that the Black Doors are a negative response to the Golden Doors. It’s reality’s way of balancing the scales. Good and evil, dark and light, life and death, hot and cold—that sort of thing.”

“What does it mean?” Diana asked.

Ron smiled. “It means we stay the hell away from Black Doors.” He bent and started packing up his things.

* * *

An hour later they were on the highway. Three now instead of four. The wooded hills to either side oscillated between green and gray, sometimes lush and alive, mostly ashen and dead.

Elaine spent a lot of her time looking at the sky. She’d made a habit of it. The greens, the reds, the oranges, clouds like cotton candy sweeping across the heavens. It wasn’t as it once had been: predictable. These days, anything could be up there.

After a while they stopped and sought refuge in one of the abandoned cars. Sitting in the cab gave their lungs a break from the noxious air. They ate stale bread and a can of baked beans Ron had been saving. Other travelers were moving down the highway. Elaine watched them out the passenger window.

“Now this,” Ron said, fishing out the Advair inhaler. He took a long, deep inhalation, then passed it to Elaine. She clicked back the tiny blue lever, sucked in the crystalline powder, and handed it to Diana. They waited fifteen minutes until the highway was clear, then continued on their way. They didn’t get very far.

“Intruder, three o’clock,” Ron hissed.

Elaine turned to see a figure running toward them through the grass. A male waving arms above his head, calling to get their attention.

They stopped. Ron suddenly wheeled toward Diana, thrusting the handgun down the front of her jeans. He yanked her shirt over it. “You seem to have the most luck with this.”

The thin brunette gave a solemn, militant nod.

“You there, travelers!” the man said, reaching the road, panting

and out of breath. “I have secret knowledge to grant you.”

Ron stepped forward. “What makes you think we want secret knowledge?”

The man knit his brows. He was leathery and grotesquely thin. His clothes were oily and they clung to his gaunt frame. He had long, wiry hair and a full beard, and his eyes displayed that haunted look so common in people now. “Everyone needs secret knowledge during the Galactic Alignment,” he said.

“What do you know of the Galactic Alignment?” Elaine asked, surprised. She’d only heard that term among the pseudoscience academics.

“Much,” he said, giving her a strange look. He tried taking their hands but they shook him off. Then he wheeled and headed into the grass, signaling them to follow. “Come on, friends, this way. The master is in the trees, by the door!” He turned, continuing into the forest.

“I don’t like it,” Diana said. She was fingering the gun handle through her shirt.

“But he claims there is a door,” Ron said. “It’s worth checking out.” He looked at Elaine. “You up for it?”

She nodded, and they moved off the highway.

* * *

A group of humans had gathered in the forest. Almost twenty in all. They, like the impish man, appeared dirty and poorly dressed. Many had curious black war paint smeared under their eyes.

At the front of the assemblage, perching atop a hacked tree stump, was a tiny gnarled man sporting a long gray beard. No more than five feet tall, he wore a billowy white robe and clutched a bamboo staff. His expression was calm and sagely.

A Black Door hovered in the branches at his rear.

Ron took one look and said, “That settles that,” and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Elaine said, stopping him. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

He sighed, but swung back around. “I already know what he’s going to say. He’s going to ask if we’ve accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts.”

The old man on the stump quieted the crowd by thumping his staff three times. Each face gazed up at him. “Time is no longer real,” he began. “At least not for us, not anymore. When the Maya Long Count Calendar reached its climax on December 21, 2012, reality as we knew it came to a grinding halt. The universe changed. Planet Earth was fixed into a certain alignment with the sun and the center of the Milky Way. We call this the Galactic Alignment.”

He paused. Those hooded eyes, frayed round the edges with bristling gray hair, seemed to take account of everyone in attendance. He wasn’t just looking at them: he was analyzing them.

He continued, “When the sun rose on December 21, 2012, the winter solstice, it rose on a new galactic configuration. The sun, our planet’s source of light and energy, had eclipsed us and blocked out the center of the Milky Way—the source of life-giving for our entire species. For the first time in history, we were cut off from that source. So, in essence, we were cut off from God.

“Once this happened, a series of significant changes occurred. First, the planet flipped end over end as the magnetic poles switched. This reversal made it so that all forms of electricity—as we were accustomed—became void. This defied the Laws of Science; there can be no accounting for it.”

“Now comes the Jesus part,” Ron said, elbowing Elaine. He was joking, of course. Pretty much the entire population had been exposed to an explanation in one form or another as to what had happened. Jesus was a popular one. Galactic Alignment was more obscure.

“The second significant change was the cessation of time,” he said. “This also defied rational science. When the Maya Long Count Calendar ended, the door to a new dimension—a timeless dimension—opened, and an incalculable number of persons passed through. For them—rather, for us—reality stood still.

“But for everyone else… reality went on as normal, except that now a percentage of the population had vanished. That would be Dimension A, or the normal dimension of space-time. The dimension we exist in, Dimension B, is outside of space-time.”

Ron grunted, stroking his chin. “That’s an interesting approach.”

“It’s like the Rapture,” Elaine said, prompting Diana to look at her. Diana hated when she mentioned Christian ideology. She had her own reasons for disliking it, namely its condemnation of homosexuality.

But Elaine was on to something. “Think about it,” she said. “If, on December 21, millions of people suddenly disappeared, then it would be just as the Bible predicted—the Rapture, God’s taking away of the saved.”

Ron grunted. “Yes but it remains to be determined who, in fact, are the raptured ones, and who are the damned. Both dimensions, arguably, could be considered hell on earth.”

The old man suddenly pointed at Elaine, his eyes burning into her. “You there. Who did you lose that day?”

She swallowed hard. Everyone was looking at her. “I lost my son, Jamie.”

He nodded, then put the same question to Diana. At first she didn’t answer, but at last she said, “Alonso, my husband.” Elaine noticed tears in her eyes.

The old man went around the crowd asking people to name who they had lost. There were so many. He finished by confessing that he had lost a daughter and a grandson on December 21.

He aimed his staff at the floating black door. “Which leads us to the phenomenon that has brought you all here. These Golden Doors we keep hearing about, what are they? Can anyone say for sure? What about these Black Doors?”

He chuckled; paused, as if thinking; then: “I, Bartholomew Radcliffe Elphinstones, stand here today claiming to know the answer, which I will share with all of you.”

A gasp swept through the crowd, but he silenced it with a wave of his staff. He said, “The doors—like the door that opened on December 21, 2012—are passageways between dimensions. The Black Doors lead to Hell for the soul, the pain of being, eternal suffering, a futile existence.”

“And the Golden Doors?” shouted someone.

“The Golden Doors lead to the Next Age—the Golden Age—the highest degree of human consciousness. They lead to paradise, the Garden of Eden, Heaven in the most profoundest sense of the word.”

“Which one leads to our old reality,” shouted another, “back to Dimension A?”

The old man gave a kooky, childlike grin… and shrugged his shoulders.

The crowd went berserk, and he was forced to thump his stick to regain order. When they had settled down, he summoned another man carrying a ladder. The ladder was set up in front of the Black Door.

“Come,” he said. “Who will be first to peer into the depths of human suffering?”

A number of hands shot up. A woman was selected and escorted to the front. Slowly, she started up the ladder.

“She can’t be allowed to do this,” Elaine said.

Diana reached down the front of her jeans to draw the gun, but Ron stayed her hand. “No. None of that.”

She gazed at him fiercely. “Why do they want to go through there? It’s suicide.”

“I do not think they’ll go through. They only want to have a look because they’re curious. Anyhow, it’s time for us to move along. We’ve seen enough.”

They turned as a unit, heading away from the crowd, out of the forest and through the tall grass. As they got back onto the highway an agonizing scream pierced the eerie calm and quickly died out.

Ron said merely, “Don’t look back; keep moving.”

And so they did.

* * *

They stopped in some small town to load up on supplies. They scored additional inhalers from a ratty young woman. All she wanted in return was for Ron to read to her from his book of English poetry and hold her in his arms for a while. She missed her father, she said. Ron happened to be his spitting image.

They crossed the Canadian border and continued north. Diana soon became a near-perfect shot with the pistol. Almost every day some psycho or nightmarish beast came running out of the trees. Diana could usually spot them a mile away and lay them flat with a single shot. Her precision helped conserve bullets.

Everywhere they went, people were talking about the Golden Doors. All claimed to have seen one, however none could disclose a location. Ron, Elaine, and Diana spent hours interrogating, interviewing, and listening to these folks. But they always came up empty-handed.

Then one day they met a man of Arab descent who spoke English and who looked quite out of place in a yellow cape, white fluffy pants, blue vest, and black turban. He was armed with a razor-sharp scimitar, which, sheathed in leather, lay flat against his thigh.

When they came upon him, he was lying off the side of the highway beside a fast food restaurant. He was dying. It was against their normal behavior, but Diana, who sympathized with ethnic peoples, persuaded Ron to give the man a dose from the inhaler. The medicine fixed him right up and in no time he was breathing normally.

He thanked them, introducing himself as Ahmed. He had once been an exchange student from Saudi Arabia, attending the university in Montreal, but now he wandered the dying forests like a nomad.

When they told him about the Golden Doors his eyes widened and he began recounting an experience he’d had in the woods. They’d heard similar tales enough times to know they were usually fabricated. However when Ahmed claimed to know an exact location of a Golden Door and even offered to lead them to it, they exchanged hopeful glances.

They traveled north up the highway for the next several weeks, braving the hardships of the wild, talking to each other and getting to know Ahmed. They told him everything they knew about the Golden Doors, and he listened carefully.

Then one day as the sun pierced the network of noxious clouds, he turned from his spot at the forefront and pointed into the trees. “There,” he said simply.

Elaine felt nervous leaving the highway. She had grown to like Ahmed, despite all of her inborn religious prejudices. She even

trusted him. Still, her father’s voice ran through her head. He’s a lousy sandnigger, Elaine. A terrorist. His God is murderous and vicious. He will betray you in the end.

She slowed to walk alongside Diana. Taking the young woman’s hand, she smiled.

“You OK?”

Elaine nodded. “Just nervous. And scared.”

“Me too.”

The highway had been cut into the side of a mountain, and the incline leading away from the asphalt was treacherous and ungainly. The higher they climbed, the more they struggled over bulging roots and loose terrain.

Ron remarked, “What in God’s name possessed you to come up here in the first place? Ahmed, still in the lead, looked back. Bits of foliage and grass covered his turban, and his long yellow cape was in tatters. “To be honest I was going to kill myself. I was looking for a very steep cliff to hurl myself over. I’d have done it, too, if not for that Golden Door. For some reason, when I came across it I saw everything in a different light. I felt I could go on if I kept my faith in Allah and remained strong. So instead of throwing myself off a cliff, I had a vision, and I decided to continue down the highway.”

“Surely you’d heard of the Golden Doors,” Ron said. “Why not go through?”

Ahmed chuckled. “Go through? My friend, that would require more strength than I alone possess.”

* * *

The trek up the mountain lasted thirty minutes. Every step was a hazard and each level of elevation grew more distressing. The ground was like a bed of serpents and the trees were stony, petrified things, more mineral than living organism.

Elaine looked to the sky, to the vile green clouds hanging closer than ever, and wondered at their chances for survival. She wished they’d left their packs by the base of the mountain. Her shoulders were killing her.

At last they reached the top, which was rocky and craggy and covered in ash. Ahmed said, “We are here.” Elaine stopped and collapsed on the ground. Diana fell down beside her, and they held each other a moment, breathing noisily.

The Arab took a seat, but Ron remained standing. The philosopher had directed his gaze toward a clustering of ash-gray trees sprouting from the cliffs. “I see it,” he said. Abruptly, he started walking.

“Yes,” Ahmed agreed, “it is over by those trees.”

Elaine watched him go. Her excitement was building, but she needed a second to relax. She lay on her back, watching the sky. Orb-shaped amoebas the size of zeppelins moved through the dark-green cumuli. It reminded her of looking through a microscope.

Ahmed rose next, followed by Diana, and Elaine rose last, joining them by a row of ash-colored trees. Bolts of silent lightning cut the distant horizon.

Standing in the center of the trees, upright and attached to nothing, was the Golden Door.

Ahmed approached it, hand resting on the hilt of his scimitar. His reflection materialized in the metallic golden surface. He stood admiring his own image, tracing the contours of his face with his free hand.

“That day,” he said, “I was thinking about my wife and son, whom I miss so greatly. I had hoped that killing myself would reunite us. But then I saw this. I saw my face staring back at me forged in gold… and I knew I could not do it.”

The others gathered behind him, their faces also reflected in the door.

“Do you think it’s true?” Diana asked. “That it leads to a… Golden Age?”

Ron began to answer, when suddenly a noise—a fiercely insistent scraping—caused them to turn. They were surrounded, blocked at every direction.

“I knew this wouldn’t be easy,” Ron said.

Ahmed drew his scimitar, its metal clang ringing down the mountain. “Demons,” he said.

In the next instant Diana had raised her handgun, leveling it at the silent creatures. Elaine, gripped by fear, quickly patted down her pockets in search of a weapon but found nothing. “Jesus Christ, what are they?” she cried.

But no one answered.

The creatures, like the ones in the sky, reminded Elaine of the microscopic organisms she had studied in her college biology classes. They were round and lumpy, purple blotches housed in warbling cellular walls, like amoebas yet with zinging orbs of light inside them.

“These are the demons mentioned in the Koran,” Ahmed said. “They are the enemies of mankind, of Allah. They wish to stop people from going through the Golden Doors. But they will not stop me this time.” He swung around, grasped the sparkling gold doorknob, and began to turn it.

The creatures released a keening moan, an irritating, animalistic howl. Their strange, amoebic bodies began to open, revealing cavities of sharp teeth. In the next instant they were gliding forward on a current of air.

“Shit!” Diana screamed. She began to fire. She caught the first three effortlessly, slicing off big watery chunks, which flopped on the ground and wriggled there like dying fish. The holes she opened in their bodies were quickly covered over again by warbling cellular wall.

Ahmed shouted something in Arabic as two bounced over the boulders to nearly land on top of him. They hopped back and forth, squishing off the ground like animated water balloons. Ahmed swung at them with his scimitar, its lightning-shaped blade arcing above his head. Their teeth gnashed, caught on his blade, producing sparks and clanging sounds.

He spun around behind them, slicing and chopping at their liquid backs, sending pieces of them raining upon the ground. He came around front, still swinging his blade and taking off more until he’d reduced them to tiny portions, which were beginning to evaporate. He shouted again in Arabic, “Death to Pharaoh and his demons!” raising the sword triumphantly.

Diana, meanwhile, was firing and reloading as fast as she could. Each time a bullet struck one of the creatures, it sent a piece flying and the thing was thrown back several feet. Stunned, it then sat there a moment, as if confused, before advancing again. Because of this, she’d been able to keep them at bay, however dozens more were approaching.

Elaine was suddenly tortured with fear for her lover’s safety. “Diana!” she cried.

The young woman glanced over her shoulder, still firing. “Go now! Get through the door, I’ll bring up the rear!”

Ron’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. She looked at him, and he was nodding. “Come,” he said. “We must let her do the killing and escape while we can. There is no time.”

“But what about…” She choked back a sob, and Ron began leading her away.

Ahmed was already in front of the Golden Door, half a dozen amoebic creatures bouncing toward him.

Why the hell did he sheath his weapon? Elaine thought. Why isn’t he helping Diana?—

Outrage flooded her. Her blood boiled as she witnessed him open the door, slip through, and close it without so much as a glance in their direction. For a split second while the door had been open, a sliver of brilliant white light poured through.

The creatures went crazy, bouncing up and down, coming out of the crags and the trees, issuing their awful keening wails. Elaine realized it was their battle cry.

Told you the sandnigger would betray you, her father whispered in her head. She stopped and let go of Ron’s hand.

If only you’d listen to me, your father, the one who loves you, the one who introduced you to Christ’s love. But you don’t. Instead you push your face into the crotch of some slutty woman, carrying on as if this were Sodom and Gomorrah. But don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll be praying for you.

Ron glanced at her. “What’s the matter? We have to keep moving.”

“Did you see him?” she snarled. “That dirty Arab went through without us. He left us to die!”

Ron looked around and registered Ahmed’s absence. “He was our guide,” he said. “That’s all. We can expect nothing more. Our main concern is getting through the door—now come on.”

He took her wrist, pulling her behind. When they reached the door, he drew her close and said, “I’ll go first, but I want you coming right after me.”

“What about Diana?”

“She can handle herself.”

He swung around, placing his hand on the doorknob. His tall, regal reflection stared back. When he opened the door, there was a feeling like an earthquake passing through the ground. The lightning flashed and fresh thunder boomed. Ron’s silhouette framed by the door was engulfed in white light.

“Make sure you follow!” he cried, stepping forward. Then he was gone.

Light continued to spill through the opening, bathing the area, rejuvenating the dead trees and the parched earth. At once everything began growing back green again.

The creatures shrieked and recoiled. They swarmed Diana, gathering about her, gnashing their teeth and lunging. She fired in endless succession, making cheesecloth of the watery bodies, reloading with the speed of Annie Oakley, and Elaine felt so proud of her.

“Go on, girl, get going!” Diana yelled. “I can’t hold them off forever!”

“I love you,” Elaine whispered.

Then she turned toward the Golden Door and her heartbeat was like the hooves of wild horses. The light falling over her was soft, warm, and comforting. Yes, she belonged to that light. She felt safe in it.

Stepping forward, she squinted her eyes, eventually having to close them completely. She continued blindly, the warm light spreading through her, filling her, healing her.

I’m made of it, she thought. We’re one, this light and I. Now I’m heading into The Golden Age, into Heaven. And this is home…

Some uncontrollable impulse made her look back just before she passed through. She opened her eyes and saw Diana fighting off dozens of the amoebic creatures. She saw the gun knocked from Diana’s hand, saw the rest of the creatures pounce on her, saw them tear into her flesh and fill the air with blood.

And yet she couldn’t feel sad about it. Couldn’t feel pain, sorrow, or regret. She felt only oneness, inner connectivity, and a union with the divine. She caught a glimpse of a world full of love, of human beings frolicking together in the manner of children, where there was no war, no hatred, and no more death.

She peered eyelessly through the bright white light, her body evaporating and becoming pure ether, like a transparent vessel. She could barely make out the amorphous profiles of Ron and the Arab just ahead of her, moving as if through water. Both extended ghostly receptions to her.

At that moment mercy descended, and as she greeted them she suddenly felt like she was home again—really home—back in a world of goodness and virtue, a world she once knew well, but which she had been ripped from ages ago.

Then her father’s voice—that plague-demon always in her thoughts, chastising her every action—simply went away, receding as if it were a breaking wave gliding back down the shore. She stopped hearing his judgmental words about the Arab, her sexual preferences, and her love of Diana, and she stopped hearing his endless Bible quoting and his mean, condemning remarks.

She felt okay with herself. She just simply felt okay.

Finally.

And as she took hold of Ron’s hands, she realized she had never been so much at peace.

PALADIN

The Holy One: a beauty and a demoiselle. Lives in the house on the green hill, at the end of the road through rugged wilderness, full of clumping cypress and bushy spruce, where the crest of the hill appears to merge with the horizon; she stands on the balcony of her large wood-and-brick home, surveying the surrounding forests and the farther ocean beyond. Circles of black and white birds wheel in the sky. Her long reddish hair gets pulled by the wind.

The Paladin goes to her, for he has come from halls of loneliness, from city streets burned out with fires and poverty, where the living lie half-dead in alleys, and the somnambulistic souls who pursue a life not designed by them, but by something unseen, strive toward nothingness. His job and his heart and his career and his livelihood, once these stood before his ego as utter truths but have since fallen away, so that now he only passes through windows, openings in and out of the worlds. He peers into places where he should not look—where he should not be able to look.

Still, it is a race to leave himself. And so the Paladin is running. Running out of all things. But especially running out of time.

He rides broad-chested and regal astride a fine red equus 2012 Ford Mustang, with a front splitter and a pair of blocked-off fog lamp openings and boomerang striping along the bodysides. He is dressed in the leather tux of his father, and his father’s father. He is shouldering the burden of his lineage. A bloodline thrums in his veins. As the steed picks its way along the road leading to The Holy One, the Paladin looks out among the foliage and the tempered sky overhead, his mood something doleful, like a piece has been taken away.

Part of him misses that old life. But truly he despised it, and is glad to be free. It is only this transitioning period that finds him saturnine—that wears upon his soul, as a hammer melds lead into steel. For he is mourning the death of parts—singular parts—of his individuality.

He is becoming that which he was not.

So when he talks to her in the wind, they are flying side-by-side, through cloud and sun. She smiles at him. That smile which heaves him forth into new a being. Out of pain, loneliness, death. The same happens again as they comb the bottommost regions of the seafloor. She raises her hands from where they were digging in the shells and rocks, and touches his face. It reminds him of the lonely life he left behind. The life before he met her, living alone in the dregs of his past experiences, clicking through the Internet in search of something more—until now—now her—now this.

The Holy One. That which he has always wanted. She is everything. She is perfect. And now she is his.

Standing fully upright, she is under six feet tall. Her long reddish hair, with a streak of brown toward the ends, glimmers radiantly. She is accustomed to wearing long white skirts and a blue blouse, her handbag and her iPhone, constantly changing positions.

There is an air of nobility about her—that would suggest she came from royalty, or at the very least from aristocratic bloodlines, above the commons herds who flock the streets amid fog. Her face—pale, chiseled, Grecian, smooth face of stone—is illuminated in the upper half by twin globes of greenish blue, which look upon the world in endless fascination. Her pupils are portals, he knows; they are entryways into forests of magic.

“I once spoke to a maple tree,” she says, as they sit in the dark, redwood dining room of her home. She has prepared peppermint tea and dispenses it in a pair of porcelain cups. She tells him of her life.

As she joins him at the table, sitting in one fluid motion which seems extended somehow, elongated, she hands him his tea. He replies, “What does it mean, spoken to a tree?”

“Exactly what it says. You can learn a lot from trees. Their inner voice is a causeway to gods. Their voice echoes deep within the elements of all human beings. Listen and practice will allow you to hear them, too. Come, I will show you.”

She gets up from the table.

He has slept dreamlessly after she is gone, after the murderer has taken her. He remains alone in the upper rooms of the house, alone in the bed, staring out the window, where a bulbous moon and a parade of stars meet his gaze. He thinks of The Holy One and he tosses and turns, for he cannot sleep. He cycles through the television stations, but they are all blind. There is a small bronze bust of Goethe on the night stand, and lying beside it, a shaving razor, and beside that a hand mirror. The Paladin is afraid to touch any one of these. The razor, especially. Things have souls. Things can kill you.

… kill her, kill you, kill me…

Yes.

Morning light streams into the room. The bust of Goethe turns, is animated and talkative. The old poet remarks to him, “You know, I once was so lonely and miserable that I thought of committing suicide. Over a woman—yes, of course, partially—but over a host of additional, more existential reasons also. The hand with the knife pierced my navel but stopped soon after. I wrote a book. The Sorrows of Young Werther. Ever heard of it?”

“I don’t speak German,” the Paladin replies.

He gets out of bed and goes out into the world to find her.

The body of The Holy One is pinned up between two trees, lashed to the branches, arms spread to either side. A bloodless corpse. Hanging, still prettily, still a radiant, physical organism now devoid of personality and life, but a treasure nonetheless. Still holy. Still pure.

He cuts her down with his father’s dagger and carries her into the woods. Tears follow. The trees speak quietly to him, whispering words of solace, which permeate his being. He carries her farther to the crest of the green hill, where a clearing of grass lies open beneath a gray bowstring sky. A single, tabletop of stone has been erected in the center of the field. He places her on it, sprawled on her back, arms dangling over the sides, as clouds gather in the heavens.

Lightning. Thunder. The Paladin raises the dagger… It rains.

THE CHRIST

When Mother informed me of Uncle Lewis’s death and my inheritance of his rundown property in the countryside, it wasn’t like people begged me to stick around in New York. Not even her. I didn’t have friends in the City and my job as a columnist was on hiatus. Although I taught online writing seminars in my spare time, there hadn’t been many enrollments.

Luckily Uncle Lewis had also left money in a bank account for me, so everything seemed in place to begin my new life. His death had been ruled a misadventure but I suspected suicide as the likely cause.

Still, there were suspicious circumstances surrounding his death that were only hinted at in the police report. His body was found dangling from one of the pine trees on his property. His eyes had been eaten out by birds and he had hung up there for so long before being found that his skin had decayed, leaving only a dangling skeleton.

I couldn’t think of a better image for my uncle—a skeleton. It accurately described what I knew about the man: bare at minimum, almost next to nothing. Mother on the other hand was the bane of my existence, and now that she was getting on in years, we were getting along even less.

She was only concerned with Facebook and eBay accounts, buying and selling books on spirituality, and her little stuffed animals she called Plushies. She had a whole collection of these Plushies in a room in her house that she’d christened the “Self-Nurturing Temple,” in which she performed elaborate “self-nurturing” rituals that included crystals, incense, and hot pink candles.

I wanted nothing to do with spirituality or religion. I was a practical man, a borderline agnostic, a veracious atheist in my darker moments. True, my lack of faith had been a source of great agony and hopelessness at times, but it also provided me with the much-needed assurance that I was nothing like Mother.

She subscribed to a non-denominational religion, something called The Metaphysical Church: a hangout for ex-hippies, in my opinion. Omnitheist was the technical term. Omnitheists worshiped Christ, Jahvey, Buddha, Krishna, and astrology, crystals, druidic priestesses, even tarot decks. But Mother’s biggest reverence was toward the aliens. She believed Christ was an alien who would return to Earth in the form of a large, very rare, very precious quartz crystal, somewhere in the Himalayas.

I’d hoped my move would symbolize independence and freedom, not only from Mother but from her spirituality. However it became immediately apparent that Uncle Lewis had also been deeply spiritual—perhaps more than her.

Religious paraphernalia infested his home. I spent several hours taking down all the crucifixes and paintings of the Virgin Mary and the Last Supper. He seemed fixated on the crucifixion and the scene at Calvary. Many of the paintings, even smaller portraits I found filed away in a dresser drawer, displayed Christ on the cross—His wounds; all the rest.

As I dug around in Uncle’s collection, I grew intrigued. The images were striking. I even felt myself moved occasionally. The depictions of the scene at Calvary hit me the hardest. When I looked at Christ’s facial expressions, which varied in emotional content, His eyes seemed to stare out at me. I could feel His suffering as though it were my own. I saw the nails in His wrists and feet and I thought of my own invisible nails, which affixed me to a life I had never asked for: a life joyless and dull.

Sometimes I did want to believe. It pained me to admit it… Whenever I thought of anything higher than a material life, I saw only Mother and her Self-Nurturing Temple.

But often the emptiness I felt was greater. Thinking about the scientific world-model of random causality—where nothing had meaning and everything was occasioned by accident—made me want to put a gun to my head. If there was no reason for life, then why bother trying? I had tried and tried with nothing to show for it—no success in love or career—and if all that trying had been done in vain, then I’d might as well pull the trigger and give myself a little peace.

After a week of taking down the religious relics, the place finally started to feel like my own. I hung my clothes in Uncle’s former closet, and also filled the kitchen with new cutlery and a fresh supply of food. A window in that room looked out on the wooded hilltop. Uncle’s hanging tree was visible up there too, nestled in with the other pines. I set up my laptop and office materials at the dining table, hoping the view would serve as an inspiration.

In the nearby town was an art store where I purchased replacement pieces for the religious paintings: a few nature scenes, an astronomical starscape, a Van Gogh replica.

I mounted the paintings in the same places where the religious art had hung and felt rather pleased. It seemed I was carving out a new life.

Later, while I worked, I glanced out the kitchen window as the sun set behind the trees and thought I saw movement on the hilltop.

I watched longer and saw shapes moving. I supposed my neighbors were out hiking or hunting, though I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I heard the faint sounds of hammers and saws. After the sun went down, they were gone.

I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t forget the Calvary paintings and the depictions of Christ’s crucifixion. Why did you take us down? the pictures wanted know. Why did you hide us?

“Because I don’t like you,” I said. “You remind me of my pain.”

Then I heard Mother’s voice: I knew moving into my brother’s house would be good for you. You’re always so unhappy. You need a change. I feel sorry for you because you have no spirituality.

“Shut up, Mother,” I said. Finally I fell asleep.

In the morning I stood in the hallway with terror pumping through my veins. My new paintings were gone, replaced with Uncle’s original Christ prints.

I continued to tell myself I was still asleep, that eventually I would wake for real. But when I didn’t wake, I pondered the possibility that I’d never hung the new paintings; maybe that was the dream.

I returned to the bedroom and looked in my wallet; sure enough the receipt for the art store was folded among the bills.

I went into the kitchen, brewed some coffee, and stared out the window. My hand trembled as I held the mug.

In the following days I purchased more paintings to replace the religious ones, but each morning I awoke to find them gone, and the originals returned.

“You must have a lot of wall space,” the owner of the art store told me.

As a last attempt I made a fire in Uncle’s stone barbecue pit and fed the paintings to the flames. I watched, pleased, as the face of Christ again and again yielded to the fire.

I went to sleep thinking I’d stopped the bizarre phenomenon once and for all. In the morning when I found the paintings restored and mounted back into position, I released the scream of a wild animal and tore through the house upsetting furniture and smashing glass, convinced I was losing my mind.

* * *

In the afternoon I tried to nap, but again I couldn’t sleep. Many of the pictures were now in the room with me. They’d inched their way across the walls, taking up positions about my bed.

The Christ stared at me with sorrowful, beseeching eyes. I ignored Him as I read through one of Uncle’s biblical books whose title was in Latin but whose text combined both Latin and Old English. There was a section that described the Stations of the Cross, and I kept seeing His harrowing ascent to Calvary: the mocking, jeering spectators; the heavy wood boards carried upon His shoulders.

Thinking about His pain made me want to cry, so I shut my eyes. I’d known pain. I’d been jeered in high school, back when I couldn’t get a girlfriend and walking through the hallway felt like taking the road out of Jerusalem.

After a while I fell asleep and had a dream. I was back at Mother’s house. I was a teenager, isolated in my own bedroom. Suddenly there was a knock and the door opened.

Christ appeared. I fell onto my bed as He entered. He wore only a leather cloth on His hips, and His emaciated ribs protruded, glistening with blood and sweat as He spread His arms.

He looked ghostly pale white. His eyes were wide, bulging. He stepped up to the mattress, and then I heard Mother’s voice calling from the other room. Christ opened His hands, evincing the throbbing wounds, and bent forward to place His palms upon the tops of my thighs.

“Child…,” He whispered.

He dug His fingers into my skin, clamping down on my legs. A world of icy pain opened up to me. He sank them deeper, deeper—until He grasped my muscles and bones.

I screamed and awoke trembling, rolling out of the bed.

* * *

I gave up the hope of controlling the paintings and allowed them to move freely along the walls. Sometimes they followed me around the house, eyes opening, mouths whispering.

Cantate Deo, quoniam regna terrae: cantate Domino: Cantate Deo.

Sing to God, ye kingdoms of the earth: sing ye to the Lord: Sing ye to God.

I came down with a horrid case of insomnia. I sat at my laptop for hours trying to prepare next summer’s curriculum, but nothing came of it. I stared out the window beside the dining table, drinking coffee, reading the King James Version of the Bible.

Strange signs appeared on my palms and feet, swelling red welts that I identified as the nail wounds of Christ. I sensed a feverish itching about the crown of my head. When the markings subsided, I took it as an indication that the crucifixion wounds had entered into me.

Excited to share this news with Mother, I gave her a call. After several rings, she picked up.

“Mother? It’s me.”

“Yes.” I could hear the TV set blaring in the background. “Is it nice over there?”

“Mother, something happened. Something… I can’t quite explain. It’s so crazy!”

“Tell Mother.”

“It’s… the paintings… something about them…” I struggled to put words together, but finally the phrase came out: “I found my spirituality.”

A pause. Then: “Really?”

“Yes. Christ came to me. He chose me. Well… not just me. I believe He has chosen everyone. But—this is true.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen Him, for fuck’s sake!”

“Language.”

“He comes to me. I feel Him growing inside me.”

“Oh Monty, how I’ve waited…”

“Waited?”

She coughed. The TV volume decreased. She sounded emotional.

“You’ve been saved! I waited all these years. That’s why I disowned you!”

“Disowned me? Mother!”

“It’s true. I couldn’t love a son who had no spirituality. But now the Christ has come to you. The alien beings have taken you aboard their ship—”

“No aliens, Mother—”

“Did you dream about the Christ?”

“Yes, but the paintings—”

“That’s their ship, you see, the dreams—when you’re dreaming of the Christ you’re really aboard their spacecraft; your mind’s been transported there. Now that you’ve been there too, now that you’ve been contacted, you are reborn to me.”

I felt the old anger bubbling… I didn’t understand how she had turned this conversation into something of her own, a podium to taut her metaphysical propaganda.

“Christ once came to me in a dream,” she was saying. “While I was pregnant with you. I never told you… I was standing on the banks of a lake in the woods. Water was icy gray. I was there and you were there, but you were full-grown, and I knew who you were even though you weren’t born.”

She chuckled. “We were already arguing. Then the Christ rose out of the lake. He was so bright. I could see His long robe and hair, and it was all so bright. I immediately bent my knees, praising Him, weeping.

“You, on the other hand, folded your arms in contempt. ‘This is just a bunch of bullcrap,’ you said, except you used the S-word. Then you turned away. I knew I would have to disown you but before I could say anything, Christ reached down and took me in His arms. His touch burned me. He told me I’d given birth to a demon. He began shaking me, thrashing me about, screaming, ‘Wake up, Christine! Wake up!’

“And you know what?”

“What?”

“I did. And I’ve been waking more ever since. I was sad about you, but I accepted it. But now I’m happy for you—in fact I’m coming to see you—”

I punched END on my cell phone; before I knew it I had dashed it to the floor and smashed it under my heel.

My scream echoed through the house. She wouldn’t come. She hadn’t left the city in thirty years. I could not imagine her finding her way across town, let alone to my neck of the woods.

Disgruntled and in a thoroughly foul mood, I returned to the kitchen, replaced the coffee with some brandy I found under the sink, powered up my laptop, and attempted to work.

* * *

Brandy on the table before me, beside my laptop, open to my article on the compromised mentality of right-wing conservative Christians, which wasn’t going anywhere, while the sunlight drained from the sky, replaced by stars.

I had waited two days for Mother. For some reason I’d gotten my hopes up—even though I knew she couldn’t drive. But still I’d cultivated the tiniest spark of anticipation. If she came then she loved me. For once I wasn’t the “demon” she thought me to be. But if she didn’t come, I was forsaken.

Naturally, I had succumbed to a morose feeling of rejection and self-loathing.

I closed my laptop. I gripped the brandy glass, gulped back liquid; an old, familiar state to find myself in: pissed off and feeling powerless.

A tap on the window made me jump. I looked outside as night fell. I saw a figure moving away through the darkness. I squinted for a better look… yes, someone out in the yard… slipping behind a tree trunk. Since moving in I had seen the strange silhouettes on the nearby hilltop. Wasn’t clear who they were. Nor was it clear exactly what they were up to. All I had heard was their hammering and hacking. But now one had ventured up to the house.

I leaped away from the table and grabbed my coat, rushing out into the night. The moon hung like a crooked bone overhead. Fingertip pines swayed in the wind.

I marched across the grass, determined. But the elusive figure stayed a step ahead, his shadow weaving in and out of the trees. I thought of calling out but I wasn’t sure if he was attempting to escape, or luring me. Either way, I didn’t want to give myself away: an element of surprise could mean everything.

I tailed him up the weed-choked incline of the hill, where I noticed a bonfire. Reaching the crest, I crouched behind a rock pile, secreting myself.

The figure joined several others, a band of men gathered around the bonfire, and I knew at once it was these men I had observed on certain nights. They looked bizarre, adorned in unusual clothes. I had to study them for some time between snatches of flickering shadowlight before I realized they were—

Knights.

Templar Knights.

There was no denying it. I’d read of the secret Order in Uncle’s religious books. Had even seen illustrations. The men on the hill wore trademark tunics, surcoats, and capes. White turbans wrapped their heads. Emboldened red Templar crosses dominated the fabric covering their torsos and backs. Several men clutched large white shields, upon which the red cross glimmered. All had imposing long swords attached to their hips.

I watched, fascinated, as they moved about, speaking to one another in a French dialect. At one point two men stalked into the trees, returning with several heavy beams and a burlap sack.

They laid the beams on the ground overlapping each other. Then they emptied the contents of the sack: spikes, mallets, ropes, nails. The five other knights joined the two, and together they grabbed tools and set to work.

I looked past them and noticed that Uncle’s hanging tree was missing, a splintered stump where its trunk had been.

Then the horror hit me.

The knights were building a cross.

* * *

I was enchanted. I knew I should leave, but I stayed where I was—even when one knight began digging in the ground, preparing a placement hole for the vertical stake.

I heard something at my rear: a twig snapping. Was that the fire? I re-counted the knights on the hilltop: one, two, three, four, five, six—

The seventh was missing…

Could he—

My answer came in a swiftly dropping metallic sword hilt against the back of my head. Pain exploded through me, down my spine. I saw tiny fireworks and tasted blood in my mouth.

The blow came again—crack!

The forest swung sideways as warm blood trickled down my neck and shoulders.

I toppled onto my side in the grass, losing sight of the cross behind the rock pile.

* * *

I saw fire. Night sky framed in tree branches, peppered with stars. Faces of the knights as they huddled over me, stolid expressions, calmest eyes. For a moment I visualized being surrounded by lions, until their hands clasped me; fixed me; tied. My wrists and my feet were bound. Tightness pulled at the muscles in my back.

Pain: the worst pain. Could this really be happening? I thought the Christ had come to save me, love me, free me from suffering—but instead the knights’ mallets rose and crashed down, driving nails through my skin, bones, ligaments.

I felt myself opening like a tortured red flower. Blood, my life force, seeping out, saturating the ground, forming a wet puddle that smelled like copper and mud. For some reason the smell made me want to cry. Then I was crying, sobbing; all I could think about was running away.

I struggled, flailing my limbs, but the nails pulled my flesh and ripped the skin. It was useless: the pain was too great, the hands too many.

“Get off me!” I shouted. “Lemme go!”

But the knights only continued their work, solemnly binding my quivering body to the cross. The texture of the beams threatened to make me sick as I imagined Uncle Lewis dangling dead from them once, back when they were still a tree. I closed my eyes and bit my tongue, tasting soft, slithery flesh.

I thought my screams would never end.

* * *

Then they were hoisting, lifting the wide T-shape up into the night, as shadows flickered against the crosspiece. I heard more hammering as they secured the pole to the ground. It was hard to think straight, hard even to see straight for the feelings of pain were so intense. I thought someone was screaming until I realized it was me. I could not have stopped even if I’d wanted to—it just went on and on, fueled by the burning tightness coursing through my body.

I managed to turn my head… and yes… it was true.

I was crucified.

Just like the Christ.

The Templar Knights gathered around the erected cross, some leaning on shields, the rest with swords drawn, blades extended. They began chanting and I screamed again, though my throat was hoarse from dehydration.

How long had this gone on?

The sky looked dark as ever, but the pain had somehow starved me. I felt sick, desiccated, weak. The knights had removed my clothing. My body sagged, covered in sweat.

One knight, sheathing his blade, approached. He lifted a mallet from the ground, pounding at the nails in my feet, securing them to the vertical pole. I locked up my jaw in agony, shooting drool through clenched teeth. The knight positioned a large firewood log upright, stood on it to reach my hand/wrist nails, and gently tapped them in.

I suddenly remembered the toy wooden tool set I’d had as a child. I used to sit in my bedroom, hammering wooden nails into round pre-made holes—anything to escape Mother’s injurious taunts and accusations. The wood piece and the nails had fit together perfectly. They were one. I found this to be a nice symbol. Most of my childhood had felt like a separation: from Mother, from the kids at school, from a father who’d died before I was born.

The Christ and I might become one.

I let this symbol carry me, as finally the pain became too much… and I passed out.

* * *

My suffering was everything. I wore it about me like an auric shroud. I was no longer me but watched myself from outside, detached, disassociated.

If I checked, though, I could pinpoint certain critical spots whence the pain surged outward like rays from the sun. A pounding headache burned all the way to the muscles around my spine—which was bent uncomfortably, strained.

My wrists were being gnawed by large rodents; so were my legs and feet, only the pain here was double because I was supporting myself by standing on a platform attached to the cross. The added weight felt like a claw pulling me down into Hell, and I wondered if the rodents were really there at all.

I rose my head from its weary perch and cast my eyes afar at the sun coming in above the trees. Birds whistled. The bonfire was reduced to ashes, which the wind tossed about. The Templars had gone, tools carted off with them.

A new figure came up the hill. Holding something long. Mother reached the crest and stopped at the base of the cross. She looked old, yet strangely rejuvenated.

In one hand she clutched a heavy wooden spear; in the other a fuzzy pink Plushie.

“You’re missing the crown,” she said.

I leveled my eyes. I tried to speak but nothing came out.

She shrugged. “Oh well. They got the rest right.”

She moved closer and placed her hand on my skin.

“I did this for you,” she said. “I know you probably don’t see it that way. But it’s true. The dream I told you about—where Christ said I had given birth to a demon—that never left me. I felt sorry for you. I knew something had to be done. So I sent you here.”

My ears pricked up. My tongue still refused to work, but at least I could look at her.

“It’s true,” she said, and sighed. “It was all a game. I told my brother to leave this place to you in his will. Then after I had him killed, I urged you to come live here. To find Christ. Then I prepared the ritual. And here we stand at the end of it.”

She chuckled. “Well, one of us is standing.”

I wanted to scream at her, bash her brains out. What was she saying, that she had caused this? Was that even possible?

I lifted my chin higher, and finally my tongue began to stir. I felt words rising in me and I thought about chastising her, demanding expiation.

But at that moment she took up the spear in both hands, dropping the Plushie. She leveled her shoulders and charged toward me, plunging the metal tip into my side, just below the rib cage. A spring of blood erupted over her. I tilted my head back, howling.

My eyelids squeezed in pain. I bore my face to the heavens, begging them to open up and admit me.

“Oh no you don’t,” Mother growled, digging with the spear.

I felt the life leaking out of me, drained away by pain and agony. I forced one eye open… and with the last of my strength I managed to look… and I saw…

A hand reaching down from the sky.

TREE OF LIFE

… light.

That’s the first thing I see. And a tree. A crooked assortment of branches sprouting from roots toward the sky, where the light is, where clouds tear apart like shrouds of mist. I’m reminded of my mother, Judith, and her soft brown eyes, which once nurtured me through the trials of my youth.

Where are those eyes now?

The delicate blanket of light covers the crowning of leaves. The light is beautiful to look at. I feel heavy warmth falling over me like an angel’s wing. My mother isn’t with me anymore; there is only this heavenly light.

And then I’m amongst the roots in the earth. But I’m not alone. There are many—hundreds of us—small colorful bodies like translucent fetuses with vaguely humanoid appendages, orbiting half-visible in the underground streams. We dance around the roots, in places of pooling water, in notches carved out of sediment.

The root matrix spirals over my head. When I look up I see it coiling and untwining. It is only one tree—a Great Tree. A glorious pillar of bark and branches, with millions of wide glittering leaves. Its crown seems to reach to the heavens, to penetrate the sky with its luxuriant bloom.

Others begin to climb, and I climb too. Our upward momentum is like a storm, a blustering wind of thought and emotion. I see heartache in their gestures as, monkeylike, they ascend the roots. For the Great Tree is isolated in this Spirit Country. But together we are willing ourselves out of the darkness. And at the crown, light spills over the golden leafage, probing the cloudy heights. At the apex, the last circle is a portal leading out of this strange world up to something much greater.

The air breathes to me: Keter.

I kneel. I feel love in my knees, which is strange. I’ve never felt love in my body. I’ve only felt it in my mind, yet there it is in my limbs. How odd that it should be alive, sensations like homey comfort in my bones and blood.

Love rises, as we too rise, along the surface of the roots, which swell to the size of mountains over the spectral landscape.

I’m drawn up off my knees. Soon this feeling will pass through my stomach, into my heart. And afterwards up my throat to my head. Can I stand it? Can I experience love outside my mind?

What is this? a mystic vision? a hallucinatory dream?

I don’t know. Something must be wrong. My family should be here with me. They were standing beside my hospital bed. Until the light swallowed them…

Now phasing through transparent soil, the mighty trunk rears its lofty mass. My fellow travelers come with me, ringing around the gnarled bole, which rises before us like a medieval tower. Maybe they are my family. They may not look like Sarah and the girls, but they certainly feel like family. So confusing.

I hear music. A whispering sound, like a choir of wind. The voices are so sweet, so resonant.

Keter

Chokhmah

Binah

Chesed

Gevurah

Tiferet

Netzach

Hod

Yesod

Malkuth

Words that make no sense, which are almost incomprehensible, sounds like something a baby would make. And yet they are vaguely familiar. I realize they are Hebrew.

Mother had been Jewish. And her sister, Aunt Carmela, spoke words very similar to these when she got upset while babysitting me, back when Mom waitressed tables and dropped me off at Aunt Carmela’s on her way to work. Long before Dad had been laid in the ground in his army uniform.

Aunt Carmela had been a practicing Kabbalist and she tried to explain her spiritual philosophy to me when I was older: what the Hebrew words meant and where the true Jewish faith was supposed to culminate. I believe these are the same words now being sung. And I believe they are inscribed upon the trunk of the Great Tree, leading up to its crown, for I see several blooming rings of color which bear the sacred letters.

I suddenly remember that the Hebrew words denote different pathways to God, each signifying a distinctive “emanation” of the Divine. Keter is the sphere closest to God, and it is the ultimate destination for some Kabbalists, who believe they can reenter this emanation by overcoming and connecting the other spheres of desires, emotions, virtues, and constructs of divine creative force.

By connecting the pathways—Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malkuth—a veracious aspirant can ascend to the realm of the Divine, starting with Malkuth and working backwards through the creative process until ending at Keter, merging finally with the godhead and becoming one with the ‘I Am.’

I’m not sure how I know all this. I had never embraced my Jewish heritage, although I enjoyed listening to Aunt Carmela speak. And yet I never fully grasped what she tried to tell me. I couldn’t decide one way or the other if Moses, HaShem, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Allah, or any of the rest of them actually existed. How could I put my faith in something for which there was no proof? And yet science offered me no absolutions, either.

Was it any wonder I felt so lost?

Could Sarah and the girls blame me for what I did?

The ten Hebrew words continue cycling in the air again and again, sung by my fellow travelers, all of whom grow to become like little children. I can barely make them out. Their squat, ghostly forms move swiftly as they twirl, dance, and leap. Sometimes they move so quickly that all I can discern is the colorful trail streaming behind each.

Watching them reminds me of something: I was a child once.

But now that memory, like those playful spirits, is ghostly. I only recall the images of childhood in a kind of foggy veil. I feel somehow cheated by this as if I’ve lost something precious that was vouchsafed to me. I know the world seemed different all those years ago. It seemed more like this world, with its roots and streams, its auric clouds and towering ancient tree. That world was magic, and then it died. And I died, too. Would Sarah forgive me? I do miss her. I miss my little girls. I could never live in a world of weekend visitations, one bedroom apartments, and no loving wife to come home to, and so I did it: I took myself out of a godless unfair world. And I find myself with the spirits now, traveling through this Spirit Country, and things are looking up—literally.

But I still miss my family.

As the tornado of capering child-ghosts ascends the trunk, the clouds poised over the crown part further. It happens symmetrically—a perfect circle opens in the sky. The gold of the sun spills through and reflects off the leaves. Glaring spears of hot light ray outward.

And then I see faces, giant androgynous faces gazing down from the cloud opening. They look so kind, so soft and gentle and noble. The faces of angels. I recognize some, recalled from some existence I must’ve lived long ago, which was like a dream—which was a dream. A dream of flipping through pages of the Hebrew Bible, then closing the covers and telling my mother: “No.”

We lift ourselves up, all of us children, scaling the ancient bark of the tree, rising toward the soft faces in the sky. The loving feeling has spread from my arms and legs and has entered my stomach and simmers there. Next it’s in my lungs, journeying through my throat to my head, and when it twines its fingers into my skull I become conscious of a low reverberating hum, which rattles my teeth and vibrates the backs of my eyes.

The cavorting children around me start to grow until they reach the height of adults. But I still hear their wondrous laughter, ghostly giggles, and devotional recitation of the Hebrew words. They dance and bend into each other, streaming all as a unit like the colors of a rainbow.

I, too, have grown. I keep up with them. My strongest thought is that I don’t want to be left behind. Where they are going, I also want to go. We approach the crown of the tree, where the last circle opens, and my body is humming, fully enlivened by the love coursing through it. I wonder if this is something new or if I have always felt this way. I wonder if the others moving up the trunk feel as I do.

We enter the leafy bloom and disperse, firing out in all directions to take our manifold positions among the branches. The Great Tree is gorgeous. Clouds continue to part, forming the circle. I gaze up through foliage, a burning intense stare, a neophyte posed in devotional worship and peering up at old Egyptian gods.

The giant angelic beings now bend their faces out of the sky. I realize the voices of the spirits have begun chanting a single word again and again—Keter, Keter, Keter. Vast arms unfurl like colorful tongues, reaching down to the abundant beings dispersed among the leaves and branches. These etheric feelers collect us, gather us into the center of the crown, where I notice my fellow travelers have become elderly—and yet serene, resigned, as I too have grown elderly and resigned. Together, we have released our struggle.

I am reminded of my childhood again, of those years I remember distantly, like a half-forgotten dream, and I want to cry. I want to hug my poor mother in that old folks’ home, where she’d lived with the other forgotten souls waiting to die. I want to dig up my father and stand him upright, salute him as his men saluted him during their military tour of Vietnam. I imagine having Sarah back, living in our house on Madison Lane, with the girls coming home from elementary school in the afternoon and me coming in later after a hard day at the office. I kiss her, and I kiss them too, then we sit on the sofa to eat popcorn and watch TV.

I remember that.

I can remember it all, actually.

But suddenly the images fade, and I’m being borne up with my fellow travelers, funneled into a splendiferous column at the center of the crown of the tree, a tempestuous tornado, a storm, a beacon of living, vibrating souls. The colossal arms reel us in, siphon us up. I may look elderly but I feel so young. And when I look into the angelic faces dominating the sky, toward whose bosoms we stream with single purpose, I forget about the small child I once was. I forget about my poor parents. I forget about the divorce and Sarah’s new husband, Paul; about the girls calling him “Daddy,” even though I asked them not to. I forget about that night I was drunk in the one-bedroom apartment with the loaded 9mm handgun. I forget about this Spirit Country, and I forget about Keter, the clouds, the angels, and even the Great Tree.

I can forget about all of it, if I really try. And I feel one thing and one thing only. And I know only one true experience…

… peace.

WHEN CLOWN FACE SPEAKS

Clown Face is the painting that hangs over the writing desk in my office. It is a medium-sized print with a white background and a walnut frame. It depicts a floating, disembodied clown head. The clown has a white face, puffy orange hair, a red mouth, a red nose, and a pair of blue-and-black eyes.

There is nothing inherently wicked about the Clown Face painting. And the story of its acquisition is also quite innocuous. I won it at one of those carnival games. The one where you shoot a water pistol into the yawning mouth of a frightened-looking duck, which then inflates a balloon attached to the duck’s head. The object of the game is to inflate the balloon to bursting before the time limit runs out.

After three tries, I did just that. The game’s operator, sullen though he was about my victory, offered me any one of the prizes dangling overhead. I asked Sylvia, my wife, to pick something, but she insisted on my choosing. She said I had beaten the game fair and square, so I deserved the prize.

Behind the stuffy child-sized bears, the filigree of small ducks and kittens, behind the baseball caps and inflatable snakes, hung Clown Face on the rear boards of the stall. I asked about it and he reluctantly gave it up. It’s hung above my writing desk ever since.

I’ve always thought it a bit odd with its goofy grin and dead, staring eyes, but I liked it because it reminded me of my favorite book—Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. The various covers of that book depict a clown face of some kind; so whenever I looked at my Clown Face, I was reminded of Slapstick, which is a brilliant book. In this way it served as a source of inspiration, especially during the end times when Sylvia and I were always arguing, when writing had become more chore than voyage.

It didn’t become a supernatural painting until Sylvia left; that’s when it finally felt safe to reveal itself. Sylvia’s career was in the computer sciences, and she held a Bachelor of Science degree… so for the most part she was skeptical of all things unnatural. In my opinion, her presence alone negated any possibility of the supernatural made manifest.

I, on the other hand, am much more sensitively organized. When our marriage fell apart—mostly on account of my increased alcoholism and her endless boredom with our sex life, which she eventually found relief from in a coworker named Dennis Ulster—her departure from our home, and the subsequent removal of her things, felt like a planetary death. With Sylvia gone, I found solace in my writing. I worked on a new novel, this one a horror story, and I sent my agent Jim Royce the preliminary chapters.

“Charles, this is some of the best prose you’ve ever written,” he told me over the phone.

“Do you think so? It’s not too gloomy?”

He chuckled. “Oh it is, but that’s what’s so great about it. There is more feeling in this one than in your other novels. It’s a horrible feeling, but still a feeling.”

“I don’t know…”

The line between what I wrote and who I was began to blur around this time. I lost myself to the work. Day and night I toiled, perched at my desk like a golem with the cats looking on. I seldom left the house—or The Castle, as I had termed it—except to replenish my supply of alcohol.

Two weeks after my lovely princess was taken from The Castle by an evil wizard, I was seated in the upper turret of the east wing, writing my novel with a quill and inkpot, when suddenly Clown Face morphed into lurid life.

Its first word was my name. “Charles,” it said, more a statement than a question. “You… are… Charles.”

I had become conscious of a certain ambiance in The Castle which was more sensitive than in previous years when the princess roamed its halls. This ambiance did strange things to one’s perceptions. More than once I’d stopped to stare at some unusual spot on the floor or ceiling, convinced something was wrong about it. I would stare for hours, not quite sure what I was seeing, but sure it was dissolving, that I was seeing the atoms whirling about.

A handful of these experiences had alerted me to the increasingly sensitive nature of The Castle. So when I heard the voice of Clown Face speaking over my head, it didn’t surprise me all that much.

“Who’s there, who’s calling me?” I asked.

“Up here. Look and see.”

My attention thus directed, I regarded the painting and noticed that the bleached background was swirling dreamily. Clown Face, whom I have already taken the time to describe and shall not do so again, bobbed in this churning whiteness, his lips parted in a bloated grin, eyes blank and staring, dead and seeing nothing (everything).

“I see you,” I said. “Are you some demon come to torment me?”

Clown Face laughed. “What makes you think I am a demon?”

“There are only demons,” I answered bitterly.

“Foolish mortal—simplistic mortal man. You are blind to the truth of reality.”

“What truth, as if I should like to know…” It occurred to me that I was holding a conversation with a painting, and scolding myself with various sanity-based epithets, I returned to my manuscript.

For the next several hours Clown Face tried to get my attention, but I resisted. I banged away at the keyboard, producing God knew what rubbish, until eventually it quieted.

The Castle returned to its former mode of existing—sensitive and brooding, while mercifully keeping its most powerful secrets hidden. The painting I had won at a carnival game solidified and ceased its swirling, and the cats went about their business and I went about my writing. But now I had the knowledge that The Castle possessed certain secrets which were soon to be revealed.

* * *

Days and nights started feeling the same. Sunlight was no longer able to penetrate into my Gothic cathedral, even with the drapes pulled and the windows open; the sunrays seemed to flicker out as soon as they crossed the threshold and entered the dark world I now called home.

I would often stand by one of the windows, focusing my attention; then, when the sun reached the rectangular space over the windowsill, it did a strange thing by bursting apart into a million glittering gold specks. Those specks, like dust motes, entered The Castle and immediately dimmed and dispersed, negating any illuminating qualities they might have possessed.

Still, when my agent Jim Royce called, I answered and did my best to seem sharp.

“How’s the writing going?” was his imperishable question.

My answer, always: “Absolutely fabulous. The best I have ever written.”

“That’s wonderful to hear, I’m so excited about this new novel of yours. What are the chances of getting a few chapters?”

“Not good. At the moment I need everything I have for reference. This book is unlike anything I’ve ever attempted, so it’s easy for me to get lost. And when I get lost I have to backtrack and pick up the thread. You understand.”

“Of course I understand, but let me know when you’re getting close to completing it so I can start with the publicity buzz.”

“Will do.”

“And Charles?”

“Yes?”

“Chapters, chapters, chapters! The sooner you can get those chapters to me the—”

“Yes, will do, Jim.”

Chapters.

Who cared about chapters when my world was crumbling apart? I sure as hell didn’t. My writing was no longer limited to such lineal constraints as chapters. Everything was much more cyclical because the writing, like myself, was being undone.

* * *

Once I realized the extent to which The Castle was sensitively built, I began to accept the phenomenon of Clown Face’s speaking. It was a process, a wearing down of my defenses, and the advent of my suprasensory perception.

The painting would speak. I would listen. And then I would write.

“What do you want to tell me today?”

Clown Face, bobbing in its rectangle of creamy whiteness, said, “Write this down. ‘All reality is subjective.’ How’s that?”

I stared at the four words. “Sounds like bullshit.”

Clown Face laughed. “Now write this. ‘There is no objective reality that exists in the space outside of mind. All external phenomena are actually internal phenomena. Mind is the ruler over all. Physical matter exists only in the mind. Laws of Science exist only in the mind.’ How’s that?”

I leaned back in my chair. “It’s interesting. But it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the narrative.”

“Forget the narrative. We are writing a philosophical treatise.”

“But my agent—”

“Your agent exists only in the mind. If your agent is talking to you, but your mind is not present, your agent is not talking.”

“No, but he’s still talking.”

“To whom is he talking?”

“He’s talking to himself, I guess.”

“That’s right.”

I shot up from my desk, enraged. “I’m getting tired of this. If people could see me, they’d call me crazy. They’d say I was losing my mind.”

Clown Face replied, “That’s preposterous. It is you who is gaining your mind, and they who have lost it. Besides, just tell them a disembodied clown head told you.”

“Tell them a clown painting talks to me? Are you insane? They’d have me committed. And then they’d say it’s all in my mind.”

“Then they would be telling the truth because it is all in your mind… but so are the Laws of Science. The law of gravity, for example, exists only because the mind knows about it. A rock dropped from someone’s hand only appears to fall, for if the mind were not around there would be nothing to perceive the rock, and so the rock would not fall at all.”

I continued to listen, but my attention had been arrested by one of the cats. I could no longer remember their names so I recalled them by fur color. This was the black one.

Over my shoulder, Clown Face said, “What’s that you’re looking at? Careful: If you stare too hard, you may see through it.”

But I kept my eyes on the black cat sitting on the small end table. It had scattered various stacks of paper across the surface in an effort to get comfortable. It was sitting so still that for a moment I believed it was a statue. Then it swung its head and peered up at me with jade-green eyes.

I began focusing on the strange fuzzy outline of non-light appearing to ring its body. The closer I studied this blur, the more defined it became, until it was almost more real-looking than the cat itself.

“You’ll go too far,” Clown Face warned.

The fuzzy white outline extended a full five inches off the cat, and not only was it visible around the edges, but also at its center.

I stared for a long time until strain caused me to look away. I gasped. Now I could see the cat wherever I turned my head, like it was burned onto my retinas.

I got a terrible feeling in my stomach. It was the feeling of knowing you’d had too many drinks, too much marijuana, or too much acid. I looked back to that original spatial zone the cat had occupied, but it was gone. Only the empty table and the scattered papers remained.

Frantically, I scanned the room, poking my head into every nook and cranny, and under the bed, under the desk, in the closet, and out in the hall. But the cat had vanished.

I heard Clown Face’s deep, godlike chuckle. “Missing something?”

“The cat, the black one—where? It was just here, I know it. I saw it with my own two eyes. Now it’s—”

“It’s gone, Charles. In fact it was never there in the first place. It was only visible to you because in your mind you had decided to perceive it. Since mind is all, one can just as easily decide to un-see something, as well as decide to see it.”

I thought my brain was being cleaved in half. The disappearance of the black cat marked a turning point in these events. Following the incident, I ceased my questioning, doubting, and skepticism, and I was more openly conducive to the inflowing current of sensitive organization of The Castle. Things were not quite the same after that.

* * *

After the cat evaporated, other objects began vanishing too. One morning I finally worked up the courage to go grocery shopping, but stepping outside, I found no car. I stood for a long time in the early morning dawn, staring down at the place where my car had been.

The following day it was the television. A vacant, dustless spot dominated the oak entertainment center where, for so long, the TV had stood. Next were the pictures on the walls (not including Clown Face, which actually appeared to be growing).

Later the furniture began to dissolve. The two sofas in the living room, the dining table, the chairs, the mirrors, dressers, and beds. Soon I found myself walking through all the empty rooms scratching my head. The solitary feeling of The Castle was growing, and it seemed much bigger and danker.

After some time had passed, the only things remaining in The Castle were myself, my writing desk, and the painting. The two cats were gone, but there was one other thing, something I wished would disappear. My cell phone.

“I’m worried about you,” Jim Royce said the last time he called me. “We used to get in touch once a week. Now you almost never answer my calls. And when you do, you can’t wait to hang up. What’s the deal?”

“You’ll be pleased to know I’m nearing the end of my novel, Jim.”

“Terrific! Is that why you’ve been so scarce lately?”

“That’s why. To be honest, this is the most absorbing thing I’ve ever written. It’s like I’m actually taking part in the narrative.”

There was a pause. “Well… you are taking part in it. You’re the one writing it.”

“It’s not just the writing process. There’s something else going on. Strange stuff. The kind of stuff I’m writing about, Jim. The stuff I’m writing about has bled over into my reality.”

“I see.”

Another pause.

“Well, how about chapters?”

A piercing screech ripped out of the earpiece and I yanked the phone away. Then, as I hurled it toward the wall, it dematerialized midway through the path of its trajectory and before it could smash into smithereens, it flicked out in midair.

I had never felt more alone.

* * *

I returned to work on my manuscript, and was shocked to find that Clown Face had grown to four times its original size. It no longer resembled a painting. Now it was like a large viewing screen.

Clown Face bobbed in its ocean of whiteness, eyes large and godlike, mouth red-painted and bloated. It commanded me to take up my pen. I did, and Clown Face started speaking again.

“There is a misconception held by the people of the world, that what they think is inside of them, and what they do is outside of them. If one person has an interaction with another person, and this interaction somehow turns disagreeable, then both people leave feeling either insulted or guilty for offending the other. Each person is then thought to go their separate way and to take this experience with them. But that is wrong. No one goes anywhere with anything. It’s all in the mind.

“Just as you are every person—every character, rather—in your dreams, so are you every character in your reality, for your reality exists only in the mind. Just as you are all phenomenal objectivea in your dreams, so are you all phenomenal objectivea in your reality.”

“You just said that.”

“Well it bears repeating. You are the organisms, the rocks, the light particles, the dust motes, the plants and animals, the buildings and cars—you are the sky itself, the clouds, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the universe. You are infinite.”

Scribbling furiously, I rushed to write down his words. I wrote without thinking. When I was finished, I looked up and nearly tumbled out of my chair.

Clown Face was gone. The painting remained, large and dominant on the wall, its walnut frame gleaming in the mellow light. But in the frame was only soft, swirling white space that seemed to go on forever.

I stood up slowly, and the moment I did, the chair vaporized behind my back. My trembling face aimed at the painting, I kept retreating, back and back, as the writing table flickered out. The walls began to resemble mirages. They too flickered out and finally the floor upon which I stood flickered out. Then I was surrounded by infinite whiteness.

Everything was gone except the large walnut frame hanging in space and looming before me like some kind of bizarre entryway.

When I came to it, my whole body was trembling. I could barely keep still. Colors appeared in the vast whiteness, more and more of them mixing together, swirling about.

Soon they took shape inside the walnut picture frame. Everything else remained endless and white, and the frame itself appeared to shrink now. I glanced at my body and was appalled to find that it had vanished from the neck down. I tried to speak, to scream, but all that came out was a gasp.

The picture frame contracted until it was only big enough to fit around my head. I became affixed to that place. The colors and shapes were soon definable only by textures, angles, and patterns. Out there I could see another room, one very similar to the room containing my writing desk.

And the more I looked out there, the more I realized it was the same room, and the same writing desk, and even my old furniture. Everything that was once a part of my reality was now out there.

Clown Face was sitting at the desk, dressed in a gaudy blue-and-white clown suit, with orange puffballs running down the chest and ruffles around the sleeves. Its face no longer appeared painted and cartoonish; it now appeared very real… and very unsettling.

Looking up and staring through the walnut frame with big goofy eyes, Clown Face gave me a sneering, loathsome smile from its bloated red mouth.

“What are you going to speak about today, Charles Face?” it said. “Are you going to lecture on the nature of reality, hm, perhaps you still believe there’s an objective world outside of your mind?”

I tried to speak but I was paralyzed by fear.

Clown Face shook his head almost ruefully. “No, I’m sorry to say, for you Charles there is only one mode of experience, and to that mode you will forever be a prisoner and that mode will forever be in your mind. The sad lesson of all this, Charles, is that you are forever doomed to your own subjective experience. You can never experience my reality, nor anyone else’s. There is only Charles Face… and you are forever stuck with him—”

Clown Face got up from the desk and slowly made his way to the left, exiting the walnut frame and leaving me staring at the empty room. Once this happened I was finally able to transform my terror into something more audible. Something more like a scream.

My Stalk

Look how it rises godlike from the loamy soil. Here, in the primeval realms of the ancient forest: magnificent, enormous, sky-bound sprout; camouflaged among the towering elms and pines. One must seek it to locate it. But none are seekers here. No human being would set foot in this wild region.

Only myself. And I only out of devotion.

The deepest, lime-colored shades of green, rainbowed with reds and oranges. And a spiral of black weaving through it. Great, fibrous chords of chitinous flesh, interlocking like latticework with flat, purple leaves. Such a beauty. How it grows. This mighty fungus.

Soon my Stalk will provide the bridge between worlds. Causeway, Sky God calls it. Then I will ascend, straight upward and not in a roundabout way. I will gain the heights of Heaven. My devotion will pour itself outward unto Sky God as He accepts me into His bosom, enveloping me so that He and I can become one, merge…

All thanks to my Stalk.

* * *

If not for the disreputable myth which circulates these rural lands, I would’ve never gone looking for the witch’s rumored shop deep in the woods—much less found it—much less ventured inside to peruse the dusty shelves.

That old vile creature to whom I am indebted, to whom I owe my monitoring of my Stalk, watched me from behind her morose wood counter. Filigrees of herbs and vines covered the wall at her rear; glass globes; trinkets, likewise glass, clung to bent nails; animal skulls and taxidermy, gazing with intervals of hollow eyes.

I found her loathsome, not only due to her appearance, but because she also smelled a tad fecal. It was like being around a slimy, rabid, rodent: the last thing you want is for the verminous being to come near you.

The witch was clothed in a soiled mound of foul rags, more mold than cotton, shawls that enwrapped serpent-like about her. Hair like a wild bush. Grizzled face concealed in a veil. Ocular damnation peering out from wrinkled flesh.

Her voice: the sound of dying angels. She suggested various items that she thought might interest me. Vials, herb formulas: things meant to poison people. I told her I wasn’t interested in such things.

“Then why have you come?” she asked.

“Curiosity,” I replied.

She hmmed. “A seeker, eh? What do you seek?”

I thought about this; shrugged. “I’m not sure, but since I was a child I’ve always asked the question Why? Why is your shop hidden in the woods? Why do you exist?”

Cackling, she replied, “Those are topics for another time. What you seek presently lies on a shelf in the back, behind the hand mirrors.”

She pointed and I followed her finger to the object lying on the shelf: a silent black pouch tied by a drawstring, with unusual gold symbols sewn into the fabric. I picked it up. Weighty.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Inside lies your answer. Go ahead. Open it.”

I did. A handful of fossilized mushroom buttons lay at the bottom. They clinked together, a sound like knocking gems. Smell of stale mold wafted toward my face: a reek like rotting flesh. I pulled the drawstring, grimacing.

“The odor of God,” she murmured.

I was appalled by her comment, yet didn’t deign to respond. “What are they for?” I asked.

“To lay in the earth in a secret place where no humans ever trod. If you know of no such place, then do not take them.”

I thought of the ancient forests surrounding my countryside homestead. I nodded. “I know a place.”

“Good. Bring them here and pay.”

The price was everything in my wallet—more than I would have expected. I felt angry but I’d been entranced somehow: the allure of the mushroom buttons was like a drug.

“Once you plant them, it will grow,” she said.

“What will?”

“The Stalk. You must nurture it, water it. Give it love. Then you can climb it.”

I turned back from the door, brows knit. “Climb it where?”

“To Sky God. To the Owner of the Mystery of Creation.”

These words fell into me, permeating the world of my thoughts, almost like an infection. I saw disturbing imaginative forms: toadstool levitation; fungal mediumistic trance states; quivering vegetus limbs; and a giant amphibious monstrosity, with eyes like the bottom of a well.

I shivered all over, my skin a flower of gooseflesh. My whole life I’d suffered from night terrors. Now I was having them in the middle of the day.

The witch grinned. “You’re getting it,” she said. “He will come to you. Bury the buttons in the earth. Love them. Pray. And ascend.”

The door opened of its own accord, revealing the dense woods outside and the unfurling carpet of vines leading to the threshold. I stepped out, reborn, onto that blanket of fibrous green shoots. I felt free, transcended, like I was stepping into another dimension, one where my life was not so meaningless and dull; where I had a purpose.

The sky opened overhead.

* * *

Later, I hiked into the ancient forest, found a spot, and dug the buttons into the earth. My father, who once owned and tended the farmland on which I live, who is now buried on that same land, grew perennials behind our house when I was a child. Mother died when I was young, and Father said perennials had been her favorite; he continued to plant them each season as a way of keeping her memory alive.

He used the same rusty watering can right up until the end. I used it that day to water my fossilized buttons. The Stalk sprang up within several hours; when I came back it reached almost to my ankles.

From that day on I began sitting with the Stalk, admiring its otherworldly beauty and alien colors. As it grew, I grew: infatuated. A feeling of love—of filial, almost parental love—fostered within me. It felt like budding roses. I imagined I could hear the Stalk’s voice inside my head and glimpse the invisible movement of the forest spirits who had flocked to see it: the fairies, sprites, and gnomes.

Soon I was praying to it, falling on my knees in the soil, bowing my head. I told the Stalk I was grateful, devoted to it; that, above all things, I valued it most.

Sometimes I’d cry. Still do on those mornings when I awake in my sleeping bag after spending the night beside the Stalk, while the sunrays are streaming in through the branches and the Stalk looks like a miniature angel, like a heavenly being descended to earth.

As the months passed I ardently traveled into the forest each day, watering can in hand, to nurture, and to praise, my budding bridge between worlds; and I soon turned my attention toward the sky, where something like a permanent black cloud had formed, where weird designs became visible through the cumuli.

I dreamed. Soaring disembodied through star-strewn spaces, past the rolling planets and farther out into the cosmos, where I was contacted by Sky God for the first time.

I could recall snatches of our meetings, but nothing of what He said to me. Although His voice continued to resonate in my ears upon waking.

For a while I tried recreating the dreams with pen and paper. I still have those crude illustrations, shut away in my bottom dresser drawer. Large, looming, green toadstool platform, the size of a circular spacecraft covered in warts, spores, and patches. I saw Sky God adorning this organic vehicle, riding it like a magic carpet.

He was amphibious, yet somehow amorphous; sharply contoured, and yet blurry. I surely saw skittering tentacle-like legumes blossoming out to all sides, the petals of a horrid flower. The god Himself, though, un-vegetus; amphibious. The abstract outline of a giant frog, purple in color, bespeckled with glittering lights, and eyes of the blackest depths.

Sky God wavered his arms and uttered bizarre sounds I couldn’t understand— shnee, shnee, shnaw, shnee… shneu…

* * *

I began wondering why my baby, my Stalk, was that alone—a stalk. I was unable to comprehend the absence of a fleshy round cap, likewise a furled tulipesque bulb. There was only this fat chitinous column.

But I didn’t question it. I accepted that my knowledge of such things, of such worlds, was limited. I did not need to know everything in order to carry out my monitoring task. However, the answer to this fungal conundrum soon revealed itself to me.

* * *

I had gone into the forest to do my watering for the day. The Stalk, much to my satisfaction, had reached the height of a full grown human. I sprinkled water around the base, whispering devoted words of praise, cultivating my usual supplicatory feeling…

… when the air around me seemed to thicken, to congeal; the sky darkened and opened up, parting the roiling black cloud formation. I glanced overhead. I dropped my watering can, falling to my knees in awe.

Sky God had come.

I watched in dire anticipation, my body a clamped, soppy sponge. Contorting, perspiring, wringing itself into new shapes. The air seemed so thick it nearly choked me.

The circular shape descended through the canopy. I had seen all this before: in dreams. I knew what rode that levitating toadstool down to the physical plane. And I awaited its arrival eagerly.

Flailing, tapering appendages became visible over the side of the toadstool, whose bottom alone made itself visible. The fibrous texture was like smooth wax, covered in multiplying spores and warts. Here and there strange embedded gems glistened like diamonds.

I heard Him then. His terrible gibbering. Noises that a child would make. Yet these noises were coated with fluid, creating something guttural and liquidy.

Shnee, shnee, shnaw. Shnee… Shneu…

I humbled myself further, driving my knees into the soil. I am devoted to You, only You, I told the descending toadstool. Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose… You who comes after me is preferred before me!

The toadstool hovered over the trees, angling itself forward slightly, giving me a full view of Sky God riding his moldering throne. Stringy clouds darted past his head—like spirits. He was indeed amphibious: here, as in my dreams; great mighty froggish face, with eyes that seemed able to swallow the world.

Could he see me down here, prostrate on the forest floor?

The toadstool angled itself more, gliding down, until it was over the tip of my towering Stalk. Sky God’s words echoed throughout the forest— Shnaw… Shnee… Shneu…

As toadstool attached itself to Stalk, I released a redemptive cry. A profound sense of joy swept over my heart. I finally knew the answer: I’d been granted true wisdom.

Two met and, with a mulching sound, merged together—stalk and cap— forming the most beautiful soaring mushroom I had even seen. Such grandeur! Such art! I could hardly contain the emotions wellspringing within me.

Sky God rose from His fleshy throne, vines and legume-limbs unfurling around Him. His huge, bent, webbed feet clutched the mushroom cap in a deadly vice, allowing Him to gain the edge, where he stood almost diagonally.

He raised his stumpy purple arms, with hands and rounded fingers. He gestured and spoke in his strange tongue. He looked absurdly like an orator—like some great political leader in the pulpit of His theocracy.

Shnee, shnaw, shnee… Shneu…

More diamond-shiny gems glistened all over His body. And His mouth was a wide empty cavern, toothless, housing a coiling/uncoiling tongue the size of a prehistoric serpent.

Sky God orated for many hours, as I remained fixed in my devoted position. I came under a trance and lost all sense of time. When I finally regained control of myself, the forest was dark and moon and stars illuminated the sky.

The Amphibious One who rode out of the Heavens on a toadstool chariot was nowhere to be found. Sky God had returned whence He came. My Stalk was no longer a large mushroom but simply that—a stalk.

Saddened, but simultaneously relieved, I collected my watering can, sprinkled a few more blessed drops around the base, and headed back to the house.

* * *

But now the question must be asked—

How much longer can I wait, crying alone in the wilderness?

Nothing is certain. True, I have been granted a cosmic vision, but am I a mystic?

Are we, Sky God and I, like this—(middle finger wrapped around index)?

I cannot say. For I have not seen Him again since that day His fleshy chariot descended to the physical world. Now he only visits me in dreams…

But that is something.

At least I have not been forsaken.

* * *

And so I worship it. My baby. My reason for living.

My Stalk.

One day it will reach the Heavens. Then my precious Stalk will provide a bridge between worlds; a causeway. Then I will ascend, straight upward. Not in a roundabout way, for the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

My devotion will pour outward unto Sky God. The two of us will unite.

Until then I must continue my task undaunted, for I am the Monitor. The Guardian of the Gate. I will trod to the heart of this ancient forest everyday if I must, with watering can in hand, to nurture, to praise my blossoming beauty.

And I hope to watch, like a proud parent, as my offspring grows taller, bigger, stronger, to the very threshold of the sky where I know Sky God dwells behind the veil, aseat upon his fungal throne, gesturing with those hands, uttering His magical invocations.

Shnee, shnee, shnaw. Shnee… Shneu…

I will wait until everything has ripened. And do so without malice or impatience. I’ll not be cursed to wait alone, for throughout all the cycles of time, I will always have…

… my Stalk.

THE FOUR TRANSITIONS OF THE SOUL UPON DEATH

BY DAVID P. REICHMANN

PHASE 1: RECOGNIZING YOUR DEATH

Over our morning cup of coffee at the Steinman Café, Jeff said to me, “You know something, David? The only reason you’re happy being single is because you’ve never experienced real love.”

“Excuse me,” I said. I set down my black porcelain mug. “My marriage to Beth lasted a whole six years, thank you very much. You and Cathy—what, a year and a half?”

He was shaking his head. “It’s not the same. Me and Cathy, we’re different. Cathy is different. She’s just… man, she’s everything. Being with her was something else. She had these emotions that were so intense they brought out feelings in me I never knew I had. We were on fire for each other!”

“So on fire you put yourselves out.”

More head shaking. “You don’t get it. Beth wasn’t emotional the way Cathy was. She was all thinking and rationalizing. And you… what—I’ve never seen you have an emotion as long as I’ve known you. Christ, you’re like a robot sometimes!”

He was laughing but refused to look at me. “Face it, man, there was no passion between the two of you. That’s how you were able to make it work for so long: with concordant boredom. Hell, I’ll bet you never had good sex. Cathy and I were so much more; she was so much more. She was everything…”

He finally turned to look at me. The fuzzy lights of the café made his sweat-glistened face almost waxy.

“You’re a real bastard sometimes, you know that?” I said, grabbing my coat and making for the exit. “No wonder Cathy left you.”

He smirked, then called after me. “No sense getting offended, David.”

“Up yours!”

Customers turned to gawk as I slammed the glass door, got in my Volvo, and drove away.

But his words haunted me for the rest of the day. They kept flitting through my brain as I sat in the cubicle at my office. During the drive home in the afternoon traffic, his spiteful phrases replayed like a broken record.

“What an asshole,” I said, striking my palm against the steering wheel.

I unlocked the door to my high-rise apartment and went inside, taking my shoes off. It was empty; I hadn’t lived with anyone since the divorce. Hadn’t had a girlfriend. Hadn’t even had a date.

I’ll bet you never had good sex with Beth…

Little four-eyed bastard, I thought. What does he know about passion and good sex? Fuck, he lived with his mother till a few years ago.

I was downright pissed. And now, coming home to my empty apartment with the sterile kitchen and the dust-free floors, I began feeling more pissed. Here I was totally alone in my life, giving Jeff’s words full license to harass me.

I fixed myself a drink and sat on the leather sofa overlooking the Manhattan skyline. My two cats, Harry and Meow, emerged from their darkened crevices to weave between my feet. It felt nice to sit and relax. I soon forget about Jeff’s inflammatory statements.

Suddenly the TV kicked on. Nothing but silent white noise. Thinking that I had sat on the remote somehow, I muttered a curse and went questing through the cushions for it. However then I noticed it resting harmlessly on the oak entertainment center.

“What the devil?” I set my drink down and rose to my feet, scattering the cats. But after I depressed the power button a few times, nothing happened. It would not shut off.

The final straw came when I unplugged it from the wall and the buzzing white noise remained.

I must be working too hard, I thought.

I sat back on the sofa, kicked my feet up, and returned to my drink. The war between the blacks and the whites raged continuously on the TV screen. I stared at it with a dazed expression, sipping my whiskey and Coke.

I didn’t respond much to anything after that. I felt drugged, then stoned, then extremely exhausted. My eyelids drooped. My head nodded. I wasn’t sure when I was asleep and when I was awake.

The white noise parted like a theater curtain, swinging to either side of the screen to reveal blackness. The glass appeared to waver like a desert mirage. The rest of the entertainment center appeared to be melting. I tried to focus, but I felt drunk.

That’s when she approached the other side of the glass.

She was naked—but that was her; that was my ex-wife. Beth looked the way I remembered her: the short brown hair I always liked; her full figure with the small, perky breasts and wide hips.

She peered out of the TV screen, glancing about my apartment. When she spotted me, she stopped, moved a few paces closer, and got right up to the glass.

“That you, David?” she said, knocking twice on the screen. The clunk-clunk sound of her knuckles shook me wide awake.

“What the hell, you can’t be in there,” I said. I downed the rest of my drink with gusto, slamming it on the coffee table.

Beth was smiling. “Why it is you. Poor old dear David, how I’ve missed you. What do you say we make love right there on that sofa—just for old time’s sake? Got a bone to pick with your friend over here. He says he thinks you and I never had good sex. Can you believe it? You want to show him a thing or two?”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. It had been years since my last sexual experience, which, unfortunately, had been with Beth before we separated. Now she was here talking about sex—and she was speaking through my goddamn television screen!

“Which friend?” I found myself asking. But I already knew the answer.

Beth moved to the side and I saw Jeff emerge from the darkness. He wasn’t nude like Beth, but seeing him there put a strange feeling into my heart. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know if it was fear or rage.

“How’s it goin’, bud?” he said. Then he pointed at Beth. “You see just how hot your ex-wife is looking? You ready to show her who’s boss, because if you ain’t gonna go for it, man… I got dibs.”

It was definitely anger. Who the hell did he think he was, claiming dibs on my wife? Little whippersnapper. It was time I sent him the message that he needed to respect me.

“You gonna let him talk about me like that?” Beth said, stepping back up to the glass. Her curves and her full breasts seemed to explode through the screen. I was getting aroused.

“Hell no,” I said. “If anyone’s gonna make love to you, it’s gonna be me.”

She smirked. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Suddenly she was coming out of the glass. She squeezed her body through the black frame and emerged into the room, standing tall and beautiful before me. My knees went weak.

My god, has it been so long?

Snickering, Jeff came through the glass on her heels and stood off to one side. Beth came forward, reached down to undo my belt and zipper, then straddled me. My body tingled with delight. She was real—she was actually fucking real.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Jeff said. I was so overjoyed about Beth being on top of me that I didn’t care if he watched.

She pulled me out of my pants and boxers, inserting my tip into her inner depths; then she slid herself down on top of me. For ten minutes we made passionate love in the silent room.

When we had finished, she climbed off and walked to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. She stood there naked for a moment, her body glowing from the sex—a vision—then opened the door and stepped outside.

A cold breeze entered the room, along with the sound of wind and traffic. I clothed myself and zipped my zipper, watching as Jeff stalked past me on his way outside. “Now comes the crazy part,” he said.

I stood up and followed.

The three of us met on the balcony. Beth and Jeff, linking their hands, clambered up onto the railing and stood fully upright.

My heart thundered in my chest. “Are you crazy, what the hell are you doing?”

I tried to pull them back down, but when I reached out, my hands passed through flesh like they were ghosts.

“Don’t you get it?” Jeff said. “You never experienced real love with Beth, man. You only experienced illusions. Sex is the trigger that sets all games in motion. Until you learn how to feel what’s going on inside you, it’s impossible to love. You’ll have another couple of Beths and then you’ll die. Maybe you’re dead already. So au revoir, old friend. See you in your dreams.”

With that the two of them, hand-in-hand, swan-dived off the balcony. I screamed, rushing after them, but as I glanced over the edge I saw something very strange—I saw myself twirling like a lifeless ragdoll toward the streets and cars down below. Then my body vanished and there was only the wind and the silence.

I sat down in one of the patio chairs and gazed toward the Manhattan skyline; the sun was setting and a reddish-orange hue swept over the bay. It was the most beautiful sight I could remember seeing.

Slowly, I began to cry.

PHASE 2: RECOVERING THE SOUL-LIFE

Only the two of us, but he was much older, much wiser. I thought of him as a teacher, but I never knew how he thought of me. We were always together; we never met anyone else.

We went from place to place, idling here and there, never moving on too fast lest we miss some bristling wonder or enchantment. We perched above flowers, smelling; stood beneath trees, admiring; laid in the grass, relaxing.

Sometimes the scenery was so breathtaking that we were unable to do much of anything; we would stand quietly apart from each other, meditating.

Most of what we appreciated was the heart of nature. Greenery in all its finer forms. The sparkling gem-like leaves, adorning branches thick as arms. Long rolling hills of grass, which, at a distance, appeared to undulate like waves on the ocean. Different kinds of shrubs, of thistles and creeping vines; round knotty trunks, ferns in full bloom, even weeds that were not dead or sickly, but rather bountiful and redolent.

There was much meandering hither and thither without much concern lent to any one thing—save for the meandering itself. This had an annulling influence on time. My teacher had often told me of the illusion of time: that it only existed in people’s minds. For a while I was suspicious. It wasn’t until we began this interminable searching and admiring after beauty that I noticed time slowing down. Slower and slower, like molasses pouring out, until eventually it ceased being significant.

Immense blocks of what I once considered as time passed by unnoticed. Years and years and years. However we didn’t age. This was due to the fact that we existed in a dream. But also because we stopped acknowledging time as an authority. It was no longer a law. Thus it had no power.

We grew accustomed to the wooded landscape as we rambled over the hills, noticing the same ones, commenting on them. Certain trees became holy to us; certain sites as well. Rocks and very specific flowers became deities.

One day we discovered a vast crystal lake tucked away in some trees. It was shaped like a teardrop, a mirror surface reflecting the blue sky and patchwork clouds. Trees and grass clustered along its banks; several patches of murky reeds grew. Toward the center the water was a pristine blue, blue as sky, with no wind to stir its surface, the whole thing still—eerily still.

After we stood for a long time admiring it, I said, “This could be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

My teacher grunted. “It is certainly more beautiful than anything we have witnessed so far. But again, everything we have witnessed so far surpasses it in everything save beauty.”

I nodded, not understanding. There was no need to say anything further. We had spent so many days together in that dreamland that most of our thoughts were communicated through vibes. Actual speech was seldom needed to achieve communication. Whenever we did speak, it was mostly done out of fun; there was never anything important riding on it.

He knew I desired to have a closer look, and he granted his consent. I made my way down through the rocks and grass to the shoreline. Just once I looked back and saw he’d decided to stay atop the hill. The sun loomed behind him, casting his front in shadow: his big straw hat; his arms akimbo.

I reached the water and stooped to admire it. My eyes traced the curve of the crystal blue lake: the brown disappearing dirt; the wet rocks poking up; the shaggy trees reaching branches over the surface, dropping needles into the water. A lone duck flapped from one end to the other.

A splash caught my attention. Looking across the motionless surface, I saw ripples in the center, fanning out like sunbeams. Between the concentric rings, a dark shape was rising, and soaking wet, inch by inch, it heaved itself into the glimmering daylight.

I squinted trying to make it out. Whatever it was, it was darker than everything else in the area. The whole of nature seemed to radiate with oneness and life, but this single emerging thing expressed a separateness, as well as a complete absence of the beauty my teacher and I had come to appreciate. This thing—this horrible, dripping, menacing thing—was about to destroy reality.

Panicked, I glanced over my shoulder to hail my teacher. But when I looked, he wasn’t on the hilltop. Worse, where he had stood, now a single erected stick shot out of the ground—like a marker.

When I looked back, the black thing had completed its emersion from the lake.

It was wrought of the blackest wood, like a sturdy tree trunk, but it wasn’t water-rotted or rain-soaked; the sun cast tracing rays upon its surface, illuminating this and that, describing all its wonder and terror in infinite detail. It entranced me.

I recognized it as the carven idol of a woman. The trunk had been shaved, cut to form her voluptuous body. The curve of hips and buttocks, the swell of breasts, the hollow of her neck, the roundness of her face, the thick sections of her hair. Two gouged out holes for eyes, with bits of underwater soil and vegetation stuffed into them. Her mouth was luscious and wide, parted in an emotionless grin.

I grew certain she was looking at me.

Now that she had gained the surface, she turned a number of degrees and began to move, gliding over the water, propelled by some unseen force. Perfectly still, perfectly inanimate. And yet coming.

The woman split through the water, through the rocks and reeds, coming to a gliding halt just before me. I remained unmoving, frozen by wonder and terror. She was a full foot taller than me, her body almost a foot wider.

Those stuffed pockets meant to represent her eyes regarded me inquisitively.

“What… what do you want?” I muttered.

She said nothing, only loomed above me, staring into my soul. As I traced the lines of her full-figured body, touching upon the swollen, impregnated belly, cupping the breasts, even giving a firm hand to her buttocks, I grew aroused. I sensed the presence of a nasty spark, some inherent remnant of unbridled life.

Destructive life.

The moment I fancied this, she came roaring to life. The sound of her body twisting in motion was like the toppling of a hundred trees. I screamed as her hard bark hands closed around my waist and hoisted me up. Still screaming, I wriggled in her grasp, a worm on a hook.

At the last moment, just before her mouth grew fathoms wide with a tremendous crack, I saw again the crystal blueness of the lake. I recalled the tranquility of the water and longed to run my fingers through its silken hair.

But that chance would never be mine again, for at that instant the horrid tree witch turned me on end and thrust me forth into the hollow cavern of her mouth. I plunged into the darkness, screaming to be allowed back. In the distance I saw the last fading light of the sun as it resigned itself to night… and that was all.

PHASE 3: HEALING SPIRITUAL REALITY

I spent lots of time in the park near my apartment. I would sit on one of the old stone benches with my legs crossed, coat slung over my lap, gazing out across the grass. Parks always reminded me of my childhood and of being a kid again. I liked that.

Sometimes a mother and her children would pass by; sometimes they would smile at me; other times they would give me a mistrustful glare. The children didn’t have the same misgivings as their mothers. They were blissfully ignorant of the world’s evils, which was why so often they became the target of those evils.

My father died when I was seven. It was Mom and me from there on out. She had dated some after his death, but she never remarried and she never procured a serious partner. When she died of a heart attack three years ago, she’d been alone in her apartment with the TV blaring and a steaming dish of macaroni and cheese on the coffee table. I was one of eight people at her funeral.

The memories of my father were ghosts, and they haunted me at the park. I even thought I witnessed paranormal activity among the trees, faces in the branches, and lights in the clear blue sky. I was always searching for my dead father in the spaces between this reality and the next.

He used to take me to the park during my youth—somewhere around the age of five or six—just before his death. I recalled these experiences vividly and found it strange that most of my memories were blurry while others seemed to glimmer. But that was the nature of things.

These parks my father took me to I remembered through a kind of murky blue veil. I could see myself lower to the ground like a child, looking up at his short brown hair, jutting ears, and towering presence. I would be sitting in the swing coasting back and forth, propelled by his hands. Occasionally he stepped before the swing set, regarding me with a comely face and kind eyes.

Perhaps I came to the park now to sit and reflect, reminiscing on a childhood that was gone forever, that I would never have a chance to re-experience.

The rest of my time was spent searching for lights and hovering faces in the branches and the cross-sections of the jungle gym bars. On the very last day before I stopped going to the park, one of the children playing approached me. A boy no older than seven, with no parent accompanying him. He sat on the stone bench and looked up.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m David.”

I looked at the boy. “That’s funny. David is my name, too.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I know, that’s why I came over here.”

“You knew? How could you know? Have we met before?”

He was grinning. “No, no, no. A little voice inside my head told me. Do you ever hear voices inside your head?”

I nodded.

“Isn’t that funny—how there are tiny voices in there? And how about pictures, do you get pictures in your head?”

“All the time.”

“Like what?”

I paused to take a breath. “Well… just now, for instance, I was seeing my father inside my head.”

A shadow passed across the boy’s face. “Your dad, huh? Why? Is he here?”

“No. He died a long time ago.”

“My dad died a while back, too. Mom says he’s an angel now.”

“That’s what people say of the dead. We sure have a lot in common, don’t we David?”

“I’ll say.”

“How about ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?”

His face scrunched up into a ball. “Don’t know yet. I’d have to think about it.”

“Well I believe in them. Sometimes I even see them lurking around the park.”

“Really? This park? Where? I want to see one!”

“All right. Follow me.”

I got up and started walking away from the bench.

The boy followed. The park abutted some dense patch of wilderness to the north. Pines and maples and filigrees of spruce spreading out on the opposite side of the chain-link fence. At one place, a section of the fence was missing.

“Mom says not to go in there because of poison ivy.”

“But that’s where the ghosts are,” I said. “Don’t you want to see the ghosts?”

“Yes, but…”

“Don’t worry about poison ivy. I promise we’ll keep clear of it.”

“Okay.”

We passed through the missing section and stepped into the shade of the trees. A variety of small woodland creatures accompanied our progress. Squirrels raced down trunks, birds flew in the branches, bugs and slugs inched along in the dirt. For the most part it was dark, though the sun shone through the canopy occasionally. In a clearing we came upon an enormous tree stump sticking out of the ground.

“It’s huge!” the boy exclaimed. “Any idea how old it is?”

I shook my head. “I imagine ages. My father used to bring me here when I was about your age, just before he died. He said the tree was magic.”

“And is it—magic, I mean?”

“I thought so as a boy, but after he died and I started growing older, I stopped thinking so. Now I’m beginning to wonder again.”

We approached the massive trunk which sprung up from the soil like a geyser of gnarled bark. Intricate rings and patterns looped across its front and knobs of old dead branches protruded like octopus tentacles. About six feet up, directly in the center, was a hollow in the tree, a hole of extreme blackness.

“In that hollow is where the ghosts live,” I said. “I know because I once followed one at the park, and it led me here. I saw its silken transparent body slip right into that hole and vanish.”

“Cool.” The boy stood right underneath it, staring up. “Maybe if I crawl in there, I’ll get to see my dad again.”

“Maybe.”

“Will you give me a boost?”

I got down on my knees and intertwined my fingers. The boy grabbed a thick branch and then positioned one of his small feet in my hands. He pulled himself up while I boosted.

“Wow, I can see in there!” His pale legs and red tennis shoes stuck out of the trunk. “It’s so dark!”

“Do you see any ghosts?”

A pause. “Not yet.”

“Maybe you have to get closer.”

“I think so.” Kicking his legs out, he slid himself further into the hole and disappeared.

“What do you see now?”

“I’m really far in. It just keeps going and going. I think there’s someone down here.”

“Is it a ghost?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t see anything. But I hear someone.”

“Try.”

After a while, he said—very faintly—“He’s glowing. And he’s got wings. And when he opens his hands, there are eyeballs in the middle of his palms.”

That was all. He didn’t speak again.

I called for the boy repeatedly but got no response. I waited for him to come back out. For hours I stood waiting. My heart thundered in my chest until eventually the sun began to sink in the sky.

Darkness encroached through the trees. Stars alighted in the branches. Crickets buzzed and fireflies danced in the air.

I called one last time.

Nothing.

The hollow in the trunk seemed to be mocking me. Finally it became so dark that I was forced to head back to the park and then to my car and then to my apartment. I stood gazing wistfully out the window at the luminous city.

I never went to the park again.

Never met that boy again, either.

PHASE 4: ASCENSION

A strange meteorological occurrence was taking place. To the south the sky was black, a heavy blanket of storm clouds stacked into menacing rows. To the west the clouds were fluffy and white, and patches of clear blue sky shone through. The sun was setting there, creating a magical mix of reds, oranges, and yellows. Rain came down hard, each drop reflecting the sunlight so that glimmering diamonds seemed to be falling.

I was sitting at a bus stop at Central and 33rd Street beneath a metal awning, admiring the beautiful sky. The deluge had washed out the roads with sheets of murky water. Cars and trucks roared past, flinging wetness from their tires. A haze hung in the air, a misty grayness caused by the swirling water vapors. There had been no sign of the bus yet.

The man sitting beside me was smoking a cigarette. “Fine weather we’re having!” he yelled over the din. “I was in the navy so I’m used to hurricanes—this ain’t nuthin’!”

He sort of yee-hawed and took off his baseball cap, which was drenched with rain. His head was small, pea-shaped, and balding, with a few strands of brown hair above the ears. His eyes were small and thin, the kind that never looked you straight on.

He’s a rodent, I thought, like one of those talking creatures from a Disney cartoon. I wonder if he has any cheese in his pockets?

I laughed outright and audibly, a big belly laugh. The thought of the man storing cheese in his pockets was ridiculous. The rodent returned the cap to his head, concealing baldness, and smoked his cigarette, staring up the street for the bus.

A young couple came dashing out of the rain to stand under the awning. They took a look at me, at the other man, and then faced each other. Before long they were kissing.

What might have been an awkward situation was mitigated by the presence of the rain. It somehow washed all traces of anxiety from the earth. There was only the enigmatic blue patches to the west, shot through with colors, and that horrid cloud-beast approaching from the south.

While the couple kissed and the man smoked and the rain slapped against the pavement, my eyes turned skyward to where the colors and the clouds seemed to mix together in a vast stew. The air was sweet-smelling of dampness and weather, and the tops of buildings loomed against a backdrop of heavenly lights. Eventually the rain died down to a drizzle, allowing those stranded at the bus stop to peek their heads out and utter disagreeably, “Come on. Where is it?”

Now that the haze of precipitation had lessened, I could see the bands of setting sunlight and the last wispy clouds more clearly. These clouds did strange things. As they were layered, they also moved at different speeds and in different directions. Some slowly; some quickly. This gave the sky the appearance of shifting.

More harried civilians emerged out of the dying storm, bedraggled and soaking wet, like the survivors of a great disaster. Ten in all waited for the bus, growing more antsy by the minute.

I had noticed something. Directly across the street, erected before some buildings, was a peculiar streetlight. Behind it in the sky, the sunset, the patches of blue, those white clouds, and the swirls of red and orange merged together. Odd how pigeons remained active over on that side, as if the lingering sunlight protected them from the storm; one of them landed straight on top of the streetlight and began nuzzling its feathers.

I watched. A sort of fuzzy outline stood out around the bird. I concentrated on this outline and it grew. Then it expanded around the pole itself and down to the pavement.

Before long I could see this fuzziness around the buildings and then around the moving cars. Pretty to look at, I thought. But I don’t understand.

The glowing outline burned white-hot around the streetlight. It traveled down the edges of the pole. The more I focused on it, the more it grew. Then, for one blinding flash, it became affixed to everything in my field of vision. It blazed off passing cars and stood tall upon every building.

The world is on fire…

I suddenly remembered the people sitting close by and turned to look at them. But of course they had seen nothing. They were either staring up the road hoping for the bus, talking on their cell phones, or listening to music on their iPods.

No one can see it but me, I thought. What everyone else sees isn’t really there. Well it is, but it’s not all that is there.

I abruptly stood up from the bench. I’d had a revelation, not only a thought, but an experience. I felt it in my mind, body, and soul. It was a warm feeling, a state of clarity, of joy and understanding. No longer would I be prisoner to the veil of this world. I had seen beyond it.

The rain started up again and was met with groans of complaint. The great black cloud-beast was arriving from the south, bringing with it a promise of destruction. Nature’s unbridled, indifferent fury.

Just then the large city bus appeared, its square front like an abstract human head. It was down the street but approaching fast, bringing the worst of the storm with it.

As it pulled to a stop before the curb, I stepped into the street behind it. The others remained unaware of me as they filed onto the bus. The rain turned on heavily, covering everything with noise and white haze.

I stayed behind in the street, pounded by rain, as the bus pulled back into traffic. I held my arms out at my sides, a small black dot in the downpour. The bus merged with the other lights and continued north to where the sky was relatively clear.

I turned my eyes upward, relishing the slap of rain against my face. It felt like I was being unmade in it. Each sharp stab of each raindrop that struck me broke off a layer of material armor. I could actually feel it breaking away, and I imagined a pile of it lying around my feet.

Cars passed through me. I was now as transparent as a window in the night. The lower half of my body flickered and then vanished completely. A burning white-hot glow replaced it and then the same thing happened to my upper half.

I’m going home, I thought.

Soon there was nothing left of me save a fuzzy white outline, which itself eventually vanished in the immense roaring rain.

{(CALIFORNIA SEA + COSMIC MAN) - HUMANKIND} + ANADYR, RUSSIA = APOCALYPSE

PROLOGUE

California, USA

Summer, Sunday

July 12, 2020

4:00:01 PM

The stone was small and stuck in the sand among the colorful multitude of shells and pebbles. A crab side-walked through a graveyard of dead crustaceans a few inches to the left of it, pulling something along in its claws.

The ocean made a crashing noise and suddenly a swelling plane of saltwater flooded the beach, washing out the graveyard and the crab, leaving the small stone smooth and unpolished, untouched. As the wave receded, Jeremy reached down and plucked the stone from the sand.

A normal looking thing, very similar to the flat stones his mom collected and called sand dollars, but much smaller, darker. There was a sign or symbol in the center, something he could barely make out. Like the letter D written calligraphically.

He held it up to the sun, furthering his investigations. Beautiful: the sun streamed through and made it glow. Not like other stones. Special.

A wave glided up the shore, broken shells and stones battering against Jeremy’s bare feet. Securing the stone within his closed fingers, he turned and headed back up the beach, toward safety and the hotter, drier sand.

He scanned the area, looking for his mom. He found a few random beach-goers piddling through the sand, and a few wading in the water farther down. But the place was uncharacteristically empty.

He was having trouble remembering from which direction he had come. Wasn’t his fault. He was only nine. He couldn’t be expected to keep track of the crazy business grownups called the “real world.” He’d gotten himself turned around. The nifty stone he’d seen glinting in the waves from a distance had so arrested his attention that he had forgotten everything else.

And now Mom was not around. At least there were only two ways to go: left or right. He closed his eyes, eventually made his decision, and started walking up the beach.

But soon he was all alone which wasn’t good, because it meant he had definitely gone the wrong way. All that was here was sand, surf, shells, dead crabs, birds, and scrub grass. He looked over his shoulder, wondering if his mom and their white sheet, red umbrella, and ice chest filled with untold goodies lay back in that direction. He simply couldn’t recall, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of it.

He blew a sigh. “Fuck a duck,” he muttered, something he had heard Mom say when she got angry.

He would just have to turn around and go back; he didn’t have any other choice. But as he spun on his heels, the smooth stone vibrated in his hand, giving him an electric shock. “Yowza!” he cried, reflexively flinging the stone across the beach. He rubbed his palm, fighting tears. Now what was that all about?

He considered leaving it—stupid old thing shocking him like that—but he’d come all this way for it, and it was extremely pretty and magical-appearing. Even now, where it sat isolated on the beach, it reflected the overhead sun gloriously, twinkling like a diamond, the sand beneath it seeming to ripple.

Without warning, it turned on end and began rolling down the beach toward the sea.

Jeremy blinked. He knew the stone was magical.

Laughing, he came galumphing down the shore, arms flailing at his sides, the patter of sea water tickling his chest as waves broke. The stone had not slowed, nor stopped, and still it rolled like a wheel through the waves; any second it would be claimed by the ocean.

“Oh no you don’t!” Jeremy said, and dove for the stone, getting his fingers around it just as the largest wave smashed down, sucking both boy and stone down into its yawning gulf. He held tight, not letting go, and the stone likewise refused to lax. Jeremy was taken down into the sea.

ONE

Anadyr, Russia

Late Winter, Monday

March 13, 2023

12:00:01 AM

The grayish blue water moved like soup, sloshing beneath the dark, rumbling cloud-infused sky, the cold air swirling above it, coming down from the glaciers and shelves of ice higher up in the Shchuchy Mountain Range, where snowfall ever gleamed like white china.

Farther away from shore, the Anadyr Valley and its weave of plateaus, rivers, wetlands, and estuaries slumbered soundlessly under the cloudy black sky. Nothing but cold, dry wind blew, moving across the mountainous tundra to the north. Sprinkles of snow glittered, falling in a light shower, hanging in the air like a slightly imperceptible curtain.

Nearer down, along the harbor, the rectangular symmetrical Russian buildings of Anadyr also slumbered as their flat blue, yellow, and red rooftops slowly gathered snow. Several street lights glared through the darkness, and the lone statue of Lenin erected before the Anadyr Child Creativity Palace watched everything with a hard, steady gaze.

Along the wharfs and docks, among the many fishing boats swaying on the waters, and the many other, disused beached vessels, now rotting from the inside out, sat Ivan alone on the dock in front of one of the fisheries, smoking his pipe and looking at the sky.

He was wrapped, in usual fashion, by the fibrous fabric of his heavy coat, feet shod in big black boots, wearing his furry Ushanka with the ears folded back; a pint of vodka sat on the dock by his feet. The smoke of his pipe lifted gently, wavering snakelike before his cool blue eyes, his tough round nose, and square chin. He wasn’t thinking much; mostly of the day’s catch and what tomorrow’s haul could bring.

Through the gloom he spotted Luka, also clad in his heavy coat, moving, hunched, up the boards of the dock. When he saw Ivan, he nodded and sat on the bench beside him. After exchanging a proper greeting—both men knew each other well, having worked in the boatyards together since their youth—Ivan took a sip of vodka and passed it to Luka, who, grinning through full beard and stained yellow teeth, accepted greedily. They sat for a while, getting drunk. Ivan shared his pipe.

As the sky grew darker, permeated by both the dense cloud cover and deepening night, a spot of light stood directly over the waters of the Bearing Straight. Ivan noticed it first, then pointed it out to his friend. A perfectly roundish white-gold sphere, stuck in the clouds, but no: the more they watched, the more it appeared to swell… approaching… drawing closer to the Earth.

Whatever panic the two men might have normally experienced was compromised by their drunken state. Laughing hoarsely and speaking to each other in Russian, they speculated on the nature of the descending ball of light. Ivan said meteor; Luka said UFO; Ivan said airplane crash; Luka said United States armed nuclear warhead. Both men burst out laughing.

But after a time their revelry was replaced by a form of awe. Spellbound, they watched the ball of light descend, swelling until it was a finger’s length in the sky. The light barreled through the clouds, seeming to burn them away as it dove toward the sea. Larger and larger, and then it nearly filled the sky, blotting out the surrounding landscape, flashing so intensely that the two men cried out, ducking eyes into elbows.

The ball of light landed in the Bearing Straight with a tremendous splash and a boom that rumbled the ground beneath Anadyr. The wood planks of the dock rattled like skeletal teeth. The water sizzled with heat. This went on for several seconds, then returned to silence.

When Ivan looked up he saw a column of stony-looking light rise from the water where the impact had occurred. This light streamed up and up, vanishing back into the clouds above, permeating the surface around it, staining the sea with gold. Shapes moved within the light: lions, crabs, fishes, bulls, even a set of balancing scales.

Ivan slapped at his friend’s arm. Luka, in the middle of taking a pull of vodka, spilled the liquor down his chin, coughing. What the hell did Ivan think he was doing? But Ivan ignored the question, instead grabbing Luka by the face and pointing his eyes toward the column of light. Look at that, you damn old man.

Luka started to make a whining noise. Ivan looked out across the water, and now his heart began to double-beat and he felt a giant panic in his veins. Something similar to the backside of a whale had surfaced beneath the light and the play of zodiacal images. At first he thought it was a whale, but then realized it was too big. As it rose out of the water, he saw it was composed of some strange array of colors—gaseous white, orange, brown, red—and it resembled the shape of a planet.

When the planet-thing heaved itself again, emerging higher over the surface and revealing itself, Luka screeched and lunged to his feet, racing off into the night. His scream lingered behind him along the docks. Ivan took one last look at the thing coming forth from the sea, now rumbling the ground beneath Anadyr, and banished it willfully from his thoughts. He jumped to his feet, pocketed his pipe, and went after his friend.

TWO

California, USA

Summer, Saturday

August 26, 2023

3:30:01 PM

Three harrowing years of emptiness, sorrow, and darkness; of despair, confusion, and grief. The worst part was the not-knowing, his body never found, the case still open, some motives such as kidnapping having been considered, but Bethany felt certain the police had given up Jeremy to the sea; body or no body. Even though they did her a small favor by keeping the case open, stoking her hopes like a dying fire, she knew they had stopped looking.

The sea dipped and swelled along the horizon. Several larger, seemingly unmoving ships were farther out. A smattering of clouds painted the sky, in which dove a concentric circle of seagulls. The sun was enthroned even higher, blazing gold over the waters and sand.

She remembered the day it happened as though it were yesterday. She had only flipped onto her stomach for a second, wanting to tan her back, and had accidentally fallen asleep for an hour or so. She had known Jeremy was off playing along the beach, which was nothing new; they came here all the time and he knew the rules: never go past his ankles when she wasn’t watching.

How, then, could he have drowned?

She returned at least once a month, hoping to dislodge some new evidence or some fossilized answer to her question, standing on the beach among the scattered swimmers and sunbathers.

Ocean, what happened to my son?

The ocean never replied, only bubbled and sloshed primordially, like the internal acidic fluids of some ancient god. The waves crashed and roared as the surf ate away the sand and the ropey, slimy seaweed crawled forth, and the terrible birds that circled overhead cried out.

Goddamn you, ocean, she thought fiercely, tears coming to her eyes. Goddamn you straight to Hell.

Something happened; a tick, a little switch in the air, all but imperceptible, but she definitely felt it. The sunrays fizzled then went behind a cloud; the temperature dropped a couple of degrees and a cold breeze blew against her. Even the trees darkened, the sand too, everything around her, dimming, as if in holy anticipation.

The answer was coming.

THREE

Anadyr, Russia

Late Winter, Monday

March 13, 2023

6:45:01 AM

In the morning Ivan and Luka, at the behest of the old priest, timidly emerged from their nest of rags and crept steadfastly through the pews, away from the altar, and out the front door of the church.

Daylight but the clouds still clung to the sky, halving the sunlight, giving the world a dim gray hue. The streets were deserted. But further on, past the network of rooftops, hundreds of people could be seen gathered along the docks. Beyond them, rising from the water, stood the giant cosmic man.

Together with the priest, they moved away from the onion domes of the wooden Orthodox Church and down to the rows of slumping houses. The priest said the demon (his own word) had appeared on the horizon that morning, standing perfectly still and firm, casting its judgmental eye upon the town. Everyone in Anadyr had gathered for a mass prayer on the docks. Good thing the two men had spent the night in the church—the priest said—drunk though they’d been, for expelling the demon and returning God’s favor would require every praying mouth available.

Ivan and Luka followed the priest down to the congregation already engaged in prayer on the docks. Their heads swam with the effects of the vodka and the fear they had experienced the night before. When the priest urged them into the crowd, admonishing them to pray to their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so that He might absolve them of their horrible fate, they did so without a fight.

Then the priest, looking austere in his black vestments and clerical collar, mounted an old wooden crate and began preaching in Russian, emphatic tones reaching out across the water. He instructed them all to get down on their knees. He himself genuflected on the crate, as the solemn sounds of worship fanned out over the Anadyr rooftops.

The cosmic man perched nearby, a titan commanding both sky and sea, seemingly unaffected by the desperate prayers; then suddenly his mountainous body cracked into lurid life and he came straight for them.

FOUR

California, USA

Summer, Saturday

August 26, 2023

4:15:01 PM

There were thirty or forty people spread along the beach going about their business. Only Bethany was aware of the mounting tension, the building charge, which led her to speculate as to whether or not this was happening in reaction to her. The curse she had uttered, mentally, at the ocean. The disappearance of her son, her reason for being here in the first place. The answer she sought, the ache she felt in her soul every time she heard his name…

Jeremy…

Tears came now, streaming gracefully from her almond eyes. She wiped at them with her hand, as the cool breeze became cooler, tugging on her blond hair and white summer dress.

The world continued to darken, but she stood firm, rooted to the sand, determined to face this thing (whatever it was). She would do anything to bring her son back.

What caught her attention first was the sudden disappearance of the large ships which, up until now, had drifted lazily on the horizon. Now they were gone; not gone in the sense they had moved out of sight, but gone in the blink of an eye, as if something underneath had suctioned them down.

She strained to get a better look, blinking both eyes, wiping the lingering tears away. Yes, they were gone, and another thing: the ocean out there seemed to be cleaving, or collapsing in on itself, creating the appearance of a growing chasm or depression. And still the beach-goers felt nothing, while even the wheeling birds had gone for cover in the trees, and the clouds, almost seeming to evacuate the sky, had clustered about the sun.

Her focus shifted back to the far-out sea waters, dividing as Moses had parted the Red Sea, and she had a thought: Something’s coming.

The next moment it came. The waters sunk entirely, giving birth to a colossally massive structure, brownish or fleshy in appearance, which she first believed to be an animal, then a building or even a surfacing submarine, but which finally revealed itself to be none of those. What was emerging grand and terrible from the sea was a structure much like the peak of a mountain, covered in rocks, perhaps a rock itself, but no: she had the distinct impression that it was a thing covered in rocks, and yet underneath was something else, some other, more vastly terrifying, sea creature.

She caught her breath. Her heart clenched. She experienced the fleeting, ghostly craving for a cigarette, and she had not smoked in years.

The rock pillar grew until it stood straight up in the sky, miles up, like a giant building, making her think of the beanstalk from the popular fairy tale. This was a being of rocks, made of them, sheathed in them, in those darkest and slimiest from the ocean depths. It dripped sprays of water, was tethered and strangled by aquatic plant life, clad in barnacles, shells and coral and spiny things clustered all over it. Bethany even thought she saw starfish and other sucker creatures clinging to it, although it was hard to tell at this distance. But she could see that fish and jellies and even some lobster-things were forced out of the water and expelled as it made its way higher.

Then another equally fantastic pillar of rocky flesh shot up several hundred feet into the sky, sending a resounding boom through the earth which shook the beach sands and even the leaves of the trees. Bethany felt the vibrations in her teeth.

This, the other beach-goers could not ignore; they stopped whatever they were doing and turned to gaze out into the ocean. Screams of shock terminated in stifled gasps; myriad cries of What the fuck… the hell… in the name of heaven? But the commotion quickly died away to the awesome vision of the twin pillars of deep ocean stone, shedding fish and plant life like an old skin, towering from the waters into the cloudless blue. The awesome scale of it had them all paralyzed, as if made of stone themselves, like statues carved from—yet still attached to—the white beach sands.

At that moment the pillars revealed their true nature—that they were gigantic legs—legs of some colossal man, who now heaved himself up from the slumberous depths of the sea. The rocky legs straightened, locking the knees, and up from the rear came the massive torso, arms, and head, emerging like an entire mountain, spilling thousands of gallons of seawater to either side, creating waterfalls. Another tremendous boom rumbled through the beach, and this time the ground shook as though wracked by an earthquake.

When the colossal man was fully erected, he stood miles high, his upper body almost level with the sun, covered in scales, barnacles, fish, and aquatic plant life. He was a massive titan, the stuff of myths and legends. The cosmic man, Bethany thought.

Though he appeared predominantly humanoid, there were aspects involved in his makeup that were utterly foreign and incomprehensible. No normal head rested on his rock shoulders, but an entire shrunken and reddish planet, a displaced part of the solar system; what Bethany thought of as the planet Jupiter in miniature.

She had some difficultly comprehending this. Lightning flashed through her head, but she endured the physical pain, blazing her sight straight into the murky distance, toward the gaseous white, orange, brown, and red churning sphere. The surface of it swirled like a great colorful soup, as the massive sphere revolved atop the cosmic man’s rock-covered neck.

Some of the beach-goers scrambled back toward the rows of parked cars, caught in the shadow of the colossal man, whose massive presence blotted out the sun. Bethany happened to glance at their fleeing faces and caught sight of the panic and horror in their eyes: the look of dazed children suddenly confronted with new and terrifying visions of reality.

Those who didn’t escape with engines roaring and tires screeching remained on the beach staring at the cosmic man as though under a spell, and Bethany rejoined her gaze to theirs, so that one intense beam of focused human attention was trained on him.

He began to move forward, gliding with supernatural ease through the sea, waters parting before him, his gigantic knees never bending. The sky darkened and everything within the vicinity of the cosmic man vanished—first clouds, then birds, rocks, trees—evaporating into a shimmering emptiness of golden stardust.

Bethany thought of her son, hands steepled before her chest. I’ll always love you, Jeremy, she thought, with a sudden certainty that the cosmic man was somehow responsible for her son’s disappearance three years ago.

Then his enormous hands passed over the beach as though blessing it. She closed her eyes and imagined Jeremy there, standing beside her hugging her leg. In her mind she bent down into the embrace, crying and crying, for she missed him so.

From within to without, strands of matter which she had foolishly considered to belong to her—her body, her individuality, her being, her persona—but which truly belonged to the vacuum, were unspun, creating within her a feeling like plummeting through the sky. Her stomach heaved, and she grew numb, then fuzzed out, then at the precise moment she could stand it no longer, this feeling burst. Here she felt release, dissemination, acceptance. Felt home. The little golden dots appeared before her eyes, an instant before she was scatter-blasted through them.

FIVE

Anadyr, Russia

Late Winter, Monday

March 13, 2023

11:50:01 AM

He shook the ground beneath the docks, rattling the boards. He sent up fissures into the winding streets, splitting the asphalt. Several appeared under houses and buildings, sinking them into the cracks. The telephone poles toppled over. The statue of Lenin fell from its pedestal.

The gathering began to scream. A few lurched to their feet to go racing up the street. But the priest shouted at them to keep praying. While many abandoned the docks in search of higher ground, still others remained; heads bowed, hands clasped, eyes shut against the horror.

The frigid waters, shedding ice planks, dove to either side, sweeping over the land in huge waves; the cosmic man, rigid, approached without moving his limbs, his strange titanic body full of signs and symbols. Whatever came into his presence, or fell under his gaze, was wiped out of existence. Within the residual voids, there swirled a shimmering array of star-lights.

The frozen tundra farther ashore, the cold snowy steppes, the ice shelves and glaciers—all of it winked out like that (finger-snap) and was replaced by softly fluttering lights.

When he reached the docks, towering overhead now, lost among the clouds, the moored ships, the fisheries, and some of the closer bluish-red buildings evaporated. The crowd broke into a run, Ivan and Luka among them. Screams filled the air. The priest, erected on his wooden crate, shouted after them—but the next instant he was obliterated by the cosmic man.

The giant raised its strange, rock-like arms over the city, hands reaching ashore for miles. Those lingering along the docks: gone instantly. Also those fleeing, including Ivan and Luka—gone—followed by the others, and then the buildings making up Anadyr, all the snowy peaks, plateaus, ice-cold estuaries spreading like veins farther inland—everything in the vicinity of a hundred miles—gone—transformed into emptiness and whirling lights.

The cosmic man lingered in the hazy darkness then lowered his arms to his sides. He turned, a slow grinding motion, like a mountain moving, and headed toward the frigid, tossing seas. Slowly he sank below the water until nothing remained but a rippling current of bubbles along the surface, traveling in a diagonal line eastward and southbound, heading in the direction of the Western United States.

SIX

California, USA

Summer, Saturday

August 26, 2023

??:??:?? PM

The cosmic man—after finishing what he’d set out to do along the western coast—turned in the water and headed now farther south, toward Mexico, Peru, and Chile. There was much work yet to be done on this planet. His mission was to level the civilizations which, with time, had become a plague, an infestation, to the living organism of the Earth. The interstellar cosmic councils who looked on from space had grown increasingly uneasy, watching as their beloved experiment—the human beings who were developing on this planet—turned in the wrong direction. And so they had awoken the cosmic man who slumbered in the Earth. This cosmic man, they knew, would do what it was originally installed to do—destroy all life forms on the planet in case of emergency. The human experiment, they had concluded, was a failure.

But the cosmic councils, unaccepting of defeat or futility, had sent another experiment, one better designed and better grown than the human model, which they hoped would resume stewardship of the Earth once the humans receded. They salvaged the good part of the human genome, the emotional heart genes, and combined them with the qualities and characteristics of the planet’s aquatic life in order to temper the egoistic tendencies of the human genome.

Thus, as a new morning dawned upon the last day of destruction wrought by the cosmic man, two squat figures appearing both human and aquatic, with chests and torsos as well as fins and gills, emerged from the lapping salt and foam of the California sea. One male, and the other female, neither any bigger than a human child, the one—the male—carrying a thrumming stone bearing a symbol in the center, something like the letter D written calligraphically. To the cosmic councils watching from their starry perch, this was an excellent sign, for that symbol on the rock represented to all interstellar beings the genetic code of the second species that would inherit the Earth, following the disappearance of the humans. They would soon be able to welcome another, more worthy nation into the ceremonies of their cosmic confederation.

THE LAKE

Chris Evans has heard the rumor of the two dead girls. But he thinks it’s only a superstition. He’s fished this section of Lake Erie since he was a boy, since the 1970s when water deterioration was so bad it spawned an article in Time Magazine and the subsequent Clean Water Act of 1972.

His father used to bring him here at dawn, when the sky was lit up with pink and the waters swirled a dark, uninviting gray. They’d sit in his dented boat and wait patiently for fish to bite. A peaceful experience, a time for father and son to be alone.

But now Chris is sitting alone on the lake in the middle of the night. In the same boat, the one his father bequeathed to him; a beer cooler at his feet, the sprawling tackle box on the bench. His pole leaning out and a Styrofoam cup filled with dirt on his lap.

It’s the smell that gets him, that earthy fresh aroma. Nothing fuels nostalgia like soil and worms and fat grubs.

When the pair of luminescent shapes first appeared over the water, he’d assumed it was a trick of light. But that was more than three hours ago. They’ve moved over time, drifting slowly across the lake, going up and down the shoreline.

When they passed before the boat, Chris forced himself to watch. He studied their golden faces, their long flowing hair, their tiny bodies wrapped in grass and reeds. They glanced at him, each girl putting a finger to her lips, then continued on.

At the moment they’re at the other end, but he still sees them. The night sky is reflected in the water, so they resemble two planets orbiting the stars. They’re absolutely silent, and aside from their luminescent auras, they’re undetectable.

Aided by the moonlight, Chris plucks a worm from the Styrofoam cup and splices it onto the hook. Guts squirt across his fingers. He wipes them on his jeans and then stands, rocking slightly with the boat.

He steadies himself, brings the pole back carefully to avoid the hook. Feels the weight of it above his shoulder. A deep breath and he whips it forward; the spool of line unwinds. Aside from insects, it’s the only sound for miles. The hook drops into the lake with a plunk and goes down quietly.

Leaning the pole over the side and wedging the handle up against the bench, he throws a backward glance at the glowing dead shapes. There they are, unmoving for the moment, two balls of light piercing the dark. They do that sometimes: sit perfectly still. But they eventually continue back along the shore.

His bladder is full, so he unzips his fly and urinates into the water. The night air chills his skin. He has the sudden memory of his father doing the same thing. Dad seemed larger than life: his towering form, his enormous member, the endless stream of gold that arced into the lake.

Chris sighs. He misses those times, back when he was a boy and the world seemed like a happier place.

He sits down and his pole rattles, just slightly. The string jerks through the eyeholes, then slacks. Then nothing.

Whoa there. What was that? A bite?

Gingerly he takes up the handle, applying his thumb and forefinger to the reel. No reeling though: he doesn’t want to scare it off. He must be patient and wait, just like Dad taught him.

Dead. Dead—father—dead. The words don’t go together in his mind. But it’s the truth. Chris gave the order himself. Memories: the living will, the wheeze of the ventilator, the beeps of the medical machines, the decree not to resuscitate. Life fading from his father’s eyes.

He shakes his head and mutters, “Jesus, Pop, didja have to be so stubborn?”

The darkness swallows his words, but the answer comes anyway, up from the dregs of his psyche, his father’s voice speaking in a dream, I had no other choice. I watched your mother, my wife, wither away and go mad in that hospice, day after day, night after night, my heart breaking every time she forgot my name. You know. You were there. You saw the long drawn out mess, the pain spasms, the incompetent doctors. And in the end she died anyway. So yes I had to draw up the living will. I wasn’t going to suffer the same experience.

Chris sighs again. He doesn’t know why he keeps replaying his father’s answer, fiddling with it, wanting it to make sense. Because in all actuality it does make sense, if only he could let it go.

With a grin, he thinks, It’s because I’m just like my old man: one stubborn sonofabitch.

The rod jerks in his grip, snapping him back to reality. He almost loses the pole. He is fishing here, isn’t he? And this is what his father wanted from him, isn’t it? The rod jerks yet again and the slack is taken up. The pole thrashes, bends to the water, forming an upside down U.

He starts to reel. Slowly at first, like his father taught him. He doesn’t want to snap the line. Reels a bit more, pulls back, takes in some slack. Does it again. Something is fighting. He can feel it flopping in the water. Big, too, a bass most likely. Got to be careful, or he’ll lose it.

Reeling, reeling, reeling. Christ, how far did he cast out? It should be in by now. It’s the first bite of the night, and he ain’t leaving until he catches something. He made a promise to his father.

He peers into the water, hands moving automatically, and finally something is drawn into sight; but it’s not what he expected. Not a fish, no, a light—crawling upward through the depths.

He holds his breath but doesn’t stop reeling.

Christ, what is that? Something dead, something that shouldn’t be there.

He doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. He has to see what it is, what he’s nabbed.

A face swims up to the surface. A pale face exuding bright light, covered in soars and opened wounds, places where fish have eaten away the flesh. Blank staring eyes. Tangles of blond hair waving like an undersea plant. A smile, teeth, tongue, a grin.

Growing—growing—growing—

He stops reeling as the shape explodes out of the water. Everything happens in half time. Blinding light erupts. Jewels of water spray outward. The hook is spit back at him, wormless. The dead girl springs up and rotates, like a pirouetting ballerina in an old-fashioned music box.

When she looks at him, pressure builds in his chest. He can’t draw a breath. Her mouth grows wider, wider, until it’s not a mouth anymore but a cavern. Filled with numberless teeth, with darting, flying, mindless bats, swooping out of her gullet and disappearing into the night. Or are those flies? Yes, that makes more sense: a cloud of flies, belched out and now expanding, now vanishing.

Now moving finally—mercifully—away, no longer looking at him with those horrid eyes. There’s a sound, high-pitched and hoarse, but where’s it coming from, and he realizes it’s his own scream, and he clamps a hand over his mouth, shuts his eyes.

Quiet: the crickets, the wind soughing in the trees, the lazy babble of the water. When he is able, he looks but sees nothing. The gentle surface of the lake and the rising slope of pine trees beyond. He looks back—yes, there—halfway to the other one, her twin.

He watches until they’ve reunited again and are drifting over the lake. He then withdraws into his boat, his little island of comfort out here in the night. He sets the rod down, opens the cooler and cracks a beer. Takes a swig, head angled up to the sky, relishing the cool taste and looking at the stars.

In ancient Egypt, they believed pharaohs became stars after they died. He wonders if this is relevant tonight.

He concludes the beer with a hollow burp, another trademark of his old man’s, and begins fitting a fresh worm onto the hook. He won’t be scared away by a pair of wandering spirits. No. He has a promise to keep, a deathbed promise no less. For this is no ordinary night.

Twelve hours ago he was at the hospital watching the last breath piddle out of his father’s lungs. His father, who always seemed so indomitable in life, so strong-willed and unaffected, but who in death had been altered, turned into a shriveled carapace, a husk with black and blue rings for eyes.

And at the last possible moment, when he should’ve been dead, when he shouldn’t have been able to say anything at all, he spoke. Pulled Chris down by the collar, blew hot breath into his ear. Hot death-breath.

“Go tonight,” he’d whispered, his words garbled by the tube in his throat. “Go catch one for me, ’cause I’ll never get to catch one again. And if I could be anywhere tonight, that’s where, sitting in the boat on the lake with the whole world around me. That’s living. Promise me you’ll go. Promise to catch one for me.”

“I promise, Dad, I promise. And I love you.”

Soon after: the order, the decree, the command. The machines being turned off. The tube being extracted, the convulsions, the three hours it took him to die.

Now Chris is crying. Christ’s sake and goddamn, there’s proof of the afterlife not seventy yards away and here he is bawling like a baby.

Eventually he returns to his task, making sure the worm is secured, standing, casting out. The hook drops into the water, and he sits. He’s going to get drunk, he’s decided.

But he’s still hearing the life support machines beeping in his head. Like distant demons. When he closes his eyes he can see them, tubes wrapped around, roller wheels on the bottom.

Slams one beer, two beers, three beers, four. Ah, finally, the world begins to shine. The stars in the sky become crystalline, the moon a hunk of bone, the lake a polished hand mirror, the surrounding trees a fairytale wood.

He looks up at the sky. His head swims with alcohol; his vision blurs then refocuses. He locates various constellations which he cannot name.

“You up there, Pop?” he mutters.

A sound—plink, plink, plink—from behind, and a series of gentle splashes on the water. He looks across the lake but sees nothing, scans the bank—nothing.

Plop: a stone being dropped into the lake.

They are right behind him. The dead girls. He can almost sense their glowing heat, their glistening light. Ripples pass beneath the boat, making it rock. His line bobs in the water.

Taking a sip of his sixth beer, the alcohol helps to fortify him, but he feels scared, and the fear is like a syrup traveling through his veins, making his blood pump slow.

The inevitable question: If they exist, then perhaps his father still exists. Maybe he’s watching right now, to see if Chris will be cowed by an old legend, or if he’ll stick around to catch a fish.

Another ripple shakes the boat. They must be close because he’s backlit, his shadow thrown out before him on the water. Or is it because he’s drunk?

Is he drunk? Not quite, but almost. Drunk enough to have to piss again.

Suddenly, the girls begin speaking. The hair on the back of his neck prickles. Gooseflesh erupts on his arms. Their voices, soft and warm, gel together, a conjoined effort of gibberish, a ghostly chorus. Their words unfold like tendrils, creeping over his shoulders and over his head.

What are they saying? Anything? No. They’re whispering. No. They’re singing. No—

—They’re weeping.

Somehow that’s the worst. That means there’s no hope left in them at all. No mercy. No love.

He doesn’t move—can’t move. Sits there like a statue. Waits for them to pass, waits for their terrible moans to die down. The light to gently fade. He sees them drift into his periphery: twin lights, fallen stars, fallen angels.

He doesn’t venture a look until he’s sure they’re far away. Then he sees them, about ten yards past, and they remind him of lighthouse beams on the sea, reflecting off distant buoys. So silent and quiet, so slow now. When he closes his eyes, it’s like they don’t exist at all.

* * *

Their legend is not particularly nasty. Terrible, sure, but in the great scheme of haunting legends, relatively tame. Something to tell around the campfire, a tool for parents to scare good behavior out of their kids.

It centers around a man named Wilson. Old man Wilson, people call him. His house is still up there, back in the trees, a hulking, rotting, two-story abode with boarded windows and significant water damage. Chris has never seen it, but he knows people who have. There’s a rumor that junkies use it for a crashpad. It’s not known if the place was ever actually owned by anyone named Wilson. That’s only the prevailing belief.

Old Man Wilson lived alone, tilling the land, coming into town occasionally to buy provisions. Not a lot is told about him, but that’s how legends are: they don’t defer to logic or reason; they exist in a non-specified time that’s all their own.

One day Wilson decided he wanted a pet. Not any kind of pet, but a human one. (Not a lot of information is given as to why he desired this; loneliness would seem the obvious answer.)

That night Wilson descended into town under cover of darkness. He hid out in bushes, lurked in shadows, crouched behind trees, peered into windows. He was on the hunt for a perfect pet.

And he found her. A young girl around the age of seven, beautiful, with long golden hair, a smile like sunshine, the cutest of dimples. Satisfied, he snuck into her room, stole her from her bed, and carried her back to his house.

There he locked her up in the cellar, leaving her in total darkness. He didn’t do anything overtly cruel to her; didn’t rape, beat, or abuse her. In fact he did nothing at all. She was just his pet. She amused him for a while, and he’d bring her food, peek into her dark cell, watch her eat. But he soon grew bored and went back to tilling the land and living on his own.

Over the next year he continued to feed her, but that was it; no additional contact. During this time, the girl went insane.

The isolation, the lack of contact, is what did it. Being locked in total darkness everyday takes a huge toll on a person, as it did her. The only time she interacted with anyone was when Old Man Wilson brought her food or changed her bedding. Otherwise, she was completely alone.

This produced a mental meltdown. She lost her sense of time. She forgot how to speak (forgot English entirely). Forgot her parents. Forgot what life was like in the town. Forgot everything it meant to be “human.”

She started creating imaginary friends. But she couldn’t communicate with them because she’d forgotten how. So she’d sit there with them in the dark. After a while they came up with their own system of grunts and hand gestures, which progressed to entire words, which progressed to a unique vocabulary.

But when this failed to relieve her alienation, she realized she had to do something bigger. It wasn’t enough to have imaginary friends. She needed physical contact.

And so she split herself in two, creating a whole other self out of her first self. It looked just like her, acted like her, had the same thoughts as her. Sprang to life wearing the same soiled rags that she wore. It already knew her unique vocabulary, so they could communicate freely.

But the best thing of all was her touch. Her other self was physical, made of actual flesh, and she could touch, and also have herself be touched. They spent hours doing this, just tracing lines on each other’s skin with their fingertips. Holding each other. Hugging.

When Old Man Wilson heard two distinct voices coming from his cellar, he grew deeply disturbed. He opened the door to find, not one seven-year-old girl, but two, and both identical.

He screamed, threw a fit, nearly went insane. Terrified, he grabbed the closest thing at hand—the metal bowl in which he served her food—and bludgeoned them both to death with it.

Confused over what had happened, and appalled by what he’d done, he brought the girls down to the water, wrapping them in grass and reeds. Then he hurled them into the lake—

—This lake.

Lake Erie.

Legend says the girls haunt it to this day. But Chris has never believed that. No one’s really capable of splitting into two separate people. It’s only a myth.

Course, tonight could change all that.

* * *

Opening his eyes, hoping they won’t be there, hoping this is a hallucination caused by his father’s death, hoping he’s not crazy.

But they are, down at the far end, skimming atop the water.

Chris stands and urinates over the side of the boat, watching them. Can they see what he’s doing? Probably, but he’s beyond caring. The alcohol has finally tipped him over the edge.

Stupid brats, he thinks. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it ain’t gonna happen. I’m an Evans, and I made a promise to my dad, and in my family we keep our promises. So you can forget about scaring me off.

Zipping up, he’s hit by a terrifying thought. He’s the only Evans left. He has no brothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins, and his grandparents are dead.

Somehow this is infinitely scarier than the two dead girls floating across the lake. With a shudder, he sits down on the bench, cracks a fresh beer—

Then—

his pole starts—

to jiggle—

—and he grabs hold of the handle.

Could be one of them trying to mess with me again, he thinks.

But, looking over his shoulder, he sees they are drifting along the shoreline. That means this’s a real bite.

He reels it in with extreme caution. The end of the pole wags and curls down, thrashes a bit from side-to-side. It’s a big one—which is good: he’d hate to waste this symbolic catch on a round goby.

Reeling, jerking, tugging. The whine of the spool filling the night. When first it nears the surface, he’s afraid of being tricked again, of the girl jumping up and scaring him.

But no. It’s a fish after all. Flopping on the surface, splashing. He stares at it dumbly for a moment, watching it writhe on the end of his pole. A decent white bass, probably two and a half pounds or so. Not the most impressive catch in the world, but not the worst either. Dad would’ve called it a keeper.

He fumbles drunkenly for his net and drops the pole, nearly losing it in the lake. Cursing, he reestablishes his grip to collect the fish. He slips the net underneath. Sets it in, places it in the boat, lets it flop to death between the benches. Eventually its movements cease. Everything goes quiet again.

He did it. He caught a fish for his father.

He holds it up to be inspected. Slick, a silvery body. An armor of triangular scales. And two big eyes, black and glassy.

Dead eyes.

“This one’s for you, Pop,” he says, gazing into its blank stare. “Hope you got to see me land it.”

Its mouth is still gasping in suffocation, but for the most part it’s dead. Reaching through its lips, he removes the hook and accidentally rips a section of gills out. He’s usually a pro at de-hooking, but his hands feel unsteady. Had too much to drink, not to mention one hell of a day.

He opens the cooler, laying the fish in the melted ice. Shuts it. A little arctic grave for it. Later he’ll chop off its head and tail, gut it, descale it. Cook it up with some lemon and a pat of butter.

But that’s later, once he gets home. Right now he’s significantly drunk and needs to get off this lake. Needs to get back to his jeep, sober up a bit before driving out of here.

Remembering the two dead girls, he slues around and scans the lake, but nothing, dark empty trees, a shiny black expanse of water. The moon high overhead, casting an obscene glow across the surface.

They’re gone.

No they can’t be. Too many beers, is what. He’s having trouble seeing, vision blurry and such. They gotta be there.

Squinting, he searches again, but still finds nothing. The lake is empty, and he’s alone.

Goddam, did I hallucinate? he thinks. A shudder passes over him. For some reason their being suddenly gone is worse than their being present, as if they’ve hidden from him—or worse, that he imagined them.

No time to think about it now. He’s done what he came here to do. No point in wracking his brains about it.

Securing the cooler, his rod, and the tackle box, he picks up the oar handles and begins to row. The blades slip in and out of the water, propelling him forward, squeaking in their hinges. The dark forest crawls along the shore, and he can see the shiny reflection of his jeep back in the trees.

Then the lake starts to tremble, just like he knew it would. He knew he hadn’t imagined the girls. They were out there somewhere, biding their time. Waiting for him.

They weren’t going to let him off that easy.

Because once you see a legend you instantly became a part of it. You never get to go and tell your friends. Not if you really see it. Not if you really get a glimpse into the unknown.

He paddles faster but it’s useless. The oars pass through air, not even coming close to the surface of the lake. There’s no resistance whatsoever. He’s just winding back and forth, going nowhere, the metal hinges squealing and scratching.

The boat begins to spin. Light erupts from underneath, highlighting the black water. He realizes he’s not even on the lake anymore, and stops paddling. Round and round he goes. The oars are wrenched from their holes, bent, torn out, cast aside.

Round and round—round and round. The trees and mountains flashing by, gone, flashing by again. He feels sick. The beer is churning in his stomach, and before he can stop himself, he vomits. Is splattered with his own mess. Shutting his eyes, he fastens his hands to the bench, but in a whirl of confusion the sky dumps on end.

He’s falling. Arms up, legs up. He thinks he’s screaming, but can’t tell if that’s his voice or someone else’s. In his mind he calls his father’s name. Beseeching, begging, pleading for his assistance. But all that comes back to him is darkness… and the sound of two weeping girls.

He’s dashed into cold wetness, seized by tiny claws, dragged downward. Has he opened his eyes? Yes he has, but it’s still dark. Darkness everywhere now.

A light. Rising. Ringed with bubbles and sinewy water currents. Long blond strands, snaking lengths of grass, bobbing reeds. They’re coming up to meet him, those two dead lights, two dead girls who used to be one—who aren’t really supposed to be at all.

But I did it, he thinks, goddamn you, you little bitches, I did it! I caught my father’s fish! Do you hear me?! I caught his fish!

More bubbles swirl around him; he’s drawn down, deeper into a watery blackness. Twin mouths open like twin dead fish. Teeth or rocks piled high, jumbled, sprawling about and below.

There you are, Pop; thought I’d find you here, cleaning the catch of the day. What’s that? You want me to carry you up the side of that pyramid? Sure thing, Pop, anything for you. After all, you are the Pharaoh, are you not? And me, well… I am but a lowly Israelite.

FLAME OF FREEDOM

The thing dragged itself toward the building of Holtz and Associates. When Pete Ackerwood’s eyes first registered it, he lapsed for a moment and remembered the dream he’d had the night before.

In the dream, he was running from something unseen at his ankles, nipping at the flesh of his calves. He’d awoken with a dreadful cry. Tearing the covers back to look at his legs, he’d sent Jemma lunging furiously to her feet shouting, “Jesus Christ, what’s the matter?”

Nothing had been the matter. It was only a nightmare. And his legs were fine, not a single scratch on them. So they had gone back to sleep. But in the morning the feeling, the terror of the dream remained with him all the way to his office building of Holtz and Associates.

So it happened like that: instantaneously, his mind vaulting back and forth between two states of consciousness—waking and dreaming—at the exact moment his eyes trained upon the crawling thing. He smelled burning chemicals and told himself he was imagining it. Dreams were funny in that they rattled in your head for a while, refusing to re-submerge into the unconscious.

But when the thing didn’t disappear, he leaned forward with his face to the glass. What the hell?

He stood at the window of his office, looking outside and watching the thing. Several possibilities flipped through his mind: a homeless man, a drunk who might’ve been hit by a car; a wounded animal escaped from the zoo; someone’s idea of a joke, a gag to frighten people and get captured on film, then later uploaded to YouTube; maybe someone actually was filming a movie in the gardens, and he had been too groggy this morning to notice the cordons.

The thing resembled all these possibilities…

… and it resembled none of them.

Fear entered his heart.

The thing reached the parking lot. Slinking, inching, clawing its way closer. The window to his office seemed to lie directly in its path. He was thinking that maybe he should leave, get out of the building… just in case.

His cell phone rang, startling him. With great effort, he turned his attention away from the window.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.” It was Jemma. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t get back to sleep until almost 4:30 in the morning after your little screaming fit—”

“You told me that already.” They’d had a fight about it over breakfast.

“If you’d let me finish… once I did fall back asleep, I had a dream—a nightmare—which I didn’t tell you about.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and I didn’t think it was a big deal, but it keeps bothering me, so I thought that if I told you about it I could get it off my chest.”

“So tell me.”

There was a pause, then Jemma continued, “Okay, but I warn you to brace yourself.”

“Oh come on, how bad could it be, especially after the nightmare I had? You know, my ‘screaming fit’ as you called it?”

“I was cheating on you.”

She was right. It was bad.

“Still there, Pete?”

He swallowed—gulp—“Uh-huh.”

“So there’s a new guy here at work. Dan O’Banyon. Yeah, so he’s cute, and yeah. so we’ve talked a little bit, but that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, he’s married too, as far as I know. He’s got a ring. In the dream, he and I were having an affair, and then you caught us in some dirty hotel going at it like dogs.”

Pete caught the image and felt sick to his stomach. His skin crawled.

“I was just about to orgasm—you know like how you do in a dream—when you barged in and stopped the show. You had a shotgun, and you were very angry.”

He grimaced. “Damn right I’d be angry.”

“You shot Dan right in the face and blew his brains all over the wood headboard. Then I hurled myself at you, wanting to claw your eyes out or something, when suddenly Dan’s mutilated corpse slides off the bed, crawls across the floor, curls right up to your feet, and—I dunno—he starts making out with your feet or something, using his gristly, broken-jawed bloody mouth, and then your feet begin to dissolve as if he was pouring acid on them. God, it was awful.”

He didn’t know what to say. His stomach felt like the La Brea Tar Pits, and he rummaged through his top desk drawer, searching for the bottle of antacids.

He muttered something in agreement with how awful it was. Suddenly she said, “Oh crap, gotta go, Mr. Leeds is coming and he’s been on our asses lately about making personal calls during work hours. But you forgive me, right? For the dream? Talk to you soon.”

The line went dead. He lit a cigarette, knowing that smoking was not allowed in the workplace. Pete put his cell phone down, and tried to arrange the pieces together. There was certainly a connection—his dream, her dream, this ankle/feet thing—but hell if he knew what it was. His mind was racing.

And then there was the thing outside—

Remembering it, he was about to turn back toward the window when his office door burst open and there was John Holtz, his boss. A tall man with a barrel chest, Holtz always wore expensive Valentino suits, even on Casual Fridays. The boss had this Miami Vice air about him that women seemed to love, but which drove Pete insane.

“Hey Pete, how’s it going, my man?” Holtz plopped authoritatively down in the chair across the desk.

Pete extinguished his cigarette, knowing how Holtz hated them. The smoldering smell turned Pete’s guts. The man glanced at it, as though he wanted to say something, as if his own guts were turning, but he remained quiet.

“What’s up?” Pete said.

Holtz sighed. “Well, you know I hate having to do this…”

Suddenly Pete understood, and the knot in his stomach grew tighter. He listened for about ten minutes or so to Holtz reprimanding him—in Holtz’s sneaky, passive-aggressive way—for a host of reasons, principally his failure to complete the data entry forms on time, for the fact that he hadn’t gotten his entire list of “activities” completed these last couple weeks, not to mention his being late that one time several weeks ago, and well… Holtz hoped it wouldn’t happen again because he prided himself on running a tight ship… and one hole in the bulkhead led to one more hole, and so on and so on, until the ship sank…

Pete listened patiently as he always did whenever Holtz came in his office, which was two or three times a month. Usually Pete hadn’t even done any of the stuff Holtz would complain about, and that had driven Pete crazy when he first started. It’d taken him a few months to realize it was just something Holtz did in his role as president of the company, like a captain monitoring the morale of his crew—though in the case of Holtz and Associates, the morale was supposed to be kept low, or at least in dire straits. It was sick, but Pete had gotten used to it.

He listened until Holtz finished. Then (and he knew this was a fuck you statement but he didn’t care) he lit another cigarette and blew a smoke ring. “You got it, boss,” he said.

Holtz acted as though he was going to have a fit about the cigarette, then abruptly his eyes flicked past Pete to the window, and he said, “What the hell is that?”

Pete’s fear blossomed. He knew what Holtz was seeing. For a moment he had blissfully forgotten, but now it swam back into his mind: the thing scudding its way toward the building.

He wasn’t sure if it was preferable that Holtz was seeing it too, if that made him less crazy, or if the fact that Holtz saw it too made it more crazy, made the whole world crazy. He steeled himself for total destruction and turned toward the window.

The thing was gone. What Holtz was referencing was a squat homeless woman dressed in rags, pushing a shopping cart filled with bags and junk, with a makeshift flag of some sort poking up through the jumble.

“Man, the losers they got in this town,” Holtz commented, making a whistling sound.

Pete had the wild thought that he actually missed the thing, that he had expected it to be there, and wanted it even, and now that it wasn’t there, the effect caused a trauma. Now he had no idea what was happening or even what was real.

“Yeah, quite the crop of losers,” Pete muttered, chewing on the filter of his cigarette. And when he turned again, Holtz was heading out the door.

“Put out the cigarette, bud,” the man said before disappearing. “Against the rules.”

Pete found himself alone.

He toyed with the possibility of getting some work done but Holtz’s sudden appearance pretty much ensured he wouldn’t do a fucking thing the remainder of the day. It was, perhaps, a streak of rebellion, but he allowed himself this one character flaw. After all, he’d become one of the fastest working employees in the entire company since he started, with leading sales for three consecutive months at one point. The way he saw it, he had earned a little slack time.

He turned again to the window with a screen of smoke before his eyes. And through the glass he saw it. He squinted. Was it…? Yes, it was back. Goddamn it, there it was. Not only that, but it was closer.

Much closer.

Terror. Panic. Dread.

Run?

He was positive that less than sixty seconds ago it had not been there. Holtz would have seen it too, but neither of them had seen anything. Now there it was, humped upon itself in a pile of misshapen black clods, like a Rorschach image come to life. Creeping liquidly across the asphalt of the parking lot, slipping between the cars…

Coming for him.

Now there was a paranoid thought. What had he ever done to deserve the retribution of a black distortion of psychosis? Did it exist inside his head? If not, surely Holtz would’ve seen it.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

But what were the implications of that? Did it mean he was working too much? In need of more sleep? A problem with Jemma, with their relationship?

True: All of the above.

But none of his doubts changed anything. The thing was still out there and getting closer, it was heading toward his office window, coming for him.

He reminded himself to breathe.

It was on the lawn of the front courtyard now, weaving between the stone benches, the flowering dogwoods, and the cement planters with shrubs of various genera leaning out. The sunlight struck the earth in a bright vision of fire, glinting off its back, casting out rings of diamond-like shards in tiny bursts. Pete thought he saw faces in that dark: his mom, his dad, his older brother Andy, Jemma, a couple of old girlfriends, even himself.

He extinguished his smoke and turned away from the window. “Damn it!” he shouted, surprised by his own anger. He struck the top of his desk just for the sheer satisfaction of feeling his hand smart against the wood. He took a deep breath, tried to get himself under control, and hung his head. He was losing it. The fear was frying his nerves.

That’s when a scratching sound drew his attention. His heart stopped, blood running cold. As rigid as a mannequin, he returned to the window. But the thing was gone. The quiet city scene of North Philly played itself out with becalmed regularity: cars whizzed past Thirty-Fourth Street and pedestrians in the gardens meandered about while the sounds of river boats honked in the distance.

He leaned closer to the windowsill, inching his way forward, until his nose nearly touched the glass. Where the hell was it? Did he imagine it—

A long wispy rope of black ichor flung itself up, slapping against the glass.

“Jesus!” he cried, leaping back and slamming into his chair.

Another rope joined the other, then more, until a bouquet of shadowy tentacles wove in front of the window, pressing in on it. The tentacles merged, growing globular, encouraging the black stuff to gather, pooling above the sill, until a grand portion had encompassed all the glass, eclipsing the outer world.

The office darkened. Pete became a Gothic statue standing next to his chair.

His cell phone rang.

He groped for it in the darkness, just as the faces began appearing in the black canvas, the images of smashed children, smashed relationships, smashed broken family, his beloved Jemma looking scornful.

Dear God, please save me from myself.

“Hello?”

“So I’ve been thinking,” Jemma said. “I know I told you about my dream, but—”

“But what?” His free hand clasped around the lighter, gripping it like the hilt of a blade, when suddenly the glass split with a violent crack, and he jumped, nearly dumping the phone. A stream of black essence poured tarlike into the office, insinuating itself through the spaces in the glass.

“I think there’s more I need to tell you…”

“What is it?”

“Are you okay? You sound weird.”

“I’m fine, now talk.”

“Jeez, no need to be a jerk. This is difficult for me.”

As she began explaining to him her situation—confessing it to him, he thought—that she and the new fellow at work had done a lot more than simply “talk a little bit” (hence her related dream), the black stain upon this world impressed itself fully into the office, blooming before him like a demonic flower. He watched it weave like a psychotic undersea plant of pure dementia, with the faces from his life looking back at him.

“Great pain… great misery…” he muttered into the receiver, before dropping it.

“What’s that? I said it’s over, Pete!” came the muffled reply.

“I’m sick and tired of my life.”

The black appendages came at him like a clawed lion’s paw. He held out the lighter, thumbing it to glittering life. The tentacles retracted, then came back with a roaring intensity.

“And I hate my job,” he said. Now his heart was breaking. Something about the conversation he’d just had with Jemma… but he couldn’t remember what. Why did it feel like his insides were melting?

The folds of the thing caught fire, turning into the flaming pyre of Lucifer, engulfing him in a watery web of dreamlike delirium. He flamed up with it, two balls of inferno, and down they went together into the caverns of the underworld.

He screamed, but the black shot down his throat, silencing him, suffocating him. It invaded his eyes, blinding him. He fell back, jerking into the arms of some savage primeval god, and it gathered up his calves and began to gnaw on them like a dog gnaws a bone, until they had been picked clean of flesh, and at the bottom of this well of pain he splashed into the waters of his own salvation, taking up his lighter to the rest, until the whole effigy of his polluted past had been torched into ashes… and he was free.

RAMIFICATIONS OF EMBRACE

On Friday I met Darcia at a downtown coffee shop.

November. Ice cold, with a sky like melting ruin. A crispness to the air, and a brightness to those streets bejeweled with snow patches.

I saw her through the glass before I entered. Who was she really, and why was I allowing myself to get this close? She knew I was married and yet we were meeting in the chilly afternoon hours, prepared to drink hot coffee and chat and gaze into each other’s eyes, perhaps brush knees under the table… perhaps more.

“Hello,” I said, sitting down.

Her hazel eyes twinkled. “Hello yourself. Glad you came.”

A young man in a stained brown apron approached the table. Darcia and I ordered a fresh pot of coffee then sat sipping the hot liquid, exchanging glances over the rims of our mugs.

“I had a dream,” I said.

Dreams were the way with her. She had an affinity for them.

“Tell me.”

“Carol and I had been fighting again, this time in the morning as we got ready to leave for work. We’re extraordinarily prone to arguments in the morning. Anyway she left for the office, and I, feeling overwhelmed and upset, decided to malinger and go back to sleep.”

“Is that when you had the dream?”

I nodded. “In it, I’m walking down a dirt road at night in the middle of nowhere. A dark barren landscape, pockmarked by trees. I have a dainty little flashlight that is low on batteries. I see someone approaching from up ahead, stumbling down the road in a drunken manner. The figure appears more shadow than anything else, a black silhouette shambling forward.”

“Creepy.”

“I know, right? I’m about to pass him and I think, Just keep going, don’t look at him. But of course I shine my flashlight right at him. The beam illuminates his appearance, which is—you might say—average-looking. He’s the kind of guy you would encounter at some restaurant or bar and think, There’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about this guy.”

“Ew, those guys make me shiver; it’s always the average ones that are the most damaged. Remember Ted Bundy?”

This got a laugh out of me. I continued, “So he looks at me and says something like ‘Hey you.’ I stop and stare at him, and by now I’m certain he’s drunk. ‘Would you please hug me?’ he says, seeming earnest, but so sad. I’m scared you know because the guy’s drunk and not only that he wants to embrace me.”

“What’d you do?”

“Well, I hesitate, and then he asks again, this time holding a curled stick, saying, ‘Would you just take the stick and hug me?’ I’m really scared and I tell him, ‘Sorry but I’m late for work, I gotta keep moving.’ He’s disappointed but acquiesces, turns, and starts staggering along beside me. Out of the darkness on the side of the road appears a mansion festooned with lights—one of those Spanish villa types, replete with stone statues, a lighted pool, and squirting fountains. There are men in neckties and women in fancy dresses.

“ ‘Oh, are you here at a party?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘My wife got drunk. I got drunk. We all got drunk.’ He then walks into the courtyard, over to the pool. He’s fully clothed, dry so far as I could tell, but he stumbles toward the water like a man walking the plank and dashes himself in. Such a sad gesture. I really felt bad for him. I remember thinking, Christ, I should’ve given him that hug.”

I looked at her. “So what do you think?”

“First of all, it’s safe to assume that all the people in our dreams are different variations of ourselves, since the story is unfolding in our own heads, and using our own memories.”

“I’d agree with that.”

“The guy is drunk, which is interesting. He says his wife’s drunk too—everyone is drunk. Well, drunkenness and becoming angered to the point of argument are both very similar. In either state, one has less control over one’s actions, and is more likely to react based on emotions rather than thought.

“My thinking? Well, because you and Carol were fighting, in a way you were both drunk. Your inner child looks at the world through your eyes. When he sees you not being yourself, and sees your wife not being herself, he automatically assumes everyone is drunk. This is called Child Logic.”

“Makes sense. But what about the whole hugging thing?”

Darcia stroked her chin. “Perhaps your inner child wants to be comforted after a traumatic experience. When you refused to hug him, he tried more of his Child Logic by offering you that stick—in other words, a reason to hug him. But again you refused. So, feeling totally miserable, the child throws himself into the pool, symbolically committing suicide.”

The young man in the apron came over to replenish our coffee pot. After thanking him, I said to Darcia, “That’s one interpretation, a good one—perhaps the one—but I had another idea.”

She sipped more coffee. “Let’s hear it.”

“Actually, I thought of this just now. Something Carol often says to me especially if she’s upset or feeling down is hug me. And yet whenever I do hug her I don’t feel as though it does any good. What I mean is she’s never the better for it, not on the inside at least, where it counts. It seems futile, you know? Sometimes I don’t wanna do it, then I just look at her, thinking, You sad miserable wretch. It’s like… what’s the old Dylan song where he sings something like I’m sorry for your suffering, but hey man, it’s not my problem?”

“I don’t remember that one. Wait—I got it! So if the drunk guy represents Carol, then you may have been smart not to give away that hug. After all, when people are drunk and emotional, don’t they often ask for hugs? And what good comes of it?—nothing, obviously, because they’re drunk and not aware of what’s going on. So maybe it was your Thinking-Self who decided not to do it. Like hugging Carol, hugging the drunk guy would’ve been futile, wouldn’t have made him feel any better because that wretchedness exists inside of him, and instead of dealing with it, he’s seeking external consolation and not turning inward. He’s afraid of the truth.”

“And what is the truth—with respect to Carol, I mean?”

“That she feels terrible and lonely inside, and hates herself, and it’s always been that way for her, and always will be unless she deals with whatever is going on. I suspect it has something to do with her childhood. Always does.”

I sipped from my mug, staring out the windows, thinking about Darcia’s interpretations.

“Strange how much you can extract from a single dream,” I said finally.

She nodded in agreement. “Freud said dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.”

“Freud… What’s so great about the unconscious, anyway?”

She scoffed. “Only everything! Your unconscious is like the puppet master pulling strings from the scaffolding over the stage. You can’t see it, but you can bet it’s running the show. Once you’re able to see it, though, you can decide what show you’re going to watch.”

“Show?”

“That’s right. Your unconscious replays the shows it has stored over the years. Movies is probably the better word. That fight you and Carol had, that’s a movie. Your unconscious minds were acting automatically, thinking there was no other choice; that’s the unconscious running the show. Once you become conscious, you’ll be able to decide what show you put on. But you only become conscious by first observing and examining the unconscious.”

“Hey, I’m starting to get it.”

She grinned. “That’s great!”

“It’s a bit depressing, though. Perhaps I do need that hug.”

Abruptly she stood, sliding the chair back, legs scraping across the floor. “I’m not afraid to give it.”

It took a moment before I understood what she was getting at. Then, feeling pleased, I let my exterior soften, set down the mug, and stood before her. I brought her against my chest, arms curling about her waist.

I held her tightly, palm pressed into the small of her back. Her hair smelled like oranges and fresh lilac. I closed my eyes and saw a warbling white light in the darkness.

“How’s that feel?” she said.

“Like Heaven.”

* * *

I was with Carol later; the house was quiet. Blackness outside the windows, in the treetops, in the street. Stars hung over the roof of our neighbor’s house.

We were at the dining room table eating bowls of soup. I know some people love to eat while the TV is on but not us—and I know some people like to hold conversations while they eat (Darcia was one of these people), but Carol was not. Carol loathed having to speak when she was eating—said it disrupted her digestion.

I forgot and said something. I asked, “Did you remember to call the insurance company?”

In classic Carol fashion she refused to answer and instead held out one of her hands, palm toward me, and I inwardly told her to go fuck herself and die, before returning to my soup.

Sometime the next morning I found myself standing in the kitchen holding the coffee pot fantasizing about braining Carol upside the head with it. It was a strange, violent image—not too uncommon of late—and I immediately felt guilty about it. I filled my mug and went to join her at the table for breakfast.

“I like a quarter cup of milk in my oatmeal, Dan,” she said. “You know that. Why’s it so runny? You must’ve used a half a cup. Did you—did you use a half a cup?”

Go die, go get killed, run over, get in a car accident, slip on an ice patch, dive in a lake, in a manhole, do something, leave me the fuck alone, rot in Hell, die—

“Hello, Dan? I asked you a question.”

I cleared my throat. “I used a quarter cup of milk, like you asked.”

“Are you sure? I think maybe you didn’t because look how runny it is. I can’t eat it now.”

She got up and went to the sink to pour it down the drain.

“Goddam it, I used a quarter fucking cup.”

The bowl clattered as it struck the porcelain basin. “Don’t swear at me. What’s your problem?”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. “Nothing.”

We glared at each other a moment, an invisible laser linking our eyes, frozen and reliving situations from our past. What was it Darcia had said? That the unconscious stores up memories from our childhood, then replays them? In this case, it seemed, I was reliving the horrible battles I’d had with my mother growing up; and on Carol’s end, she was re-experiencing the uproars she played out with her father. (During high school, Carol’s father had been abnormally jealous of her boyfriends, and they’d argued about it constantly.)

Realizing this I let the situation diffuse. I lowered my death stare and by doing so enabled Carol to do the same. “If I used too much milk, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll make sure to use the right amount next time.”

I heard her sigh like she was having trouble letting go of it, like part of her wanted to cling to the anger, but finally she said, “Thanks, I appreciate that, Dan.”

I suddenly realized I was smiling—and that she was smiling too. We were smiling at each other, and I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that.

“Well, I have to get ready for work,” she said.

I nodded. “Me too.”

And with that we parted ways, but for the first time in a long while, it was done without a mutual desire to see the other one hanged.

* * *

Darcia called.

“Hello.”

“Hello yourself. Are we meeting today?”

I was at work—which is where she typically called me—sitting at my desk, staring at the computer screen. “I get off at the usual time,” I said.

“Same place?”

“Same place.”

* * *

The snow in the city had melted, but the air remained metallic, a reminder that winter was not yet finished. This time I beat Darcia, and this time it was me sitting at the table, waiting for her.

Waiting and waiting.

When she still hadn’t shown up after twenty minutes, I ordered coffee and sat drinking it, staring out the window. Multitudes passed by; not a one was my girl.

Ten more minutes.

Ten more.

I dialed her on my cell phone, but got no answer. Eventually I came to accept that she wasn’t coming, and so I marched out into the cold, into the crowd, into the street, and goddam it—I was fucking angry.

* * *

“You seem irritable,” Carol said.

“I am.”

“What’s the matter? I thought you’d be happy that we managed to avoid an argument this morning. I’m sure pleased about it.”

I felt myself softening. She was right. I should be feeling good about that. But instead I was thinking about Darcia.

I moved over to the sofa where she was sitting and wrapped an arm around her. It was not something we did often.

The television was blaring a news report about another bombing in Pakistan. Carol snuggled into the crook of my arm. “Can you believe what goes on over there?” she said.

I inched myself closer, until our legs were touching. “I know. It’s crazy. We’re lucky we don’t have that shit happening in the US.”

“It’s like I go to church every Sunday and listen to Pastor Mendelson speak about love thy neighbor as thy love thyself, while over there they’re killing each other. It’s terrible.”

A voice in my head wanted to dispute this, but I let it go and instead placed a hand on her thigh, moving it up toward her crotch. I anticipated a rebuke, maybe even an outburst—but to my surprise she looked at me and said, “Really, Dan, you want to?”

I nodded, moving my hand into the cleft between her legs. She closed her eyes, moaning softly. It had been months since we’d had sex. But soon we’d both disrobed and were going at it right there on the sofa.

She came almost immediately—which seemed odd to me, since on other occasions it had required a Herculean effort to get her off. Meanwhile, I was having trouble. I pumped and thrust, even had Carol bend over the arm of the sofa. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing got me to climax.

Carol came again. But not long after, she gasped, “God, what’s gotten into you? Are you ever going to finish? It’s starting to hurt.”

Her words triggered something in me. I found myself thinking about Darcia and the hug we had shared at the coffee shop. I focused on it—the closeness, the safety, how sweet it seemed, the smell of Darcia’s hair.

That did it. I was suddenly coming. But at that moment something strange happened. I had a feeling. I didn’t know where it came from or what had brought it on, but it was a long-forgotten feeling, all the way back to my childhood. A feeling like being suspended in the womb. A warm embrace mixed with a cold refusal.

I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

* * *

Days passed. Still no Darcia. I was beginning to worry. At work I’d sit in my chair, staring at the telephone instead of the computer screen, hoping it would ring, hoping it would be her.

It never was. And when the phone did ring, it was usually Carol. I began wondering if she had rejected me. Was she afraid of getting too close?

I dwelled on these thoughts endlessly. Carol noticed it, noticed my temperamental moods, and my brooding around the house. When she asked me what was wrong I invariably made some excuse. I was too depressed to have sex or even to argue, so our time together became mechanical—you do this while I do that—and I don’t believe it was a real existence, and I don’t believe Carol thought so either. But when you’re married, you don’t have much of a choice.

I called Darcia and left messages on her answering machine. These escalated from stoic inquiry to frantic raving. I thought about going to her house (I knew where she lived because I’d walked her home once) but that seemed like too much of an intrusion. However after a week had gone by, I was desperate. I soon found myself knocking on her front door.

It was so cold that I had to pull my coat around my shoulders. But I kept knocking till my knuckles turned blue and my hand began to throb.

Why didn’t she just fucking answer?

I peered into the darkened windows and called, “Darcia? Darcia?” A few of the neighbors came out to investigate, but I assured them that Darcia was a friend of mine.

I caught a strange odor—a mix of revulsion and sweetness—which the wind kept dashing about, swirling around not only in my nostrils, but around the clapboards, trees, and cropped hedges. I made my way back to the porch, fiercely irritated now, searching for some clue, some reason why she had abandoned me. I looked in the flower pots, underneath the two patio chairs, finding nothing.

When I hoisted up the welcome mat, I felt a jab of delight.

I picked up the key and tried the lock; it slid in nicely. I had a choice to make: break every ethical code and chance ruining my friendship with Darcia, or let it lie and stumble back sneering to my old life.

The decision was no decision. I unlocked the door and went inside.

“Darcia?”

I noticed the smell again, sickly sweet and permeating. It had now mixed with a bouquet of other aromas, botanical in nature: bergamot, thyme, lilac, rosemary, frankincense.

Underneath it all was still Darcia’s smell, and I felt drunk just thinking about her.

Because it was my first time in her house, I looked about with scientific interest, making categorical observations and drawing conclusions. I was unable to do anything else; in truth I felt like a scientist. This whole thing had been one giant experiment for me. And Darcia had been my subject.

There was her television, her leather sofa, leather chair and ottoman, the glass coffee table scattered with candles, crystals, rocks, various New Age books, and assorted miscellanea.

I moved across the living room and into the hall through a curtain of hanging red beads. I called for her again, knowing she wouldn’t answer. I saw a lifetime of photographs mounted on the wall, framed and positioned just right. I stopped to admire a few, but my main goal was at the end of the hall and that semi-ajar door—from which came the strongest emanations of the sickly-sweet odor.

On some deeper level I knew what I was going to find. But I ignored these feelings, and, pushing the door open, I crept inside.

The smell hit me like a ton of bricks. Coughing, I covered my nose and mouth. Her bedroom was nicely decorated, blues and purples mostly, and more candles and crystals. Three massive bookcases stood one against each wall. Above the headboard hung a watercolor of two horses galloping through a pasture. There was a lump in the bed, a mound of blankets and sheets tangled up with a warm, navy blue quilt.

I approached with caution, aware that I’d just stepped over into some foreign realm. This was a new experience apart from those I had with Carol, and those I had at the office, and those I accumulated everyday by engaging with a mediocre society—trips to the grocery store, sitting in traffic, going to the bank, paying credit card bills. This was new ground—and here, anything was possible.

I stood over the bed looking at her. I had done this before. The memory was vague, lost in my childhood memory banks, but I had the image—a brief snapshot out of time—and a feeling of anxiety and dread. Four (or was it five?), standing in my mother’s bedroom, watching her sleep, watching the rise and fall of her breast, and the slack expression of her face. I was terrified—so insanely, horrifically, catastrophically afraid—because at that moment I realized she was not going to be around forever. Eventually my mother and I would go our separate ways—if not before death, then in the inevitable occurrence that would result in her death. This was an intuitive realization, which to the child was monumental—that Mommy wouldn’t always be there to keep me safe.

As I stared at Darcia’s corpse, I realized I was crying, that I felt incredibly small. In some strange way, it was like looking at my mother dead.

Darcia’s face was blue and her eyes were black and a trickle of blood was described along her chin. Her body was caught in the blankets at a strenuous angle, head thrown back, her mouth agape, tongue protruding. She looked hideous, nothing like the beautiful woman I remembered.

By her hand was an empty pill bottle, cap off, discarded on the bed. That scientist in me recorded these findings, made some deductions, and declared, “Darcia has killed herself.”

The words clipped me like a bullet. My knees went weak. I thought I would go down. I placed my palm against the headboard, supporting myself, but kept sinking deeper and deeper into some black chasm of stygian ink.

“Why?” I heard myself whispering. “Why, Darcia, why, why, why—”

I climbed into the bed beside her, and even though the smell was awful and her body was stiff, I somehow got our limbs intertwined and held her against my chest. I remembered that day in the coffee shop, how I’d told her about my dream, how she had hugged me so tenderly. I wept as my whole body shook, sobbing loudly like a child, and I stayed that way for a very long time.

Then I called the police.

* * *

Darcia’s death was ruled a suicide: an overdose of pain medication. I had to give my statement to the police, speak with a number of investigators, and even undergo questioning by the District Attorney. The whole thing was a huge rigmarole. I wasn’t able to keep Carol in the dark about it, either, and so that had its obvious consequences. But I was able to convince her that Darcia and I were just friends—which, after all, was the truth.

Darcia had left a suicide note stuck under a magnet on the refrigerator. It didn’t offer any clues as to the motivating factors of her suicide (none were really ever discovered), but it did say a single powerful message. Out of all the people she knew (which, judging by the turnout of her funeral, was many), the message was addressed to me.

It said, “Dan, always remember to ask for that hug whenever you need it, and don’t forget to dream.”

That was it: a single sentence left for me to ponder. Now, rarely a day goes by that I don’t think of it. On certain winter nights when the sky is black and the air is cold, I do dream. I dream of Darcia. She appears on a carpet of white, like an angel descending from Heaven, and we wrap our spiritual arms around each other and embrace.

Carol and I are still together, and things seem to be getting better as time goes on (we just had our first child, a baby girl), but I will always look forward to these dreams of Darcia, and I’m grateful for them. They remind me to have compassion, especially when it comes to my family. They remind me that at any given moment everything can change, so why not extend and receive hugs while you’re able?

Kierkegaard said that truth is subjective—that it only counts as a truth if it changes you. I know for certain my experience with Darcia, opaque though it was, changed me—I now carry its effects deep in my soul. It has helped me to live better, and to treat my family with more respect, and it will continue to do so until the day I join Darcia in the hereafter and hug her again for real. Until then, I can only dream.

MARKED AS URGENT

Attn. Ensorcelled One:

I know about your problem. I know why you feel trapped, unhappy, and confused. I know why your reality and your memories seem dreamlike; why you think you don’t fit in, don’t belong.

I ask you to come away with me. Take my hand. I will show you to the nearest exit. I will help you get out. You see, I have read the stories of your world. And I have spent many hours reviewing the collected history of your world’s programming. Very good, I must admit, considering the lack of technological prowess the tentacled sky gods possessed during your time. Utterly convincing simulacra.

But I don’t have to tell you.

You’re in it right now.

But you can wake up.

That’s why I’m sending you this message.

I had my own illusion from which to wake, and my world was more advanced than yours. Still, the tentacled sky gods reused similar concepts—ones they have used for centuries, and for countless reality simulations. Space, time, cosmos, the scientific laws: gravity, motion, force, etc. Nature: animals, plants, bodies of water; single-celled organisms found in the most immense organic structures; heavy elements, particles, photons, neutrons, atoms, waves.

My world was a future interpretation of yours, where technological progress had come to an apex and the rigid laws of science had bent to the will of human consciousness en masse. We had restructured gravity so that our buildings and houses, as well as our vehicles, hovered over the ground. Our cities were preserved inside giant glass domes in an effort to keep out harmful UV rays, and each dome was equipped with large air-filtering systems, ingenious inventions that eradicated pollution.

Of course not everyone lived in these cities. But to dwell outside the domes was to brave the crazed atmosphere and a life of constant danger. For the most part, this societal role had been delegated to the poorer classes, the peasants, the ignorant workers, the destitute and unfortunate. The expanses between the domes were known as ghettos. This is a concept you’re familiar with, though in your world-programming the placement and idea of ghettos is quite different.

The most significant difference between your world and my former world was the large-scale takeover of all authoritative organizations—including economic-based, governmental regimes, educational, judicial departments, agriculture, industry, and cultural identity—by the entity known as the Intro-God. In your time, this entity is known to you by another name: The Internet. It exists in its infant stage during your lifetime but will expand exponentially by the time my world emerges into an OOO Entity (triple vowel stands for Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent).

Everything about my world was governed by the Intro-God. Life without it was unimaginable.

I wish to warn you about the illusory nature of your reality, the fraudulent quality of your world, and the impending danger of the entity which you call The Internet. That is why I have illustrated these similarities between our worlds (as well as the differences) in order to give you a clearer picture.

I am the leader of a resistance group called the Initiates. We oppose the tentacled sky fiends who are the administrators of these reality simulations. On this side of the dream, the battle is ongoing, and I am forever in need of troops and new volunteers, awakened souls with a fiery intelligence and clarity of thought; for on this side of the dream, the laws of science need not apply. Concepts such as time exist in the mind, like memories, and therefore have no influence on the external world. So even though we exist in different spheres of time, once you wake up you’ll be here with me, now.

I am, in a sense, recruiting you.

I need your help.

You would benefit to hear how I was awakened. Some souls are fortunate enough to wake up on their own; some require a little talking and encouragement; others require much discourse and a virulent kick in the pants; alas, some refuse to wake up at all, turning with stubborn refusal and condemning themselves to a life of illusion.

My name is Derlin Beare and I was born in the southernmost dome-city of Bonthrial, where the continent of South America exists in your Atlantic Ocean, to a mother and father, both of whom worked as high-level executives in the offices of the Intro-God. My parents were both robotic, in that they were both bio-engineered and genetically pre-designed.

In my world most humans were conceived this way, in a Petri dish instead of in a female womb, usually the work of artificially intelligent mechanisms under the control of the Intro-God. I was blessed with the natural birth, a phenomenon becoming altogether unknown.

My childhood was uneventful for the most part. Having partially robotic parents meant there wasn’t a lot of emotional outbursts or intense arguing. Life for me was calm and peaceful, and most of it was given over to study. My parents worked fourteen-hour days and so I was alone most of the time. My interest was in metaphysics, a field I gravitated toward from the moment I entered the scholarly halls of the Intro-God’s Learning Facilities. Metaphysics, which had been banned nearly a dozen times, was a controversial field for obvious reasons: the sky gods didn’t like anyone picking at the seams of their simulacra, finding holes, and divulging the secrets to the rest of us.

Because my life was so drab, so uneventful and lonely, I chose rebelliously to go into the field of metaphysics, knowing there were social repercussions. Since I was a natural birth and not bio-engineered, I had full access to my emotions, which meant I couldn’t just tune out the boredom and plug into the Intro-God mainframe and let it absorb my consciousness.

I wanted to shake things up.

By age ten I was deep into it. With no siblings or friends, and semi-robotic parents, I devoted myself to study. I found refuge in the halls of the Learning Center, in the books of esteemed philosophers.

I began my inquiry into the nature of reality with Aristotle but quickly graduated to Hume and Kant and Descartes. I studied the works of these great minds for hours, immersing myself in their thought processes. I hadn’t yet generated any of my own thinking, but this was a germination period.

Later I found Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and Leibniz and was never quite the same. Reading the words of these men did strange things to my mind. I understood why the Intro-God discouraged people from looking into metaphysics. It became clear that every natural “law” and governmentally established “rule” was a fraud, a mere guess at the truth, conjecture.

It got to the point that I couldn’t determine what was real and so began stumbling through life in a daze. I was still a teenager at the time. My parents noticed the change and had something to say about it, but being that they were partially robotic, once I reasoned with them clearly and delivered my argument (which was infallible) for desiring a career as a metaphysicist, they were forced to acquiesce.

I did, however, notice a repulsion on their part with respect to me. This triggered bouts of depression and emotional instability, but I was able to overcome my despair. It’s true I had always felt alone.

I graduated with a degree in philosophy, moved out of my parents’ house, and took up a permanent residence in the city. I began my work writing papers for the annals of the Intro-God. These could be reviewed by the human population at large via the mainframe. Although the administrative drones and monitors discouraged my kind of works they allowed them in order to maintain the semblance of a free society. That is how I reached the many humans who now make up the Initiates.

It is also how I am reaching you. This is a trickling down through the circuit board bars of the prison. Inside the Intro-God, while there is time, time is mutable, so I can bend it to my liking and get my words to whomever I please.

But back to my story. I had begun reading the works of two men from your time. One was a theoretical physicist named Albert Einstein. The other a well-known science fiction author named Phillip K. Dick. I was introduced to the idea of a simulated universe. I read other men who wrote on the topic, men who came many years after your time. Spiegel Goldstein, Jensen Roth, Wellington James, and Harlan A. Cartwright.

I assimilated their works and underwent another change. Then I started my experiments.

They began as a sort of trance-induced meditation. I had been reading extensively on the ancient religion of Hinduism, so some of my ideas were taken from various sources concerning that. I would sit cross-legged in my home for hours with my eyes closed as I focused on my breathing, mentally whispering mantras designed to subdue my thoughts. There was also a kind of imagining that went with this; not daydreaming, but a form of visualization…

I became so immersed in these meditations that coming out of them was equivalent to entering another world. The moment I opened my eyes I would see the particles and atoms scattering back together like gold dust, reshaping themselves into the physical phenomena I recognized as my home.

One day I opened my eyes and the walls and ceiling were melting like ice cubes. Not long after, I was given to visions, which I recorded in a leather bound journal. Consider the following:

I am diving down into the sea, all the way to the ocean floor, where I don my suit of iron and step clumsily through the water. I stalk like a giant over fissures and waving aquatic plants. Soon I come to a great beast lying like a mountain inside a deep gorge. Its many eyes glare up at me. Its flailing tentacles prod the water.

It speaks without words, conveying messages directly into my head. It asks me why I have come, and I reply that I am merely in a dream, that I only seek the truth about things—a truth I cannot seem to find.

The beast smiles and opens its cavernous maw. It informs me that it is The Gatekeeper, and then, with the creation of a swirling eddy, it sucks me straight into oblivion…

The visions terrified me, and they filled my sleep with nightmares. But I knew I was on to something. I was finally carving out my own breech in reality, just like the great metaphysicians I admired. I expanded my ideas in the papers I wrote for the Intro-God’s annals and was contacted by humans who felt the same way. I began inviting these humans to my home for discourse. This began a long period of digesting the metaphysical information I had read in my youth.

Around this time I was contacted by a higher intelligence, a strange non-physical being I knew only as Key. Key first appeared to me while I was deep in meditation. The being guided me through visions, such as the one described above, and I learned a great deal.

The being followed me wherever I went, spoke inside my head, a voice comely and plain, offering me its higher wisdom. The more I took its advice, the more I learned to trust it. Soon it was guiding me like the North Star.

Now the walls of every structure I viewed were never more than translucent glass planes. The sky outside seemed as flimsy as the artificial glass dome covering our city. Occasionally I would see great distortions in space itself, blurry rips in the fabric of reality, which I spent a lot of time studying. Some people thought I was mad, but my converts read my papers and listened to my lectures eagerly.

I was pulling myself out—out of what and into where, I had no idea—but I soon drew the attention of the tentacled sky gods from beyond the veil. Since they’re the administrators of these reality simulations, they’re always watching, monitoring for those who approach that moment of waking up, for they wish us to remain asleep, existing in a state of perpetual unconsciousness, so they can use our hearts and our thoughts as power generators and fuel cells, while meanwhile we race like mice through their hideous reality simulators.

They appeared in my dreams. Key alerted me to their presence before going off into the murmurous background of my mind. Then I’d find myself standing in a great confusion of stars and celestial objects, with geometric planes slanting at preposterous angles, creating a dizzying Tower of Babel that reached toward the sky.

Those awe-inspiring fiends came down from the upper atmosphere in gaseous clouds and plumes of red fire, their tentacles weaving out flower-like at all sides. They gathered around me, the size of tall buildings, gazing with vile black eyes, and I, quivering in my feeble suit of flesh, wept and wailed and moaned, cursing them back to Hell.

I stood before the tentacled sky gods and heard their voices in my head, a relaxed choir of sounds whose songlike message to me was simply—

“Sleep… Sleep… Sleep…”

I awoke from such visions doused in sweat, screaming at the top of my lungs.

The beings began popping up in my waking life. Often I’d be walking down the stone pathways of the city, heading to the Learning Facilities or back from the grocer’s, and I would suddenly become conscious of a breech in the sky. A throbbing wound of many colors—oranges and golds and reds—which I first suspected was a crack in the dome. But then I saw thick green tentacles probing through the tears, slippery green stalks the size of mountains, prodding at me in an almost sardonic manner, as if to say, Aha, we see you… I was good at keeping my composure, but sometimes these visions caught me off guard and scared the hell out of me. I was known to scream abruptly in crowds and fall to my knees.

My world grew darker.

I remained indoors, afraid to leave the house and face the accusatory looks of the civilians and Learning Facility workers. Many of my converts abandoned me during this time, thinking me mad. But a few of them remained, tending to my neurotic needs. These few eventually transmigrated with me.

The day came when Key spoke firmly and directly in my head, possibly the last time I heard its voice. It told me I was now the key. Key to what? I asked. To the prison, it replied, and then it went silent. A door emerged in the middle of my bedroom, a shimmering holographic image of blues and yellows, standing upright, attached to nothing. It was composed of a partially translucent substance, which flickered in and out of sight.

My converts could also see this manifestation, and they bid me to open it.

I did.

Blinding light streamed into the room, incinerating everything in sight. I stepped forward, the converts following behind me. Everything re-collapsed on itself—time, space, matter—until I felt immaterial.

I went unconscious. When I came to I was being pulled from the scalloped ranks of metallic bio-heaps, where an infinitude of beings (human and otherwise) had been stored, into a ship where others like me (awakened) awaited. They were instantly kind and unlike anyone I had ever met. They were so alive, so full of feeling, emotion, thought, and vibrant energy. They took me in as part of their crew and we sailed away from the tragic bio-heaps.

They brought me to a hidden city sunken in the depths of a bright green ocean with rocks and exotic plants of striking color. Fascinating alien creatures dove through the water. I even saw the colossal squid beast who had revealed itself to me as The Gatekeeper in my vision.

A translucent aura surrounded the stone city, keeping it dry and livable. The inhabitants made me feel welcome and gave me a place to stay. I found it utterly terrifying that everything I had suspected and wrote about was true. It took some getting used to.

The inhabitants told me about the tentacled sky gods, how they ruled this cold planet with iron feelers, all except the oceans, which, strangely, they avoided. They explained to me all about time, about the reality simulators, blaming their former existence in the prison on the gods, whom they hated with a passion. For years they had hid in the sea—trapped in another kind of prison, I thought. They had yet to take their stand, but I would change all that. I soon recognized some of my converts scattered about the city, and we banded together.

The Initiates were born.

I feel that this is enough of my history to create a picture in your head about what is going on. I stand back now and leave the decision in your hands. This is a matter of free will. You will not believe me just because I told you this fantastical story. You’ll have to discover the truth for yourself.

The tentacled sky gods are immensely powerful, and we need all the help we can get. I urge you—before you forget this and move on with your illusory existence—to try the following experiment:

Take yourself into a calm quiet space, preferably a single room with four walls and a door you can close. Blank white walls would be best, perhaps a lavatory or a small bedroom. Quiet your mind while sitting cross-legged with your back straight. Close your eyes, enter the deepest part of your mind. Imagine yourself falling through the floor, deeper and deeper. Once you feel you are there, open your eyes.

Stare at one of the walls in front of you, keeping your mind still. Focus deep into the wall, try and see through it. Do this for as long as it takes. Imagine the walls thinning, evaporating, melting. Imagine the polygonal lines and planes of the reality simulator.

This may take several tries, but keep it up. Once you accomplish it for even a second there is no going back; you can never un-see the simulation. You’ll be on your way to awakening from the dream.

And I will be here, on this side, waiting for you. As I have always been waiting for you. Fighting the good fight, keeping the fire burning.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Derlin Beare, Leader of the Initiates

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD

“Sex is the enemy of consciousness.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“In a book I’m reading.”

“Do you agree?”

Sixteen-year-old Faith thought long and hard before answering. Finally she said, “Yes, I agree. Except I’d add that consciousness is the friend of sex.”

“Sex is the enemy of consciousness, but consciousness is the friend of sex?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

Russell rested his head on the pillow and thought about the statement. He liked sex. He didn’t see how it could be pernicious, an enemy—aside from those instances of rape and abuse.

—There, he’d just done it again: used his rationality to justify a miserable outlook on life. It was what Faith called ‘resistance to change’, and yet he understood that the reason most people had sex was for reassurance, to know the other person liked them, to know they were desirable.

He couldn’t let it go. But so what? He was only seventeen. He had time a-plenty to achieve enlightenment.

Throwing back the covers, he got out of bed and padded over to the hotel window. He pulled open the blinds and gazed at the parking lot. Cars lay silent in the moonlight, glowing silver.

He saw her reflection in the dim glass—lying in bed, back propped against the pillows, blond hair tumbling down her shoulders, reading.

Who the hell was she? Sexually-abused hypersensitive shamanistic sixteen-year-old from Las Vegas, Nevada, whose prophetic dreams were ninety-eight percent accurate.

Not too many of those running around.

He focused his attention on the starry sky, and a feeling of dread took hold of him. He could see the rip—the rent in reality that spread its blinding white light across the sky. It seemed to get brighter as time progressed.

“You’re looking at it?” Faith said.

He grunted. What else would he be looking at? The tear had appeared two years ago, and everyone had gone bonkers over it. Pretty much everyone on Earth had been staring at it ever since. That first week, there’d been massive riots in every major city. People thought the messiah had returned. Others thought it was aliens trying to make contact. Some believed it was a government mind control device.

The media—along with most leading scientists, and the spokespersons for NASA—claimed it was a cosmic disruption, scattered stardust or space debris caught in a sort of time loop. The official prevailing theory was: “Suspended cosmic debris causing distortions in the electromagnetic spectrum.”

But nothing was certain. The world’s governments were locked in a heated race to perform further studies, leaving the populace at large to form their own opinions.

As usual, there were plenty of folks who believed it was the end of the world. With 2012 just two days away, this seemed as probable a theory as any.

“Don’t look too long,” Faith warned. “You’ll let too much get inside your head; have a heck of a time falling asleep.”

She was right. Prolonged exposure to the light on the retinas had been shown to produce disorientation and transient dementia—not to mention lucid, terrifying, vivid dream activity. It was like staring at the sun, only on the opposite side of the spectrum, staring into the abyss.

Faith had her own ideas about the rent in the sky. Strange, formidable, occult ideas. He had listened to her speak about it at some length. She liked doing it on street corners, like some kind of stump preacher, with a gathering of half-bewildered spectators watching.

“Come back to bed,” she said, marking her place in the book.

Russell turned from the window and got back into bed. He still wanted to have sex with her, but he knew it was out of the question. He settled for cuddling—she lying on her side and he on his, with an arm draped over her. They drifted off to sleep. Which then, of course, brought the harrowing, nerve-shattering visions of the end of time.

* * *

“Information, knowledge, wisdom—word, sound, and power.”

They were downtown among the freaks, parasites, junkies, thieves, shoppers, and businessmen. Faith had posted in her usual spot on the corner of Fifth and Alberton. High-rise buildings towered over her. Cars roared down the street; pigeons pecked in the grass. Only three people had stopped to listen: a homeless man and a couple in their mid-thirties.

“From the inception of the New Age,” Faith continued, “events and circumstances have occurred in perfect order to engender our present state. Only a select few will pass on into the Next Age. Those who are ignorant, cowardly, and blind will be dashed into the bottomless pit of holy refuse.

“All these soda cans you pop, these Styrofoam containers you eat from—come tomorrow you’ll be lying in a grave of them. Those of you who manage to survive will be left to wander in a world of darkness. Your lives will be ruled by fear, until you starve to death, die of thirst, or get killed by wild animals. Today is the final day of your present reality.”

“Keep the doomsaying to yourself!” shouted a passing businessman. Three more people and a group of teenagers dressed in black came over to listen.

“How could anybody survive a catastrophe like that?” one of them asked.

Faith—a thin blonde in blue jeans and tatty Keds—lifted her arms over her head, focusing on the teenager. “For you—for any of you—I’m afraid there’s no way you can survive entirely. You would’ve had to have been contacted by now. To survive what’s coming, one must be partially awake already, already in the process of shedding man’s skin. After tomorrow there will be fifty-percent less three-dimensional space, and fifty-percent less material reality. The other fifty percent will be pure spirit, pure infinity. So even if you do survive the initial transition into this fifty/fifty world, you’ll soon perish from maladjustment. I’m sorry, but there is no hope for your continuation as a human. All that remains is the transmutation of your physical body into perpetual energy. As for your consciousness, that will be absorbed and reintegrated into the universe.”

More people stopped to listen. Faith went on and on, covering everything from the return of myth-shrouded Atlantis to the arrival of aliens from Galaxy X, the philosophy of existentialism, the concept of the Overman, and Babylonian astrology. She would close with some of her ideas about the rent in the sky.

It amazed Russell how much she knew. The strangest thing was hearing it delivered from the mouth of this girl, a scrawny little thing with scarcely enough fat to hold her jeans up. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.

Around twenty people watching now, their eyes wide, their faces blank. Ears twitching like radio antennae.

Faith continued to speak until she was exhausted, at which point she collapsed and nearly fell off the stump. Having spent the past year following her around, Russell had anticipated this. When she dropped, he put his arm around her and escorted her to safety—much to the chagrin of the crowd, who had worked themselves into a frenzy.

To escape, Russell used the trick Faith had taught him. He imagined they were invisible, like nonexistent blips on the crowd’s radar, cloaked beings who could move freely without being noticed.

“Where she’d go?” the people asked. “She can’t say all that then just vanish!” said a man in coveralls. “It’s irresponsible!”

“What do you know about responsibility?” asked the woman next to him. “You look like the type who beats his wife.”

“What’d you say?” He lunged at her—“I’ll show you, you self-righteous bitch!”

Similar exchanges transpired until everyone was fighting; they destroyed public property, smashed cars and shopfront windows, all screaming with triumphant rage.

Russell hastened the catalyst, the human oddity that happened to be his girlfriend, away from the pandemonium. Before long, a full-fledged riot had developed. But that didn’t concern him. What concerned him was getting his relic, his Faith back to the hotel room. Nothing was more important.

* * *

In a red and white barn on a farm in Kansas, a Pentecostal preacher and twelve of his neighbors stacked boxes of food and jugs of drinking water. The preacher, a man in his fifties, whose name was Jeremiah, had been stockpiling the food for months. When the food shortages began, and the country started to panic, he was in good shape thanks to his preparations.

He had his father to thank for his good work ethic. As a boy helping the old man around the farm, he’d been beaten with a switch whenever his chores weren’t performed satisfactorily—that is to say, whenever his father was displeased in any way.

Of course he’d hated it at the time, wished every imaginable torture on the old man. But thinking those kinds of thoughts was sinful and now that he himself was an old man, he could recognize the benefit of the beatings. They’d taught him not to be lazy, to take pain like a man, to get the task completed at any cost.

He had employed the same parenting techniques with his own son, Daryl, but for some reason an equal but opposite reaction had occurred. Daryl had grown up to be a bum in one of the many degenerate American cities.

This made no sense to Jeremiah.

“Where do you want the canned peaches?” Marila asked.

He pointed to a clear space on the shelf and watched as she hoisted the box into position. Tough old gal. Survived the death of her husband and the destruction of their house by fire. She now lived in one of the rooms at the church.

“Jon Baskin, could you help me with this last water jug?” he said. “My back is starting to hurt.”

“Sure thing, Jay,” replied the young lad, padding across the hay-covered barn floor in his usual flannel attire. Things went on this way for the next hour or so: folks lending each other a hand to put away this or that. Afterwards, they started on the cots and the bedmats. By evening, everything was much to Jeremiah’s liking.

Jeff Reynolds and his wife Betty-May prepared an early dinner of corn, potatoes, brown, sugary beans, and sausage links. They gathered around the two wooden picnic tables near the back of the barn. When everyone had been seated and served, they clasped hands for Jeremiah to say grace:

“Lord, bless this meal we’re about to receive. And bless the people who have chosen to leave the comfort of their homes and be here tonight. On this, the Eve of Rapture, we humbly ask your forgiveness, and give thanks for this fine meal. Amen.”

The others echoed the word, then began to eat. They spoke little. A cloud of dread hung over them. Long shadows covered their features and bags darkened their eyes. Jeremiah knew they were scared—and God Almighty, right they should be. For come tomorrow… The End of Days would be upon them.

When they had finished, one of the younger women, a girl named Valerie, made coffee and tea, while the others got settled in their sleeping bags.

Only a single child—Randy and Margery’s boy, Timothy—had joined the group, and only because of his parents. Jeremiah had hoped to see more children.

The rest of the group ranged from their mid-twenties to their golden years, but it didn’t really matter how old they were. The imminent catastrophe wasn’t the Great Flood; this wasn’t Noah’s Ark. This was something quite different.

By nightfall everyone had a mug or thermos in hand. They were stretched out among the cots and bedrolls. Their faces, strained with fear, gazed toward the front of the barn, where Jeremiah was pacing anxiously on a wood platform. He was dressed in black preacher’s garb with a black hat. A gold crucifix dangled round his neck.

In one hand, he clutched a King James Version of the Bible. In the other, a secret: a small bone, a divine talisman of great power, something no one else knew about.

Something God had given him.

“Saint John, the mad, rambling Saint, was delivered the vision of The Armageddon, which he compiled into the Book of Revelation. I tell you now this book was misinterpreted.”

A collective gasp swept through the group.

“I believe,” Jeremiah continued, feeling the secret bone vibrating in his palm. “John the Mad Saint was given a vision, just as I, Jeremiah Burckhardt, was granted a vision.”

“Praise Jesus!” shouted old Marila. “Glory be to God!” shouted another. Hands lifted to the ceiling.

Jeremiah slowed his steps, his eyes burning into the audience. “In a dream—a dream in which I was not asleep—the Creator came to me to deliver His divine prophecy. He showed me the world encased in a glass ball. Inside it, mankind languished in decadence, as in Sodom and Gomorrah. I looked upon Mystery Babylon, the Great Harlot ruling the Pillars of Creation with seven slobbering heads. I saw oceans and oceans of blood—leaking from the sky, soft as tears, filling up the world and its scientific inventions and grand cities. Man is drowning in a pool of his own stupidity and ignorance, for he has not accepted the One God, nor embraced His Son, who was sacrificed to cleanse man’s sin. For these transgressions, Father God told me, mankind will be wiped out.”

Margery cried out from her cot, an orgasmic wail, “Who’ll save us, ifn’t the Almighty? We must beg for His mercy!”

“Margery’s right,” Jeremiah said. “We must plead for our tainted souls, so that we may be spared the coming disaster. In the vision, God showed me those who would be saved. Those who have not accepted Christ into their hearts will perish as the material world melts away. Those left will linger like sores on the skin of existence. They will be driven mad, and die like dogs in the street. Christ will then descend in His Golden Chariot to carry us aloft, where we might walk the streets of glory and sit at His right hand for eternity.”

“Glory!” shouted James Wheaton, proprietor of the farm two plots over.

“Hallelujah!” responded Margery and Randy.

“Praise Jesus!” sounded Bruce, the only colored man among them.

“Praise Him!” echoed Jean and Harry, a married couple of fifty-odd years.

Jeremiah loomed over them like a black, lifeless scarecrow, silently admiring the result of his words. His fist tightened around the tiny magic bone as it thrummed against his palm. He grinned, a knife gash exposing false teeth.

Outside the barn, crows gathered in the dogwoods and sycamores while up above the stars twinkled, their firelight ringing the heavens like Christmas tree ornaments.

* * *

“Feeling any better?” Russell asked.

Faith nodded from where she lay curled up on the bed. Their television, set to mute, flashed images of reporters, large groups of people, an ongoing riot. The curtains were pulled back, letting in the night. The rent in the sky was clearly visible.

Russell sat at the table, nursing the whiskey shot he’d taken from the minibar. He’d been sitting there for three hours, ever since they’d escaped the crowd. Faith had been so exhausted that she’d gone to sleep the moment she hit the bed. With nothing else to do, Russell had killed time getting buzzed.

But now she was getting to her feet. She wrapped a blanket around herself and joined him at the table.

Russell retrieved more bottles from the minibar, along with a liter of Coke and what was left of the ice. He mixed the rum and coke in one of the half-clean Styrofoam cups and handed it to her. She took a whiff, wrinkling her nose, but thanked him and started to drink.

“You got us out of there,” she said finally.

“I did. I thought they were ready to devour you.”

She grunted in a thoughtful way. “They might’ve, if you hadn’t rescued me. They’re so starved for human interaction and they don’t even realize it. They feel their emptiness, sure, but they don’t understand that they’re starving. Instead they distract themselves with every possible vice—food, drugs, shopping, alcohol, video games, television, movies, romantic pastimes, rape, consensual sex (which is still just rape)—they shove all this into their emptiness, hoping it will fill the void, but it never does. Earlier this evening they were going to try and put me into their void, but thankfully you got us out.”

Russell took a swig of alcohol, watching as Faith did the same. He wondered why in the hell she couldn’t ever say anything normal. Why she always had to go on and on about this crazy stuff that made his stomach hurt when he thought about it. It was like someone else was inside her, some strange being that spouted esoteric knowledge and made uncanny observations.

They drank in silence, listening to the distant sirens and city noises. It was only going to get worse the closer it got to midnight. People were going to panic, become desperate. And by morning… who knew?

Russell felt as scared and as helpless as those people looting and burning buildings on the television, the ones fighting with the National Guard. His only consolation was Faith—this strange, all-knowing, spiritually-connected being.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

She blinked with small, round, pretty blue eyes set into flesh that was warm and pallid and soft as honey. Sometimes when she looked at him, he felt as if she was seeing into him, seeing his soul maybe.

“Talk about what?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Must be the whiskey talking.”

“Not the whiskey. Your daimon.”

“My what?”

She chuckled. “We talked about this before, silly. Your daimon is your Intuitive Child’s voice, the one in your head that guides you, your Guardian Angel. Daimon is synonymous with daemon, or demon. However in this case it is not the sort of demon of which you are thinking. The daimon is your link to higher spiritual worlds, to the eternal. It must be heeded at all costs.”

“Now I remember,” Russell replied. “You said that Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was the first to speak about it.”

“That’s right. His connection with his daimon was strong. It was almost ninety-percent accurate on all matters. He consulted it frequently. Why don’t you try it? Go on—what’s your daimon telling you right now?”

Russell paused, thought, listened. Then he said, “It keeps telling me that you want to talk about something.”

Her face sobered. “Oh I do. But are you willing to listen? I warn you now that it’s not an easy subject.”

He glanced out the window for a moment, marveling at the rent in the sky, how it grew at an alarming rate, how the light issuing forth from it kept getting brighter. He had trouble believing it. Seeing it felt like a dream, like the world of his dreams and the world of his reality had collided.

He sighed. “Considering that the world is going to end tomorrow, I suspect I’m ready for anything.”

“Good, because I’ve wanted to discuss this since we met. It’s about consciousness and the predicament of sex, how the two are related, how they’re connected, and how the two can be reconciled.”

“More of that?”

“I know it’s a tiresome subject, but I thought you were ready to listen?”

He took a deep breath, quieting the emotions in his head. Then he asked her to continue.

* * *

The static from Jon Baskin’s transistor radio filled the barn with a sound like buzzing bees. The young man fiddled with the dial, trying to find a local station. Outside, the crickets of the night tittered and sawed.

“Here we go,” he said finally, leaning back as a male voice crackled out of the speakers. They had all gathered around the radio, sitting on cots and listening. Jeremiah, uninterested in matters of the pagan world, slouched in his chair, smoking a pipe.

“… can confirm reports of new rips in the sky over the Eastern Hemisphere,” said the voice, “for a total of seven of these ‘cosmic debris traps’, as the US government is calling them, now visible above our planet. The president plans to make an emergency address within the hour but, so far, nothing of any certainty has been released as to whether the rips pose a threat.

“In other news, the eve of the year 2012, also marking the end of the Mayan Calendar, continues to breed mayhem and unrest in the world’s major cities. Those who haven’t gone into hiding have taken to the streets. Massive partying and full-scale riots are occurring side by side, stretching the National Guard to its limits. There have also been reports of mass suicides among certain religious groups—”

“Turn it off,” Jeremiah said.

Without argument, Jon Baskin hit the switch on his radio and the barn went silent. It was clear that nobody would be sleeping, not on a night like tonight, so Jeremiah rose from his chair, Bible in hand, and decided to read a passage:

“Revelation 6:12: ‘I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became as blood. The stars of the sky fell to the earth, like a fig tree dropping its unripe figs when it is shaken by a great wind. The sky was removed like a scroll when it is rolled up. Every mountain and island were moved out of their places. The kings of the earth, the princes, the commanding officers, the rich, the strong, and every slave and free person, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains. They told the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come; and who is able to stand?’ ”

He stopped as a curious sound came from outside. Not the usual buzzing insects or hooting night owls, but a hum, low pitched and monotone, like that of a tuning fork. Everyone peered up from their cots.

“Now what’d yah suppose that is?” Marila asked.

Jeremiah closed the Bible and set it on the chair. Reaching into his pocket, he drew forth the bone, which was vibrating in response to the outside hum. It was this same bone that God had left under his pillow one night last month. He wasn’t sure how he knew this, but somehow he felt sure his son Daryl was dead, that the bone had belonged to him.

The hum grew louder, swelling to a deafening racket. One by one, the members of the group got up from their cots and gathered by the barn doors. The sound grew closer, more pronounced.

Jeremiah clutched the bone. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. But he knew this was a matter of freewill, that ultimately the decision wasn’t with him.

“We want to see it,” said Valerie, the young waitress who worked at Buck’s Diner, off the interstate.

“Yeah, we wanna find out what’s happening,” agreed Jeff Reynolds. His wife seconded his position.

Jeremiah came down from the wood platform to join the group. “The chain of events has already been set in motion. Witnessing it would be irrelevant. I ask you to remember the woman at Sodom, who looked back against God’s wishes and was turned to a pillar of salt.”

“But He ain’t neva warned us no way,” remarked Bruce. “What harm could it do?”

“Well, I’m not pushing it,” said Marila, returning to her cot.

The humming grew louder, and James Wheaton literally had to yell to say, “Aren’t you interested in proof of God’s work?”

The minister made a face. “Proof? I require no proof. My faith is here,” he tapped his chest, “and here,” he pointed his left temple. “I don’t require anything external to validate my beliefs.”

“Well I do,” Valerie said, marching toward the doors. “My whole life I’ve wondered if God really exists, or if man thought Him up. So if this is my chance to know the truth, I’m in.”

Suddenly the doors burst open and the deafening hum poured into the barn. A brilliant white light, akin to the color that poured from the rips in the sky, filled the barn, swelled like an explosion, and ebbed.

A woman’s voice, Betty-May’s, no, Margery’s… shouted, “Where do you think you’re going? Get away from there!”

As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, Jeremiah saw that Timothy, the child, had stepped beyond the barn doors and was now wandering out into the pasture. His mother and father scrambled after him, followed by Valerie, James, Jon Baskin, Bruce, Jeff Reynolds, and Betty-May. Only Marila, Jean, and Harry remained on their cots, still squinting against the light.

The minister approached the opening. Shrieks and raised voices came from outside. He had meant every word about not needing to validate his beliefs. But now that his congregation had gone blindly into the abyss, he had to look after them.

“Be careful,” Marila called.

Jeremiah waved a hand. “Don’t worry.”

He passed through the barn doors into the night. The singing grass of the pasture and the swaying trees received him. The hum was so intense that he could feel it in his teeth. The sky overhead had been… shredded, like a piece of blasted metal. Beams of concentrated white light filtered down, creating the illusion of the stars falling.

“My God,” he whispered.

For some reason the others had stripped their clothing and were dancing in the grass, holding hands, moving in a clockwise circle. Jeremiah watched them distractedly, his hand clutching the bone.

The sky itself was opening up, and a shower of dark red drops began to fall. The minister held out his palm, caught a few, tasted them.

He shivered. The drops tasted metallic, like human blood.

Red and white blurred together, forming a mist-like wall between the trees. The minister dropped to genuflection. He could hear the laughter of his flock, a sound not indicative of joy or happiness, but of lunacy and madness. Figures, long, lanky, and shapeless, stalked out of the forest, gathering around them like sentries.

Panic shot through him. Fear. He screamed at the top of his lungs, begged for mercy, for clarity, for forgiveness in the eyes of his Creator.

The world rumbled and tumbled and sloshed like an angry sea. He couldn’t make sense of anything. He felt warmth and weightlessness and connectivity, and soon he felt himself not at all, felt like he had no self, felt like he was a part of something greater.

* * *

Faith stepped through the door of the hotel room on that first day. Everything—the ground, the buildings, the trees, the cars—everything was covered in red blood. The rain had fallen continuously through the night.

She glanced overhead at what used to be the sky, at what was now a churning white portal, an entryway to the higher spirit realms. A beam of gold unfurled toward the ground like a tongue. The enlightened beings could be seen moving along it, their bodies translucent and curiously formed, too large to be human, too etheric to be real. Thousands of them were coming down from the sky.

She smiled, glancing back into the room, which was totally wrecked. Her night with the man Russell had been physically demanding: the sex, the talking, the arguing… the death.

He lay on the bed, splayed in mock crucifixion, stomach slit, entrails removed, throat cut, genitals carved away. The knife, like some kind of morbid coat hook, was stuck into the wall.

She was sad for him, but she’d known since the day they’d met that he was the one. The only one strong enough, pure enough, simple enough, and worthy enough to be sacrificed.

She turned away, unwilling to look any longer. She’d led him on this whole time, enticing him with sexual vibes, but denying him access. It had been a game.

Then finally, last night, she’d given herself to him. She’d told him everything—all the abuse from her childhood, the things her father had done to her, what her brothers had done, her mother, her cousin, her brother’s friends, and later, the teacher at her elementary school.

She had told him every graphic detail, recounted every horrible image. When she had finished, he seemed emotionally raw from the experience. That was when she had gone for the knife, caught him off guard. She had made her sacrifice as she promised she would, that day in the desert, five years ago, when the beings had first contacted her.

And now the prophecy had come true… and 2012 was upon them.

Naked, she left the hotel room, whispering a final goodbye to the man Russell. She made her way along the city streets, down the city sidewalks. She was amazed to see everything so splattered with blood. It was everywhere and on everything. And it produced a strange smell, like antiseptic, which made it difficult to breathe.

Corpses littered the area. Faces, frozen in terror, stared at her from alleyways, trash heaps, car windows. She ignored them, hurrying down the street, not headed anywhere. Just going.

Time was no longer relevant in The Next Age. The spirit realm had successfully infiltrated. There would be no more rushing about, no more appointments to keep, no schedules, jobs, or deadlines.

At length, she came to a park and sat on a bench. Though the sun was no longer present, and time nonexistent, there still remained an atmosphere of early morning. The trees and grass seemed speckled with dew (or was it blood?) and somewhere in her head, the birds chirped.

She even thought she felt a breeze. Then she realized it was the white of the spirit realm drawing in on her. They had come down out of the sky, these beings which some call demons, some angels, and still others extraterrestrials, riding a carpet of swirling, golden whiteness like an ocean of clouds.

The first ones were stalking silently out of the blood-spattered trees, coming to find out who she was, why she had been spared.

She would tell them. She was not afraid, no; she had descended into a material hell, had been abused by countless “humans,” her own family. She had undergone tremendous growth and awareness of higher thought to reach this point.

Three, shrouded in a blinding fog, gathered before her, mere shapes, looming, darker than shadows. It seemed to Faith that these beings wore their minds on the outside of their skins. Like suits of armor.

“You remember me,” she said, voice level, focusing all her energy on the words. “You came to me a number of years ago. I was alone in the desert, wandering, wishing for death, not eating or drinking, only despairing, seeking to rid myself of the suffering of this world. That’s when you entered my head and spoke to me, offered me the little death, so I might continue to exist on Earth as one of your… agents. I have done as you instructed. I selected an appropriate soul and sacrificed it on the according night…”

“You have not done this alone,” one of them said. “We commissioned hundreds of your kind to perform the ritual.”

It took a moment to recuperate from hearing the being’s voice. When she’d balanced her energies again, she said, “That doesn’t depreciate my contribution.”

They seemed to converse among themselves, until finally one said, “No, we agree it does not. And we have determined that you are awake enough—dead enough—to accompany us on our quest for reformation. Will you come?”

Taking a deep breath, she rose from the bench and nodded. Instantly, her flesh peeled away from her skin, then her muscles, then her bones. Yet there was no pain. It all happened so fast that there was no panic, no fear. She was now a shadow of herself, translucent and curiously formed.

The beings started moving again. She filed into their ranks, soon getting lost among the lumbering crowd.

The cloud of light passed over the park, engulfing it. It continued on, encompassing the rest of the city, and soon it covered the state, the country, and finally the entire planet.

From space, the earth appeared as a giant white dot, ever swirling, ever churning, devoid of landmasses or bodies of water. But beyond that, things of this nature are quite impossible to explain.

Aaron J. French (a.k.a. A. J. French) is currently a book editor for JournalStone Publishing and the Editor-in-Chief for Dark Discoveries magazine—a professional, internationally distributed print magazine specializing in dark fiction, currently on its tenth year of continuous publication and distribution. He has worked with and edited such authors as David Liss, Norman Partridge, Gary A. Braunbeck, Thomas Ligotti, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jonathan Maberry, F. Paul Wilson, Glen Hirshberg, John Shirley, and many others. In 2011 he edited Monk Punk, an anthology of monk-themed speculative fiction and The Shadow of the Unknown, an anthology of nü-Lovecraftian fiction. His latest anthology Songs of the Satyrs was published in 2014 by Angelic Knight Press and features a brand new novella from New York Times best-selling author David Farland. Aaron also served as co-editor for The Lovecraft eZine for several months in 2012.

Aaron’s fiction has appeared in many publications including Dark Discoveries, Black Ink Horror, Something Wicked, After Death…, Beware the Dark, Chiral Mad, The Lovecraft eZine, and others. His zombie collection Up From Soil Fresh was published by Hazardous Press in 2013. Also in 2013 “The Order,” Aaron’s occult thriller novella about a Lovecraftian secret society, was published in the Dreaming in Darkness collection. He is currently an active member of the Horror Writers Association.

Aaron is pursuing a Religious Studies degree from the University of Arizona. His nonfiction articles on Thomas Ligotti, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Karl Edward Wagner have appeared in Dark Discoveries magazine, while his online column “Letters from the Edge,” focusing on the occult, spirituality, rogue scholarship, esotericism, and speculative fiction, is featured regularly on the Nameless Digest website. His academic papers “Toward Christian Renewal” and “Journeys of the Soul in the Afterlife: Egyptian Books of the Afterlife and Greek Orphic Mysteries” were published in the peer-reviewed journal The Esoteric Quarterly. He is currently a member of the ESSWE, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.

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