-i-
Ethan was in a daze when he got home.
Well, to tell the truth, he’d been in a daze for several weeks. Headaches, blurry vision, and misremembering. He even thought he saw his doppelganger a few times.
Still, the diagnosis came as something of a shock. Or, perhaps I should say, prognosis.
The oncologist tried to be as upbeat as possible, floating the hope of experimental therapies, but terminal brain cancer had a certain ring of finality.
As a life-long Christian, Ethan had imagined that he would be better prepared for the prospect of death.
He had seen his saintly grandmother die a peaceful death, haloed with the hope of immorality knocking at the door.
And, indeed, Ethan was a believer. But believing was one thing, and knowing was another. Or was it?
He had no reason to doubt. Indeed, he had every reason not to doubt.
But imaginary doubts have a way of bootstrapping their own conception, gestation, and birth.
He had faith, but how could he trust his own state of mind at this stage of the game? Was his faith a grace of God, or merely a symptom of his cancerous delirium?
He had read of signs and wonders. And heard of many more. But that was hearsay.
God had spoken to the prophets, but not to him. No burning bush or water into wine in his own experience.
Where was God?
-ii-
Ethan woke up in the middle of the night. Or, perhaps I should say, he was awaked from sleep.
At the foot of his bed stood a shadowy figure. Ethan tried to suppress his terror.
At first he pretended to be asleep; hoping he would, in fact, fall asleep; hoping the specter would go away.
But even with his eyes shut, he sensed the specter staring at him—as if it could pierce his eyelids with the intensity of its gaze.
At last he sat upright and addressed the specter.
“Who are you?”
“I am Legion.”
“What do you want?”
“To do you a favor.”
“What sort of favor?”
“I can cure you.”
“What’s the point? I’m already an old man. I’m going to die sooner or later. I admit the diagnosis threw me for a curve. Like everyone else I’ve been procrastinating about the inevitable. Maybe I needed this jolt to prepare me for my final end.”
“But that’s the catch, now isn’t it?”
“What catch?”
“It’s easy to believe when you have no other alternative. As long as you’re going to die anyway. What kind of faith is that? But suppose I could make you well? Suppose I could make you young? Suppose I could make you immortal? Then how would you choose?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Then give it some thought, and tell me how you choose when I return.”
-iii-
And, indeed, that’s all Ethan could think about the next day. But wouldn’t this be apostasy? If he were wrong, he would forfeit eternal life for this hopeful hallucination. Or maybe it was the other way around. Was eternal life the delusion? Maybe there was no heaven or hell. Only here and now. Why mortgage the present on a future that might never come?
Either way, the stakes were equally high. If he accepted the offer, and he was wrong, he would damn himself for all eternity. God would never forgive him. Or could he take it back?
He could only know by giving it a try, but by that time it would be too late to rectify his mistake. Ethan’s mind went round and round.
-iv-
Once again, Ethan awoke in the middle of the night. Once again, the specter was standing at the foot of the bed.
“How do you decide?”
“I can’t?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know what to believe. What if I accept your offer, and it turns out badly?”
“Then I’ll make you another offer. So it’s risk-free, you see.”
“What do I do?”
“Follow this map. It will take you to Gihon spring, deep in the woods. Take a drink. The spring will restore your youth. Render you ageless.”
-v-
The next morning, Ethan woke up with the usual headache. Blurry vision. Forgetfulness.
He showered, shaved, and dressed. Then, when he went to put his wristwatch on, he saw the map on the chest of drawers.
So he drove to the countryside. The trail was overgrown with underbrush, making it a hot and tiresome hike. Age and ill health made it even more onerous.
Without the map, he would have lost his way many times. But finally he arrived at the spring.
The aureate tint of the gurgling the waters set it apart from any an ordinary spring.
Even under normal circumstances, a drink of cool spring water would be refreshing after such a hike. But the flavor of this water was especially bracing.
He decided to lie down for a little nap before retracing his steps. When he awoke, the sun was already edging towards the horizon.
But his headache was gone, and there was a new spring in his step.
It was nearly dark when he got back to the car. After arriving home, he went to the bathroom.
What he saw in the mirror as soon as he switched on the light was amazing. It’s as if the odometer of his life had been turned back to the time he was twenty or so.
-vi-
There were some unforeseen circumstances when he accepted Legion’s offer.
His picture ID was out of date. And he couldn’t very well update his picture ID, for there was a mismatch between his present appearance and his date of birth.
Neighbors also began to notice that they never saw Ethan around the house. Instead, some young kid was coming and going.
A homicide detective came rapping at the door. Ethan was able to bluff his way through the conversation, yet it was clear that he had only succeeded in arousing rather than dispelling the detective’s suspicions.
The next time the detective came rapping at the door, he would no doubt have a search warrant in hand.
So Ethan suddenly found himself on the run. He was able to book a flight to Rio, since Brazil had no extradition treaty.
No doubt life as a fugitive was a small price to pay for immortality, but it did put a crimp in his plans. And the irony of it all is that he was completely innocent, yet he couldn’t afford to prove his innocence, lest someone dissect him for his immortal genes.
So he’d have to lay low for a few decades. Create a new identity.
Indeed, to be an immortal in a world of mortals meant recreating your identity every generation or so—as he was to discover.
He couldn’t get married. Or even have a girlfriend for very long. He couldn’t live in one place for very long.
It was only a matter of time before the natives began to notice that Ethan was immune to the passage of time. He could only visit Monte Carlo every so often. Every few decades, really.
If you went back too soon—say, thirty years later—and the same card dealer was still there, it would raise awkward questions. Hazardous questions.
He made many new friends. But the trouble with making new friends is that they had a habit of eventually dying of old age.
And he had to fake the aging process himself—as best he could.
At first he reveled in his apostasy. The nice thing about being an apostate is that you could cast off all the hang-ups of organized religion.
And Ethan was in a hurry to make up for lost time. Not that he needed to be in a hurry. It took him a while to make the mental adjustment.
He had all the time in the world. He would be alive until the sun went supernova.
For the first few years, he wondered to himself how he was ever able to put up with the utterly suffocating, claustrophobic creed of organized religion. Life was so much bigger than the four walls of a church.
But with time to burn, time began to burn a hole in his proverbial pocket.
He didn’t dare have a wife and kids. And even if they kept his secret, he would outlive them. He would have to watch them die, one by one, of old age.
No wife or mistress. Just a trip to the local brothel.
He did attempt to make one exception. For there was one woman who was everything he ever wanted in a woman. The sort of woman that a man could only hope to meet once in a thousand years. Which meant, for most men, never meeting her at all. But as an immortal, the odds of meeting her were greatly improved.
She would be the love of his life. Or, should I say, the love of his many lives. His serial lives, as he traded on alias for another. Or so he hoped.
He didn’t care about risk. She was too good to lose.
He tried taking her to Gihon spring. But the spring had dried up. Legion’s offer was to him, and him alone.
And it wasn’t just people that died on you. Places changed.
He began to appreciate the sense of place. Place was a beachhead against the high tide of time. Place was memory externalized. A way of fixing memory.
We associate people with places. Even when the people are gone, the places remind us of them. But when both are gone, what is left?
He went back to his hometown for the first time in 50 years. But his parents’ house was gone. His grandparents’ house was gone. His junior high school was gone. His high school was gone.
Without these outward dikes to dam the flood of time, the loss of continuity began to erode his sense of identity.
Everything which anchored him to his past was gone. His childhood. Coming of age. First love.
And making new friends, far from replacing old friends, accentuated the sense of loss.
Even if his new friends had been immortal, they could never take the place of those he’d grown up with. Those with whom he’d come of age. His father and mother. Brother and sister. His adolescent buddies. His high school sweetheart.
There was no substitute for that look of recognition in the eyes, when you spoke of shared memories.
To mention a girl you both knew from high school. To mention a trip you once took with your brothers.
There’s a reason these were called the formative years. They were irrevocable.
The isolation became unbearable. The dislocation became maddening. It was like being an amnesiac. Knowing no one and known to no one.
And there was one more thing. Before his rejuvenation, he had been an avid nature lover. And after his rejuvenation, he was looking forward to revisiting his favorite haunts as well as exploring a hundredfold more.
And yet, for some reason, which he couldn’t quite put his finger on, it didn’t have the same resonance.
-vii-
So, at the age of 473, he demanded that Legion put in an appearance.
“I’m tired of living like this!”
“So soon?”
“I’d rather die. Give me back my brain cancer!”
“If you wish. But there is another alternative.”
“What’s that?”
“I could send you back in time to when you really were about twenty. And I could immortalize your loved ones as well.”
“That would be better. Yes, that would make a world of difference.”
-viii-
And it was better—for a time. He offered to take his best friends to Gihon Spring. He offered to take his next of kin to Gihon Spring.
His grandmother was the only holdout. To her, apostasy was not an option. Life without Christ was a living death.
Her refusal was a disappointment to him. For she was one of the people he cared the most about—because she was one of the people who cared the most about him. And she died as she lived—praying for his soul.
But while that was loss, there was gain. They could face the future together.
One by one they drank the water. And it changed them. Renewed them.
Yet it changed them in other ways as well.
When he told his younger brother Austin about the spring, the first reaction took him aback. He saw disillusionment in his brother’s eyes.
Austin always looked up to Ethan. Ethan was his hero. Ethan’s piety was a cornerstone of Austin’s piety.
So Ethan’s apostasy left his younger brother shattered. But eventually he succumbed to temptation. Indeed, the loss of faith made it easy.
His mother, father, and older brother Dominic, none of whom were what you’d call devout, needed no convincing.
Neither did Selina, his high school sweetheart, or Brad, his best friend from junior high and high school.
Everything was looking up—for a while.
But one of the unforeseen complications of immortalizing your love ones is that they will also want to immortalize their loved ones, and so on. And all their loves ones are not the same as all your loves ones.
Here you were hoping to spend eternity with all, and only, your loved ones, only to find yourself in the company of folks you’d rather avoid.
Ethan found that he was unable to immortalize only his own loved ones, for some of them were unhappy unless the same benefit was extended to all of their loved ones.
Yet another oversight is that, because his loved ones had been dead so long, it slipped his mind that things had not been all that idyllic to begin with.
It’s easier to love some people after they’re gone. You can forget about all of their irritating traits, and just remember the good things about them.
But having immortalized his loved ones, he immortalized all of their irritating traits.
In his memory he had unconsciously rewritten parts of the past. Made some signal improvements. Perfected the past.
He forgot that his mother never understood the first thing about men. He forgot that his dad was the consummate backseat driver.
And he also forgot why he and Brad drifted apart in the first place. Indeed, “drifted apart” is a euphemism. They had a falling out over Selina. They were both in love with the same woman.
Now he was right back to the same ménage a trois.
What is more, Selina wasn’t the way he remembered her. How could she be?
He hadn’t seen her for over five hundred years. The Selina he remembered, the Selina he idolized, was the legend. The ingénue, forever frozen in time at sweet sixteen.
Not a real woman. Or a real wife. But a fantasy.
And it now occurred to him, for the very first time, that this is why he could never settle down with another woman.
I don’t mean, when he was immortal the first time around. I mean back when he was still a mortal.
In fact, it dawned on him that he might have had a happy marriage with any one of several other women he met over the years if he hadn’t been constantly comparing them with Selina. How could any flesh-and-blood female compete with a legend?
What is more—having now known countless women over the centuries, he could suddenly see her for what she really was all along—just a normal, ordinary girl.
When he was a teenager, Selina was a goddess. A star in the constellation.
In the meantime, his parents were getting a divorce. They had a good, working marriage back when the two of them expected to grow old together. Nurse each other in their dotage.
They were sensible people. Life is short. You take what you can get. You settle for less. You make the most of what you’ve got.
But now, restored to youth, with limitless opportunities ahead of them, they could afford to be more finicky. They had the luxury of time to find the perfect mate. The husband or wife of their dreams.
And this degenerated into a lawsuit over the division of their assets.
Early one, without consulting Ethan, his parents decided to cash in on Gihon’s spring. There was a fortune to be made. People would pay anything for immortality.
They took out a loan to buy the tract of land on which the spring was situated. They then had various investors put in a bid. Billionaires. Multibillionaires. Multinational corporations.
For a time, they were living the high life. But as is so often the case, a dream come true is only as good as your wildest dreams.
Success is the worst thing that can happen to some people.
Austin became a compulsive gambler. Dominic became a compulsive womanizer. Both became alcoholics and drug addicts.
The property deed was challenged in court. The state exercised eminent domain.
Overnight, Ethan’s family was dirt poor—hopelessly mired in unimaginable debt.
A civil war ensued when Washington attempted to federalize the land, after having been seized by the state.
The civil war escalated into a world war as everyone attempted to wrest control of Gihon’s spring from everyone else.
That’s before Gihon’s spring went up in smoke—or, more precisely—a mushroom cloud.
In a fallen world, eternal life is a living hell.
Ethan saw the fallout on the horizon when he went hiking one day. He was still trying to figure out why the mountains and streams and other wonders of the natural world had ceased to inspire him they way the used to—before Legion first appeared to him.
Then it came to him. Or, rather, it came back to him. Flooding back. Before his apostasy, there was more to nature that meets the eye. Nature was a sign.
Behind a tree stood the tree of life. Behind the starry heavens stood the throne of heaven. Behind a stream stood the river of life. Behind a mountain or high hill stood Mt. Zion. Behind the dawn stood Eastern morn. Behind a woman stood the Church.
And behind it all lay God, as the surpassing good in every earthly good, and greater good in every incidental evil.
Where was God? God was everywhere he looked. But, up until now, that had been subliminal. Something he took for granted. Something so familiar that it escapes our jaded gaze.
That’s what he was missing. God was there all along. God was writ so large that he couldn’t see him—for the whole of a nature was an allegory or theophany, of which Scripture was the key.
Throw away the key, and nature is all surface. An antique photograph. A thin film of sepia.
Once more, he demanded an audience with Legion.
“I repent! I recant! I take it all back!”
“As you wish.”
-ix-
Ethan woke up the next morning with a headache. He showered, shaved, and dressed for church.
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Pearly Gates
-i-
Roxanne, or "Roxy," as all her friends knew her, was more concerned about her eyeliner than the yellow line as she swerved into the opposing lane. Approaching the tunnel from the other end was a sleepy semi-truck driver.
Roxy was bound for Vegas, eager to see her name up in lights. Marilyn Monroe she wasn’t, but with a bit of judicious padding and truckloads of steely determination, she was sure the world would be bowled over by her irresistible charm.
But somewhere between the yellow line and the dark tunnel, her aspirations to greatness took an unexpected turn.
-ii-
Next thing she knew, she is standing, dazed and unsteady, with singed dress and tangled hair, in a washed-out no-man’s land, like a TV screen with the contrast knob turned to zero.
After a few moments, the fluffy mist began to dissipate, and in the near distance she saw a sparkling city, looking like Vegas, only bigger and brighter, with more moreness than ever before.
"Well I’ll be damned!" she said, bowled-over by it all. As she was gazing at this great glittery bauble in the sky, a white-suited, well-tanned gentleman approached her:
"My dear Roxanne," he said, in a mellifluous foreign accent, "your limousine awaits you!"
"How do you know my name?"
"Why, your reputation precedes you!"
"Oh, you silver-tongued devil you!" she exclaimed, blushing, giggling, and batting her eyelids all at once. "But did I really make it to the place upstairs?"
"Well, ever since the Copernican Revolution, up-and-down is pretty relative. But you might call this is a dream come true!" He then extended his arm, which she took, and walked with him to the stretched limo.
"Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like what’s-his-name in Fantasy Island?"
"It wouldn’t be the first time," he answered, with a wry smile and a twinkle in the eye.
-iii-
Inside the limo an angel choir was playing on the radio. Mr. Roarke, or whatever his name really was, offered her a glass of bubbly. Roxy couldn’t tell if the car was driving, gliding or floating in mid-air. When they arrived at the Ritz hotel, Roarke escorted her to the express elevator.
"Where am I going? she asked?
"The penthouse suite has been reserved for you," Roarke answered.
"All that for me?" she said?
"Is it not written, ‘in my Father’s house are many mansions’?" Roarke said.
The glass elevator seemed to ascend forever as they passed through the pink, puffy clouds on the way up. In the suite itself, a small army of beefy, bare-chested manservants tended to her every whim.
That night she stayed in the suite, to clean up and rest up after her accident. She took a champagne bath in her solid-gold bathtub and went straight to bed.
Combing out her hair in the morning, she found out that this was no ordinary comb, but a magic comb with different settings. Depending on which setting she chose, the comb would make her hair come out looking like Farah Fawcett, Maureen O’Hara, Jean Harlow, Veronica Lake, or Marie Antoinette.
She also discovered a pair of magic dance-slippers with several different settings that made her dance as well as Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Margot Fonteyn.
-iv-
The next day she went to the Monte Carlo casino. Roxy was given a million bucks worth of chips as seed money. Every hand she was dwelt was a royal flush. Every throw of the dice came up sixes. Every yank of the one-armed bandit hit the jackpot.
On the first night alone it took a dozen wheelbarrows just to haul all the loot back to the penthouse suite. After the first week, a whole floor of the hotel was set aside to store her winnings.
-v-
The day after that she went to Bloomingdale’s. Roxy was issued a Bloomingdale card with an unlimited credit line of credit. It took another dozen wheelbarrows to haul all the diamond rings and emerald earrings and jade bracelets and pearly necklaces and gold brooches back to the penthouse suite, not to mention three semi-trucks to transport all the fur coats.
Because she couldn’t bring herself to choose between the white mink coat, the brown mink coat, and the black mink coat, or between the mink coat with chinchilla trimming and the chinchilla coat with mink trimming, she bought the whole rack. Fortunately for her, the walk-in closet the size of an airplane hanger.
Due to rear-round climate control, the air outside stayed at 70 degrees day and night. So she had to lower the thermostat in her suite just to get a chance to wear her mink and leopard coats.
-vi-
The day after that she went to the Chez Piggerie restaurant. There she was delighted to find that every gourmet dishe had zero carbs. She could gobble down a twelve-course meal and never gain an ounce. What was more, she could swig as much bubbly as she liked and never wake up with a hangover.
-vii-
The day after that she went to see Christian Dior. Instead of taking her measurements and then tailoring a form-fitting dress, Dior handed her a catalogue from which she could simply pick out a slinky evening dress, and whatever dress she put on would magically conform her figure to the contours of Dolly Parton.
-viii-
The day after that, she went to the Sands, where she was invited onto the stage to do a concert. The microphone had ten different settings. Depending on which setting she chose, she would sound exactly like Julie Andrews, Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Loretta Lynn, Bernadette Peters, Barbara Streisand, Joan Sutherland, or Sarah Vaughn.
She even got to dance with Fred Astaire and Rudolf Valentino, as well as sing with Frank Sinatra and Evis Presley.
-ix-
The day after she went to see Richard Avalon. Here she sat to have her picture taken. She could have her picture taken with Cary Grant, Santa Claus, or Jesus. Well, it was really Jeffrey Hunter, but he looked just like Jesus is supposed to look.
She got to sit on Santa’s lap and ask for three wishes. And whatever she asked for was instantly granted by a band of winged chambermaids. "All this and Jesus too!" she shouted out loud!
Wherever she went she was feted like a diva, with an entourage of paparazzi and autograph-seekers. She was truly in seventh-heaven.
-x-
A week later she went back to the casino. Roxy was given another million bucks worth of chips as seed money. Every hand she was dwelt was a royal flush. Every throw of the dice came up sixes. Every yank of the one-armed bandit hit the jackpot.
-xi-
The day after that she went back to Bloomingdale’s. Once again it took a dozen wheelbarrows to haul all the diamond rings and emerald earrings and jade bracelets and pearly necklaces and gold brooches back to the penthouse suite, not to mention three semi-trucks to transport all the fur coats. The walk-in closet was getting to be a bit crowded.
-xii-
The day after that she went back to Chez Piggerie, where she had another twelve-course meal consisting of caviar, escargot and Brie for the appetizer; followed by fillet mignon, veal Marsala, venison, rack-of-lamb, Australian lobster, wild boar, king crab, grilled salmon, poached sole, scampi, and breast of pheasant; topped off with chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, and French cheese for desert; and all washed down with five bottles of bubbly.
-xiii-
The day after that she went back to Dior to flip through the latest catalogue.
-xiv-
The day after that, she went back to the Sands to do another concert.
-xv-
The day after she went back to Avalon to do another photo shoot.
-xvi-
After a few more weeks of this, she summoned Mr. Roarke to her suite. "My dear Roxane," he said, "so very good to see you again."
"I wish I could say the same!"
"What’s the matter?"
"For the first few weeks I was afraid that living here was just too good to be true."
"And now?"
"And now I’m afraid that living here is just too true to be good."
"Whatevery do you mean?"
"Well, for one thing, I won the jackpot last night."
"What’s wrong with that?
"The lady sitting to my right won the jackpot as well, while the lady sitting to my left won the jackpot too! Where’s the fun in that?"
"I see your point!"
"Another thing--I can never turn off that damn angel choir! It plays day and night, everywhere I go--whether I'm in the limo, elevator, suite, casino, restaurant, nightclub…there's no off-switch. I can't even turn the volume down to get by beauty sleep!"
"Yes, I can see how irritating that might be."
"I feel like I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue see. If this is the best you can do, I’d rather be in that ‘other’ place, if you catch my drift."
"Where in hell do you think you've been all this time?"
Roxanne, or "Roxy," as all her friends knew her, was more concerned about her eyeliner than the yellow line as she swerved into the opposing lane. Approaching the tunnel from the other end was a sleepy semi-truck driver.
Roxy was bound for Vegas, eager to see her name up in lights. Marilyn Monroe she wasn’t, but with a bit of judicious padding and truckloads of steely determination, she was sure the world would be bowled over by her irresistible charm.
But somewhere between the yellow line and the dark tunnel, her aspirations to greatness took an unexpected turn.
-ii-
Next thing she knew, she is standing, dazed and unsteady, with singed dress and tangled hair, in a washed-out no-man’s land, like a TV screen with the contrast knob turned to zero.
After a few moments, the fluffy mist began to dissipate, and in the near distance she saw a sparkling city, looking like Vegas, only bigger and brighter, with more moreness than ever before.
"Well I’ll be damned!" she said, bowled-over by it all. As she was gazing at this great glittery bauble in the sky, a white-suited, well-tanned gentleman approached her:
"My dear Roxanne," he said, in a mellifluous foreign accent, "your limousine awaits you!"
"How do you know my name?"
"Why, your reputation precedes you!"
"Oh, you silver-tongued devil you!" she exclaimed, blushing, giggling, and batting her eyelids all at once. "But did I really make it to the place upstairs?"
"Well, ever since the Copernican Revolution, up-and-down is pretty relative. But you might call this is a dream come true!" He then extended his arm, which she took, and walked with him to the stretched limo.
"Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like what’s-his-name in Fantasy Island?"
"It wouldn’t be the first time," he answered, with a wry smile and a twinkle in the eye.
-iii-
Inside the limo an angel choir was playing on the radio. Mr. Roarke, or whatever his name really was, offered her a glass of bubbly. Roxy couldn’t tell if the car was driving, gliding or floating in mid-air. When they arrived at the Ritz hotel, Roarke escorted her to the express elevator.
"Where am I going? she asked?
"The penthouse suite has been reserved for you," Roarke answered.
"All that for me?" she said?
"Is it not written, ‘in my Father’s house are many mansions’?" Roarke said.
The glass elevator seemed to ascend forever as they passed through the pink, puffy clouds on the way up. In the suite itself, a small army of beefy, bare-chested manservants tended to her every whim.
That night she stayed in the suite, to clean up and rest up after her accident. She took a champagne bath in her solid-gold bathtub and went straight to bed.
Combing out her hair in the morning, she found out that this was no ordinary comb, but a magic comb with different settings. Depending on which setting she chose, the comb would make her hair come out looking like Farah Fawcett, Maureen O’Hara, Jean Harlow, Veronica Lake, or Marie Antoinette.
She also discovered a pair of magic dance-slippers with several different settings that made her dance as well as Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Margot Fonteyn.
-iv-
The next day she went to the Monte Carlo casino. Roxy was given a million bucks worth of chips as seed money. Every hand she was dwelt was a royal flush. Every throw of the dice came up sixes. Every yank of the one-armed bandit hit the jackpot.
On the first night alone it took a dozen wheelbarrows just to haul all the loot back to the penthouse suite. After the first week, a whole floor of the hotel was set aside to store her winnings.
-v-
The day after that she went to Bloomingdale’s. Roxy was issued a Bloomingdale card with an unlimited credit line of credit. It took another dozen wheelbarrows to haul all the diamond rings and emerald earrings and jade bracelets and pearly necklaces and gold brooches back to the penthouse suite, not to mention three semi-trucks to transport all the fur coats.
Because she couldn’t bring herself to choose between the white mink coat, the brown mink coat, and the black mink coat, or between the mink coat with chinchilla trimming and the chinchilla coat with mink trimming, she bought the whole rack. Fortunately for her, the walk-in closet the size of an airplane hanger.
Due to rear-round climate control, the air outside stayed at 70 degrees day and night. So she had to lower the thermostat in her suite just to get a chance to wear her mink and leopard coats.
-vi-
The day after that she went to the Chez Piggerie restaurant. There she was delighted to find that every gourmet dishe had zero carbs. She could gobble down a twelve-course meal and never gain an ounce. What was more, she could swig as much bubbly as she liked and never wake up with a hangover.
-vii-
The day after that she went to see Christian Dior. Instead of taking her measurements and then tailoring a form-fitting dress, Dior handed her a catalogue from which she could simply pick out a slinky evening dress, and whatever dress she put on would magically conform her figure to the contours of Dolly Parton.
-viii-
The day after that, she went to the Sands, where she was invited onto the stage to do a concert. The microphone had ten different settings. Depending on which setting she chose, she would sound exactly like Julie Andrews, Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Loretta Lynn, Bernadette Peters, Barbara Streisand, Joan Sutherland, or Sarah Vaughn.
She even got to dance with Fred Astaire and Rudolf Valentino, as well as sing with Frank Sinatra and Evis Presley.
-ix-
The day after she went to see Richard Avalon. Here she sat to have her picture taken. She could have her picture taken with Cary Grant, Santa Claus, or Jesus. Well, it was really Jeffrey Hunter, but he looked just like Jesus is supposed to look.
She got to sit on Santa’s lap and ask for three wishes. And whatever she asked for was instantly granted by a band of winged chambermaids. "All this and Jesus too!" she shouted out loud!
Wherever she went she was feted like a diva, with an entourage of paparazzi and autograph-seekers. She was truly in seventh-heaven.
-x-
A week later she went back to the casino. Roxy was given another million bucks worth of chips as seed money. Every hand she was dwelt was a royal flush. Every throw of the dice came up sixes. Every yank of the one-armed bandit hit the jackpot.
-xi-
The day after that she went back to Bloomingdale’s. Once again it took a dozen wheelbarrows to haul all the diamond rings and emerald earrings and jade bracelets and pearly necklaces and gold brooches back to the penthouse suite, not to mention three semi-trucks to transport all the fur coats. The walk-in closet was getting to be a bit crowded.
-xii-
The day after that she went back to Chez Piggerie, where she had another twelve-course meal consisting of caviar, escargot and Brie for the appetizer; followed by fillet mignon, veal Marsala, venison, rack-of-lamb, Australian lobster, wild boar, king crab, grilled salmon, poached sole, scampi, and breast of pheasant; topped off with chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, and French cheese for desert; and all washed down with five bottles of bubbly.
-xiii-
The day after that she went back to Dior to flip through the latest catalogue.
-xiv-
The day after that, she went back to the Sands to do another concert.
-xv-
The day after she went back to Avalon to do another photo shoot.
-xvi-
After a few more weeks of this, she summoned Mr. Roarke to her suite. "My dear Roxane," he said, "so very good to see you again."
"I wish I could say the same!"
"What’s the matter?"
"For the first few weeks I was afraid that living here was just too good to be true."
"And now?"
"And now I’m afraid that living here is just too true to be good."
"Whatevery do you mean?"
"Well, for one thing, I won the jackpot last night."
"What’s wrong with that?
"The lady sitting to my right won the jackpot as well, while the lady sitting to my left won the jackpot too! Where’s the fun in that?"
"I see your point!"
"Another thing--I can never turn off that damn angel choir! It plays day and night, everywhere I go--whether I'm in the limo, elevator, suite, casino, restaurant, nightclub…there's no off-switch. I can't even turn the volume down to get by beauty sleep!"
"Yes, I can see how irritating that might be."
"I feel like I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue see. If this is the best you can do, I’d rather be in that ‘other’ place, if you catch my drift."
"Where in hell do you think you've been all this time?"
The Dream-Drifters
-i-
Up until the year 2212, intergalactic travel was thought to be impossible due to the light-speed barrier and the immensity of space. Year after year, ingenious theories of every description were been floated to get around this obstacle, but to no avail.
But in the year 2212, a mnemonics major by the name of Fibert Lyle took the unorthodox approach of saying that the answer lay, not in the problem, but in question. The physical constraints were admittedly insurmountable, but why pose the problem in physical terms?
Mnemonics was the science of directed memory. Way back in the 20C, neurosurgeons had already discovered that cortical stimulation would trigger memories. Not just fuzzy images, but memories so vivid and lifelike that they seemed to recreate the original experience.
For a time, no one pursued this discovery until the entertainment industry took an interest in the recreational possibilities of directed memory—of being able to catalogue all one’s memories, then pull up the most pleasant memories for repeated, interactive viewing. This became quite addictive. Just as VR programs edged out recreational drugs, commercial mnemonics edged out VR programs as the diversion of choice.
One branch of mnemonics was morphetics. This was the science of recovered dream engrams. Just as mnemonics could recover real memories, morphetics could recover forgotten dreams.
Besides its recreational value, it was also a useful tool in penology. Instead of sentencing a convict to prison time, you could sentence him to relive his worst nightmares. Not only was this far more cost effective than imprisonment, but had a definite deterrent value.
Filbert’s study of mnemonics and morphetics led him to investigate the mind/body problem. And this, in turn, led him to investigate medieval mysticism.
In a flash of inspiration, as he was flossing his teeth one morning, it occurred to him that if we couldn’t change the nature of space, we could change the nature of the astronaut.
The mystics often spoke of raptures and astral travel. What if this was more than a figure of speech? What if it was really possible, through the mental discipline of the contemplative life, to detach the mind from the body and project the mind? The mind, unlike the body, was essentially illocal and could “go” anywhere.
Another aspect of parapsychology was telekinesis. I don’t mean the spoon-bending circus tricks. No, what if it was possible for the discarnate soul to reconstitute a body from the raw materials available on another planet?
-ii-
Filbert combined these revolutionary insights in his doctoral dissertation. It was, by al accounts, a brilliant, ground-breaking thesis.
But his examiners were less than thrilled. One went so far as to call it “metaphysical.”
Not only did he flunk out of the program, but he was blacklisted by the scientific community as a dangerous quack. As a result, Filbert drank himself to death.
Once Filbert was safely dead, there was a renewed interest in his work. Other scientists “independently” came to the same conclusions, but studiously avoided naughty words like “mysticism” and the “soul.”
-iii-
Astral travel was not without its dangers and impediments. The discarnate soul needed to know where to go. This required a star chart to supply the coordinates. And there were limitations on the mapping of space, for only a fraction of space was visible from our solar system.
But once the discarnate soul reached the first leg of the journey, it could hopscotch from one celestial body to another.
Yet this was not without its perils as well, for without an Ariadne’s thread to retrace its steps, the soul could easily become disoriented and lose its way in the labyrinth of outer space.
In addition, there was a point beyond which the soulless body could not be reanimated. Technically, when the soul left the body, the body was clinically dead. It could be sustained indefinitely on life-support, and the threshold for reanimation had been extended through rigorous physical and psychological conditioning, but it was only within that narrow widow of opportunity that the soul could leave and rejoin the body.
Yet another hazard was the danger of telekinetic revisionism. It was tempting for a mindbender to use his psychic powers to literally reshape parts of his life he was unhappy about. Although a mindbender could not actually go back in time, he could simulate time travel in order to rectify lost opportunities. Yet in altering his surroundings, he would change the world in which he and others lived.
For this reason, candidates for astral travel were rigorously screened and monitored. And there were severe penalties for abusing their powers.
Yet, despite the many dangers, research continued, for nothing was ever allowed to impede the stately progress of science.
-iv-
John Fisher was a mindbender, assigned to the Astronautica. And yet, like a mathematician who can do quantum geometry in his head, but is helpless to balance a checkbook, Fisher’s psychological insight did nothing to improve his social life. As with so many talented and ambitious men, he was a social misfit, alienated from his father, now deceased, his three wives, now divorced, and his kids from each marriage. Work was an escape from souring social relations, and escapism further curled his already sour social life.
If only he could do it all over again. That’s a question we all ask ourselves. But unlike the rest of us, creaking under the crushing weight of vain regrets, there was a sense in which a mindbender could do it all over again. Could succumb to temptation. If not on earth, for the authorities would detect any psychic contamination, then on another planet. It need not be habitable. For he could make it habitable. Parts of it, at least—like The Little Prince come to life.
To reinvent his past life he’d have to make an irreversible break with life on earth, leaving his body forever behind, along with his everyone he ever knew. But, from his standpoint, he had nothing to lose. Nothing, really, to leave behind but mistakes and heartaches.
-v-
And so he terraformed his boyhood home from the raw materials of a minor, unprepossessing planet on the outer fringes of Andromeda.
As a boy he always loved living there, on the lake, with the woods and the mountains. But when he was a teenager, his dad moved the family to the big city, which he always hated.
Fisher decided to synthesize a family reunion. He would synthesize his father, and have the kind of filial relationship he never had with his real dad. He would synthesize his beloved mother and grandmother. When the family moved, they left grandmother behind.
He would synthesize “Justin,” the brother he always wanted as a kid, but never had. He would synthetic Cora, the girl next door, his first crush, his first love, the girl he should have married all along. He would synthesize Austin, his best friend from high school. They had drifted apart after graduation.
True, they would not be real people, but synthetic, physical facsimiles, programmed with his memories. But they were better than real. Whatever was good, he would preserve; whatever was bad, he could improve.
He would bring them together under one roof, in his dream home. He had once been inside a mausoleum with an artificial stream and waterfall running down the middle, with flowers and songbirds, stained glass and fan-vaulting. He always wanted a home like that.
He was, in fact, a seminary dropout. He originally intended to study theology, but decided that he didn’t have the bedside manner for the job. So he went into science instead—his other love. And as time went on he adopted the celebrity lifestyle of a famous astronaut. Yet he had the troubled conscience of a backslider, torn in two.
-vi-
So there he was, on day, under the clear sunny skies of his artificial world, driving an E-type Jaguar roadster cross-country to his mother’s home to pick her up. After dropping her off at the new house, he drove over to his grandmother’s house. She was gardening in the backyard, as she always did.
One by one he moved them into his dream home on the lake. He went hunting and camping with Austin and Justin, sail boating with his dad. He made a life with Cora. His grandmother continued to garden. There were outdoor barbecues whenever the weather permitted, which was often since the weather was whatever he wanted it to be. For the first time in his life he was free to pursue a number of fun hobbies.
It was, to be sure, a rather confining existence. His synthetic friends and family only knew what he knew, so he was really talking to himself. They never said anything new or unexpected.
He read books, but only what he remembered; listened to music, but only what he remembered; saw movies, but only what he remembered.
But while it was rather routine, it was a better routine than his old life. Predictable, no doubt, but predictably agreeable rather than predictably disagreeable.
Things fell into a natural groove. He lost track of time. There were no clocks or calendars, schedules or deadlines. Just the rhythms of nature.
Would he want to be doing this a hundred years from now? Maybe not, but he’d burn that bridge when he came to it. Everyone got bored sooner or later. But some boredoms were better than others.
-vii-
Yet something else was beginning to eat away at him. Really, it was always gnawing on the inside. But he had been able to suppress it in his dream world come true.
Theoretically, the synthetic body was immortal. Of course, that proposition had never been put to the test. Forever is a long time, as they say. Yet to all appearances, the synthetic body was ageless.
But back on earth, his old friends and family members were far from ageless. In his effort to recapture lost opportunities, he was losing real opportunities. Even if he were still around several centuries from now, they would be gone beyond recall.
And another nagging thought was tapping him on the shoulder. For while he might be able to cheat the grave, he would not be able to cheat the Day of Judgment. Would God ever forgive him if he abandoned his family for good? If he made no good faith effort to be reconciled with his kids?
Yes, he still believed in God. As a seminarian, the more he tried to think about God, the more he doubted God. But as a backslider, the more he put God out of his mind, the more the thought of snuck in through the back door, pressing him on every side. He was never so mindful of God as when he was leading a godless life. The only effect of pushing God to the far corners of his brain was to flatten it thin like a piece of pizza dough so that it spread around, coating every bare surface.
-viii-
But what could he do? He wasn’t at all sure he could find his way back to terra firma. And even if he did, what then? In principle, he could synthesize a new body, but that was strictly forbidden. The authorities felt that a class of immortals among mortals would be a recipe for social unrest. Every citizen would demand the same privilege. But not everyone could be a mindbender. You had to have a psychic predisposition. Yet the fear of death was such that every citizen would demand to be tested and trained, just in case. A pitchfork insurrection would result.
For this reason, the incorruptible character of the synthetic body was highly classified. Mindbenders would only permitted to synthesize a body back on earth for training purposes, after which the body was immediately cremated. Mindbenders who broke the rules were ruthlessly hunted down.
-ix-
But there was one last option. If a man died by drowning or some other cause which left the brain and body intact, a discarnate soul could take possession of the corpse before necrosis set in.
Even so, would his disaffected family forgive him for deserting them these many months and years? Maybe not. But he had to try. He had a duty to perform. He had to seek them out, one-by-one. And so he dematerialized, leaving his synthetic paradise behind.
After he as gone, his adaptive, synthetic family and friends continued their synthetic existence without him, hunting and fishing and weeding the garden.
-x-
In the year 2273, another mindbender happened upon the very same planet. As you can well imagine, this was a sensational discovery. Here, at last, was hard, incontrovertible evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Clearly some alien species had studied the earth and then replicated its culture and horticulture in a laboratory experiment.
The only question was, were they friendly or hostile? Was this a prelude to first contact or invasion?
Theories multiplied. Whole histories and competing histories were written about this alien race. Its arts and sciences were meticulously reconstructed from clues and inferences. Every Ivy League university had its own endowed chair of Ufology. Law schools taught courses in exobiological rights.
Political parties took hawkish or dovish sides. Several millennial cults were founded, some of a survivalist mindset, others eager to greet the alien saviors. The entire global economy and educational establishment was redirected to prepare, for better or worse, for the arrival of the little green men. News coverage was saturated with stories of UFOs, contactees, and abductees.
-xi-
There was one man who knew the truth, but unfortunately, he had died in obscurity several years before, surrounded by a few old friends and family members, taking his secret with him to the grave.
Up until the year 2212, intergalactic travel was thought to be impossible due to the light-speed barrier and the immensity of space. Year after year, ingenious theories of every description were been floated to get around this obstacle, but to no avail.
But in the year 2212, a mnemonics major by the name of Fibert Lyle took the unorthodox approach of saying that the answer lay, not in the problem, but in question. The physical constraints were admittedly insurmountable, but why pose the problem in physical terms?
Mnemonics was the science of directed memory. Way back in the 20C, neurosurgeons had already discovered that cortical stimulation would trigger memories. Not just fuzzy images, but memories so vivid and lifelike that they seemed to recreate the original experience.
For a time, no one pursued this discovery until the entertainment industry took an interest in the recreational possibilities of directed memory—of being able to catalogue all one’s memories, then pull up the most pleasant memories for repeated, interactive viewing. This became quite addictive. Just as VR programs edged out recreational drugs, commercial mnemonics edged out VR programs as the diversion of choice.
One branch of mnemonics was morphetics. This was the science of recovered dream engrams. Just as mnemonics could recover real memories, morphetics could recover forgotten dreams.
Besides its recreational value, it was also a useful tool in penology. Instead of sentencing a convict to prison time, you could sentence him to relive his worst nightmares. Not only was this far more cost effective than imprisonment, but had a definite deterrent value.
Filbert’s study of mnemonics and morphetics led him to investigate the mind/body problem. And this, in turn, led him to investigate medieval mysticism.
In a flash of inspiration, as he was flossing his teeth one morning, it occurred to him that if we couldn’t change the nature of space, we could change the nature of the astronaut.
The mystics often spoke of raptures and astral travel. What if this was more than a figure of speech? What if it was really possible, through the mental discipline of the contemplative life, to detach the mind from the body and project the mind? The mind, unlike the body, was essentially illocal and could “go” anywhere.
Another aspect of parapsychology was telekinesis. I don’t mean the spoon-bending circus tricks. No, what if it was possible for the discarnate soul to reconstitute a body from the raw materials available on another planet?
-ii-
Filbert combined these revolutionary insights in his doctoral dissertation. It was, by al accounts, a brilliant, ground-breaking thesis.
But his examiners were less than thrilled. One went so far as to call it “metaphysical.”
Not only did he flunk out of the program, but he was blacklisted by the scientific community as a dangerous quack. As a result, Filbert drank himself to death.
Once Filbert was safely dead, there was a renewed interest in his work. Other scientists “independently” came to the same conclusions, but studiously avoided naughty words like “mysticism” and the “soul.”
-iii-
Astral travel was not without its dangers and impediments. The discarnate soul needed to know where to go. This required a star chart to supply the coordinates. And there were limitations on the mapping of space, for only a fraction of space was visible from our solar system.
But once the discarnate soul reached the first leg of the journey, it could hopscotch from one celestial body to another.
Yet this was not without its perils as well, for without an Ariadne’s thread to retrace its steps, the soul could easily become disoriented and lose its way in the labyrinth of outer space.
In addition, there was a point beyond which the soulless body could not be reanimated. Technically, when the soul left the body, the body was clinically dead. It could be sustained indefinitely on life-support, and the threshold for reanimation had been extended through rigorous physical and psychological conditioning, but it was only within that narrow widow of opportunity that the soul could leave and rejoin the body.
Yet another hazard was the danger of telekinetic revisionism. It was tempting for a mindbender to use his psychic powers to literally reshape parts of his life he was unhappy about. Although a mindbender could not actually go back in time, he could simulate time travel in order to rectify lost opportunities. Yet in altering his surroundings, he would change the world in which he and others lived.
For this reason, candidates for astral travel were rigorously screened and monitored. And there were severe penalties for abusing their powers.
Yet, despite the many dangers, research continued, for nothing was ever allowed to impede the stately progress of science.
-iv-
John Fisher was a mindbender, assigned to the Astronautica. And yet, like a mathematician who can do quantum geometry in his head, but is helpless to balance a checkbook, Fisher’s psychological insight did nothing to improve his social life. As with so many talented and ambitious men, he was a social misfit, alienated from his father, now deceased, his three wives, now divorced, and his kids from each marriage. Work was an escape from souring social relations, and escapism further curled his already sour social life.
If only he could do it all over again. That’s a question we all ask ourselves. But unlike the rest of us, creaking under the crushing weight of vain regrets, there was a sense in which a mindbender could do it all over again. Could succumb to temptation. If not on earth, for the authorities would detect any psychic contamination, then on another planet. It need not be habitable. For he could make it habitable. Parts of it, at least—like The Little Prince come to life.
To reinvent his past life he’d have to make an irreversible break with life on earth, leaving his body forever behind, along with his everyone he ever knew. But, from his standpoint, he had nothing to lose. Nothing, really, to leave behind but mistakes and heartaches.
-v-
And so he terraformed his boyhood home from the raw materials of a minor, unprepossessing planet on the outer fringes of Andromeda.
As a boy he always loved living there, on the lake, with the woods and the mountains. But when he was a teenager, his dad moved the family to the big city, which he always hated.
Fisher decided to synthesize a family reunion. He would synthesize his father, and have the kind of filial relationship he never had with his real dad. He would synthesize his beloved mother and grandmother. When the family moved, they left grandmother behind.
He would synthesize “Justin,” the brother he always wanted as a kid, but never had. He would synthetic Cora, the girl next door, his first crush, his first love, the girl he should have married all along. He would synthesize Austin, his best friend from high school. They had drifted apart after graduation.
True, they would not be real people, but synthetic, physical facsimiles, programmed with his memories. But they were better than real. Whatever was good, he would preserve; whatever was bad, he could improve.
He would bring them together under one roof, in his dream home. He had once been inside a mausoleum with an artificial stream and waterfall running down the middle, with flowers and songbirds, stained glass and fan-vaulting. He always wanted a home like that.
He was, in fact, a seminary dropout. He originally intended to study theology, but decided that he didn’t have the bedside manner for the job. So he went into science instead—his other love. And as time went on he adopted the celebrity lifestyle of a famous astronaut. Yet he had the troubled conscience of a backslider, torn in two.
-vi-
So there he was, on day, under the clear sunny skies of his artificial world, driving an E-type Jaguar roadster cross-country to his mother’s home to pick her up. After dropping her off at the new house, he drove over to his grandmother’s house. She was gardening in the backyard, as she always did.
One by one he moved them into his dream home on the lake. He went hunting and camping with Austin and Justin, sail boating with his dad. He made a life with Cora. His grandmother continued to garden. There were outdoor barbecues whenever the weather permitted, which was often since the weather was whatever he wanted it to be. For the first time in his life he was free to pursue a number of fun hobbies.
It was, to be sure, a rather confining existence. His synthetic friends and family only knew what he knew, so he was really talking to himself. They never said anything new or unexpected.
He read books, but only what he remembered; listened to music, but only what he remembered; saw movies, but only what he remembered.
But while it was rather routine, it was a better routine than his old life. Predictable, no doubt, but predictably agreeable rather than predictably disagreeable.
Things fell into a natural groove. He lost track of time. There were no clocks or calendars, schedules or deadlines. Just the rhythms of nature.
Would he want to be doing this a hundred years from now? Maybe not, but he’d burn that bridge when he came to it. Everyone got bored sooner or later. But some boredoms were better than others.
-vii-
Yet something else was beginning to eat away at him. Really, it was always gnawing on the inside. But he had been able to suppress it in his dream world come true.
Theoretically, the synthetic body was immortal. Of course, that proposition had never been put to the test. Forever is a long time, as they say. Yet to all appearances, the synthetic body was ageless.
But back on earth, his old friends and family members were far from ageless. In his effort to recapture lost opportunities, he was losing real opportunities. Even if he were still around several centuries from now, they would be gone beyond recall.
And another nagging thought was tapping him on the shoulder. For while he might be able to cheat the grave, he would not be able to cheat the Day of Judgment. Would God ever forgive him if he abandoned his family for good? If he made no good faith effort to be reconciled with his kids?
Yes, he still believed in God. As a seminarian, the more he tried to think about God, the more he doubted God. But as a backslider, the more he put God out of his mind, the more the thought of snuck in through the back door, pressing him on every side. He was never so mindful of God as when he was leading a godless life. The only effect of pushing God to the far corners of his brain was to flatten it thin like a piece of pizza dough so that it spread around, coating every bare surface.
-viii-
But what could he do? He wasn’t at all sure he could find his way back to terra firma. And even if he did, what then? In principle, he could synthesize a new body, but that was strictly forbidden. The authorities felt that a class of immortals among mortals would be a recipe for social unrest. Every citizen would demand the same privilege. But not everyone could be a mindbender. You had to have a psychic predisposition. Yet the fear of death was such that every citizen would demand to be tested and trained, just in case. A pitchfork insurrection would result.
For this reason, the incorruptible character of the synthetic body was highly classified. Mindbenders would only permitted to synthesize a body back on earth for training purposes, after which the body was immediately cremated. Mindbenders who broke the rules were ruthlessly hunted down.
-ix-
But there was one last option. If a man died by drowning or some other cause which left the brain and body intact, a discarnate soul could take possession of the corpse before necrosis set in.
Even so, would his disaffected family forgive him for deserting them these many months and years? Maybe not. But he had to try. He had a duty to perform. He had to seek them out, one-by-one. And so he dematerialized, leaving his synthetic paradise behind.
After he as gone, his adaptive, synthetic family and friends continued their synthetic existence without him, hunting and fishing and weeding the garden.
-x-
In the year 2273, another mindbender happened upon the very same planet. As you can well imagine, this was a sensational discovery. Here, at last, was hard, incontrovertible evidence of extra-terrestrial life. Clearly some alien species had studied the earth and then replicated its culture and horticulture in a laboratory experiment.
The only question was, were they friendly or hostile? Was this a prelude to first contact or invasion?
Theories multiplied. Whole histories and competing histories were written about this alien race. Its arts and sciences were meticulously reconstructed from clues and inferences. Every Ivy League university had its own endowed chair of Ufology. Law schools taught courses in exobiological rights.
Political parties took hawkish or dovish sides. Several millennial cults were founded, some of a survivalist mindset, others eager to greet the alien saviors. The entire global economy and educational establishment was redirected to prepare, for better or worse, for the arrival of the little green men. News coverage was saturated with stories of UFOs, contactees, and abductees.
-xi-
There was one man who knew the truth, but unfortunately, he had died in obscurity several years before, surrounded by a few old friends and family members, taking his secret with him to the grave.
Shadow of Death
-i-
Starbuck was alone in his cell, feeding a pet rat, when the door swung open and another inmate was shoved inside.
"Looks like my dear captors brought me a cellmate to keep me company!" said Starbuck.
"Yes...considerate bunch, aren’t they?" said Hornblower.
"Guess that’s why nobody ever leaves--can’t beat the room service!" said Starbuck. "Cosmo and I were getting downright lonely before you showed up--ain’t that so, Cosmo?" he said, rubbing noses with the rat and assuming a baby-talk tone of voice.
"Cosmo, eh? Isn’t it dangerous to name a rat after our esteemed leader?" said Hornblower.
"Just between one counterrevolutionary and another, what’s a subversive like me got to lose?" Starbuck said, in mock-hushed tones. "Besides, the family resemblance is sooooo striking! No offense, Cosmo," he said, turning to the rat.
"Well, then, let me introduce myself. I’m Starbuck, Undersecretary of the Secretariat of Public Information...at least, that’s what I was before this terrible misunderstanding."
"Name sounds vaguely familiar. As for me, I was a gunnery sergeant in the People’s Republican Army. Hornblower’s the name."
"How’d you wind up here?" Starbuck asked.
"My CO screwed up and then screwed me over to cover his own screw-up. So what’s your story?"
"Don’t know for sure. They won’t tell me. Last month these two blue suited goons came for me, right there in my office, in front of God and everyone, and hauled me off. I suspect it was that smarmy new Assistant Undersecretary...the one I was assigned a few weeks before, who secretly denounced me--one of those...oh, you know...eager-beaver types...could cut his own throat on that steam-creased collar of his."
"Yeah, I know just what you mean. I always promote ‘em to the frontlines first to spend some enemy rounds before sending in my own boys," Hornblower said, in a wheezy, tobacco-saturated laugh.
-ii-
The door opened and yet another inmate was shoved inside.
"Another addition to our exclusive club!" Starbuck exclaimed, as all three shook hands. "My name’s Starbuck, and this here is Sgt. Hornblower".
"Call me Dunkelmann."
"So what did you to do deserve such an honor?" Hornblower asked.
"I was Deputy Director of the Directorate of Internal Security. Can't say why I’m here. They didn't tell me."
"No, they never give a reason, do they?" Starbuck interjected. "I was Undersecretary to the Secretariat, while Hornblower here was with the People’s Republican Army." Hornblower stood at attention and salutes.
"How long have they kept you here?"
"Going on two years now. Hornblower joined me a month later."
"What’s the disposition of your case?"
"I met with my lawyer a few times, but he dropped the case."
"What did he say?"
"You can’t defend yourself unless you deny the charge, you can’t deny the charge unless you say you were falsely accused; as soon as you say you were falsely accused, they say you’re impugning the system of justice, which proves you were justly indicted in the first place."
"Ah, yes, that’s the beauty of the system," said Dunkelmann. "Heads or tails, it always comes up off with their heads!"
"It gets worse. Even your lawyer can’t defend you without complicity. That’s why mine dropped out of sight," said Starbuck.
"It don’t ever pay to be right when the paymaster’s wrong!" Hornblower interjected, running a finger across his neck.
"So what do you guys to for fun and games," Dunkelmann asked.
"We’ve got a lovely view of the firing squad," said Starbuck, taking him over to the window. "On your left you can just make out the gallows. Unfortunately for us, the cell next door has a better view of the gibbet. And sometimes our caregivers even favor us with a beheading or two for holidays and other festivities."
"So there’s more than one form of execution?"
"They like a little variety to liven things up a bit," Starbuck continued. "If you’re just some run-of-the-mill subversive, they hang you or shoot you. It’s cheaper, you know. If you’re something special, then the guillotine awaits! And if you’re extra-special, they fry you alive. On a busy day the whole cellblock takes on that mouth-watering, hickory-smoked aroma!"
-iii-
"Hey, Dunkelmann. Looks like they’re bringing Starbuck back alive!"
Starbuck stumbled in through the door, shaken, sinking to his knees.
"What happened?" Dunkelmann asked. "Did you get a reprieve, a pardon, a..."
"Reprieve is too nice a word. They stayed my execution. That’s what they do around here: string you out while you hope against hope for a pardon, then schedule an execution, strap you in the chair, then cancel it at the very last minute—like a cat toying with a rat."
"At least you escaped the noose to live another day!"
"Yeah, if you can call this hellhole living. After all I’ve..." Starbuck jumps at a flash of light and crackling sound from the electrocution chamber
"Uh…after all I’ve done for the State, and this is how they reward me! I can’t tell you how many hours I spent..." Hornblower pantomimes a violin while Dunkelmann daubs imaginary tears. Starbuck rises to his feet and glares at both of them.
"What do you two think is so goddamn funny?" Starbuck demanded.
"Sorry, Starbuck," said Dunkelmann, "but sometimes you talk as though the universe were delinquent on your paycheck. How can you expect justice in a world like this?"
"That doesn’t make it one whit more fair!"
"I know how you feel, but it’s a funny feeling, all the same. Why do we so often feel out of our element? Does a guppy curse his fate because the water is wet?"
"He’d have plenty to gripe about if he had to swim in this cesspool of ours!"
"I don’t know. So often we act as if we were born for another world."
"Can’t spare a tear for either one of you, if you ask me!" said Hornblower.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" said Starbuck.
"You and Dunkelmann sent many a good man to an unjust death. You make the mistakes and make the foot soldier pay."
"I never condemned an innocent man to death!" said Starbuck, indignantly.
"Oh, yes...yes you did. No, not in so many words, of course, but every time you wrote one of your pretty little speeches for Cosmo, every time..." Another flash of light and crackling sound interrupted his train of thought.
"And every time Dunkelmann did the dirty work for Cosmo, you signed another man’s death warrant."
"Why you treasonous little scumbag!"
"Horny’s right, you know," said, Dunkelmann, lighting a cigarette. "We had it good at the expense of others. We had our little moment in the sun."
"More seditious speech! I can’t believe my ears!" Starbuck exclaimed.
"Don’t you think it’s time to drop the pose?" said Dunkelmann. "You played your dutiful role to the hilt, and look where it landed you?"
"If you never believed in the revolution, how could you serve in the Directorate all those years?"
"It’s not about believing, but surviving. We were both playing our part. The difference between you and me is I know I was play-acting the whole time. That’s the only choice in life--either play the fool or play another for the fool!"
"You dirty little hypocrite!"
"To the contrary, you’re looking at a man of moral consistency. I’m only hypocritical when I need to be!"
-iv-
Starbuck, Dunkelmann & Hornblower were playing cards, using cigarettes as chips.
"I call your cigarette and raise you half a butt," Hornblower said to Starbuck.
"Starbuck, you afraid to die?" Dunkelmann asked.
"Oh, I don’t know," said Starbuck, turning misty-eyed. "Death is such a natural part of life. Without death there is no life. We’re stardust gazing at stardust. When we die we return to the to the very stuff that gave us birth and being, and our mortal remains are...well are recycled to make a another generation of dusty stargazers--yes, billions and billions of dust particles composing billions and billions of dusty stargazers, all perched atop a speck of spinning stardust, and gazing at billions and billions of twinkling stars!
Dunkelmann folded his hands in mock prayer while Hornblower flapped his arms like angel wings.
"‘Scuse me for asking," said Hornblower, "but isn’t that just a pretty way of saying that when you die you turn to dog crap?"
"Now, now, my dear Hornblower," said Dunkelmann, patting him on the shoulder while assuming an indulgent tone of voice, "remember that our beloved Starbuck used to work for the Secretariat. They can make a dunghill smell like rose garden"
"Would you rather jawbone or place a bet?" said Starbuck, huffily.
"I fold," said Hornblower.
"You’re bluffing," said Dunkelmann to Starbuck.
"Try me!"
"I’m running low on cigarettes."
"I thought you had an outside source?"
"I did, until my contact fell out of favor with the Subcommissioner to the Commissar. I think he’s now in the prison block just down the hall."
"What’ll we do for a smoke?" Hornblower asked.
"Rumor has it the guy in the next cell has a rendezvous with Old Sparky this week," Dunkelmann answered in a low tone of voice. "Maybe we can bribe the guard to give us his leftover pack."
"So, what about you, Horny?" said Starbuck.
"What about what?"
"About your own appointment with Old Sparky? It’s only a matter of time, you know."
"Well, death is a damn bloody nuisance, if you ask me. But it’s no use our wasting any womanish fears and tears over the whole affair. Gird up your loins like a man! That’s what I say. Better to build on a firm foundation of unyielding despair. I was dead a...
"It’s your bet," Starbuck interrupted. Hornblower paused, tossing another cigarette into the kitty.
"Where was I?"
"You was dead!" said Dunkelmann.
"Ah, yes, that’s right, I was dead. How could I forget a thing like that! Anyway, as I was saying, I was dead all right--dead a billion years before I was born, and it never inconvenienced me a bit. After snoozing through the eons of time I woke up for a wink of an eye. I’ll die, but only ‘cause I got to live. For every one of me a million squiggly little sperm cells never had a damn chance."
Dunkelmann salutes Starbuck, behind Hornblower's back, who returns the salute.
"So, Dunkelmann, what about you?" said Starbuck.
"Sorry, but I don’t have any flowery speeches to make. This is my creed: first you die, then you rot! Direct and to the point!"
"Yeah, but you leave out all the spunk and all the valor," Hornblower objected. It’s not like we’ve got to face our fate like a dog. "Go not gentle into that good night, but rage, rage against the dying light!"
"’The boy stood on the burning deck’, and all that confounded crap?" said Dunkelmann. "You make it sound like the bloody charge of the light brigade!"
"And what if I do?" said Hornblower, voice raised and eyes ablaze. "Maybe we’re on a death march into a dawnless night, but we can summon the courage to lift a fallen comrade or give him a decent burial. That’s the true baptism by fire into the company of the blood-washed martyrs!"
"O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence!" said Starbuck.
"Truth is," said Dunkelmann, "you two talk like a pair of drunken choirboys. Such high-flown speeches are for the living, not the dead. Come to think of it, wasn’t the Devil a demoralized saint?"
"It's not about you and me only, but about our part in the whole grand and glorious scheme of things," said Starbuck.
"Oh yes, yes, it is, it is about me, and me alone. That’s exactly what it’s about, all right! We’re all by ourselves out here, shivering in the lonely, cold, and silent spaces of black infinitude--from one end of nothingness to another. And we’ll all die alone, walking the valley of the shadow of death in single file.
Who are you two trying to impress, anyway? The stars? The tombstones? No one’s listening! The graveyard has no ears. The cosmos has no ears. You both got a great way of dressing up the corpse with your eulogies. But face it, guys, life’s a bad joke told by a dead comedian."
"Maybe we’re not all alone. Like, I mean...what about life on other worlds?"
"Guardian angels by another name. Or just another chain-gang doomed to die. What a pair you make--of fat and happy lab rats..." gesturing to the execution room, "but I’ve got news for you--the vivisection table awaits!"
"Really, my dear Dunkelmann," said Hornblower, "you do have a way of ruining a perfectly good game of five-card stud! If that’s how you feel, why not hang yourself and get it over with?"
"That’s a good question. Sometimes I think that suicide is the only question. The mistake was being born. The very first step was the fatal misstep, the original sin. My little pet rat was better off than me for never knowing any better. The only way forward is backward."
"So why don’t you cut your own throat?"
"Because I’m a coward--like everyone else."
Starbuck was alone in his cell, feeding a pet rat, when the door swung open and another inmate was shoved inside.
"Looks like my dear captors brought me a cellmate to keep me company!" said Starbuck.
"Yes...considerate bunch, aren’t they?" said Hornblower.
"Guess that’s why nobody ever leaves--can’t beat the room service!" said Starbuck. "Cosmo and I were getting downright lonely before you showed up--ain’t that so, Cosmo?" he said, rubbing noses with the rat and assuming a baby-talk tone of voice.
"Cosmo, eh? Isn’t it dangerous to name a rat after our esteemed leader?" said Hornblower.
"Just between one counterrevolutionary and another, what’s a subversive like me got to lose?" Starbuck said, in mock-hushed tones. "Besides, the family resemblance is sooooo striking! No offense, Cosmo," he said, turning to the rat.
"Well, then, let me introduce myself. I’m Starbuck, Undersecretary of the Secretariat of Public Information...at least, that’s what I was before this terrible misunderstanding."
"Name sounds vaguely familiar. As for me, I was a gunnery sergeant in the People’s Republican Army. Hornblower’s the name."
"How’d you wind up here?" Starbuck asked.
"My CO screwed up and then screwed me over to cover his own screw-up. So what’s your story?"
"Don’t know for sure. They won’t tell me. Last month these two blue suited goons came for me, right there in my office, in front of God and everyone, and hauled me off. I suspect it was that smarmy new Assistant Undersecretary...the one I was assigned a few weeks before, who secretly denounced me--one of those...oh, you know...eager-beaver types...could cut his own throat on that steam-creased collar of his."
"Yeah, I know just what you mean. I always promote ‘em to the frontlines first to spend some enemy rounds before sending in my own boys," Hornblower said, in a wheezy, tobacco-saturated laugh.
-ii-
The door opened and yet another inmate was shoved inside.
"Another addition to our exclusive club!" Starbuck exclaimed, as all three shook hands. "My name’s Starbuck, and this here is Sgt. Hornblower".
"Call me Dunkelmann."
"So what did you to do deserve such an honor?" Hornblower asked.
"I was Deputy Director of the Directorate of Internal Security. Can't say why I’m here. They didn't tell me."
"No, they never give a reason, do they?" Starbuck interjected. "I was Undersecretary to the Secretariat, while Hornblower here was with the People’s Republican Army." Hornblower stood at attention and salutes.
"How long have they kept you here?"
"Going on two years now. Hornblower joined me a month later."
"What’s the disposition of your case?"
"I met with my lawyer a few times, but he dropped the case."
"What did he say?"
"You can’t defend yourself unless you deny the charge, you can’t deny the charge unless you say you were falsely accused; as soon as you say you were falsely accused, they say you’re impugning the system of justice, which proves you were justly indicted in the first place."
"Ah, yes, that’s the beauty of the system," said Dunkelmann. "Heads or tails, it always comes up off with their heads!"
"It gets worse. Even your lawyer can’t defend you without complicity. That’s why mine dropped out of sight," said Starbuck.
"It don’t ever pay to be right when the paymaster’s wrong!" Hornblower interjected, running a finger across his neck.
"So what do you guys to for fun and games," Dunkelmann asked.
"We’ve got a lovely view of the firing squad," said Starbuck, taking him over to the window. "On your left you can just make out the gallows. Unfortunately for us, the cell next door has a better view of the gibbet. And sometimes our caregivers even favor us with a beheading or two for holidays and other festivities."
"So there’s more than one form of execution?"
"They like a little variety to liven things up a bit," Starbuck continued. "If you’re just some run-of-the-mill subversive, they hang you or shoot you. It’s cheaper, you know. If you’re something special, then the guillotine awaits! And if you’re extra-special, they fry you alive. On a busy day the whole cellblock takes on that mouth-watering, hickory-smoked aroma!"
-iii-
"Hey, Dunkelmann. Looks like they’re bringing Starbuck back alive!"
Starbuck stumbled in through the door, shaken, sinking to his knees.
"What happened?" Dunkelmann asked. "Did you get a reprieve, a pardon, a..."
"Reprieve is too nice a word. They stayed my execution. That’s what they do around here: string you out while you hope against hope for a pardon, then schedule an execution, strap you in the chair, then cancel it at the very last minute—like a cat toying with a rat."
"At least you escaped the noose to live another day!"
"Yeah, if you can call this hellhole living. After all I’ve..." Starbuck jumps at a flash of light and crackling sound from the electrocution chamber
"Uh…after all I’ve done for the State, and this is how they reward me! I can’t tell you how many hours I spent..." Hornblower pantomimes a violin while Dunkelmann daubs imaginary tears. Starbuck rises to his feet and glares at both of them.
"What do you two think is so goddamn funny?" Starbuck demanded.
"Sorry, Starbuck," said Dunkelmann, "but sometimes you talk as though the universe were delinquent on your paycheck. How can you expect justice in a world like this?"
"That doesn’t make it one whit more fair!"
"I know how you feel, but it’s a funny feeling, all the same. Why do we so often feel out of our element? Does a guppy curse his fate because the water is wet?"
"He’d have plenty to gripe about if he had to swim in this cesspool of ours!"
"I don’t know. So often we act as if we were born for another world."
"Can’t spare a tear for either one of you, if you ask me!" said Hornblower.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" said Starbuck.
"You and Dunkelmann sent many a good man to an unjust death. You make the mistakes and make the foot soldier pay."
"I never condemned an innocent man to death!" said Starbuck, indignantly.
"Oh, yes...yes you did. No, not in so many words, of course, but every time you wrote one of your pretty little speeches for Cosmo, every time..." Another flash of light and crackling sound interrupted his train of thought.
"And every time Dunkelmann did the dirty work for Cosmo, you signed another man’s death warrant."
"Why you treasonous little scumbag!"
"Horny’s right, you know," said, Dunkelmann, lighting a cigarette. "We had it good at the expense of others. We had our little moment in the sun."
"More seditious speech! I can’t believe my ears!" Starbuck exclaimed.
"Don’t you think it’s time to drop the pose?" said Dunkelmann. "You played your dutiful role to the hilt, and look where it landed you?"
"If you never believed in the revolution, how could you serve in the Directorate all those years?"
"It’s not about believing, but surviving. We were both playing our part. The difference between you and me is I know I was play-acting the whole time. That’s the only choice in life--either play the fool or play another for the fool!"
"You dirty little hypocrite!"
"To the contrary, you’re looking at a man of moral consistency. I’m only hypocritical when I need to be!"
-iv-
Starbuck, Dunkelmann & Hornblower were playing cards, using cigarettes as chips.
"I call your cigarette and raise you half a butt," Hornblower said to Starbuck.
"Starbuck, you afraid to die?" Dunkelmann asked.
"Oh, I don’t know," said Starbuck, turning misty-eyed. "Death is such a natural part of life. Without death there is no life. We’re stardust gazing at stardust. When we die we return to the to the very stuff that gave us birth and being, and our mortal remains are...well are recycled to make a another generation of dusty stargazers--yes, billions and billions of dust particles composing billions and billions of dusty stargazers, all perched atop a speck of spinning stardust, and gazing at billions and billions of twinkling stars!
Dunkelmann folded his hands in mock prayer while Hornblower flapped his arms like angel wings.
"‘Scuse me for asking," said Hornblower, "but isn’t that just a pretty way of saying that when you die you turn to dog crap?"
"Now, now, my dear Hornblower," said Dunkelmann, patting him on the shoulder while assuming an indulgent tone of voice, "remember that our beloved Starbuck used to work for the Secretariat. They can make a dunghill smell like rose garden"
"Would you rather jawbone or place a bet?" said Starbuck, huffily.
"I fold," said Hornblower.
"You’re bluffing," said Dunkelmann to Starbuck.
"Try me!"
"I’m running low on cigarettes."
"I thought you had an outside source?"
"I did, until my contact fell out of favor with the Subcommissioner to the Commissar. I think he’s now in the prison block just down the hall."
"What’ll we do for a smoke?" Hornblower asked.
"Rumor has it the guy in the next cell has a rendezvous with Old Sparky this week," Dunkelmann answered in a low tone of voice. "Maybe we can bribe the guard to give us his leftover pack."
"So, what about you, Horny?" said Starbuck.
"What about what?"
"About your own appointment with Old Sparky? It’s only a matter of time, you know."
"Well, death is a damn bloody nuisance, if you ask me. But it’s no use our wasting any womanish fears and tears over the whole affair. Gird up your loins like a man! That’s what I say. Better to build on a firm foundation of unyielding despair. I was dead a...
"It’s your bet," Starbuck interrupted. Hornblower paused, tossing another cigarette into the kitty.
"Where was I?"
"You was dead!" said Dunkelmann.
"Ah, yes, that’s right, I was dead. How could I forget a thing like that! Anyway, as I was saying, I was dead all right--dead a billion years before I was born, and it never inconvenienced me a bit. After snoozing through the eons of time I woke up for a wink of an eye. I’ll die, but only ‘cause I got to live. For every one of me a million squiggly little sperm cells never had a damn chance."
Dunkelmann salutes Starbuck, behind Hornblower's back, who returns the salute.
"So, Dunkelmann, what about you?" said Starbuck.
"Sorry, but I don’t have any flowery speeches to make. This is my creed: first you die, then you rot! Direct and to the point!"
"Yeah, but you leave out all the spunk and all the valor," Hornblower objected. It’s not like we’ve got to face our fate like a dog. "Go not gentle into that good night, but rage, rage against the dying light!"
"’The boy stood on the burning deck’, and all that confounded crap?" said Dunkelmann. "You make it sound like the bloody charge of the light brigade!"
"And what if I do?" said Hornblower, voice raised and eyes ablaze. "Maybe we’re on a death march into a dawnless night, but we can summon the courage to lift a fallen comrade or give him a decent burial. That’s the true baptism by fire into the company of the blood-washed martyrs!"
"O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence!" said Starbuck.
"Truth is," said Dunkelmann, "you two talk like a pair of drunken choirboys. Such high-flown speeches are for the living, not the dead. Come to think of it, wasn’t the Devil a demoralized saint?"
"It's not about you and me only, but about our part in the whole grand and glorious scheme of things," said Starbuck.
"Oh yes, yes, it is, it is about me, and me alone. That’s exactly what it’s about, all right! We’re all by ourselves out here, shivering in the lonely, cold, and silent spaces of black infinitude--from one end of nothingness to another. And we’ll all die alone, walking the valley of the shadow of death in single file.
Who are you two trying to impress, anyway? The stars? The tombstones? No one’s listening! The graveyard has no ears. The cosmos has no ears. You both got a great way of dressing up the corpse with your eulogies. But face it, guys, life’s a bad joke told by a dead comedian."
"Maybe we’re not all alone. Like, I mean...what about life on other worlds?"
"Guardian angels by another name. Or just another chain-gang doomed to die. What a pair you make--of fat and happy lab rats..." gesturing to the execution room, "but I’ve got news for you--the vivisection table awaits!"
"Really, my dear Dunkelmann," said Hornblower, "you do have a way of ruining a perfectly good game of five-card stud! If that’s how you feel, why not hang yourself and get it over with?"
"That’s a good question. Sometimes I think that suicide is the only question. The mistake was being born. The very first step was the fatal misstep, the original sin. My little pet rat was better off than me for never knowing any better. The only way forward is backward."
"So why don’t you cut your own throat?"
"Because I’m a coward--like everyone else."
Painted Devil
-i-
"Hey, Jacobi," Malak said.
"Captain, what’s up?" Jacobi said, answering his cell phone.
"There’s been another murder. Check it out!"
-ii-
"What have we got?" Jacobi says to the coroner.
"According to the wallet, this is the late Martin Tours."
"What else?"
"Just like the other four," said the coroner, pulling back the victim’s shirt. "See ‘Legion’ carved into the chest?"
"Same MO. But the way the papers have been playing up ‘The Legion Killer,’ could be a copy-cat murder as well."
"After I get back to the lab I’ll page you if I turn anything up."
"Anything else?"
"This is not the primary crime scene. The victim was executed elsewhere and dumped in the alley to cover his tracks."
"Also consistent with the ‘The Legion Killer.’ Well, I’ll go knock on doors."
-iii-
"Pastor Morgenstern--I saw your name on the plaque outside," said Jacobi.
"Yes, that’s right," he said, shaking Jacobi's hand. And you are..."
"Inspector Jacobi," he said, flashing his badge. "I’m a homicide detective."
"Ah, this must be about the crime scene down the street," said Morgenstern.
"Sorry to interrupt."
"No problem! You boys continue with your singing while Inspector Jacobi and I have a little chat."
"Have you ever seen this man before?" showing him a photo of the victim, as the choir went about rehearsing Mendelssohn's "Es wird ein Stern aus Jacob" in the background.
"Can’t say that I have. "What’s his name?"
"Michael Tours."
"Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry I can’t be more helpful."
"Maybe you can. Does the name of ‘Legion’ mean anything to you?"
"’Legion’ was the name of a demoniac on whom our Lord performed an exorcism. Does this have anything to do with the ‘Legion Killer’?"
"I see you’ve been following the news."
"To be honest, I don’t have time to keep up with all the headlines--but word gets around. I get most of my info from the parishioners".
"Still, if the killer took the name of a...of a...what was that again?"
"Of a demoniac."
"Yes, of a demoniac," Jacobi continued, "then it might have some ritual angle. That could be helpful."
"What were the names of the other victims?"
"Max, Dennis, Diomedes, and Steven."
"That reminds me of something, but I can’t quite place it at the moment."
"Here’s my card. If you remember, give me a call."
-iv-
"Ah, Inspector Jacobi. I guess you got me message. But you didn’t have to make a special trip."
"No problem. I’m not finished canvassing the neighborhood. So what did you have to tell me?"
"Well, this may only be a coincidence, but the five names you gave me correspond to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus."
"The Seven Sleepers of...what?"
"It’s a feast-day, based on an old legend. During the reign of the Emperor Decius, seven saintly young men hid in a cave to escape imperial persecution. The authorities walled up the entrance. But when the cave was unsealed several centuries later, they walked out alive—not having aged a day."
"What were the other two names?"
"Antonio and Constantine."
"So, assuming that the killer is following this blueprint, that would leave two more victims--by the names of Antonio and Constantine."
"Looks like you need to spend some time in the phone book."
"I wish I had some cue as to when he was going to strike next."
"When were the five victims killed?"
"Let’s see," said Jacobi, flipping through his notebook, "Mon-day...Tuesday...Wednesday...Thursday...Friday."
"So he’s killing a victim for each day of the week."
"And in that order,which leaves Saturday and Sunday. What’s the connection?"
"Off-hand, I can’t say."
-v-
"Jacobi," answering the phone.
"Yes, this is Pastor Morgenstern."
"Good to hear from you."
"I was thinking some more about the days of the week. The only connection I can see is numerical...the seven sleepers of Asia, the seven days of the week."
"Well, that’s another coincidence."
"May be more than a coincidence, especially if, as you say, the murders have a ritual angle."
"How so?"
"Seven is a highly significant figure in Judeo-Christian numerology: the seven-day crea-tion, the seven-day week, the seventh day of rest, the sabbatical year, the seven weeks from Passover to Pentecost, the seven devils cast out of Mary Magdalene, the sevenfold sprinkling of blood, the seven-pronged Menorah, the seven-day feast of Tabernacles and unleavened bread, Enoch as the seventh from Adam, the year of Jubilee, New Year on the seventh month. The Book of Revelation is chock-full of sevens."
-vi-
"What have we got?" Jacobi said to the coroner?
"According to the wallet, this is the late Antonio Padua."
"Number six...that leaves one more to go."
"How do you mean?"
"This is a serial killer with seven designated targets."
"Then it should be possible to catch him before he kills again."
"I’m afraid it’s not that easy. I've only got first names, not last names. Have any idea many ‘Antonios’ live in a city this size?"
"I see your problem."
-vii-
"Pastor Morgenstern, can I come in?" Jacobi asked, poking his head into the study.
"Why, of course! Any break in the case?"
"I don’t know. I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams lately."
"What kind of dreams?"
"In my dreams I’m being shadowed by a seven-headed, seven-horned monster."
"What does its face look like?"
"Can’t tell. When I turn around I only see the back of its head."
"The case is getting to you. That’s only natural."
"But there’s more."
"Go on."
"I also see it during the day...in the rearview mirror, or washroom mirror, or storefront window. But when I turn my head it vanishes from view."
"Do you see its face then?"
"Just a fleeting glimpse."
"What did it look like? Some diabolical fiend?"
"No, almost angelic. I mean, the face itself, if you leave out the horns and all, could pass for one of your choirboys. A little older, but that same innocent demeanor."
"I guess that makes sense. The best way to beguile is to be without guile."
"But what do you make of it all?"
"Well, that is uncanny--that’s for sure. But given the occultic aroma of the case, it’s not altogether surprising. You stand astride two worlds--of sense and spirit."
"Either that or an undigested apple-dumpling!"
-viii-
"Morgenstern here" he said, answering the phone.
"It’s Jacobi again. I've had another nightmare."
"Was it like the others?" Morgenstern asked.
"Yes, except that this time I was able to make out more background detail."
"What did you see?"
"It looked like a boarded up old church. You know, Gothic arches…stained glass windows, but broken and cobwebby."
"Anything stand out?"
"There was a sign...hard to remember now...something like St. Elizabeth."
"That’s the name of an old abandoned church in Chinatown."
"Funny, I don’t recall seeing anything like that down there."
"That’s because it was painted over a long time ago and turned into restaurant, which, I think, went out of business just recently. In any event, you should check out your premo-nition."
-ix-
"Sir, are you hurt?" Jacobi asked, as he untied a bound-and-gagged man inside St. Eliza-beth.
"I’ll be fine now that you arrived," he said.
"May I ask you name?"
"Steve...Steven Nichols."
"This is Inspector Jacobi," he said, dialing his cellphone. "Send a squad car and ambu-lance to the Fortune Cookie restaurant on the corner of Broadway and Easy Street. Mr. Nichols, you stay here while I step outside for a moment."
"Hey you--freeze!" Jacobi shouted, drawing his service revolver and pointing right at a jaywalker whose face resembled the face in his visions.
-ix-
"Harry Hesper," Jacobi said, looking across the table from the suspect in the interrogation room. "According to my file here, you’re a seminary drop-out."
"That's right."
"Was serial murder part of the curriculum?"
"You might call it an elective course" Hesper said, smirking.
"So why'd you drop out? Loose your faith?"
"No, I found my calling."
"I see. Is this another one of those Antichrist conspiracies to destroy the world as we know it?"
"No, to save the world."
"Saving by killing?"
"A necessary evil."
"How so?"
"In the Koran it is written that seven sleepers portend the end of the world."
"But wasn’t that centuries ago? They're all dead and buried by now."
"No, they’re immortal. That’s the point of the story. They can’t die of natural causes."
"How'd you find them, anyway?"
"Seven angels appeared to me in a vision."
"But what’s the connection between the seven sleepers and the seven days of the week?"
"It’s all goes back to the mystery of the seven stars."
"The mystery of the seven stars?"
"Yes, the mystery of the seven stars. If you read in Revelations, the seven sleepers are the seven stars...as well as the seven angels of the seven churches."
"That's all there?" Jacobi asked?
"Well, not the part about the seven sleepers--not in so many words, exactly, but John the Revelator lived in Ephesus, and addressed his prophecy to the church of Ephesus…oh, and the temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the world. The number seven--that's the key!"
"But what’s that got to do with the days of the week?"
"Isn’t it obvious?" Hesper exclaimed. "The days of the week were named after the seven planets--Monday for the moon, Tuesday for Mars, Wednesday for Mercury, Thursday for Jupiter, Friday for Venus, Saturday for Saturn, and Sunday for the sun."
"Okay then, what now?"
"Now the world comes to an end. I failed! Thanks to you, I failed! You kept me from completing my mission!" Hesper cried. "The sun will be black as sackcloth, the moon blood-red, and the stars shall fall from heaven."
-x-
"So, what happens now," Morgenstern asked, standing in the sanctuary. "Will he face the death penalty?"
"He won't be around that long," Jacobi answered.
"How come?"
"He suffered a seizure while in custody."
"What was the cause?"
"A head-scan revealed brain cancer. So much for that hokum and bunkum about angelic apparitions!"
"Well, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you. You’re welcome to stop in any time. Why not pick up a program on the way out?"
In the narthex, Jacobi pauses to peruse a program, begins to pocket a copy, then decides to put it back on the table. In the distance the choir is rehearsing the "Dies Irae" from Mozart's Requiem Mass.
Getting into is car, Jacobi switches the radio on as he drives out of the lot. "...the Packers beat the Red Sox 32-16. Tomorrow’s forecast: clear and sunny. Oh, and that reminds me--for all you amateur astronomy buffs, we’ve got a rare conjunction the next few days with a solar eclipse, followed by a lunar eclipse, followed by a meteor shower. And now for a message from our sponsor at Ace Auto Body-Shop..."
"Hey, Jacobi," Malak said.
"Captain, what’s up?" Jacobi said, answering his cell phone.
"There’s been another murder. Check it out!"
-ii-
"What have we got?" Jacobi says to the coroner.
"According to the wallet, this is the late Martin Tours."
"What else?"
"Just like the other four," said the coroner, pulling back the victim’s shirt. "See ‘Legion’ carved into the chest?"
"Same MO. But the way the papers have been playing up ‘The Legion Killer,’ could be a copy-cat murder as well."
"After I get back to the lab I’ll page you if I turn anything up."
"Anything else?"
"This is not the primary crime scene. The victim was executed elsewhere and dumped in the alley to cover his tracks."
"Also consistent with the ‘The Legion Killer.’ Well, I’ll go knock on doors."
-iii-
"Pastor Morgenstern--I saw your name on the plaque outside," said Jacobi.
"Yes, that’s right," he said, shaking Jacobi's hand. And you are..."
"Inspector Jacobi," he said, flashing his badge. "I’m a homicide detective."
"Ah, this must be about the crime scene down the street," said Morgenstern.
"Sorry to interrupt."
"No problem! You boys continue with your singing while Inspector Jacobi and I have a little chat."
"Have you ever seen this man before?" showing him a photo of the victim, as the choir went about rehearsing Mendelssohn's "Es wird ein Stern aus Jacob" in the background.
"Can’t say that I have. "What’s his name?"
"Michael Tours."
"Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry I can’t be more helpful."
"Maybe you can. Does the name of ‘Legion’ mean anything to you?"
"’Legion’ was the name of a demoniac on whom our Lord performed an exorcism. Does this have anything to do with the ‘Legion Killer’?"
"I see you’ve been following the news."
"To be honest, I don’t have time to keep up with all the headlines--but word gets around. I get most of my info from the parishioners".
"Still, if the killer took the name of a...of a...what was that again?"
"Of a demoniac."
"Yes, of a demoniac," Jacobi continued, "then it might have some ritual angle. That could be helpful."
"What were the names of the other victims?"
"Max, Dennis, Diomedes, and Steven."
"That reminds me of something, but I can’t quite place it at the moment."
"Here’s my card. If you remember, give me a call."
-iv-
"Ah, Inspector Jacobi. I guess you got me message. But you didn’t have to make a special trip."
"No problem. I’m not finished canvassing the neighborhood. So what did you have to tell me?"
"Well, this may only be a coincidence, but the five names you gave me correspond to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus."
"The Seven Sleepers of...what?"
"It’s a feast-day, based on an old legend. During the reign of the Emperor Decius, seven saintly young men hid in a cave to escape imperial persecution. The authorities walled up the entrance. But when the cave was unsealed several centuries later, they walked out alive—not having aged a day."
"What were the other two names?"
"Antonio and Constantine."
"So, assuming that the killer is following this blueprint, that would leave two more victims--by the names of Antonio and Constantine."
"Looks like you need to spend some time in the phone book."
"I wish I had some cue as to when he was going to strike next."
"When were the five victims killed?"
"Let’s see," said Jacobi, flipping through his notebook, "Mon-day...Tuesday...Wednesday...Thursday...Friday."
"So he’s killing a victim for each day of the week."
"And in that order,which leaves Saturday and Sunday. What’s the connection?"
"Off-hand, I can’t say."
-v-
"Jacobi," answering the phone.
"Yes, this is Pastor Morgenstern."
"Good to hear from you."
"I was thinking some more about the days of the week. The only connection I can see is numerical...the seven sleepers of Asia, the seven days of the week."
"Well, that’s another coincidence."
"May be more than a coincidence, especially if, as you say, the murders have a ritual angle."
"How so?"
"Seven is a highly significant figure in Judeo-Christian numerology: the seven-day crea-tion, the seven-day week, the seventh day of rest, the sabbatical year, the seven weeks from Passover to Pentecost, the seven devils cast out of Mary Magdalene, the sevenfold sprinkling of blood, the seven-pronged Menorah, the seven-day feast of Tabernacles and unleavened bread, Enoch as the seventh from Adam, the year of Jubilee, New Year on the seventh month. The Book of Revelation is chock-full of sevens."
-vi-
"What have we got?" Jacobi said to the coroner?
"According to the wallet, this is the late Antonio Padua."
"Number six...that leaves one more to go."
"How do you mean?"
"This is a serial killer with seven designated targets."
"Then it should be possible to catch him before he kills again."
"I’m afraid it’s not that easy. I've only got first names, not last names. Have any idea many ‘Antonios’ live in a city this size?"
"I see your problem."
-vii-
"Pastor Morgenstern, can I come in?" Jacobi asked, poking his head into the study.
"Why, of course! Any break in the case?"
"I don’t know. I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams lately."
"What kind of dreams?"
"In my dreams I’m being shadowed by a seven-headed, seven-horned monster."
"What does its face look like?"
"Can’t tell. When I turn around I only see the back of its head."
"The case is getting to you. That’s only natural."
"But there’s more."
"Go on."
"I also see it during the day...in the rearview mirror, or washroom mirror, or storefront window. But when I turn my head it vanishes from view."
"Do you see its face then?"
"Just a fleeting glimpse."
"What did it look like? Some diabolical fiend?"
"No, almost angelic. I mean, the face itself, if you leave out the horns and all, could pass for one of your choirboys. A little older, but that same innocent demeanor."
"I guess that makes sense. The best way to beguile is to be without guile."
"But what do you make of it all?"
"Well, that is uncanny--that’s for sure. But given the occultic aroma of the case, it’s not altogether surprising. You stand astride two worlds--of sense and spirit."
"Either that or an undigested apple-dumpling!"
-viii-
"Morgenstern here" he said, answering the phone.
"It’s Jacobi again. I've had another nightmare."
"Was it like the others?" Morgenstern asked.
"Yes, except that this time I was able to make out more background detail."
"What did you see?"
"It looked like a boarded up old church. You know, Gothic arches…stained glass windows, but broken and cobwebby."
"Anything stand out?"
"There was a sign...hard to remember now...something like St. Elizabeth."
"That’s the name of an old abandoned church in Chinatown."
"Funny, I don’t recall seeing anything like that down there."
"That’s because it was painted over a long time ago and turned into restaurant, which, I think, went out of business just recently. In any event, you should check out your premo-nition."
-ix-
"Sir, are you hurt?" Jacobi asked, as he untied a bound-and-gagged man inside St. Eliza-beth.
"I’ll be fine now that you arrived," he said.
"May I ask you name?"
"Steve...Steven Nichols."
"This is Inspector Jacobi," he said, dialing his cellphone. "Send a squad car and ambu-lance to the Fortune Cookie restaurant on the corner of Broadway and Easy Street. Mr. Nichols, you stay here while I step outside for a moment."
"Hey you--freeze!" Jacobi shouted, drawing his service revolver and pointing right at a jaywalker whose face resembled the face in his visions.
-ix-
"Harry Hesper," Jacobi said, looking across the table from the suspect in the interrogation room. "According to my file here, you’re a seminary drop-out."
"That's right."
"Was serial murder part of the curriculum?"
"You might call it an elective course" Hesper said, smirking.
"So why'd you drop out? Loose your faith?"
"No, I found my calling."
"I see. Is this another one of those Antichrist conspiracies to destroy the world as we know it?"
"No, to save the world."
"Saving by killing?"
"A necessary evil."
"How so?"
"In the Koran it is written that seven sleepers portend the end of the world."
"But wasn’t that centuries ago? They're all dead and buried by now."
"No, they’re immortal. That’s the point of the story. They can’t die of natural causes."
"How'd you find them, anyway?"
"Seven angels appeared to me in a vision."
"But what’s the connection between the seven sleepers and the seven days of the week?"
"It’s all goes back to the mystery of the seven stars."
"The mystery of the seven stars?"
"Yes, the mystery of the seven stars. If you read in Revelations, the seven sleepers are the seven stars...as well as the seven angels of the seven churches."
"That's all there?" Jacobi asked?
"Well, not the part about the seven sleepers--not in so many words, exactly, but John the Revelator lived in Ephesus, and addressed his prophecy to the church of Ephesus…oh, and the temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the world. The number seven--that's the key!"
"But what’s that got to do with the days of the week?"
"Isn’t it obvious?" Hesper exclaimed. "The days of the week were named after the seven planets--Monday for the moon, Tuesday for Mars, Wednesday for Mercury, Thursday for Jupiter, Friday for Venus, Saturday for Saturn, and Sunday for the sun."
"Okay then, what now?"
"Now the world comes to an end. I failed! Thanks to you, I failed! You kept me from completing my mission!" Hesper cried. "The sun will be black as sackcloth, the moon blood-red, and the stars shall fall from heaven."
-x-
"So, what happens now," Morgenstern asked, standing in the sanctuary. "Will he face the death penalty?"
"He won't be around that long," Jacobi answered.
"How come?"
"He suffered a seizure while in custody."
"What was the cause?"
"A head-scan revealed brain cancer. So much for that hokum and bunkum about angelic apparitions!"
"Well, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you. You’re welcome to stop in any time. Why not pick up a program on the way out?"
In the narthex, Jacobi pauses to peruse a program, begins to pocket a copy, then decides to put it back on the table. In the distance the choir is rehearsing the "Dies Irae" from Mozart's Requiem Mass.
Getting into is car, Jacobi switches the radio on as he drives out of the lot. "...the Packers beat the Red Sox 32-16. Tomorrow’s forecast: clear and sunny. Oh, and that reminds me--for all you amateur astronomy buffs, we’ve got a rare conjunction the next few days with a solar eclipse, followed by a lunar eclipse, followed by a meteor shower. And now for a message from our sponsor at Ace Auto Body-Shop..."
Mark of Cain
-i-
Marcus McCain was the talk of the town. In a small town, anybody’s business was everybody’s business.
Loners drifted in and out of Tumbleweed Texas on a regular basis. And Marcus McCain was both a loner and a drifter.
A man of indeterminate age, McCain was a topic of local conversation, not for what he did, but what he didn’t too.
Having purchased an abandoned farm for cash, he never came to town—not even for groceries. He had no phone, utilities or mail. He lived off the land and was only seen from time to time hunting in the woods.
-ii-
But mischievous boys being what they are, his life as a recluse was an object of mischievous adventure. They would do anything to get a rise out of him—teepee the house or shoot out the windows with a bee bee gun.
A favorite exercise was to see which boy was brave enough to knock on the door, then run for cover before the arms of certain death caught him in its clutches.
One day Timmy O’Brien was peering through the window, propped up by a water barrow, when the barrow tipped over and he sprained his ankle. Ominous footsteps were heard inside the house.
His playmates did what all braves boys do when having to choose between imminent death and rescuing a fallen comrade---they abandoned him to his fate.
Timmy heard the creaky front door open, and the heavy tread of footsteps on the porch, before he saw a forward leaning shadow curve around the porch in his helpless direction.
Jimmy’s life—all nine years and a quarter—passed before his eyes. He mumbled a half-remembered prayer and prepared to meet his Maker.
He fully expected Marcus McCain to be a ten-foot tall hunchback with six-fingers per hand and glowing red eyes. But he was quite unprepared for the full horror of what rounded the porch.
He near ‘bout lost bladder control at the sight. But after a moment of pure frostbitten fear, his lurid imagination adjusted to what his eyes actually beheld, which was a surprisingly well-kept man with a sad and weary, but not unkindly face.
Marcus McCain was, indeed, powerfully built, as if he’d descended from a race of long extinct Nephilim.
Timmy’s breath was caught in his throat as the stranger peered over him from Olympian heights. McCain wordlessly plucked up the young urchin in his arms, carried him inside, and deposited him on the kitchen table.
Timmy was now shaking and quaking like a wet kitten as his eyes darted about the dark corners of the house, for fear of seeing the cool, sharp gleam of stainless steel implements—the better to dismember naughty little boys.
McCain was rummaging through draws and cupboards for something in particular. He came back with a roll of gauze and began to tightly bandage the ankle.
The realization slowly dawned on Timmy that he may have averted death and hellfire for another day.
-iii-
Through the kitchen window, Molly O’Brien saw a tall stranger, with Timmy in his arms, walk into the front yard. She rushed out of the house.
McCain wordlessly deposited Timmy in her arms, turned around, and walked bacl home.
After she got him inside, Timmy filled her in on the momentous events of his misadventure. There were, to be sure, a few tactical modifications in his account to avoid self-incrimination—modifications which always left his own complicity swathed in enigma. But Molly was used to that.
Timmy had yet another version to tell his playmates—an especially lurid version of steely valor in the face of unspeakable horror as he made his narrow escape from the torture chambers of the unmentionable One.
Every time he retold the tale, he remembered yet another gory detail, yet another proof of his plucky ingenuity.
Before his brush with death, Timmy had held a middling rank in the pecking order of the gang, but his courageous tale was, to his playmates, what the Congressional Medal of Honor was to a wounded soldier.
A boy like Timmy would have been a handful in the best of times, but Molly was a single Mom. Her husband left her for another woman when Timmy was five.
-iv-
After he got over his limp, Timmy screwed up his courage and went back Marcus McCain’s farmhouse—this time to properly introduce himself and get to know this manly man and mysterious stranger.
It turned out that McCain was quite a storyteller. He had an endless fund of stories—from World War II and World War I to the Civil War and Revolutionary War, through the Crusades and the Black Plague to the Greeks and Romans, Assyrians and Parthians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and before.
Molly O’Brien was a churchgoing woman, and some of is stories sounded like stories that Timmy had heard from the pulpit, but with a lot of incidental detail, as if he wre remembering instead of embellishing.
He also took Timmy on hunting trips and taught him many survival skills, taught him how to be a tracker, taught him the nutritional and medicinal value of various plants.
Timmy was especially intrigued by an interesting looking ring which McCain used to wear. McCain had a story about that as well. He said it was an old heirloom. According to family lore, this was the signet ring which Pharaoh gave to Joseph.
-v-
Timmy had never been a very studious student. But under McCain’s tutelage, Timmy excelled in grade school and Sunday school.
When the time came for his confirmation, Timmy asked McCain to be his godfather. McCain did not want to become that involved in the life of the community, but he also did not wish to hurt Timmy’s feelings, so he consented.
After the ceremony, the Rev. Freigeist struck up a conversation with McCain. It turned out that the good parson was broad churchman with enlightened views of the Scriptures. He was especially amused by the “inanities” of the Flood.
At that point, McCain launch into a very detailed description of just how it was possible.
Freigeist could only grimmace. Here he was hoping to have an intelligent conversion. Now he saw his mistake. McCain was clearly just another backwoods Bible-thumper—a breed all to common in these parts. He asked, sarcastically, if McCain had been a stowaway on the ark.
-vi-
Up until his confirmation, Timmy had been keeping his visits to McCain a secret from his Mom.
After she found out, Molly wasn’t quite approving, but wasn’t quite disapproving. She wasn’t at all sure it was a good thing for Timmy to be under the sway of this strange man. He seemed to be benign, but she knew next to nothing about him, and he was nothing if not eccentric. Who was he, anyway? A fugitive from justice?
Molly worked part time for the local sheriff as a secretary, and she began to do a background check. At first he seemed to be a man without a past. No birthplace or birth certificate or medical records or school records or criminal records.
Yet as she dug deeper and did some cross-checking, McCain suddenly seemed to be a man with more than one life, more than one birthplace or birth certificate—a man who changed identities.
But Molly ran out of leads because the database didn’t go back before a certain point in time. So she turned her research over the local reporter.
He did his own digging, came up with some new leads—or rather—old leads—and then drove over to McCain’s place to interview him for a story he was writing for the paper.
McCain did not appreciate his new-found notoriety, and brusquely turned the reporter away.
-vii-
Molly forbad Timmy from seeing McCain ever again. But Timmy snuck out of the house that night. McCain told him another story, the story of a man condemned. Of a man guilty of an unspeakable offense. Of a man accursed to wander the earth until the Second Coming.
-viii-
The next day Timmy went back. He knocked on the door, but no one answered. The door was unlocked, so he went inside. The house was deserted. What personal effects had been there were all gone, except for a signet ring which McCain left on the kitchen table.
Marcus McCain was the talk of the town. In a small town, anybody’s business was everybody’s business.
Loners drifted in and out of Tumbleweed Texas on a regular basis. And Marcus McCain was both a loner and a drifter.
A man of indeterminate age, McCain was a topic of local conversation, not for what he did, but what he didn’t too.
Having purchased an abandoned farm for cash, he never came to town—not even for groceries. He had no phone, utilities or mail. He lived off the land and was only seen from time to time hunting in the woods.
-ii-
But mischievous boys being what they are, his life as a recluse was an object of mischievous adventure. They would do anything to get a rise out of him—teepee the house or shoot out the windows with a bee bee gun.
A favorite exercise was to see which boy was brave enough to knock on the door, then run for cover before the arms of certain death caught him in its clutches.
One day Timmy O’Brien was peering through the window, propped up by a water barrow, when the barrow tipped over and he sprained his ankle. Ominous footsteps were heard inside the house.
His playmates did what all braves boys do when having to choose between imminent death and rescuing a fallen comrade---they abandoned him to his fate.
Timmy heard the creaky front door open, and the heavy tread of footsteps on the porch, before he saw a forward leaning shadow curve around the porch in his helpless direction.
Jimmy’s life—all nine years and a quarter—passed before his eyes. He mumbled a half-remembered prayer and prepared to meet his Maker.
He fully expected Marcus McCain to be a ten-foot tall hunchback with six-fingers per hand and glowing red eyes. But he was quite unprepared for the full horror of what rounded the porch.
He near ‘bout lost bladder control at the sight. But after a moment of pure frostbitten fear, his lurid imagination adjusted to what his eyes actually beheld, which was a surprisingly well-kept man with a sad and weary, but not unkindly face.
Marcus McCain was, indeed, powerfully built, as if he’d descended from a race of long extinct Nephilim.
Timmy’s breath was caught in his throat as the stranger peered over him from Olympian heights. McCain wordlessly plucked up the young urchin in his arms, carried him inside, and deposited him on the kitchen table.
Timmy was now shaking and quaking like a wet kitten as his eyes darted about the dark corners of the house, for fear of seeing the cool, sharp gleam of stainless steel implements—the better to dismember naughty little boys.
McCain was rummaging through draws and cupboards for something in particular. He came back with a roll of gauze and began to tightly bandage the ankle.
The realization slowly dawned on Timmy that he may have averted death and hellfire for another day.
-iii-
Through the kitchen window, Molly O’Brien saw a tall stranger, with Timmy in his arms, walk into the front yard. She rushed out of the house.
McCain wordlessly deposited Timmy in her arms, turned around, and walked bacl home.
After she got him inside, Timmy filled her in on the momentous events of his misadventure. There were, to be sure, a few tactical modifications in his account to avoid self-incrimination—modifications which always left his own complicity swathed in enigma. But Molly was used to that.
Timmy had yet another version to tell his playmates—an especially lurid version of steely valor in the face of unspeakable horror as he made his narrow escape from the torture chambers of the unmentionable One.
Every time he retold the tale, he remembered yet another gory detail, yet another proof of his plucky ingenuity.
Before his brush with death, Timmy had held a middling rank in the pecking order of the gang, but his courageous tale was, to his playmates, what the Congressional Medal of Honor was to a wounded soldier.
A boy like Timmy would have been a handful in the best of times, but Molly was a single Mom. Her husband left her for another woman when Timmy was five.
-iv-
After he got over his limp, Timmy screwed up his courage and went back Marcus McCain’s farmhouse—this time to properly introduce himself and get to know this manly man and mysterious stranger.
It turned out that McCain was quite a storyteller. He had an endless fund of stories—from World War II and World War I to the Civil War and Revolutionary War, through the Crusades and the Black Plague to the Greeks and Romans, Assyrians and Parthians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and before.
Molly O’Brien was a churchgoing woman, and some of is stories sounded like stories that Timmy had heard from the pulpit, but with a lot of incidental detail, as if he wre remembering instead of embellishing.
He also took Timmy on hunting trips and taught him many survival skills, taught him how to be a tracker, taught him the nutritional and medicinal value of various plants.
Timmy was especially intrigued by an interesting looking ring which McCain used to wear. McCain had a story about that as well. He said it was an old heirloom. According to family lore, this was the signet ring which Pharaoh gave to Joseph.
-v-
Timmy had never been a very studious student. But under McCain’s tutelage, Timmy excelled in grade school and Sunday school.
When the time came for his confirmation, Timmy asked McCain to be his godfather. McCain did not want to become that involved in the life of the community, but he also did not wish to hurt Timmy’s feelings, so he consented.
After the ceremony, the Rev. Freigeist struck up a conversation with McCain. It turned out that the good parson was broad churchman with enlightened views of the Scriptures. He was especially amused by the “inanities” of the Flood.
At that point, McCain launch into a very detailed description of just how it was possible.
Freigeist could only grimmace. Here he was hoping to have an intelligent conversion. Now he saw his mistake. McCain was clearly just another backwoods Bible-thumper—a breed all to common in these parts. He asked, sarcastically, if McCain had been a stowaway on the ark.
-vi-
Up until his confirmation, Timmy had been keeping his visits to McCain a secret from his Mom.
After she found out, Molly wasn’t quite approving, but wasn’t quite disapproving. She wasn’t at all sure it was a good thing for Timmy to be under the sway of this strange man. He seemed to be benign, but she knew next to nothing about him, and he was nothing if not eccentric. Who was he, anyway? A fugitive from justice?
Molly worked part time for the local sheriff as a secretary, and she began to do a background check. At first he seemed to be a man without a past. No birthplace or birth certificate or medical records or school records or criminal records.
Yet as she dug deeper and did some cross-checking, McCain suddenly seemed to be a man with more than one life, more than one birthplace or birth certificate—a man who changed identities.
But Molly ran out of leads because the database didn’t go back before a certain point in time. So she turned her research over the local reporter.
He did his own digging, came up with some new leads—or rather—old leads—and then drove over to McCain’s place to interview him for a story he was writing for the paper.
McCain did not appreciate his new-found notoriety, and brusquely turned the reporter away.
-vii-
Molly forbad Timmy from seeing McCain ever again. But Timmy snuck out of the house that night. McCain told him another story, the story of a man condemned. Of a man guilty of an unspeakable offense. Of a man accursed to wander the earth until the Second Coming.
-viii-
The next day Timmy went back. He knocked on the door, but no one answered. The door was unlocked, so he went inside. The house was deserted. What personal effects had been there were all gone, except for a signet ring which McCain left on the kitchen table.
House of Clocks
-i-
Ethan was in love with Esmeralda. But was Esmeralda in love with Ethan? That was the burning question. She seemed to like him well enough, but liking and loving were a world apart.
If only he could spend more time with her, he would bring her around—or so he hoped. But trying to pin her down was like trying to make time stand still or stanch a river with your fingers.
Brief, fleeting, fugitive snatches of conservation in the hallway or the bus stop or the cafeteria—before class, between class, and after class.
But every time the conversation took a promising turn, the bus came, the bell rang, and away she went. Every opportune colloquy felt like a race against time—before the clock struck twelve and the gilded carriage reverted to a pumpkin.
Wanting her without having her made the wanting all the more obsessive. There were other girls—pretty girls, perky girls—but they were interchangeable. There was only one Esmeralda—only one girl who reminded him of a river ride on a sunny summer’s day.
So he did what any normal, sensible, lovesick and enterprising boy would do—he resorted to subterfuge. If she wouldn’t come to him, he’d have to go to her.
One day he trailed the school bus in his car, keeping a discreet distance. After she got off, he followed her—followed her until she went into a clock shop.
He parked his car almost out of sight and waited for her come to out, to follow her home, to see where she lived.
He had seen it before—the House of Clocks—seen it out of the corner of his eye, driving by innumerable times, but never really registering its existence in any conscious, memorable way before.
It was a small, rundown building in a small, rundown shopping center, with vacant stores for rent on either side. The only other business was a greasy spoon.
Minutes stretched into quarter hours, then half hours, then hours—until it began to grow dark, and he drove home.
-ii-
That night he hatched a plan. He would damage his wristwatch and take it in for repairs. Assuming that she worked there or lived there—apparently—he could find out more about this elusive and alluring girl.
Such a natural way to strike up a conversation. He would act surprised to find her there. What a happy coincidence!
This would break the ice, inviting a series of innocent, offhand questions and revealing answers. She’d have to be nice to him since he was, after all, a customer! Not that she wasn’t always nice, but with a distracted air—as if she were flipping through a yearbook or old family photo album.
Once he established contact he could hopefully parlay his initial foot in the door into a casual meeting place and, from there, into a regular trysting place.
Damaging the watch was a delicate operation. If he did too much damage, the watch would be irreparable, and he’d have to buy a new one on the spot. If he did too little, it could also be fixed on the spot.
He wanted to inflict just enough damage that he would have to leave it there and come back. That would give him two bites at the apple instead of one.
-iii-
The next day, after school was out, he once again trailed the bus, and parked his car at the same spot. This time he wanted for a decent interval to pass before going in lest it look like he was following her—which, of course, he was.
By force of habit he kept glancing at his broken watch. Then he studied the car clock while strumming his fingers.
After forty-minutes had passed he got out of the car and went over to the shop. To his dismay, the door was locked and the windows were dark. He tried to peer inside. He could make out faint tinkling sounds and dim flashes of reflected light, but nothing more.
-iv-
The day after he repeated the same experiment, to the same effect. He tried again on Saturday, and Sunday, to the same effect. He tried in the morning. He tried again in the afternoon. He tried Monday through Friday. All to the same effect.
Not only was this frustrating, but he began to question his motives. What began as an impulsive gesture had become compulsive. Was this getting out of hand? Lurid news stories of celebrity stalkers, jilted loves, abusive boyfriends, and angry exes ran through his mind.
Yet he wasn’t trying to force himself upon her. She had never rebuffed him. There was no restraining order in place. He was just looking for an opening.
Yes, she was all he thought about. But wasn’t that natural? Wasn’t it normal to be smitten? Wasn’t that part of falling in love? The hunt. The chase. The quest.
The infatuation might pass, but for now he was acting like any healthy and hormonally charged young man might act. No harm done. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Still, his plan had failed, and he had no fallback plan. At the time it seemed like a perfect plan, something that had fallen into his lap by a happy providence.
Still, the trail had gone cold—assuming it was ever warm. Absent a contingency plan, there was nothing left to do except to leave off what he was doing. The only thing he had for all his troubles was broken watch and a broken heart.
-v-
Back to the bus stop, back to the cafeteria, back to the hallways. Soon school would be out. Soon they all would graduate. Soon they’d all scatter to the winds to move away, or marry, or study out-of-state.
Weeks later, as he was driving home from the movies, his eye caught sight of lights on inside the House of Clocks. He went around the block and drove into the parking lot.
By now he had a new watch, but the busted watch was in the glove compartment. He went to the door. Tried the door. The door was unlocked. The door opened. He went inside.
The shop seemed oddly larger on the inside than on the outside. The shop was full of clocks—clocks of every kind and description under the sun: cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, water clocks, astronomical clocks, figural clocks, Gothic clocks, China clocks, Lyre clocks, Skeleton clocks, sundials, and hourglasses.
The shop was dizzy with ticking and chirping and chiming, as well as the glitter of brass and glass, crystal and silver in perpetual motion and countermotion. It’s as if the whole of history was laid end-to-end, then coiled around like a garden hose and crammed within those four walls—today, tomorrow, and yesterday all in one and all at once.
In his captivation he didn’t see or hear a woman come up behind him until she spoke to him.
“May I help you?” she said.
He spun around, startled. For a moment he thought it was Esmeralda. Indeed, she was, in a way, the spitting image of Esmeralda, but a good deal older. Her mother, no doubt.
He concealed his disappointment at not seeing Esmeralda. Recovering himself he said,
“Yes, I banged up my watch. I’d like to get it repaired.”
“It looks fine to me,” she said, staring at his wristwatch.
“Oh,” he said, slightly embarrassed—still preoccupied by his real mission. “I meant this watch,” pulling the damaged timepiece out of his pocket.
She inspected the item while he inspected her. She was garbed in a rather quaint, Victorian dress—like one of the antique clocks.
“It might cost you more to repair than replace,” she said. “Are you sure you want to have it fixed—seeing as you already have another watch?”
Her lethal logic was rapidly unraveling his well-laid plans.
“I know it’s a cheap watch,” he said, “but it’s a keepsake. My dad gave it to me on my birthday when I was just a kid, so it’s the sentimental value more than anything,” he said, lying through his teeth.
“I see,” she replied. She took it over to the counter and began to fill out a form.
Speaking of time, the transaction was quickly moving to a conclusion before he had a chance to do what he came for. He looked around, half frantically, half surreptitiously, for anything with the proprietor’s last name—a plaque or sheet of letterhead—something he could use as a pretext to ask about Esmeralda.
“If you’d fill out this part of the form,” she said.
He filled in his name, address, and phone number and handed it back to her. That was followed by a hesitant pause as they made eye contact.
“Will that be all?” she said.
“Yes…I mean no…I mean…you remind me of a girl at school” he said. He was always at his most awkward when he pretended to be nonchalant.
“Who’s that?” she answered.
“Esmeralda Zeitlich,” he said, hopefully. Her face remained expressionless.
“I don’t suppose you’re related to her by any chance,” he added.
“You might say that,” she answered. “Anything else?”
“No, that’ll do it,” he answered, flustered by the whole exchange. He thanked her and left.
-vi-
Right after he got in the car and put the key in the ignition, it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t asked when the watch would be ready. So he walked back to the shop, but the door was locked and the lights were out.
That was odd. It was open just a minute ago. But, then, everything was a little odd about Esmeralda and the House of Clocks. That’s part of what made her so bewitching.
He glanced at his new wristwatch. There still time to pick up a bite to eat at his favorite deli before closing time.
He drove over, went up to the door, but found it was locked. He looked through the window. It was dark inside.
He glanced at his watch. It was a little past 10:30. He looked at the closing hours. It wasn’t supposed to close until 11:00.
Maybe they closed early. Or maybe his cheap new watch was slow.
Irritated, he got back in the car and headed home. On the way he glanced at the car clock. It was nearly 2:00 AM.
How was that possible? He was only in the House of Clocks for a short while. How could he lose several hours? It’s as if time passed at a different rate within the House of Clocks—which was absurd.
-vii-
He went back to the House of Clocks the next day, and the next—day after day. But it was never open.
A few weeks later he received a phone call. The watch was ready to pick up. “I’ll be right down,” he said. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded like Esmeralda’s—but a bit on the shrill side. One of the things he loved about Esmeralda was her soft low speaking voice. Her mother had it too.
He raced down to the shop and rushed in, expectantly. No one was there so he rang the bell.
A young girl came out of the back room. Once again the family resemblance was marked. She appeared to be Esmeralda’s kid sister.
After he paid for the watch, he asked, “Is your sister around?”
“Sister?” she said, giving him a blank stare. Once again he felt foolish and confused.
“Never mind,” he said, between sixes and sevens. After leaving the shop he ambled absent-mindedly to the car, eyes to the ground, sulky and sullen.
Lost in thought, he reached for the door handle, but he hand swept the air. The car was gone! Anger instantly displaced dejection.
He looked up and down both sides of the street. But something was out of place. As he stood there, watching the cars pass by, every car was an older model car—as if he’d been catapulted back into the Eisenhower era.
He walked several miles to his house. Or was it his house? The house paint was a different tint. He went to the door. His key didn’t fit the lock. He rang the doorbell. A strange woman came to the door. He was speechless.
-viii-
Ethan slowly made his way back to the shop. As usually, it was closed.
He broke a windowpane in the front door and went inside. There was no one in the show room. There was no one in the backroom.
He went back to the entrance, the broken glass crunching underfoot. As he went outside and turned to shut the door, the window was no longer broken. He swung it back and forth. Broken on the inside, unbroken on the outside.
He strolled over to the sidewalk. The greasy spoon was gone. This time the cars looked like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.
-ix-
Vivian was in love with Ethan, but was Ethan in love with Vivian? That was the burning question. He was a new student. No one knew much about him excepting that he lived along and had a part-time job at the House of Clocks.
Ethan was in love with Esmeralda. But was Esmeralda in love with Ethan? That was the burning question. She seemed to like him well enough, but liking and loving were a world apart.
If only he could spend more time with her, he would bring her around—or so he hoped. But trying to pin her down was like trying to make time stand still or stanch a river with your fingers.
Brief, fleeting, fugitive snatches of conservation in the hallway or the bus stop or the cafeteria—before class, between class, and after class.
But every time the conversation took a promising turn, the bus came, the bell rang, and away she went. Every opportune colloquy felt like a race against time—before the clock struck twelve and the gilded carriage reverted to a pumpkin.
Wanting her without having her made the wanting all the more obsessive. There were other girls—pretty girls, perky girls—but they were interchangeable. There was only one Esmeralda—only one girl who reminded him of a river ride on a sunny summer’s day.
So he did what any normal, sensible, lovesick and enterprising boy would do—he resorted to subterfuge. If she wouldn’t come to him, he’d have to go to her.
One day he trailed the school bus in his car, keeping a discreet distance. After she got off, he followed her—followed her until she went into a clock shop.
He parked his car almost out of sight and waited for her come to out, to follow her home, to see where she lived.
He had seen it before—the House of Clocks—seen it out of the corner of his eye, driving by innumerable times, but never really registering its existence in any conscious, memorable way before.
It was a small, rundown building in a small, rundown shopping center, with vacant stores for rent on either side. The only other business was a greasy spoon.
Minutes stretched into quarter hours, then half hours, then hours—until it began to grow dark, and he drove home.
-ii-
That night he hatched a plan. He would damage his wristwatch and take it in for repairs. Assuming that she worked there or lived there—apparently—he could find out more about this elusive and alluring girl.
Such a natural way to strike up a conversation. He would act surprised to find her there. What a happy coincidence!
This would break the ice, inviting a series of innocent, offhand questions and revealing answers. She’d have to be nice to him since he was, after all, a customer! Not that she wasn’t always nice, but with a distracted air—as if she were flipping through a yearbook or old family photo album.
Once he established contact he could hopefully parlay his initial foot in the door into a casual meeting place and, from there, into a regular trysting place.
Damaging the watch was a delicate operation. If he did too much damage, the watch would be irreparable, and he’d have to buy a new one on the spot. If he did too little, it could also be fixed on the spot.
He wanted to inflict just enough damage that he would have to leave it there and come back. That would give him two bites at the apple instead of one.
-iii-
The next day, after school was out, he once again trailed the bus, and parked his car at the same spot. This time he wanted for a decent interval to pass before going in lest it look like he was following her—which, of course, he was.
By force of habit he kept glancing at his broken watch. Then he studied the car clock while strumming his fingers.
After forty-minutes had passed he got out of the car and went over to the shop. To his dismay, the door was locked and the windows were dark. He tried to peer inside. He could make out faint tinkling sounds and dim flashes of reflected light, but nothing more.
-iv-
The day after he repeated the same experiment, to the same effect. He tried again on Saturday, and Sunday, to the same effect. He tried in the morning. He tried again in the afternoon. He tried Monday through Friday. All to the same effect.
Not only was this frustrating, but he began to question his motives. What began as an impulsive gesture had become compulsive. Was this getting out of hand? Lurid news stories of celebrity stalkers, jilted loves, abusive boyfriends, and angry exes ran through his mind.
Yet he wasn’t trying to force himself upon her. She had never rebuffed him. There was no restraining order in place. He was just looking for an opening.
Yes, she was all he thought about. But wasn’t that natural? Wasn’t it normal to be smitten? Wasn’t that part of falling in love? The hunt. The chase. The quest.
The infatuation might pass, but for now he was acting like any healthy and hormonally charged young man might act. No harm done. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Still, his plan had failed, and he had no fallback plan. At the time it seemed like a perfect plan, something that had fallen into his lap by a happy providence.
Still, the trail had gone cold—assuming it was ever warm. Absent a contingency plan, there was nothing left to do except to leave off what he was doing. The only thing he had for all his troubles was broken watch and a broken heart.
-v-
Back to the bus stop, back to the cafeteria, back to the hallways. Soon school would be out. Soon they all would graduate. Soon they’d all scatter to the winds to move away, or marry, or study out-of-state.
Weeks later, as he was driving home from the movies, his eye caught sight of lights on inside the House of Clocks. He went around the block and drove into the parking lot.
By now he had a new watch, but the busted watch was in the glove compartment. He went to the door. Tried the door. The door was unlocked. The door opened. He went inside.
The shop seemed oddly larger on the inside than on the outside. The shop was full of clocks—clocks of every kind and description under the sun: cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, water clocks, astronomical clocks, figural clocks, Gothic clocks, China clocks, Lyre clocks, Skeleton clocks, sundials, and hourglasses.
The shop was dizzy with ticking and chirping and chiming, as well as the glitter of brass and glass, crystal and silver in perpetual motion and countermotion. It’s as if the whole of history was laid end-to-end, then coiled around like a garden hose and crammed within those four walls—today, tomorrow, and yesterday all in one and all at once.
In his captivation he didn’t see or hear a woman come up behind him until she spoke to him.
“May I help you?” she said.
He spun around, startled. For a moment he thought it was Esmeralda. Indeed, she was, in a way, the spitting image of Esmeralda, but a good deal older. Her mother, no doubt.
He concealed his disappointment at not seeing Esmeralda. Recovering himself he said,
“Yes, I banged up my watch. I’d like to get it repaired.”
“It looks fine to me,” she said, staring at his wristwatch.
“Oh,” he said, slightly embarrassed—still preoccupied by his real mission. “I meant this watch,” pulling the damaged timepiece out of his pocket.
She inspected the item while he inspected her. She was garbed in a rather quaint, Victorian dress—like one of the antique clocks.
“It might cost you more to repair than replace,” she said. “Are you sure you want to have it fixed—seeing as you already have another watch?”
Her lethal logic was rapidly unraveling his well-laid plans.
“I know it’s a cheap watch,” he said, “but it’s a keepsake. My dad gave it to me on my birthday when I was just a kid, so it’s the sentimental value more than anything,” he said, lying through his teeth.
“I see,” she replied. She took it over to the counter and began to fill out a form.
Speaking of time, the transaction was quickly moving to a conclusion before he had a chance to do what he came for. He looked around, half frantically, half surreptitiously, for anything with the proprietor’s last name—a plaque or sheet of letterhead—something he could use as a pretext to ask about Esmeralda.
“If you’d fill out this part of the form,” she said.
He filled in his name, address, and phone number and handed it back to her. That was followed by a hesitant pause as they made eye contact.
“Will that be all?” she said.
“Yes…I mean no…I mean…you remind me of a girl at school” he said. He was always at his most awkward when he pretended to be nonchalant.
“Who’s that?” she answered.
“Esmeralda Zeitlich,” he said, hopefully. Her face remained expressionless.
“I don’t suppose you’re related to her by any chance,” he added.
“You might say that,” she answered. “Anything else?”
“No, that’ll do it,” he answered, flustered by the whole exchange. He thanked her and left.
-vi-
Right after he got in the car and put the key in the ignition, it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t asked when the watch would be ready. So he walked back to the shop, but the door was locked and the lights were out.
That was odd. It was open just a minute ago. But, then, everything was a little odd about Esmeralda and the House of Clocks. That’s part of what made her so bewitching.
He glanced at his new wristwatch. There still time to pick up a bite to eat at his favorite deli before closing time.
He drove over, went up to the door, but found it was locked. He looked through the window. It was dark inside.
He glanced at his watch. It was a little past 10:30. He looked at the closing hours. It wasn’t supposed to close until 11:00.
Maybe they closed early. Or maybe his cheap new watch was slow.
Irritated, he got back in the car and headed home. On the way he glanced at the car clock. It was nearly 2:00 AM.
How was that possible? He was only in the House of Clocks for a short while. How could he lose several hours? It’s as if time passed at a different rate within the House of Clocks—which was absurd.
-vii-
He went back to the House of Clocks the next day, and the next—day after day. But it was never open.
A few weeks later he received a phone call. The watch was ready to pick up. “I’ll be right down,” he said. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded like Esmeralda’s—but a bit on the shrill side. One of the things he loved about Esmeralda was her soft low speaking voice. Her mother had it too.
He raced down to the shop and rushed in, expectantly. No one was there so he rang the bell.
A young girl came out of the back room. Once again the family resemblance was marked. She appeared to be Esmeralda’s kid sister.
After he paid for the watch, he asked, “Is your sister around?”
“Sister?” she said, giving him a blank stare. Once again he felt foolish and confused.
“Never mind,” he said, between sixes and sevens. After leaving the shop he ambled absent-mindedly to the car, eyes to the ground, sulky and sullen.
Lost in thought, he reached for the door handle, but he hand swept the air. The car was gone! Anger instantly displaced dejection.
He looked up and down both sides of the street. But something was out of place. As he stood there, watching the cars pass by, every car was an older model car—as if he’d been catapulted back into the Eisenhower era.
He walked several miles to his house. Or was it his house? The house paint was a different tint. He went to the door. His key didn’t fit the lock. He rang the doorbell. A strange woman came to the door. He was speechless.
-viii-
Ethan slowly made his way back to the shop. As usually, it was closed.
He broke a windowpane in the front door and went inside. There was no one in the show room. There was no one in the backroom.
He went back to the entrance, the broken glass crunching underfoot. As he went outside and turned to shut the door, the window was no longer broken. He swung it back and forth. Broken on the inside, unbroken on the outside.
He strolled over to the sidewalk. The greasy spoon was gone. This time the cars looked like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.
-ix-
Vivian was in love with Ethan, but was Ethan in love with Vivian? That was the burning question. He was a new student. No one knew much about him excepting that he lived along and had a part-time job at the House of Clocks.
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