I feel my peaceful breathing, the heavy blankets on top of me. I open my eyes, expecting to see my wife beside me, reading a book by lamplight. Instead, I’m alone in a single bed under layers of fur comforters.
I can see my breath in the dim, reddish light. I look around.
No other furniture, a backpack, shoulder bag, and pile of folded clothes on the floor against the wall to my right. I sit up and see a short stack of spiral notebooks next to it: my life’s work. It’s always with me as I have no permanent address.
I look up at the wall near the ceiling. Emergency lights. The only lights.
Slowly the sound comes in.
First, my steady breathing.
Next, the stillness.
Dripping, creaking, distant muffled voices.
A laugh.
I remember who I am.
A consultant brought in by the mystery solving Derringer family. More Scooby-Doo than Supernatural, despite the name. Not that they would understand either of those references.
This is the abandoned hotel next to the old haunted Gilded Djinn amusement park. They got the generator working so they could live here while studying the place.
The dad was possessed. They didn’t know it. The ghost of a Parisienne serial killer put to death in 1938 had possessed him shortly after they got here three weeks ago. The ghost of a child, dead since 1953, told me about it last night. Even though I can see them, the child was but a wisp, a pink sparkling cloud in the shape of a skull. She'd been trying to reach me for days, but the serial killer was strong and suppressed, repressed, the others, hid itself plainly behind living flesh in a way that even I hadn’t noticed.
She can’t tell me her name. Maybe she doesn’t remember it. I call her Papillon because her fluttering colors remind me of a butterfly and she seems to like that.
She could only whisper and hint as to say more courts his attention, but I understood last night. I was supposed to stop him from killing again as he’d taken a secret mistress from town. They were never good enough. No matter how hard he tried to raise them from their station. No matter what he bought them, no matter how he lavished them. No matter what he did to educate them. They were all beneath him and they wasted his time and his affection. Again and again. They were so worthless that killing them was a mercy, the kindest thing he could do for them.
And the body he wore while doing it? Well, they should have had a stronger will than his own, shouldn’t they? The flesh is weak and he is most definitely not weak. Let them sort it out if they can. They swagger around in warmth, wearing blood and sweat; smelling, touching, feeling. Let them figure out what happened, why they went mad. If, with their vaulted senses and biological faculties, they were unable to ferret him out, then they deserved their fates.
I shrug off the covers, invigorated by the chill, breath deeply.
Mildew, moisture, decay. For some reason, I grin.
I slide around and step out of bed.
SQUISH
Shivering ice shoots up my legs all the way to my shoulders.
I remember the dripping sound, whip my head to the inside wall.
drip
Rivulets of water from the room above running down the wall.
I “see” the room, the father smiling at a strange brunette woman in a steamy bathroom. Behind his eyes, I see another set of eyes, greedy, indolent, and apathetic.
Papillon floats out of my head.
“sorry,” she whispers, a voice closer to my ear than her floating form appears.
I feel her shame at invading my space but there was no violation.
“Don’t be. It was far more expedient to show me than to try to tell me.
“When?”
Time is elusive to a ghost. Being detached from a body’s signals and urges leaves one prone to missing days or weeks at a time.
A quiver passes through her. “i stayed aware so it must only be hours”
“So he’s close to finishing the act, then?”
She hesitates. I can feel her reaching out, testing the air, probing for his eyes.
“yes” she finally whispers.
I slosh over to my belongings, now sitting in two centimeters of water.
I look down at myself, a young adult man, black; thin, but well-built; wearing loose sleep pants and boxer shorts. No shirt.
I kneel down to check my fresh clothes. Even the top ones are damp.
I glance at my other belongings.
My eyes go wide in panic. My heart pounds and my ears ring.
My notebooks.
I gently touch the top.
Wet.
My vision goes red and my teeth grit, grinding so hard my jaw hurts.
At the same time, tears well and begin to spill.
I gingerly scoop them up and place them on top of the covers on the bed, afraid to spread them out and risk further damage.
Thirty years of notes, observations, dreams, musings, philosophy, journaling, secrets.
My heart sinks to my stomach.
So many memories.
Hands in fists, nails digging into my palms, tears rolling down my face, breathing in ragged bursts.
“I will kill him,” I think, seeing the desiccated, skeletal form of the ghost riding Paul Derringer, using his body for pleasure and murder. “I will rip him from the body, tear him into strips, and swallow them one at a time while he wails in horror.”
How does one kill a ghost? I know how yet rarely have I done it.
I will relish killing him. I will bask in his suffering as I eat his essence.
Shocked at my own thoughts, I try to calm myself, try to slow my breathing, control my pulse.
Papillon nudges me over and over.
She cannot see me like this.
I look at her but can’t speak.
A page from my notebook floats in the air, deftly separated from the rest without damage.
It sparkles with Papillon’s light, flattens, dries, without smearing the ink further, without tearing or ripping, without sticking to the other pages.
Moments later, the dry, clean page floats to the bed and another appears and undergoes the same methodical process.
She can rescue them. She can save my past.
My tears switch to those of relief, joy and mostly, of gratitude.
I nod to Papillon.
My blue jeans will be far to wet, even for an industrious little ghost. The sleep pants will suffice. My boots will be fine as the water was not deep enough to rise up over the rubber.
The closet still has the dusty old outfits of the last person to stay here. I find a shirt only a size or two too large.
Time is slipping, so this must be good enough.
The family waits for me outside.
Paul grins as if he knows that I know. “About time, Tarek. We thought maybe you’d taken a sleeping pill. Not sure how you slept through the commotion.” He’s fit for his age, effortlessly athletic and buoyant. Before the ghost indwelling, his generosity and kindness were overflowing. Now he prefers sarcasm and backhanded compliments.
The sleeping pill reference tells me what he did with the woman I saw in my vision.
Ainara, the mother, weary and weathered, smiles purely. Even beneath the hard years, of chasing ghosts, of raising four children, her deep alluring elegance seeps through. In another life, I would have courted her, married her, and kept her far away from this nonsense, forgoing even my own natural gifts so that I might spend all my efforts giving her everything she ever needed.
Adam, the oldest brother was away on his own investigation, leaving barely 18 Tom and the twin teenage girls, Cori (Corinna) and Eri (Erinna), named after Greek poets. The girls were destined to get their own spin-off set of adventures, that was obvious. Tom would have his own, as well soon enough. After Adam disappears during his investigation in the Appalachians in the coming months leading such that Tom sets off to find him.
The parents would retire into the background, showing up for the sake of nostalgia and for frequent flashbacks and phone calls for guidance.
But this story was to be the crowning achievement of the family as a unit, the last time they all worked together, save Adam whose absence sets up the next series. This was high stakes, lives on the line, pulling out all the stops. The possession of Paul was telegraphed far earlier to those who had been paying attention, long before I was brought in as a cross-over character.
They stand around a glowing hole in the parking lot leading down into the earth. It had not been there the night before.
Smoke or steam rises from it and it glows with red light, similar to the emergency lights in the hotel.
“That opened up last night?” I ask.
“The storm?” Ainara asks. “The air rang like collapsing steel for hours behind a wall of black water.”
Cori adds, “there was no lightning.” Then Eri, “but plenty of thunder.”
Tom shakes his head, hands on his hips. “I don’t like it.” He motions toward me. “T, come take a look, please. Let us know what you see.”
I nod and walk over, letting my vision fade in and out of this world and the other.
In the other, I see pale, glowing tumbleweeds drifting and flowing toward the hole, not fast, not a torrent, but it is like a drain has been opened into the other world and any ghost form or related energy not firmly connected is being drawn back toward it.
I think about Papillon and how she was eager to repair my notebooks wondering if she was seeking something to keep her attached for just a little while longer.
“It’s an opening into the other world,” I tell them plainly. “Give it time and it will clean up the infestation at Gilded Djinn all on its own.”
Paul immediately interrupts. “But then we’ll never know what caused it. We have to go in. We have to figure this out.”
Ainara stares at Paul, holding her mouth steady, squinting at him, but saying nothing.
Tom, newly a man, counters, “Dad. We are not prepared for this. We do not have equipment for spelunking, certainly not into the freaking other world.”
The girls, who I know have underdeveloped psychic powers of their own, glance at the hole and at each other, sharing a conversation only they can hear. I know they want to go inside. I know they want to go inside and are afraid of the fact that they want to go inside. I know they will be pushed to the brink and the struggle to save their family will enable their psychic powers to burst through.
I know that hole is more than just a portal to the other world. I know we are expected down there. There are long-gestating plans finally coming to fruition. Entire bloodlines worked toward this day.
We will go down into the hole.
We must.
Paul looks at me. “Tarek can help us see our way, right?”
I lick my lips, rub my chin, feel the inevitability, the pull of the narrative.
“I will do my best, Paul. I will keep you safe.” It’s a lie, but a necessary one.
So, after Paul loans me a pair of pants and I go change, after I gather a few trinkets from my belongings that might help us, an antique ghost-light, a handful of protective carvings, a bracelet for each of the twins and for Ainara.
Tom has the globular, gold, tin, silver, copper, and glass ghost-light. I demonstrate how you squeeze the mechanism on the side, it spins a dynamo inside which generates a burst of electricity used to shine the directional light for a few seconds. The light will reveal ghosts and ghost energy illusions for what they really are. In other words, it will let them see the world the way I can albeit only briefly.
The opening reveals a short drop to a ramp carved out of the asphalt and then the earth and then stone angled gently enough that we needn’t even brace ourselves from falling. The air is warm, buzzing with otherworld energy, filled with the remains of ghosts and other things decaying back into their constituent parts. I see the pieces of their bodies, violently torn, shredded, spread around like wallpaper, like paint, like window dressing. All for our benefit, to keep us comfortable.
Yet these ghosts volunteered for second death. It is the only way their remains would produce warmth instead of bitter cold. I can’t understand it. I know what I’m seeing but why would so many do this. What is so important about the Derringer’s coming down here?
Even with my foresight, even with my other world connections, even with my knowing the boundaries and artifice of this world, I can’t understand it. I can’t see what comes next. I know the ending. I see the ending. But the path is darkness.
What I notice most of all is that, when the end comes, I am not there.
“Be careful,” I advise as I cross a rickety bridge first. “Use the ghost-light. Some of the boards are missing but its enchanted to look whole.”
Tom cranks the handle and tries it out.
“Hmm.”
Tom kneels down and feels where a board was missing but visually seems to be there. His hand slips through.
“You can’t touch them,” he says. “You can feel each step with your foot before you take it.” He tells the rest of the family, “Just go slowly.”
On the other side, I see them feel the way ahead, one plank at a time.
I glance further down the path, seeing how the corridor of stone narrows ahead. It is filled with unsavory ghosts of all kinds, pirates, soldiers, ancient warriors, spirits of things not-human at all. I see them then I don’t see them, then I see them again. Something is trying to blind me.
In the distance is a green glowing village filled with both living humanoids and ghosts seemingly operating together. My vision shifts into their midst. They chant and dance around a black pit, wider than a skyscraper and at least as deep. They call to something sleeping, something to protect them from the family arriving from the surface. They fear the surface. They know what the dead have told them. They know about World Wars and weapons that can atomize cities in a flash. They know about slavery and prisons and courts with twisted laws that protect kings while subjugating the people. They know about great monstrous cities built on the backs of obliterated forests, siphoned waters, pluming world covering smoke that kills their own children. They know of the madness of those who live above them, how we destroy and ruin our world and they fear we are coming for theirs.
The thing that answers them from the pit is so massive that a single eye cannot see it, so through a thousand eyes I peer into the depths and see it rise, a mountain of stony flesh, mouth that could swallow a blue whale, its own eyes burning with heat and intensity. I feel its hunger and its pain. It was sleeping and now it is awake.
They know not what they are waking. They know not what it will do to them or the world above.
I pull back and remember myself, remember my history, remember some of who I really am.
I call to Iškur, Adād, 𒀭𒅎, 𐎅𐎄, I ask for lightning to sate this thing, to feed this creature so it does not eat the world itself. I cannot tell it my name for I have forgotten it, but I beg it to listen, to answer. I beseech it to protect not just this family, not just the fearful creatures dancing to their own doom, but to protect everything.
I call to the old gods, the forgotten gods to save this place for I understand that we were brought here to end it.
That was the purpose.
That was the plan.
I plead to save this reality.
I plead to save this version of Ainara.
The ground glows blue and a river of electricity rushes along the walls to the thing in the pit.
The electricity does not hurt it. Instead it feeds it. The creature gorges and gorges.
I reach into the stream and feel a rush in my veins and nerves, all firing at once, all bubbling and splitting, vibrating and humming. I burn, sizzle, my ears burst and my eyes boil in their sockets.
I hear my laughter echoing.
I see Ainara seeing my body inflate like a balloon in a split second before I explode into a mist.
I hear her weeping, shielding the children, Tom pushing past to see if any of what I was is left.
I feel Paul and not-Paul tugging at each other’s thoughts trying to make sense of what just happened.
But I am no longer there.
I shift sideways.
I’m at the bottom of a carved sandstone staircase that spirals up. Adam and Tom are right behind me. I can hear scrabbling in the distance, yelling, the clashing of steel on steel. Cori and Eri float a few centimeters off the ground, pushing against the air, against the onslaught with all of their considerable telekinetic might.
Adam shouts, “They can’t hold them back forever, T.”
Tom looks up the shaft next to me, “What do you think?”
I feel the entire stairway, heading up. Not the surface, but close. It crosses over into some other place along the way.
“It’s safe. I’ll float up, y’all come behind as fast as you can.”
Tom nods. “Got it.”
He turns back, “Come on!”
I’m already half-way up the shaft, feeling the quality of the air shift from oppressive to open, to something else.
I hear them running and hear the others pursuing behind them.
First Adam, then Tom. As as Cori and Eri make it I use my own abilities to crush the stone stairs, sending them tumbling into the shaft, sealing it and preventing anything from coming up after them, after us.
Tom slaps me on the back and hugs me, “Damn good work, Tarek!”
Adam adds, “Yeah, I’m really glad you thought to call Tarek for this.”
Cori says, “He saved the day for sure.”
Eri says, “He kept us from being taken.”
We’re close to the surface and it’s easy enough to find a path. We weren’t the first to come this far, just the first—in a very long time—to be foolish enough to go any deeper.
I was honestly surprised to get the call from Thomas. I didn’t think I was welcome.
Back at the homestead, I went into the stasis room to see Ainara, frozen twenty years ago after the last time I worked with the family. The unexpected explosion of other worldly energy sucked the life out of her. She’d be dead if not for the sorcerer I found who know how to do this. She wasn’t dead or alive, she was frozen in time.
I didn’t expect them to let me talk to her. Every moment out of stasis was another moment close to death. But I could see her, standing there, immobile. Her missing left eye a reminder of how wrong I was that night.
The twins had snuck up on me. They could do that now.
“She asks about you,” Cori says. Eri adds, “she misses you.”
I knew they brought her out from time to time when they needed her wisdom. I knew the sorcerer had said she would keep trying to find a way to reverse the anti-life damage that had been done to her soul.
I turn to them. “What happened to your dad?”
They look at each other and I feel a thought pass between them, but I can’t decipher it.
“Ask Tom,” Cori says. “Or Adam,” Eri adds.
I leave Ainara and find Tom in the study behind the desk engrossed in a massive, ancient book.
“What’s up, Tarek?” he asks, barely looking up from the tome he’s reading.
“Where’s your dad?”
“Hmm,” he says, then motions for me to sit down across from him.
As I’m sitting he asks, “You remember Dr. Gallagher, right?”
“The one who saved your mom, of course, I remember her.”
“Well, she didn’t have the same luck with dad, unfortunately.”
My heart sinks, “Paul’s gone? I’m so sorry.”
Tom shifts his head left and right.
“He’s not quite gone.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll just show you.”
Tom stands up and leads me out of the study to their trophy room full of artifacts and items picked up in their adventures. It smells of dirt, tree sap, ancient smoke, and libraries full of papyrus.
He points to a chest on a slightly raised section of floor. It’s the size of a steamer trunk.
“Go ahead,” he motions. “Open it.”
The lid is heavier than it looks, resisting as if there is suction or magnetism holding it in place. Finally, it snaps open.
Inside, I see an entire world, like a doorway, hiding a jungle. Birds caw, large things stumble in the distance, but the smell is dank, cemetery, rotten.
“Tom,” croaks a broken voice. “Adam?”
Something shambles into view below the portal, brown, ragged, covered in leaves and dripping worms and worse.
“Tarek? Well, I’ll be,” it groans.
I see blue eyes buried somewhere in the hideous face and hints of a smile behind the rictus grin.
“Paul?”
It can’t be. But it is.
“What happened?”
“Thought I’d found a way to bring Ainara back,” he rasps.
“I was wrong.”
He shuffles for a moment, looking away, looking at his hands.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think.
He looks back up.
“If you get a chance to talk to her, Tarek. If you find a cure for her.”
He looks directly into my eyes.
“Well, you have my blessing.”
Then he shuffles out of view.
I’m still staring when Tom closes the lid.
He puts his arm around my shoulder.
“It’s an undead world down there, Tarek. I mean a world where the undead thrive and the living are endangered.”
He pulls me away.
“Dad is safe there, more than safe.”
At dinner, they bring out dish after dish, meat and potatoes, meat covered in cheeses, meat in exotic sauces.
I’m still struck by what I saw through the portal in that chest and can’t even think of food.
My mind wanders, distracted, distraught. I can’t focus. I can’t think.
What was Paul thinking to end up like that? What did Dr. Gallagher do to him? Why was that the only option?
Something slips and my perception fully crosses into the other, something that never happens on its own. I have to will it and I certainly did not will it.
I see the banquet before me as it really is. None of the meat is cooked. It is raw. It is fresh.
Tom, Adam, Cori, and Eri are no longer human. I see them as the ghouls they have become.
The girls smile at me with lipless grins. “We see you,” they say in unison.
I pull my sight back but still see them, still see the reality.
Tom’s head is grotesque, held together by wires and metal staples.
“Tarek! You get to join us. Mom insisted.”
It’s not clear how Tom manages to speak at all, but that was his voice coming from his head.
Adam slides in with, “She didn’t want to leave you behind after we head in after dad.”
Cori says, “Dr. Gallagher is already waiting for us.”
Eri says, “This is the way to cure mom, what dad almost got right.”
I swoon, my head spinning, trying to grasp what they are doing, what they are asking me to do.
The world closes in, becomes a pinpoint of light and everything goes dark.
I sit in a cavern much like the one from before, but there are no ghosts here, just cowering warriors and their shield maidens before them.
I sit because the caves are too narrow for me to stand. At 7 meters tall, I tower over even the tallest among them.
I see the arena in the distance and kneel to shuffle toward it. I will fight them there. I will fight them all.
I long to see if Benttite flesh is as tender and sweet as was their rivals, the Amelonians.
I grunt and crawl until the cavern opens up for the arena. It was filled with fighting men and women, sparring and competing.
“I come to fight,” I tell them, my booming voice echoing off the stone walls. “I come to fight in your legendary arena where the pinnacle of human strength, strategy, and fitness strive to best one another.”
Alas, when the gate swings open, the arena is empty, all warriors having fled in my wake save one who does not seem the fighting type.
“My Lord,” he addresses me, kneeling and breaking eye contact. “Instead of combat, perhaps you would prefer a different style of conquest.”
He motions toward another exit and I see healthy men and women in little clothing eyeing me with half smiles and curiosity. I scent them immediately and understand the offer.
Although I cannot fully honor it, I am moved by their humility.
I nod to the little man and move toward the harem, my mutilated manhood doing its best to prepare for the experience.
They appease me. They indulge me by performing with each other. I see methods of pleasure and how to both delay and prolong it that are truly inspirational.
All the while I am plied with exotic foods of which I have never tasted, cooked and uncooked meats of varying shapes, strange fruits and vegetables, and drink with flavours the likes of which I had never encountered.
Each time I am approached to join in their sexual proclivities, I redirect the man or woman back to the throng, to show me something new, some other act forbidden by all the gods of the surface world and I am never disappointed.
I had heard of their prowess in war and battle but not of this, not of their creative depravity in the realms of sex or of their artistic skill with meal preparation. I supposed the renowned Benttite generals, soldiers, archers, and reavers must be fighting for something. Why not this?
After much gentle prodding, I finally show them my sex. I lift my furs and reveal to them what curse befell me.
My great size was a boon granted by a god whose name I was never taught. But to keep me from bringing about a great race to challenge those gods, I was hobbled.
My penis is wide as an oak tree yet as short as a what remains after one is felled and what skin it does have is covered in yellow pustules filled with unsavory fluids.
“It has always been thus,” I assure the awestruck audience.
Several among them assuage me they have the finest doctor’s in the known world and that would be honoured to treat me and find a cure.
Again, I am touched by how they treat me, a giant who had come to find pleasure in killing and eating their best while their blood still ran hot.
I consider their words as I am overcome by weariness and lose consciousness. I cannot know if I will survive the night, if their hospitality is genuine or a trick of their vaunted intelligence.
“I’m don’t know what the problem is, Sol,” I say, standing on a pearlescent balcony overlooking the black sky. “I had a fine time down there. You think it’s done? Kaput?”
I walk back into Sol’s workshop. He stands or maybe sits. It’s hard to tell with him. He stits holding the rough-shaped platter up at arm’s length, eyeing it with a grimace, squinting.
“I think it’s garbage, Jove.” He shrugs. “I should just eat the whole thing and get it over with.”
“Wait a second, Sol.” I’m trying to save it. I’m trying to save her.
“Stick it in the void. Let them stew on it. Let them see if they can figure out that there is no other world but theirs, that everything they need just happens to be there when they need it. See if they can look beyond it and ascend.”
Sol is rolling his eyes, shrugging, throwing up his hands, but saying nothing.
“Talk if you want to talk,” I shout.
“Bah, you never listen when I do,” he yells back.
“Stick it in the freezer then,” I shrug. “Come back to it later.”
We both know “later” means “never” but I said what I said.
“How many freezers do you have, Sol?”
He waffles before muttering, “three.”
“Three? That’s not bad!”
A chorus of voices rises up from the blackness that surrounds us, “three thousand.”
“Hah,” I laugh. “That’s sounds more like you than three.”
“What does that mean?” he gestures while tossing the world stone to the side.
“You never finish anything but you can’t throw it away either.”
He’s still muttering, “never finish anything, you should see what I’m building, what I’ve found.”
He’s definitely standing up now, but still not any taller.
“Come with me!” he demands.
I follow after him, looking down at his starry crown. Was he always this short? Was he always this bald?
The golden jeweled staircase of light leads to the basement where the floor itself is torn up.
“You ripped up your own floor?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips.
“Look underneath you old fool!” he calls.
I see it now, a silver stream leading off into the infinite night. Big enough for a toy boat if we had a toy boat.
Standing next to it, I can hear a shimmering trickle, a hint at consciousness, novelty.
I see a broken up chair built into a crude boat, barely big enough to stand in.
Sol and Jove argue.
Jove asks me, by name, by my real name, a name I had forgotten.
“Jessica,” he says. “Why don’t you get us in that boat.”
I thought I was Jove. I look down and see Jove’s body: a tall old white man in flowing saffron robes.
I have our body step into the shell of the boat made from a chair.
I slip our feet under a little overhang to keep us from falling. It clamps down gently.
“Do you need to tell Sol about me or… whatever?” I ask inside Jove’s head in my voice, not his.
Jove doesn’t answer. He’s still arguing with his old friend.
The boat shudders and starts to move away from the shore.
I have our body sit down, against the back of the chair, now a small platform, so we don’t rock the boat and fall out as we see where it leads us next.
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Outro dia desses estava lendo “homo bolsonarus” do Renato Lessa (disponibilizado de graça na rede) e uma das coisas que acho instigante no texto é a concepção de que o bolsonarismo é uma instituição.