Eye of the Forest

by P. B. Kerr

  “Third is the fact that this place is kind of cold and spooky and I don’t much like being up here on my own, so the sooner I can complete the ritual and get out of here the better. I think the silence is beginning to get to me. I’d sure hate to be here at night.” He tossed another stone at the carving. “I don’t know how you stand it, pal.

  “Fourth is the fact that fundamentally, McCreeby was a very picky sort of guy and was always one for doing things exactly by the book and the proper way, even though a lot of times, in most situations, you can always cut a few corners. That’s certainly been my own experience. Frankly, he was a bit of a bore like that and just because he thought we couldn’t do without the third gold disk, doesn’t mean that it’s really the case. If this ritual is half as powerful as it is supposed to be, then I can’t believe that one little stupid disk is going to make all that much difference.”

  Another shadow moved across the ground, only this time it seemed human in shape. Dybbuk thought it must be McCreeby with the disk and felt a mixture of emotions. He was pleased to see McCreeby back, because he was lonely, but at the same time he was already looking forward to being rid of him again.

  “Well, you certainly took your time,” said Dybbuk. “Did you get it? Did you find the disk?”

  Glancing up, he found himself staring at a figure silhouetted by the bright sunshine. A figure that did not answer him. A figure that seemed to be wearing a cloak of feathers.

  Dybbuk sprang up. It wasn’t McCreeby at all but someone else. Someone or some unspeakable thing. An Inca not unlike the little figure carved in stone. This Inca’s face was also defaced, not by the stones hurled from some careless boy’s catapult, but by that greatest vandal of all — time itself. The baboonlike visage was that of a near-naked mummified man, part skull and part flesh, hardened by centuries, with some sort of material thrust by its long-deceased embalmers into the ancient nostrils and question-mark ears to prevent the escape of something decayed and liquid. Several teeth were visible on the upper jaw of the stiffened mouth. But in the large recessed eye sockets, behind half-closed eyelids, some kind of sinister life still moved like goldfish in two bowls of very dirty water.

  Instinctively, Dybbuk backed away from a figure he half recognized, half guessed must be Manco Capac. The same Manco Capac whose mummified figure had remained in the Peabody Museum, a gift from the explorer and desecrator of graves, Hiram Bingham, for a whole century.

  “Was it you I was talking to?” Dybbuk asked nervously. “If so, I meant no disrespect to you or your people. I’m a djinn, too. Like you. Only I’ve lost all my power. Which is why I’m here. To complete the kutumunkichu ritual and get it back. The same way you did, right?”

  “I see the twins have arrived,” hissed the figure.

  “Twins?” Dybbuk looked around. “They’re not here, are they?”

  “You, boy,” hissed Manco Capac. “You’re the twins. Two boys in one body. As if you didn’t know.”

  “You’re mistaken.” He started backing away from Manco Capac’s mummy. “So, look … nice to meet you, but I’ll finish up and be on my way, okay?”

  Anxious to be gone from Paititi as soon as possible, Dybbuk ran back into the dome and picked up the staff with a mixture of urgency and reverence. Swallowing his fright, he carried the heavy staff up the steps. He checked the release mechanism as he had seen McCreeby do, and then slid the rod precisely into the golden tube, appreciating for the first time the accurate workmanship of the ancient Incas who had fashioned these pieces of precious and semiprecious metal. Fear of Manco Capac and anticipation about what he was about to do — about what he was about to become — now dominated his thoughts. Would it work? Would the energy and heat released return his djinn power or would it destroy him? He was willing to take the risk. What else could he do? Dybbuk wiped the sweat from his hand and reached to twist the top of the staff.

  Then a voice he recognized stopped him.

  “Sure, before you do that, young Dybbuk, consider this: A trout in the pot is better than a salmon in the sea.”

  Dybbuk turned around in the direction of the familiar voice. He had to look hard to see who or what had spoken, although in his bones he knew exactly whose voice it was he had heard.

  It was Mr. Rakshasas.

  Or rather it was a thin, almost invisible, ghostly version of what had once been Mr. Rakshasas. Not so much a ghost as the ghost of an idea Mr. Rakshasas had once had, a long time before: the idea that one day Dybbuk would have need of some wise and fatherly advice of the kind he was unlikely to get from his real father, Iblis.

  “Mr. Rakshasas,” said Dybbuk. “First Manco Capac. And now you. It’s becoming like a convention of freaks up here.”

  “I heard you talking to that old prune face. He started out a decent sort of djinn. But I’m afraid that too much time has curdled his soul.”

  “I rather admire him,” said Dybbuk.

  “There never was a scabby sheep in a flock that didn’t like to have a comrade.”

  “What are you doing here?” Dybbuk asked Mr. Rakshasas. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m not so very dead that I can’t spare a little time to come here and stop you from throwing away your life, you young eedjit,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “It’s not easy being a child of the lamp when the light gets taken away. Ages ago, when first we met, I decided to attach a pale ersatz version of myself to you and the twins, John and Philippa. Like a sort of personal recording, if you like. Or a conscience, if you prefer. So that in a moment of great personal crisis, I might turn up and give you some necessary guidance. Private-like. Sure, a whisper in Nora’s ear is louder than a shout from the highest hill. Anyway, my advice to you is this, boyo: You might not have your power anymore, but at least you still have your life. You twist the head of that Incan staff to release yon rod, and you’ll regret it to your dying day, if you live that long.”

  Dybbuk sighed. “There’s no other way to get my power back. And I really can’t live like a mundane. I know, I’ve tried. I don’t know how anyone could live an ordinary life like that. So, please Mr. Rakshasas, do me a favor and go away.”

  “A silent mouth is sweet to hear, right enough. And if you really believe that, then you’re a bigger eedjit than I take you for. Listen to me, Buck, lad. When the old cock crows, the young cock learns. You want your power back? This is not the way. There never was an old slipper but there was an old stocking to match it. In time, a better solution than this will present itself. I promise you.”

  Dybbuk shook his head. “What good are your promises?” he asked. “You’re not even real.”

  “It’s a stubborn one you are, Dybbuk Sachertorte,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “You’ve a tongue like an adder, and no mistake. Just like your father. But sure, it’s no more I’m telling you now than you know yourself in your heart of hearts. That this is a big mistake you’re making.”

  “Then it will be my mistake,” Dybbuk said sullenly. “Not anyone else’s mistake.”

  “Another mistake in a long line of big mistakes.”

  “It’s my right to make my own mistakes,” insisted Dybbuk.

  “Sure, the fox never found a better counselor than himself.” Mr. Rakshasas sighed and shook his head. “Listen to me, young fellow, me lad. There are no shoes on your feet. So what’s the use of carrying an umbrella? Forget this idea. It will turn out badly for you and your other half.”

  “My other half?” Dybbuk shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “Sure, it’s not just atoms that can get split, Dybbuk.”

  Dybbuk made a noise like a bassoon and rolled his eyes. “Buck,” he said. “Just Buck, okay?” It was the last time he would ever say it.

  “It’s people, too,” continued Mr. Rakshasas. “A man can lose more than just his hat in a fairy wind.”

  “Look, I don’t know why you’re bothering with me,” said Dybbuk. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

  “If I didn’t think there was some good in you, Buck,
I wouldn’t be here, and that’s the truth. There’s good and bad in everyone. In you, most of all.”

  “What do I care about being good?” said Dybbuk. “It’s the good part that made me weak. Except for that, I might still have my djinn power. It was being nice to people, trying to entertain them, that got me where I am now.”

  “That’s nonsense and you know it.”

  “I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to turn this staff head,” said Dybbuk.

  “If you count three, Buck, you’ll never hear the count of five, do you hear?”

  “One.”

  “It’s a different kind of energy you’ll release, Dybbuk. And you won’t like what it looks or feels like.”

  “Two.”

  “Even the light-bearer himself, the son of dawn, the morning star — he fell and lost his glory and hated himself for all eternity.”

  “Three.”

  “You will become hateful unto yourself.”

  “I am hateful to myself already,” said Dybbuk, and turned the staff head. He felt the mechanism inside the little Incan god give a little click, and the heavy gold-covered uranium rod of the staff dropped away into the depths of the yellow rock mountain. He smiled a sarcastic sort of smile at Mr. Rakshasas. “It’s done.”

  The old djinn’s shade nodded quietly. “Well, I tried,” he said. “But sure ‘tis as much of a mistake to give cherries to a pig as good advice to a fool. I’ll not be troubling you again.”

  And with that he disappeared.

  “I thought you’d never leave,” said Dybbuk.

  He kept his hand on the little staff head but it was loose on the golden tube now so there seemed little point in holding it there. A few seconds passed and, wondering if anything had actually happened, he took a flashlight out of his backpack and peered down the tube into the depths of the atomic rock.

  A split second later, he felt a wave of energy and a strong glow of courage. Something had happened. It was quite unmistakable.

  For a moment, a great sickness took hold of him. This quickly subsided to leave a sense of something new and sweet. And for the first time he saw himself for what he no longer was. As something weak and disordered and fettered by the bonds of friendship and obligation and decency.

  That person now stood apart from him.

  While he himself was stronger and entirely careless of innocence and good. And Dybbuk knew himself, in the first moment of this new life, to be more wicked, a million times more wicked than he had ever dreamed was possible.

  While that other Dybbuk, the good Dybbuk, the one who now stood apart from him with a face full of horror at what he had become, was now an object of contempt and derision.

  And as the good Dybbuk collapsed onto the ground, the evil Dybbuk stretched out his powerful-looking hands, and the very thought of his own utter wickedness braced and delighted him like a hot shower.

  Appearing inside the dome of Paititi a split second later, Philippa, wearing her anti-radiation suit, registered the radiation levels in the lost Incan city with horror. They were completely off the scale. What was most horrible, however, was the realization that there were now two Dybbuks. It was as if he himself had split like one of the atoms whose huge and lethal power he had sought to control.

  One of these two figures — the Dybbuk she recognized more easily as her old friend — lay on the ground, huddled up against the blizzard of uranium neutrons that now raged inside the containment dome. He looked utterly exhausted. His skin was a deathly shade of gray and in his hands were large clumps of his own dark hair. Instinctively, Philippa knew that this Dybbuk was near death. And she might have gone to comfort him but for the presence of the other, the second Dybbuk.

  This second Dybbuk was a livelier, obviously healthier version of the boy who lay on the ground. He was taller, stronger, and older than the other Dybbuk. More ruthless, too. All the good that had once appeared in Buck’s eyes was now gone. Evil was written on his face so clearly that, for the first time, Philippa saw a strong similarity to his father, Iblis. And a powerful sense of misgiving that he would not permit her to come near the other Dybbuk kept her at a distance.

  “Buck,” she said, “what have you done to yourself?”

  “Realized who and what I truly am,” said the second Dybbuk. He uttered a little chuckle. “Discovered the real me. Taken charge from my better half. Better late than never, I suppose.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” said Philippa. “I’m talking to the other Dybbuk. The good Dybbuk. I’m talking to you, Buck. It’s me, Philippa. Can you hear me? Let me help you, if I can.”

  “It’s too late for him,” said the second Dybbuk, the evil Dybbuk. “I should have thought that was obvious. Even to you, Philippa.”

  “Buck,” said Philippa, “listen to me. Come to me. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” said Dybbuk.

  Philippa paused, searching for something else that might give the boy on the ground some strength. “Think of your sister, Faustina. And your mother. Buck, let me help you for their sakes. Think of their love for you.”

  “Love.” Dybbuk made a noise of derision. But the boy on the ground raised his head weakly and stared ahead of him, as if seeing nothing. “Phil?” he croaked. “Is that you? Help me. Please.”

  “You’re finished,” said Dybbuk. “Dybbuk is my name and what I am. Malicious. Turned away. Dislocated. Like a split atom. What I was always meant to be. There’s no mileage in being good. No recognition for it. People just think you are weak. It’s strength that matters. Being pitiless.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Buck,” said Philippa. “You can still prevail against him. Against his evil.” She held out her hands. “Come back with me. I can help you. My power is greater than his. Dybbuk knows it, which is why he doesn’t dare come near me.”

  “Your power is greater than mine, true,” said Dybbuk, and planted a foot squarely on Buck’s shoulders. “But mine is much greater than his.” And with that he crushed what remained of the part of himself that was still good.

  “There,” said Dybbuk finally. “Happy now? You’ve made me kill him, I think. Whoops. Boo-hoo. Aw, look. Poor little me.”

  This seemed to make Dybbuk stronger.

  Now that his good half was finally out of the way, Dybbuk felt a sudden exhilarating boost in his own newly recovered djinn power. Indeed, he felt much stronger than he had ever felt before; as if the good part of him had somehow always been holding back the extremely wicked part. Like that most pathetic of human things, a mundane’s conscience.

  At the same time Dybbuk guessed that Buck must have always known who and what Dybbuk really was. Poor Buck. How he had struggled against it. He must have been acutely aware that Dybbuk was every bit as nasty as his true father, Iblis. Possibly even nastier. And aware that Iblis had previously tried to destroy Philippa, Dybbuk did not hesitate. He resolved to try to do the same.

  Up until now he had been cautious of Philippa, sensing that her own djinn power was somehow enhanced by some ancient force present in the strange golden slippers she was wearing. But that earlier caution no longer existed. Every decent feeling he had once had for Philippa was now gone. He had quite forgotten the many good turns she had done him in the past. And silently uttering his focus word, he tried to concentrate all of his new malignance upon his former friend. Wasn’t it Philippa and her stupid brother, John, who had helped imprison his father inside a jade suit of armor, somewhere in China? She would pay for that. Dybbuk pointed at the sky over Paititi.

  “I wish for a great black cloud,” he said.

  Immediately the sky darkened ominously and a storm cloud as big as a city materialized over Philippa’s head.

  “And out of that great black cloud I wish for a huge fork of lightning to blast you into oblivion,” he yelled.

  A split second later the mountaintop was hit by a bolt of lightning that was the size of the Amazon River itself. It split the rock to a depth of
several feet and left a smoking scorch mark as wide as a bus. But it did not harm Philippa. As long as she wore the slippers she was protected by the ancient djinn power of the great Kublai Khan. A few seconds before the bolt of lightning struck the rock with a noise like a train wreck, she was transported a short distance away to a place of greater safety.

  “Stop it,” Philippa yelled. “Stop it, or I’ll hurt you, Dybbuk. You’re not the only one who can pull that kind of a stunt. My power is as great as yours. Greater.”

  But she did not finish her sentence. Dybbuk’s next wish brought a huge boulder sailing through the air, which narrowly missed crushing Philippa to a pulp.

  The sense that he truly meant to harm her was enough to make Philippa stamp her feet with anger and frustration. She was wasting her time. He was lost to the world of good. She could see that now. And this realization was enough to return her, in the blink of an eye, to the nuclear bunker where she had left her uncle, her brother, and her true friends. Not to mention Virgil McCreeby.

  “There’s no time to explain,” she said and, stamping her strawberry-slippered feet again, transported them all, in the wink of an eye, to their encampment on the other side of the Eye of the Forest even as Muddy was welcoming Sicky back from his journey to the Xuanaci village, and Hector the dog after being lost in the rain forest.

  Philippa took another radiation reading with the strawberry-colored Geiger counter, and finding the levels quite normal, started to relax a little. “We can take off these stupid suits now,” she said.

  “You were only gone for a split second,” said John. “What on earth happened?”

  “More than I think I can say,” said Philippa. “For the moment at least.” Her eyes filled up with tears.

  Nimrod placed a kind hand on her shoulder. “Tell us later,” he said. “When you feel more equal to the task.”

  For an hour or two she sat quietly on her own, and gradually recovered her composure. And when no one was looking, she dug a very deep hole and buried the gestalt slippers.