Deeper

by Jeff Long

  A worried face hovered into view. It belonged to a young man with old eyes. He looked undecided about his violent skills. American, guessed Ike. “I was sleeping,” the man apologized.

  “Me, too,” whispered Ike.

  “Beckwith,” the man introduced himself. “I’m the one who struck you down.”

  “Am I your prisoner?”

  “My what? Christ, no.”

  Ike tried to remember the circumstances. Like the assassin just now, he had been stopped in the act of stabbing his enemy. At the crucial instant, in midplunge, his wrist had exploded. Now Ike understood. His hand had been shot away.

  “You did this?”

  Beckwith winced.

  “How far away were you?” Ike asked. It didn’t matter, particularly. Even at close range, it would have been a fantastic deed.

  “Four hundred yards plus.” That was interesting. The man had memorized the architecture of his shot.

  “Good eye,” said Ike.

  “What?”

  “You have a gift.”

  Beckwith frowned at him. “Yeah, what, for blowing up the good guy?” He opened Ike’s shirt and checked for injuries with a soldier’s blunt touch, no time wasted on what was not vital. His look of worry turned to relief. “He nicked you, that’s it. I thought he’d killed you.”

  “He would have,” said Ike. “But you were here.”

  This time Beckwith accepted the absolution. Ike saw the guilt pass from the young man’s face. Then he began to fade.

  “Stay with us,” said Beckwith. “We’re almost out.”

  Ike was a step ahead of him, though. He was out already.

  A pair of dockworkers left the monster on the beach, to go join the big benjo, or luau. Deep inside his skull, Ike listened to them. They had been hired to babysit him for an hour or so, but they were island boys and superstitious. He was dying, they were sure of it, and neither wished to risk the haunt. Also, some famous movie stars and a rock band had flown in with “the family units,” and the American embassy was footing the bill for the party, meaning the music and barbecue were bound to be awesome. So they ditched him in the shade of a palm tree.

  There Ike lay on a nylon stretcher. The sea breeze fingered his long, white hair. He listened to the waves breaking and the suck of water and the hissing of sand. He sifted the smells: seaweed, a dead gull, and in the far distance, charcoal and a roasting pig. The sunshine filled his lungs.

  None of these pleasures spoiled his long meditation. None of it was any more or less real than the house he was erecting in his mind. Out there on the far side of his eyelids, the Great Illusion was changing scenery again, that was all. He would have been content to go on borrowing bits and pieces of the beach for his imaginary house.

  That was when the song found him. His contemplation stopped. Same voice, same song. It was coming from the ocean, and at first Ike was sure the abyss was hunting him again. He had not heard it for many years, not since it had pulled him from his bed and Ali and into the earth and down to the angel. Eyes shut, Ike gave a soft grunt. His house on a green hill fell to ruins.

  “‘Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands,’” sang the voice. But it was a young voice, not old. “‘And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon…’”

  Ike resigned himself. The song was here to take him away. There was no escape. He began climbing from his ruins. For better or worse, it was time to reenter the world. No more hiding. No more seeking.

  “…‘the golden apples of the sun.’”

  He opened his eyes.

  She was dancing by the water in a heat blast of light, a girl with molten gold for hair. While she sang, she played tag with the surf, chasing it in, darting out.

  It was his daughter.

  The instant he saw her, Ike was sure of it. Who else could it be on this empty beach? Why else would she be singing this song of his? She must have escaped, clever girl. Or the angel had relented and set her loose. Or had he been lying about her capture all along? Had she been free and waiting for him for all these years? Whatever the explanation, Ike’s heart soared. He tried to slow it. After so much time lived in fear and deprivation, his joy felt dangerous.

  “Maggie,” he called. It came out a raven’s squawk. She didn’t hear. He laid his head back to gather strength. An IV bag hung overhead. Sunlight sparkled in the fronds.

  The hubbub of partiers drifted down to him. A woman—a mother, Ike put it together in his head—screamed her jubilation. Oh God, oh God, oh God. The children and families were getting their happy ending. Somehow, for some reason, so was he. If only Maggie would come closer.

  Out of nowhere, a fighter jet shrieked past, wagging its wings. For an instant, Ike thought it might be welcoming him back. Then he heard shouts and applause rise in the distance. A steel guitar launched into Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner.”

  In and out his daughter ran with the surf. She was the one who had sung him down from the world, and it was fitting that she should be the one now singing him back up into it. Ike wasn’t sure how this was possible, since she hadn’t yet been born when he went into the cave. But he had learned to respect certain mysteries. Perhaps Maggie had searched him out in her very beginning so that he could be where she needed him in the end. He couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. She was here, and all he needed now was Ali. The three of them could live in a house on a hill, why not?

  “Maggie,” he squawked again in vain.

  Obviously he was going to have to go down to her. Ike sat up, too fast. The blood drained from his head. He landed facedown in the sand beside the stretcher, out beyond his little patch of shade.

  The sun bored into him. The sand burned. Flies mobbed his wounds. Ike got as far as his knees before running out of gas. He sank back on his heels.

  “Maggie.” But the surf drowned him out.

  Ike’s head sagged. White sand powdered his legs. He brushed at it with the delicacy of an archaeologist, discovering the leather beneath all mottled with alien text and mumbo jumbo. The words had leached into him so deeply he could not read his own story anymore.

  Two bare feet planted themselves in the sand. A shadow fell across him. “Ike,” said the girl.

  He lifted his head. A Band-Aid plastered one of her knees. He searched for a face up there, but her hair was all flames, fire from the sun. “Maggie?”

  “I’m Samantha,” she said.

  Samantha, he remembered. That was the name of the madwoman’s child. But that couldn’t be right. The child had been killed. Had the angel lied to him about his daughter’s name? Indeed, had he lied about Ike having a daughter in the first place? And yet the child knew Ike’s name. She knew his song. She was connected to him somehow.

  Ike started over. “I’m your father.”

  “No,” she said.

  He tried again. “We’ve never met, Samantha. I left a long time ago…”

  She stopped him. “Ali sent me.”

  At last, he thought, the door was opening. “Your mother…”

  “No, Ike.” She patted his head. “Listen.”

  “Is she here?”

  The girl’s hand glided down the bones of his face. Abruptly she gave his beard a sharp tug. “You’re not listening,” she said.

  This time Ike listened. The child was a messenger. She told him things he didn’t want to hear. Maggie was dead. Ali had descended, guided by his initials, and taken his place with the teacher. Nothing was the way he had imagined.

  “Ali,” he said. “With him?”

  “Don’t try to find her,” said the child.

  “What?”

  “She said to tell you. Don’t go looking for her. She has work to do.”

  Ike stayed on his knees in the sand, receiving her message one fragment at a time. This was not his child. Maggie had died. Ali had gone into the abyss.

  “Your mother,” he said, “she was holding a braid of yellow hair. It was your hair.”

  “That w
as before. Now she has me to hold.”

  “They said her daughter was killed.”

  “Something happened,” said the child. “I was lost. Then I opened my eyes. Ali was there. She chose me.”

  “She brought you back?”

  “She pulled me from the river.”

  “Why you?”

  “You mean why not your child? She said you’d ask.”

  Ike waited.

  “It’s because,” she said, “Ali’s not coming back. And my mother’s a mother. And you are not a father. You wouldn’t know what to do with a kid.”

  That much was true, devastating as it was, and so Ike accepted the rest as well.

  He had failed. He had traded away his life with Ali and their baby, and buried himself in the earth, and for what? To one day rise from his grave and save the world? What arrogance. Lazarus had come back to life, too. But that didn’t make him a savior, only a dead man walking.

  Far away he heard the revelry. People were laughing and dancing. Music pulsed through the air. For a moment he had thought he might have a place in the city of man. He was nothing more than a fool circling its wall, though. The revelry mocked him.

  The girl stepped back, and the sun stabbed his eyes.

  He let go of his hopes. He let go of his child. His head sagged.

  All his life, from the summits to the deepest void, he had been fighting gravity, an endless fight that no one ever won. His chin came to rest on his chest.

  Flies feasted on his teardrops. Let them eat his emptiness. His shadow looked black enough to fall into. Fall, he thought. Go back into the dream. He closed his eyes.

  “Ike,” said the girl.

  He didn’t move. The dream was so much easier. In there he could lay aside the suffering. He could live a thousand lives.

  She yanked his beard again.

  “You’ve slept enough,” she said.

  He opened his eyes. “What do you want?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ali,” he remembered. “I have to go find her.”

  “She said don’t.”

  “He’ll destroy her.”

  Another yank on his beard. “Monkeys!” the child snapped at him. “Quit chattering.” Spoken like a Zen master. Or a nun. It shocked him.

  He squinted at her. “Who are you?”

  “Quit hiding,” she said. “No more distractions. No more wandering. You have to get ready.”

  “Ready?”

  “You’re wasting time.”

  “Ready for what?”

  She took his arm, and got him to his feet, and aimed him at the water. He swayed like a man on stilts high above the ground. “Where are we going?”

  “Not me,” she said, “you.”

  She steered him toward the ocean. The music was getting faster behind the trees. Ike concentrated on his feet. Somehow he made it across the stretch of sand.

  The waves lapped low and lazy, no higher than his knee. Even so, without her help he would have fallen. It got easier the farther out they went.

  Ike was getting the picture. Back into the dream. He waded deeper into the turquoise water until his feet barely touched. Like that, at last, the weight of the world lifted from him. Gravity let go.

  He kept going, slowly tiptoeing out toward the sun. No more fighting. No more pain. He was going to float right off the planet.

  A hand gripped his arm. “That’s far enough for now, Ike.”

  Her eyes were blue as the sky. She had sunbeams for hair. The surf rolled in her voice. “A little farther,” he told her.

  “But the tribe needs you,” she said.

  What tribe? For as long as he could remember, Ike had soloed in life. The only time he had ever really opened up his heart, the deep had robbed him blind. Maggie was gone, or had never been, and Ali was entombed.

  “What do you want?” he said. She had whispered him into the abyss, and whispered him out of it, and now she was doing it again.

  “What do you want?” she said back to him. Her golden hair was splayed on the sea foam.

  Ready for what?

  It gave him a headache. After a few minutes, Ike rested his head back on the water. He felt the sea cleaning his wounds. Fish nibbled at his legs. The darkness scaled from his hide. It bled from his mind.

  Ready for what?

  The sun painted the inside of his eyelids pink. His feet just touched the bottom, though another step beyond would plunge him into the abyss. He rested on that watery brink. When he opened his eyes again, the child was gone and the island had drifted to one side. The sun had sunk to the horizon. It startled him.

  The beach was far away and empty. It looked like a desert island passing him by. The castaway had slept right through his main chance. Ike eyed the vast expanse waiting for him. It frightened him. But he was philosophical. One way or another, now or later, the abyss would have reaped his sorry bones anyway.

  The sun slid lower.

  Ike drifted without a fight. There was nothing left to fight. Get ready, the child had said as she led him into the ocean. Now he knew what for, a beautiful sunset, and then the endless night.

  The horizon blazed with colors, and then blinked shut. The blue ocean went black. A shiver ran through him. The water was cold. The breeze shifted.

  He saw the flicker of a bonfire through the screen of trees. A plume of white smoke rose up like some prehistoric signature. It drafted across the water full of scents: cooked meats, onions, spices, clean sweat, and perfumes. Music and voices and laughter carried out to him. He could even hear certain words.

  They were celebrating like there were no tomorrow. Or like there were a million tomorrows. Celebrating their children. Celebrating victory. Celebrating survival. It struck him. Conquering death, that’s what they were doing. No matter that darkness was falling, they had their fire and stories and each other. Their communion pulled at him. It kept him at bay. Pass on by.

  The current towed at him. Something bumped his leg, something alive and with weight to it. Predators, everywhere predators. Pass on.

  His toes barely reached what little floor remained. He danced for contact. Emptiness yawned. Let loose.

  He fanned at the water to keep his toe tip of purchase. It had muscle, this ocean. To be honest, he was afraid of it. Where had his still mind gone? Chin raised high, Ike clung to the island with his eyes.

  Just then a woman appeared on the distant beach. To his astonishment, she knew his name. Her siren’s voice skipped across the water. He was not one to break cover so quickly, though. He took his time, making sure this was no trick. Was he the dream or the dreamer? Was he calling to himself or hearing himself called? Saltwater stung his eyes. He spit it out, quietly.

  More figures emerged from the trees. His name multiplied. The children had come down, trailed by their retinues of family. They never quit searching for him, he realized, first Ali tracking his initials, now these girls with their flashlights and flaming torches wagging across the sand.

  “Ike.” A girl ran into the dark sea. Her parents darted after her and pulled her back. Others lined the tidal edge. They had found his tracks and knew he was out here, but were afraid to go farther. Perfectly understandable. It was night and there were monsters out here.

  The tribe needs you.

  Something changed in him.

  They needed him. He knew the monsters. Maybe not all their colors and shapes and weak points. But even one-armed and one-eared and heartsick, he had no fear of the beasts themselves, only of the angel who had fathered them and the abyss that had no end.

  He was a monster himself, all wild and whittled down by his terrible journey, and they would always wonder whether he was really part of them. But they were his people, and defenseless against what they did not know. Whatever might come unleashed if Ali failed, he had learned there was worse waiting beneath it. More than any one dragon he might slay, that was their need: knowledge, not the fight, would save them from the night.

  As if sensing his ch
ange of heart, the abyss made a sudden grab for him. The current yanked his feet loose and he went under. The crescent sliver of beach with its lights and the stars flickering overhead: he lost them. The water reached its tentacle down his throat. The void sucked him backward.

  Ike struck at the water, and it only sucked him deeper. He grabbed for the surface, and it slipped through his hand. The leviathan closed its mouth around him. His back scraped bottom. Headfirst, he felt the seafloor slipping past.

  Then something reached up through the water and touched him, an animal or rock, though it felt distinctly like a human hand. It did not clutch at him exactly, but it braked his slide down the tilted slope. For a moment, hardly long enough for him to register the opportunity, the void was held back.

  Ike didn’t need a second invitation. Digging his toes into the silt and shells, he rooted for purchase. Invisible creatures wormed free and scattered from his touch. He was running out of air, but had a foothold in the living now. His panic stilled. He pushed to the surface, and took a breath. The beach was there. They still lined the water’s edge.

  He sank back to the bottom again, purposely this time. His body had grown too heavy to swim. But he had his direction now, and the island’s ramp lay underfoot. He planted his feet back into the ocean floor and took a step. Slow as a giant, he began climbing out of the abyss.

  ARTIFACTS

  SBIRS (Space-based Infrared System) High—Satellite 4

  22,300 MILES ABOVE CHINA (GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBIT)

  The lens zeroes in on a hole that is opening in the earth.

  A glistening cylinder appears on a tail of fire.

  The ICBM spears upward and then makes an elegant arc down.

  It slides around to the dark side of the planet.

  A minute later a flash of light disturbs the horizon.

  50

  DIALOGUES WITH THE ANGEL, NUMBER 11

  Back and forth, the angel paces. His thigh muscles bunch and spill. A masterpiece of his species, thinks Ali, all one of him. The veins remind her of a lion. His mouth is stained with blood. It gives his beautiful face the look of a snout. He often returns home from his walkabouts like this, stinking of his kills. Home. That’s how the library feels these days, like her home. And his. Ours.