The Ends of the Earth

by Lucius Shepard

  “Nothing bad.”

  “Then I will ask.”

  “I was thinking about making love with you again.”

  She made a pleased noise. “Why don’t you?”

  I turned to face her, drawing her against me, but as we began to kiss, to touch, I realized I was afraid of making love, of reinstituting that fierce animalism. That puzzled me. In retrospect, I had been somewhat repelled by my behavior, but in no way frightened. Yet now I had a sense that I might be opening myself to some danger, and I recalled how I’d felt while playing the game with Konwicki—there had been a feeling identical to that I’d had during our lovemaking. One of helplessness, of possession. I forced myself to dismiss all that, and soon my uneasiness passed. The sun melted like butter across the bed, and the sounds of morning, of birds and the sea and a woman vendor crying, “Coco de aguas,” came through the window like music to flesh out the rhythm that we made.

  For a month or thereabouts, I believe that I was happy. Odille and I began to make a life, an easy and indulgent life that seemed in its potentials for pleasure and consolation proof against any outside influence. It was not only our sexuality that was a joy; we were becoming good friends. I came to see that like many attractive women she had a poor self-image, that she had been socialized to believe that beauty was a kind of cheapness, a reason for shame, and that her disastrous affair might have been a self-destructive act performed to compensate for a sense of worthlessness. Saying it like that is an oversimplification, but it was in essence true and I thought that she had known her affair would be ill-fated; I wondered if my own affair had been similar, a means of punishment for a shameful quality I perceived in myself, and I wondered further if our budding relationship might not have the same impetus. But I should have had no worries in that regard. Everything—sex, conversation, domestic interaction—was too easy for us; there was no great tension involved, no apprehension of loss. We were healing each other, and although this was a good thing, a healthy thing, I missed that tension and realized that its absence was evidence of our impermanence. I tried to deny this, to convince myself that I was in love with her as deeply as I had been in love with Karen, and to an extent my self-deception was a success. Atop the happiness we brought to one another, I installed a level of passionate intensity that served to confound my understanding of the relationship, to counterfeit the type of happiness that I believed necessary to maintain closeness. Yet even at my happiest I had the intimation of trouble hovering near, of a menace not yet strong enough to effect its will. And as time wore on, I began to have recurring dreams that centered upon those black pyramids in the rust-colored desert.

  At the outset all the dreams were redolent of the first, dealing with dangers overcome in the desert. But eventually I made my way into the complex. The pyramids were enormous, towering several hundred feet high, and as I’ve said were reminiscent of old Mayan structures, with fancifully carved roof combs and steep stairways leading up the faces to temples set atop them, all of black stones polished to a mirror brilliance that threw back reflections of my body—no longer that of a dwarf, but my own, as if the dwarf were merely a transitional necessity—and were joined with incredible precision, the seams almost microscopic. The sand had drifted in over the ebony flagstones, lying in thin curves, and torpid serpents were coiled everywhere, some slithering along leisurely, making sinuous tracks in the sand. Here and there I saw human bones half-buried in the sand, most so badly splintered that it was impossible to tell from which part of the body they had come. Many of the buildings had been left unfinished or else had been designed missing one or more outer walls, so that passing beside them, I had views of their labyrinthine interiors: mazes of stairways that led nowhere, ending in midair, and oddly shaped cubicles.

  Before entering the complex I had been visited with certain knowledge that the buildings were not Mayan in origin, that the Mayan pyramids were imperfect copies of them; but had I not intuitively known this, I might have deduced it from the nature of the carvings. They were realistic in style and depicted nightmare creatures—demons with spindly legs, grotesque barbed phalluses, and flat snakelike heads with gaping mouths and needle teeth and fringed with lank hair—who were engaged in dismembering and otherwise violating human victims. In a plaza between two pyramids I came upon a statue of one of these creatures, wrought of the same black stone, giving its skin a chitinous appearance. It stood thirty feet in height, casting an obscenely distorted shadow; the sun hung behind its head at an oblique angle, creating a blinding corona of violet-white glare that masked its features and appeared to warp the elongated skull. But the remainder of its anatomy was in plain view. I ran my eyes along the statue, taking in clawed feet; knees that looked to be double-jointed; the distended sac of the scrotum and the tumescent organ; jutting hipbones; the dangling hooked hands, each finger wickedly curved and tipped with a talon the length of a sword; the belly swollen like that of a wasp. I was mesmerized by the sight, ensnared by a palpable vibration that seemed to emanate from the figure, by an alluring resonance that made me feel sick and dizzy and full of buzzing, incoherent thoughts. From beneath heavy orbital ridges, the eyes glinted as if cored with miniature suns, and my shock at this semblance of life broke the statue’s hold on me. I backed away, then turned and sprinted for my life…

  I came back to consciousness thrashing around in the dark, hot bedroom. Odille was still asleep, and I slid out from beneath the sheet, being careful not to wake her. I crossed to the door that led to the living room, my heart pounding, skin covered with a sheen of sweat. The room beyond was slashed by a diagonal of moonlight spilling through the window, and the furniture cast knife-edged shadows on the floor. I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm and was startled by the coldness and smoothness of my skin. I looked at my arm, and the feeling of cold ran all through me—the skin on my wrist and hand was black and shining like polished stone, channeling streams of moonlight along it. I let out a gasp, and holding the arm away from me, I staggered into the living room and onward into the kitchen, the arm banging against the door, making a heavy metallic sound. I tripped, spun around, trying to keep my balance, and fetched up against the sink. I didn’t want to look at the arm again, but when I did I was giddy with relief. Nothing was wrong with it; it was pale and articulated with muscle. A normal human arm. I touched it to make sure. Normal. I leaned against the sink, taking deep breaths. I stayed there for another fifteen minutes, trying to counter the dream and its attendant hallucination with rationalizations. I was smoking too much dope, I told myself; I’d lived for too long under emotional pressure. Or else something was terribly wrong.

  Houses and intricate buildings in dreams, says Freud, signify women, and for this reason I supposed that the pyramids might be related to my experiences with Karen—a notion assisted by the patent sexuality of the serpent imagery. There was no doubt that I had been damaged by the affair. For a year and a half prior to falling in love with her I had been forced to watch my father die of cancer, and had spent all my time in taking care of him. My resources had been at a low ebb when Karen had come along, and I’d seen her as a salvation. I’d been obsessed with her, and the slow process of rejection—itself as lingering as a cancer—had turned the power of my obsession against me, throwing me into a terrible depression that I had tried to remedy with cocaine, a drug that breeds its own obsessions and eventually twists one’s concept of sexuality. I wondered if I was still obsessed, if I was sublimating the associated drives into my dream life. But I rejected that possibility. All that was left of my feelings for Karen was a vengeful reflex that could be triggered against my will, and it occurred to me that this was a matter of injured pride, of anger at myself for having allowed that sad woman to control and torment me. The dreams, I thought, might well be providing a ground for my anger, draining off its vital charge. And yet I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion that the dreams and the game I had played with Konwicki were at the heart of some arcane process, and one morning as I walked
along the beach, I turned my steps in the direction of Konwicki’s hut, hoping that he might be able to shed some light on the matter.

  I hadn’t spoken to him since the night of the game, and I had seen him only twice, then at a distance; in the light of that, it was logical to assume that he had come to terms with what had happened. But the instant his hut came into view I tensed and began to anticipate a confrontation. Ryan was sitting outside, dressed with uncharacteristic informality in cutoffs and a short-sleeved shirt; his head was down, knees drawn up. When he heard my footsteps, he jumped to his feet and stood in front of the door.

  “You can’t go in,” he said as I came up.

  I was taken aback by that, and also by his pathetic manner. His eyes darted side to side as if expecting a new threat to materialize; nerves twitched in his jaw, and his hands were in constant motion, plucking at his cutoffs, fingers rubbing together. He looked paler, thinner.

  “What’s the problem, man?” I asked.

  “You can’t go in,” he said stubbornly.

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s the hell wrong with you?”

  Konwicki’s voice floated out from the hut. “It’s all right, Ryan.”

  I brushed past Ryan, saying, “You better get yourself together,” and went on in. The light was bad, a brownish gloom, and Konwicki was sitting cross-legged against the rear wall; beside him was something bumpy covered by a white cloth, and noticing a corner of orange wood protruding from the cloth, I realized that he had been fooling around with the game.

  “What can I do for you?” he said in a dry tone. “Sell you some drugs?”

  I sat down close to him, off to the side, so I could watch the door; the dried palm fronds crunched beneath my weight. “How you been?”

  He made a noise of amusement. “I’ve been fine, Ray. And you?”

  I gestured at the covered board. “Playing with yourself?”

  A chuckle. “Just studying a bit. Working on my project, you know.”

  I didn’t believe him. There was a new solidity to his assurance, and I suspected it had something to do with the figures and the board. “Are you learning how to play it?” I asked.

  After a silence, framing his words with—it seemed—a degree of caution, he said, “It’s not something you can learn…not like chess, anyway. It’s more of a role-playing game. It’s essential to develop an affinity with one’s counter. Then the rules—or rather, the potentials—become evident.”

  The fight was so dim that the details of his swarthy features were indistinct, making it difficult to detect nuances of expression. But I had the feeling he was laughing at me. I didn’t want to let him know that I was leery about the game, and I changed the subject. “Sounds interesting. But that’s not why I came here. I wanted to”—I pretended to be searching for the right words—“clear the air. I thought we could…”

  “Be friends?” said Konwicki.

  “I was hoping we could at least put an end to any lingering animosity. We’re all going to be living here for a while, and it’s pointless to be carrying on petty warfare…even if it’s only giving each other the cold shoulder.”

  “That’s very reasonable of you, Ray.”

  “Are you going to be reasonable? You and Odille were done before I came along. You must be aware of that.”

  “If you knew me, you wouldn’t approach me this way.”

  “That’s why I’m here…to get to know you.”

  “Just like a Yank, to think he can know something through talking.” Konwicki’s hand strayed toward the board as if by reflex, but he did not complete the movement. “I don’t let go of things easily. I hang on to them, even things I don’t really want. Unless I’m made to let go.”

  I ignored the implicit challenge. “Why’s that?”

  Konwicki leaned back and folded his arms, a shift in posture that conveyed expansiveness. “I’ve traveled in America,” he said. “I’ve seen slums in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. Ghastly ruins. Much more terrible in their physical entity than anything in England. But there’s still vitality in America, even in the slums. Some of the slums in London, they’re absolutely without vitality. Gray places with here and there a petunia in a flowerpot brightening a cracked window, and old toothless women, and children with stick arms and legs, and women whose bodies are too sallow and sickly to sell, and men whose brains have shrunk to the size of their balls. All of them moving about like people in a dream. Bending over to sniff at corpses, poking their fingers in a fire to see how hot it is. So much trash and foulness lying about that the streets stink even when they’re frozen. To be born there is like being born on a planet where the gravity is so strong you can’t escape it. It’s not something you can resist with anger or violence. It’s like treacle has been poured over you, and you crawl around in it like a fly with your wings stuck together. I’ve never escaped it. I’ve run around the world; I’ve cultivated myself and given myself an education. I’ve developed refined sensibilities. But everywhere I’ve gone I’ve carried that gravity with me, and I’m the same ignorant bloody-minded sod I always was. So don’t you tell me something’s not good for me. I’ll want it more than ever. Things that aren’t good for me make me happy. And don’t say that something’s done. I’m too damn stupid to accept it. And too damn greedy.”

  Despite its passion, there was a hollowness to this statement, and after he had done I said, “I don’t believe you.”

  He gave a caustic laugh. “That’s good, Ray. That’s very perceptive. I’ve other imperatives now. But it used to be true.”

  I let his words hang in the air for a bit, then said, “Have you been having odd dreams lately?”

  “I dream all the time. What sort of dreams are you talking about?”

  “About the game we played.”

  “The game? This game?” He touched the cloth covering the board.

  I nodded.

  “No…why? Are you?”

  His mocking voice told me that he was not being direct, and I realized there was no use in continuing the conversation; either he was lying or else he was running yet another game on me, hoping to make me think he knew something by means of arch denial. I tried to dismiss the importance of what I’d said. “A couple…just weird shit. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  If Konwicki was dreaming of that strange desert, if there was an occult reality to the game we’d played, I knew—because of my partial admission—I must look like a fool to him; to me, with his arms folded, half-buried in the dimness, he seemed as impenetrable as a Buddha. The thatched roof crackled like a small fire in a gust of wind, and behind Konwicki, mapping the darkness of the wall, were tiny points of lights, uncaulked places between the boards through which the day was showing; they lent the wall the illusion of depth, of being a vast sky mapped with stars, all arranged in a dwindling perspective so as to draw one’s eyes toward a greater darkness beyond them. I began to feel daunted, out of my element, and I told myself again that this was the result of manipulation on Konwicki’s part, that by intimating through denial some vague expertise he was playing upon my fears; but this was no comfort. I tried to think of something to say that would pose a counterspell to the silent pall that was settling over me. I had a great faith in words, believing that their formal noise elegantly utilized could have the weight of truth no matter how insincere had been the impulse to speak, and so when words failed me, I felt even more at sea. I looked away from Konwicki, gathering myself. The doorway framed a stretch of pale brown sand and sun-spattered water and curving palm trunks, and the brilliance of the scene was such a contrast to the gloom within, I imagined that these things comprised a single presence that was peering in at us like an eye at a keyhole, and that Konwicki and I were microscopic creatures dwelling inside the mechanism of a lock that separated dark and light.

  The weight of the silence forced me to stand and squeezed me toward the d
oor. “We haven’t settled anything,” I said, brushing off my trousers, making a bustling, casual business of retreat. “But I hope you understand that I don’t need any aggravation. Neither does Odille. If you want to make peace, we’re open to it.” I stepped into the doorway. “See you around.”

  Once outside under the sun, breathing the salt air, I felt easier, confident. I had, I thought, handled things fairly well. But as I turned to head back to the house, I tripped over Ryan, who had reclaimed his place beside the door, sitting with his knees drawn up. I went sprawling, rolled over, intending to apologize. But Ryan didn’t appear to have noticed me. He continued to sit there, staring at a patch of sand, fingers plucking at a fray on his cutoffs, and after getting to my feet, watching him for a second or two, I started walking, maintaining a brisk pace, feeling a cold spot between my shoulder blades that I imagined registered the pressure of a pair of baleful eyes.

  That same night, following a bout of paranoid introspection, I dreamed that I went inside one of the pyramids, a structure not far from the statue of the snake-headed creature that I had encountered in earlier dreams. Leery about entering, watching for signs that would warn me off, I passed through a missing wall and climbed a stair that ended several hundred feet above in midair and was connected to a number of windowless cubicles, all of the same black stone. I considered exploring the cubicles, but when I put my hand to the door of one, I heard a woman’s muffled voice alternately sobbing and spewing angry curses; I pictured a harpy within, some female monstrosity, and I withdrew my hand. On every side a maze of other stairways lifted around me, rising without apparent support like a monumental fantasy by Escher or Piranesi, reducing perspective to a shadowy puzzle, and I felt diminished in spirit by the enormity of the place. Snakes lay motionless on the stairs, looking at a distance like cracks admitting to a bright coppery void; black spiders, invisible until they moved, scuttled away from my feet, and their filmy webs spanned between each step. From a point three-quarters of the way up, the desert appeared the color of dried blood, and set at regular intervals about the complex were five more colossal statues, each similar to the first in its repulsive anatomy, but sculpted in different poses: one crouching, one with its head thrown back, and so on. I couldn’t help wondering if these six figures were related to the counters of Konwicki’s game.