“And then what?”
The mystic is taken aback by the simplest of questions. “That would be up to you.”
“And my debt?” Donovan meets the mystic’s gaze.
“What you have needed since his passing. You will be able to tell him goodbye.”
“And my debt?” Donovan repeats, losing patience.
“That will be up to him,” S’n Te matter-of-factly responds.
Donovan nods his head in acknowledgment and barely makes his way to the chair. He raises his hands to his eyes and sobs.
ADIRONDACK PARK, UPSTATE, NEW YORK
Later, on the day the world ends . . .
New York City falls first. The fires have overtaken all vision; the ground continues to shift and split. Daniel Baxter has perished. X and Searle have vanished; Adriel has escaped to another hell with Taebal and the Over-dweller Eron.
Samantha. The rabbit hole.
She is fully conscious as she falls. The most difficult realization of all is that she is not dreaming. She notices also that either the hole is wider than appearances or it has no sides. As she descends she hits nothing.
And then she is no longer falling but there no impact. Samantha, retaining all awareness, believes that she has simply stopped. There is darkness around her, though not black. Something bleaker, something far less safe, with vague hints of light emanating from some other unknown here or there.
Samantha stares straight ahead at the sudden glimpse of shadows that appear to swarm about her. The shadows are nearby, behind her, to both sides . . .
She recalls the mystic S’n Te. Within the work of Project Ara it was recorded that the mystic had once encountered similar shadows, and now she believes she is in that very spot, well under a castle once inhabited by a king. A king of Mirkwood. Though she cannot be certain, Samantha is convinced the images in her presence are the same that presently entrap her, the dark elves. The name Aragranessa Flameleaf comes to mind. As Samantha calmly eliminates her distractions and focuses on her surroundings, the shadows overtake her until her body is obscured in black.
When the shadows pull away seconds later, the dark elves appear to her in familiar form. Her calm becomes a mounting panic; for as long as she maintains the ability to make a decision, she decides that she must only watch and listen.
The forms taken by the dark elves hold no resemblance to anything that she has heretofore passed. They are neither Over-dwellers nor gods nor monsters of the likes of dragons or their ilk.
She changes her mind.
“Who are you?” she tests.
She notices that one of them does have a tail and they would, indeed, be considered monsters by any other definition. They are familiar form to her because, again, their collective presence has been recorded through the ages. The border of what is real and what is created, though, is a dank blur that, for now, makes no difference whatsoever.
Demons, is the first thought to come to her mind. The dark elves are the demons I wrote about.
She is approached. “Tell me,” one says. “Tell me about your Over-dwellers. Tell me about the factions and what you intend to do about it.”
“Whose side are you on?” another asks.
“Remains to be decided,” says another. “She will not speak against any of us, nor any of them.”
“No?” she says, surprising them all.
“No?” asks the first.
“Mortal against immortal. Gods of man against gods of man,” she says. “Over-dwellers against mortal and god.” She gathers the courage and looks up into his bloody red eyes. “This is why you will spare me. You need me.”
“You should not look at me such,” he advises.
She ignores him. “Demon against—”
Samantha loses her voice as flesh from her throat and neck pulsate and tear into tiny pieces that proceed to crawl upward from her larynx like ants obscuring an anthill. The tatters form a new elastic layer of skin that covers her mouth, effectively terminating her ability to speak.
A new demon approaches. “The decision will be ours,” it says. “Not yours. The difference is the humans do not influence us. We influence them.”
Samantha closes her eyes and submits to the invasion.
“We anticipated as much,” the new demon says. “And now that you have accepted your fate and can no longer influence the weak among you, the split you have been battling in the name of Ara has been similarly quieted.” This demon is pushed aside and another takes his place. His presence is something quite larger and certainly more horrifying.
Before he speaks, Samantha contemplates that horrific possibility. The split—
“Unless, of course, we are incorrect,” the larger demon says. “In part, Hell is the circle you and the poet Dante have assumed, as time and again you shall fall as if for the first time.” He kneels before her. “Or so you would have us believe, if you are Ara and your visits are but another manipulation.” Samantha does not understand. The demon gets closer. “Again and again for eternity you will descend, until you either learn to defeat us, which is an abject impossibility, unless you are who our ruler suspects, or we will finally realize you are not who we seek, and we will force you to bring us to the muse, to the girl called Adriel . . . or to the Eight, based on Ara’s . . . puppeteering of time and space.” Samantha watches, silently, tears streaming. “Beleth fears that if you are not Ara or an incarnate then you must be of an unknown order.” The demon gets in her face. “The question is, which order would that be? What you call ENIGMA . . . or LOCUS?” Samantha struggles to answer, then quickly realizes she cannot. The demon resumes. “King Beleth sent us to you for the answer. To our own endgame . . . the boy who has been unified must not be allowed to sire. I ask you, then . . . who are you with?”
Samantha’s eyes go wide as he comes still closer, his foul breath and unbearable stench quantifying into something more, a horrifying vision of whose appearance is based on her deepest and darkest imaginings.
An Open Closing Letter To The Media
As I’ve said time and again, nothing is as it appears.
Donovan Bradley is alive; he may soon reunite with his beloved son . . . assuming the positive identification of one Don Bradley.
And there is a bargain in the offing that may change everything yet again.
I mentioned earlier that Matthius Alexi, whom Ara’s father called “The Chronicler,” may have been responsible for writing the entirety of our holy books. Now understand this: I’m no idiot. A fool, sometimes, but no idiot. I fretted over including that comment earlier. I believed that I risked the goodwill of my most open-minded readers by doing so,but if they—you—have gotten this far and you’re still reading these words, consider yourself a member of a most exclusive club.
So here’s your reward, a reveal you probably didn’t see coming:
Matthius Alexi? He’s an Ara incarnate. Think about it. Considering the above words, it sort of makes sense, doesn’t it?
Not really? Well, explanations are forthcoming.
One more: Matthius Alexi . . . the Creation Breaks, Matthew Was Right code found by Sidra . . . Matthew from The Bible . . . Matthius = Matthew? As I learned from the writings of Lewis Carroll, any problem can be mathematically solved.
We’ll pause on that riddle for now.
Brikke does not know all there is to know about Matthius. He cannot, despite being Ara’s father and a god, because he has been blinded by his belief that his path is the only way. (And how many times have you heard that from me?)
And Samantha? Who is she, really?
We’ll see.
ENIGMA? LOCUS? Battle lines being drawn?
Another clue.
What we have here is a tale of mortals and immortals, mystics and Over-dwellers and demons who answer to neither and, somewhere among them all . . . a misguided former muse once known as Ara who will make all the difference.
Who is Aragranessa Flameleaf?
As to myself and Sidra, here’s a random
reference: If Stanley Kramer’s filmic work of art, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, changed the world by helping change U.S. laws of interracial marriage, which to then were illegal in sixteen states, then maybe there is hope for me yet. I would be loath to discount that matter entirely, as loathsome as the idea may be for some.
Coming Attractions: We’ll delve further into movies in our next volume. Blacklisted writers and so on, those artists who were unable to create. Troublemakers and the like.
As for Rise of the Red Dragon? Well . . .
Taebal, as we had known him, has drowned and appears to have become something quite else. (And remember, Percy Bysshe Shelley too is long gone, not-so-incidentally also drowned in an unforgiving sea.)
Connections, connections . . .
Our prior volume, which I have subtitled Creation, was weighted heavily with the motif of fire. This present volume has addressed the essential of water, in case you haven’t noticed.
We’re not reinventing the wheel here, folks. We are indeed going to address our essential needs in these pages, all relevant to my Ten Measures, and I’ll continue to prove how Ara has endangered it all. Earth, air, fire, water . . .
She’s canny, that one. To my senses, the muse has left nothing up to chance.
And neither has Brikke. Stay tuned.
Concluding . . .
I mentioned earlier that soon it will become cold . . . very, very cold. I’ll give you a preview, by going back. I’m going to wrap up this busy volume with the words of Mary Shelley, from her seminal Frankenstein. The ambitious explorer Robert Walton, who captains a ship headed to the North Pole, rescues an ill Dr. Victor Frankenstein from the frozen Arctic. The doctor dies as he tells the tale of the monster he created . . . and then this, the denouement, including words from his creation:
‘Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever.
‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’
He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
I never did consider Frankenstein’s creation a monster. He was entirely too soulful, and clearly much more insightful a creature than his creator.
His creator, as a metaphor for man himself. As I wrap, consider this: Does man ever stop lying to himself? He is not God, you know.
Unless man’s attainment of God is the real monster?
Victor Frankenstein and (a pre-Disney) Geppetto. That’s a twosome.
Speaking of monsters and other sensitivities . . . the afore-mentioned Rise of the Red Dragon and other such explorations? We’ll hold off for now. We still have six volumes of this monster left to explain all.
Oh, and one more ... techie thing? Regarding the back and forth tenses throughout this second volume, the inconsistency or imperfection in style and the like? Reason for everything. As always. And a time to answer for everything too ... which is not yet.
So there you go. I guess I’m done, for the time being.
The clock continues to tick.
And now sleep.
EPILOGUE
SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH,
DORSET, ENGLAND, FALL 1885
Years following Mary Shelley’s burial in Bournemouth, and decades before J.R.R. Tolkien’s arrival, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson—the former Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson—and his wife, Fanny, moved to the quaint seaside resort town on England’s south coast. The bohemian Robert, who was fast becoming a literary celebrity with his first success, Treasure Island, had relocated to Bournemouth in his quest to find a suitable environment for his increasingly ill health. Fragile and rail thin, he had suffered throughout his life from a number of crippling ailments regarded by friends as complications of undiagnosed tuberculosis.
His house was purchased as a wedding gift for Fanny by Thomas Stevenson, Robert’s father. Robert named the house, which was located on a peaceful parcel of land at 61 Alum Chine Road, Skerryvore, after the tallest lighthouse in Scotland. The tallest lighthouse in Scotland, incidentally, as built by Robert’s uncle, Alan Stevenson, and itself named after a remote Scottish reef twelve miles southwest of the island of Tiree meaning “The Great Skerry.”
Early on, Robert—Louis to his familiars and, as such, heretofore considered here—fretted over the move.
I am now a beastly householder, he wrote on March 12 to his friend, English writer and critic Edmund Grosse, but have not yet entered on my domain. When I do, the social revolution will probably cast me back upon my dung heap . . . I shall call my house Skerryvore when I get it: SKERRYVORE: c’est bon pour la poeshie.
Once settled in, however, acceptance, and productivity, came quickly.
~~~
Night.
Tossing and turning in response to a nightmare. His wife, horribly frightened, awakening him.
“Louis!”
He rouses slowly. He looks around and sees Fanny. “What day is it?” he asks, shuddering.
“You don’t know?”
“What’s the date?”
“Louis—the year? —1885. Is this September or October?”
“No difference, my dear,” Louis angrily replies. “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale! I was in the midst of a transforma-tion, and . . .” He gathers his thoughts.
“And?”
He grabs her arms for support. “I need to write.” He tries to stand, but can barely manage.
“What possesses you?” Fanny asks.
Louis sits up from the bed, his feet touching the floor. “I need my robe,” he says. “The muse has come to me.” She retrieves his robe from a hanger and helps him fit his arms through the sleeves.
He stands, weakly, and stumbles to his desk.
She watches as he sets to work. “Do you have a name?” she asks.
“No, not yet,” he says, breathless with anticipation. “There was a doctor . . .” He scribbles on a pad. “He was transforming when you awakened me, transforming . . . into something hidden, something terrible.” He ponders his words. “Hyde . . .”
Fanny draws a breath and nods. “Goodnight, dear. That was quite the start for us both.” She kisses his head and leaves the room, quietly shutting the door behind her.
She’s been through this before.
He waits for the click of the door catch. “And so she leaves me,” he says to himself as he adjusts his chair. “And I am yet again alone with the muse . . . in my own maddening portal beyond the rabbit hole.”
And so he focuses, and he writes:
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary . . .
TO BE CONTINUED
GLOSSARY
Abeyance – An indefinite period of earth-pause followed by a correction, as determined by Ara, the muse.
Centrist – The letter X intersects at its central point. The prodigy, X, believes he has so-chosen the initial in deference to his hero, Malcolm X. In fact, the initial is a mark a
nd has been enforced upon him as an identifier. Within a multiverse of alternate realities, X’s realities have been integrated, and his universe is singular. He is the Centrist as prophesied by the mystic S’n Te.
ENIGMA – A shadow organization whose foundation and specific purpose has yet to be determined.
Infinity Pass – The void, the vast unknown, unattainable by man or god, with the exception of Ara.
LOCUS – A second shadow organization, so-identified by the mark of X from shoulder blade to lower back. LOCUS was founded by the mystic S’n Te, who has prophesied the arrival of a Centrist—the prodigy named X. S’n Te has foreseen that the prodigy is fated to become the father of a demon more powerful than even Beleth, the king of Hell.
Over-dweller – A restless spirit.
Pre-Genesis – The period before the so-called Big Bang and/or events as elucidated in the Bible’s book of Genesis.
MISCELLANY
AND NOTES ON SOURCES
Entries from the journals of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley have been reprinted from non-copyrighted material sourced within the public domain. Save for the inclusions of parenthetical markings within words, to complete or elucidate certain proper spellings or meanings, and select paragraph breaks, this material is unedited.
Excerpts from Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and select grimoires, have been reprinted from the original works, which are likewise copyright-free and residing within the public domain.
About the Authors
Joel Eisenberg has been interested in the mechanics behind artistic creation, an ongoing theme of The Chronicles of Ara series, since he penned the nonfiction How to Survive a Day Job in 2004. Interviewing seventy-plus professional creatives, including celebrities from several artistic industries, he credits his “mentor in a box” tome with hastening the realization of his dad’s inspiring words from forty years ago. Writing a novel with similar objectives, much less a series, has been on his bucket list since.
Chronicles of Ara: Perdition Page 40