GARDENS OF NIGHT

by Greg F. Gifune

  The bee on his arm stings him, falls free and dies.

  * * * *

  “Were you dreaming?” Doctor Berry asks, her legs crossed at the knee, one leg bobbing slightly.

  “Am I dreaming now?”

  She never answers. “Do you believe there was something more going on, Marc? Some sort of conspiracy, let’s say?”

  He watches her a while, trying to read her, but she exists in a language he doesn’t speak. “I believe we were attacked by two escaped convicts.”

  “Do you believe that’s all there was to it?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  She gives a vague shrug. “It’s not about should or shouldn’t. It’s about what you believe. What do you believe?”

  “I believe I want to go home.”

  “Can you define that for me?”

  He thinks about it a moment. “No.”

  “Do you think Brooke could if she were here?”

  “I think Brooke would say something like she doesn’t have the luxury of shutting down.”

  “But you do?”

  “I haven’t shut down. I’ve awakened.”

  Doctor Berry arches an eyebrow. “What have you awakened to?”

  He closes his eyes, remembers the last time he was home with Brooke, and how they’d spent hours sitting together, saying nothing, watching the world through the windows of the living room. Winter was setting in.

  “In nature, animals mask injuries to survive and stay safe,” she’d said, her voice a hollow echo in the empty house.

  “You’re not in the jungle, Brooke.”

  “I’m not?”

  “They made you suck their cocks.”

  She brought a hand to her face, rubbed her eyes. “Why do you say these things to me? Why do you say them so nasty and mean and dirty? You just blurt them out as if they have no meaning. They raped me, Marc, the same as you.”

  “No,” he reminded her, “not the same as me.”

  Silence again enveloped the room. Marc strode to the window facing the street. The same unmarked car with tinted windows that had been there on and off for days was parked a ways down on the opposite side of the road. “Why are they out there?” he asked. “Why are they watching us? We’re the victims.”

  “Maybe they’re afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of you.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at her.

  “Of what you might do,” she added. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you afraid of what you might do?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Marc?” Doctor Berry’s voice opens his eyes, returns him to her cramped office. Someone groans then screams out from a nearby hallway, but such sounds are so commonplace here he scarcely notices them anymore. “Marc, what have you awakened to?”

  Tears well in his eyes, spill free. He can still feel the man inside him; still feel his warm blood dripping through his fingers; still remember the sounds of their final dying breaths.

  “God,” he says softly. “I think its God.”

  Thirteen

  Sparse candlelight barely illuminating the way, Marc shuffles behind Sister Sarah as she makes her way through winding catacombs beneath the farmhouse. An old and musty odor hanging in the air fills his nostrils, along with the earthy aroma of dirt and decay. The only sounds are their muted footfalls and the swishing fabric of Sarah’s habit as it moves with each step she takes. Shadows bend and creep along the tunnel walls, and Marc does his best to ignore the horribly oppressive and claustrophobic feeling closing around him, mindful that he is deep underground, an ant negotiating dark and narrow passageways carved into the earth by others who came well before him yet knew even then that they were preparing the way for those to come.

  You’ve chosen this path, Marcus. It belongs to you.

  Perhaps the claustrophobic feel of the corridors is to blame, or the lack of decent air, but Marc feels lightheaded and then rather suddenly drowsy, as if he’s ingested a sedative his system is struggling to fight off. He reaches out and touches the wall to his right, steadying himself as he follows along after Sarah, her dark robes blurring and leaving trails as they move about her.

  They come to a section where another corridor bends to their left, but Sarah continues straight ahead, never slowing. As Marc turns to look down the adjacent passageway, he sees light. Not fire, light. He stops, leans against the wall and draws some deep breaths. Unaware of his respite, Sarah keeps on.

  “Sarah,” he says. “Wait!”

  Movement within the light catches his eye. At the end of the corridor is a room of some kind. Thick red curtains of velvet hang across the doorway, but stand open. There are people in the room – women – all women – sitting or lying around on velvet couches and chairs, some standing and talking quietly amongst themselves, drinks in their hands, cigarettes between their lips, others smoking drugs from small glass or metal pipes. The women are all heavily made up and dressed in flimsy pieces of lingerie, like prostitutes in a brothel waiting on the next wave of johns. At their feet, the floor is alive, crawling and slithering, a blanket of insects and snakes tangled together and flopping about.

  As Marc moves deeper into the passage, a beautiful woman in a bustier, satin panties and spike heels notices him and rises from a couch. The night nurse, he realizes. Skuld... the future. Only now her hair is fire red, piled atop her head and held in place with ornate sticks. She grabs the curtains on either side of the doorway, and with a decidedly demonic glare, angrily yanks them shut.

  From behind the curtain comes a series of loud clicks, then horrible tearing sounds echo through the catacombs followed by a shrieking cry and a violent intake of breath.

  “Yes,” a voice hisses.

  Marc turns and staggers back into the main passageway. Sister Sarah is gone. There is only darkness now. He calls out for her, his voice hollow in the blackness. “Sarah, where are you?” Feeling the sides of the catacombs as he goes, he shuffles in the direction she’d been leading him. Taking each step carefully, he strains to see through the darkness ahead but cannot be sure of anything. Without the luxury of candlelight he quickly becomes disoriented.

  In the distance he hears what sounds like running water. Rain?

  Through the darkness, a flicker of light…

  He moves toward it, quickening his pace, but soon realizes it is not Sister Sarah’s candle but another, a series of them in fact, their flames bending into the main corridor from another side-room. Marc leans to the wall again, and peers down the tunnel to his right.

  The room looks to be a small underground chapel of sorts, and there is something cast on the wall, something enormous.

  The shadow of a cross, upside down…

  A group of impossibly old nuns in black habits are knelt in prayer, pale, bloodless, ravaged faces turned to the inverted cross above them, their hushed mantras drifting through the catacombs in a droning rumble. Religious artifacts from every conceivable religion are scattered about the chapel, on the floor, on tables, even the walls. Odd books showcasing ancient drawings and texts lay open near a bank of candles burning on the far side of the room. Yet rainwater leaks from the ceiling, pours down from the world above, caught by various ornate goblets and ceremonial bowls.

  Growling whispers murmur, emanate from some deeper part of the room Marc cannot see from his position. Rather than investigate its source he moves away as quietly as he can, again following the walls of the main corridor.

  Forcing away thoughts that he could be trapped in these catacombs forever, he follows the contours of the walls through the thick darkness until he hears something familiar, the faint swishing sound of Sister Sarah’s habit. But there is no sign of her candle. He advances, slowly, quietly.

  A strange red hue cuts the darkness, seeping through it and casting the area with the look of a colored filter placed over a camera lens. At the farthest reaches of light, he sees a nun standing in the main corridor, her back to him.

  “Sarah?” he asks
in a loud whisper.

  She looks over her shoulder with her bright green eyes and gives a subtle nod. It is then that he sees she still has her flame, but is cupping it with her hand. Marc sidles up next to her then follows her gaze to something at the end of a long hallway.

  The red light originates from behind a sheer curtain, casting whatever is behind it in silhouette. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, but once they have he sees the shape of someone lying on a bed behind the curtain, nuns positioned around the bed in a semi-circle, heads bowed. The prone figure stirs a bit, and a groan wafts into the catacombs. It doesn’t sound entirely human, and as Marc continues to watch he realizes the silhouette on the bed isn’t either.

  The red shadow is clearly female but as it changes positions an appendage behind it sways and bends in the air, long and oddly graceful.

  Like a tail, Marc thinks.

  He instinctually takes a step back as the panic of terror sets in.

  “Shhh,” Sarah whispers, a finger to her lips. “The Devil’s back there.”

  “It’s another of them, isn’t it?”

  “Urd,” she says. “Fate… the past… those are her domains. Together with her sisters they control it all, the past, the present, the future. But like the others, and like Yggdrasil – like all of us, really – she’s dying.”

  When he returns his gaze to the curtain the silhouette has changed and more closely resembles the crippled old woman he encountered at the church in the forest. “The third sister... Verdandi… the present…”

  “You’ve not yet seen her. But she’s here.” As Sarah moves away down the main corridor, he follows, determined to not be distracted again by whatever else resides within this bad dream of his, sealed off in these long-forgotten tombs.

  Eventually they stop and Sarah shines her candle on a closed door. “The catacombs are deeper and more extensive than you can even begin to imagine,” she tells him. With her free hand she pulls open the door. It scrapes a bit but gives way easily. Beyond the door lies an enormous stone staircase leading up to a distant pinpoint of light. “But this will lead you closer to the way out. This will lead you up.”

  “To Brooke and Spaulding?”

  She nods. “Eventually.”

  “Show me, take me to them. You said you’d take me to them.”

  “This is far as I can go. This is your path. It belongs to you.”

  “But you brought me down here.”

  “As they instructed,” she tells him, looking nervously behind her at the darkness from which they’ve come. “Go now. Hurry, please hurry.”

  “What’s waiting for me up there, Sarah?”

  Candlelight flickers across her face, the shadows distorting her beauty, or perhaps hinting at what truly lies beneath it. “Set us free, Victim Soul,” she whispers, backing away into darkness. “All of us. Set us free.”

  He looks to the steps and then back to Sister Sarah, but she’s gone, one with the darkness now.

  Marc begins his ascent.

  * * * *

  “What else do you remember, Marc? Can you tell me?”

  “I’m trying,” he assures Doctor Berry. “I know there’s more but…”

  The air in her office is thick, oppressive. She seems unfazed by it. “You said you felt as though you’d awakened to God,” she reminds him in her soothing voice.

  He paws the tears away, feeling stupid and vulnerable in his little chair in her little office. “I don’t know, I…”

  “Let’s explore that.” She brings a hand to her face, lets the tip of her index finger rest in the corner of her mouth. “Did you have a particularly religious upbringing?”

  “I was raised Catholic,” he explains. “But we weren’t fanatics or anything.”

  “So then, for you, this would all have a decidedly Christian bent.”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, I am a Christian, I suppose, but…”

  “But?”

  “But I don’t believe like I used to, not across the board anyway. For the most part I think we’re all wrong.”

  “No one’s right then?”

  “God is right. Man is wrong.”

  “Understood, but if we were to refer to a religious text that you had some experience with, as a Christian it would be the Bible, yes?”

  “I read it years ago as a child and young adult but not since.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “I don’t believe it literally, and much of it I find ridiculous and distasteful.” He shrugs with indifference. “But like anything else, there’s good and bad in it.”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense for God to reach us through whatever vehicle we know and are familiar with? For you, it would be a Christian-based approach because that’s what you know and were raised with.”

  “Yes, but as an adult I haven’t had much use for religion of any kind.”

  “Yet you believe in God.”

  “I do. I just think it’s much deeper than any of us understand, greater than any old books or stories, far more complex and personal than that. But, yes, in some form I believe there’s a God, a greater power, whatever you want to call it.”

  “What do you want to call it?”

  “I call it God.”

  Dr. Berry uncrosses her legs and readjusts her position. “All right then, if God exists, is there total separation between God and Man or do you believe a bridge exists between the two?”

  “I believe there’s a bridge.”

  “Following that thought, there’s often a lot of talk about bringing people to God, yes? But what about bringing God to people? How do you do that? What connects God to people?”

  After brief contemplation he says, “Creation.”

  “Good,” she replies, eyes wide. “See that through to the end.”

  “Without creation there can be no God. A god can’t be a god until it’s worshipped, revered, feared or even questioned, believed in or not believed in. Without creation none of that’s possible because there’s no one else there to have those thoughts or feelings. Without its creations it would exist alone in a void, not yet a god.”

  “So,” Dr. Berry says, flashing a bright smile, “until a god brings forth its creations, it cannot truly be a god.”

  “No creation, no god.”

  “Logically, wouldn’t this be a cyclical concept?”

  “Yes.”

  “No god, no creation either.”

  He nods. “A god without creation is not a god. And there can be no creation without a god.”

  “What about science, Marc?”

  “Science is also a god.”

  “And those who don’t believe in gods at all?”

  “Their belief – or disbelief – is their god.”

  “So would you say that without gods we don’t exist?”

  “One cannot exist without the other. We need each other. The question is, did God create us, or did we create God?”

  “Which do you believe?”

  “I don’t think it matters.”

  “Do you think God has chosen you, Marc?”

  Discomfort stirs in the pit of his stomach. “I don’t know.”

  “If he has, for what purpose exactly, do you know? Surely there would have to be a purpose, no?”

  Set us free, Victim Soul…

  “Yes. I just…” Pain flares through his temple. He touches it with his fingertips. His flesh is warm and clammy.

  “If there is a God then there must be some reason for you to have been put through such an incomprehensible amount of misery and hardship,” she says. “Or is it all random, a cosmic coincidence of some sort?”

  All of us.

  “I miss my wife,” he says softly, the words catching in his throat. “I miss her, I – I miss us. And I want it back.”

  Set us free.

  Dr. Berry lets him sit with his thoughts a while. After a few moments she says, “Maybe we should discuss the accident. I think you’re ready.”

  He stares at her
, confused. “The accident?”

  “The car accident, Marc.”

  Something inside him begins to thrash and fight, violently struggling to break free, to run from all that is slowly closing in on him. Wolves, he thinks, a pack of wolves creeping, circling, gradually closing the distance, closer and closer, jaws snapping and drooling in anticipation, eager to tear him to pieces.

  “The car accident in upstate New York,” she presses, raising her eyes to meet his. “The car accident that took the lives of your wife and best friend.”

  Fourteen

  In the narrow space, Marc’s screams of rage and agony echo below him, as if they’ve come from someone else. Mind splintering, he forces himself up the steps. But for the pinpoint of light in the distance, darkness reigns, and though he climbs hard and fast as he can, the light remains the same size and intensity. Heart drumming his chest and eyes straining to see, he continues a bit further, ignoring the musty odor permeating the area. “Take me,” he tells the light. “That’s what you want.”

  Stopping, he falls against the wall and tries to catch his breath. I’m the one you want, the one you need. Take me and give Brooke the life I saw in dreams: the life with Spaulding in the cabin in the woods, she was happy there. Give it to her. “This is her dream. Wake her up and take me.”

  Somewhere nearby he can hear water running, surging, strong and violent and alive. Countless thoughts and visions fill his head, firing one into the next to form an endless montage. Brooke, Spaulding, the men in the driveway, the three sisters, the strange nuns, the shadow of an inverted cross creeping across the wall, the church in the woods, the strange forest runners, Wilma in her cottage, the catacombs, the deer darting before the car, the sounds of impact, the whispers and growls, fire and water, blood and bone, death and life, love and hate, violence and peace, chaos and serenity, all of it rolling over and engulfing him in a relentlessly suffocating fog.

  In the distance the light still beckons.

  Whispers everywhere… circling him… stalking him… until one breaks free… a woman’s voice from somewhere not so very far away. Her words drift past but she remains concealed in darkness, hidden in the impossible…