by Sean Hancock
Speaking excitedly, Tammuz asks, “So, does it really taste like battery acid?”
Reclining on my blanket, bag doubling up as a pillow, I say while wincing, “Imagine a snake covered in razor blades slithering down your throat.”
“That good, huh? How long before it kicks in?”
“Shhhh,” I say, looking up at the endless expanse of darkness peppered with stars and planets and a glowing moon. “I need to focus.”
“Okay, sorry.”
Setting an intention is important, so I close my eyes and visualize Ashkai, not as the great Egyptian prince of old, but as the African American who ended my life in order to save it. I think about all of the great things he has done and how much I love him, but it’s difficult to stay on track. That’s because the memory of what happened in New York—and everything since—has unsettled me, releasing a torrent of questions I don’t have answers to, questions that are making me angry, suspicious, and afraid.
Who is my master really, and what has he been hiding? Who is the imposter, and where does the voice come from? What about those dark, whispering flames and, of course, Meta? What does she want, and how close is she to finding me?
“You all right, Sam?” a voice asks. I open my eyes. Leaning over me, his hand resting gently on my thumping chest, is Tammuz, only he looks different. His stomach is aglow with a pulsating internal light that’s making his entire body shine and bloom at two-second intervals. The effect is mesmerizing until I notice something dark and sinister hovering above his left shoulder. It’s an intelligent entity; that much is obvious. It has long, veinlike tentacles that have attached themselves to various parts of Tammuz’s body. I’ve seen things like this before, spiritual vampires who siphon energy from their hosts. That’s why Tammuz’s light is pulsating when it should be continuous. His life force, his soul, is being sucked dry.
While the situation is bad, it’s not unusual. Negative entities attach themselves to human beings all the time. Even so, this is bigger and more powerful than any such parasite I have encountered in the past. Left unchecked, it will cause Tammuz serious psychic and emotional damage. It’s something we’re going to have to deal with, just not right now.
“I think you were having a nightmare,” Tammuz says. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, don’t worry,” I whisper. “Let me be.”
There’s a buzzing sound coming from inside my head. I close my eyes. I know from experience it’s only going to get louder and more overwhelming. In fact, it won’t stop until the medicine has finished retuning the chemical infrastructure of my brain, the means by which human consciousness can perceive and interact with planes of existence otherwise inaccessible.
Tammuz says something else, but it’s hard to hear him over the noise. And anyway, he’s a million miles away now.
Everything is vibrating and shaking. It’s as if an avalanche is approaching.
I hear a woman’s voice inside my head.
“Are you ready?” the stranger asks, her tone flat and emotionless. “Here it comes.”
Almost instantly, a deluge of fragmented colors and shapes smash into me, carrying me forward. The impact is so violent and powerful that it manages to break me into pieces, each one flying off in a different direction.
The sensation of forward momentum is quickly replaced by a swirling feeling, as if I am inside a huge washing machine. All around are millions upon millions of different colors, shapes, and geometric patterns. There are also pyramids, hieroglyphs, and large stone heads with reptilian eyes. While moving, I glimpse a piece of myself in the maelstrom and try to lock onto it, but it quickly gets lost in the chaos.
Who is the me seeing me? I ask. Who is the I asking?
That’s when my grip on things start to loosen, and panic sets in. My journey has barely even begun, and I already feel like I have gone totally crazy.
“You drank too much,” Samsara says.
“What’s happening to me?” Rosa screams.
“Make this stop!” Suzy demands.
I hear Elsie next, then Inga, followed by every other person I’ve been, all of them berating me—whoever “me” is—for being so naive and stupid.
“What have you done to us?” they shout in unison. “Make it stop.”
The woman speaks again. “Fear or love?” she says, cutting through the noise and confusion. “It’s your choice.”
The spinning stops, and I become aware of two portals. The one farthest away is shining with light and tranquility. The other is its opposite: a dark whirlpool of nothingness. It’s sucking all of the colors, shapes, pyramids, and hieroglyphs into its vortex. Somehow, I am immune to its pull.
Even though I can’t fully conceive of what it is, I know I must choose love, and that love is represented by light. I start moving toward it, but as I do, a piece of my being, a fragment I was separated from when the avalanche hit, whizzes past and disappears into the nothingness.
My instinct is to follow after it—what if I need that; what if it’s important?—but Ashkai always told me that love is the preeminent force of the universe, that it’s the only truth there is. Because of that, I continue toward the light.
I hear another voice then. It’s the rasping entity who spoke to me before Cato killed himself.
He says, “Before you save your master, you must save yourself.”
“But I have to choose love,” I say.
“Self-abandonment is hate, not love.”
I’m just inches from the white portal now. It’s so beautiful and inviting, but maybe he’s right; maybe saving myself is what this journey is all about. And isn’t facing fear different from choosing fear?
“Of course it is,” says the voice, and I turn, allowing the darkness to take me.
I am running down a long, narrow, dimly lit corridor. I am afraid, but I don’t know why. Am I being chased?
I look over a shoulder, but nobody is in pursuit. There are numbered doors on either side of me. I reach a T-junction at the end of the hallway and stop. I look left down one seemingly endless corridor and right down another. The floors and ceilings are cold, gray concrete, and the walls are bare and white. I can see perfectly, but there are no lights or windows, which means I should be shrouded in darkness.
Directly in front is a frosted glass door. The number 5183027 is engraved into it. The handle is round and metal. I look left, right, and behind. From what I can tell, all of the doors, bar the numbers, are identical. As I take it all in, a feeling of déjà vu washes over me. The sensation is subtle at first but quickly grows stronger. It’s clear I have been here before. I just don’t know when or under what circumstances.
I check myself over, feeling my face and head for clues. It seems I am in the body of Suzy Aarons, the person I was the last time I saw Ashkai, just before he threw me from that building in New York. I’m even wearing the clothes she died in: black shorts, white sneakers, gray sports vest.
I become aware of an unpleasant but familiar taste in my mouth, and things start coming back to me, things like Rosa, Tammuz, and drinking ayahuasca.
I look at the numbered doors more closely. They trigger something in my mind.
I remember being here!
While that is good news, it also represents a problem. Having drunk the medicine, I should have risen and crossed over to the spirit realm. But instead, I somehow descended into the corridors of my own subconsciousness. My first and only other visit here took place thousands of years ago when my training was at its most grueling and intense.
Back then, after wandering the labyrinthine halls for what seemed like an eternity, I built up the courage to open one of the many doors. It wasn’t a random choice, however; I was drawn toward it like a bee to a flower. The number displayed was 4320, digits I have seen during visions and dreams these past few days. Before I could open the door, Ashkai appeared and raised a hand.
“It’s better not to disturb anything down here,” he said, projecting his own consciousness into the deepes
t and most private recesses of my mind.
“Why?”
“Behind each door is a moment from your past, everything you’ve ever done, thought, or felt, and it’s crucial they remain separate from each other.”
“For what reason?”
“It has to do with your Flooding and making sure the information you receive is truthful and real. At this level, if memories are disturbed, they can become distorted and misleading, negatively impacting the lives you have yet to live.”
I didn’t fully understand what he meant, but it didn’t really matter. My master said it was a bad idea, so it was a bad idea. But that was a long time ago, and things have changed. The problem is, I don’t know where door 4320 is located, nor do I feel drawn in any particular direction. Keen to explore nonetheless, I reach for the handle in front of me. At that moment, I hear the woman in my head again, her tone ethereal and soothing.
There you are.
I turn to the hallway on my left and see a shining orb, about the size of a tennis ball, hovering roughly twenty feet away.
Wrong door, the light says as I move toward the strange but clearly benevolent entity.
The floating apparition remains still, and I’m able to get very close. The light, which has a liquid quality, is brilliant and should be hurting my eyes, but it isn’t. The being is emitting a low humming sound, and I can sense it’s as interested in me as I am in it.
I am you, says the sphere, communicating telepathically. And you are me.
Of course, I think, remembering the part of myself I followed into the unknown. That’s why I came here.
I reach out a hand.
Patience, the orb says, retreating. I must take you somewhere.
Speaking aloud, I say, “To door 4320?”
Yes.
“What’s there?”
Pain and suffering.
“Will it be worth it?”
That depends.
“On what?”
The choices you make.
“Take me,” I say, and with the words uttered, the light being shoots down the corridor like a bullet, moving away from me into the far distance.
“Wait,” I shout, breaking into a run. “Slow down.”
When the light being comes into view again, it has stopped at another intersection.
Follow, it says, darting right, and the game of cat and mouse goes on and on, down hallway after hallway, past door after door and crossing after crossing.
I notice that the ground is sloping downward and that the air is getting brisk. Not only that, the look and feel of everything is changing. Although I can’t pinpoint when it happened, the doors are now made of wood instead of glass and some even have padlocks on them. The floor, once bare concrete, is covered with animal skins that have become rigid in the cold. The walls, previously clean and white, are dark and alive with images of stars, planets, and constellations.
It’s becoming apparent that door 4320 is hidden deep within my subconscious, meaning it will be harder to navigate out. And there’s something else to consider, something disconcerting: I haven’t seen my guide for what feels like a very long time.
What if I have been tricked? What if I’m stuck here forever?
It’s a frightening prospect, but I don’t have to dwell on it for long. The orb has come into view again, hovering in the distance. Only this time, it’s not waiting for me at an intersection. This time, it’s outside a door.
We have arrived.
I come to stop and lean forward on my knees. It’s very cold, and my breath, labored and heavy, is steaming the air. I turn my head and look at the door. It has been boarded up with panels of dark wood, each one covered with a thin crusting of ice.
“This is different,” I say. “Who did this?”
You.
“When?”
You already know the truth, my guide says. All you have to do is remember.
Before I can reply, she passes through the barricade and disappears.
“Wait,” I say, thumping the cold, hard wood. “How am I supposed to get in?”
My question goes unanswered.
I try pulling the panels off, using my right leg as leverage, but they are heavy and securely nailed. I attempt three shoulder barges followed by numerous kicks, but it soon becomes clear all I’m doing is wearing myself out.
If only I had an ax, I think, flinching because of a thudding, clanking sound behind me. I turn, and there on the floor, beside my feet, is exactly what I thought of. I grab the ax and palm it from one hand to the other. In doing so, I notice an explosion of goose bumps on my arms. It’s freezing down here, and I’m not dressed for the occasion. By way of a solution, I imagine Suzy Aarons in jeans and a long black coat with sturdy boots, smiling because that’s exactly what she’s wearing now.
Halfway through hacking the barricade to pieces—the door beyond (including the number 4320) in clear view—it dawns on me that I could have just imagined it away. After all, this is my mind, and everything I am seeing is a projection of sorts, a way of making sense of the mystery that is my own subconsciousness. In essence, I am the architect of everything I am seeing and experiencing. That means I have a great deal of power here, but only if I am able to remember where I am and what’s going on, two things that are easily forgotten under such challenging and emotionally turbulent circumstances.
It’s more satisfying to use the ax. I swing it again and again, not stopping until the obstruction has been reduced to a pile of chips. The oak door it was protecting has an ornate, golden handle. After putting the ax down, I turn the handle and push, revealing complete and impenetrable darkness. I close my eyes and visualize light, but when I open them again, nothing has changed.
I take a step forward, then another. On the third, I slip and plummet about thirty feet. I hit the hard ground with a thud. At first, I think I must have broken my legs, but other than some cuts and bruises, I seem to be okay. And there’s light down here! I clamber to my feet and look around, discovering I am in a huge, natural cave with cathedral-like proportions.
I angle my head toward the hole I came through and the door beyond, but I can’t locate any sort of gap in the stone above.
I scan the cave, unsure of what my next move should be. The orb spirit is nowhere to be seen, but up ahead, next to the opening of a narrow tunnel that bends off to the left, are two burning torches that have been stuck into divots in the ground. The walls and protuberances have been painted with images of bison, aurochs, deer, and other more unusual depictions of humans transforming into animals.
The air is damp and cold, and there’s trickling water nearby. I walk toward the two flames to see what’s down that tunnel. I’m still approaching the entrance when a woman starts screaming. She sounds far away at first, but her guttural shrieks—is she being tortured?—quickly get louder and more immediate. The person is obviously in excruciating pain, and I can’t help but feel panicked and overwhelmed, especially as her suffering is bouncing off the walls, crashing into me from every direction.
I’ve barely had a moment to process what’s happening when two lean, powerful men appear from behind my left shoulder, moving with speed and purpose. They have the demeanor of seasoned warriors and are carrying torches of their own. Wearing only loincloths—are those knives strapped to their waists?—the men vanish into the tunnel.
“Where are we?” I shout, following after them. “Where are you going?” They don’t react in any way.
Can they see me? I wonder. Is this even real?
The tunnel, also alive with art, is fairly wide but only a fraction taller than me. The people I’m following, whose torches are casting menacing, shape-shifting shadows, have to stoop as they run.
“Wait!” I shout, noticing that the man on the right has lighter skin than his slightly shorter companion. In fact, it’s as if he has been covered with chalk.
I stumble on a raised ledge and fall to the ground, but I’m back on my feet in no time. The distance has grown, but
I can still see the men up ahead. At one point, their flames vanish around a corner, and everything goes black. Seconds later, when I regain line of sight, I force myself to find an extra gear, slowly closing the gap now.
We must be nearing the girl because her screaming is getting louder.
The tunnel begins to widen and open before finally spilling the two warriors, closely followed by me, into a horseshoe-shaped space with no other exits. In addition to the flames being carried by the men who led me here, there is a freestanding torch to my left.
The room is significantly smaller than the one we came from, maybe a tenth of the size, and the ceiling is covered with thousands of painted handprints, all of them surrounding a large red circle.
There is a thin blanket of smoke in the air, pungent with strange herbs and spices.
There are roughly fifteen people, men and women, seated in a circle on the floor toward the back wall, directly opposite the entrance to the tunnel. They all seem to be naked and are holding hands. They are chanting quietly. In the middle of the group, on a raised platform, is a girl with her legs spread, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her entire body (including her face) has been smeared with some sort of dark paste. A young man is stroking her hair.
Standing behind both (facing me) is an older woman with a striking appearance, swaying from side to side. She’s wearing the head and skin of a cave lion, and her entire body, like the girl’s, has been painted black. Her eyes are closed. In each hand is a small wooden container emitting smoke.
There’s something about this place I don’t like. In fact, it’s as if I’m in the presence of pure evil. I have an instinct to turn and run, but I resist it.
My gaze returns to the girl on the floor, and I become aware of a dark mass of energy hovering above her left shoulder. The man tending to her is leaning directly into it. All in all, it’s a strange and somewhat terrifying scene, but there’s at least one bit of good news: the girl is not being tortured; she’s having a baby. I can see its head.
I feel relieved but also jealous; the experience of being pregnant and giving birth is one that has eluded me. Whenever I think about the fact I have never been somebody’s mother, it makes me sad, but there is no time for wallowing in self-pity, especially as everything has descended into madness and chaos. The men I followed here weren’t coming to offer help. Instead, their plan was to spread violence and carnage, using their torches and knives to bludgeon, slice, and murder.