by Lee, Edward
“Indeed. Keirkegaard said ‘I must find a truth that is true for me, an ideal for which I can live or die.’ Yes?”
“Yes,” Locke agreed.
“You’ve found that truth. And so have I. But the weak, Locke, what truth do they really have? I’ve offered them everything—over ages, and all that their truth turns out to be in the end is falsehood.”
—over ages, the words rang in Locke’s head.
“Yes, ages, one century after the other until too many have accrued to count. In all my witness, poet, the true heart always fails.”
“Mine doesn’t,” Locke said, blurting it out.
Lethe’s sunlight eyes bore down on him. “I suspect you may be right. How can one tell the difference between the truth, and mere appearances?”
Locke remembered what Lethe had said yesterday. I’ve always believed in the power of appearances. Then he’d gone on to refer to a “top-notch” alarm system. After confronting the other occupants of the house, Locke saw that the man wasn’t kidding.
“And let me quote another poet,” Lethe continued. “‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all…I will tell you all.’”
Eliot, Locke recognized. “So tell me.”
“I’ve become what I’ve made myself, based, logically, on the human precept. I am, as you’ve no doubt gathered, far more than human; the people of your age no longer have a word for what I’ve become. I was not born—I fell. We were the things that mothers warned their young of, the specters who would come at night and consume them. But, then, even I did not know how to perceive. Eons old, yes, but little more than a newborn once my feet were firmly settled on the crust of this place. I’d like to tell you that I was a king or general or leader of men, but that was not the case. Quite insipidly, I followed the cause—I formed myself into a warrior in a race of warriors, but otherwise unremarkable. But when the war was over, I stood as victor. I learned, you see? After three or four thousand years, it was easy. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure,” Locke admitted.
“I could smell it, Locke, I could taste it—the gullibility of man, the fear. So you know what I did?”
“You used it,” Locke answered. “You took fear as your ally, your twin.”
“My brother.”
Locke’s thought swept with lines from Baudelaire: Boredom—he smokes his hookah while he dreams of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother. You know this dainty monster, too, it seems, gullible reader, my twin, my brother.
“Your fear gave me power, Locke, yet it was I who manufactured the fear of your kind.” Lethe paused, the light of his face growing to an intensity that nearly blinded.
“Like Shelley’s Doctor Frankenstein, most grow into becoming the makers destroyed by what they make. All too seldom, there come a precious few who are empowered by what they make. Like you. To face the real guts of your own truth, you created your own egression to lead to the domain of what I really am. Not a vampire—how trivial! It is but the facepaint and bulbed nose of a clown. It’s easier that way, Locke, and it’s quite stylish.”
“What are you really?”
“Anything and everything. The belief of your pitiful souls is my greatest fuel. And this cattle—” Lethe extended a hand to the suddenly appearing remains of Martin—complete with burned face and smoldered mohawk, and Anna cooked just the same like a barbecued goose in Chinatown. “This heap of the meat of idiots was born not by me but by their own weakness, their own trepidations—the same which induces toddlers to cry out when they spy the shirt-shapes in the closet, to piss their bunny-imprinted pajamas after a bad dream. Few face the challenge, Locke, so few have enough of the blood of their own real truth pushing through their veins to cast off their frailties and look into the workings of their hearts. Your plight is holding you by the hand, poet. By facing what you really believe in, you’ve never been more strong…nor more vulnerable. That useless cadaver Byers failed. But you? I think that remains to be seen.” Lethe grinned. “Only faith can save you now. Choose your tactics with great care.”
“But you’re a devil,” Locke ventured. “Why should I believe you?”
Lethe’s laugh rocked the sky. “A devil? My good Locke! The only one who hates me more than God is Lucifer. They’d both send assassins if they could! No, no. I’m as honest as you are. Good and evil are the same at their hearts—if you think about that, and I mean really think…you’ll agree. Whether you’re human, something less, or something more, whether you’re God or the Devil, it defies logic not to agree.”
Maybe it did. Locke had to confess, the man had a point. “But the coffin, the cape I found in the basement?”
“Appearances,” Lethe replied. “Did Gregor really transform into an insect in Kafka’s masterpiece? Or was it merely the character’s fear that had created the appearance? And what was the character’s fear? The fear of inferiority, of rejection by an oppressive society, the fear of dying alone and unloved. It was that fear which constituted the change, or I should say the metamorphosis. Cause and effect, Locke. The story’s symbology rings quite true. We always get what we fear in the end.”
Locke looked down through gaps in the clouds. Come to think of it, he always did have a fear of heights. But this was just an illusion, wasn’t it? An appearance, he thought. Nevertheless, the appearance—of the earth five miles down—induced him to urinate in his pants. Locke didn’t see much point in asking if there was a men’s room nearby.
“And I’ll tell you something,” Lethe went on from his weightless stance, “something that I’ve never told anyone, not even your predecessors. There is only one thing that can destroy me. No, not tawdry wooden stakes, not holy water, nor the light of the sun.”
“What then?” Locke’s eyes held fast to the Sciftan’s face, uncomprehending.
“It’s your pure heart, Locke, which has led you to me. What else has it led you to? Good and evil, black and white. The only thing I want is what I now know I can never have. So I must destroy it.”
Locke remained staring, inhaling clouds.
“Yes, your pure heart,” Lethe’s voice seemed to corrode. “It’s raw meat in a shark tank. Will you bring me the shark?”
Locke’s stomach was beginning to twist into a knot of acid. He had a funny feeling something was about to happen.
“I—don’t understand,” he croaked.
“Then perhaps you will in your next journey.” Lethe’s hand bid the clouds, and the landscapes miles down. “If you happen upon something you want, all you need do is take it.”
“What?”
“A simple yes will suffice, or—better yet—a simple kiss.”
Locke began to shiver. Beneath his feet he felt…nothing.
“You rejected my first proposition,” Lethe said. “Consider this a second proposition.”
Then Lethe snapped his fingers and—
—Locke fell.
He’d had dreams like this before, swooshing endless nightmares of being thrown from a plane; Locke plummeted now, just as he had in the dreams, a skydiver with no chute, his face gathering crystalline ice in the clutches of gravity. Here was Newton’s Law, all right, and Locke was the apple. In manic-swirling glimpses, the countryside below seemed to race toward him; the longer Locke fell, the faster his impact approached, and as his mind and body spun flywheel-like, he retrieved one consolation. In the nightmares, he always awoke at the instant before he would hit the ground.
SPLAT!
Locke hit the ground at a velocity of hundreds of feet per second.
(iii)
“You’re late.”
He stood dumbfounded in his apartment doorway. Er, it looked like his apartment but—
Fresh white paint, bright floral-print wallpaper, new furniture, new curtains, new carpet. Sunlight blazed through the open window overlooking 45th Street. Light strains of a Beethoven string quartet whispered from an Adcom stereo that Locke did not own, while a 35-inch Trinitron that Locke did not own showed a pr
etty anchorwoman mouthing something from North West Cable News with the sound down.
Locke tremored, mortified, his heart still thumping from the freefall to his “death.” A dual sentience seemed to struggle in his head, one part still in turmoil of Lethe’s phantasmagoric mansion and the plummet through the sky, while the other part conducted itself in a way Locke could not comprehend.
“Half of my 3:45 class stayed late,” Locke said without having any idea what he was saying. Inexplicably, he carried an open tote bag full of books: The Norton Anthology of American Poetry, Fine Frenzy—Studies in Poetical Survey, and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. “Can you believe it?” Locke called out to the unseen voice. “When class ended we were in the middle of a debate about William Carlos Williams’ ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower’ and its importance to the imagist movement, so half of my students didn’t want to leave. It was wonderful: college kids actually arguing over poetry.” What the hell did I just say? Locke thought. From the tote, he withdrew a course syllabus, which read T & TH, 3:45 P.M.—5:15 P.M., ENG 412: THE AMERICAN IMAGISTS. INSTRUCTOR: RESIDENT POET RICHARD LOCKE.
“Holy shit,” Locke whispered. “I’m a teacher…”
He smelled the most luscious aroma, just like the Pad Thai rice noodles that—
Wait a minute…
The top shelf of a fine walnut bookcase that Locke did not own seemed to be full of books that Locke did not write. The Preceptor & Other Collected Poems, The Exit Volumes (I-III), Terra Metamorphoser and a number of others, all written by the same author: Richard Locke.
“Well would you come in! The noodles’ll get mushy!”
Locke dropped his tote, slowly entered the transformed apartment, dry-mouthed, eyes bolted open. Somehow, now, he knew that since Clare had dropped to part-time at the law firm, she’d taken to experimenting quite successfully in the kitchen.
“You didn’t forget the flank steak, did you?”
“Oh, damn, honey, I’m sorry, I forgot,” Locke mouthed, knowing nothing of any flank steak.
“I’ve got the skewers soaked in coconut milk and the grill all fired up. I can’t make satay without the meat.”
Locke walked into the living room. With some difficulty, Clare raised herself from a recliner, her hair longer but just as silken in its shine, her face bright, a beacon of smiles and beauty. A beacon…for him.
Locke stood stunned.
“You are such an airhead sometimes,” she joked. She walked up, dressed in a simple blush-yellow housedress, and kissed him.
My God…
It was the most honest kiss in the world, just a peck on the cheek, like the casual kiss of a happy wife.
Wife…
“You should walk over to the Chevron, ask them to check your head for leaks,” she said, then issued the tiniest of laughs. “But don’t worry, I think I still have some prawns in the fridge.”
She sauntered away, giggling at his forgetfulness. Yet as she journeyed to the kitchen she did so in awkward steps, and that’s when Locke took full notice—
“Michael was kicking up a storm today, I’ll have you know. We might have a star soccer player on our hands—”
—that Clare looked about seven or eight months pregnant.
Locke could only stand there in sweet shock. His eyes roved a varnished high-boy, its top set with framed photos. Some Locke recognized but the one in the center beamed at him: himself proudly decked out in a tux, standing next to Clare in a white bridal gown on their wedding day.
This is it, all I’ve ever wanted, he realized. Not a trick, not an appearance.
This was his life. This was what he wanted more than anything in the world, and now it was his.
He remembered Lethe’s words when they stood on the top of the sky. It’s your pure heart, Locke, which has led you to me. What else has it led you to?
Love of another kind, an endless love? Something beyond the limits of the physical world?
The angel? he thought.
Locke stared at the surmise as though it were a solid object, an arcane piece of art to be scrutinized and interpreted, a crux to be solved.
Good and evil, black and white. The only thing I want is what I now know I can never have.
So I must destroy it.
Locke stared and stared.
Bring me the shark—
“Aren’t I a dutiful wife? Slaving over a hot hibachi while my husband makes the world a wiser place?” Clare had returned from the kitchen, now bearing a plate with several skewers of seasoned shrimp. “These only take a minute per side so go wash up, and make it quick!”
“You’re the boss,” Locke said. He watched her move out to the sunny balcony where the small grill gusted heat.
Numbness took him to the bathroom, immaculate now and redone in cheerful trimmings. He turned on the faucet. He washed his hands and when he raised his eyes to the mirror—
Oh for shit’s sake!
His heart nearly burst. In the reflection, standing just behind him, was Byers, now little more than a stand of bones draped with collops of organic decay.
“Don’t turn around, it uses too much juice,” the dead poet’s voice bubbled from his lips. “You know, like I told you last time. It’s this—”
“The energy thing,” Locke recalled.
A hand flayed by advanced decomposition touched Locke’s shoulder; in the mirror he noticed several maggots emerging from their casings.
“I’m not allowed to tell you,” Byers gurgled. “I’m not allowed to spell it out—I’ve told you that already. You’re supposed to be using your brain.”
“What do you expect from a guy who couldn’t even remember to pick up some flank steak on the way home?”
“Stop being an asshole. You want to know why it didn’t work for me?”
“Why what didn’t work for you?”
“I wasn’t honest enough. My search for truth was tainted. This whole thing’s about you, Locke. It’s about your verity and how it relates to them. But you have a choice to make, and it’s one you’re going to have to make rather quickly.”
Locke shook his head through a frown. “I’ve already made my choice. Why should I give this up? I’d be out of my mind.”
“Here’s why…”
—images, then, shotgunned into his mind.
—chaos, ataxia, where the only order was disorder.
—“Lethe saved her for last…”
—mountains of corpses, yes, literally mountains.
—millions after millions dying.
—“Lethe saved her for last because he loved her!”
—then millions more, and then—
—“But she could never love him, it’s an impossibility. Yin can’t love yang! The needle will never stick to the magnet, Locke!”
—billions.
—“Without her, he’s got nothing. No place for him in heaven, and none in hell. They were traitors!”
—until nothing remained alive but one man…
—“So now all he can live for is payback. But he can’t do that with her here, so he’s got to kill her, and the only way he can do that is through you—”
—and the sky turned black with clouds of death.
“Did you see it?” Byers asked.
Locke shuddered from the scene, cold sweat trickling as he regained his breath and looked back at Byers’ dead face in the bathroom mirror.
“She can’t face him, it’s too risky. Don’t you understand?” The little that actually remained of Byers’ face seemed to plead in its black-green film. “Would you risk that? With nothing to keep him in check, Lethe could do it. Lethe has that kind of power. He’s using you as bait.”
“Bait for what?”
“Bait for her, you moron!”
Her, Locke wondered.
“Why do you think he uses poets and writers and people like that?”
“I don’t know,” Locke spat back.
“Because of what we’re all trying, ultimately, to create.”
“Bullshit,” Locke replied, pointing at the morbid reflection. “I’m only responsible for myself, my wife, and our child.” Then he commenced to jerk around, to shove Byers away—
“Don’t do it, Locke, for God’s sake, don’t turn ar—”
Byers was gone.
“Good riddance,” Locke sniped. “If there’s one thing that pisses me off more than a lousy poet, it’s a lousy dead poet.”
He dried his hands on a soft terry towel, fiddled with his hair for a moment, then walked back out to the enticing aromas of Thai spices.
But that’s not all he walked back out to. He walked back out to his providence, not the jilted rip-off of past misery. I’m walking back out to the life I deserve, the one I’ve earned.
Clare hurried back in from the grill, aglow in this commonplace domesticity. A happy wife elated to cook dinner for her loving husband. The quick-seared prawns on the skewers wafted still more delectable aromas into the air. Locke smiled at the gift he’d been given, and all he had to do to keep it…was take it.
“And I’m going to,” he whispered.