by Sean Platt
Fifty-Eight
Wolf
Wolf stood in darkness without ground below, sky above, or much of a reality floating around him. Just a whole lot of nothing and the faraway echo of the girl he had saved.
Emory’s voice as she read:
* * *
Alice lifted the veil and looked beneath it, behind, at the marvelous tapestry of stars.
* * *
In a blink he was standing inside a circular room with a giant tree in its center. Concrete walls, a silo or something. Light poured in from above.
The tree kept going, straight into the sky, a beanstalk waiting for Jack.
— BLINK —
The room was now dark.
The tree was glowing purple and pink from the flowers blooming across its leaves and bark, like an epidermis erupting in hives.
Flowers everywhere.
Someone was on the other side of the tree.
A man calling him. “You … come here.”
Wolf began to walk.
— BLINK —
Then he was somewhere else.
Waking up in a bed in New Orleans. This dream felt so familiar.
He had to be dreaming, but this wasn’t just a dream. The girl had unlocked something inside him, memories like pieces of puzzles that might not even fit were now flashing.
— BLINK —
Bashing someone’s head in with a bat.
— BLINK —
A psychedelic trip in some rich asshole’s house that felt like he might have been talking to God.
— BLINK —
Back in that New Orleans bedroom.
The clock read 1:11 AM.
The world had gone quiet.
October 15, or so said the phone on his nightstand.
— BLINK —
Then he was gone, running through a corridor with something dark coming up fast behind him.
He leapt.
* * *
Alice stared at the wolf, wondering if it was the same one as before. Had it come to finish her off?
* * *
— BLINK —
Wolf was in bed, morning light bleeding through sheer curtains, beside a stunning redhead.
He touched her face.
A name at the tip of his tongue, then it was gone.
And so was he.
— BLINK —
Standing in a room with a boy who was really an old man.
The ancient kid was trying to “fix” Wolf on account of his being a broken monster who kept hurting people because he didn’t know another way. And never would, until the boy changed him.
The boy …
Luca!
— BLINK —
He and the boy were in Wolf’s childhood home, a horror show if ever there was one.
— BLINK —
Then Wolf was somewhere else, no idea where, but the teenage girl …
Paola!
And … her mother …
M—
— BLINK —
Wolf was gone again, this time no longer in the same place or even the same life.
Something squirmed inside him. Two things: Darkness and Light.
He had to contain them. Leave the world he’d once known.
— BLINK —
Walking around the tree as the voice beckoned him. “Come … don’t be shy.”
— BLINK —
Wolf was on another world, like his but different, looking for someone.
— BLINK —
And then another world, also like his but still a bit different, looking for someone else. Not just someone else, there was something about the someone. Something important that—
— BLINK —
Always looking for someone.
Who?
And why did Wolf need to find them?
* * *
Alice thrust her hands into the cold water, cupping it, splashing it into her mouth, gulping it down. Ambrosia after being parched by life for so long.
She was finally home.
Or was she?
* * *
— BLINK —
Wolf was entering the room with the tree again.
But he wasn’t alone. Now he was with a man with tattoos all over his body. Tall and pale, the monk was bald save the few tufts of white hair over his ears matching his snow-colored eyebrows. His eyes were dark and ringed in black. He barely had a chin.
Brother Faith. An odd name for a strange man.
The tree looked different in the daylight.
Peaceful, with no flowers or voice on the other side.
— BLINK —
Then it was dark and the man on the other side was back. “Come closer, I can’t see you.”
Wolf walked
— BLINK —
through a door and into a bedroom.
A woman looked up at him from the bed, dark-haired and beautiful, with hauntingly familiar eyes.
“Come here,” she said.
He walked to her. She pulled the sheet aside, revealing herself.
He climbed into bed, kissing her, starting at her thighs and moving up.
Her name was on the tip of his—
— BLINK —
Back in the bar in Callan’s Corner. A woman and a girl came in, begging for help. Something about the woman seemed so familiar.
— BLINK —
Back in the bed, kissing up the woman’s neck then staring into her eyes.
Alma!
— BLINK —
She was in the bar with the young girl.
Why hadn’t he recognized the woman or her daughter?
Because she hadn’t had a daughter back then.
How long ago was—?
— BLINK —
She yelled as they trudged through the snow. “You can’t just choose that!”
“You don’t understand!” he yelled back.
— BLINK —
Back in the bar, the men in black storming in.
* * *
Alice stared down the point of the spear. “I am not afraid of you,” she lied.
* * *
— BLINK —
Alma was crying.
He was holding her, but she was scared. Scared of him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I … I didn’t mean to.”
“I can’t do this.”
She got up.
“Please,” he begged. “I love you.”
She looked at him with her eyes full of sorrow. “I know. But …”
Then she left.
— BLINK —
Back in the bar. Why hadn’t he recognized her?
The man murdered her.
And the girl screamed.
— BLINK —
He’d gone to find her, but she was no longer in the Township.
She’d disappeared and nobody would tell him where she went. She was scared of him, wanted nothing to do with him.
What did I do?
— BLINK —
Back in the dark room with the tree.
“Come here.” Something so familiar in his whisper.
Wolf walked toward the tree, again.
— BLINK —
He was crying to someone about Alma. A monk.
The same monk that had led him into the room with the tree in the daylight — Brother Faith.
“I can help you,” the monk said.
“I just want to go home. Or if not that, then I want to forget that she ever existed.”
“We can help you.”
— BLINK —
Back in the dark with the tree.
The man on the other side was laughing.
“Scared?”
“No,” he said.
Silence as Wolf drew closer.
The man laughed and whispered again. “You really should be.”
— BLINK —
Brother Faith sitting him down in a prayer chamber.
“I’m not religious,” Wolf said.
“It doesn’t matter. The
Gods still believe in you.”
He wanted to get up and leave, fuck this place, and double fuck the monks. But he’d heard about the magic they made with their leaves and their chants, or the mystical bullshit he didn’t believe but could no longer ignore.
Maybe they could help him.
“Let us release you from your burdens. “The monk handed him two leaves. One was purple and the other one pink.
Both were glowing.
* * *
Alice looked down as the light bugs surrounded her, slowly lifting her off of the ground.
* * *
— BLINK —
He was back in the dark room with the tree, flowers glowing pink and purple. He heard the man on the other side laughing.
“What are you waiting for? Come, already.”
— BLINK —
In the prayer chamber with the monk, eating the leaves.
They were walking toward the tree, the bright morning sun above spilling an iridescent shine on the bark, pink and purple, of course. Beautiful, like a mostly healed bruise.
It glistened and sparkled. As he got closer, its flesh began to move, as if the tree itself was breathing.
“These are some excellent drugs you fed me, brother. I didn’t expect to swallow Shangri-La.”
— BLINK —
Back in the bed with Alma.
Her hand was on her belly.
“What is it?” Wolf asked.
“Nothing, just feeling a little sick.”
He should have heard what she was trying to say. That was one week before she left.
— BLINK —
Back with Brother Faith taking him toward the tree. “Feel its energies within you, freeing you from your burdens.”
He felt lighter as he made his way around the tree.
The monk placed his hands on Wolf’s shoulders, gently pushing him down into a kneeling position.
On his knees.
— BLINK —
Back in the dark room, entering as if for the first time.
A man yelled from the other side of the tree. “Come on, already!”
— BLINK —
Wolf knelt, looking up at the tree, seeing its flesh moving.
He could hear it breathing.
Flowers blossomed, from bud to bloom in seconds, starting at the trunk and sprouting in waves all the way up as far as he could see.
The tree yawned into the sky, painting the clouds in shades of salmon and thistle. Sparking currents with lightning inside them.
Something slithered at his waist.
He looked down to see vines from the tree wrapping around him.
Wolf tried to move, but the monk shoved him against the tree.
— BLINK —
Back in the darkness with that man behind the tree. “Come, now. Don’t be shy. I promise I won’t bite.”
— BLINK —
Wolf’s hands gripped the tree as he tried to push himself away from it, but between the roots and the monk, he couldn’t break free.
Roots kept creeping toward his mouth.
He gritted his teeth.
Tendrils peeling his lips apart, thinning themselves into sharp points to slide between his lips.
— BLINK —
He was entering the darkness again.
But this time the man wasn’t talking.
Wolf wondered if he was there. If not, where did he go?
He approached the tree, waiting to be pulled away as he had been over and over again.
But this time he made it to the front of the tree.
At first, he couldn’t see anybody.
Then he saw a shape in the tree, a man melded, flesh fused into the bark.
The man’s eyes opened.
And Wolf was looking at his doppelgänger, fused with the tree.
His twin screamed.
— BLINK —
The tendrils thrust into his mouth, crawling down his throat, choking him.
Then he realized that they were pulling something out, not trying to get inside him.
He watched in horror as the tendrils slurped up dark viscous matter from his body and soul, through the tendrils and into the tree as if it were feeding from his core.
What is that?
But he knew.
It was The Darkness that had been in him.
And then it began to swallow The Light.
He found a burst of desperate energy.
Then Wolf pushed off the tree with his legs, falling backwards, tendrils yanked from his mouth as he squirmed out of and away from its grasp.
He fell atop Brother Faith.
He began to stand and scramble away, but Faith stabbed him in the ribs.
Wolf turned, punching the man in his face.
He ran toward the door.
Roots were suddenly up and like a jump rope, tripping him. He fell to the ground and lost all the air from his lungs.
The roots encircled him again, stealing what was left of The Light from his body.
But The Light didn’t wait for the tree to rob him.
It burst out of his body in six bright flashes instead. One at a time, shooting from his mouth and up into the sky.
Roots and branches chased the Lights but failed to capture them.
Wolf laughed as he watched the tree fail.
Its bark began to wither and blacken.
The monk cried out, blood spurting from his nose. “What have you done?”
He raced to the tree.
Wolf ran away, the blade still stuck between his ribs.
* * *
Wolf? Are you awake? Wolf?
* * *
— BLINK —
Wolf woke up.
He was no longer in the dream.
He was in a room. The place smelled familiar. The monastery where he’d come so long ago. They’d taken him and … had they healed him?
Emory was sitting in a chair next to his bed, holding the book, Alice Unfolded in her hands.
“You’re awake,” she said, smiling.
And now that he saw her up close, in the light, he realized what he’d not noticed the night they met.
Emory was his daughter.
— BLINK —
He woke up again.
She wasn’t there and his room was dark, save for a small blue light above the bed.
Small and sparse, with a single bed, one pillow made of gauze, a paper-thin blanket, and an old trunk with rusted hinges. The antiseptic scent made it smell like a hospital room, everything else including the corner toilet made it feel like a jail cell.
Had he dreamed her reading the book to him?
Had she been here but he fell asleep?
Was she safe?
If they were indeed at the temple, then no they were not.
Wolf had been tricked into giving up the alien forces inside him, the Light and the Dark he’d picked up in his previous life on another Earth, different from this one in so many ways, and yet also the same as all the worlds everywhere.
His memories were jostled loose, flooding him in a chaos of incomplete memories. Some that made sense, others that felt too fantastical. Reality, imagination, dreams, and the kick in the teeth to his psyche that accompanied the ingestion of too many drugs.
The first of the memories were like blunt hammers, showing him the vicious monster he’d been. A monster much worse than The Darkness that had been in him. A monster that had been of his own making, doing horrible things to innocent people.
He hated that part of himself. Wished that he could forget who he was.
But there were good memories too, of who he’d become.
Memories of a boy who’d stepped into his mind and into his past to heal him, memories of fighting for the friends he’d made. But then he had to leave his friend behind.
Why did I leave them?
Flash after flash of the other men who looked like him that he’d run across over the years as he leapt from world to world, just wanting to go home. Men he’
d killed and men he’d spared, and men he’d helped.
How long have I been doing this shit?
All he wanted was to go home, but was there even a home anymore? Sure, Earth was probably still spinning, but were the people he’d left behind still there?
Then he remembered why he’d left. He was the only one capable of containing the alien Darkness. He had to imprison it inside himself to save the world, to save his friends. To save the only people in existence that he’d ever given two shits about.
He’d left to keep those people safe.
But now that he no longer had The Darkness inside him, he was no longer a threat to them. He could finally go home.
Were his friends, whose names and faces were still just blurs, even still alive?
Mary.
Her face came through clear. As did those eyes, eyes that saw him not just as the monster he was, but the man he’d become. She wasn’t just a friend.
He loved her.
And he loved her daughter, Paola, who he’d helped mentor in the art of survival.
He’d sacrificed everything for them.
But the curse was lifted. Now he could return to them.
Assuming they’re still alive.
Assuming they still remember me.
His heart was breaking as the memories of those losses crashed into him. But then another thought broke him out of his misery.
Emory!
He had to get his head out of the past. Right now there were more pressing problems. The same people, these fucking monks who’d stolen his powers, were now looking to rob his daughter of hers.
Wolf got up and looked for his clothes, but found only the powder blue robes and slippers sitting at the end of his bed atop a chest.
He donned the robe and slippers, knowing it either made him look like a bitch-ass punk or a punk-ass bitch, then went to the door and tried the knob.
Locked from the other side.
He wasn’t a guest on the mends. Wolf was their prisoner.
Fifty-Nine
Slum Lord
The shantytown might have been even more alive at night than during the day. It was almost festive with music on every street, people dancing and playing cards, throwing dice to the music of chatter and meandering. The scent of grilling meat and deep-fried vegetables permeated the air, somehow managing to compete with the steeping reek of garbage mountains behind them.