by Justin Bloch
“Hello, Bertha,” the karma policeman said.
“Hello, Sol.” She came forward and kissed the karma policeman on the cheek. “It’s good to see you again. How are you?”
“Fine. I brought these for you,” he said, offering her the bouquet with the red ribbon.
“Thank you, they’re beautiful.” The Gatekeeper gave him a radiant smile and took the flowers from him, raising them to her face. She sighed and wrinkled her nose with pleasure. “It’s been a long time since you visited. I’d begun to think that you’d become the ocean and I’d never see you again.” She turned her attention to Nathaniel. “And who is this?”
“This,” the karma policeman said with satisfaction, “is Nathaniel Valentine. I believe that he may be the Cipher.”
The Gatekeeper’s eyes grew wide and surprised. She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. She stared at him as if he were a fish she’d just found in the middle of the desert.
Nathaniel offered his hand awkwardly, unsure of what to make of her flummoxed reaction. She took it and held the embrace briefly, recovered herself and grinned again.
“What a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“We came for your counsel,” Sol explained.
“I see.” She looped her hair behind her ears and looked at the ground for a moment. “What is your full name?”
“Nathaniel Ian Valentine.”
“A numerical palindrome,” the karma policeman broke in. “And his birthday is the seventh of May.”
Bertha’s eyes narrowed. “Is that true?”
“Yeah,” Nathaniel replied. “What do palindromes have to do with any of this?”
“And,” Sol interjected, “he bested Pestilence.”
The Gatekeeper blinked in surprise. “That’s not possible. They were banished.”
“Yes. But it appears that for Pestilence, the banishment has come to an end.”
The Gatekeeper’s face fell. “They have returned, then.”
“Pestilence has. I know nothing of his siblings. He made no mention of them.”
The Gatekeeper bit her lip. She held the bouquet loose in her hand, forgotten, the flowers pointing toward the ground, the ends of the red ribbon curled over her hand. The colors of the petals reflected on the slight sheen of her dress. Her free hand played with the neckline of her dress. “Where did you encounter him?”
“In the Cathedral of the Spire. Nathaniel defeated him.” Sol looked to the west where the sun was quickly sinking toward the crest of the hill, painting the sky scarlet.
“Is this the truth?” Bertha asked, returning her focus to Nathaniel.
“Yeah. We played a game of chess and I won,” he responded. When both the karma policeman and the Gatekeeper remained silent, he took the opportunity to ask again, “What do palindromes have to do with any of this?”
Bertha ran a hand through her hair, composing herself. “Numerical palindromes have great power in terms of karma. The number of letters in your three names are nine, three, and nine. Added to that is the fact that you are born on the seventh day of the fifth month. Seven and five are holy numbers; seven is the perfect number and five is the number of aggregates, the aspects which influence karma.” She paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “The date may have some other significance as well.”
Nathaniel looked at Sol. “Didn’t you say something about the numbers adding up? When this all started?”
Sol nodded, but Bertha explained. “Do you know what gematria is?” she asked. He shook his head, and she went on. “It is the process of assigning a number value to each letter of the alphabet, then adding up the numbers of each of the parts of a name. The numbers of your name are three, six, and three. Another palindrome, and one that happens to add up to twelve.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Nothing certain,” Sol whispered. “But it is an indicator. Numbers like yours are very rare, much less frequent than you might think. They often point to something important.”
“Like being the Cipher,” Nathaniel said.
“You said yourself that you are a no one, that you have no friends, that you have gone most of your life unnoticed,” he said. “That is common among Ciphers.”
“And so he brought you to me,” Bertha added in her melodic voice. She stepped forward, touched his chin with one hand and turned his face so that she could stare into his eyes. He felt naked, incredibly uncomfortable, and he tried to look away but could not break from her gaze.
After ten seconds that felt much longer, she began to hum a high, hollow note, the sound of a fingertip around the lip of a crystal champagne flute. His eyelids fluttered, and then his past was unspooling before him, so fast that he had only a vague notion of what he was seeing. His vantage point sank lower as he aged in reverse, lost his height, was a child, a toddler, an infant. And then it was over, and there was nothing, only darkness for an interminable, infinite span.
He returned to himself, shook his head to clear it. Bertha stood close to him, too close he thought, and he backed away, uneasy: she had just witnessed all of his most private moments. “What was that?” he asked, shaky.
“I read your karma,” the Gatekeeper replied. “I’m sorry it was so sudden, but it’s easier if you’re not expecting it. People tend to cling to memories if they know what’s coming.”
Sol gripped her bare shoulder, turned her toward him. “Is he the one?” he demanded.
“He has none of his own karma, no karmic path, and no past lives,” Bertha announced. She smiled, and in the crimson light of the sunset, her white teeth seemed filmed with blood. “He is the Cipher.”
The karma policeman raised his hands to his face. “At last,” he whispered, “I have found him.”
Chapter VI
So there it was: he was the Cipher. He felt that thrill again, that sense of greater purpose and excitement. He had been invisible his entire life because he was some mythic savior, chosen at birth and destined to do…something. He realized with unease that he was more than a little unclear about what being the Cipher actually meant. Something to do with balance, but that was all he knew, and it occurred to him that, of all the many questions he asked, he somehow managed to skip the most important ones.
The light was failing quickly, dusk bleeding into full night over Elysium, and pinprick stars appeared in the deep indigo sky to the east. The karma policeman gazed upwards, the second bouquet dangling in his hand.
“Things that were wrong can at last be put right,” Sol said. He was grinning and it lit his face, and Nathaniel watched him with caution, wary of the policeman’s sudden joy after so much dourness. “Bertha, may I have your leave to enter Limbo?”
The Gatekeeper beamed at him. “Of course you may, Sol.” She waved a hand behind her and Nathaniel felt some imperceptible shift take place in the great black stone. The rock hummed, not audibly but within his head, a deep bass note. Sol strode toward the rock, bouquet in hand, and vanished into the depths of the stone.
Nathaniel took a shocked step back, stood staring at the place where the cop had disappeared. “He left me,” he uttered, and his fight or flight instincts prepared to make a choice. He rubbed the ‘p’ scarred on his hand nervously.
“Don’t worry, child,” came Bertha’s calm voice from behind him. “He won’t be gone long and you’ll be here with me. You’ll be safe. Come on, sit down.”
She walked back to where she had been laying when they approached and folded her legs beneath her. Nathaniel hesitated. He did not know this woman, except that she could be dangerous. But he had no choice, and he followed after a moment, sat down on the springy grass a few feet away from her. The night was cool and he pulled on his hoodie and hugged his knees to his chest. He did not like being without the karma policeman, which was weird because Sol spent most of their time together making it clear that he didn’t like him. The moon was a bright circle overhead and he could see the Gatekeeper watching him with her large, oceanic eyes. She looked conce
rned.
“Do you know what the Elysian Fields are, Nathaniel?” she asked.
“It’s the Roman Heaven,” he said, distracted, staring at the stone.
She shook her head, her curls bouncing around her face. “No, that’s the tale of the Elysian Fields. The truth is something different. That is something you must remember, Nathaniel: on this world, the tale and the truth are very seldom the same thing.”
“What’s the truth, then?”
Bertha leaned back, propping herself up on her hands. She regarded the dark sky for several moments, the moonlight painting her face, then began to speak in her musical voice. “Before the beginning, there was nothing, and then there was the Source, who is one from many, who has always been and will always be. And the Source created four worlds from the nothingness, and they were Heaven, Hell, Earth, and this nameless world on whose grass you now sit. Next, the Source created its choirs of angels, the Citizens of the Silver City, the most beautiful of all creatures, and they dwelt with the Source in Heaven. Then it filled this nameless world with all the beings that it dreamed of, beings of great power and all those that came to be known throughout the mythology of the then-still-uncreated man, for there is nothing the Source cherishes more than a story, and it wanted the lives of man to be rich with them. It looked upon its work and saw that it was good, and it created life on your world, Earth. When it was finished, it had given rise to man, its most complex and flawed creation. It took tremendous pride in what it had done and deemed man a sacred and holy race. Its favored race.
“The Source gave each of its creations free will, the ability to make their own decisions, choose their own path. It did not create perfection, but it gave the worlds rules and asked that they be followed toward perfection. To ignore them would invite the Source’s wrath. Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and when they did, they were forced to live with the consequences. They disobeyed the Source and were punished. As was Lucifer, the Morningstar.
“Lucifer was one of the Source’s seraphim, the highest choir of angels. He rejected the holiness of man and refused to serve and worship him. He claimed that the Source alone deserved the angels’ praise; man was a violent beast not worthy of such high accolades. The Morningstar began to spend his time in a desert on this world, away from Heaven, not able to stand the Source’s disappointment in him. Over time, other angels joined him, and they fasted and praised the Source.
“The Morningstar was given five chances to recant, but he refused each one. So the remaining faithful angels were sent to the desert where those that had disobeyed the Source dwelt, and there was a great war that lasted over a millennium. It was a vicious battle, terrifying in its intensity. When it finally ended, when Lucifer had been cast down to Hell and his renegades turned to Demons, the entire vast desert was stained scarlet with the lifeblood of the angels. The Source looked down upon the massacre and was overcome with a great sadness, an unbearable sorrow over the bloodshed of its most beautiful creations.
“On your world, in a fit of rage, it sent a vast flood to wipe away all mankind, the cause of the rift between its angels. Only at the last moment did it send a warning to Noah. On this world, the bloody desert ground became fertile, and where once there had been only an arid wasteland, now there was a paradise of green. The Source deemed it a place of peace. The Elysian Fields became a monument to all those who had fallen, so that none should forget.”
Nathaniel sat, lost in the story. The Gatekeeper fell quiet, turning her lovely face toward the hulking black stone, now just a vague silhouette, a dark hole in the landscape. Crickets sang all around them, and a light breeze drifted through the little valley, chilling the air. The sky was cloudless and clear and filled with stars brighter than any Nathaniel had seen before. If light had a language, he thought, stars would be its alphabet.
The Gatekeeper was the first to break the silence. “That war is why you are here.”
Nathaniel looked up, surprised. He wasn’t used to having information offered.
“After the great war ended, the Source created karma so that mankind would have a better chance at Heaven. Humanity was too weak, temptation too alluring. The Source gave you free will so that your journey to Heaven would be your own, but it has also been your undoing. Lucifer, bitter over his fall, began sending Inhabitants and Demons out to disrupt karma, and the Source chose angels like Sol to defend your race. And now you are here, to balance the flow of karma. In the end, all things balance.”
“What does that mean, though? I don’t even know what the Cipher is.”
“Sol hasn’t told you?”
“No, he’s barely told me anything. All he’s said is that there’s something out there that’s interfering with karma and I’m important because I’ll fix things. I don’t know any more about it than that.”
The Gatekeeper shook her head. “What he told you was the truth, but not all of it. The ‘something’ that is interfering with karma is an Allamagoosalum.”
Here we go again, he thought, and said, “A what?”
“An Allamagoosalum. A monster. The name is derived from a Native American word for ‘boogeyman.’ The Micmac Indians were the first ones to be cursed with one of the creatures, and so it was their name which stuck. Every so often, one is created and a Cipher is chosen to stop it.”
Nathaniel sighed, unnerved. The karma policeman had said nothing about stopping a monster. “Why does Sol need me, though? Why doesn’t he just go after it himself?”
“It is your destiny to stop the Allamagoosalum.”
“Stop it from what?”
She gave him a funny look, her head tilted to one side. “It’s a monster, Nathaniel. What do you think you have to stop it from doing?” She smiled, and there was something gleefully hostile in that moonlit grin. “It kills, Nathaniel. It murders. And it is your responsibility.”
He turned away from her, dropped his head and stared at the ground. He didn’t know what to think. On the one hand he had a life lived in the background, and on the other his destiny. He realized now how unhappy he’d been in Bel Air, bored and alone, but at least he was safe. Here, he was expected to stop a monster. Then again, if the task had been placed in his hands, how hard could it be? He’d been given what he always wanted, he mattered, he was needed, he was important. He didn’t regret his decision to come to this world, he’d seen things that defied belief, that he would never forget. People, or at least things that looked like people, noticed him here. If anything, he was getting too much attention.
“Why is there a gate into Limbo?” he asked to change the subject. He needed some time, perspective, to fully grasp everything he had just learned.
“Inhabitants and Citizens are able to enter Limbo, should they choose. To visit souls or the Divinors. Sometimes Inhabitants will go to visit loved ones who have passed on, although that’s rare. A strong sense of family is mostly a trait of mankind.”
“So Inhabitants can go to Heaven too?”
She shook her head. “No. We have souls, but they are endlessly reincarnated. Heaven was not made for us.”
Nathaniel said nothing for a moment, contemplating this. “Why did Sol go?” he asked, glancing toward the black mass of the rock. The moonlight reflected off its jagged edges, and it looked like a snow-covered peak, the kind that mountaineers lusted after, the kind that would kill half of them.
“He went to visit someone he used to know, someone he was very close to a long time ago.”
There was a new coldness in the Gatekeeper’s tone, and Nathaniel looked at her. “Who did he go to see?”
Bertha remained silent, gave her head a slight shake, her lips pressed into thin lines. Nathaniel tried a different tack instead.
“Why does he dislike me so much?”
The Gatekeeper turned back to him. It put her face in shadow, and he couldn’t make out her expression. “A long time ago, Sol lost something that was very dear to him. A Resident stole it from him.”
“
What was it?”
“That is not for me to say,” she answered. “But it changed him. His opinion of Residents had already been unfavorable, and now I wonder…” She trailed off, one finger twirling slowly in her hair. She seemed far away, distracted.
“Yes?” Nathaniel prodded.
“Now I wonder whether Sol is more in line with the Source…or the Morningstar,” she finished.
Nathaniel stared at her, mouth open. “What do you mean?” he whispered.
She said nothing and there was a finality to the way she sat, still and steadfast, that told Nathaniel that she was done speaking for the night. He had touched on something sensitive.
After a moment she rose to her feet and walked away from him, out to the crest of the hill. He looked toward the great black stone, wondering about Sol, wondering what he was doing inside. He cast another glance at Bertha, then lay down on the soft grass, his head on his arm, and closed his eyes to wait for the karma policeman’s return.
He was shaken awake at the dim gray wash of dawn. Sol was crouched beside him, and as soon as the karma policeman saw his eyes open, he withdrew his hand and stood. Nathaniel sat up, stretching. The curve of the sun had just peeked over the hill of the valley and cast its first light on the floor, and huge, puffed towers of clouds lazed overhead. Nathaniel scratched the back of his head, careful to avoid the knot from the fight with Pestilence.
“Morning,” he rasped. “How long have you been back?”
“A few minutes. Not long,” responded the karma policeman, offering him the slim flask of water from his jacket. “Are you awake enough to travel? There is much to do.”
“Mhmm.” Nathaniel stumbled to his feet and stretched again. He decided that, other than the fact that he needed a shower and a toothbrush, he felt pretty good. He had spent a pleasant, dreamless night in the Elysian Fields, and he felt reenergized. He glanced around, looking for Bertha, and instead noticed the stone. Discarded beside it was the bouquet of wildflowers Sol had taken with him inside Limbo.