by Justin Bloch
Bertha was watching the sunrise at the crest of the hill where he had seen her last night. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her hair gleamed golden in the newborn sun.
“Is she all right?” Nathaniel asked.
“I think so. She probably doesn’t want us to leave.”
“Well, I’m ready whenever you want to go.”
The cop stood looking at the Gatekeeper for a moment more. “Bertha,” he called.
She turned, half of her face lit by the sun, the other hidden in shadow. She was holding her bouquet again. She walked over slowly. “You’re leaving?”
“Yes,” answered the karma policeman. “Now that we know for certain that Nathaniel is the Cipher, we can finally move forward.”
She nodded, her head pointed toward the ground. “It was good to see you again, Sol,” she said.
“And you, Bertha. We’ll be back before long, I think.”
“I’d like that.” She turned to Nathaniel. “It was very nice to meet you. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Where will you go next?”
The karma policeman considered. “We’ll need a lead to start out. I know someone on Earth that may be able to help us. I’m not sure.”
Nathaniel perked up. “Really?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. We’ll talk about it.”
There was a beat of silence, then Bertha said, “I’m glad you came, Sol. And I’m glad I could help.” She shifted in place, as if she was expecting something, the sun glowing behind her like a corona.
“Thank you,” the cop said. He took a half-step forward, paused, cleared his throat, looked away, out over the hill. He turned back, gave the Gatekeeper an awkward, crooked smile. “Goodbye, Bertha.”
“Goodbye,” she responded. She waited for a moment, pursed her lips, and strolled toward the entrance to Limbo, facing away from them.
They made their way back up the gentle slope of the hill, walking side by side, neither speaking. As they topped the crest and headed down the other side, Nathaniel turned for a final look at the sunrise.
Bertha stood by the stone, her back to them. He watched as she untied the ribbon on her bouquet of flowers and let the blooms fall to the ground. She tossed the ribbon into the air and the wind carried it twisting and twirling into the higher grass. The Gatekeeper clasped her hands behind her, aglow in the dawn’s light.
The birds of Elysium awoke. Swallows darted here and there, their forked tails flicking as they chased insects. Nathaniel picked out blue jays and gold finches perched in the weeping willows, flashing vibrant colors. The trees transformed into symphonies as the sundry songbirds tuned their voices. Feathers were ruffled, nests were redecorated, the air was filled with swooping flights and the quick beat of wings.
Nathaniel and the karma policeman made their way across the grassland. They walked quickly but comfortably, not rushing. The cop had been silent since his farewell to the Gatekeeper, and Nathaniel left him alone for the time being. They would stop for a meal soon enough and he would ask his questions then. And he would have his answers, or Sol would lose his prize. During the night he had learned many things, but the most important had been that the whole system of karma operated on free will. He could choose not to fulfill whatever function he had as Cipher if he wished. If Sol wouldn’t tell him what he needed to know. But the truth was, he didn’t want to go back to the way his life had been. Despite his misgivings of the previous evening, this world felt more natural to him than his own ever had. And nothing waited for him in Bel Air. He had no friends or family, his job was a dead end. The only thing he missed was Robber Baron, and Sol had promised him that the cat was being well cared for while he was absent. Life was not good for him in Maryland, and while it wasn’t particularly great for him on this world, at least it was interesting.
The day warmed swiftly once the sun was above the horizon, the sky bright, cerulean blue. The beds of wildflowers shone like rubies, sapphires, and garnets scattered among a field of mawsitsits. Clouds floated by like great dollops of foam on a rough sea, so low that they seemed reachable from the highest boughs of the trees. Their bottoms were blurred and hazy gray, but the tops glowed brilliant white.
It had been nearly three hours when Sol called for a rest. They sat in the shade of one of the willows, their backs resting against its thin trunk. The long, chartreuse tendrils swayed lazily in the light breeze like the tentacles of a sea anemone. Above them, birds flitted back and forth between the branches, chirping. The karma policeman produced more manna, handing some to Nathaniel.
“What exactly is this stuff?” he asked, breaking it open. Beneath the golden brown crust was a candy apple red center, and he took a bite, relishing the taste.
“There are stories about it, on your world,” the karma policeman said. “There are a few varieties. This one is good for long journeys.”
Nathaniel took a bite. He didn’t feel much like eating, but he knew he would need the energy. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Allamagoosalum?” he asked suddenly.
The karma policeman froze, his last bite of manna halfway to his lips. His hand dropped away from his mouth like a half-dollar falling through water. He looked hard at Nathaniel and said sharply, “How do you know about that?”
“Bertha told me, which is interesting because I would have thought you’d be the one to explain exactly what I was getting myself into. You know, since you were the one who convinced me to come.”
The cop was quiet, glowering at him.
“So? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sol snorted. “Would you really have agreed to come if you knew the reason you were needed was to stop a monster?”
“I might have.”
The karma policeman raised his eyebrows. “Come now, Nathaniel. Be honest with yourself. You were shaken up enough about the vissika. The Allamagoosalum is something far beyond her.”
Nathaniel’s face twisted in disgust. Sol had judged him based on only a few minutes of knowledge. It was insulting, it was infuriating. “The point,” he said, “is that you didn’t know what I would say and you held back the truth. I’m tired of it. If you want me to help you, then we need to be partners. I risked my life to come with you, and all you do is manipulate and belittle me.”
Sol raised his hands defensively. “That’s—”
“No, I don’t want to hear it,” interrupted Nathaniel. His piece of manna was crushed in his hand. “I’m not a child. I’m not an idiot. I’m the Cipher, and I deserve to know what that means.”
“All right,” he growled. “The Alla—”
“Shut up.”
Sol grabbed him by the throat and yanked him to his feet, thrust him back against the willow’s trunk. “What did you say to me?”
Nathaniel stepped closer and shoved him. The cop, taken off guard, stumbled out from beneath the tree and Nathaniel followed, fuming. “I told you to shut up,” he spat, and pushed the karma policeman again. “This is the last time we’re doing this. I’m sick of fighting with you.” He paused, took a breath. “Now apologize.”
Sol stood before him, shaking with anger. “I am a Citizen of the Silver—”
“Yeah, that’s really great for you,” Nathaniel broke in. “If you don’t apologize to me, you might as well take me home, because I’m done.”
The karma policeman bit his lip, spun away and yelled in frustration. “Fine,” he told the grass and the sky. He turned back, paced closer, struggling to control himself. “Fine,” he repeated, “I am sorry.” Nathaniel said nothing, only stared at him, and after a moment he took a slow breath, clenched his teeth. “I spent a decade searching for you, and I couldn’t risk you saying no. But what I did was wrong, and I am sorry.”
Nathaniel considered for a moment, then nodded. “Good enough. But I mean it, I don’t want this to happen again. Don’t underestimate me. Maybe I was chosen for a reason.”
Sol looked away, off into the distance. He had been made to swallow his pride and d
idn’t like the taste. “What else do you want to know?”
“Everything. What it is, how I’m supposed to stop it, where it came from. I want to know everything there is to know about the demon.”
“The first thing you should know, then, is that it is not a demon. There are demons, like the vissika that attacked you, and there are Demons, the angels who fell with Lucifer, but the Allamagoosalum fits into neither category. It is a unique creature.”
Nathaniel nodded, waited, and finally grew impatient. “Yeah, and?”
Sol let out a belabored sigh. “Have you heard about the killings up and down the East Coast?”
“Yeah, it’s been all over the news lately. Some serial killer.” Then, after a moment, realizing, “Not some serial killer.”
“The Allamagoosalum. It’s killed four times so far. A nineteen-year-old girl in New York City, a twenty-two-year-old man in North Carolina, a ten-year-old boy in a suburb of Boston, and a five-year-old girl outside of Baltimore. No motive for any of the crimes, different styles in each. Random and completely untraceable.” He paused and a small, bitter smile slipped onto his lips and was gone. “Untraceable for normal police officers, anyway.”
“I thought Inhabitants were forbidden to kill.”
“Any interference with Residents at all is forbidden. To kill is to forfeit your own claim to life. Murder by an Inhabitant not only influences karma, it takes the power of free will away from the Resident. There is only one greater crime in the eyes of the Source, and that is to disobey its direct will,” the karma policeman said. “The Allamagoosalum, however, kills because it is born a killer. That is all it knows how to do. It is a combination of both Inhabitant and Resident, and that mix makes it impossible for the karma police to track it by any normal means.”
“It doesn’t make ripples.”
“Exactly. When an Inhabitant interferes with karma, we can see glimpses of what is occurring as it happens. With the Allamagoosalum, we see nothing, sense nothing, until it is too late.”
“So that’s where I come in?”
He nodded, glanced up at the clouds, ran a hand over his hair. “In a way. It is my responsibility to catch the monster, it is your responsibility to kill it.”
Nathaniel looked at him in surprise. “Wait, what? I thought I was just supposed to stop it.”
The karma policeman laughed. “Think back to every story you’ve ever read or been told, and tell me this: what must always happen to the monster in the end?”
“But, I mean, it’s a monster. I’m just some guy. I’m not a hero.”
“Well, in this story, you are.”
“But it’s a monster,” he emphasized.
“Be that as it may. In any event, you will develop abilities to help you kill the Allamagoosalum, although I don’t know what they will be. It may be a monster, but you are its balance, and you have already proven your worth by defeating Pestilence. And you attacked me, which shows that you possess an extreme amount of both bravery and luck.”
Nathaniel smiled. “Are you hitting on me?”
Sol groaned and waved a hand at him. “Come on, let’s get moving. We can’t bridge here in Elysium, and we have things to do.”
They set off across the fields, heading north, passed a half hour without speaking, falling into the rhythm of the walk. The landscape was unchanging, and Nathaniel began to feel as if he was simply walking in place as the world beneath his feet breathed, the soil rising up into hills and falling down into valleys with each breath. The sky above them was a checkerboard of clouds, and they moved into and out of shadow.
“Why do I have to kill it?” Nathaniel asked after awhile, hands in pockets.
“Inhabitants very rarely succeed in interfering with the karma of Residents. When they do, it is generally in trifling matters that don’t actually affect karma to a great degree. They aren’t able to get away with larger interferences, like the vissika attacking you in your apartment, because they disrupt karmic flow and a member of the karma police responds.
“But the Allamagoosalum operates outside of our ability to track it,” Sol went on. “Because it kills its victims before we know it is acting, those victims, with their death, pay a huge karmic debt. It’s complicated.” He paused, thinking, trying to come up with an easier explanation. “Do you remember when I told you about skillful and unskillful actions? Imagine each skillful action as a blue marble, and each unskillful action as a red marble, and every event in a person’s life is influenced by the marbles that they have. It’s what Residents refer to as ‘good karma’ or ‘bad karma.’”
“It really works like that?”
“This is a simplified, imperfect analogy. Karma is a very complex concept, the loopholes and paradoxes are numberless. I don’t think anyone other than the Source and the Divinors fully understand it.” He took a breath, nodded to the north, and they began walking again. “So your actions affect the numbers of marbles, and the numbers of marbles you have affect the events in your life, and the events in your life in turn can affect the numbers of marbles you have. Do you understand so far?”
Nathaniel made a face, shrugged. “Sort of.”
“All right. The Allamagoosalum works beyond karma. It chooses its victims, and it kills them whether their karma dictates a death by murder or not. So victims earn a tremendous amount of blue marbles that they don’t necessarily deserve as per their karmic allotment figured by the Divinors. The Source will not permit this, because the Source is just, and karma was put in place so that every soul could fairly earn their way to Heaven. That is why when an Allamagoosalum is created, a Cipher is as well, for balance.
“The Cipher is a new soul, with no past lives, born with no karma, and that is where you come in. Every time the Allamagoosalum kills, the unjustified blue marbles that the victim would have received go to you. In the end, your murder of the Allamagoosalum earns you enough red marbles to cancel out your unearned blue marbles, returning a balance. That is why Bertha said you have none of your own karma, and no karmic path. You have only that which you have accumulated from the first four victims.”
“That’s…” Nathaniel began, then let what Sol had said sink in. There was what he had been promised, his destiny laid out before him. And what should he say to it? What should he think about it? His entire existence had merely been a way to make sure the precious accounting system of the universe balanced. It made him incredibly valuable, but in a disposable, objectified way. “So all the karma I have, none of it is based on the life I’ve lived. It’s all stolen.’
“Again, it is not quite so simple. But yes, essentially.”
They topped a rise and saw it, a line of trees stretched across the horizon ahead. They gazed at it for several moments, not speaking, so enraptured by the end to the beautiful monotony of the Elysian Fields.
“How far away do you think it is?” Nathaniel asked.
The cop considered. “A mile, maybe?”
“Not so bad.”
“No.” The karma policeman was silent for a moment, as if distracted. “We can rest when we get there, before we bridge back.”
Nathaniel smiled. “Let’s get going, then,” he said, and set off down the hill.
When he reached the bottom, he turned and looked back at the karma policeman, who was still perched at the crest, his head cocked to one side and a curious expression on his face, like a man straining to hear whispered words.
“Sol?” Nathaniel called, frowning. “Is everything okay?”
The karma policeman remained still, sometimes tilting his head in a different direction, which only intensified Nathaniel’s original impression. After a moment, Sol rubbed a hand across his forehead.
“What is it?”
“The Allamagoosalum has killed again,” murmured the karma policeman.
Nathaniel’s breath caught in his chest. “What do we do?”
“We can bridge in the forest,” Sol said, “and try to catch it.”
Chapter VII
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sp; Carli Barker was twenty-four years old, five feet, seven inches tall, a Sagittarius, a natural blonde and a bottle brunette. She was pretty but bland, the mirror of a thousand other attractive girls in Philadelphia. Once ever few months heavy migraines fell on her that could leave her confined to a dark bedroom for days. To combat the headaches, and because of a distrust of medications, she snacked endlessly on almonds, which she had read contained natural aspirin. She was fascinated by tarot cards and tea leaf readings and, along with a smattering of classic literature, books on these two subjects comprised the bulk of her library.
Her only serious relationship had been with a sculptor named Leo Damascus, tall and lanky with a dark shock of hair that refused to stay neat. They met at a fundraiser party for a student production of Medea she was involved with and he fell hard for her. He manufactured meetings between them, sent her letters, wore down her resistance over the course of a month. Their first date was a picnic in Love Park, then roller-skating around Center City and through the tunnels that connected the various subway stations. What she remembered most was his hands, rough from woodworking but gentle when he touched her, when he skimmed them across her skin with a sound like sand falling through an hourglass. She had loved his hands first, and then him as well.
His family was obscenely rich and he was shy about it, showing his wealth as discreetly as possible. They rented a cute, pink and green Victorian house together in Cape May on the South Jersey Shore that summer with money Leo had from his trust fund. One evening, a week after they arrived, they’d gone to Sunset Beach, famous for Cape May Diamonds and the wreck of the S.S. Atlantus, one of a small number of concrete warships that had been built and tested for use during World War I and now jutted out of the water fifty feet from shore. The Diamonds were tiny pieces of quartz, carried down the coast from the mountains and rubbed smooth by the ocean currents. They came in a surprising array of colors, from crystal clear to dusty rose and pale yellow. Carli and Leo stayed on the beach long after the last of the tourists had left, sifting through the stones, sharing childhood memories, picking out constellations, drinking a bottle of Bordeaux that Leo had brought. Sometime after midnight, tipsy from the wine, they went skinny-dipping, emerged from the water dripping and laughing, collapsed on the blanket together. That was the last time they had sex and the first time they made love, diamonds shifting under the blanket as they moved together.