by Justin Bloch
Stella’s plumage darkened slightly as she grew, becoming slate gray flecked with black. She had her father’s pale hair and her mother’s eyes, though hers were a startling shade of green like cut emeralds. She was a gorgeous child, bright and a quick study. It took her no time at all to memorize the songs her mother taught her or how to retract and hide her wings. She seemed preternaturally gifted with an effortless agility that the karma policeman took great pride in. His daughter moved like a seraph.
She showed a great talent in art, as well, and her pictures, drawn in pencil or crayon or charcoal, covered the black stone entrance to Limbo as if it were a proud parent’s refrigerator. A small section was left open on the off chance that anyone did show up with the intent of entering the realm, but the only visitor to grace the trio with her presence was Nova, who would play for hours on end with her tiny niece, painting or reading or playing dress-up or winged tag. It was a happy time for Sol, his bride, and their child. None of them looked forward to the conclusion of the karma policeman’s holiday, nor was it met with open arms when it arrived.
And when late one night after Stella was fast asleep, Bertha brought up what had been on her mind for most of the previous year, it cast another pall over Sol’s mood. He reacted with whispered anger, and in the days following reverted to his old, brooding self, speaking to the Gatekeeper only when she initiated the conversation, and seeming to take only feigned joy in play with Stella. But his dark disposition lifted a few days before he was set to return to service, and he opened himself to the Gatekeeper’s suggestion.
What Bertha proposed, what had been so repellent at first, was that Stella leave the Elysian Fields and make her home on Earth. The idea had at last begun to make sense to the karma policeman as the best option, however unpleasant. The points that the Gatekeeper made, the points that he had raged against and dismissed on the night she had first made them, were succinct and logical:
Sol could not raise Stella in the Silver City.
Bertha could raise Stella in the valley of Limbo, but wouldn’t because she refused to curse her child to that loneliness.
Stella could be raised on Earth in a healthy environment where she could have a whole family and friends and a normal life.
The karma policeman held out as long as he could, but in the end, the truth of what the Gatekeeper said won out. Stella would become what was called a middling child, Inhabitant of one world but resident of another. There were those on Earth who would raise her, others who had chosen to leave the world beside this one and make their lives in the ranks of man. And Stella was still young. The transition would be hard for her at first, but children adapt, and she was an exceptional child. In time, her memories of Elysium, the Gatekeeper, and the karma policeman would fade.
On the last day of his leave, in what was the final minutes of his fifth day away from Heaven, Sol took his daughter in his arms and held her close to his chest. Bertha sat behind the great stone, out of sight. She had already said her goodbye and reminded her daughter never to reveal her wings, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. The karma policeman hugged the small, thin child, wetness pricking his own eyes, and concentrated on her tiny heartbeat against his chest. He focused until the rest of the world dropped away from them and he knew only the rhythm of her life, focused until his own pulse harmonized with hers. They bridged like that, with a twin heartbeat filling their consciousness, and, for the first time since he had heard the Gatekeeper’s voice as he stood before the Pearly Gates, a new song filled the karma policeman’s mind.
He watched her of course, his little girl, but only from afar. He checked up on her every week at first, to see how she was adjusting, then dropped back to once or twice a month. Never less than that. He spoke with her surrogate parents sporadically to stay in touch with the minutiae of her life, all of which he related to Bertha in his follow-up visits with her. His wife grew distant after Stella left, seemingly uninterested in the karma policeman’s company, but he assumed this was from resentment over the fact that she was not able to see their daughter. Still, he remained faithful in his promise to visit Bertha after every visit to the child, who was quickly growing into a young woman. It was a far from perfect life, but it was still a good life, and with much happiness.
And then, twelve years after Stella had departed Elysium, on the seventh of May, everything went wrong and the Allamagoosalum was created.
Later, when Sol met Nathaniel Valentine, he would describe karma as a river into which pebbles and rocks and boulders were sometimes thrown. To the karma police, this was no mere metaphor. They watched karma, felt it flow. It was how they did their work, how they tracked the interference of Inhabitants. The tiniest change in the course of the river sent off ripples in their minds. They could glimpse shadows of the event even as they bridged, and instinct guided them through the shelter space and to the disturbance. They were made for their work, made for their life of judgment and balance, and they were made perfectly.
When Sol felt the karmic vibrations that would change his life forever, he was standing in the park where he had sat with Nova so many centuries ago. At first, the disturbance barely registered in his thoughts as he waited to see if anyone else would respond before him. It was only when he decided to take it that he realized just where the disturbance was, what was happening, and how far it had already gone.
Panic thundered in his ears as he sketched a hurried circle in the dew damp grass of the park, spinning quickly enough that his long jacket swirled around him. The instant the toe of his shoe completed the circle, he was gone.
He rocketed through the shelter space, barely aware of the gem bright colors surrounding him. No one knew exactly what the shelter space was, but Sol’s private belief had always been that it was the actual mind of the Source, and he usually took a certain comfort in the fact that when he passed between the worlds, he was one with his creator. Certainly it would explain why he lost his human form when he traveled and took on his angelic one, blazing brightly toward another world. But today it could offer him no solace.
When he emerged from the shelter space and into the high school’s hallway, the air crackling around him, he immediately saw the boy, a gangly, gawky boy standing like a poorly made marionette, with long, greasy hair splayed across his forehead and in front of his gray eyes. Acne was spattered across his cheeks and around his mouth like mulberry stains. He was pale, dressed all in black. He was holding a gun.
The boy looked at him dumbstruck for a moment, frozen, and then seemed to catch some sense of the karma policeman’s rage and took two hesitant steps backward, tangled his feet, and crumpled to the floor.
Sol turned and looked past the boy and his eyes opened and he saw through the walls, through hasty barriers made of tables on their sides. She was there, Stella, slumped on the ground in the arms of another girl, one side of her head caved in, her face scummed with blood. He could still hear her heartbeat timed with his own, but it was weak, thready, and then it was not there at all. The single remaining pulse, his own solitary, unaccompanied pulse, beat louder, filled his soul with its throb, and in that pounding rhythm, the karma policeman heard vengeance.
“You,” he seethed. “You, what have you done, what have you done?” He rushed forward, his long jacket streaming out behind him. He reached toward the boy, felt his power leap out and take hold of the gun. It flew through the air, smacked into his hand, the weapon that had killed his daughter, and his mind became an inferno. Flames licked along the arms of his jacket, danced across the backs of his hands.
The boy backpedaled awkwardly and Sol kicked him in the side, knocked him down the hallway. He stepped forward, hesitated, trying to get himself under control. He took a harsh breath, and the image of Stella flashed before his eyes again, and he lost himself. He erupted, sent fire roaring down the hallway, knocked classroom doors from their hinges, scorched walls. When the explosion receded, he remained burning, a creature of flame and fury, a perfect, sculpted masterpiece o
f fire.
He advanced on the boy again, reached out and remembered the gun in his hand, the gun that had murdered his daughter. His daughter, his daughter, Stella. He did not think, did not consider. He pointed the gun at the boy and began to pull the trigger.
He screamed, a ragged, violent sound, screamed at the boy, at himself. The gun glowed ruby in the fierce heat of his hand, and it was several moments before he realized that he had emptied the clip, that he was dry-firing at a corpse. He cast the weapon away, stooped and heaved the body into the air. He could see his flames reflecting in the boy’s open eyes, and it was not enough that he had killed the boy. Sol was broken, his daughter was dead and it could never be enough, and his fire lashed out again. It coiled around the boy, enveloped him, twisted tight around him, and the karma policeman watched him burn, watched him cinder, watched him ash.
When the body was gone Sol’s hands went to his face, covered his eyes. There would be consequences later, but his mind brushed the fact away like a wasp from a piece of fruit. Stella was all that mattered to him, and he went to her.
Her pale hair was matted to her head and stained the color of ripe strawberries. There was blood on her lips, on her hands, in her eyelashes. She was ruined, silent. She was dead. The word pounded at him as he stood above her, and a cloak fell across his heart. The agony and fury corrupted his fire, and he began to burn black. He fell to his knees beside Stella and wept, tears falling like tiny diamonds from his onyx eyes. Dead, she was dead, and he roared, and dark flame engulfed the room, overturned desks, shattered lights, but did not touch either of the girls. He was dangerously close to cataclysm, but it did not matter. His daughter was dead.
He gathered up the body of his fallen child, cradled her in his arms as he had on the day he had brought her to this world, and then he took her away from it forever.
Chapter XIX
The rain had stopped and night had fallen. Outside the wind howled, shoving heavy charcoal clouds across the dark depths of the sky. Wet leaves clung to the window screen like moths attracted to light. The world beyond the pleasant, warm living room of Nathaniel Valentine’s apartment seemed a bitter and cold one, and the karma policeman’s tale offered no evidence to the contrary.
Nathaniel sat beside Nova on the couch. At points during the telling, she had put aside her knitting to listen more closely or to tell a bit of the story herself. When Sol shot the boy in the final part of the tale, she had placed her hand on Nathaniel’s knee, realized, and returned it to her lap. Now she had taken up her knitting again, her needles clicking softly back and forth against each other. He could see Sol in the kitchen, hands on either side of the sink, his head hung low and miserable. Nathaniel had just enough time to wonder how he could possibly see this, considering there was a wall between himself and the karma policeman, when Sol straightened and returned to the living room.
“I took her back to Elysium,” he whispered. “I took her back to her mother and to the valley where she had been born. Bertha…” He said nothing for several seconds, running a hand over his white-blond hair. “Bertha did not take the loss well. She withdrew into herself. I know she cried, she must have cried, it was her daughter, but she must have done it when I wasn’t there. For my part, I withdrew as well.” He went on in a tone of voice that belied his shame. “Except I withdrew only from her. I wasn’t there for Bertha, for my wife, as I should have been. Instead, I threw myself into tracking down the Cipher. I knew what I had done when I killed the boy.”
There was a half empty glass of water sitting on the end table, still damp with perspiration, and the karma policeman raised it to his lips and drained it. When Nathaniel opened his mouth to speak, Nova touched his arm lightly with a fingertip. He turned to look at her and she shook her head.
After a moment, the karma policeman continued. “His name was Raymond Degroots. He was an only child, the son of a secretary and an accountant. He had a normal childhood. But he was small and didn’t have many friends, and when he reached high school, he was bullied. One day he woke up, drove to school, and killed seven people.” He cleared his throat. “Including my daughter Stella. And so I took my vengeance upon him and I killed him. And though I won’t ask forgiveness for what I did, I shouldn’t have done it. In killing him, I created a karmic imbalance. They teach in schools that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that holds true for everything, even karma.” He considered this. “Especially karma, maybe. ‘For every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.’ The Buddhist teaching defining karma. But it creates a problem when the second event cannot occur.
“There must always be a balance in karma. All things balance.” Sol held his hands out in front of him, palms up, at equal levels. “When I killed that boy, it paid off a huge amount of whatever karmic debt he had accrued in his life. His side goes up.” He raised his left hand, his mouth twisting in distaste. “If someone from this world had killed him, a cop, a teacher, another student, anyone, their side would have gone down in direct correlation to his.” He lowered his right hand the same distance he had raised his left. “But I am an angel. Karma does not apply to me.” His right hand disappeared behind his back. “And so an event remains unmatched, and karma will not tolerate an imbalance. The boy gets a second chance at life; his soul is reincarnated as an Allamagoosalum. A negative force of karma. A balance to the inequity which I caused. A monster.
“But once again, there is the problem of balance. The Allamagoosalum kills. It takes lives too soon, doles out karma that is undeserved. Which is why the instant the boy died, a Cipher was also created, to take on the karma of the victims. And when the Allamagoosalum is slain, there will once more be a balance and this whole affair will be at an end.”
Sol sat down in the overstuffed arm chair and folded his hands in his lap. His face was contorted with emotions, anger, frustration, despair. The karma policeman had murdered the boy who murdered his daughter, but to no end: the boy had returned and killed again. Sol’s revenge had been futile. And now he would not even be able to finish what he had started, because it was the Cipher who must complete the cycle. Nathaniel rubbed the raised ‘p’ on his hand unconsciously, uneasy.
“That story,” he said, speaking up for the first time since the karma policeman had begun his tale. “The one that History told, about the guy who could change karma? He became an Allamagoosalum, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Nova answered. Sol did not raise his eyes. “It was the first one in a very long time, and people had begun to think that perhaps there would be no more. Jacques Rogers was an anomaly, though. There was no choice but to kill him, he was growing too powerful. Raymond Degroots, however…” she trailed off, looking at her brother, who seemed to tighten like a muscle in spasm. “No one blamed Sol for what he did,” she went on. “The circumstances were unique.”
Robber leapt into Nathaniel’s lap and took a few swipes at a stray loop of Nova’s yarn, then curled up, his head on his paws. Nathaniel began petting him absentmindedly, the cat nipping at his fingertips. He couldn’t imagine what he would have done in Sol’s place. His daughter, ripped away from him. A child, a beautiful, talented child, a life, a piece of himself.
“You didn’t tell me that Bertha was your wife,” he said quietly.
“It was a long time ago. I didn’t see any reason to tell you.”
“You didn’t see a reason to tell me a lot of things.” That earned a sharp look from the karma policeman, and Nathaniel held up a hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just…maybe we could have prevented some of what’s happened if I’d known things sooner.”
Sol grimaced. “It has been a long time since I thought of Bertha as my wife. Thinking of her in that way brings up unpleasant memories.”
“So what do we do now?” Nathaniel said. “How do we find this thing?”
The karma policeman stirred. The
light reflected off of his pale hair and face, but his eyes were dull as ash. He cast a look at Nova, then turned his attention back to Nathaniel. “There may be someone who can help us, on the world beside this one. Tomorrow we will see if we can find her. It’s late now and we all need to rest.” He paused. “It is only a matter of time before we confront the Allamagoosalum. Soon, this will all be over.” He rose, ran his hands down the front of his long jacket. “Goodnight, both of you.” He turned without waiting for a reply and slipped away into the room where Nathaniel kept his computer, closing the door quietly behind him.
After a moment, Nova pressed her needles into the ball of yarn she had been working with and set it on the table beside her. She stood, stretched her small, lithe body; Nathaniel’s eyes traced her curves. There was an infinite number of questions he wanted to ask her about the karma policeman’s story, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t have many answers for him. She was closer to her brother than perhaps anyone besides Bertha, but as they had listened to Sol talk, Nathaniel sensed that Nova was hearing the majority of the story for the first time as well.
Nathaniel lifted Robber off of his lap and placed him gently on a down blanket beside him. The cat yawned and looked up at him with eyes that hid the thoughts behind them, then licked one paw and went back to sleep. Nathaniel uncrossed his legs and discovered that one of his feet had fallen asleep, and now pins and needles laid siege to his skin. He grimaced, tried to stand and stumbled instead. Nova reacted with uncanny speed, grabbed his arm before he could fall to the ground. Images and abstracts flashed through his mind like jump cuts in a poorly edited film:
(a man in a wheel chair, smoking a cigarette, a box of candy in his lap.)