by Richard Long
“Like mine!” Martin shouted proudly.
“Aye, like yours.” Paul smiled, rubbing his bristly blond crew cut.
The story didn’t stop there. In fact, it had only just begun. The story seemed to go on forever. At every twist and turn, there was so much adventure! And better yet, treasure! They went on a quest to hunt it down. The things they found were incredible. So incredible he couldn’t believe treasures like that could exist without everybody knowing about them. “That’s why it’s a secret,” Paul told him.
Martin loved the secrecy, loved all the planning. And just as in any good story, there were plenty of bad guys to battle along the way. “Monsters,” Paul called them. The monsters were scary, just like monsters should be, but Martin didn’t mind. He liked the challenge. The monsters made everything more exciting because they were real. It felt like he was inside the story, acting it out. And winning every time! What could be more fun for a growing boy?
The treasure was real, too. Jewels. Rings. And best of all, gold! Martin loved the gold. He wasn’t sure why, but he loved it. When he was little, he loved it so much he wanted to eat it. He even tried once, on a really old coin. His teeth sunk in when he bit it. There were other treasures too, scrolls and statues, staffs, goblets and swords, really old stuff. And the Book. Paul liked the old stuff much more than the gold and he loved the Book more than anything. Martin knew why. The Book told the story. All of it. But why did he like the Book more than the gold when he already knew the story? Paul made fun of him when he asked. He called him stupid. Martin recoiled from the shame. It took him three minutes and eight seconds to remember what he’d been thinking about. Oh, yeah: the story. Martin thought the story was about the treasure, but Paul kept telling him no, he was missing the point.
“The story isn’t about the treasure, dummy! It’s about…”
Dammit! He was forgetting again! He closed his eyes, moistening them, then gazed at the undulating trees, deeper and deeper into the shadows between the branches, the waving blobs of charcoal gray, navy blue, and deep, dark green. The darkness shifted and swayed, weaving in and out like a living, breathing tapestry. The shadows. The branches. And after he stared with open eyes for a long, long time, he heard Paul shouting at him again:
“The story isn’t about the treasure, dummy! It’s about…”
That place. That place where Paul took him, when they were standing on the altar, after he made his vow, before Paul killed…No!…don’t go there…focus on the story.…
He paused, breathing in deeply, emptying his mind of everything except the image of Paul in the wheat field, his arms waving wildly as he told his tale. He closed his eyes and the image became so clear it felt like he was actually there again, sitting at Paul’s feet, listening rapturously. He could hear Paul’s booming voice, smell the whiskey on his breath.
The memories came flooding back in a tidal wave: He was remembering everything! Martin tried to stay calm, but couldn’t help gasping as all the jigsaw puzzle pieces rearranged themselves and slipped smoothly into place. He could see it all, his heart beating faster and faster…until there was something moving toward him, coming at the end of the train of memories like a lonely caboose.
This wasn’t a memory…it was a place…the wonderful place where the angel told the boy all his secrets…the same place Paul took him…the place that finally made sense of all the awful things they’d done together. It was coming toward him now. No, it was here…obscuring all the trees and the buildings and everything…a glorious mass of swirling light that was talking to him without words…pumping a completely formed thought into his brain that was even more vivid than a memory. It sounded like Paul, but no, that wasn’t right…it wasn’t a thought or a voice, it was a knowing…a certainty that Martin spoke out loud:
“The story has a purpose. We’re doing something together…something that will change…”
Fuck! Martin banged his fist on the armchair as the words vanished from his lips, as the swirling waves disappeared with them and washed all the knowing away like it had never even happened. It was gone! Every part of it erased in an eye blink.
Martin paced in front of the window. I need to bring it back!
He forced himself to calm down. To sit down and try all night if that’s what it took. And if that didn’t work, there was still another way. The white room. That was why he made it. To show him the world of dreams. To help him remember…and forget.
The white room would bring it all back. He would clear his mind and stare into all that blankness and concentrate on the one image he could still cling to. The swirling shape that gave him everything and took it all away left one solitary clue behind in its wake: an image of the prize Paul valued above all else…and the key to snatching it away from him.
Yes, there it was, only a few feet away, at the end of a long, gilded chain, gently rising and falling on Rose’s sleeping chest. It was the key to protecting Rose, the key to everything. He wasn’t sure where she got it, but he remembered where he’d seen it before. Even though the one Paul wore around his neck was different, he guessed they both did the same thing.
It was the key. Yes, the key. Now all he needed was the Book.
Bean opened the closet doors slowly. He was glad there was a light in this part of the hallway. Even so, it was still hard to see. He wondered how Paul hooked up his electricity in the long-condemned building. Probably tapped into some live Con Ed lines in the basement. Even more puzzling was why he only had a few functioning lights. Some of the other hallways were so dark you couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. Michael stayed clear of those, retracing his steps back to the big closet the instant he walked in Paul’s front door. The closet that was filled with…
It was empty. What the fuck? The wood inside was charred. It smelled like a drowned campfire. He closed the doors to see if there were dents in the wall where Paul had slammed the doorknobs. Yep. Could there be more than one closet? He looked around and saw the room with the couch and the windows facing the street. It was only a dozen yards away. This had to be the right closet. So where were the guns? He opened the closet again, even slower than before…and almost screamed in shock.
The burnt smell was gone. The wood was smooth and clean. The chest was there, open and gleaming with all that deadly steel. Instead of comforting him, the sight threw him into an absolute panic. Was he crazy? What the fuck was going on here? He almost ran down to the street and probably would have if not for what he saw inside the giant chest of weapons. He saw three golden coins. Three beautiful glowing coins.
They were sitting on top of a very big book.
Paul watched over the city that never slept and thought about how much they had in common. He wouldn’t sleep tonight. I was already dreaming. And I saw him, sitting in that chair. Watching me.
“William…” he whispered.
“What?”
“Are you ready?”
I couldn’t answer. He knew I wasn’t. He didn’t care.
I saw him smile, taunting me. I saw those long, fat fingers drumming on the arms of his chair. Soft, muffled sausages. Farump. Farump. I looked at his face and saw a resemblance to mine I’d never noticed before. My dream-self moved in for a closer look and I watched his expression change by infinitesimal degrees. Softening. Flattening.
As it changed, the resemblance grew stronger and stronger, until finally at the end, just as the sky was starting to brighten in the east, it became frighteningly clear:
I could no longer tell the difference.
I am William’s soul. I am writing this Book from a place you can’t imagine. I found this story rendered whole, complete. It was there before I started.
I dole it out in drips and drabs. Sometimes he listens. Sometimes not. It doesn’t matter. It will all come out eventually. Unraveling, thread by thread.
I am the machine that makes his dreams. I make them fierce and thrilling. Sometimes I tell him things I wish I could take back again. I see the trouble they caus
e. I watch from my way, way far-off place. I see him try so hard to be good.
I keep talking and he keeps writing. I can’t stop it. He can’t stop it.
Even if I could…make it nicer…make it happy…make it safe…I still wouldn’t. Because I have to tell you…I really like it this way.
“Picnic,” Rose whispered in Martin’s ear early in the morning, before he was even awake, as the sun twisted around the corner of their spacious bedroom suite, poking between the hanging plants, filtering through the gauze-sheer curtains, looking for a bed to warm, a face to paint. It found Martin’s stubbly cheek. He hadn’t shaved in one whole day, definitely a record. Rose didn’t mind. She rubbed her own soft cheek against his bristles—up and down, up and down—like she was exfoliating with a dry loofah sponge. She did one cheek and then the other until her skin was red and sore. Rosy.
Martin opened his eyes and looked at her curiously. She grinned and ducked between his legs to rub her newly flushed cheeks against his morning erection.
Rose loved sucking cock. She loved it like other women love baby showers. Not “giving head,” or “going down,” or any of those other sanitized euphemisms her girlfriends sometimes used to describe what in her mind was best defined by the act itself.
“Mmmmm,” she sighed, grabbing the meaty club in both fists. Martin was fully awake now, scrunching a pillow behind his neck to get a better view. She pressed the fat underbelly of his cock down with both her hands, mashing it against his washboard abs, rocking it back and forth like a rolling pin. Martin did a sit-up crunch to heighten the effect. Rose looked up and gave him a beaming smile, then yawned her mouth open and took him inside.
Martin didn’t complain, but what he really wanted to do was fuck. Now that he was getting more practice, he was as excited about fucking as Rose was about sucking. He tried to coax her head away so he could get between her legs. It wasn’t easy. Her mouth clung to him so voraciously it felt like he was trying to pull a bowling ball off a swollen finger. Eventually, he succeeded and climbed on top of her. But even someone as emotionally dense as Martin couldn’t help notice her sad pout as he began thrusting in and out of her in long, even strokes. He was rushing things. Not good. It didn’t take long for him to pump the pout off her face, but it registered nonetheless. So when they finished and she moved back between his legs, he let her do whatever she wanted at her own slow pace.
After twenty-three minutes and nine seconds by Martin’s internal clock, she wiped off her face and led him by the hand to the window. They looked out over the sprawling mass of Central Park, both of them thinking it was the most beautiful sight they’d ever seen.
“Can we go for a picnic?” Rose asked, stroking his back. “Do you still think it’s safe?”
Picnic. Why did that sound so appealing? And unsettling? He almost heard Norine’s voice warning him, but the switch clicked and all he was left with was a deep longing in his heart. Picnic. It sounded so good. So necessary. But what about that other word?
“Yeah…it’s safe,” he said, trying to convince himself, torn between the longing to forget everything that had ever happened before and the job still waiting to be finished.
Paul. The key. The Book. Martin had spent most of the night awake, trying to recreate the vision that slipped between the fingers of his mind. The more he tried to corral those re-erased memories, the faster the switches in his brain locked down, until finally, exhausted and angry, he settled between those soft sheets and wrapped his arms around Rose’s even softer body. Nice. That was the last word that registered in his mind before sleep carted him away. Waking up with Rose was even nicer. It was the nicest thing that had ever happened to him. He gripped her hand, staring at the same view that seemed so sinister last night. Everything looked so different. So new. He pictured them lying in the sun with some sandwiches. Could he deal with Paul later? Could he do something good, just once?
“It’s so nice out, isn’t it?” Rose asked in a childlike voice, trying hard to pretend she hadn’t noticed the hesitance in Martin’s last reply, needing him to affirm her denial.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” he said. “Everything looks like gold.”
Michael clutched the coin as he looked at the Book in his lap. It was so thick and heavy it practically pinned his legs to the couch. From the instant he held it, he ceased thinking about anything else. Not the weird hallucination with the burnt closet, or the equally surreal incidents preceding it: the beheading, their leap from a five-story building…not even Martin’s gold. As soon as he saw it, he knew this was the book Paul had taken from Firth. Taken back from Firth, he thought, wondering how anyone could take anything from Paul in the first place without losing his head in the process.
“Some things are worth more than treasure,” Paul had said.
What did that mean? He couldn’t begin to guess. Because he couldn’t open it up. A wide leather strap with a big brass lock bound it tightly shut. Fuck! It was driving him crazy. He’d been up all night trying to pick the brass lock with a rusty old paperclip he found on the floor, but the metal bent like rubber every time he stuck it inside and twisted. He even thought about grabbing one of those gleaming knifes in Paul’s “war chest” and slicing through the strap, but he knew what Paul would do to him for mutilating his most precious possession. Michael shuddered at the thought…then he started in with the paperclip again.
After another round of futile poking and twisting, he paced around the room. But like every other time he set the Book down, something felt so wrong about it that he scooted right back to the couch and picked it up again. Ooof. When he lifted it this time, the morning sun flashed across the leather surface and he felt the strangest sensation he’d ever experienced. The Book felt like it was pulling him forward, dragging him across the room and into the dark hallway. What the fuck? Was he tripping? He followed the tug on his hands for a few steps, then commanded his feet to stop.
There was something up ahead in the hallway. A light? He walked down the corridor, the tug from the Book growing more insistent with every step until suddenly he wasn’t afraid of the darkness. What darkness? The hallway was swirling with light. Where was it coming from? It seemed incredibly bright, but it didn’t hurt his eyes. He wanted to go closer. He needed to. The Book helped him, pulling him onward with a force that felt like gravity. This time he stopped resisting, his blinded eyes open, unseeing and seeing at the same time. But after he walked only a dozen yards, the darkness returned all at once and swallowed him up.
Holy shit! He couldn’t tell which direction he’d come from or where he was headed. The Book knew. It kept pulling him. Bean tried to slow down, afraid he’d slam into a wall and break his neck. He ran into a wall anyway. As the feeble light coming from his left flickered against the surface, he saw that it wasn’t a wall after all. Well, it was and it wasn’t. It was the same height as the wall and it was covered with the same filthy wallpaper. But it wasn’t a wall. Not really. It was more like a door.
The Striker finished my implants today. I’m so wiped out. Between the agony of the procedure and the misery that followed, I can barely sit still to write this. It doesn’t help that I hardly slept last night. The gift Paul left in my suitcase was one reason. Strangely enough, the threat of arrest is much less disturbing than the panic I’ve felt since he dropped the Clan Kelly bomb. When he told me that his family—our family—co-opted the Hermetic line of succession, I could only conclude he was certifiably insane. What else could I think? Unfortunately, no matter what I thought, how obvious it seemed, how much I wanted, needed to believe that he was totally off his fucking rocker—in my guts, in my heart of hearts, I knew he was telling the truth. How crazy is that? Insanity must truly be genetic.
Regardless of his craziness or mine, he had also given me the first solid fact I could use to track him down. I went on the web to see what I could dig up. Kelly is the second most populous Irish surname after Murphy. There are a lot of Paul Kellys out there. I ran down as many as I could who
seemed in the right age range, but I couldn’t find anyone who fit the bill—a big, burly Irish sociopath with a fondness for collecting ancient occult manuscripts and blackmailing young men into committing unspeakable acts of horror. I wasn’t particularly surprised when I came up empty. This obviously wasn’t a guy who craved publicity.
So I trudged over to their grisly parlor today, hoping Paul would be as chatty as he’d been yesterday. He was not. In fact, he barely spoke the entire time. When at last The Striker struck his final blow and cleaned off the blood, we all went to the mirror together to check it out. The golden rays snaking from my solar plexus were surrounded by inflamed bloody tissue. It looked horrible. Staring at my raw, red, ravaged skin, I can’t believe I ever thought about doing something so insane. As horrified as I felt, Paul seemed exceptionally pleased with the results. “Billy boy, you did such a fine job here that you’re due for a reward.”
“A reward?” I asked, completely flummoxed.
“Come with me,” he said with a sly wink. “There’s something I want to show you.”
The way he said it made me feel the same excitement I feel when I’m collecting: like an adventure is about to begin. I put on my coat. The Striker nodded and opened the door for us, but remained inside. We headed east, almost to the river. The wave of gentrification hasn’t pushed that far and most of the buildings are abandoned. It’s really scary at night, so I was grateful there were still a few rays of sunshine left. I’m not sure why I felt so jumpy. Even if it were midnight, I was in no danger of being mugged with Paul stomping beside me.