by Cody Lakin
She leaned back in her seat, for the moment able to put aside the swells of anxiety beneath the surface of her skin. Her father could always calm her, sometimes even with his mere presence. “I think I remember that about Mom,” she said. “The way she was when you guys fought. It always kind of made me mad.”
“Well, she had a way of getting to me, too, but that’s just how people are. I’m sure I caused her more headaches than she did me, when we were together.” He smiled. “Do you remember other things about her, though? There was a lot of good, before she left.” Before the Knox family, he thought, but decided not to say.
“I think so,” she said. “Actually, yeah. Sometimes I can remember her smile. Just her smile. Like… did we ever go to the county fair?”
“We did. You were maybe four years old, the one time we went. You ended up having a bit of a panic attack because of all the people, so it was the only time we went as a family.”
“I think I remember that, actually. Just… maybe I’m remembering a dream, but I think I remember lights, and music, and her smiling at me.” Jezebel was surprised that there was the feeling of a lump in her throat, and she looked down, hoping her father wouldn’t notice.
“Mmm,” Andrew looked down as well, maybe remembering those good times, or perhaps remembering the pain. “She was a good mother to you, while she was here.”
Jezebel looked at him. Sometimes the sight of him sad, or crying, could bring her to tears too, like the sight of him now. “Did you ever try to find out where she went? Or try to contact her?” she asked.
“I thought about it. There were a lot of nights when I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and I had to do everything I could to keep from reaching for my phone to see if maybe she would answer if I called. But no, I never did. I owed it to myself not to, and I thought I owed it to her, too.” He tried to smile despite the twinkling in his eyes. “It’s funny how people are, isn’t it? The things we allow to get in our own ways. Invisible things, like our egos, or our fears.”
“Yeah,” she said.
The silence that fell between them then seemed to have a weight, its own physical weight. When Jezebel inhaled and then exhaled through her nose, it came unevenly, and her prior anxiety came flooding back, making her restless.
“Dad,” she said, and their eyes met. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. But when you break it down, there’s nothing that any of us have to do.”
“Dad, now really isn’t the time—”
“You know I don’t believe in things like destiny, or fate, or predestination. They’re fun concepts to entertain and theorize about, but in the real world, they don’t hold up. The only patterns we find in the world are the ones we look for. The only meaning anything has is what we give it. That’s what I believe, and it’s what I’ve found to be true across my whole life. And you know me. It’s something I’ve put a lot of thought into, over the years.”
“Dad, this isn’t about philosophy, it’s about your safety, and your life.”
“I know it is, but listen. Charlie Knox told Edgar Forgael that he was going to come here. And for whatever it means, I played a significant hand, all those years ago, in what happened to the Knox family. If Charlie Knox is going to come, I’m going to be here. And Jezebel, I have the pager Jimmy gave me. It’s not like I would just…”
“I know,” she said, but knew, again, that her father was dancing around a lie. She knew him too well to think that he wouldn’t engage Charlie Knox, wouldn’t rise to the challenge before him. “I’m just… I’m so scared. He’s killed people. He’s… you know what he is.”
“Don’t worry about me, Jezebel. I’m more worried about you, how you’ll handle it if he intends to confront both of us.”
Jezebel looked at him with the makings of a glare, but saw that he was holding back a smile. After a moment, she gave in and smiled too.
Outside, the day moved slowly, indifferent to what was playing out beneath its sky. All of Lamplight seemed to be waiting.
Chapter 9:
A Messiah
It took just a day more for Charlie Knox to appear, and when he did, it was in the afternoon, and could not have been at a more precise time. It was, Andrew thought, as though Knox had been watching, waiting for the perfect moment.
Although she had originally intended on staying home all day, refusing to let her father be alone in case Charlie Knox did show up, Jezebel went to see Edgar Forgael to make sure he was okay, though she had promised her father that she would be back as soon as she could. After the other night, she had to know that Edgar was okay. The thought of how he had gone off into the dark, on the edge of hysterics, hung heavily over her every thought and her every action, so she went to see him.
Only a matter of minutes after she had gone, the wind picked up briefly and Charlie Knox appeared in the street in front of the house.
Andrew Jean had just lit up a cigarette and was reclining in his usual seat on his front porch when he saw Charlie standing there, and it was as though he had just now appeared, materialized from the air. Andrew hadn’t seen him come from any direction.
Knox wore a long dark coat which hung almost to his knees, and it settled until it was perfectly still once the brief gust of wind died down. Even with his slight stigmatism—though he refused to wear his glasses—Andrew could see Charlie Knox’s eyes clearly, and his gaze burned with an intensity Andrew could all but physically feel.
Andrew took a drag on his cigarette as Charlie Knox calmly approached the house, coat flowing behind him.
Showtime, thought Andrew, blowing out smoke through his lips. Somehow this felt right. Somehow it seemed that he had been awaiting this moment for a long time. Eight years, maybe; since the day the Knox family case had been closed, spurred by the suicide of Charlie Knox’s now legendary parents.
* * *
Jezebel knocked four times on Edgar Forgael’s front door, then stepped back and waited.
It was unusual for Edgar to shut his front door. Normally he only closed the screen door, and could be found cleaning his house or spending time on his front porch or front yard at any given time during the day. Today the house seemed abandoned. More of a stagnant, inanimate object than the place of warmth she was used to it being.
She waited a whole minute before stepping forward and knocking again, this time with more force. But another tense minute went by, and the only answer she got was the continued silence both outside and from inside the house.
What if something happened to him? Or worse… he did something to himself?
She shifted her weight between both legs as dark possibilities arose in her mind. Anything could have happened. Edgar had been so disturbed, so shaken. She had always known him to have a perpetual smile on his face and wise words on any topic, like a less intense version of her father. It was only in recent days that she had seen a sobering seriousness find its way into his demeanor, first in how he held his eyes, then in the way he spoke to her.
She let out a deep sigh and reached out. The door opened with ease.
All the curtains were drawn on the windows and the house was mostly dark, except for the daylight that spilled onto the living room’s carpet when she opened the door. There was no sign of Edgar, at least not that she could see.
“Hello? Edgar?” Her voice trembled in the quiet house. She was certain now that something was wrong. “Edgar?” She stepped forward, prepared to search the house, when her eyes fell on a sheet of paper on the small coffee table in the living room. Under any normal circumstance she may not have noticed it at all, but it was the only thing on the coffee table.
The words suicide note flashed briefly in her mind but she forced them away and wen
t to read what was written.
* * *
In his building anticipation, Andrew hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this.
Casual as could be, Charlie Knox stepped up onto the front porch, gave Andrew a sly grin, and then walked over and sat on the plastic chair that Detective James Goode often sat upon when he came to visit. Now it was Charlie Knox sitting there, separated from Andrew by a small plastic table which amounted to maybe three feet, and they faced each other like friends about to play a game of chess, which, Andrew thought, wasn’t so far off.
Charlie Knox wore a black button-up shirt under his long slim coat, and nestled in his swept back hair was a pair of round black goggles. He was handsome, his face thin, eyes wide and piercing and intensely aware. Behind those eyes, Andrew could envision an endlessly turning wheel of analytical and philosophical thought. In this, Charlie Knox reminded him of his younger self when his ever-reeling mind had made it hard to sleep every night, and his trains of thoughts could have filled notebooks on the most abstract but profound musings and observations. And even with their eyes meeting, neither Charlie nor Andrew dared look away. Both of them tacitly understood that this moment had been a long time coming, and it deserved their mutual acknowledgment.
He’s not how I imagined, thought Andrew. Not at all.
Charlie was the one who broke the silence.
“I’ve looked forward to this moment for most of my life.” His voice was soft and melodic, somehow intimate, and it caused a chill to ripple down Andrew’s back.
“Since your parents’ suicide?” Andrew asked.
A grin spread over Charlie’s ominously cherubic face. “Yes. Since then. That was when we first met, after all.”
“This is about revenge, then.”
The grin widened. “Revenge? You’d assume such a juvenile emotion would apply to me, and to this situation, Andrew Jean? You do your reputation an injustice. If this were about revenge, I would have cut your throat by now.” A small, genuine chuckle escaped Charlie’s throat. “No, this isn’t about revenge. My parents mean very little to me. In fact, there were only two things I ever owed to them: their giving birth to me, and their having introduced me to their higher truths. Which are, you should know, what I have come here to talk with you about.”
Andrew leaned forward, his eyes never leaving Charlie’s. “You may think of yourself as some sort of prophet, Charlie, the way your parents did, but you’re talking to a man who has spent most of his life contemplating this world, philosophizing over divine questions that many go about their lives never even conceiving of. To me you’re just a man, the son of two psychopathic occult leaders—”
“And to me you are just an old philosopher, whose knowledge, though great, is limited to the only world he thinks exists.” That sly grin returned to Knox’s face as an expression of puzzlement came across Andrew’s.
* * *
Jezebel, feeling far away from herself, picked up the letter on Edgar’s coffee table. She hesitated then, her heart pounding which she could feel in her ears. What if—
No, she told herself. And she started to read.
Dear Jezebel,
If I felt that I had more time, I would have waited for you to come by my house so that I could have told you this in person. But I feel in my heart that if I put off my leaving much longer, save to write you this letter, I may just lose my mind. So I’ll have to hope that this short letter will suffice.
You see, I have to go. John Muir, the explorer and true mountain man, was also a writer of many memorable quotes, and I find it fitting to quote him now: “The mountains are calling and I must go.” There’s something beautiful about that, for how simple it is, and I have no doubt that you of all people can fully grasp, even relate to, what it means that I am quoting it to you now. The things I learned from Charlie Knox have left me useless, emptied out, and disheartened, because, as I explained to you, despite the man’s insanity and the fact that he is a murderer, he is a man who carries with him truths I shudder to think of. I have had the rug pulled out from beneath me, and if I was to stay in this world much longer, I fear that I might soon find reality unbearable, even destructive. Fairlane Road calls me. The songs of the fairies call me from the base of the Fairlane World mountains, and, you see, I must go. If I am to find any hope left for living, I will find it there. But even so, after all that I learned from Charlie Knox, I wonder if I will ever be able to look upon the worlds the same way.
I am sorry that I must go and leave you, Jezebel. But this is not and never was my battle. It is yours. It is written in the libraries of the fairy-folk. I am the observer, the walker of the worlds, the gate-keeper of Fairlane Road, if you will, and in that sense, I am powerless to help you. I feared that a day like this would come. You are the only hope there is of beating Charlie Knox. Your connection to him, it’s why this is happening, yes, and it is why you are the only one who can beat him. But if you cannot, and if you instead find his truths convincing and good, know that I will not blame you. His goal is to merge our world with the higher world. To do so would bring about a great spiritual and mental awakening in all people. All of Earth’s pretenses would fall away, and higher, deeper, more meaningful truths would be the rule, in place of ignorance and division. Could you imagine it? Charlie Knox, the psychopath, the murderer, plans to rid the world of division, to inject it with unity and truth. He is a monster, but he is—he could be, I mean—a savior, too. Who would have thought? It sounds beautiful to me. He convinced me, truthfully, that his cause is not an evil one, and that is why I must go. My role is done. In fact, if I were to stay, all that I could offer you would be my confusion, my bewilderment. I would likely even hinder you. So if he convinces you, too, then neither I nor anyone could blame you. In fact, I cannot help but wonder if it would even be a bad thing if he does succeed in his confrontation with you and your father. I’m not even sure that this is about who wins and who loses anymore. There’s so much more to him, and to his message, than that. His vision of the world is one I almost crave myself. It can be so hard living in a place filled with so much hate, fear, ignorance, emptiness, and division. You know this even more than I do.
I am going now, so I bid you farewell, Jezebel. I’m certain we shall see each other again, someday. Until then, you are ever in my thoughts. I trust in you, and I love you as though you are a member of my family, which you have always been.
With love,
Edgar
There were tears in Jezebel’s eyes when she read the final words. She set the letter back on the coffee table with trembling hands, and, stepping away, she felt a cold knot of terror tightening in her chest.
If he convinces you, too…
I will not blame you.
She took a deep breath and brought a hand up to cover her mouth. It was all hitting her now, and it was hitting her hard.
Edgar had given up. He hadn’t been able to resist whatever Charlie Knox had shown him and told him, and rather than succumb and join Knox’s cause, Edgar had left the world to journey to Faerie. He had abandoned her. He had been convinced that her enemy was right and he had abandoned her.
The world began to sway and Jezebel had to crouch down so that she wouldn’t faint. “Oh my god,” she said, beginning to cry. “Oh my god.”
* * *
“It seems we both digress,” said Charlie Knox, who leaned back in his chair to be more comfortable. “If we both enter this conversation with closed minds, discrediting each other for who we are rather than objectively considering each other’s words, then this meeting is pointless.”
Andrew considered this, then nodded and also leaned back in his chair. “You’re right. We’re both above ad hominem fallacies.”
Charlie smiled. “M
y favorite fallacy, used most often by those of a less liberal mindset. Your reputation precedes you, Andrew Jean. I like you already.”
Andrew raised an eyebrow. “My reputation?”
“Yes. This may sound strange, but I have read about you. There is a place where everything about every world, and every person—every being, living or not—has been written down, recorded, analyzed, and is frequently updated. It is in these libraries that I have spent the majority of my life.”
“I assume you’re talking about the… what did your parents call it?… the higher world. Or maybe it was the invisible world.”
“The former is correct. Your reputation becomes you once more, Mr. Jean, that you would have even the slightest notion of the higher world’s existence.”
“It was the basis of your parents’ cult. Their messages to the police force and to the media were full of strange references to their ‘higher world.’”
“Of course,” said Charlie. “And as I was saying, in my time in the libraries of the higher world, even up until recently, I read what was written about you. And you are revered as a philosopher of this world, and a truly great one, I might add. Much is written on your superior intelligence, your ability to deconstruct others’ arguments against your own beliefs, and your cynicism, which I believe may be your weakness. You are intelligent, morally philosophical, but cynical. It must be difficult, for that reason, to live in a world filled with such banality.”
Andrew had to tense his body in order to keep from showing his shock. “You’re very good at analyzing a person. I’ll give you that, Charlie.”
“I did not gain this knowledge by analyzing you, Mr. Jean. I’ve only just met you.”
“Which means you’ve come here to convince me that this higher world, and its library, is a real place.”