by Cody Lakin
Jezebel knew another thing, too. She’d needed to hear her father’s story first.
She knew Charlie Knox was still alive.
And she knew where she could find him.
* * *
Andrew finished telling Jezebel about his debate with Charlie Knox, and they were both surprised by how much time had gone by while he’d been talking. The sun had set, and the sky was turning gray with fading twilight.
“Looks like I’ve talked the evening away,” he said, grinning with a small hint of guilt. He had been fidgeting and squeezing his hands together, and now he released them and wiped them on his thighs. “I’ve just… I’ve been trying to process everything I’ve witnessed today. And whatever it means, if it means anything at all, Charlie Knox won. He accomplished what he came here to do.” He shook his head. “I don’t have the words for it. But goddamn it, Jezebel. He’s a murderer, and his beliefs seem insane, yet… yet you saw what happened today. And you can see how his words have affected me.”
Jezebel nodded. She was looking at the ground but not really seeing it. She felt far away, having to force herself to stay present and in the moment. And suddenly she didn’t know whether she wanted to start laughing or just break down into tears. Her own father had been persuaded by Charlie Knox, just as Edgar Forgael had been.
It was, to her, almost incomprehensible. Yet at the same time, she could see the belief in her father’s eyes, could see the desire for more.
“I’m sorry,” said Andrew, looking to his feet and sighing. “Goddamn it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. All my life I’ve built up these foundations under myself, and all it took was for that man to come to me and talk to me for me to realize that all of my philosophies and conclusions and definitions are just… words. Words and rationalizations, built on… on nothing.” His eyes were now shimmering, and seeing this was enough to bring tears to Jezebel’s eyes, too. “I tried to fight it, but I’ve never been able to deny facts and truths. It’s the folly and strength of being an existentialist, I suppose. You can build your life around a truth, but if a greater truth shows up, even if it’s out of the blue, your truth has to crumble. It’s like, everything I’ve ever come to believe about the world, it’s still true, but the things he told me, and explained to me… there’s hope for so much more than I’ve ever even imagined. I’m trying to make sense of all of this, but Knox…” He took a slow, trembling breath.
“It’s okay,” said Jezebel, staring blankly. “I understand. I do. You don’t have to explain yourself, you know.”
He blinked his tears back, nodding. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what it means, if it’s supposed to mean anything. There was so much to the things he spoke about, and even the things that seem impossible… it’s the possibility of it. I think that’s the part I can’t deny, no matter how much it would be easier to. The possibility.”
They were both silent. Jezebel, her mind reeling, looked out the window at the police car parked outside, the sunlight’s last afterglow fading from the sky above.
“You know where he is,” Andrew said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“He’s still alive, and you know where he went after he disappeared.”
“Yes,” she said.
“So he was telling the truth, then. About all of it. Even that other world.”
Jezebel looked at him. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long…”
“I know,” he said. “I used to see it in your eyes, and trusted you’d… you’d tell me, one day, whatever it was.”
“I’m sorry.”
Andrew Jean smiled. “Don’t be, Jess. We can talk more about it later. For now, I… I think I need to rest.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
They stood together and embraced. “Be careful,” he told her. She thought of asking what he meant, but didn’t.
“I think it’ll be fine, Dad. I love you.”
He winked at her. “Love you too, sweetie.”
* * *
Jezebel waited until it was completely dark out, and used the darkness as a cover to sneak out of the house without the parked police officer noticing her.
The night was cold, the wind brisk. Pockets of stars were visible through gaps in the clouds. The trees were silhouettes against the sky’s blackness.
Jezebel wrapped herself in her coat and walked down the road, crying softly to herself, telling herself that even though Charlie Knox had succeeded in persuading her father, it didn’t mean he had won.
She ignored the Tracy house with the confederate flag and the Make America Great Again sign in the front yard. And the other polar opposite house down the road, the car in the driveway plastered with stickers saying I’m With Her, or Don’t Like Socialism? Get off the Highway. Even harder was ignoring the pang in her heart when she passed by Edgar Forgael’s now empty house. It was a hollow thing in the night, as if it hadn’t been lived in for years.
She stepped onto the aged asphalt of Fairlane Road without a moment’s hesitation or second thought, and felt only a hint of tingling fear as she walked into the forest of rustling trees which blocked out all other sounds there would’ve been in the night.
She walked down Fairlane Road and witnessed the changes that entering the higher world brought to her surroundings as well as her own emotions. Just as beauty could never grow old, so it was with walking between the worlds.
At night, however, it was remarkably different.
The wind died down as she walked deeper into the forest, first dropping to a low howl, then a whisper, and then silence. The stars became brighter and larger in the sky, glimmering like small searchlights, their rays of light bathing the landscape in dreamy silver. From the far distance—from the mountains—came the songs of the fairies, carried on the still air. At night they were quieter, softer lullabies. And Jezebel felt a lightness in herself, one she always welcomed but could never prepare for, as she left the lower world behind. She stopped crying, wiped the marks of the tears from her cheeks.
But there was something different about the higher world this time, something she had never felt before. She could think of it only as an implacable sense of wrongness, so small but so undeniable. And she knew it was Charlie Knox. She could feel him in this world, and it was a feeling she resented. But it was why she had come. So she pressed on.
Night in the Fairlane World was not like night on Earth. The darkness had a natural, soothing glow to it from to the silver starlight, but it was not like any light on Earth. It wasn’t bright, and had never disturbed Jezebel’s sleep on the few nights she had spent here. It was its own kind of darkness, obscuring nothing yet so very different from daylight nonetheless. In a way, Jezebel preferred it to darkness on Earth. There was something serene about it. Moving through it was like moving through soft, caressing mist. And scattered across the forest were flowers that glowed shades of crystalline blue and green, like lamps to light the way for travelers.
Time seemed to slow, but Jezebel emerged from the trees and followed the road down to where it narrowed and became more of a forest trail, and after walking for some time more, she stopped and turned off the trail.
The glittering pools sparkled in the starlight, visible through the trees as though the forest contained its own universes and stars—which, in many ways, it did. Jezebel took a deep breath to prepare herself, and then stepped into the tree-line.
The first pool was unattended. It was where she had seen the god Pan on her last visit here. She made sure not to linger, else the sublimity of being near the water of the pool would become too much to resist and she would forget her purpose here, and she pressed on through the forest, taking note of ever
y clearing and every pool she passed.
It wasn’t long before she came upon one in particular, bigger and more expansive than most, and saw Charlie Knox there, just as she had known she would. He had been waiting for her.
He was sitting on a boulder at the pool’s edge, hunched slightly, tense rather than relaxed. Jezebel emerged from the trees just a few feet away. Charlie turned, and then slid off of the boulder.
He was holding his side, and his hand was stained with blood that looked black under the silver starlight. His breaths were coarse and labored, and even in the darkness she could see that the color had drained from his face. His eyes looked sunken in, encircled with discoloration and growing weariness. It was evident in everything about him. Charlie Knox was dying.
They stood, regarding each other, studying, analyzing. Minutes passed without a word spoken between them. They were the opposites of each other, two parts of a hybrid soul born in the higher world, split in two and manifested as separate beings on Earth. And they stood, wordless, looking at each other, equally aware of the weight of this moment, and of its importance.
Jezebel wouldn’t have known how to describe what it was like laying eyes on him, but she felt it all in painful clarity. All the fear and all the blinding hate she had felt for him—for the mere idea of him—dissipated within seconds, and was replaced by an unexpected warmth. There was something profoundly familiar about looking into his eyes, the kind of easy familiarly one might feel when looking at themselves in a mirror. It was uncomfortable but familiar, and unlike anything she’d ever seen in another person. To her, Charlie Knox’s lonely, tortured, dying stare was comforting. It was like home, you could say. What she felt then was that it was as though this was what she had always needed; as though this was what she had always been missing and longing for. There was no hatred anymore, just as there was no longer a sense of being a separate person from him.
She saw herself in Charlie Knox just as certainly as he saw himself in her. Moments ago she would have sworn that she had come to Fairlane Road to make sure he died and could never haunt her life again, but standing here now, she felt not the slightest resistance or fear to what she was feeling.
It was what both of their lives had led up to, finally come to fruition.
Jezebel’s eyes welled up with tears.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. She dropped to her knees, trembling, unable to stand or control her emotions. “This is… s-so this is what’s been wrong. All this time.”
Charlie Knox stepped toward her, and though it hurt, joined her on the ground by kneeling.
“After all this time,” she said again, crying. “I had so much hate, and so much… fear. All because I d-didn’t understand.”
“I know,” he said, and lifted her chin so she could look into his eyes.
“You knew all along.”
“Yes.” He smiled slyly with his lips. “There was a part of me that didn’t want to do the things I’ve done. I thought I had to, for the cause, for the truths, but it… it wasn’t what I should have done. And when I learned what I was—what we were—during my time in the great libraries, I no longer wanted to be who I am. The son of psychopaths, cursed by weaknesses of human nature. I…” He coughed several times into his hands, ignoring the blood from his lungs. “If you could see the things I’ve seen, learn the things I’ve learned, perhaps you would understand that when you see the world in a higher, far enlightened way as I have come to, how difficult it can be to value the small, seemingly insignificant lives that people lead. It’s what made killing so easy. That, and being half of a person… cursed, like I said, by my ties to Earth, to my own flawed human nature… by an emptiness in me I have never been able to understand. But always, always my goal, my sole purpose, was this. To introduce the truths that were greater and bigger than any one person… to become one person again, so that I could be the harbinger of those truths. A true… m-messiah. To you.” He tried to smile but started to cough again. Jezebel held him by the shoulders until he stopped, and then he went on. “You see… your father was right. Someone like me, a killer, can’t bring about the… the utopia, that I spoke of to him. It would be impossible. A perfect world built on dark foundations. No.” He shook his head. His whole body shuddered. “I needed you, the other half of my soul, to understand the things that I knew could change the world. All that mattered was that you would come to understand. I needed you, Jezebel, and you needed me. We are halves, lacking what the other has, and when separated, neither can function correctly. As one, the foundations for the truths of the higher world that I have lain can exist, and can last. You can be the prophet, now that you understand. It was… it was never supposed to be me. I s-saw that, after I spoke to your father. I see it now.”
Jezebel, whose tears flowed freely down her cheeks now, nodded and took Charlie Knox’s hands, examining them. “No wonder,” was all she could manage to say, though she knew that her thoughts were enough, since he could probably hear them as clearly as his own. She thought, No wonder I’ve always been so alone. No wonder I was never truly happy, or fulfilled. I was a half. I belonged in this world, and I was half of a whole, always lacking something. And so was he, but he was the darkness, all the ugliness, unable to be redeemed by the light. We were out of balance.
And that’s why he did what he did.
It all made so much sense to her now—why all of this had happened, why she was always drawn here, and why her life had always been a collection of such empty actions and tired pretensions. And finally it was apparent that Charlie Knox really was the carrier of higher truths, that he had been right all along despite being a victim of his own severed soul. Their fates were intertwined and always would have been, and all of it, no matter what it would have taken, would have one day come to this: their reuniting, becoming one soul again. His passing his purpose and his knowledge to her in his death.
“I am sorry, Jezebel,” said Charlie Knox, his voice weak, remorseful. “I never imagined all the pain that these past days would cause. The life lost. The shattered minds.”
“Sshh.” She wiped his tears away with one hand. “I’m sorry I hated you the way I did, and that I… that I resisted this so much. I guess I just… I guess I saw the darks parts of myself in you and the things you were doing, and it made it so easy to hate you.”
“There are no apologies to be made. I have been… I have been the darkness, just as you have been the light. Two opposing forces grappling over truths, the way they have through time, without realizing they exist to serve the same purpose, just as, in the end, you and I seek the same things, despite our differences.” He smiled again, and it broke her heart. “And as it happens, we share the same soul. No good can exist without bad. I only wish, that in the things I have done in the past few days, there could have been less pain. I couldn’t… couldn’t h-help it. I have too much of the darkness in me. You have too much of the light.”
“Yes,” she said. “I understand now.”
“But maybe I have failed…”
“No, Charlie. No you haven’t.” She looked to the glittering waters. “Come on.”
“I—”
“You must. I know you’re weak, but come on.” She helped him up, and she led him, step by step, into the waters, until they were both up to their waists in the glittering pool. Charlie’s breaths were becoming more labored. “The pain’s almost gone now,” she said to him. “You’re almost home, Charlie.”
He managed a grin. “I know.” He was slipping from her arms but didn’t fight it. It was as though the water was absorbing him, pulling him down. He was no longer as imposing as he had been. He was weak, fading. “Jezebel?”
“What?”
“I… I think I am finally free. I think we finally are, I mean. Can you feel it?”
&
nbsp; “Yes,” she said, and she could. For all the unexpected sorrow she felt over his dying, she could feel, in every physical and emotional sense, all her empty expanses being filled up. She was, at last, becoming whole.
“Jezebel?”
“Yes?”
He looked her in the eyes, those vibrant purple eyes of hers. He thought of all the things he’d done. All those years building a life and a purpose in the great endless libraries of the fairies, learning the universe’s deeper truths; grappling with all the afflictions of human nature at odds with the contradicting dark purity of his incomplete soul; the lives he’d taken; the fear and the power he’d felt; the sense, now, of a circle closing, found in Jezebel’s familiar eyes. “You’re the most beautiful thing,” he said. And then he was gone. The waters seized him in their ethereal embrace, and Charlie Knox was gone.
Jezebel felt, then, his essence enter her. The water swirled gently around her waist, forming a slow whirlpool of reflected stars. It lasted only a moment, but she felt it, the final remnants of Charlie Knox’s soul reconnecting with hers. The waters of the pool had absorbed him, and given him back to her. And if she hadn’t understood before, she knew now, with absolute clarity, that this was what Charlie had wanted all along, this was why he had let himself die. For her.
Jezebel was alone in the forest of the glittering pools, tears streaming from her eyes. But her heart was full.
* * *
Dear Dad,
I am giving this to someone to deliver at the door, because, despite how much I would love to hand it to you myself and be able to properly say goodbye, I can’t. The place I am in now isn’t somewhere I can leave now, not even to say goodbye to you. But I have the time, before I go, to write you this.
There are dozens of things I wish I would’ve told you, now that I think about it, with everything that’s happened in the past few days. If I could, I would write it all down here, but that would take too much time. For now, there is one main thing that I think I have to tell you. I didn’t have the time to before I left and you went to sleep, so I’ll do my best to explain it to you now.