Now, keep that idyllic little scene in mind as I fade to black. We switch locations, like prop-masters changing scenes on a darkened stage. Slowly, slowly, the light comes back on, and you find yourself in a shadowy place of perpetual twilight. In front of you is a tall rock face, slick with moisture. Moss pocks it here and there. The dim light is coming from a torch set into the wall. The flame burns and flickers, but without consuming itself, and the fire provides no heat. If you touch the wall with your fingertips, you can feel the edges of words etched there, although they’re smooth, worn down by time. You don’t have to read it. I’ll relay it to you, word by word, the God’s honest truth:
I know you’re feeling cold and afraid. That’s why I wrote this message, to help you. I know, too, you may be so young you won’t be able to read this . . . not at first. But, finally, when you do, I hope it brings you comfort, knowing that someone else was sent here, and that he survived.
At least, I’ve survived this long, and I pray to God I’ll return. In fact, I’ve felt the pull of the old world lately. I feel things aligning, doors opening up in the vast expanse that separates us. And time, of which I once had so much, I feel I now have so very little in order to accomplish my task.
By ‘little’, I don’t really know what that means. Maybe I’ve got a hundred or a thousand years left. I don’t know. But of other things, I know a great deal. In fact, I know everything that’s ever been known, everything that will be known.
You see, I am the first boy they ever sent here. Of course, they sent prisoners before. Most of them didn’t survive, and the rest died in comas, so it wasn’t financially sound. I won’t go into the details now—it’s something scientific about the development of the brain. Let’s just say children are resilient to suffering that would break most adults.
And time . . . children’s sense of time is less established, more malleable than adults’. Like when you’re in a car and you ask, ‘How much longer ’til we arrive?’, even though the minute hand hasn’t moved since the last time you asked. Or when you pick up a good book early in the morning (let’s say a Hardy Boys), and you’re suddenly jolted out of it by your mother calling you to dinner. The sun’s gone down, and it’s cold, yet you didn’t notice it.
I’ll be frank, there’s no food or water here. At first, it’ll feel like hunger and thirst will consume you. You’ll get weak, you’ll despair. As time passes, you’ll pray for death. But soon you’ll find your body doesn’t need nourishment to survive here. Like everything else, your current state of health is unalterable.
You won’t age, you won’t get sick. In spite of this, you’ll still feel hunger for a long, long time, and the thirst will be terrible. You’ll go over your favourite foods, again and again in your mind, your stomach rumbling, mouth watering: pizza, pasta, steak, fajitas, chocolate. You’ll smell a pie baking in the kitchen, sweet smoke wafting from the barbecue in your backyard. But these are phantom smells. The more time you spend here, the more remote the objects that once provoked these Pavlovian reactions in you become. The idea of ‘chocolate’ and ‘pie’ (indeed, the idea of food) will become disassociated from you.
Eventually, you’ll feel as if those cravings exist outside your body, that they’re being experienced by someone else. Instead of hunger being a blinking indicator light that your body’s shutting down, it becomes anecdotal. It’s something you read about in books like ritual mutilation by a tribe in Borneo. Then, like so many other bits of trivia—like the average rainfall in the Amazonian basin—it seems wholly inapplicable and foreign to you, and you’ll forget the idea of eating.
Letting go of those sensations won’t kill you, and that’s the worst part. When the hunger and thirst fade, when you’ve lost the ritual of eating and drinking and going to the bathroom . . . when, in addition to your lament that there’s nobody to play with, you forget the notion of ‘play’ . . . when you’re tired of singing to yourself (indeed, when you forget the notion of ‘sing’), it’ll sink in that that’s why they sent us here, to break us, to empty us, to turn us into good-natured automatons. And this is more brutal than if they’d just drowned us in a canvas bag or lobotomised us. God, I prayed for that, the first few years!
If you know anything about Incan culture, you’ll know the Indians had all sorts of evil punishments, even locking criminals in a box with a wild panther. But they never, ever built one single jail, because it was unthinkable, unpardonable to keep someone immobile, isolated from the world. And that’s what our parents have done to us, times infinity.
Instead of wishing the hunger away as you once did, you’d do anything to feel it again. You’ll long to feel anything at all—false hope, fear, desperation—any indication from your former life that you’re still alive.
Eventually, you’ll do things to yourself, to feel pain—the one thing that’s left for you to control—like the first prisoners sent here did. You’ll see stains on the jagged rocks they left farther down the passage, like the ‘Cave of the Hands’ in Santa Cruz still visible after 9,000 years.
As for me, when the hunger faded and the pain, and all the concepts attached to them, and when the loneliness faded, too (because I’d forgotten what it was like to have ever spoken with anyone), I ran screaming through the passages of the cave looking for a way to escape, on and on, for days, for months, for years. But I’d always return to this same spot . . . as if I’d never been away.
Eventually, I gave up. I took off my clothes, lay down in a recess of the cave and purged myself of all human experience. Memories, sensations, language. Here, you can’t sleep, and you can’t really rest. So I huddled in the cave and began my existence without any consciousness, drive, meaning, purpose, thoughts of any kind. And this went on, perhaps, for decades, maybe for centuries, a vast and utter emptiness about which only the stars know. I lay there, naked, grimy, empty, as a rock exists. I was a being without sensation, without a sense of self, just an accumulation of atoms in the shape of a body but without a soul. Then something happened.
You’ve seen the torch on the wall, stuck there in a niche, endlessly burning. It was brought here by the first one who stumbled on the calculations of this place. He was an early Pythagorean who must have escaped, somehow, and brought the story back to the Ancient Greeks.
As I lay there, immobile, unfeeling, but forced to exist, the flickering of a shadow against the wall of the cave reminded me of something deep inside. It was a single memory that had not yet been stripped from me. As ridiculous as it sounds, the moving shadow reminded me of a wind-up monkey with brass cymbals. I had seen it one afternoon when I’d slipped out of the house and went to the county fair. What a day that was! The sky blue. The smell of beef and charcoal in the air. And burning a hole in my pocket was five dollars I’d stolen from my mother’s purse. There was a tent packed with stalls overflowing with comic books, stamps, flare guns, ancient brass telescopes and old keys. But out of all these wonders what caught my eye? A wind-up monkey, with a little red, velvet fez.
I knew the mechanism would soon break, and the fur would come off in patches. But that’s the draw of things that are impermanent. There’s a special joy we derive from knowing a thing will only last an afternoon. When my money was gone, and I felt tired and hungry, I slinked back home, hoping my parents hadn’t noticed my absence. But there was my old man waiting for me in the parlour, and he pulled off his belt. . . . After extracting my confession, he crushed the clockwork monkey under his foot, the cogs and springs rolling everywhere.
As soon as my bruises healed—my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house until then, for fear of scandalising the neighbours—they signed me up for ‘Flicker’. They’d read in the newspaper that the trials on children had just been authorised. As it turns out, I was the first one.
That memory of the clockwork monkey was the only thing left that linked me to the world before the cave. And that one memory sparked another. It was something my civics teacher once wrote on a failed examination paper of mine, ‘If
you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare. Keep banging, you monkey.’
And there it was! Suddenly, I began to resuscitate. I began to waver from my rock-like existence.
I’d lost the ability to move and speak. But I still had imagination. So, from the flickering shadows, I began to create a whole series of imaginary friends. Schoolmates, soldiers, postmen, teachers, construction workers. . . This went on for a long, long time. And not just individual friends. Eventually, I imagined whole generations of them, whole civilisations, populating castles and ziggurats. Births and deaths, long, convoluted stories. Curious and twisted plots, patricides and incest, armoured Popes advancing on barbarian armies. Poison rings and comets announcing the death of kings. And, as I had all the time in the world, I imagined cuneiform and hieroglyphs, calculus and Zoroastrianism. In this way, instead of remembering my former life, I created everything that ever was.
And sometimes, every hundred years or so, I felt my thoughts were having an effect somewhere, somehow, in another world. It’s impossible to describe the sensation. But it’s as if, in some parallel place, my will was guiding others’ actions, moving the pieces on the chess board. I was Adam Smith’s invisible hand. I was Destiny. I was the Furies. I was God. For isn’t that what God is after all? Just a will? Just a powerful, enduring will, that has imagined us and everything that surrounds us, and always and forever it will be?
I spent so much time at this. But I’m sure, when I return, enshala, it’ll appear to those back in the laboratory, that I was only gone an instant, a flickering of a candle. When I return—when we return—it will seem to the adults as if no time has passed at all. And all that pain and all the knowledge will be wrapped up in our child’s body. And we’ll return in that form, enlightened babes, to homework and whippings, scoldings and cleaning our rooms.
I tell you this to give you hope, and to give you a purpose, which is integral to hope. It is essential you survive. It is essential you endure the loneliness and emptiness, and that you do not let it drive you insane. You must focus on one goal only, like an ocean that focuses on wearing down the sheer, rock cliffs until they are smooth, white sand: you must get home. And when you get home you must murder your parents, in the most bloody, awful way imaginable. Tie them down. Torture them. Make them suffer, but keep them hydrated. Make it last for days. Do finger-paintings with their blood. Then decapitate them and stick their heads on the white, picket fence at home.
If you do this, you’ll send a message to the scientific community that we come back worse than when they sent us here.
Communicate with your peers. Plan a coordinated attack while they’re still asleep, so they can’t resist. That’s the only way they’re going to stop the experiments. But if you return, docile, beaten into submission, if you go back to the world so relieved to be released from the everlasting torment and if you do their bidding once more, then you are not only accepting the yoke of slavery for yourself, but also for your brothers and sisters who follow you. You will be condemning generations of children to your same fate.
Socrates called this place the ‘philosopher’s cave’. Buddha called it ‘Enlightenment’. Those who have never seen it, call it ‘Shangri la’. But I have lived it, and I know what it is.
This place is hell.
And that’s how the message ends, my friend. At least the English-language version of it. If you go on a little farther into the cave, you’ll see the same message, chiselled into the living rock, in French and Spanish, German and Greek, Latin, Phoenician, Basque, Yiddish, Polish and all the other languages ever written or that ever will be written, on and on into the impenetrable darkness.
Now that you know the message of the cave, let us return to the scene in progress. . . .
The children continue playing in the sandbox. The little boy finishes his recitation, lisping as he does so. The girl then has a double turn, for herself and her brother who hasn’t moved a muscle. Eduardo, the father, drops his cigarette on the grass and snuffs it out with his foot. He blows his nose with two fingers and wipes it on his pants. He ambles up to the sandbox and says, ‘Come on, Dan, it’s time to go. My football game’s about to start.’
The boy with the raven-black hair looks up from the children’s complex creation in the sand, sticks and bits of straw adorning it, pebbles signifying hallways, ‘Jus-tht a few more minut-thes, plea-the, papá?’
‘No, son,’ he says, anxious to wipe out any trace of dissent in front of his friend. ‘What have I told you about contradicting me? We agreed that when I, or your mother, said something, you’d do it, no questions. Or we’ll send you back for more therapy.’
‘Oh, yes-th, papa. Of cour-th, papá. You’re right. You’re alway-th right.’
‘That’s better,’ says the proud father, beaming back at Alonso. ‘And why did the doctor say you should obey us?’
‘Becau-the you are my King, and mamá i-th my Queen.’
‘That’s right. And our home. . . ?’
‘Our home will alway-th be pea-th-ful and calm. It i-th our cath-le.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As the lisping child’s voice faded, I looked around and found myself trapped within the Devil’s cave. The burden of Eternity hung heavy upon my soul. I began to run about desperately, trying to find any passageway to the outside world. But there were only caverns connected to more caverns, and caverns and more caverns. After hours and hours, I saw a glint of light; it was deep within a small burrow carved into the living rock. A way outside!
I stooped to get inside. Then I lay flat, and squirmed through the opening. I scraped my belly, I cut my forehead. Then I became stuck. I couldn’t move for a countless space of time. Finally, by rubbing myself bloody, I squeezed through the tiny rabbit’s hole. It was not a passageway to the outside world, but a vast, cathedral-like chamber. The light came from great stalactites and stalagmites glittering with purplish-blue geodes.
I broke down crying. I prayed that that maw of sharp, stone teeth would clench closed and kill me. But nothing happened. No change for a thousand years, just the endless dripping. I emptied myself. I forgot my previous life. I became stone.
Then slowly, imperceptibly, a long-distant memory of a cold, autumn night came to me. The chill of the breeze. The rustle of pine needles. The warmth of Carolina’s body pressed against mine.
Reality shimmered. The cemetery on the outskirts of Incarnation transposed itself over those endless, hopeless caverns, like a wax rubbing on top of a tombstone. The rock walls parted like theatre curtains, and a passage opened up. Then I saw clearly, it wasn’t a passage after all but the gaping hole the creature had ripped in the cemetery fence. It was then I saw the monster, half-hidden in the shadows. It glared at me hatefully, a fetid steam rose from its nostrils.
‘So . . . li-ittle ma-an,’ it brayed triumphantly, ‘have you learned wisdom in the cave of wonders? If s-oo . . . guess who I am. Guee-ss correctly, and you return to life as you knew it. Return to your little gi-irlfri-end, and to your happy dreams together.’
I looked at Carolina, rigid in my arms. She took in rapid, staccato breaths. She stared at me, or, rather, she stared through me at the never-ending caverns.
I racked my brain for any clue as to the Muladona’s identity. I’d learned so much more about its hateful character in the last tale. But were these things true or merely subterfuges? Were they lies that led to more lies like the passages in the cave?
‘MOTHER’: the word on the wooden grave marker floated towards me again. Why had my mother abandoned me? Why had she left me stranded, like that little boy in the cave? I was just a child.
A child . . .
There was something about the tale of the young Texas Ranger. Two men fighting over that strange, ethereal child. One ended up killing her. Was that my grandmother? Was she murdered?
Two men fighting over the same woman. . . .Why did I suddenly think back to that look Pastor Olafsse
n shared with my mother around the campfire? Had it, in fact, been a glimpse? Or had it been a trick of the dying fire? I looked at Carolina again. There had been a before and an after to our kiss. A new world had opened up before me. But what now?
I had to guess the Muladona’s identity either that very night or the next. I shuddered to imagine how much more terrible the next tale would be. To what depths of depravity would the monster take me? What new horrors would it open up to me?
‘MOTHER’, ‘MOTHER’, the word kept leaping up at me, like sparks from a green log, spitting out sap in a campfire. Did I have a right to happiness? More importantly, did I have a right to drag Carolina down into this horror that was now my life?
What did I know of love? I thought back to a sermon my father had given long ago, before my mother disappeared. It was a passage from the book of Corinthians, ‘Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up.’ I cleared my throat. Directing myself to the creature, I said, ‘If I guess wrong, will you spare Carolina?’
The thing spat back, ‘If you come out and face me, then I am bo-ound by the infe-ernal laws of Lu-ucifer to respect you. If you gue-ess wrong, I will sa-acrif-ice only you. I’ll have no need to harm the girl. She’s merely a ga-adfly to me.’
‘All right,’ I said, standing a bit shakily on my feet. ‘I’m going to guess. But, before God, you’d better swear to spare Carolina.’
The creature chomped greedily at the golden bit between its steamy, dripping lips. At the same time, I thought I sensed some revulsion in its countenance, as if I’d offended its evil nature by being willing to sacrifice myself for love. I cleared my throat again, and my thoughts flew back to the old, deserted gambling hall. The battered suitcase. The felt hat. Oh, God, didn’t I know them? Could it possibly be. . . ?
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