by Ren Hamilton
“So the story is true then?” Patrick asked skeptically. “Zirub and his band were trapped for two thousand years in the darkness?” He was still wary to believe his longtime pot-head friend was some sort of mythical character.
“Two thousand, four hundred and sixty-one years, to be exact. If you’ve read the folklore, you know the rest. The others in the band began to go mad in the void. Zirub felt responsible for their plight. He put them to sleep, vowing to find a way out, or in, whichever came first. He spent all those years alone, testing the space around him for one of the soft spots that exist between the realms.”
“A Cripulet,” Litner said.
“Yes. A Cripulet. Zirub found his Cripulet, finally. The ironic thing was he wasn’t really looking for it at the time. Zirub’s emergence into this world was an accident. It happened the day my parents died.” Wesley paused. “Even he didn’t know how it had transpired, at first. One moment he was trapped, the next he was free, flesh and blood, lying on the floor of a collapsed cave in western Massachusetts. There was a low-grade tremor that day. Pearl Chasm sits on a fault line because of the way it was formed. That place never should have been made into a state park. At any rate, the wall did collapse, and my parents, Melvin and Eugenia, were killed.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Litner said.
Wesley nodded. “I had to go live with my Aunt Roberta. I was only ten years old, but I was the smartest kid in school, and independent to the point of being considered strange. My aunt, however, saw only a vulnerable little boy who had just suffered a terrible tragedy. She wouldn’t even let me go to the funeral for fear it would traumatize me. That ate away at me. They told me my parents were dead and I believed them, but I had no closure. I needed to see where it happened. So one day, I skipped school and took a taxi to Pearl Chasm.”
Patrick thought about Joey and his alleged genius. The similarities between Wesley and Joey became more apparent by the minute. “Please, go on,” Patrick said, overjoyed to be finally getting some sort of answers, however bizarre.
“I found the cave right away,” Wesley said. “It was still surrounded by yellow caution tape. The cave had been bulldozed and cleared of rubble. So, I went inside.” His eyes misted. “Their blood stained the stone parts of the ground. My mom and dad. Nothing but a stain on a sheet of rock. I fell to my knees and cried, wanting to sink into the ground and die with them. I don’t know how long I stayed in that cave, kneeling in my own tears and my dead parents’ blood.”
“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “That must have been terrible.”
Wesley glanced up. “When I finally left the cave, the light outside was fading. I remember how frightening the chasm looked as I stood alone in that eerie evening light, amidst the black rocks and tunnels. I started to follow the trail out through the woods. That’s when I saw him.”
“Who?” Robin whispered.
“Zirub.” Wesley glanced Robin’s way. “The one you know as Shep. He was standing up on a cliff, watching me. I’ll never forget the sight of him looking down on me like that. He was like another jutting rock, a phantom, still as stone, watching me with those enormous eyes. If not for his hair and the way it blew in the wind, I’d have thought he was a statue. I ran. The stranger on the cliff did not follow me. Not that day, anyway.”
“And this was fifty-two years ago,” Litner said with a tone of disbelief.
“Yes. This was fifty-two years ago.”
“And you’re certain this stranger was the same man that Patrick and Robin know.”
“If it is Zirub who has become your friend…” He glanced at Robin. “And your lover, I have something that may help convince you.”
Wesley hobbled over to a wooden box on a corner table. He pulled on the bottom and slid something out, then handed it to Patrick. “This is the only one I kept. I don’t know why I even kept this. I must be out of my mind.”
Patrick stared at the photograph. “Mother of God,” he whispered, and Robin snatched it from him.
They both studied the faded black and white. It was Shep, no question about it. He stood in front of a basketball hoop, spinning a ball on his finger. He was not looking at the camera. His sandy curls were tied back in a ponytail, his face quite visible. The picture was faded and worn, but Shep looked unchanged.
Patrick examined the photo. It had a date on the corner of the white border. According to the date, the picture was taken forty-five years before. Patrick thought about his friend, and how he stayed looking so young. Sure, Shep was a vegetarian, but only because meat disgusted him. He was no health nut. He drank like a fish and smoked pot like a fiend. Was it possible? Clearly the answer was yes. Shep did not age normally. Patrick’s head was spinning.
Robin took over the questioning, seeming to sense that Patrick needed a moment to absorb what the photograph meant. “Okay Wesley,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to believe you. But what is it all about? What’s all this with the chosen one and the plan and the church? Why is Joey going on news programs and trying to get more attention?”
“I know nothing about a church, or this Joey person. I’ve been shut away here for many years. I have no phone and I have no television. I can only tell you my own experiences.”
“What’s he trying to do?” Patrick asked. “What does Shep want?”
Wesley’s expression darkened. “Everything. He wants everything.”
“Explain.”
Wesley looked terrified, his eyes darting around like he expected Shep to burst into the house at any moment. “Zirub approached me as I was leaving school two weeks later. I immediately recognized him from Pearl Chasm. He was so striking. I couldn’t have forgotten him, though I’d only seen him fleetingly. He asked me to come with him. He said he had things to show me. Now as I said, I was not a stupid child. I knew about perverts, and there was no way I was taking off with some hippie looking stalker who wanted to show me things. Besides, he talked funny and he walked like he had a rod up his ass. Pardon my language.”
Patrick and Robin exchanged a glance. “Like the brothers!” she said.
“It’s hard to believe Shep was ever…like them,” Patrick said.
They turned to Wesley when they heard his wine glass shatter onto the floor.
“You all right?” Litner asked, rising to his feet.
Wesley paled. “I’m sorry about that. But did you say…the brothers?”
Agent Litner walked over and began to clean up the shards of glass. “That’s what they said.”
Wesley put a hand to his forehead. “Then he…he’s gotten them out? The brothers?”
Patrick nodded. “Yes, Wesley. He’s gotten them out. All four of them.”
Wesley stumbled, pressing a hand to the wall as if he’d collapse otherwise.
“Hey, you okay there?” Robin went to his side.
“I apologize, I just wasn’t expecting to hear that.” Wesley looked at them, expression pained. “What are they like?”
“The brothers?” Patrick asked. Wesley nodded. “Well, they look like Shep. Not exactly like him, but similar. They’re odd. Clearly intelligent, but no common sense, you know? They speak with an accent, as if they’ve just learned the language.”
Wesley scowled. “Bright eyes, baby talk, seemingly harmless, right? Walk like they’re breaking in a new set of legs?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “Exactly.”
“Well they don’t stay that way!” Wesley said sharply. “Make no mistake. They are extremely dangerous. They only appear innocent because they’re still adjusting to life in the flesh. Shep was the same way once, all stumbling and stuttering and seemingly naïve. Trust me, it doesn’t last. In time they will be as clever and diabolical as he is.”
Patrick thought of Klee crunching on a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, and couldn’t imagine he had a diabolical bone in his body. Wesley limped over and locked the front door, flipping the deadbolt. “Did you lock the back door after we came back inside, Agent Litner?”
“Yes.” L
itner walked over and handed Wesley a fresh glass of wine. “Who are you afraid is going to come here?”
Wesley returned to the living room. “Who do you think?”
“Shepherd knows you’re here?”
Without answering, Wesley went to a window at the rear of the room and stared out into the back yard. He seemed terribly nervous. “Wesley, you obviously had some relationship with Shep at one time,” Patrick said. “He must have won you over eventually when you were a kid.”
Wesley laughed bitterly and turned to face them. “At first he told me he was an angel sent by my parents to take care of me. I laughed. I told him that only a moron would tell such a tale and expect anyone to believe it. He didn’t like being spoken to that way. Apparently, God called him a moron once. Or something equivalent in God speak, which is what started this whole series of events.”
Patrick cleared his throat. “God?”
Wesley waved him off. “I know, I know. Let’s just call it Zirub’s big boss for now, that’s a more complex conversation. Regardless, my particular insult hit home and he didn’t like it. So he melted my shoes. While they were still on my feet.”
“He melted your shoes?” Robin said. “How?”
“By looking at them.” The three of them must have appeared flabbergasted because Wesley laughed. “That’s right folks. It was the beginning of a long relationship of abuse and physical coercion by a being far more powerful than me. Look here.” Wesley removed one of his boat shoes and showed them his foot. It was covered with puffy white burn scars.
Patrick stared at the scars. He couldn’t believe Shep had physically harmed a ten-year-old boy. “That’s awful,” Patrick said. “Disgustingly awful.”
“Yes, that was Zirub, sadistic from the start. He tended to my wounded feet by making some sort of herb mixture, but he’d waited too long sulking before doing so, so it didn’t take care of all the damage. Said he was sorry.”
“He melted your feet and then kissed the boo-boo,” Patrick said. “That’s the Shep I know. He’ll verbally degrade you until you’re nearly in tears, then pat you on the back and offer to buy you beers all night.”
Wesley nodded. “Then you know him well.”
“Not that well. I thought he was human. Silly me.”
“Well, he practically is human now,” Wesley said. “He’s had fifty-two years of practice. Anyhow, he brought me back to the cave and we dug up the charred remains of his wings. He showed me the wound on his back. I must say I was overwhelmed. I was a clever kid, but I was not beyond my childhood longings. I’d just lost my parents. I was looking for answers, guidance, magic. Zirub gave me those things. He told me the truth. He said that somehow my parents’ accident in the cave had set him free. He said that I need not worry about my life any longer. He would watch over me. I was the chosen one.”
“Why you?” Robin said.
“My parents’ death brought about his life in this world. It was meant to be, he told me. That’s why he took their names. Melvin Eugene Shepherd, after my parents, and his, he said. He said he knew when he saw me walk out of that cave, that I was the one he had come to find.”
“That’s all very prophetic, but what the hell did he want you for?” Litner asked.
Wesley smirked. “How open are your minds?”
Patrick shrugged. “My mind’s been forced open lately.”
“Well, my mind was not open when I met Zirub. I thought simple science could explain all things. How I miss that blessed ignorance. Do you know why he made that fateful trek to the material world?”
“No!” Litner said a bit too loud. He looked around as if someone else had said it. “No,” he repeated more softly. “That’s the one thing that wasn’t in the book Father Bello had. Why did Zirub decide to leave his post and go to earth? What was the urgency?”
Wesley hobbled over and sat on the floor in front of them. “Let me start by telling you, the man you know as Shepherd is insane.”
“Duh,” Robin said.
Wesley held up a hand for patience. “Let me also tell you that Zirub, who is one and the same, is also insane. I think perhaps he always was, even in his previous life. Delusions of grandeur doesn’t even cover it. It is his intention to manipulate, and on some level control, the entire world.”
“What for?” Patrick asked.
“Initially, it was to help sustain the realm from which he came. But now? After all that time trapped in the void?” Wesley raised his eyebrows. “Now his motivation is primarily spite.”
“Spite!” Robin scowled. “Against whom? Don’t say God. I mean it.”
“Yes, but not primarily. There are others he hates more.”
“I asked you not to say that.”
“I understand,” Wesley said. “I’m using the term ‘God’ but this is not the being imagined by humanity in their various religions.”
“What then?” Patrick asked.
“Zirub…I mean Shep, refers to it as The Light, and to the best of my understanding, this is an entity older and more intelligent than we can conceive of. Divine by our standards. It is an actual creator, that’s the truth. But it is still a life form. Just as Shep was still a life form, even in his prior existence. Hence the wings. Where he came from has a different atmosphere. Wings are much less functional in this world. More of an effort to use. Plus, obviously, he had to remove them to blend in.”
“Wait.” Patrick gave his head a shake. “God, you mean the God that people write about and worship, is alive. Like biologically, the way we’re alive.”
“Alive, but not like us at all. A being so far beyond us in power and sophistication that we can’t comprehend it. But yes, it is a life form. One we are intimately connected to. In fact, according to Shep, we wouldn’t thrive without it. It is simultaneously the source of our life force, yet also dependent on our life force for its own rejuvenation.”
Patrick’s brow lowered. “So this thing needs us?”
Wesley nodded. “It gives us life, then thrives on a certain energy we provide while living. This gives it fuel to make more life once ours burns out and dies. A constant cycle. A symbiotic relationship.”
“Great,” Litner said snidely. “God is an ancient cosmic energy vampire. Shep pissed it off and it retaliated. Now Shep wants to retaliate back.”
“Well that’s partially debatable,” Wesley said. “Shep claims he doesn’t know if it was The Light itself that locked him in the darkness, or his superiors. He could only rely on their word that they’d brought his grand ideas to the big boss to begin with, as Zirub was not allowed to do so himself.”
“I don’t care who or what locked him away,” Litner said. “What I need to know is, exactly how does his plan to retaliate affect humanity?”
“All I know is,” Wesley said, “Shep claims he’s going to control the flow.”
“The flow of what?” Litner demanded.
“When humans gather with group focus, not just for religious services or prayer, but any event where the group intention is singular and positive, a specific energy coveted by The Light manifests. Shep claims this is why The Light gave music, art, creativity to the world. These things, as well as any skilled orator, can draw a crowd and create group think, group delight. The Light syphons this energy back into itself. This energy is what Shepherd seeks to control.”
Patrick huffed. “The Light…this thing, whatever it is, eats the group energy.”
“That’s more or less how Shepherd described it,” Wesley said. “This is where the big emphasis on good and evil comes in. It’s not just a morality lesson for the sake of it. This being, this Light Shep speaks of? It can’t feed off negative energy. So war, battlefields, people brought together in violence or hatred? Spoils the meat.”
“Shit,” Robin said. “And we don’t always feed it properly to say the least.”
“Exactly.” Wesley pointed at her. “But we’re not the only world this ancient being has cultivated, it has others. Plus, according to Zirub, there’s
usually enough good juice on earth to go around, even with all the bad happening. So his valiant mission to help increase sustenance for The Light was not only arrogant, but highly unnecessary, or so it seems to me. But he thought he could improve things. He always thinks he’s the only one with the answers. Control freak to say the least.”
“Increase sustenance?” Patrick let out a hard breath. “How exactly did Shep think he could do that? And why did he think it was necessary?”
Wesley took a gulp of wine. “Shortly before Zirub made his plan to come here, The Light was experiencing a dip in the spiritual energy it had been feeding off since cultivating this planet. Climate problems and wars and inequity were killing off a lot of the population. Fewer group events happening due to poverty and strife and the hoarding of wealth by a select few. Natural disasters. Not exactly a festival atmosphere.”
“So Shep was worried about The Light not getting enough food,” Litner said.
“If things kept going the way they were, yes,” Wesley said. “Shep wanted very much to please The Light, but he couldn’t travel to the nether worlds himself, so he would instruct lower angels to whisper divine secrets in the ears of humanity. To create messiahs, if you will, with knowledge beyond the average human. Teachers. Leaders. To turn things around and gather masses of people in positive messaging.”
Robin cocked an eyebrow. “Did it work?”
“For a time,” Wesley said. “But there were problems. His various messiahs were only human, and quite vulnerable. They kept getting killed. Often by their own followers. Mobs of joy transformed into mobs of violence and darkness.”
“Like Jesus?” Patrick said. “The crucifixion?”
“Shep never mentioned that or any other name,” Wesley said. “But we have to assume that and others like it is a story concept trickled down from activity happening at the time. The assassination of leaders is not new of course, and it’s not just ancient history. Shep says it’s a quirk in humanity’s design. Rock stars, politicians, celebrities. Messiahs and gods? We have a tendency to raise something up, above ourselves, so we can feel awe. Then we get pissed off that we’re so far below it, and try to tear it down again.”