by Micah Thomas
Touching them was to touch a live wire; a jolt went through him, but he searched for his friends—the ones he’d found in this life, not the angry and Godlike weird ones. In his embrace, they came forward. They leaned into him and brought their arms around his body, too. Together, the three relaxed and let go of the tension.
“Oooh,” they sighed in unison.
~
FOR SEVERAL HOURS, Thelon, Cassie, Henry, Cat, and PD sat in the SUV listening to the radio while Black Star put itself in order. Cynthia came by once, knocked on the window, but Thelon waved her off.
The news was wild. The ritual had fucked things in the world good and proper, and it was an international day of mourning. Soldiers, presidents, kings, and peasants all went home and sat and cried and shook like dogs trying get rid of the heebie-jeebies. However, the memories of all their timelines, all the things done by and to them across many iterations, all integrated like crisp new dreams in the minds. One by one, radio stations played a message that they were going off the air today and would play their best of prerecorded hits and that was what the friends listened to.
“Can you two talk about it yet?” Thelon asked, turning down the radio.
Cassie held PD and let him lick her hands. Henry sat in the backseat, Cat against his chest and letting her rub her face on his chin.
Cassie spoke first. “Woo, boy. This is something else. We are making peace still, but I think we are close. Just don’t need anything from me right now.”
“It’s cool,” Thelon said, and touched her hand as he also petted PD. These animals were doing double duty as emotional support critters and Thelon was thankful to the entire fucking universe that had brought them along for the ride. “I think—and feel free to disagree and just chill here some more—but I think we stink. What I’d like to do is give these animals a good boy and girl treat, let them sleep, and we go take a much needed shower and put on some of our own clothes. I don’t like looking like a cult member.”
Henry leaned forward, head close to Thelon as he sniffed. “Bro, you don’t stink. You fucking reek of sweaty balls, and I say that as someone who has cleaned literal shit out of your pants.”
Thelon waited, then turned and looked at his friend. Cassie turned, too. Both kissed Henry, a big, smacking peck on either cheek.
Cassie said, “Thelon, do you understand what we did last night?”
Without pulling away, Thelon said, “We closed the gate.”
And so, they did turn off the car and take their precious pets to their bunkhouses. They let them eat tasty treats and then hit the showers together. Steam rose in rays of sunlight and naked bodies rinsed in foamy soap and warm streams of the miracle of endless hot water at high pressure. Ruddy clay and muddy pools swirled down the drain and the friends took turns scrubbing each other’s backs and dislodging clumps of mud from their hair and ears. Their nakedness was an intimacy they’d now shared several times, and while not erotic, they stood like spoons beneath the water, Henry the littlest, Cassie the middle and shortest with her head against Henry’s back, and Thelon’s arms were on Henry’s shoulders, chest to Cassie’s back, and it felt really good.
Thelon knew this wouldn’t last. That things had changed. This was a calm moment, but there was a tangle in them—between them. Cassie had the power of fire—a power so great it once nuked the planet—and what if she got pissed enough, or if that Henry within was pissed enough, and burned again? Thelon didn’t know what to say about that and just wanted to keep the calm going, but there was talk that needed to happen.
They toweled and dressed and knew where Cynthia would be waiting. By noon, under the cautiously optimistic and watchful gaze of Thelon, they all went into the big house, to the drawing room where so much exposition had been shared.
Cynthia wore a heavy poncho and looked like shit. Eyes bloodshot and hair a mess, she sat on the sofa, hands held by Lena, whose arms flexed while imparting comfort to her friend. Wiseman sat on the floor, hands entwined in silent repose like a yoga figurine. Cynthia flinched as they entered, but Thelon smiled and hushed them.
“Easy. Easy,” he said. “We’re just gonna talk it out, just like we did last night, okay?”
Henry took the high-backed chair, and Cassie curled up in his lap, arm around him, but facing the couch. Thelon pulled up a stool between the lovers and Wiseman with the knowledge that his friends didn’t care for Black Santa. I know you have history, but let’s keep it out in the open. They didn’t reply; there’d been no telepathic joking since they’d merged with the Primes.
Thelon held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Look, it’s over. Well, the big stuff is over, and I want you to know I’m not mad at you. You were tricked. We were tricked, too, but we figured it out in time and…okay, what is going on for you, Cynthia?”
She freed her hands from Lena and covered her face in shame. “He was so knowledgeable.”
Thelon nodded. “Did he say you’d get your scientist lovers back? Did he make some deal with you and you weren’t allowed to tell us or else you’d die or some shit?”
She lowered her hands and met Thelon’s eyes. “He did.”
Thelon sighed. “That was a lie. Nestor showed you what he wanted you to see. Like a good conman, there was truth in there, but there’s no way to tell how much was false. Only what is now. What is going on with you now?”
“I keep seeing myself doing terrible things,” she sobbed. “I keep thinking about my greed. My lust for power. The people I hurt. And Henry, I’m so sorry. I am so deeply sorry.”
“Cassie, do you—does Henry—have anything to say?” Thelon asked.
Cassie tightened her embrace around Henry and her brown eyes flickered with flame. “I knew I didn’t like you. I fucking knew it, but—and it’s a big but—you aren’t to blame for what happened in another life any more than I’m to blame for a genocide.”
Henry stroked her hair, kissed her neck, and said, “We have decided to forgive you, Cynthia. What’s done is fucking done, even if we don’t like it. But that’s just for you and Lena.” His voice started to tremble with emotion. “That thing sitting on the floor though…”
“Easy,” Thelon said and sent a mollifying wave of energy through his hook—a pet, a stroke, a massage of the excited vibration—to calm his friends along with a silent prayer that it would work.
Henry calmed, then in a steady tone said, “We were holding everything back. The demons. The other timelines. The gate was ours to watch and you broke that. That’s on you. On top of everything else you’ve done to us, that shit is on you and you should pay.”
Cassie added, “Thelon, whatever assistance he gave you in this, remember, he did Nestor’s bidding. He is not human. He is an ancient thing. A tricky son of a bitch. We know him.”
“You just said it, though,” Thelon pointed out. “He helped me. I could not have survived without his help. What’s that worth to you?”
Cassie craned her head to see Wiseman on the floor, “But why? Why help Nestor? He’s a murdering son of a bitch.”
Wiseman likewise looked at Cassie with an even gaze. “Is our not Henry the same? For Nestor’s hundreds, Henry has billions, and that’s just counting humans. There were many animals large and small gone, wiped clean from existence.”
Thelon moved himself back between their quarrel. “Dude, I’m gonna let her eat you if you don’t stop poking the bear. Tell me, what did Nestor stand to gain from all this?”
Wiseman raised a bushy eyebrow in surprise. “You don’t know? You dominated him, made him surrender the good, right there at the end. I feared you were going to kill him and possibly me in your terrible strength, but letting him survive was far crueler. Ask yourself why you don’t remember.”
Henry spoke after a long silence. “Thelon, he’ll mess with your head. Let Cassie burn him.”
Suddenly sounding like her old self, Cynthia said, “Let us have one final moment of recapitulation and then place the decision on the table. Whatever you choose
shall be done.”
Cassie said, “Okay.”
Thelon nodded. Wiseman scoffed. Lena sighed. Somewhere outside, PD barked.
“Here’s what I remember,” Thelon said. “I was alone in the throne room. You two were merging. Wiseman was collapsing the worlds. That’s when it came for me from somewhere else. Some thing—some big, big, big thing. I remember not being alone, but there were no people. Other things.”
Cynthia seemed excited by this. “Yes. You were outside of the knowable world. Through the crack. And then what happened? What did you learn?”
Thelon closed his eyes and willed himself to recall what his body knew. “Nestor wasn’t the cancer. I was. The gate, the Energy Portal, and I were the same thing this whole time. He’d tried this shit on me in a hundred lifetimes, but it was my bad. The chain reaction that started decades ago that broke time, the catalyst of random acts and subsequent…shit…it was just one damned thing after another. By shitty luck, I wound up being the drain through which all worlds flowed back to this one.
“The gate closed because,” his voice caught in his throat with emotion, “it was almost done already. The Primes were holding back the last of the worlds from merging into this one. When they abandoned their post to come with us, all instances of the universe and everything flattened into this. Nothing is ever going to be the same, but we all still alive.” He opened his eyes, “And that’s what I chose. I chose life.”
Cynthia smiled. “Good. That’s good. I think we should all sit with that. Thelon, your friend and leader—yes, your leader—chose life. Not destruction.”
Thelon wasn’t done. “Nestor believed this negation or integration of everything would stop the cycles of time. He wanted to kill it and everything else. He’s a nihilist or some shit. I don’t know him, but I know he thought he could use me to do something terrible. The integration into a single world was like corralling cattle into a death pit. I think he wanted to stop it.”
Wiseman stood and cracked his back, flexed his toes, and stretched his arms. “But you stopped him.”
Thelon pointed at Wiseman but cracked a half smile. “We only stopped the second part, and with no help from you, you creepy piece of shit.”
Wiseman shrugged. “What could I do? I am no warrior. I was beaten by my own kind several times over in combat requiring strength, and Nestor was something entirely different. Rota, the wheel, is broken. What is done is done. Here, now, I can help as I always desired.”
“Bastard,” Cassie spat.
Wiseman winked at her. “Who wants orange juice? Perhaps some of that delightful coffee with heavy cream? I should also like a little something; a cracker with something sweet.”
“Lena, you’ve seen it. You are the most impartial here. What the decision we should put on the table?” Thelon asked.
She stroked her braid and looked down at the silver knots at her shoulder. “I led the dreamers as we facilitated the background of your big dream. We all survived, but it was hard and terrifying. What we saw was that Nestor is no threat to anyone now. I personally watched him exit first and descend, his energy nearly spent, a tattered and rotting thing a strong wind carried far from here. We survivors should set aside the past and help heal this injured world together. Look, even now, they cry for help.” She pointed out the window to a pickup truck speeding down the gravel lane.
~
THE WHOLE LOT of them got up and went out to the front porch. A breeze tinkled pewter windchimes and rustled leaves in the towering trees. The air smelled of rain and smoke. Thelon took a deep breath and braced for whatever this was going to be; it wouldn’t be good.
A young man came bouncing out of the truck, alarm written on his face, beads of sweat dripping down his bald head, and worry in his blue eyes. “Y’all are the ones who do work with spirits?”
Cynthia strode forward and said, “Yes. Yes, we do. How can we help you?”
He rubbed his lip with the back of hand. “I didn’t know who to call and there ain’t no God damned Ghostbusters. The police ain’t picking up 911 calls either. My cousin Jesse has lost his mind. I think he’s possessed by the devil, ma’am.”
Wiseman gestured for him to join them on the porch swings. “Interesting. Remarkably interesting. I believe we are suited to help you. Come up. Tell us your tale.”
Cassie glared at him and Thelon shook his head at the way Wiseman talked, but the visitor got the message.
However, before he started, he paused and looked up at the smoking portion of the house. “Good gawd. What happened here?”
Thelon paced, a nervous excitement within him. “Never mind that. What makes you think we can help?”
The man did join them, but didn’t sit easy, as he fidgeted and scratched at his arms. “I went by his trailer—Jesse’s trailer—when I got a real bad headache. I’m having some weird thoughts, y’all, but I’m not crazy. Jesse usually has something to take the edge off. A little toot of something like crushed up oxys. I just let myself in like usual and he was in there, but it weren’t him. I felt the evil clutching at me, and I saw the devil in his eyes so I ran out of there. After the police, it was either hit you up or the church, but you’re closer by a mile.”
He really looked at the motley group, as if recognizing they too had seen some devil work this day, and said, “Y’all should call the fire department. It’s been dry this summer and, uh…this could get out of hand real fast.”
Cassie laughed and her eyes flashed with literal flames. “I am the fire department.”
The man jumped off the swing and down half the steps. “Dayum! I don’t want no trouble.”
Henry said, “Let’s go meet Jesse.”
Thelon said, “Guys, let’s think about this.”
Cynthia said, “No, Thelon. The guilt I feel...we must take part in healing. The lies...the deception; if I’d talked to you openly of Nestor perhaps, but we must be involved.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE THREE FRIENDS left the Black Star crew back at the house with the young man worried about his cousin, still unhappy about not getting a little something to take the edge off. They followed the directions on the GPS to the trailer park, but Henry and Cassie didn’t need them; those doubled up lovers could sense the issue at hand.
“It’s a nasty collection of demons from Wiseman’s world,” Henry said. “We burned them up before, but now, here with nowhere to respawn, we can consume them. Reabsorb them into me,” Henry said in that creepy, Cassie Prime speaking-through-him way.
“Can we agree to try talking first?” Thelon asked as he navigated the bumpy road into the trailer park.
“We’ll see,” said Cassie, doubtfully, in her normal voice.
“Fuck,” Thelon said. Even his sensory perceptions, the sight he had developed to peer into the machinery of the hidden world, could see the man was in agony in the trailer.
He parked several yards away. I’m glad no one else is out and about for this. There’d be no talk. The demons had total possession and were devouring poor Jesse alive, feeding off his physical and emotional torture, lapping up his pain and delighting in the corporeal world so long denied to them.
Everyone got out of the car and walked up to the door.
“Can’t you force them out?” Thelon pleaded, but he knew the answer. “Like an exorcism or something?”
“No. This isn’t angels and demons from religion. They’re real and don’t belong here. And they are entrenched. Look. Really look,” Henry said—and it was Henry talking.
Thelon’s second sight expanded wide now, through his left eye. The inner window opened, and he saw. Jesse’s body crawled with half a dozen critters. In and out through his d dimming energetic egg. Rotten. Consuming his light. Fuck.
Cassie said, “If we don’t do this our way, they will latch onto another one. Our way is the only way.”
“A mercy,” Henry added, steel in his tone.
“Yeah, mercy,” Thelon said, unsure. He walked back to the car, closed his eyes, a
nd cried.
The flames ignited with a loud hissing sound, blue-white, bright as the sun. Thelon glanced up and saw the outline of his friends entering the blazing trailer. He again averted his eyes but couldn’t push away his shame. Terrible sounds. His eyelid twitched. Thelon wasn’t sure if the screams piercing his mind were the man’s, the creatures’, or the heat breaking down the materials of the structure.
With a thwomp of air and a wave of vibration like a silent, yet powerful explosion, the fire went out. As the smoke cleared, Cassie and Henry stood alone upon a pile of ash where the trailer had been.
“It is done.” Henry’s body glowed like an El Greco painting. Cassie Prime had consumed the lesser demons and as the light died back down, Thelon made a private decision then and there.
Thelon didn’t talk on the way back to the farm, but on the radio, hosts had picked back up their day jobs and chattered on regarding the altered world. Some argued a terrorist plot had unleashed a collective acid trip like the Salem Witch ergot poisoning, but things would be going back to normal.
When they got to the long driveway of Black Star, he said, “Goddamn it. I can’t do this.”
The lovers said nothing, because they already knew.
Thelon said, sadness in his voice, but stern decision as well, “Get out.”
“Where will you go?” Cassie asked.
“Home. I’m going home.”
“Wait. There’s someone here for you,” Henry said in that voice that meant Cassie Prime was speaking through him.
Thelon’s chin fell to his chest and he rested his head against the steering wheel. “What now?”
Henry said, “It’s Annie.”
Thelon swallowed a lump of guilt and took a deep, pained breath. “Fuck.”
~
THELON WALKED INTO the house in slow motion. The air was crisp, and funny butterflies trembled in his chest. Someone had rolled an old-fashioned portable TV into the sitting room and it was so very out place. Black Star bustled with activity. Seniors on laptops and on phones, taking calls reporting supernatural chaos out in the world as if this was ordained to be the role for the commune.