Ghost Dance

by T C Donivan

  “Tantalus, Tantalus,” came the whispers. “He means to take a bride.”

  King Tantalus was the portrait of debauched decrepitude. Once tall, his spine was bent as if the weight of all sin had been piled upon it. The top of his head was bald and cracked like the dry bed of the Alcyonian Lake. A filthy beard caked with food and wine hung from his chin. In his ruined face I saw the map of Ezekiel’s City which made me wish to God I was anywhere but that place. He stared up at Rachel with unbridled lust.

  “This is a bad piece of luck, the king has left his counting house and come to the auction” Tree Owl said. Spencer seemed not to notice.

  I heard Annie exclaim, “Mozart!”

  The king turned and stared back at her in confusion. As I looked into his eyes, his features and persona were unmistakable. Within that ruin was the musical lad who had entertained us across the half the continent and tricked us into this hell. He cocked his head at Annie and smiled.

  “Do I know you madam,” he asked.

  “Mozart, it’s us, Clayton and Annie,” I said.

  He looked at us for a flickering moment then lost interest and turned his eyes back to the stage of the arena.

  “What is this? He doesn’t know us, or pretends not to,” I said.

  Tree Owl shrugged. “May be you have caught him in-between and he doesn’t remember you, or maybe he hasn’t even been born yet into the life you just left, or maybe he is an electric shadow.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  “Time is not linear. It doesn’t run in a straight line here,” he explained.

  Despite his proclamation of having mastered a score of languages, he surprised me with his vocabulary, for which I admired him greatly. “How so?” I asked, trying to be heard above the din.

  Tree Owl pressed the fingers of his hands together making a circle. “Time is like a maze inside the Compass of Eternity. There are many paths that lead to the same point. Some are in a straight line that cut across many trails, while others are roundabout and meandering like a drunken man.”

  Spencer had taken no notice of his nemesis, his focus fixed firmly upon poor Rachel. The bidding began. Within moments, all had dropped out except Spencer and Mozart, or Tantalus as he was known in this place. Where Spencer had gotten them, I couldn’t guess, but he bid thousands of gambling chips he passed along in sealed bags to the auctioneer’s banker who confirmed their authenticity. Finally, the bidding progressed beyond mere material objects of wealth and souls were offered. Again, Spencer offered up riches he could not possibly possess, bartering the souls of warriors and maidens whose spirits fluttered like butterflies from a canvas sack he held inside his shirt.

  The King’s man shouted a final offer, “One hundred pure souls, fallen from grace, the product of avarice and greed, jealousy and mistake. No man can match this.”

  “Now,” I heard Spencer whisper to the nymph.

  The atmosphere around the stage congealed as if we had been submerged in a fishpond, time slowing to a crawl. Tree Owl pumped a fist in the air, the motion captured as if in a molasses covered dream. The only ones affected were our small band of intrepid adventurers and outcasts. There was safety in the bubble. I knew somehow that we were outside time and nothing could harm us.

  I heard the girl Melinoe, whisper, “Forget.”

  The world unfroze. Normal motion returned to our limbs.

  “The winner,” the auctioneer announced nodding at Spencer.

  I looked at the King, but his bright eyes were strangely empty and his jaw slack. His servants milled about in confusion. We hurried to the banker’s office which adjoined the auction block to collect Rachel. She stood shivering like a wet kitten as they led her from the stage. Ugly bruises and scars marred her once beautiful body. Spencer paid the banker and wrapped a cloak tenderly around her shoulders. He spoke softly to her, but she gave no sign of recognition.

  “We have to hurry, the spell will only last a little while,” Spencer said. He turned to the nymph. “I release you.” She nodded and started to slip away.

  Just then a rasping voice called out, “Seize the nymph, a deception has been perpetrated!”

  Blocking the door of the banker’s office was the auctioneer clad in his red hooded robe. Two ruffians took hold of the delicate Melinoe, twisting her spindly arms behind her back causing her to cry out. The auctioneer nodded at us.

  “Grab them too and don’t forget the ugly little dog. We shall have a trial.”

  “We’ve done nothing wrong!” I shouted.

  The auctioneer threw back his hood and pulled a cigar from his pocket which he stuffed in the corner of his mouth.

  “Sam!” I exclaimed.

  “The name is Samson,” he said.

  “You are not the Samson of the Book,” Tree Owl said.

  The Director grinned enigmatically at him. “No, but I’ve brought down many a house in my day.” He turned to his henchmen. “Make fast their arms and bring them out, but be careful, they’re shifty.”

  The arena was in chaos, more so than it had been before, if that was possible. Rioting had broken out and the King’s legions had entered the hall and were laying about with great ugly clubs, indiscriminately beating anyone who came within their reach. Though they were a wretched lot, who no doubt deserved much of what they got, their cries were still awful and I prayed for their cessation.

  We were dragged upon the stage where lately the sad women had stood and paraded before the throng. As order returned, the King appeared, beside him was a white haired woman little bigger than the nymph Melinoe. Her skin was thin as paper, the mark of age upon her. She wore a purple cape and golden slippers. I recognized her immediately as Sosanna.

  “Villains,” she called out.

  Tantalus caressed her shoulders. “Don’t worry my love. I won’t let them hurt you again.”

  I incautiously spoke up, “Listen to me Mozart, or Tantalus. This is not the same man you knew. You exiled him here from another life, one you haven’t even lived yet. Isn’t that enough revenge?”

  “Don’t listen to him! He’s a liar. All writers lie,” Samson argued.

  “Agamemnon is my name,” the King answered. “Submit to my authority Orestes and Electra and you may yet be spared.”

  Spencer rose up in the full flower of his arrogance. “That is an illusion. You hide yourself in legends. You are not the father and I am not the son. Put away these masks and accept who we truly are.”

  “If you will not accept me as father, then accept me as your executioner,” Mozart/Agamemnon said.

  Samson wrung his hands in exasperation. “We must have a trial. The boy enjoys trials. He fixed one the night they tried to kill the Jews in the camp near Chimney Rock and he set himself up as judge and jury the day he executed the poor dumb bastard who kidnapped the girl. No, we must have a trial. Etiquette demands it!”

  Chairs were produced and we were seated on them. Mordecai was bound with a rope around his neck and tied to Spencer’s chair. A jury was convened of twelve dastardly contemptibles who were beaten and culled from the herd of gaping spectators who still crowded the arena. They sat dumbly across from us, more in fear of their own lives even then we. A massive wooden captain’s seat was placed at center stage and Samson placed himself upon it. He lit a stinking cigar and puffed blue smoke rings at us.

  “Now then, read us the charges,” he said.

  One of his toadies spoke up, “The prisoners are accused of murdering the King, Queen and sundry other honored individuals of the court.”

  “What about us? We had no part in this!” I said.

  “Ah, Peter has denied Christ already and the cock has not yet crowed. You still have two more tries son, make good use of them,” Samson said.

  “Shut up you fool,” I shouted.

  “Finish reading the charges,” Samson ordered.

  The lackey leered at us. “Accomplices after the fact are charged with complicity for crimes against the state.”

  Sa
mson clapped his hands. “Excellent, very good. Let’s get on with it.” He looked at Spencer. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “The killings were not personal, they were political.”

  Samson shook his large head. “All politics are personal dear boy.”

  Spencer nodded at the King and Queen. “How can these two accuse us of murder, when their own hands are smeared with blood?”

  Samson sighed. “Is that all you’ve got?” He turned to the erstwhile jury. “How say you?” They stared back at him with dumb expressions. “Guilty? Good then, guilty it is. The King will pronounce sentence.”

  Mozart/Agamemnon turned to his Queen/Sosanna. “Tell me how you want them to die and it shall be done, but I would advise slow torture.”

  “Let us go,” I begged.

  “Do not plead, it will make no difference,” Spencer said.

  Mozart caressed his Queen’s wrinkled neck tenderly. “After every life, she flees back into Hell, persecuting herself, trying to forget the crimes of her children. So I come to the Slave Market over and over again, buying her freedom with pieces of my soul. These two are evil incarnate and if you stand with them, so I judge you the same.”

  Spencer began to laugh. “You’re trapped here just like us aren’t you?”

  “We go where we please,” Mozart told him.

  “Come with us,” Spencer said.

  “Why?” He asked incredulously.

  “Because I know the way out. I can guide you and Sosanna to a peaceful life. The feud must end Mozart.”

  “You will not beguile me with your sugared words. Cease the struggle. The feud will end, but it will end my way,” the King said.

  Tree Owl spoke up, “These people are nothing to me. I’d like to leave, if I can.”

  Mozart looked at him as if he were a bug. “Run away then coward.”

  “I will,” Tree Owl said. They unbound him. He stood up, teetering unsteadily on his ancient legs. He seemed frail and shrunken.

  “I shall personally carry out the sentence,” Mozart said.

  He pulled his scimitar from its sheath and lurched across the stage toward Spencer. The crowd roared its approval. As the edge flashed toward Spencer’s throat, Tree Owl took flight, his motion too quick for the eye to follow. His stone tomahawk lay on a table that had been placed beside our former friend Samson. He picked it up and smashed it into Mozart’s face. His skull exploded, not in blood, but flashes of white light. His shape skittered and decomposed, fading away. Sosanna came at him and Tree Owl killed her in the same manner. The King’s entourage fled in terror.

  “Just as I thought, electric shadows!” Tree Owl said gleefully.

  “Goddamn, you ruined it!” Samson cried.

  The arena erupted once more into riot, the King’s soldiers now overwhelmed by the inspired lunatics they had so easily cowed only minutes earlier. As chaos overtook the arena, Tree Owl undid our bonds.

  “What in the hell is an electric shadow?” I asked.

  “Something that is not real, even in this place. Metal is no good against them, only natural things of the Earth like stone and wood can kill them.” Tree Owl explained.

  “There’s no time to think about it. We have to get away,” Spencer said.

  The nymph Melinoe, who had been release as well, smiled at him then flickered away like a firefly disappearing into the crevasses of the arena. Annie tended to Rachel who seemed unaware of her surroundings and everyone around her.

  Samson stood up from his captain’s chair and stuck out his hand in comradeship. “I almost had it, the show of a lifetime. If you’d gone along with it, we’d all be sitting pretty and eating peaches in Georgia by sundown, but no, that’s the way of it with young people. You have no patience. Did you really think I’d let them kill you?” He shook his weary head.

  “You’re as mad as the rest of them,” I said.

  He grinned at me, his crooked teeth sticking out like demented fence posts. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  His face turned cloudy and evil. “Good, because I am.” He turned to the arena and raised his arms, the sleeves of his red robe falling back.

  “Kill them!” He shouted. “Don’t listen to him! He’s a liar. All writers all,” Samson answered.

  Chapter 36 – The Akashic Records

  We fled down darkened cobblestone alleyways, boot heels clattering, the murderous horde only moments behind us. Rats the size of dogs barked at us from atop oozing piles of steaming refuse. Mordecai ran in terror, streaking off into the distance ahead of us. I called to him, but he fled like the wind. Tree Owl stopped, his lungs heaving, unable to keep up the pace. Annie and I ran back to him.

  “We’ll make our stand here,” I said fumbling with the Colt Pistol I had carried from Missouri into Hell.

  Tree Owl shook his white haired head. “No, you go on and I will stop them.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He gave a faint smile. “I have some magic I was saving.”

  “Don’t be a fool, come with us,” I said.

  “Let him do what he wants. We haven’t got time to debate,” Spencer said angrily.

  “We won’t leave you,” Annie said.

  He gazed at her fondly. “You are the sweetest of them. If Clayton had not found you first, I would have made you my woman,” he said.

  “Take my pistol at least,” I begged.

  “I won’t need it,” Tree Owl said.

  He touched my face. The palm of his hand was coarse as hardwood, but the warmth of humanity still flowed through it. “We are all together again and I am happy. Our destiny has finally come, the three owls and the doves that fly with them. I was born for this moment. Without you, I would have not have found my people.” The noise of the mob echoed closer.

  “Come on!” Spencer shouted.

  My rationale for leaving him was the protection of Annie and Rachel, but I savored my own skin as well. We left him alone in the street. I looked back once. Our loyal friend stood, looking shrunken and old, confusion painting his weathered features. Pangs of guilt came near overwhelming me, but I turned my face to the wind and ran away with the others.

  “How are we to get out of here?” I asked Spencer as we ducked down an alley.

  “I know the way, but if we’re separated, meet us at the boat by the lake,” he said.

  Our flight had taken us near the main boulevard of the city. The sound of thundering hooves, distant at first, then close by, began to shake the paving stones beneath our feet. We stopped at the head of an alley and looked out. A herd of buffalo such as the one had come near crushing me so many months before, came crashing through the streets. As they roared past, the sound of chanting boomed out across the city. A cold breeze rustled the hot, fetid air. We looked up. Towering above the gambling dens and whorehouses, fifty feet high, was a ghostly apparition, the image of Tree Owl as he was when he was a young man. His mighty voice bellowed out a Cheyenne war cry and he bent over and swung his massive fists. When he stood upright again, he held in his hands a dozen screaming men whom he flung across the rooftops like rag dolls. He stamped with his moccasined feet, kicking down the houses of iniquity.

  As we watched. Tree Owl marched away toward the Slave Market which was still visible above the buildings from where we stood. With a mighty kick, he shattered the walls then stove in the roof with his fists. We could see the King’s minions swarming about his legs like ants attacking a praying mantis. The fantastic image began to flicker and shrink as they cut him down, piece by piece.

  Tree Owl’s voice roared like a lion, “I shall rise again and again until I have freed all the people!”

  We turned and ran. As we rounded a corner, we stumbled into a company of soldiers, beefy men with scarred faces in black uniforms who carried trident pitchforks. They called out to stop. We split up then, Spence and Rachel going one direction and Annie and I another. We ran blindly for what seemed like hours, our hearts pounding wildly until
we found ourselves in a dark, deserted section of the city. We paused, trying to catch our breath and get our bearings. Behind us, the night sky was aglow with flame from the destruction our comrade had wrought.

  “Where are we?” Annie asked.

  I had no idea. Though safe from our pursuers, we were lost. I felt despair creeping into my soul as the walls of the city seemed to envelope us. I spied a darkened cathedral outlined against the caliginous sky. Something about it called to me. We started toward it. The streets were unbelievably quiet.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said.

  “When?”

  The memory came flooding back. “The dream I told you about when I fell in the buffalo herd. This was the cathedral.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “No, after I saw you, I woke up and Spencer had saved me from the herd.” I studied the scene around us. “How can this be the same city? There’s nowhere in this place that isn’t swarming with people.”

  “Have we passed over into yet another world?” Annie wondered.

  “If we have, at least we’re together,” I said.

  We approached the ramshackle building. It towered above us like a derelict stone giant. Its construction was of soft, brown limestone which had been painted black with soot over the centuries. Darkened stained glass windows stared out like dead eyes from its walls. The massive doors hung on red rusted hinges. We walked up the broken steps and pushed them open.

  The narthex of the cathedral was shrouded in gloom. It reeked of old books and rotting parchment. We walked through a second set of doors and our senses were flooded with a warm light. We stood in the hall of a grand library whose aisles seemed to run on into infinity. Its shelves were crammed with papyrus scrolls and illuminated manuscripts as well as the works of Milton and Chaucer. How I knew this, I cannot say, but the contents of those shelves were as clear as if every page was open to me. The tall, blighted, stained glass windows we had seen from the outside stood unblinking in their brilliance like lidless eyes reaching into the soul. The room’s vaulted ceiling arched into the darkness and descended into cozy corners where one might hide away for a lifetime consuming the wisdom of the ages. Soundless music played in my mind, filling me with joy. Though I had eschewed the life of a scholar for the rough comfort of the frontier, I could feel myself drawn to this place, my spirit wanting to lose itself in the stacks. Annie and I instinctively locked arms, joy cascading through us.