Chapter Fourteen
After dinner, Nereika led Arris to Onorien’s study, a large room not unlike his library but which featured a large desk in one corner. Arris realized he had been in it that morning, only the path of hallways to it had changed since then, and the room looked somehow different, now. There were bookshelves and curio tables against the walls, and a pair of leather easy chairs in one corner of the room, flanking a low table with an ornate crystal ashtray. The room was lit by antique wall sconces fitted with globe light bulbs the likes of which Arris had never seen before. Arris had no way of knowing if what he saw meant anything, but he knew odd when he saw it, and he filed that away with the weird lack of electrical switches he’d noticed in the mansion.
The room struck Arris as an anachronism. It was the kind of room men from a certain time in the past would retreat to, away from the women, to discuss politics or finance or sports while drinking aperitifs. It was a men’s clubhouse, a place that Arris imagined existed only in the past, filled with cigar smoke and sexism.
“Your … boss … has an interesting design style,” Arris said to Nereika as he surveyed the room, taking in the heavy curtains and the wrought iron grate covering a large fireplace set into one of the walls.
“How do you mean?” Nereika asked, looking around the room.
Arris shrugged. He wasn’t sure he knew how to describe it. “I dunno. This is all a little old fashioned. Hardcover books on the shelves, leather chairs … it just seems like something a person would’ve done before you could put in a PC and a printer. I mean, it’s well-done and very cool, but it’s, like, a hundred years out of style.”
“He just had this furniture put in last year,” Nereika said, her tone suggesting she didn’t understand what Arris meant.
Arris suppressed a laugh. “No, I don’t mean the furniture looks old, I mean Doctor Onorien’s style is old, or, if you prefer,” Arris fished around for a word to describe it and found none, “a different time period. Vintage, maybe, or classic. Definitely some sort of antique period.”
“Well, I can assure you, Ma- … Doctor Onorien had the room redecorated only last year and he was quite particular about it,” Nereika said, her tone devoid of defensiveness. “He designed the desk himself.”
Arris turned and looked at the desk. It was a large, cumbersome, heavy piece of furniture. Beautiful and ornate, the kind of desk one never saw in modern daily life what with the mass-produced tongue-and-groove pressed wood or metal-and-glass fixtures that adorned most public and private spaces. Arris wondered briefly if such hand-crafted furniture still even existed in corporate CEO offices. He wouldn’t know that, either, since the most elaborate corporate office he’d ever been in was his boss’, and Dale Singer used an undistinguished desk from an era where plainness and uniformity were celebrated as cultural virtues.
Arris shrugged. It meant almost nothing to critique Onorien’s furniture style or, indeed, the peculiar taste that defined the mansion’s interior. Still, Arris wondered aloud, “I hope your Miami home is a bit more with the times. From what I see on HGTV, buyers don’t go much for this sort of 1800s décor.”
Nereika stared at him blankly for a long second, as if what Arris had just said made no sort of sense to her, and then stood abruptly and nodded slightly, acknowledging a non-verbal cue from elsewhere.
“Mr. Arris, can I interest you in a brandy and a cigar?” said Onorien from the corner of the room near the doorway.
Arris turned in his chair. Onorien had a way of making a silent entrance that was beginning to emerge in Arris’ subconscious as a potential problem, an indication that Onorien was accustomed to stealth despite his outward display of hospitality. Arris stood out of the chair and walked over to Onorien as Nereika slipped out of the room.
“Do you have any Scotch?”
“Of course, I’m a civilized man,” Onorien said, reaching toward a selection of crystal decanters on a glass-bottomed silver serving tray. “Single malt or a blend?”
“I’m partial to both, but a single Highland if you’ve got one handy,” Arris said.
Onorien nodded and poured a couple of fingers into a glass. “Ice? Or do you prefer a few drops of Scottish spring water to enhance the bouquet?”
Arris shook his head. “Neat is fine, thank you.”
Onorien set the glass down and pushed it toward Arris before turning and filling a snifter with brandy. Onorien moved a few steps away, opened a cabinet door revealing a humidor and pulled a pair of cigars out, slid one down the shelf toward Arris, and placed an ornate silver lighter and a cutting tool alongside it. The two men spent a minute lighting their cigars. Arris let out a large puff of smoke into the air of the study, realized that he was smoking indoors for the first time in years, and regarded his cigar.
“You know, a guy could get used to living like this.”
Onorien smiled widely, warmly, “A ‘guy’ already has.”
Onorien motioned toward a pair of glass doors and let Arris out through them and onto a masonry veranda that overlooked the jungle canopy and revealed just a squeak of ocean in the distance. The sun was deep into the blue hues of sunset, and out to the east, the first hundreds of stars were already popping through the unfurling indigo veil. The jungle was quiet.
“So, Mr. Arris, what did you do in your life before you began ferrying holiday goers and honeymooners around on island tours?” Onorien asked.
Arris took a sip of his Scotch. “I was in the Army,” he said, taking a small puff from his cigar, briefly wondering how much real biography he should reveal. “I used to fly Rangers to and from the battlefield, mostly, although whatever the mission required, really.”
“You were in Iraq?” Onorien asked.
“Iraq. Afghanistan,” Arris said plainly, “a couple of times in both, actually. And other places over the years.”
Onorien regarded Arris carefully, tipping a small amount of brandy into his mouth and letting it sit on his tongue for a moment. “So, is it true what they say about war, that ‘War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man?’”
Arris was caught off guard by the question and stared blankly into the night sky for a moment. “Somebody thinks that’s what war does to you?”
“It’s just something I heard, once, long ago,” Onorien said. “I’ve always wondered if there were anything redeeming about war for the individual soldier, not ever having been one, myself; if there were any proof that those who ply that trade do so out of some desire to measure themselves against the horrors and cruelties of combat, or if the military calling is just something as simple as a desire in a man to serve his country.”
Arris tapped some ash over the edge of the veranda. There was some truth in that last bit from Onorien, that many of those called to the profession of soldiering wondered if they had what it took to succeed in battle, to not let their fellow comrades in arms down, but Arris had never met anybody who had ever said he actually wanted to test himself. There was, perhaps, a fine line in the distinction between wondering and wanting; Arris had always wondered until he’d found out, and knowing he could do it did not make him want to do it again. He’d never thought about it much more beyond that, as anything other than the job he did and the risk it entailed. And, to be honest, he’d never really thought about the risk to himself; he had always been more concerned in getting the job done, being seen as competent.
“Well, I suppose there’s something to that,” Arris said, “although I’ve never met anyone who wanted to be shot at to find out, what with the chance of being killed and all. But, I suppose everybody wants to know what they’re made of, if they’ve got what it takes to not let their buddies down, to accomplish the mission and come home in one piece.”
Onorien took a few small puffs on his cigar. “So, there’s no thrill to staring danger in the face and coming away alive?”
“Thrill?”
Arris asked, sniffing out tiny laugh devoid of mirth. “I think the emotion is ‘fear.’”
The two men were quiet for several long moments as each sipped on his drink, puffed his cigar and listened to the nighttime noises of the jungle below.
“And then you got out of the Army and traded on your skills as pilot to ferry tourists on sightseeing trips around the islands?” Onorien asked.
“Yeah,” Arris said. “I needed a change of pace, a change of scenery, if you will … a new mission. “
“That must be a nice change for you, after your experiences in the Middle East.”
“Yeah, yeah it is,” Arris said, suppressing a shrug. “It’s nice not to get shot at.”
“So, you said earlier today that there would be people looking for you,” Onorien said.
Arris looked at his watch and then up at the sky. “There should be, at least for a little while longer. But after a while they’ll be forced to give up and conclude I sank to the bottom of the sea with my helicopter. I guess they’ll maybe be out there until sunset tomorrow at the latest.
“They’re going to be a bit surprised in a couple of days when your supply ship lets me off on the mainland wherever it lets me off, having already assumed I’ve drowned. Hopefully, they’ll have already had some sort of memorial service for me,” Arris said with a slight smile.
“Do you know what caused your aircraft to crash, Mr. Arris?”
“Oh, yeah, I was on it at the time,” Arris said, trying to sound mirthful. “I didn’t have a lot of time to react, but from what I could tell from the caution lights, I experienced multiple system failures and then the engine quit. Probably something with the fuel delivery system, but I didn’t have much time to diagnose it before I had to autorotate to the water and ditch.
“It’s pretty uncommon for something like that, but given the age of my helicopter, it’s not unheard of,” Arris said, trying to remain vague and banking on Onorien’s ignorance of helicopters. Arris hadn’t expected to be asked to give any details on the nature of his crash landing, although, as he stood there and thought about what he was saying, he should have expected to be asked: how often did anyone crash a helicopter into the ocean and wash ashore on a more-or-less deserted isle?
“Perhaps it was the effects of the Triangle,” Onorien said, taking a deep puff on his cigar and blew a steady stream of white smoke up into the night air.
“What triangle?”
Onorien paused, apparently shocked by the realization that his guest had no idea of what Onorien spoke. He tapped some ash onto the veranda floor and tilted his head ever-so-slightly to the side, as if making sure the universe were screwed on straight. Arris wasn’t sure if he had misspoken or said something so out of the ordinary that any average person would have snickered at him.
“The Devil’s Triangle, Mr. Arris, surely you’ve heard of it?”
This was not what Arris had expected to hear, and he resisted every urge in his subconscious to roll his eyes in disbelief.
“The Devil’s Triangle?”
“Yes, Mr. Arris, The Devil’s Triangle,” Onorien said, lifting his cigar above his head and gesturing in a small circle around the general area. “This part of it is particularly strong, so the lore goes, and there are those who think we are very close to the epicenter of its power. Surely, you must have heard about it.”
Arris was baffled. “Uhh, yeah, sure, I’ve heard of it,” Arris said, trying to figure out what tack to take, uncertain of Onorien’s interest, “but just what I’ve seen on television shows about it. Mysterious boat disappearances, ships that enter with crews and are later found unmanned, something about a bunch of World War Two bombers that disappeared on a routine training flight. Why?”
“Yes, exactly,” Onorien said, his shoulders easing up a bit in relief. “Where do these people go? What happens to them? Why is it in this particular part of the world where so many strange things occur to those who try to pass through it? Maybe whatever happened to them caused your helicopter to malfunction.”
For a moment, Arris could see the missile ripping through the sky toward his aircraft, the white smoke billowing behind it. He remembered jerking the controls to try and make it miss. He took a sip of his drink.
“Well, I … I have to say that I hadn’t thought of that particular possibility. I didn’t realize I was in The Devil’s Triangle, to tell you the truth,” Arris said, his mind racing to fill in unforeseen details of his cover story. Cover story? His role in the mission was un-credited, not warranting “Pilot” in the final scroll up the screen. “I’m surprised nobody has ever mentioned it to me before, what with all the flights I’ve made since starting the business.”
“Yes, it makes you wonder,” Onorien said, pausing and staring intently at Arris for a short moment. “You have to wonder where all those other people went, no? So many of them, so many stories over so many years; why did none of them ever come out to tell a tale?”
“I’d wager they’re down on the bottom of the ocean with my helicopter,” Arris said.
“Maybe,” Onorien smiled. “Or, perhaps, they made their way to some small little island like this one, like the natives who live here now, generations of slaves and slave traders mingling their blood lines and creating a new hybrid of human.
“Why didn’t they ever leave? Why was nothing of them ever discovered? Perhaps the power of the Triangle keeps them here, hiding them and the means that brought them here.”
This was a conversation for which Arris was singularly unprepared to have, and he took a moment to stare out into the now completely dark sky, the sun having finished setting.
“Why would it let everybody else pass through but target them?” Arris asked. “It’s not like the Caribbean isn’t a high draw tourist destination; there are plenty of people to target. I’ve been flying around here for a while and never had a problem. Until yesterday, that is.”
“My point, exactly, Mr. Arris,” Onorien said. “How does it work? Why does it choose some and not others, or, why does it choose all? Ever since Europeans began sailing these waters centuries ago, tales of weird and strange occurrences have been told, but nobody knows why or how.”
Arris did his best not to stare in disbelief. “Okay, I’ll bite, how?”
Onorien shrugged. “That’s why I come here: to study it, to explore its ways, to determine the nature of its ways, to understand its magic. There are strange and mystical places all over the world, each of them with their own powers, each of which only works in certain ways under certain conditions, and I spend my time working to understand them.”
Arris took a sip of his drink, finished it and set the glass down on the veranda’s railing. “So, you’re some sort of paranormal investigator? I’ve actually seen some show on television where a bunch of plumbers hang out at night in abandoned buildings with electronic equipment and claim to be searching for ghosts. I can’t say as I’ve ever watched much more than a few seconds between clicks on the remote, though.”
Onorien guffawed. “In a manner of speaking, I guess I am like them,” Onorien said, taking a puff on his cigar and letting the smoke out in a big cloud. “Only, I don’t look for ghosts, Mr. Arris, I look for things nobody believes in because nobody has thought to believe in them, despite the evidence to the contrary. Ghosts are not so spectacular a thing to believe in; man has believed in them ever since the first human watched another human die and wondered where the person in the body went. Humans have always believed that the spirit persisted after the body perished, so it’s not that unusual to find people looking for ways to contact the spirit world.
“But that’s not what I mean, at least, not entirely. I’m interested in what you would call the paranormal or the supernatural, The Divine World.”
“The divine?” Arris said. “You mean like religious?”
Onorien paused for a moment and thought about this question, pursing his lips and rolling his cigar between his thumb and forefingers. “Almost … but, no. Although, to be
sure, there is an element of faith involved. Since the era of man began, man has always believed in, or, at least, professed a disbelief in, certain kinds of things. We no longer believe in magic or monsters or demons or devils but, long ago, mankind did. At one point in our collective past, not believing in these things would’ve made you a pariah, an outcast, a heretic, perhaps. These were the things that were true regardless of anybody’s ability to prove they were true.
“Did you know, Mr. Arris that at one time nearly every civilization on the planet believed in the existence of dragons? Every advanced civilization with any ability to record its history made some sort reference of enormous scaled beasts that flew and breathed fire. The dragons vary from culture to culture, but they persist through them and all of our ancestor civilizations believed these creatures existed without having ever seen a single dinosaur bone.
“Now, we have enormous collections of dinosaur bones revealing some of the most awesome and dangerous creatures ever to have walked the planet and nobody believes in dragons anymore. They are now myth. How does such a belief change?”
“I don’t know, maybe because nobody has ever seen a dragon?” Arris said.
Onorien smiled slightly. “Nobody sees the gods they worship and almost everybody on the planet believes in a god. Indeed, many religions actively proselytize to gain adherents but can show no evidence of the god they worship or the benefits of believing.
“You don’t need to spend much time at all looking for evidence of the divine to find it, to find the stories that show most people once believed in the divine nature of life. It’s a paradox of a sort: there are many things nobody believes in anymore that everybody believed in long ago, and, now, there are many things to believe in that nobody once believed in, and, almost always, the two streams are incompatible. You have to ask yourself, Mr. Arris, why would almost all of humanity believe in the supernatural – the divine – for most of human history and then suddenly cast it aside? What changed in the past that would cause such a wholesale departure from one stream on consciousness to another?
“It’s almost as if the world underwent a simultaneous religious transformation, exchanging one faith for another and not getting anything tangible in return for the switch.”
For a moment, Arris could almost taste the beer he and his roommates would have been drinking during a late-night bull-session in college, the half-thought-out mystical interpretations and religious implications of the world mingling with what he and his friends experienced as part of the process of meshing with the real world of adult life. They had never figured out what made the world go around then. At some point, the real world intruded on the theoretical and made such explorations moot. Such subjects now bored Arris.
“Well, as I understand it, magic was how early humans interpreted the world, how they made sense of everything around them that they didn’t have the science to understand. Early man was too busy just surviving to spend any time investigating why lighting struck or the sun rose, so they came up with something, anything, to make some sense of their environment,” Arris said. “I’m sure it made sense to them on some level, gave some sort of predictability to their physical environments. I guess, otherwise, they’d have come up with something else, religion, maybe.
“Religion is a more metaphysical reaction to the world, a ‘what does it all mean’ attempt at interpretation. Since nobody can know, religion filled the void. It still does. There’s been a lot of philosophical debate over it ever since, as far as I can tell, and there’s no general agreement on which religion is the right one.”
Onorien listened patiently and drummed his fingers on the veranda. He absently set down his cigar alongside his near-empty glass, brought his hands together in the prayer position, and collapsed his fingers into a steeple, pointing his two fingers at Arris. “And you? Are you a man of faith?”
“In religion? No,” Arris said, turning away from Onorien and staring out over the jungle, and, then, softly, almost under his breath, he added, “I lost my faith a while ago.”
Onorien tilted his head slightly, trying to catch the last bit of what Arris had just said, and was just about to ask him to re-state what he had said under his breath when Nereika stepped through the doorway and swept her eyes over the two of them. A look of uncertainty washed over her face before she composed herself, her hands clasped in front of her. Onorien stepped toward her, avoiding contact with Arris, who watched the scene curiously.
“Yes, Nereika?” Onorien asked.
Nereika made a slight head nod toward the jungle. Arris checked the tree line on the far side of the manicured lawn but could make nothing out in the darkness. Onorien turned to the jungle, made a small motion with his hands, and nodded.
“Mr. Arris, I apologize, but I must leave you to your own devices for the rest of the night,” Onorien said, no evidence of any trouble showing in his demeanor. “Please, help yourself to the bar in my study. I look forward to continuing our discussion tomorrow, after dinner.”
Nereika and Onorien slipped through the open door and disappeared into the mansion. Arris turned back to the jungle and peered into the darkness, certain that there had to have been something out there to draw Onorien away, but saw nothing and heard only the sounds of nature. Arris stood still for a moment, the nature of the conversation turning through his head, its direction not pointless, but intended to arrive at Onorien’s last question: was he a man of faith? Faith in what? What had Onorien been trying to discover about him?