Chapter Forty-Four
Arris and Gregoire sat on the back deck of Arris’ house, a three-quarters-drained bottle of Lagavulin Scotch on the table between them. Arris lit a cigarette, pondered the US Special Forces emblem on the Zippo lighter and dropped it onto the table, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the night air. The two men stared at the black sword and crystal lying on the table.
“That couldn’t have really happened,” Gregoire said, turning a cigar in his fingers, his mind agog.
“I agree. It couldn’t have, but it did,” Arris said.
“But it doesn’t make any sense, Dave, not on any level imaginable. I followed one of the boats connected to the drug dealers we were after, and it went to the island you were on,” Gregoire said. “What kind of connection could that be?”
“I dunno, but it sounded like a weird boat,” Arris said. “You sure you saw what you saw?”
Gregoire smiled broadly. “We saw some weird stuff the last few days.”
Arris reached across the table and took up the bottle of whisky, tipped a few fingers into each glass and set it down. He lifted his glass and took a meditative sip, turning his head up and staring into the stars of the night sky.
“That’s why you brought the girl back here, isn’t it?” Gregoire said. “You think she knows something?”
“She knows more about it than we do. Until a week ago, we didn’t know anything about whatever this is, and now I’ve seen it first hand, lived it. I watched a man get turned into a pile of ashes, Greg, by a man who uttered a word and pointed his fist. That’s not supposed to be possible,” Arris said.
“You think maybe it was the Bermuda Triangle at work?”
“The Bermuda Triangle?” Arris shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Doctor Onorien called it The Devil’s Triangle. I don’t know what to think, anymore. It’s almost like there’s a new world transposed over the one we know, only invisible to most people. I don’t think I was supposed to see it; or, at least, survive after having seen it.”
“Have you talked to the girl about it at all?”
“Just a little bit, before they moved her in here,” Arris said, motioning with his head toward a lighted bedroom window on the second floor of his house. “It doesn’t make any more sense than anything else, though. She says she was under some sort of spell for the last few years, that Doctor Onorien was training her as his apprentice while using her as a sex slave. She couldn’t do anything about it. She knew it was happening to her, but she was trapped inside her own body, helpless.
“Apparently, he would capture other natives from the jungle and perform tests on them, magic spells, if you can believe that. Other times, he would take her to Miami, where he had a house, and keep her locked up in it while he did whatever it was he did there. None of it really makes any sense.
“We might never know what the hell just happened to me on that island or what Doctor Onorien really was.”
They were silent for a moment, each pausing to smoke and sip from their tumblers. The sound of a manual transmission car could be heard from the street on the other side of Arris’ house, the driver working up through the gears after pulling away from a stop sign at a nearby intersection. Overhead, the pilot of a jet airliner bound for Los Angeles International Airport changed the power settings on his engines, the rumbling pitch of the turbines changing as he maneuvered the aircraft and prepared for final descent. The phone in the house in the lot behind Arris’ rang several times, and Arris watched the silhouette of his neighbor moving behind her curtains as she made her way to the handset base.
“What are you going to do about her?” Gregoire asked.
Arris looked up at the lighted room and then motioned to a brick structure at the back of his lot, a small garage-like building with a door and several windows.
“I’m going to fix up the garden house,” Arris said. “It’s got heat and electric in it, so I figure I’ll just turn it into an apartment for her, give her a place to live where she can have some amount of privacy while we figure out what to do with her.”
“What about the – ” Gregoire said, lifting his hands and making a brief wiggle of his fingers as if he were a magician finishing a trick.
“I dunno, Greg, we’ll just have to see what happens next,” Arris said.
Arris tilted his glass into his mouth and felt the Scotch wash in over his tongue, fill his cheeks. He held it there, savoring the peat and the salt water marsh, concentrating all his senses on the reality of the whisky. He knew, now, that there was another purpose available for his life, one that didn’t involve movie actors or terrorist cells, one that didn’t concern the vague national security concerns of whatever administration ran the government. There was a new world out there, a divine world, one hidden by shadows and in the pauses of gusts of wind, a world that could make his life mean something, a challenge to make living worthwhile.
He took a drag from his cigarette, held it tight in his lungs, then spilled the smoke up into the night air in a slow, steady stream, “If there’s one thing that seems certain, something else is going to happen.”
EPILOGUE
Onorien stared up at the ceiling of the foyer, the pain in his arm and abdomen more severe than any he had ever felt in his life. He was also empty in a way he had never known, every ounce of his faith in himself had been drained from his body. He had to concentrate. He had to focus. The blood in his mouth was a constant reminder of his peril, of his impending doom. Of his looming death. How had this man Arris broken free from the Restraint Spell?
Concentrate. Have faith. Focus on the possible.
He could hear his mansion being shredded by The Prismatic Maelstrom, a spell on which he had spent decades working, trying to bring to life, the spell that would give him the upper hand over his foes. And now, in his hour of triumph, in the moment he was finally able to activate it, a simpleton unbeliever from the outside world ruined it with two strokes from a Divine Blade. How?
Although there was a problem: the spell should have ended when the crystal fell from his hand. And, yet, it hadn’t. He could see the tendrils of light separating into additional colors of the spectrum, each new beam whipping out and destroying what it touched. It was only a matter of time until everything became nothing. So, clearly, the spell was not perfected.
The pain in his gut was monumental, a searing, tearing and almost poisonous feeling; he could feel his strength seeping from his body along with the determination of his mind. And then the room flashed with a pulse of white light so bright it forced his eyes closed with pain. This was not how it was supposed to end, he thought, as he heard the walls of his mansion buckle and collapse. Concentrate.
He opened his eyes to see the fool above him, the man’s eyes searching for comprehension, for understanding. If he could have, Onorien would have laughed at him in contempt, but the severed muscles in his arm and the puncture in his gut prevented any mirth. And then the simpleton spoke to him.
“Can you turn that thing off?”
Fool. Idiot. Interloper. Onorien could feel his blood seeping into the fabric of his robe, taste the alkaline on his tongue, and knew he had very little time left. His robe’s power was flickering out. It would be now or never.
He stared back up at Arris blankly, once again returning deep into his own mind, blocking out the sights and sounds of the world around him, knowing only his faith could get him out of his predicament. Faith in himself. Faith in the world. Faith in the universe. Faith in the Divine World. Vaguely, he could hear the footfalls of Arris as the man ran away down the hallway, fleeing the collapsing mansion. Onorien took another breath, calmed himself with it, and focused on all the motions of his body, inhaling the air from the world, knowing in his soul the power of the world. He opened his eyes and envisioned where he had to be:
“Transporto!”
And he was gone.
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William Young is a former newspaper reporter, Army National Guard helicopter pilot, hearse driver, truck
unloader and retail security guard. He lives in a small town along the Schuylkill River outside of Philadelphia with his wife, two sons, and daughter.
The Divine World is the first in a series.
Original Short Story Version