Pete lay still. His skull was broken open like an egg, like some terrible real-world Humpty Dumpty. Gelatinous pink brain matter pushed up out of the rupture and oozed onto still-hot rock.
Trent hugged the rock wall, took several seconds to catch his breath, and then carefully, no longer needing to rush, finished his descent.
Before he reached the bottom, cursing furiously as his hands blistered from the heat, Messenger, Oriax, and I were there beneath him.
There standing over the gruesome body of his victim.
And the Master of the Game was there as well, still a tableau of writhing serpentine horror.
Trent, panting, pumped his seared, smoking fist in the air. “I won! Yeah! I won! Take that!”
Did he even take note of the fact that he had just committed murder? Did it even cross his mind that the body at his feet was his friend? Did he smell the sickening aroma of human flesh as the very matter that had held his friend’s mind cooked?
“The game is finished, the winner decided,” the Master of the Game intoned in his bowels-of-hell voice.
“Hell, yes, it’s over,” Trent snarled.
“The winner is he who first touched the ground.” Then the Game Master extended his serpent hand and, with a rattlesnake finger, pointed. At Pete.
“Idiot!” Oriax said. “You stupid, stupid boy. We had uses for you! You could have done great things!”
Trent looked at her and his blank expression seemed to confirm her judgment of stupidity.
“He’s all yours,” Oriax said, her voice cold now, emptied of all emotion. And she was gone.
Trent seemed bereft. It was all beginning, I thought, to dawn on him. Oriax had been his ally, of sorts. And now she was gone in a wave of disgust and disappointment. He had won nothing. He had been only the second to touch the ground.
His friend lay dead and the nightmare freak show that was the Master of the Game was speaking to Messenger. “Have I performed my office?”
“You have,” Messenger said. “You may withdraw.”
Without a word or gesture the Game Master retreated into mist, which now swallowed the tower. When he was gone, the mist withdrew, and the tower of rock and lava was no more. The ground beneath our feet was smooth once again. We still occupied a space too large by orders of magnitude to be a basement, but the weights and the bench and the forlorn sticks of furniture were all back in place.
And Pete’s head, that broken egg, was healing. The fracture was closing. The blood that matted his hair, the sizzling brain matter, obscenely reminiscent of scrambled eggs, was sucked back into his skull. There was an audible snap when the bone rejoined.
Then, slowly, Pete began to climb to his feet, he who had been indisputably dead. He was slow and stiff, but far more spry than a person should be under the circumstances.
Messenger turned to me.
I knew what he wanted me to do.
10
ARE THERE THINGS YOU CAN DO WITHOUT really knowing how you do them? Can you explain how you can ride a bike? I mean, really understand not that you can do it, but how the bike doesn’t just fall over?
I can enter the mind of a person condemned to punishment. I just can. I don’t know how, I only know that I close my eyes and I focus on that person, and just as the physical world sort of moves aside at times to avoid my touch, so the barriers of Trent’s mind moved aside so that he had no sensation of me being in there with him. In there, inside his brain. Inside his memories.
It is a terribly violative thing to do. It makes me sick to do it. I’m certain there are people who would revel in the power, but for me it is a disturbing, nauseating thing and makes me despise myself.
But that doesn’t stop me, I can’t let it.
So, with a deep breath, I entered Trent’s world.
It was a hallucinatory experience of images and flashes and bits of dialog and strange physical sensations. It comes at you like a fire hose of way too much information.
I was not there to learn how Trent had come to blame “foreigners” for his father leaving home. I wasn’t there to learn that it was a bitter aunt who first set him on the path of hatred. I wasn’t there to see Trent’s father’s psychological abuse. Or his mother’s deliberate blindness to what was happening to her son.
It did not matter that Trent had been a fearful, insecure child, or that he was struggling in school because he had undiagnosed dyslexia, or that his only sense of worth came from having a weaker boy to look up to him.
None of that changed things except insofar as they made me sympathetic. Trent had not gotten to this place alone. I suppose no one ever does. The road to hatred is lined with enablers.
But I was not inside his mind to find out those things, they were simply layers I had to pass through on my way down, down into the subbasement of Trent’s fears.
There was a great deal of fear. Fear of his father never coming back, fear that it was somehow Trent’s own fault. Fear of dogs, fear of flying, fear . . . and there it was.
In this spaceless space I somehow occupied, it was like a glowing, black mass, a seething melted tar pit of a thing. Fear. The great fear.
The nightmare buried deep in Trent’s subconscious mind. The great fear that would shatter him.
Slowly I disentangled, dreading what would follow from revealing this truth to Messenger. Dreading what I would be forced to witness.
I opened my eyes and there he was: the Messenger of Fear.
“What is his fear?” Messenger asked me.
There was no point in evasion. “Trent is most frightened of being helpless. The image in his mind is from his childhood. He saw a man in a wheelchair, a quadriplegic. He—”
“No,” Trent whispered. “No. No.”
“The man was at a bus stop. It was a freezing cold day and a car came by and splashed a puddle of slush onto the man. Then, two bullies—”
“No, no, no,” Trent said, shaking his head vigorously.
“—and they used the hockey sticks they were carrying to poke the man. They kept asking if he felt it. They broke the urine bag the man was wearing under his clothing and—”
“Listen, I, I, whatever you want from me . . . ,” Trent pleaded. There was no bluster left. There was only fear.
I had seen this boy beat a helpless man. I knew that this boy’s actions had set in motion a series of events that would lead to the death of Aimal. But now he was scared, and his voice shook, and his eyes pleaded, first with Messenger and then with me.
“Hey, I’m sorry about that chink thing. I mean, I really am sorry. I got no problem with chinks. Asian people I mean. But you can’t . . . I mean . . . you guys are just messing with me.”
I didn’t answer. I tried to maintain a cold look. But it’s not so easy doing that, not so easy to look at naked fear and remain cold and detached.
“In the name of Isthil and the balance She maintains,” Messenger intoned, “I summon the Hooded Wraiths and charge them to carry out the sentence.”
Now the basement was just the basement again, tight and airless. It was the smallness and confinement, and the sense of realness I think, that pushed Trent over the edge into incoherent babbling and pleading.
The mist, the cursed mist, filled one end of the room, a gateway for new horrors.
They came then, two wraiths, tall, vague of shape, faceless, but bringing with them a feeling of cold, of the cold of death itself, so that even I shuddered.
The wraiths moved closer and I heard from them a low, insistent whispering sound that contained words, but not words I could parse. Only Messenger could understand them. His face grew gray with sadness as he listened.
He was troubled when he turned to me. “Trent will live a lifetime in that condition,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s an illusion, not reality, he won’t actually be made a quadriplegic.”
“For him it will be a lifetime. Years and then decades, during which he will live out every aspect of his fear. He will rem
ember his old life, and what we have done, but he will not be able to escape or deny, as year follows year, decade follows decade. Until he dies at last in that time and wakes again to his interrupted life.”
The wraiths moved closer then, and both laid invisible, shrouded hands on him.
Trent spoke no more. His eyes rolled up in his head. His mouth hung open. He sank to the floor and sat there, crumpled. His strong arms hung limp.
Messenger frowned, but not because of Trent. He had heard or felt something. I suppose it was this universe’s version of a text message. How else did Messenger know when and where to be?
It was a question I should ask him.
Add that to the list of a hundred other questions I had for him.
“I must go,” he said to me.
“Where are we—”
“I, not you. I am summoned.” He drew a deep breath, not pleased at the nature of his summons.
“Should I stay here with—”
“No,” he said curtly. “Go. Trent will be . . .” I think he was about to say, “fine,” but stopped himself. Trent would not be fine. But this location in time and space could be returned to when Messenger chose to do so.
I returned to my abode.
It felt strange to be back after so little time, a thought that drew a wondering laugh from me. Had I reached the point where what had just occurred now seemed like a short day?
I read. Not the book of Isthil or any of the other more exalted texts left for my education. Instead I read one of the novels also provided for my amusement.
I wondered idly just who stocked my private library? Was there some sort of Messenger of Library Science who selected after careful screening? Or did some unseen servant scan the bestseller lists and run down to the local bookstore?
It was an amusing thought, and I needed amusing thoughts. I read for a while on the couch and then, finding myself more tired than the mere passage of hours could explain, slipped between cool sheets. Was there a maid who came and cleaned my room and changed the linens? There must have been, for these things were done. Someone provided me with clothing and laundered same after I threw them in a clothes hamper. Someone bought me food. Someone vacuumed. And brought me the book I was reading.
Maybe I should leave a thank-you note. But I suspected I would never meet whoever this person was. Just as I was confident that I would never really know where I was, how this place came to be.
When I had opened the door to the outside, only the brooding, sinister yellow mist had met me. This place might be on the same patch of land where I had first materialized. Or it might be deep within the earth. Or suspended in a cloud.
I wondered if Messenger had the answer to all these questions. I wondered if all would be revealed to me when I at last assumed his position.
I wondered if my mother missed me. Or if she didn’t even know I was gone. When I was young I’d read the story of a boy who went off on adventures but had a golem to take his place so that no one ever noticed he was gone.
Was it like that? Was there a simulation of me back at home, back at school?
I wondered and at some point fell into a troubled sleep full of dreams.
My dreams were visited by burning boys, demons in human shape, a figure with auburn hair who alternately drifted just out of sight or appeared with flesh eaten away like a leper.
I dallied in dreamland imagining the moment when Messenger offered Ariadne a game. I imagined his desperate hope that she would prevail, and his horror when he saw that she would not.
I dreamed of the way he must have felt when he dived into her mind, invading the sanctuary of the person he loved, and found there the one thing she feared most.
My God, how had he done it? How had he done that to the one he loved?
No choice, I thought, yet had not Oriax hinted that we still had free will, at least a little?
But most of all, I dreamed of Trent in his punishment. Those dreams had a peculiar reality to them. I saw him as he was, as a boy, as a mean young sadist with a mind full of hate, but now confined to a wheelchair.
I often remain aware in my dreams, but this was on a whole different level. I wasn’t just lucidly dreaming, I felt I was observing actual events. The scenes lacked the distortion of dreams, they were clear and sequential. The level of detail, too, was most un-dreamlike, for in these visions there was not only sight but sound, and not only the obvious sounds, but the subtler ones as well. I heard the electric whine of his wheelchair. I heard the strained quality of his voice as he learned to speak with diaphragm muscles affected by paralysis.
In a public restroom I heard the closing of the door to the handicapped toilet and the sound of him emptying his ostomy bag. And then the muffled sobs of despair.
I watched as he struggled through physical therapy that did nothing but seem to magnify his hopelessness.
I saw him stare, stare for a very long time, at a place on a freeway overpass where there was a gap between railings just wide enough for him to steer his wheelchair through. Below, traffic screamed by, cars and trucks, massive steel bullets that would certainly crush him to death as he hit the pavement.
He was picturing it. He was doing more than imagining it, he was working it out in detail: This is how I squeeze through the gap. This is how I pivot to the place where a fall will land me on the road rather than just tumbling me down an embankment. This is how it will feel as I fall. This is the sound I will make when I hit the pavement. This, if I still live and remain conscious, is what the onrushing tractor trailer will look and sound like as it bears down, unstoppable, this the view I’ll have of the driver’s horrified face.
Would he be struck by the massive tires? Or would he be scraped along the pavement by being dragged beneath?
May the goddess Isthil protect me from ever facing such a terrible moment.
I woke to the sound of tapping. Someone was tapping on the closed door of my bedroom. Perhaps it was morning, but I was not rested. I felt like my nerves had all been sandpapered raw. The connection to Trent’s punishment—a punishment that to him would last a lifetime—faded only slowly.
I went to the door.
“I made the coffee,” Messenger said.
“Trent?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“Graciella?”
“Soon, not now.”
“Then . . .”
“There is a ceremonial matter. I am to attend, and so you must as well.”
“I’ll be ready in two minutes,” I said. So that was what had called Messenger away: a ceremonial matter, whatever that meant.
I don’t know what I expected. I certainly did not expect what happened.
Messenger led the way to the exterior door and opened it. But instead of opening onto the despised yellow mist, we stepped out onto a lawn that seemed to go on almost forever in every direction. It was springy underfoot, very like the grass in Brazil, giving a sense of both reality and strangeness.
I had an odd suspicion as soon as I was clear of my door, and glanced back to have confirmed for me the suspicion that my home was not there any longer. Whatever place I had just stepped out of was not visible now and had been replaced by that Brazil-quality grass, a field that rose and fell in gentle undulation. But as if this scenery revealed itself only to those who took the time to look more carefully, features arose into view: a stream crossed by a fantastic bridge; a distant volcano of impossible height, glowing at the top but emitting no smoke. And ahead of us, right where I should certainly have seen it upon arrival, was a structure that immediately reminded me of the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz.
No, it was not green, but it was unworldly, composed of sharp angles that made it seem to be a single giant, multifaceted crystal shimmering in faint hues of blue and green.
“Surrender Dorothy,” I said.
“What?” Messenger asked.
“Nothing. Where are we?”
“It would be difficult to explain in geographical terms,”
Messenger admitted. “We are nowhere specific, rather we are within the imagination of Yusil, goddess of creation and destruction. She is the great builder and destroyer, thus city and the volcano. She has created this reality for the ceremony.”
“What is the ceremony?” I asked.
“A trial,” he said flatly, “though guilt is already decided and only the sentence remains in doubt.”
We walked with the easy gait and blistering speed that is only possible in the time distortion of this Netherworld and soon were at a gate. I felt utterly abashed by the size of the crystalline wall that loomed above us. The gate was forbidding, but in a strangely styled way, with sharp spikes of crystal on all sides. The portal itself was open, and as we walked, the spikes around us seemed to notice our presence and grew a bit larger, as if preparing in the event that we made trouble.
The gateway opened into a tall tunnel that led in turn to a chamber so vast you could have stuffed Giants stadium into it with room to spare. It had the feeling of a medieval cathedral, but was filled with light. Even the tiles beneath our feet glowed softly.
At the far end was a stepped platform that rose and rose until it melded into a series of thrones.
The thrones—I counted seven—were empty, but the space at the foot of each throne was already crowded with people, all but a very few dressed head to toe in black. No one was milling around. No one appeared to be in conversation. A hundred or more people stood in all but total silence.
“A congress of messengers,” Messenger said.
This was not a particularly helpful explanation, but I was fascinated by what I saw around me as we joined that assembly. Here was every expression of the human genome—Asians, blacks, whites, and all the hues of each. There were men and women in roughly equal numbers, and ages ranging from quite old to my age. There were no young children, only teens through the elderly.
No one, not even those who by their look would be in their eighties, seemed feeble in the least. These were strong, erect people, who stood with squared shoulders and composed expressions. It seemed that messenger status conferred health and good looks—the only positive benefit I had yet discovered. Part of me wondered if I would be physically transformed when I became a full messenger. Would I have the terrible beauty of so many I saw around me now? And was that physical transformation somehow necessary or was it just the pleasure of the goddess Isthil to make her minions attractive?