Just as he had the thought, he saw a man—bearded, and wearing jeans and a ragged denim shirt—standing in the middle of the road. He was wearing a homemade placard and shouting, “Death is upon us! The bowels of hell are waiting. Repent, sinners, repent! Scorn music, dance, drink, sex and drugs, for the end is coming. Hellhounds will rip out your throat, and demons will slice your flesh and gnaw on the innocence of your infants. Repent!”
People were simply walking past him, ignoring him for the most part. But then the prophet of doom ran right up to a young woman. “Repent!” he roared, spittle flying from his lips.
Scott paused, then started to walk toward her, in case she needed help, but she only smiled and managed the situation herself.
“Repent? I’m in the church choir, where I sing for God, and guess what? I think he likes my voice,” she said, and walked on by.
The fire-and-brimstone preacher leapt in front of Scott. “Repent! The bowels of hell will burst open, and you will face the death-spewing demons of the deep!”
He reached out to touch Scott, then flinched and drew back. His silence struck Scott as more disturbing than his diatribe.
“I think the Lord and I are good,” Scott said, and hurried quickly on. He could feel the man watching him go and winced, afraid the man would start shouting about the Oracle.
But the man remained eerily silent.
In another minute, Scott turned onto his own block. His new design shop was right on Sunset, but he’d purchased a town house down a side street. The lights were out on his block, but the houses were all standing, though there was some broken glass on the sidewalk, and a couple of small trees were down.
He paused one last time to help a man drag a palm tree off his car, then moved on. As soon as he was inside, he turned on the large Coleman lantern the neighbor had suggested he should go out to buy. The guy had been right, and Scott mouthed a silent thank-you.
The pale glow from the lantern displayed his new living quarters in a surreal light. Simple, sparse. He could probably use a few throw pillows or something, he thought, as he looked around the living room. But the place was gaining some character. He’d done some posters for rock bands over the years, and he had several up on the walls. The sofa was an old chesterfield he’d found on eBay, and the throw rug on the hardwood living room floor was a Navaho design. His workstation was an old oak bank desk with tiered files in a lighter wood. The room was finished out with a rocker, TV, end tables and a few photographs—himself and his folks, more family, his friends. For some reason, he’d blown up a picture of himself, Zach and Emory, taken earlier on the night when they’d gone to the rescue of the couple being attacked in the alley, the night that had changed his life. The kitchen, which opened onto a small den, was pretty much bare. On the counter, he had a coffeepot and a can opener. The range—which so far he hadn’t even used—had come with a microwave, which had come in handy. He couldn’t be bothered cooking, because he spent a lot of his time—when not getting the new business going, because superhuman strength had not come with a superhuman income—staring at the computer and trying to ascertain just what had happened to him. And not only what, but why?
He strode through to the kitchen, grabbed a still-cold beer from the fridge and returned to the chesterfield to sit. The situation that had plagued the back of his mind since he’d started his long walk home returned to haunt him.
What the hell had really happened out there tonight?
Who was she, and more importantly, what was she?
She was tall, just a few inches shorter than his own height, but slender and angelic in comparison to his own dark appearance. She was a stunning woman who would have looked great strutting a catwalk, modeling the latest fashions. Her hair was rich and lustrous, but pale. Her eyes were light blue, he was pretty certain—but emphasized by strikingly honey-toned brows and lashes. Her bone structure was delicate, but she hadn’t betrayed a blink of fear as she faced down a gang of street thugs, completely confident that she could win.
Had she also touched a dying man’s hand in an alley and been told that she was Capricorn?
He would probably never know.
He returned to his ongoing examination of his own powers. He was fast, and he was strong. Once he had literally pulled his door off its hinges, an expensive annoyance, but in the end a—good thing. It had taught him that he had to be careful. But, he had to admit, despite his old friends looking at him a bit strangely now, he had found a certain satisfaction with what had occurred, and he’d taken advantage of it. He’d always gone to the gym now and then, and he’d loved playing football and tennis. But since that night, he’d taken up yoga, karate and kickboxing, trying to learn to harness his mind, agility and strength.
Oh, yeah, he was fast. But the platinum-blond beauty had disappeared so quickly that she might have flown away, even disappeared into thin air.
He stretched his legs out on the coffee table and stared at the laptop on the desk, realizing that it still had battery power. He rose slowly, walked over and sat down, then pulled up the site he’d been looking at before he’d gone out. The words swam before him for a moment. Since that night in the alley, he’d been studying astrology, hoping it would take him somewhere, help him to understand Capricorn—and the Oracle.
And the dream. The dream that had recurred several times since then….
That first time had been the most bizarre, though, when another person had been there, as startled to run into him at the juncture of the corridors as he had been to see someone else inside his dream.
So many times he had lain awake at night, staring up into the darkness, trying to make sense of what had happened. His whole place in the world had been changed that night.
A man dying in an alley.
A command to find the Oracle.
And a tall, seemingly very real stranger, suddenly joining him in a bizarre dream.
No matter how real he’d seemed, the man must have been part of the dream. Logic told him so.
Now, tonight…
So was the blonde another Capricorn? Or maybe another earth sign? Or maybe she was the Oracle who was supposedly looking for him. Right. She was looking for him about as much as she was looking to contract the bubonic plague.
He leaned back as he hit a link to a recent article. The header read: The Oracle and the Zodiac: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water—and the Puzzle that can Save the World from the Darkness of the Solstice in 2012.
He bolted forward and started to read.
While armchair sleuths and psychics dabble in old Mayan prophecies, finding what they choose in Sumerian, Greek, Indian, African, Asian, Norse and other legends, a mysterious Roman blogger states that the ancient capital may house the answers to the importance of 2012. Reference is made to cities beneath other cities, to a hell below the earth, kept under control by the basic goodness of the human soul, and the ability of the Church and other religious institutions to give man the strength he’ll need in the upcoming battle for our world. News has leaked that a quiet convent sheltered near the decaying remains of one of the earliest churches holds prayer services daily for the survival of mankind. Sister Maria Elizabeta, one of the convent’s most respected nuns, has denied that the sisters pray for anything other than human souls, but admits that those souls they pray for belong to all the inhabitants of the known world. “If the earth is to end,” the sister has been quoted as saying, “then all the peoples of the earth must join to fight evil, by whatever name they call it. The earth, our home, has always been volatile. Earth, wind, fire and water are the elements we need to survive, yet they may come in such torrents as to deluge us, not so much with their power over life and death, but with their power to touch the human soul.” Is she speaking in riddles—or, better yet, in parables? Follow the link below to read the blog and decide for yourself.
Rome.
Sister Maria Elizabeta.
His dreams, with skeletons stacked up underground. Catacombs?
Scott hi
t the link. Words written in Italian popped onto the screen, along with whimsical, medieval drawings. He stared at the words blankly, then spoke aloud impatiently.
“What kind of idiot are you? You need an Internet translator.”
But when he went to hit another key, the battery gave out.
He continued to stare at the dead screen, three words at the forefront of his mind.
Sister Maria Elizabeta.
He told himself that he was crazy, but he knew he wasn’t. He had been searching desperately for understanding, and at last he might have found someone who could provide him with answers.
The woman was a nun, he told himself. Of course she wanted the world to come together in peace.
But she had spoken of earth, wind, fire and water.
A nun. In Rome. Where there were dozens of catacombs.
And if he didn’t do something, he was going to lose his mind for sure.
Why not?
He pulled out his phone, flipped it open and whispered a prayer of gratitude that he’d kept it charged.
3
Melanie dreamed of being in a strange grotto. Stone, covered with lichen, cool, with a sense of being deep in the earth. There were shadows, dark and looming, and there was a sound like something dripping. And in the distance, a glow, beckoning her.
There were paintings on the walls, frenzied drawings of the cruelties of war and the excesses of victory, the revenge those who had won took on those who had lost. There seemed to be lines carved in the stone, but when she looked, they weren’t lines at all, but something dripping down the face of the stone. She blinked, and saw that it was crimson. It was as if the ancient walls were crying tears of blood.
There were holy drawings between those images of war and brutality, oddly peaceful despite the chaos around them. Halos of light above kneeling saints, angels singing cherubically. A lion slept at David’s feet, and a cross glowed, the ray of illumination that spared the catacomb from the darkness. Knowledge streaked through her like lightning. She was in a catacomb. A place where the dead lay rotting beneath their shrouds.
Was she, too, clad in a shroud, lying in a niche in the wall, one with the rows of the dead who had been buried in corridors beneath the earth for centuries?
Of course not, because none of this was real. She was dreaming.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had dreamed so vividly. Perhaps once, in a different time…
She realized she was afraid, and she was never afraid.
Suddenly a silhouette appeared in the glow ahead. It loomed large, a shadow snaking along the glistening walls with their tears of blood. She wanted to shrink away from that shadow, to pretend that she was only the detritus of time, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
But at the heart of that dark figure, there seemed to be a light. Something that was warm and strong. She dared to open her eyes, dared to look. She felt a sense of flesh and blood, bone and breath, a living being, one who had come to offer comfort, perhaps, and hope.
“I am here, waiting,” it said.
Which was ridiculous, Melanie told herself. Shadows didn’t talk. But this was a dream; the shadow could do whatever it chose, and apparently it had chosen to be there in that place of death and decay, the light in the darkness. But the shadow had form, human form. The whisper was melodic, a soft, feminine voice. The shadow was cloaked, wearing some voluminous garment that swallowed it whole.
The shadow looked like a nun.
“I am the Oracle,” the shadow said. “I am waiting. I know you will come, and that we can make it to the light.”
The figure faded away, then, leaving Melanie in the darkness, aware of the pungent smell of everything that came from the earth and then returned to it. The scent of mold teased her nostrils, that deep earthy scent that smelled like death. And she felt a growing heat, like the slowly simmering threat of brimstone from the bowels of hell.
Melanie jackknifed into a sitting position, shaking. She panicked at first, looking around, then realized she was in her own room, in her own home, with Maggie sleeping in the guest room down the hall.
She reached over and turned on her bedside light. Her hands were trembling. The scent of the dream seemed to hover for a moment, but she hugged her arms around herself, and then it was gone.
She was tempted to cry…. All she wanted was to live as normal a life as she could, but this…bizarre drawings, dreams of hell and nuns promising salvation.
“I’m turning on the television and watching a totally ridiculous sitcom rerun,” she announced, as if someone could hear.
Then she turned on the television, and let canned laughter filled the room.
A mile away, Scott was immersed in a dream, as well.
He was standing on a hill, and he could feel the wind ripping around him. There was dirt beneath his feet; he felt the grime between his toes. He was wearing sandals, and some kind of a…skirt? And when he moved his head, he realized that he was wearing a helmet. Not only that, he was holding a massive spear.
He heard moans, and above the moans, screams of agony. When he looked around, he saw them.
Human beings, being herded along in single file between the rows of crosses that bordered the road. The crosses rose to the sky all along the path, and each one held a burden of dying flesh. Men and women dying in agony, and nearby, his fellow soldiers sweated in the sun as they nailed another man to a cross.
“Stop!” he roared. But no one heard him, or maybe they just ignored him. He saw the face of the man being nailed to the cross, and it was the face of the old man who had died in the alley.
“Be strong, Capricorn, be strong,” he said, his voice hoarse with agony.
“Stop!” Scott raged again, grabbing one of the soldiers, tearing him away. The others, stunned, looked around, seeking to fight an enemy they couldn’t see.
“I am gone now. It is up to you to find the Oracle,” the old man said. “Tread the ancient road, and go to where the battle must be won.”
The face changed and became a woman’s. She was old, older than time itself, it seemed. But she had brilliant blue eyes, and she smiled toward heaven even as a nail was being driven into her wrist by one of the soldiers as the others stabbed at the wind.
“You can see me now, and you can see the way. Come to me,” she said.
Her face shifted, and then the old man was there again. But he was dead now; he’d been too old, too weak to endure the torture of the nails, the loss of blood.
Scott howled in rage and frustration, then threw out his arms, and the soldiers fell away.
The back of his hand began to throb and he woke in an instant. He was sitting up in bed, and he had just slammed his arms against the wall.
He looked around in the shadows and the darkness. A groan escaped him. “I guess I am Capricorn. I will find the Oracle. I will find the way,” he said, then realized he was speaking aloud. What the hell. It was bad enough that his whole life had changed and his days were a torment of hoping that he would discover a reason why, but his nights were worse.
He was beginning to hate going to sleep.
He sat awake, wondering what the dream had meant, or if it had meant anything at all, other than that he was still spooked by that night in the alley. Maybe he was just going mad. Getting really philosophical, was there a point to life at all? Or was he, along with everyone else, just organic matter that had developed until it had to believe in more for the sake of sanity?
He smashed his pillow—better than the wall, at least—and lay down again.
It was hours before he slept.
“I know I need to start all over again. Calming my darling down and letting her know how much I love her. She’s just a pile of quivering, quaking nerves,” Judy Bobalink declared, cradling Miss Tiffany to her chest.
Miss Tiffany was a “designer dog,” a peek-a-poo, bred from a Pekingese and a miniature poodle. Mel knew that Judy had spent a great deal of money on the dog, which was, in Melanie’s mind, a cute li
ttle mutt. Judy Bobalink reminded Melanie of a designer creation herself. Once upon a time she had been a beautiful young starlet. Fortune had not fallen her way, though, and now she was a character actress—actually, a very good one. But she was sixty, with bleached-blond hair that fell to her waist, pretty blue eyes and massive fake lashes. On the screen, it worked. In person, she was a bit like a photo out of focus. She had given up on the possibility of family for her career, and Miss Tiffany was everything to her.
Miss Tiffany was quivering in her owner’s arms—but Melanie had seldom seen the dog do anything but.
“So, can you work with her this afternoon?”
“I’m sorry, Judy, but I really can’t. I have friends coming in to help me fix some damage, but I can…talk to Miss Tiffany. Honestly, it isn’t me she needs now. She doesn’t have any behaviors that need to be modified, she’s just nervous after the earthquake. She needs you.”
Judy looked crushed and unconvinced. “Oh. It’s just that I was so excited to see that you were open. So many places are closed because of the quake. And honestly, we get those little quakes all the time, and this wasn’t really that much bigger. It was more like a warning of something more, don’t you think?”
A warning? Melanie wasn’t sure that the earth knew anything about warning people or that the plates beneath the earth’s crust did anything more than react to natural stressors.
“Well, we’re always open on Saturday, so I figured I’d give it a few hours. But you know how it goes. I’m sure many places are closed because their employees live in areas that were harder hit. Anyway, I can’t keep Miss Tiffany for you, Judy, but let’s talk to her for a minute. Hand her over, and listen to the way I reassure her,” Melanie suggested.
Judy complied, and Melanie held the little dog and talked to her gently, telling her that the quake was over, that everything was okay. The dog had no idea of what she was saying; it was the soothing cadence of her words that made the animal pay attention and finally wag her tail tentatively. Melanie gave her a few treats, and the little tail began to wag so hard it created a breeze. Judy gushed over the results, but Melanie waved a hand dismissively. “You just need to use positive reinforcement, and it doesn’t have to be food. Dogs are affectionate creatures. Miss Tiffany loves you, and she takes all her cues from you. Make sure you’re calm and she’ll be calm, too.”