The Book of All Things Read online

  David Michael Slater

  Children’s Brains are Yummy Books

  Austin, Texas

  p

  For Heidi,

  who shows me the light

  Children’s Brains are Yummy Books

  www.cbaybooks.com

  The Book of All Things

  Sacred Books, Volume IV

  Copyright © 2011 David Michael Slater

  ISBN (10): 1-933767-04-9

  ISBN (13): 978-1-933767-04-8

  eISBN: 978-1-933767-08-6

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form without express written permission. For more information write to:

  Rights Department

  CBAY Books

  PO Box 92411

  Austin, TX 78709

  “Maybe this crime belongs to the

  history of Jewish superstitions…”

  “Like Christianity,” the editor…

  ventured to put in.

  — Jorge Luis Borges —

  PREFACE

  They saw an owl and an eagle, a mustard seed, and the dark spark that gave birth to all that is. They saw their mother sobbing with joy as she gave birth to each of them. They saw another woman in a birthing room, but she lay dead on her bed, her newborn limp and lifeless in the brawny arms of her grief-stricken husband.

  They saw another man, the first man—their father—in the Library at Eden, wailing and rending his clothes. They saw a desperate woman listening to a hiss from the darkness beyond the edge of the garden that surrounded that same Library. They saw the woman stumbling into an unknown night clutching two books, one large and one so small it fit in the palm of her hand.

  They saw a metal disk with the names of three Hebrew angels. They saw it broken in three.

  They saw ten thousand men clinging to a monumental tower as it crumbled in an unearthly wind.

  They saw ash trees and automobiles, whirlpools, and mirrors reflecting other mirrors. They saw a man, their father once again, ruffling the hair of a proud young girl. Then he was ruffling the hair of other children, and then they were all in a network of caves, learning to speak the language of God.

  They saw one of those children as a man, hurling a book off a precipitous cliff in a mad rage.

  They saw more books, an infinity of books—on parchment, on pages, on digital screens. They saw a blind man stumbling through a bookshop on fire. They saw a volcano under a hot sun spewing black lava. They saw a warehouse full of garbage. They saw pretty girls filling a bucket with cleanser. They saw the body of a giant boy lying under a sheet.

  They saw Dexter holding a jagged shard over a wild-haired monster at the throat of an old woman—their second mother. They saw him stab the creature, and they heard the long moment of silence before it sunk its teeth into her face and then let loose an unholy scream. They saw another old woman falling into a chasm with a smile on her face—their first mother. They saw bats; they saw helicopters; they saw sundials and the Statue of Liberty.

  They saw a crowd of men and women in masks, crocodile and hippo masks. There was smoke and fear. There was running and falling and fighting for air. They saw the one in charge, the Hierarch, scrabbling on the floor. They saw his white sneaker, the right one, with the extra high sole.

  They saw a man possessed of a great and terrible beauty, his long livid hair falling over a moldering scroll unrolled on his lap. He was seated atop a short set of stone steps that led to a shrine of some sort rising up behind him, fronted by two small, highly ornate doors. The walls around him were covered with crimson and gold geometric patterns, stars and pentagons and rectangles, all surrounded by curling and swirling flourishes.

  They heard him whisper something they could not make out.

  Then they saw a woman with shining black hair spilling over her white lab coat. She was looking between a pair of x-rays with her eyes going wide.

  They saw a fireplace stuffed with burning pads of paper. They saw a group of old folks trudging through the woods, playing a deadly game. They saw a group of librarians devastated at the site of a room strewn with fragments of ancient text.

  They saw two bodies being carried out of their own house.

  They saw a figure in black, entirely in black, with black boots and black gloves, and a black mask covering its face. It was leaning over a beetle-browed man with thinning hair on a bed, pressing a folded cloth to his face. The man flailed, then went still. A bag sitting on the edge of the bed fell to the floor spilling gleaming silver tools.

  They saw scientists injecting rats in a lab. They saw soldiers blockading streets and bridges and harbors.

  And then they saw the dead, billions of the dead, with faces covered by dark, pustular splotches. Corpses were everywhere: in houses, in hospitals, lying in piles on the street.

  But they saw something else, masses they could not recognize at all. They were deep in the underground, far below the crust and mantle, down in the Earth’s molten core. They were monstrous—giant agglomerations of meat and muscle, pulsing and throbbing, beating in the heat like malevolent hearts.

  They had to look away.

  And so they saw one more thing: long gossamer slivers shining in the sky. They undulated, emanating a dazzling spectrum of shimmering hues. Suddenly the twins were through one, it having opened like a seam in the firmament, and they fell from one light into a second, this one amber and nearly unbearable to behold. It felt alive—a living light.

  There was something there inside the light, a pattern all around them. A grid of some kind—or bricks? Bricks made of light?

  But then they were out, hurtling through the vortex again.

  It was all happening then and now, simultaneously and forever. The twins were nowhere. They were everywhere. They could not feel their bodies, nor differentiate their minds from the very warp and woof of the worlds.

  CHAPTER 1

  something’s off

  Dexter?

  Yeah?

  The barrage of images had finally, mercifully, stopped, but Daphna couldn’t open her eyes. She was clutching her brother’s hand—perhaps she had been throughout…whatever they’d just gone through. Are we alive?

  I think so. But Dex was also too shaken to open his eyes.

  The last time either twin had processed a coherent thought, it was that they were about to be murdered, but that at least it would be together. Maybe that’s exactly what had happened.

  Where are we?

  I’m not sure. I saw our house. I sort of reached for it. Maybe—

  The twins opened their eyes. They were not dead. They were home, on their backs, in Dexter’s closet, exactly where they’d been when they gazed into the Aleph and let it sweep them away. Only, they weren’t looking up at the bottom of the basement steps, but rather into their kitchen. The stairwell had been smashed, and its skeleton lay in splintered pieces all around them. The closet itself wasn’t really even there anymore. The door was lying on the floor next to Dexter’s bed, partly buried under plaster cracked off the ceiling.

  Both twins had variations of the same thought as they sat up, untangled their fingers, and surveyed the situation: the state of their basement was a perfect visual representation of the state of their lives. Strangely, both also felt the same way about the observation: while it wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, it was what it was.

  Daphna assumed she’d finally reached the point where it was all just too much to bear. She felt numb. I can barely lift my arms, she thought, trying to rub the trembling out of them.

  “My arms, too,” Dex said.

  They were both unbelievably weak.

  Daphna blinked at her brother, who blinked back at her, and four identically speckled
eyes tried to adjust once again to reality as they used to know it. Something odd was going on —still going on—though neither could put their finger on it. Daphna’s black bob was a disaster. Dexter’s spikes were demented.

  “Dex,” Daphna said, “you look, well, sort of peaceful. Sloppy, but peaceful.”

  The dead usually do, Dex thought. But actually, he had to admit Daphna did, too. Her face was relaxed in a way he wasn’t used to. In fact, he might never have seen her so relaxed since she’d always been such a stress case. Maybe she’d gone round the bend once and for all.

  “I am not a—” Daphna started to say, but just then the ceiling creaked directly overhead, and the twins realized what might still be in the house. Neither panicked, though. Creaks were not unusual in the old Multnomah Village cottage. They listened in silence for a while, until it seemed clear that no one was upstairs.

  Brother and sister shrugged to one another.

  Dex climbed unsteadily to his feet, hoping he wasn’t going to have to run or fight, or even move much. He did feel peaceful, but also fragile—not to mention lightheaded and leaden. The feeling was novel, and really quite interesting, though he certainly needed to do something about it right away. “Where’s Rabbi Tanin’s body?” he asked. “And for that matter, where’s Brother Joe’s?”

  “That’s strange,” Daphna said. “Maybe Lilit took them.”

  It occurred to the twins that, though they weren’t even fourteen yet, they’d apparently seen enough death to render a conversation about corpses in their own house unremarkable.

  Precariously, Daphna got to her feet, baffled less by this mystery than by whatever else it was she was still too disoriented to grasp. She’d never felt so calm, but she’d also never felt so drained and dehydrated.

  “Wait, no,” she said. “I think the police were here. I saw it. They were carrying them out.” Anyway, she thought, we need to get upstairs. If I don’t eat something, they’ll be carrying me out, too.

  Dex felt the same way. He was ravenous. “If there is an upstairs,” he groaned. “I don’t think Lilit took too well to our getting away.”

  “What time is it?” Daphna asked, her calm ebbing slightly as she grew increasingly flummoxed. She wasn’t feeling like herself at all, but there was more to it than mere exhaustion.

  “Dex,” she said, regaining some awareness of their predicament, “The Aleph. Where is it?”

  Again there was no panic. The twins simply looked around. The little silver book was sitting harmlessly on the floor next to some random mechanical bits of something or other Dexter had once taken apart. Teetering a bit as she bent over, Daphna picked the Aleph up. Then she opened it, wondering if perhaps it had all been a dream, or some kind of hallucination.

  Brilliant, variegated light burst from the book, dizzying the twins. But neither tried to look into it this time. Daphna closed the cover.

  In the palm of her hand, she held all things—the universe, its every point concentrated and contained, including, it seemed, even the entirety of time in which it spun.

  Glad we didn’t lose it, Daphna thought, far too sapped to think about how unthinkable it all was. “Okay, let’s eat.” She slipped the book into her jeans’ back pocket. “What time did you say it was?”

  Dex had no idea. His talking clock radio was nowhere in sight, not that they’d find it in one piece if it had been. The room looked as if a bomb had been detonated inside it. It wasn’t just the mess—that was always there—the walls were actually buckling. The ceiling looked on the verge of caving in.

  Together, with much difficulty, the twins managed to drag Dexter’s bed under the kitchen doorway. They laid the door on it, then set the desk chair on top of that. Finding it reasonably secure, they clambered up and out of the basement into what was left above.

  The house had already been trashed, but now it was a bona fide demolition zone. The stove and refrigerator were both on their sides and partially crushed, their cords and connections ripped out and dangling like the innards of mauled prehistoric beasts. Most of the cabinets had been torn off the walls, and the window above the sink had been shattered. No, it wasn’t like a bomb had gone off. It was like a tornado had passed through.

  Which was, of course, essentially the case.

  Daphna, too weak to stand after hauling herself up from downstairs, didn’t bother to try. She crawled over to the refrigerator and opened the door, letting it fall flat onto the floor. The smell of rot hit her square in the face. She shoved the door closed, retching.

  “Oh, man,” Dex moaned, catching a whiff. “Did something die in there?” The question, he realized at once, didn’t sound like a joke.

  “Everything’s spoiled,” Daphna said, wincing at the burning in her nostrils. How long were we—wherever we were? she wondered.

  “It’s light out,” Dex said, looking through the window. “We must’ve been gone at least a few hours.” It had felt like—he didn’t really know—both fleeting and somehow forever. But Dexter ceased his contemplation of the matter because he’d spotted an opener, and there were cans of food all over the floor. He crawled over to gather them in, then set to opening some sliced peaches.

  Daphna helped by holding the can steady while Dex feebly rolled the blade around the lid. When it was off, they dumped peaches into their hands and stuffed them directly in their mouths. When they were gone, the twins opened two cans of diced pears, which they gulped down, fruit and juice, all at once, soaking their shirts in the process. Then it was a can of green beans and two cans of corn.

  Finally, they rolled onto their backs and just lay there in the ruined kitchen, savoring the act of digestion, slowly coming back to life.

  Ten minutes of contented silence later, Daphna felt like her brain was more or less functional again. “I wonder if that’s what they call an out-of-body experience,” she said.

  “It felt that way,” Dex agreed, “but our bodies were out, too, I guess, or we’d be dead, right? I saw—I don’t know—it seemed like everything.”

  Everything horrible, anyway, Daphna thought.

  “True,” said Dex.

  With her senses mostly restored, Daphna was finally able to perceive the obvious.

  “Dexter,” she said, sitting up. He was still lying on his back, in peaceful repose. His eyes were closed. “Dexter!”

  “What?”

  Look at me

  “What?” Dex opened his eyes. “I am looking at you.”

  Dexter! Look at my mouth. Watch my lips. What am I saying?

  Dex bolted upright. That’s what was so odd. How could he not have realized it right away? “I can hear your thoughts!” he cried.

  Daphna nodded. I can hear yours too, she said without speaking. “What happened?” she asked out loud. “Where were we?”

  “I don’t know. Everywhere, I think.”

  “That light,” Daphna said. Images began to come back to her. And then she was on her feet. “The plague is spreading around the world!” she cried. “Everyone is dying!” Daphna hurried into the living room and across to the front window, hopping over the household debris scattered every which way. Included in the mess, she noticed, were most of the former contents of her precious photo albums. They were all she had of the life she’d lost, but it was okay. They were just pictures.

  Dex got up and followed, dodging the strewn remnants of their former life. He saw Daphna notice the pictures and was amazed she didn’t have an immediate and total meltdown. He wasn’t overly worried about what he’d seen in the Aleph. All that death and dying was ghastly, it was true, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “I think it was the future,” Dex guessed, “but only one future.” It seemed eons since Dorian Rash had introduced such thoughts into their lives. “It doesn’t have to end up that way. At least not this ti—”

  Dex forgot what he was saying when he reached the window and saw what Daphna was staring at outside.

  The two houses directly across the street had been demolished
—demolished by the winds, the deadly winds of Lilit, God’s first creature. The creature he’d condemned to an eternity of confinement after it defied him one too many times. The creature they’d accidentally freed and who was no doubt hunting for the Aleph this very instant.

  For what reason, they couldn’t even begin to guess.

  Amazingly, neither twin felt particularly afraid of it just now, this monster that was made male and female, animal and elemental all at once. The desolate sight of their neighbor’s homes having been laid to waste didn’t particularly unnerve them, either. Surely, the houses had already been abandoned.

  “I was hoping Brother Joe wasn’t lying when he said Lilit was weak with its female part killed,” Dex said, wishing he’d killed all of it with that piece of the broken talisman. “But if that’s weak—” His voice trailed off since there was no point in finishing the thought. He was relieved to see that the streets, even in quarantined Multnomah Village, ground zero of the new plague variant unleashed by Lilit’s bite, weren’t littered with decomposing bodies.

  Dex approached the front door, which was off one of its hinges. When he touched it, the whole thing fell onto the porch, producing an incredibly loud slam. The twins cringed as the sound echoed outside, but they heard nothing in response.

  It was silent. Strangely so. No one was around.

  Something’s off, Daphna thought, choosing not to speak out loud as she stepped outside with her brother. Once again, she felt it was something obvious, but nonetheless just beyond her capacity to see.

  The first thing the twins noticed was the yellow crime-scene tape that had been ripped down when the door fell. This warranted little reaction from either of them. They looked up and down the street for a sign of—anything. A stiff breeze was blowing.

  “Weird,” Dex whispered. “The Abbot’s car is gone.” The police must have hauled it away. There were no lights on in any of the undamaged houses, even those with X’s taped on their doors, the ones that should have sick people inside. More disturbingly, most doors were wide open.