Chronicles of Ara: Perdition Read online

  The first: I never said what I wanted to say to my loved one.

  Relevance, then as now.

  I’ll swim to the light and if I see you again, Elizabeth, the first thing I’ll tell you is I love you . . .

  On his way, he glances down at the contents of X’s final letter, which falls folded from his shirt pocket and unfolds in the muck before crumbling and breaking into dozens and hundreds and maybe dozens of hundreds of pieces as his eyes finally close.

  Taebal.

  In his final moment, the writer glimpses that especially significant word before losing his fight and allowing himself to drown, on pace with the sliver’s own sinking and collapsing before him, bringing forth a vague recollection of its meaning culled from a spate of recent perfect storms:

  Taebal. Translation: Guide to light.

  MIRKWOOD

  Elsewhere.

  A place and a time when once were dragons.

  Taebal battles against a progressive, monster current in a faraway land known as Mirkwood. Ara watches passively as the dragon panics against the crashing waves exacerbated by bombs of thunder and lightning. Typically, Taebal would take shelter under such circumstances or he would awaken from his reverie just prior to being overcome.

  But sanctuary is no longer an option, and this time he is not dreaming.

  In his panic he figures either Ara is attempting to somehow teach him a lesson, or he has outlived his usefulness. And now, indeed, she does nothing but watch as Taebal is smothered by the gulfs of water that flow into his flaring nostrils and into his lungs. As he chokes and his muscles weaken to paralysis, he too ponders his impending demise.

  He would typically have awakened by now. What happens next is new to him.

  As he goes under, he realizes he has no idea how he finally arrived here.

  KINGWAY HOSPITAL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  “Ara . . .” Denise mutters. ICU nurse Christine McCorkle’s ear was but inches from the patient’s mouth before the expiration. Though the bedridden publisher’s eyes are wide open, she is barely alive and had been left to die; not her alone, others also. Much of the hospital staff had already evacuated. Christine would attempt to remove some from harm’s way at her own peril, and she convinced another to help.

  “Nurse!” Christine yells. “I need you, stat!”

  “Hold please!” Nurse Pickett responds. She will join her associate in a second. Clutching and nearly breaking the hospital room’s flimsy window shade while staring at the horrific goings-on outside presently holds for her far more importance. The skies are the most perfect and threatening hue of red that she has yet seen and the falling debris is increasing in frequency.

  She makes no effort to hide her fear. Denise Watkins’ elevator accident that Nurse Pickett suspected, on a hunch, was no accident at all, the view outside and even Denise’s uttering of “Ara,” which she had indeed heard but dared not acknowledge, should all of this really be related to those strange letters written by that captured fugitive kid . . . any misstep will be catastrophic.

  “Nurse!” repeats Christine. “She speaks. There’s still hope.”

  Neither of the two nurses realize the patient had briefly regained consciousness and, more briefly, lucidity minutes before their entry, nor does either conceive that Denise had been blankly watching falling snowflakes on her smartphone screen, which in truth were silhouettes behind the window shade of the beginning of the collapse of Manhattan Island, before her neck gave way and she again lapsed into semiconscious-ness. To then, Denise correctly ascertained from approaching footsteps that two nurses were entering the room. Never the doctor, she thought. Light steps. But her senses also indicated . . . something more?

  When the nurses arrived they noticed her shifting in the bed, though nothing came of it. Neither of them would have been able to decipher the simple thought anyway that ran through Denise’s mind as near-death toyed with her awareness:

  Maybe another, hiding somewhere in the shadows? That’s when her eyes opened again.

  “Nurse, I need you!” Christine repeats.

  Nurse Pickett reluctantly releases her grip on the shade. “Did you call Doctor Katz?”

  “I can’t reach him!” She didn’t try. She’s been staying out of his way.

  “I have to do everyone’s work around here,” Nurse Pickett protests. “I always—”

  Red matter crashes against the window, and Nurse Pickett surrenders to her fears without another word. She turns and runs.

  Christine glances to the now empty doorway, then to the window, then to the patient.

  Tom is the next name that comes to Denise’s mind. Once again.

  When thought becomes voice, Christine turns back to Denise.

  “Tom.”

  But the nurse does not turn to Denise in response. She turns toward Denise as the machines and instruments that are keeping her alive suddenly begin to shudder and shake, just like the neighboring buildings outside.

  What Christine does not hear over the din are Denise’s final words just before the ground splits open and the hospital begins to sway—

  “Nurse . . . where is X?”

  ADIRONDACK PARK, UPSTATE, NEW YORK

  Earlier that morning.

  X writes from his former hovel in Adirondack Park. Surrounding him are images of Alice Liddell—Lewis Carroll’s primary inspiration—pasted to the walls, and too an empty baby rocker that once comforted Adriel, reminders that the closest place X has to a home is home no longer.

  He had come to visit Professor Searle, to ask him the many, many questions he had been torturing himself over since they had last spoken. But Searle was gone, no idea where, and X found it strange as certainly he knew the boy would be coming.

  An Open Letter to the Media

  I came out of retirement.

  I had my reasons, as ever.

  Past tense for effect, you see, as I am surely, by now, de-ceased.

  Not that that would stop me.

  Anyway . . .

  I’m writing this in the underground, in preparation of the catastrophe I’ve warned you all about, expected within twenty-four hours according to my calculations and, really, I have no expectations myself as I doubt any of you will survive either.

  You laughed at me. I warned you all and (most of) you laughed at me.

  The other, Mr. Thomas McFee (yeah, that one, the one who loathes games; surprise!) was, soberingly . . . INEFFICIENT!

  But by some miracle, just in case, if this blast is being at all read, well, I feel it’s time to let the cat out of the bag.

  Human imagination and human memory are one.

  That’s it.

  I’ll clarify for those of you, like the aforementioned McFee, who may be a bit slow. Human imagination does not exist—not as a separate gift, anyway. That is a fiction. As are past lives and NDEs, contrary to Matthius Alexi’s ramblings.

  Our cells have memory.

  We recall events not from any prior states of our own existence but from the lives of our parents, our grandparents, their parents before them, and so on back to the dawn of time.

  Deja vu is but our DNA’s recall of an ancestral experience.

  Reincarnation is but the curse of the muse and the muse alone. Anything else that resembles the same is, well, a technicality.

  Sorry to disappoint you.

  What we know and what we will know has already been lived.

  “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” as the saying goes? Yeah, Napoleon Hill was right. It’s all happened. The heights of science fiction and flights of fancy? Been there, done that.

  The next question then becomes, “At what point did the first experience end and the reruns begin?”

  The Truth is not so simple. I once wrote, after all, something to the effect of “The Truth must no longer be suppressed. This means, hello? That The Truth has never been lost. Follow me, people. All of our “lost” art and knowledge, despite the fires and other calamities . . . neither
missing nor destroyed.

  THEY WERE HIDDEN! Yet another clue. The answers have been out there all along and you were too lazy to make the effort!

  The earth spins and we spin along with it. Whoever said, “What goes around, comes around?” That person was right too.

  Check your physics.

  The muse understood. The muse understood that there was once another period Pre-Genesis, a period before the storytellers even, when all manner of living creature existed purely on impulse and one recorded the very first authentic memory.

  His own.

  “Light” was preceded in this period by something quite more substantial than “nothing”; don’t kid yourselves.

  Ara understood this and yet . . . she was handicapped. She could not see beyond the Infinity Pass, so she could not see beyond infinity.

  Or so it appeared.

  And so, to our final questions of the hour . . .

  How does one reconcile dual realities? Ara was a muse who inspired but . . . there is no imagination? One volume of words has already passed; at least some of us had spent a great deal of time pondering the first two Measures of Creation that I promised would, collectively, solve our greatest mystery and . . . you know the rest.

  We’re a sorry lot.

  I alone held the proof of Ara’s limitations, and her enhancements—and by extension yours as well—but one and done. Ara’s determination to be finally reunited with her lost love and ensure that her own history is corrected has reaped the desired benefit.

  Especially now. I still hold proof of many other things, in fact, that apparently will all go down with me.

  And so she won.

  Tomorrow the world will spin to the beginning and start again, and history will be hers for the changing.

  Until then . . .

  And so on. And so on . . .

  P.S. Despite an insatiable need to reinforce that I owe you guys nothing because I blame you for everything, I’m compelled to make one final point.

  About our boy Matthius. He is not who he appears. Either.

  Before his accident Matthius Alexi was quite immune to the muse. Go figure.

  After, though Matthius had never previously taken brush to canvas, he was compelled to paint a series of eight portraits that would capture her essence.

  Eight. Resurrection if you read your Bible.

  Consider, however, that by this time the muse had ceased to exist. She had since been reborn as mortal.

  And then let’s not forget there was the matter of a never-completed ninth painting.

  If I were to submit to you that Matthius Alexi—wait for it—was not only a biblical scholar (we alluded to it but did not make it that far) but also a writer, who well may have authored not only your Bible but conflicting holy books, of his own will and for his own maddening reason—all eons before the accident, of course—would you have me committed?

  Would you?

  Alas, mortals do not reincarnate, and he was immune to the muse, but she had already become mortal by the time of his accident, though he was haunted by her and . . . AND . . .

  I said it before, I’ll say it again: NOTHING is ever as it appears.

  What? I’m sorry? Am I fucking with you, you ask?

  That’s for you to decide.

  (Stepping away for a minute.)

  (Back.)

  Just took a peek. The clouds are redder than ever.

  We never did discuss “why,” did we? Do you know why? Does it matter?

  My running is over and I have a few hours, I think, to cherish this newfound sense of inclusion; I am one of you now as I too will very soon be privileged to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch my own descent to hell.

  Shift happens.

  And so it goes.

  X stands and shadowboxes. He returns to his desk, sits and stares at the small stack of pages to the left of a bookended collection of early edition classic literature, alphabetized by the authors’ last name from Dante Alighieri (Inferno) on the left, followed by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and ending eight volumes later with H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

  He skims the top page of the latest set of papers and reviews his own concluding note in the process:

  CRIBBED AND REFORMATTED FROM

  THE NOTEBOOKS OF MATTHIUS ALEXI

  (THIS HEADER AND MY ANNOTATIONS IN CAPS;

  MARKUP 1/15/15)

  It's over. I fear that I have become a cripple, intellectually without function. By some New Year's miracle I have regained the use of my legs but the accident is eating away at my spirit. Writing is no longer an option as I've become compelled to visualize she who watches me. And visualize only. I cannot get her out of mind. I review my old notes on scripture and such and cannot comprehend how they emanated from the same hand. Or my purpose for those compositions.

  I do know this much. I know that the next painting will be of a dragon. He is tragically drowning in a cascading sea and she will watch him, passively, as he fights for breath.

  I am strangely empowered by the thought of this new creation and I have no clue as to why.

  My sole comfort is there is reason for everything and, God willing, He, indeed, is the higher power.

  ANALYSIS

  THIS SHORT ENTRY HAS PROVEN TO BE AMONG HIS MOST IMPORTANT. DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE BREVITY. MATTHIUS ALEXI MISLED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.

  YOU'LL SEE.

  X tightly balls his hands into fists, his fingernails immediately drawing blood from his palms. When he breaks, he pounds the desk and its contents with both fists in rapid succession, bloodying his knuckles. Controlled deep breaths prove a futile effort; he overturns his desk, letter still in hand, and storms out of the cave.

  And into the open, for perhaps the last time.

  He is stricken by two sights, only one unexpected, upon touching familiar ground. He knew the red skies would be dark. What he didn’t expect was the reemergence of the raven, soaring through the crimson and landing atop the same rock as two years earlier. X has not forgotten; the first time he was unspeakably stricken by its presence. Maybe, he considers, the raven was sent to him directly from the spirit of Poe himself as some sort of dark, metaphoric practical joke. The mysterious creature—aren’t they all?— who last soared onto the rock during one of X’s rare, willing breaths of fresh air and engaged him in a staring contest, just following the boy’s conclusion that S’n Te , Mage of the Mountain, was, more so even than Searle, the entity responsible for his then-present circumstance.

  Nothing has changed. S’n Te is the one.

  But if he sees his mentor again he certainly wouldn’t admit to the judgment as, he fears, there would be nothing to gain.

  Now the boy, who has not heretofore been prone to such supernatural prescience, has a vision while studying the bird’s eyes—the way the dark of the red reflects within its tiny stygian pupils, reminding him instantly of the Satan-myth he had previously believed far too many people had taken entirely too seriously—which for the moment morphs into as fair a theory as any. He envisions a great cosmic collaboration between Ara, the muse . . . and Satan, having been additionally informed by a recent read of Dante’s Inferno, which he will be sure to one day recommend to Thomas McFee. “It’s not about the devil, it’s confusion over the metaphor of the demon,” he used to say to Professor Searle, typically whenever they argued about religious philosophy in the time before the boy became a public crackpot and those who knew him personally still took him seriously as a prodigy.

  Maybe Edgar Allan Poe really was possessed. Maybe he is still.

  He comes to his senses upon watching the raven fly away and disappearing back in the blood.

  Like Ara needs help. What an idiot. Must be the thin air.

  X turns to reenter the hovel.

  I bet I wrestle the same demons as Poe. Maybe I’ll write the damn sequel.

  ~~~

  Two hours later.

  A deafening roar shakes the troposphere as a scaly wing penetra
tes its lowest layer of crimson. Incongruously, the reverberations are louder still. The mystic, S’n Te, shouts over the bedlam: “What is your decision? The dragons are near.”

  Though the question is directed to him, X’s former mentor, Professor Edward Searle, doesn’t respond, overwhelmed as he is by the incessant fury.

  The swath of incoming flame promises to spare no prisoners as the first circle of fire is rapidly engulfed by another much larger. Trapped within the first flaming ring—the inner ring—is Samantha McFee, Thomas’ daughter, who has been unable to move from the fallen tree that has shattered both of her legs; in the second, outer ring, stands Daniel, Samantha’s husband, Searle . . . and X. Adriel is gone, having been transported with Eron on the back of Taebal to the unfamiliar destination S’n Te referred to moments earlier.

  “The girl must be retrieved,” the mystic warned. “She must be retrieved before she glimpses the Infinity Pass.”

  The professor, whose shirt has been torn and pulled to the waist by the mystic in stark reminder of a long-suppressed responsibility, bleeds and pusses from the symbolic X carved into his back flesh. His army, as S’n Te referred to the minions of restless spirits, the Over-dwellers who fell from the sky and now stand in battle formation outside of the second ring of fire, awaits the word of their reluctant leader.

  As they weaken in response to the nearly intolerable heat, the boy can only watch, helplessly, while his old mentor considers his options. X no longer knows the man he once trusted with his life. Now, he figures, he’ll save his questions in the event of another opportunity. In other words, if they meet in yet another ring of hell or, most far-fetched, they survive.

  S’n Te anticipates the professor’s next words. The Over-dwellers stand instinctively in battle formation as the first dragon swoops to ground. And then, as in Mirkwood when a swarm of dragons led to the demise of the mortal Eron, this dragon is followed by another. And another. Each of them begets further calamity; each breathes fire, each increases the breadth and ferocity of the flame-span until the two rings become indistinguishable.