Book of Names

by Slater, David Michael

  “You what?”

  “I knew who you were. I recognized you from the news when I ran out of the auditorium. My father had been warning me about you for over a year.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “You said you didn’t think living the life you’ve had was worth it. Well, I’ve never lived any kind of life at all. I wanted you to take me with you, away from my father forever. I believed you were a Mason, and I wanted to go with you, and I didn’t care where you took me. I wanted to be evil if that’s what it took to feel alive. I used you.”

  Dex looked blankly at Nora for a long few seconds.

  Then he laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed hard.

  “What? Why are you laughing?”

  “I’ve been used worse,” Dex said. “It’s okay. Really.”

  “Really?” Nora smiled now through another falling tear. “I know you’re not evil.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You can kiss me now.”

  “Wha—what?” How did she know?

  “I said you can kiss me now.”

  “I—I can?”

  “I’m not going to die in here without ever having been kissed.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Dex said, suddenly realizing what should have been obvious before they ever got in the car with Richards and Madden. “You should go, or hide, while you still have the—”

  “Now. Please. Kiss me now.”

  Nora closed her eyes, but this time she didn’t disappear. She was right there.

  Dex, trembling, closed his eyes and leaned toward her.

  “Come with me,” a voice commanded. Both Dex and Nora jolted, pulling back just before their lips met.

  It was an inhuman voice, like a robot’s.

  Someone was in the gallery, someone in a hooded black robe and bright blue mask. There was something designed over the mask’s left eye: a bent ruler, some kind of compass, and the letter G. He had stepped out from behind a painting that swung open like a door.

  The figure waved Dex and Nora forward.

  “Come with me,” he repeated with that creepy electric voice.

  “It’s okay,” Dex said. “He’s got a voice distorter.” He rose and offered Nora his hand. She shifted uncomfortably on the bench for a moment, but she accepted the offer of help getting to her feet.

  Then, after letting out two deep and very nervous breaths, Dex and Nora followed the masked figure into the darkness behind the secret door.

  CHAPTER 29

  pam reynolds

  Instead of restarting the car, Mr. Brown surprised Daphna and Quinn by opening his door and getting out. They were apparently at their destination. Being so close to the museum was immensely comforting to Daphna. After climbing out, she and Quinn followed him through a set of glass doors under an awning—into some kind of health clinic.

  “Where is everyone?” Daphna asked after stepping inside. She was doing everything she could, focusing all her energy on not thinking about her brother. He could handle—one of the most notoriously vicious organizations ever to exist.

  Please God, Daphna prayed. Then she stopped.

  The place, which was arranged in a circle, was as silent as a tomb. There was a chiropractor, a nutritionist, a naturopath, and an acupuncturist, each with a closed door to their separate, evidently equally abandoned facilities.

  “This way,” said Mr. Brown. He led them through the middle of the circle, to the far end, to a door that had no identification on it. Across from the door was a glass-walled yoga studio.

  It turned out the place wasn’t entirely deserted. Someone was inside the studio sitting cross-legged on a blue mat, a man in an orange robe. He looked deep in meditation.

  Mr. Brown reached for the knob on the unmarked door, but didn’t open it. Instead, without turning around, he said, “There was a woman, a number of years ago, named Pam Reynolds. She had a massive aneurysm in her brain. That’s part of an artery that has ballooned. It could not be safely removed using standard surgical procedures, so her doctor tried something radical, a procedure called, ‘Standstill.’”

  “What’s that?” Quinn asked, though he sounded like he didn’t really want to know.

  Daphna heard this. She was interested in the answer, but somehow not as much as she was interested in the meditating man. She couldn’t take her eyes off him sitting there so serenely. He seemed so peaceful, as if nothing in the outside world was of the slightest relevance to his state of mind. For some reason she thought of her blank book up in Heaven.

  Mr. Brown remained facing the door. It was as if he couldn’t bear to share this story face-to-face, or to see its effect on his listeners.

  “During the operation,” he explained, “Ms. Reynolds’ body was lowered to sixty degrees, her breathing and heartbeat were stopped, and the blood was drained from her head. She was, effectively, dead while they successfully removed the aneurysm. She was then revived. She recovered fully.”

  “That’s what you want to do to us?” Quinn yelped.

  Daphna heard all this as well, but she forced herself to stay focused on the meditating man. He looked old, but somehow youthful at the same time. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow. She tried to channel his calm so her bladder wouldn’t empty at the prospect of what she was getting herself into.

  “But here’s the point of the story,” Mr. Brown said. “This case represents the best documented event of its kind because of the controlled circumstances in which it took place. After recovering, the patient reported that—”

  “She was pulled toward a light,” Quinn said.

  Mr. Brown turned around. Daphna did as well.

  Quinn was reading his phone. “It’s true,” he confirmed. “At least according to Wikipedia.

  Then he read, “‘As she got closer, the light became very bright. She began to discern figures in the light, including her grandmother, an uncle, other deceased relatives, and people unknown to her.’ It says eventually, her uncle pushed her back to her body.”

  “We believe,” said Mr. Brown, “that she was passing through Purgatory during that time.” He looked between Daphna’s and Quinn’s paling faces.

  “Right, then,” he said. “Any questions?”

  CHAPTER 30

  hold your tongue

  Dex and Nora followed the masked figure down a flight of stairs, a rather long flight of stairs. They were obviously going underground. At the bottom was a fancy carved door with the same symbol that was on the blue mask. The figure knocked in some complicated way, after which the door was opened by an identically robed and blue-masked figure.

  They were ushered into a large chamber tiled in blue and white diamonds, arranged in checkerboard style. A dozen blue theater-style chairs were set up along opposite walls, and in every one of them sat a robed figure wearing the same blue mask. Dexter swallowed a giant lump in his throat, and he could see Nora do the same. It felt like they’d walked into an alien tribunal, one that was sure to judge them harshly.

  A raised platform sat in the rear, carpeted in blue and supporting what looked like a throne. On the throne sat one more figure, robed like the others, but wearing a red mask.

  In the center of the chamber was a large square carpet. It was black, but filling it was a gray circle, and inside the circle was a five-pointed star. Each point was a different color. Symbols adorned each point. In the center of the star sat a podium, on top of which rested what had to be The Book of the Living, now without its protective yellow cover. Dex congratulated himself on getting them to the book.

  Now what, he thought.

  In front of the podium was what looked like a high-backed wooden bench of some kind. The legs were framed and it faced the throne, so it wasn’t clear whether anyone was sitting in it.

  Both Dexter and Nora instinctively turned to look at the door they’d come through. It had been closed. Two hulking Blue Masks stood in front of it, arms crossed on their bulging chests.

  No
ra turned back around and began to pray.

  “This is not the boy who discovered the book,” said the man on the throne. His voice was also distorted. It was low and vibrated in an awful way.

  “The boy is one of the Wax twins,” someone said. More mechanical words. It was impossible to tell who’d uttered them. The masked figures in the chairs all around sat immobile, inscrutable.

  “And the girl?”

  “We do not know. But they were both there when we obtained the book.”

  “Check her name.”

  A Blue Mask rose from a chair and approached the podium. He leaned over The Book of the Living, then said, “Eleanor Jons.”

  “She is of no use to us,” Red Mask decreed. “Send her away.”

  There was a long pause as the group considered this. Finally, a voice said, “If she is close to the boy, she may know what he—”

  “Hold,” said Red Mask. “‘Jons.’ She is the daughter of that meddlesome pastor. She is here to spy.”

  “Then she should die,” a voice declared.

  Dex looked at Nora. It was clear she wasn’t hearing this, and he was glad for that.

  “The time for trifles is over!” Red Mask boomed. “We dread no man! No nation! No power on Earth! Tell me you two: What do you know about how to properly remove a name from the book?”

  “Consider your words wisely,” another voice added. “For they may be the last you ever speak.”

  Two Blue Masks rose on either side of the room and approached the bench facing the throne. Each took an end and, together, they spun it around on hidden wheels.

  Dexter gasped.

  It wasn’t a bench. It was a torture device.

  A man was in one of the bench’s two seats, his arms and legs strapped down, his head held in an apparatus attached to an armrest that supported his chin like those contraptions eye doctors use during examinations. It had gears and knobs all over it. The man’s mouth was forced open by some kind of pincer and a clamp gripped his tongue, pulling it out of his mouth unnaturally far. His eyes bulged. His face was covered in sweat and tears.

  “That’s the rabbi!” Dex cried.

  Nora fainted dead away.

  “Nora!”

  Before Dex had a chance to help her, the door giants siezed him by the arms and dragged him toward the bench’s empty seat.

  CHAPTER 31

  one more way

  Behind the door lay a gleaming white operating room. There was an operating table on a hydraulic lift under a large round lamp, larger than but not unlike the kind dentists use. Behind the table was a massive steel machine with attachments all over it: retractable arms, monitors, storage compartments, tubes, dials, and gauges. Several rolling trays laden with silver tools and an IV cart sat next to it. A cart next to them held four large tanks topped with more gauges and tubes.

  Another large machine sat across the room, two connected machines it seemed. The shorter one looked like a chest freezer, the kind you get ice cream out of at corner stores. It was attached to a taller unit that looked like a dryer with colored buttons on its door.

  A bank of monitors blinked along the back wall, just behind a couch and a rather capacious desk. A sink sat next to the door, flanked by a shelf full of towels and supply boxes.

  Daphna processed this all very slowly, so it took a moment to dawn on her that a man was at the sink washing his hands, a rather elderly man in a lab coat with a shock of haywire hair. He straightened up and said, “Excellent, let’s get started,” in a soft, almost feminine voice.

  “This is Dr. George Lewis,” said Mr. Brown.

  But Daphna was looking at the operating table again—the single operating table. As was Quinn. Daphna could tell it was dawning on him, too, that Mr. Brown never intended to send them both. He’d allowed them to think they’d be going together, but she realized now he’d never said as much.

  “I’ll do it,” Quinn said.

  When Mr. Brown turned to him, Quinn added, “Daphna’s been to Heaven, but she doesn’t know anything about Purgatory, or The Book of Creation. She’s been through way too much as it is.”

  “Quinn,” Daphna said, “it should be me. My rib—”

  “Needs to be protected at all costs! What if you get stuck there?”

  This gave Daphna pause, but she nonetheless retorted, “There’s still Dexter’s!”

  Quinn looked at Mr. Brown. “Does it have to be one of them?”

  “We believe our best chance of success would be to send one of the Righteous Ones—“

  “There!” Daphna cried.

  “But because we have never attempted this before, it might be prudent to try it with a typical human first.”

  “There!” Quinn shot back.

  “But Quinn,” Daphna pleaded, “it’s much less of a risk for me. If something goes wrong, my rib can bring me back. ”

  “For up to a month of renewed life is our best guess.”

  “What?” He hadn’t told them that!

  “That’s it then!” Quinn declared. “There’s no reason for you to go unless you absolutely have to. I’m doing it.”

  “No!”

  “They need a guinea pig, Daphna! And it’s my parents who are up there. The guilt is killing me! It’s eating me up like the worst possible disease! But that’s not the only reason I want to go.”

  Dr. Lewis, who’d been watching this in silence from the sink, tapped his watch and looked at Mr. Brown, who put his hand up to request patience.

  “I want to go,” Quinn promised, “because, if I fail, I’ll be with them. I know you don’t love me, Daphna, and so I have nothing to keep me here. But that’s not all, either.”

  “Please,” Daphna begged. “Please don’t—”

  “You have Dexter. He loves you and needs you. I want to do this for you. I want you to see that people can be trusted. I want you to know that one day you’ll find someone else out there who you’ll believe really does want only the best for you. Daphna, you don’t have to do everything all of the time.”

  Daphna looked at Quinn blankly for a moment. Then she turned to Mr. Brown and asked, “Do the Righteous Ones actually have to be more righteous? Or is it just the rib?”

  Mr. Brown seemed surprised by the question. After a moment, he said, “I believe it is, as you say, ‘just the rib.’”

  Daphna looked between Mr. Brown and Quinn, then said, “Hold on. Give me two minutes, okay?” Before either could react, she hurried out of the room. The surprised pair hurried after her.

  Daphna pushed open the door of the yoga studio and approached the man in the orange robe. He was still sitting in the same position on his mat, still in deep meditation. Daphna glanced up and saw Quinn and Mr. Brown watching her through the glass wall. She sat down and crossed her legs.

  “Do you believe in life after death?” she asked. Something told her formal introductions, or even basic manners, were simply not necessary just now. Up close, the man’s age was still indeterminate. 50? 80? He had white hair but perfectly smooth skin.

  “A more useful question,” he said without opening his eyes, “might be, ‘Is there life before death?’”

  “But Heaven—”

  “‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ are words of little use to me. There is Heaven here, on Earth, for those who live. There is Hell, too, for those who can’t or won’t.”

  “But, everyone lives, don’t they?”

  “To draw breath, to have a beating heart—” the man replied, “This is to be alive. But to live is something else altogether.”

  Daphna had to think about this.

  “How long have you practiced?” the man asked. He took deep, slow breaths in through his nose and down, it seemed, into his belly.

  “Um,” said Daphna. “Practiced?”

  “Meditation.”

  “Oh, I’ve never—”

  The man opened his eyes and looked at her with surprise. His eyes were chocolate brown.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  �
��Why?”

  “You are not throwing bricks through windows or turning over cars.”

  “No,” Daphna confirmed. “My friends and I, we seem—”

  “Do any of them practice meditation?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You’re so—peaceful. Would meditation help kids—people—resist this—what’s happening?”

  “Only what we call the False Self can fall prey to what some call the Evil Urge,” the man explained. “This is the Self that isn’t truly us, the Self created by accidents like where and when we are born and who our parents are. Meditation is a means by which one temporarily takes leave of this False Self. Upon return, the practitioner sees the so-called ‘Self’ for what it is: borrowed clothes. And she is thus much less susceptible to unproductive urges of all kinds.”

  “But how have I—?”

  “There are other means of shedding the False Self. One effective technique, if done properly, if done selflessly, is prayer.”

  “Nora,” Daphna whispered.

  “Another is via the practice of Compassion, or any other feeling that leads one to place the needs of others above one’s own.”

  “Dex,” Daphna said. “And that’s it for me, too: I’ll risk anything for—the people I’m trying to help. And Quinn is trying to save his parents.” She thought a moment, then added, “but he seems even more immune. I mean, he doesn’t love his parents any more than I love my—”

  “There is one more way,” the man said.

  “What is it?”

  “One’s False Self diminishes in direct proportion to the degree that one is in love, true, romantic love.”

  “But he’s not in love with me!” Daphna protested. “He only wanted me to think—Even just now, he’s pretending it’s for me.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Daphna muttered.

  “Ahh. You will discover that people are people only through other people. Despite the obvious risks, if one does not trust, one cannot fully live.”

  The man nodded, closed his eyes, and returned to his meditation.