The Python of Caspia

by Michael Green

  “What?” He nearly yelled. The guard hushed him.

  “No need to get upset. Dean wears glasses, I got them at your age, too. You can get contacts eventually.”

  No! No! I can’t do that!

  Andy was surprised by the force of his own negative reaction.

  Why am I so upset about this—the windmill? Rembrandt’s message. It said to avoid eye physicians. But, really?

  “We’ll go tomorrow.” His father decided, before helping him to his feet.

  Andy wanted to argue, to scream, to blame Dean for being okay with glasses, but he knew none of it would work. Rembrandt had said no eye physicians.

  He nearly opened his mouth, but thought better of it.

  They won’t believe a word I say. Dean already thinks I’m cracked; I don’t need that at home too—worse than it already is.

  They left the museum, and Andy had to keep his eyes on the ground the whole way to the car. Dean talked his ear off about how glasses weren’t that bad, and how he used to get nausea. Andy just listened. A large part of him wanted to forget about Letty and Kate, and the paintings, and the mice, and the dark mist most of all. He wondered if this was the adolescent craziness Dean had warned him about, or something more.

  They made it home in good time. Dean stayed for dinner and then his parents stopped by to pick him up. Both sets of parents talked for far too long about Andy’s newfound dizziness. It took half an hour, but, eventually, they determined that the best thing for him was a trip to the optometrist.

  He spent the rest of the evening trying to fight off the headache and spinning that took him, even when he closed his eyes. Getting to sleep was difficult, but when he finally did, he found himself troubled with rude dreams.

  “Lysander,” a voice called out.

  “Call me Andy, please.”

  “Listen to me!” The voice felt like it was right in his ear. “They’re going to take you tomorrow. When they give you the test—fail. Fail the test. Refuse to see the symbol, don’t let your eye rest on it.”

  “Okay,” Andy drawled in sleepy obedience to the voice.

  “And don’t walk through any more of that ink, it makes your symptoms worse, and it’s almost impossible to get off.”

  What?!

  Andy forced his eyes open. He struggled to lift his head and looked.

  There was a score of mice, no two alike, brushing black lint off his arms. The white and red mouse sat on his chest, staring him squarely in the face.

  “Sure, no more ink, and by ink, you mean that dark mist I’ve been seeing around.”

  The mouse nodded his head.

  “Hey, uhm, mouse, I tried, but that big guy slammed into me.”

  Andy wasn’t sure, but he thought the mouse was staring him down. He seemed a no-nonsense sort.

  “Did you guys clean the mist off Letty? Because the same thing happened to her, and I think it’s my fault,” Andy rambled.

  “That’s a different team, but yes, she should be fine.”

  “Thank God,” Andy said, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders.

  A second mouse approached and whispered to the first.

  The first sputtered in outrage. “What he ate at dinner won’t serve through to tomorrow! Rush back and get more carrots! We need them diced and ready for his breakfast—and bring a spare for Coriolis’s team; those bumblers will have forgotten as well!”

  The second mouse hopped to it. He bounded over the bed and disappeared in moments.

  Andy blinked, mystified. “What was that about carrots?” he asked.

  “Forget all of that—and just remember what I told you!” The mouse said sternly.

  “All right—no more mist, don’t see the symbol, and forget the carrots. If you don’t mind, I’m going back to sleep.”

  The mouse leaped off his chest without a word, and a moment later it was like nothing had happened. The naturalness of his conversation, coupled with fatigue let him sink back into sleep, but, whether hours or minutes later, the better part of his mind finally caught up and his eyes burst open. He looked around and saw nothing, no mice, and no mist. The sound of lonesome cars on rain-drenched streets leaked in through his window.

  Andy let his head fall onto the pillow. He dreamed of Letty, and of mice.

  Andy woke with a shock. He recalled the mice and the one with the red face in particular. He’d conversed with this mouse, but there was something else.

  He leaped from his bed and inspected his arms and legs. He looked all over for signs that something had happened to him. Again, he found nothing.

  More than that, he felt great. The dizziness was gone. Everything looked normal, but that dream.

  Andy tore apart his room. He looked under everything. He pulled his bed away from the wall and flipped over the mattress and box-spring. Nothing.

  Next, he tore into his closet, pausing only to grab a few plastic bags to finally get rid of the piles of old and ragged toys he had lying around.

  The mice are making me clean again.

  For a moment he wondered if it was all a trick to get him to sort out his room. It seemed too involved for his parents.

  As he pulled his computer desk away from the wall, he cringed at the noise it made. A moment later, his parents poked their heads into his room.

  “What’s going on in here?” his mother asked.

  They came in and looked around. He could only stare. Worse yet, he felt a guilty look growing across his face.

  His father sensed the issue. “Finally cleaning your room? That’s great. But you’re still going to the optometrist.”

  His mother stared at the bags and piles of clothes as well as the moved furniture, clearly concerned. “You are cleaning your room, right?”

  Andy nodded. “Yup, it needed it. I’d swear we have mice in here too.”

  His father looked behind the desk. “It’s probably just mouse-sized tumbleweeds of dust rolling around.”

  Andy was silent. He didn’t want to go to the optometrist, but he couldn’t come up with an excuse. Then he remembered the dream and what the mouse had said. It was something about the symbol.

  “You’ve got a few minutes to sort this out before we leave for the optometrist.”

  His parents closed his door. He heard them muttering between themselves moments later.

  Distracted, Andy couldn’t recall what the mouse told him the night before. He knew it was important, and that it had to do with seeing the optometrist, but he couldn’t remember the exact words.

  He rushed to rearrange his room. When the last piece of furniture was back in place, he breathed an exhausted sigh and lay on his bed.

  “No way!” He exclaimed, seeing the symbol from the painting glowing on the ceiling above his bed.

  “Don’t try and argue your way out of this, mister. You’re going to the optometrist,” his mother called to him from the front room.

  “Yes, mom!” he said, leaping to his feet for the second time that morning.

  How?

  He stood on his bed and gently touched the symbol. It pulsed ever so softly, and it felt slightly raised, like it had been painted on.

  Maybe if I—

  He poked at it with his fingernail and found it would peel away easily if he tried. He was about to tear it off before the image of The Night Watch shot into his head. He remembered the drum and the symbol.

  There were other words too! More Dutch writing next to the symbol! How could I forget?

  He left the symbol and hopped off his bed, looking for his sketch pad.

  “Where is it?” he whispered angrily.

  He tore through his things and found his backpack. He turned his computer on before opening the sketch pad.

  “Come on—come on!” He flipped through the pages and finally found his first attempt at copying the symbol.

  As the computer booted up, he glanced at the ceiling and back to his sketch pad.

  They look nothing alike.

  But he knew the symbol on his c
eiling was a match for the one in the painting. Staring at the intruding mark, his head started to hurt.

  I don’t want to repeat that—better stop staring, it seems to make it worse.

  “Lysander? Come on!” His father called.

  He pulled up the translation page and typed in the words letter by letter. “Can’t we reschedule for next weekend?” He tried to sound helpless and sincere, but came off sounding determined.

  “No, we are going today.”

  “Let’s reschedule. The room’s really coming along—I don’t want to stop now.” He finished typing the sentence, but the translation didn’t make sense. He nearly panicked, but looked back and forth before realizing that he had misspelled a word halfway through.

  His parents were quiet for a moment, he could sense their concern through the door.

  Come on!

  He clicked the translate button as they walked into his room.

  “Wow, it looks great in here,” his mother said.

  His father looked around and agreed, “Yes, it does. Therefore, no reason to delay.”

  “But—”

  “I won’t have you falling over during P.E. and cracking your skull because you’re afraid of how you’ll look. You are getting glasses today,” his father concluded.

  His mother glanced between them nervously.

  Andy relented. He stood up to go but read the translation before stepping away. It said: ‘Guides our steps.’

  He wondered if the translation was off again, but as he put his seatbelt on, the meaning struck.

  The symbol guides our steps.

  He wanted to write it off as an inside joke between artists, but he had seen the same symbol above his bed. He had to take it seriously.

  It guides our steps? But why is it above my bed? How did it get there? Should I tell my parents that I need to see a psychiatrist before the optometrist?

  For a moment, he considered breaking down and admitting everything he had seen.

  They might call off the trip—but it wouldn’t be forever. What did the mouse tell me? Something about the eye exam, or a test. He mentioned seeing—or was it, not seeing, the symbol?

  He considered his parents. They were both tense but his mother more so.

  Maybe they know I’ve gone off the deep end. This might be a trip to the asylum after all.

  His grim hopes were dashed when they pulled into a parking lot and he saw the sign for one Dr. Ropt - Optometrist. They left the car and approached the building.

  Andy stared at the sign and saw different letters appearing above the doctor’s name, like they had been painted over. They glowed and shimmered in a way almost reminiscent of the paintings at the gallery and the symbol above his bed, though the color of this script was chaotic and greasy to look at. These new letters were incomprehensible and from another language, but one unlike any he had ever seen. As he focused, he felt pain and was oddly certain that the letters were pushing his vision away, as if he was not supposed to see them.

  Beneath the alien script were similarly shining letters. These were English, and it took a serious effort to work through them.

  187th Ward—Lord Ziesqe, The Just and Master of Zentule, presiding.

  Andy gawked, and felt certain that he was losing his mind. His head strained with the effort of reading the script, and he had to lean against a car for balance.

  “It’s okay,” his father said, rushing to help him, “just take a second; we’ve got time.”

  He nearly stumbled, but with his father’s help, he kept his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” his mother asked.

  Andy was as truthful as he could be, “My head starts to spin and hurt when I read some things. I can’t stand up, I need to sit down when it happens.”

  “Oh, let him sit,” she said, pulling a water bottle from her purse.

  Andy took a moment and tried not to think about what he had just seen on that sign.

  I just need to stop seeing these things. If I try, it’ll go away eventually. I just need to stop caring, stop feeding it.

  He took a drink and steadied himself. His parents hovered close by, as they walked to the door. Andy sat while they filled out medical forms.

  “Do you have his insurance card?”

  “Yes, it’s here in my wallet.”

  He tried to ignore his parents, and the spinning in his head, by looking around. There was a familiar face in the waiting area. Letty’s mother was sitting across from them.

  “Excuse me,” Andy said.

  The woman looked up.

  “Are you Letty’s mother?”

  The lady gave a slight smile, “So, she has everyone calling her by that name.”

  “Lysette, I mean,” Andy corrected himself. “She just asked me to call her Letty.”

  “Hmm.” The woman grumbled, looking away.

  “My son isn’t fond of his given name either,” his father interjected.

  An odd look bent the woman’s face. She seemed between concern and annoyance. “What is he called?” she asked in a plain voice.

  “We called him Lysander, after a Greek hero.”

  Andy tried not to frown at the adults talking like he wasn’t there.

  “Lysander?” The woman asked, casting an appraising look at Andy. “No wonder he doesn’t like it.”

  Andy wasn’t sure how to respond, the words were insulting, but her voice wasn’t.

  Andy’s father scowled before addressing his family, “Look everyone, it’s a rude person in their natural habitat. They remain calm and neutral after striking, as if that should confuse us and excuse her.”

  Again, the woman had that look of annoyed concern, “Oh no, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that young people are so set on either fitting in or standing out. We both hoped for stand outs; it’s clear with names like theirs, but they simply haven’t grown into them yet.”

  Andy’s parents weren’t sure what to say, neither was he. But the woman continued anyway.

  “What name have you chosen for yourself?” she asked.

  “I go by Andy.”

  She laughed. “See parents, there’s still a trace of your name in that. Andy—Andy, wait, are you the boy who got Lysette in trouble?”

  “I—uhm—” He looked for help from his parents.

  His father gave him a knowing grin and a wide-eyed shrug.

  “Yeah, that was me,” he admitted.

  The woman looked ready to launch into a rant, but the doctor’s assistant came in and called for Andy.

  He gratefully followed the man back into the darker rooms. Computer screens lit the way, and strange instruments covered tables. The man asked him to take a seat.

  After a minute, he heard a creak. He looked over his shoulder and saw another figure sitting in the dark, at a table.

  “Don’t stare, Lice, it’s bad for your eyes.”

  It was Letty. Her voice was drained and heavy.

  “You too?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “It started that day at the museum, right? Dizziness, seeing odd colors? Annoying parents?”

  She let out a small laugh. “Yes, to all three.”

  Andy wanted to be frank with her about everything he’d seen, but he remembered the last time he tried.

  She’s in a better mood; maybe I can risk it.

  She continued, “They don’t know what’s wrong with my eyes. I’ve been here all morning. They sent for my father, but he was all the way across town.”

  “Why did they send for your father? You’re here for an eye exam. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “I’m defective; they need to cosign the demolition papers.”

  She stared at the ceiling, upset and impudent all at once.

  How can I lighten her up?

  “I met your mother out there,” Andy said, a bit of hesitation in his voice.

  “Oh, God.” Lysette sighed, “What did she do?”

  “Eh—she,”
Andy wasn’t sure if he should lie or not.

  Letty straightened out and leaned forward at the delay.

  He knew he had to be honest. “She kind of made fun of my name.”

  Letty thought little of that and leaned away from him. “I kind of make fun of your name.”

  There was silence.

  “I see where you get it,” he said in a sideways tone.

  “Get what?” She asked, disengaged and annoyed again.

  “The attitude,” He said plainly. She gave him a sharp look, but he continued anyway. “That’s the problem with being too smart for your age or group. Your friends put you to work as their queen, making up petty names to bully people with. It’s pretty obvious that you don’t enjoy it.”

  He expected an attack, or possibly a denial, or complete silence. Instead, she asked a question.

  “Have you been seeing those mice? You mentioned one the other day.”

  Yeah, and you chewed my head off for it.

  Now Andy sulked. “I don’t know what’s been going on the past few days. We saw something back at the museum, and I’m still seeing things. But I think we need to get over it. It’s—”

  “So, you have been seeing them. The mice, I mean.”

  Andy wanted to deny everything, but he couldn’t. He had spoken to one last night.

  “Did they come to you last night?” he asked.

  “Yes,” She replied earnestly. “But I failed. They told me not to see it, but never explained what it was.”

  Andy considered that odd. The mice told him not to see the symbol.

  Maybe not seeing it is difficult. But nothing bad happened to her. At least she seems fine.

  Letty shook her head. “I saw something strange on the paper he held up, I think that was what the mice wanted me to ignore. I could barely see it, but I did, and he noticed.”

  “You saw what? The symbol?”

  “Yeah. The Infiniteye.”

  “Infiniteye?” Andy thought about the symbol, and the name made sense.

  “I’m scared. I’m scared of what’s going to happen to me. But I’m thinking that I’m not completely crazy because you’re seeing everything too. Now I don’t know if something bad is coming, or if the whole mouse episode was just—a shared insanity.”

  Andy still felt an urge to deny it, but he knew that it wouldn’t help if he did.