Liminal States

by Zack Parsons

  In the faint, unearthly light of the cavern Gideon cleaned himself of the slop that clung to his limbs and webbed his fingers and toes. After more than a year of being murdered by the outlaw Warren Groves, that man’s final, explosive act of defiance amused Gideon. A good jest. He stretched his new muscles and shook the primordial stew from his head. Always the last wisps of memories that were his and not his, receding like clouds boiling away beneath a hot sun.

  Gideon’s many visits to the cave had resulted in gradual improvements. He brought clay pots of water, washing basins, clean clothing, shoes, and wooden boxes filled with provisions. The cave and the pueblo beyond were transformed into an outpost, the first stop on each of Gideon’s journeys beginning at the pool and ending in his brutal murder.

  He walked from the pool and sought out the water pots. Instead he cut his foot upon a jagged shard of broken pottery. His new eyes adjusted to the soft light, and he could see that all his efforts had been destroyed. The pots were broken, the boxes smashed, and food scattered and crushed underfoot. Much of it was missing completely, stolen or thrown into the pool to be digested.

  He found a torn shirt and trousers sealed to the cavern’s warm rock by a decayed mash of root vegetables. It bore the imprint of a boot as clear as a signet in a wax seal. He pried away the mess and donned the clothing and crawled out from the cave. The good humor with which he greeted each new life was obliterated by anger.

  Warren Groves was waiting for him beyond the cave. The lawman was dressed and relaxed along the upper terrace overlooking the valley. He did not even turn to face Gideon as he approached. Gideon thought of pushing him over the edge. So easy to splatter his brains upon the dark rocks below, but that was not how gentlemen behaved, and Gideon was doing his best to train this wild animal to be a gentleman.

  “Good show,” said Gideon. “I should have known better than to gloat over you.”

  In his short time of resurrection Warren Groves had somehow managed to acquire an industrial stink. Groves wore clothing of his own. Must have laid them out here before the ambush in San Francisco.

  “I would extend to you my hospitality, Mr. Groves, but it would seem you have already rejected it. What a frightful mess you’ve made in there. At some point you’ll need to learn of more rewarding pursuits than destruction.”

  Gideon joined him at the edge of the terrace and gazed down upon a wagon so large, it must have been brought into the valley by a mule team. The mules were gone, long ago turned loose or ridden out.

  “What is all that?” asked Gideon.

  “Something I shoulda done a year ago.”

  There was more detail to be seen, broken-down crates and wooden spools. Fine gray wires ran throughout the valley. No, not wire at all. Black lengths and loops fed from one crated pile to another along the base of the cliff and up the terraces to cases of explosives near the cave entrance.

  “You can’t do this!” Gideon grabbed at Warren’s shoulders.

  Warren punched Gideon in the nose and sent him to the ground with the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. The outlaw did not even look at him.

  “It is already lit.”

  “Wait,” said Gideon. “Please. Be reasonable. You do not know what this will mean. We could become trapped in the rubble forever. You would doom us to that?”

  “I will,” said Warren. “You and I have done too much evil to go on living. It’s past time for us to set things right.”

  Gideon got up and stood beside Warren again. The blood dripped out over his lips. He could see the smoke issuing from the fuse. There was a thick trunk of it from the mule cart running along the ground to the slope of the terraces. At each level it diverged into one or two smaller fuses.

  “You ever dream in between being alive?” asked Warren.

  “What?” Gideon held a hand to his nose. “No. Yes, I suppose. I never thought of them as dreams. I see places.”

  “Places?”

  “I told you of these things before—do you remember? Cease this madness with the dynamite, and we can discuss it like rational men.”

  “Tell me again,” said Warren.

  Further objections were clearly pointless, so Gideon answered, “When I die, I feel as if I am falling, very quickly and without direction. I am plunging through a gulf of darkness, a great sea of black with no shores or moon or stars. Though it seems endless, I pass through this darkness quickly, and I experience a multitude of places in such rapid succession that I can barely endure it.”

  “Are they like the valley out there, only with a yellow cyclone sky? Or a flat plain with a big building falling to bricks?”

  “No, not that. I only see the valley when I walk out of this cave. You must know, these memories fade, so it is difficult to recall the details.”

  “You got to recollect a few.”

  “Please, stop the fuses,” Gideon urged, but Warren just cocked his head and smiled. Gideon continued. “All right. I do recall a few. Barely. Forests of stone obelisks and places with no ground at all, only clouds. Fallen pillars as big around as my family’s foundry, laid over a channel of stone, thousands of spires in the rain. There was a rolling meadow of white plants and blue flowers, sun-lit, cotton seeds drifting in the light, but it was cold and ugly, and I knew somehow that the plants were poison.”

  “That your hell?” wondered Warren.

  “Or the infinity of God’s creation.” Gideon watched the fuse begin its slow climb to the first terrace. There was yet time to stop this. “Before you trap us in here with your dynamite, why don’t you tell me what you see?”

  “Ain’t much to tell. I forget, same as you, but what I do recollect ain’t that way.”

  “Humor a man about to be blasted to pieces,” said Gideon, but his mind was on the guns hidden in the pueblo below and the folding knife he kept beside the pool. The chamber was ransacked. Perhaps if he could lure Warren back to the pool.

  “Here, but not exactly,” said Warren. “There’s a shack, and it’s full of furniture and old books. Jars like somebody has been collecting things. There are Indians and they wear strange hides. And there are animals with blue eyes.”

  “Like the dog,” said Gideon.

  Warren nodded. “I only saw it once and never again. Now it’s just black. Always black and this feel like I’m moving. There’s something in that black, some memory was snatched out of my head and gets farther away all the time.”

  “What have you done with yourself over all these months?”

  “You’re an odd man to ask that question.”

  “Right.” Gideon stamped his foot. “Right. Your task was murdering me over and over again. Right? Yes. My task, Mr. Groves, was to make something out of this world. Do you understand?”

  “Don’t care to,” Warren said.

  “I made money, by any means available, and I bought back my family business from the creditors. I mined thousands of tons of copper, sold mile upon mile of copper wire. I built coke ovens and barracks and a kitchen for my workers. Every problem you see needs to be solved with violence. I paid wages, Mr. Groves—do you see? Better than the Pearce foundry. Men fed their families with my money. I made a better world. All of that is going to end now.”

  “Somebody else will do it.”

  “But I did it!” Gideon tore at his shirt. “I fought back against the darkness, and you, pig, you wallowed in it. Do you see? All those folks in Utah. That marshal. Damn you, I am not the villain. That whore in Santa Fe. You have to remember her. You killed her. That poor family at the tr—”

  Warren struck him in the mouth to shut him up. Gideon was undeterred. He spit out the blood and kept on talking but began to back away toward the cave entrance.

  “I fucked her, you know,” Gideon said. “She was still a woman, even if she didn’t speak to me.”

  Warren’s rage seized him, and he roared and struck at Gideon with both fists. Gideon retreated into the cave, scampering and ducking away from his foe. He dodged and ran and crawled deeper,
with Warren clutching at his heels.

  They emerged into the cavern, and Warren immediately landed a two-fisted blow to Gideon’s shoulders. The impact sent him to one knee but stopped him only for a moment. He launched his shoulder into Warren’s midsection and knocked him to the ground. Gideon tried to go for where the knife was hidden, but Warren rolled and stood before Gideon could press the advantage.

  “You fucking devil,” Warren said.

  “Now, now,” said Gideon, backing away. “I tried to save her. If you put a dead thing into the pool it doesn’t return like we do. It’s a blank slate. Just meat. But you can teach it. I did my best with her. ” His hand felt for the knife in the dark stone. “I sang to her and fed her by my own hand. She could sing a little herself before you took her.” Gideon’s fingers found the alcove empty. “What did you do for her? Left her to rot? I’ll not apologize to the man who has killed her twice.”

  Gideon brought up his guard without the knife. It was the first time the men had faced one another in a truly fair fight. Warren had a few inches and close to thirty pounds of muscle on Gideon. He landed two powerful body blows, and Gideon shrugged them off even though he spit blood. Gideon bit Warren’s biceps and raised blood through his shirt. Warren shouted in surprise and gave Gideon the opening to land a solid cross to Warren’s cheek.

  “Feeling it now, eh?” Gideon laughed from behind his guard.

  “I’ll pull out your heart.”

  Warren’s punches missed or only connected with Gideon’s guard. Gideon began to get the better of Warren. The men were battered and bloodied. Their circling had brought them closer to the pool.

  Gideon seized the opportunity and dragged Warren to the floor. Gideon got his hands around Warren’s throat and began choking him and pulling him closer and closer to the pool until Warren was on his back with his head over the rim.

  “Can’t stop it,” choked Warren.

  Warren hammered Gideon’s ribs with his fists, and Gideon could feel the knife-pain of the bones breaking. Despite his will, he lost some of his grip on Warren’s throat, just enough for Warren to turn his neck. The outlaw used his knees to slam Gideon aside, and he twisted his body and broke free. Gideon lunged at him, and Warren countered and beat him to the ground and began to choke him.

  There was a loud splash of stones falling into the pool. Warren sought the source of the noise and was immediately struck by Gideon’s knees. Warren was not dislodged so easily. He tightened his grip on Gideon’s throat until Gideon felt as if his eyes would burst in their sockets. He tried to plead with Warren to let him up. To end this madness. The outlaw was crazed.

  There came a wet, gagging sound and another splash. A slapping of flesh on stone. Gideon clawed at Warren’s face and gnashed his teeth. Warren risked dividing his attention to look over. Gideon freed his throat and pushed Warren off his chest. As he rose, gasping, he saw what Warren saw.

  A human figure was rising to its feet and tearing at the membrane covering its body. The sack parted and revealed white skin. Beneath the cowl the face was obscured by the thickness and uniformity of muddy slime. The thing lurched in their direction. Gideon’s stomach tightened in recognition.

  “No,” Gideon said.

  It was over. Warren Groves recognized the futility of it and surrendered. He found his hat and left, left to pull the fuses and maybe to disappear into the desert for at least one lifetime.

  The thing that stepped out of the pool limped over to Gideon and offered him a hand up. Gideon was afraid and confused but took the offered hand and stood and faced it. It was a man who smiled in a way that was sickeningly familiar, for he wore the face of Gideon Long.

  1890

  The Covenant

  The ferocity of the day divided the world clearly into shade and baking canyon rock. Where the men stood in shadow, their faces were blue, and where they stood in the midday sun, the rocks were almost white, and the men’s faces seemed to glow. There were nine men who gathered to author the Covenant. Nine men divided by two faces.

  There was Gideon Long and his four brothers, and there was Warren Groves and his three brothers, separated by months or years, depending, diverged by personal experience but each from the root of their originator. The men who shared the face of Gideon stood together and discussed the details of the document. The Warrens were sullen and stood apart from one another.

  It was the Warren named Thomas Yarborough who finally convened the signing. He was the most recent of the Warrens to emerge and draw his name from the hat. His voice alone among the Warrens had sought to reconcile their new way of living to the realities of the modern age.

  “Enough talking,” said Thomas. “The longer you confer, the more opportunity for my brothers to desert this endeavor. We sorted it out, and unless you object, let’s be done.”

  “There is only one item,” said the Gideon called Harlan Bishop. “It is the matter of the Judge.”

  “He’ll be elected,” said Thomas. “It’s only right.”

  “Democracy, being the foundation of this great nation, would of course be desirable,” said the originator, Gideon Long, “but not always practicable. Gathering in this location could become impossible if our ranks continue to swell.”

  “Conducting a tabulation of votes from a Diaspora could be similarly time-consuming,” added Harlan Bishop, “and require methods open to fraud or abuse. We propose a simple alternative.”

  “Beware,” said the originator, Warren Groves, stepping forth from the blue shadow. “He means trickery.”

  Each Warren knew the originator was right to be wary.

  “Get to your meaning,” Thomas addressed the Gideons.

  “I will assume the duty of selecting each Judge,” said Harlan Bishop, “until I die and the duty passes to another Gideon.”

  Curses went up from the Warrens. The Gideons reacted with a uniform look of bemusement. They had expected such a reaction.

  “I’ll not abide by you choosing the Judges,” said Thomas.

  “We currently outnumber you,” said Harlan Bishop, “but this might not always be the case. Should we leave it up to the pool, then? Dominance to whichever of us benefits from its generosity? I think not. Democracy will not work in our unique situation.”

  “I’ll not bow to you,” said the Warren called Jacob Fortune. “Forget the whole goddamn thing. We don’t need no Constitution.”

  “I have not been allowed to finish,” said Harlan Bishop. He waited for leave to continue from the Warrens. Jacob shook his head in disgust. Harlan continued, “As I said, I will choose the Judge, but only from your numbers. That means your face and your blood will always occupy the office.”

  “Why?” asked Thomas.

  “He means to piss on us, but like a gentleman,” said Jacob.

  “You are lawmen,” said Gideon Long. “Renegades by deed, perhaps, but you adhere to your own code. Uphold this Covenant. That is all we ask.”

  Thomas saw the sense in the idea. At the least it would prevent a repetition of this painful experience. He turned to his brothers.

  “We’re each of us derived from the same notion and same flesh, aligned if not—”

  “I reckon I’ll just put my mark upon this fucking paper.” Warren Groves stepped forward and took up the pen. The Covenant was flat upon a campaign table and held fast at its corners by four pieces of black rock. “Do any of you object?”

  No one spoke, and so Warren Groves scrawled the alterations and added his name to the paper. He tossed the ink pen onto the table and began walking away. The other Warrens, all but Thomas, followed him down the terraces. Gideon Long took up the pen and signed his own name with a flourish.

  “We should read the oath aloud,” said Gideon as he admired his penmanship.

  “Allow me,” said Harlan, and he held up the paper and began to read aloud.

  “By the Intercession of the Lord, or by His natural creation, the Pool that dwells in the black mountains has rendered all flesh it touches unlimited;
it restores vitality to the dead and produces at uncertain intervals whole men of likeness and mind indistinguishable from their originators. This cohort of duplications and their originators do hereby assemble as a brotherhood and set forth to establish a Covenant of laws and principals to guide our body, to preserve mortal society, and to provide authority for the enforcement of laws herein.

  “Gideon Long and all men of his likeness resulting from his flesh and Warren Groves and all men of his likeness resulting from his flesh do hereby swear, individually and collectively, of free will, that ...”

  Harlan was losing his voice to dryness. Another of the Gideons handed him a flask to wet his tongue. Thomas Yarborough glared at the Gideons from beneath the drooping brim of a farmer’s hat. Harlan Bishop cleared his throat and continued.

  “I will permit no man, woman, or child of mortal nature to enter the Pool, nor will I bathe them in its waters against their will.

  “I will reveal no detail of the Pool, its function, its location, or even its existence in conversation or in document.

  “I will not submerge dead men, women, children, or beasts in the waters of the Pool.

  “I will abandon my name upon death and forfeit all claim on past property, family, friendships, or debt.

  “I will avoid all communication with those who knew me before my death.

  “I will not congregate with a duplication of the same originator in any location beyond the black mountains.

  “I will not take the life of another, be they mortal or duplication, unless under flag of war or in the commission of lawful duties under this law or under the law of the land.

  “IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD and in the interest of preserving the fabric of mortal society, the signatories of this Covenant, known as brothers in good standing, do hereby swear to abide and uphold the laws put forth within under the just penalty of death.”

  Harlan paused to interpret Warren’s scrawled modification.