“Guess so!”
Mark strapped her in, then went about preparing Emily’s dinner of strained peas and turkey, and a sippy cup of apple juice. Grabbing a beer for himself, he sat down and began feeding her... when one of the envelopes from the mail pile caught his eye. It was just a plain white (creased) number-ten envelope, but it somehow called out to him. He gave Emily another spoonful of peas, then reached across to the envelope.
It was from Kacey.
Mark stared at the envelope until Emily’s short chirps and open-mouthed pleading reminded him of his need to continue feeding her. Giving her another mouthful of turkey he carefully, nervously, opened the missive.
“Dear Mark and Emily, I have no idea where to begin, so I might as well just start writing and see where it takes me....” was as far as he got before Emily again protested for lack of nourishment. As he fed her, thoughts of “can’t we just be friends,” and “I’ve found another” shot through his mind, as well as the last time they’d made love. Feeding Emily with one hand, he read the letter with the other. Phrases like “I really tried to make things work... but something inside me just snapped...” and “I’m really messed up, and I can’t come back until I find out what’s the matter...” hit hard, and he repeatedly ended up missing Emily’s mouth with an unsteady hand until he had to stop altogether.
He couldn’t believe she’d actually, finally, made contact after all this time. Her. Kacey—his wife—Emily’s mother.
She’d finally made contact. A phone call and now this letter. This letter had been in her hands, scribbled with ink that had issued forth from a pen that had known her touch. These words represented thoughts that had originated within her head, and with which she had taken the time to put to paper—to communicate. To them. This was the closest they’d gotten to her since her infamous and ignoble departure.
Why the hell had she left, dammit? Why wasn’t she coming back? What the hell was going on, and wasn’t this all just a dream—a frigging nightmare?
It was all here, in this little south-Florida communiqué, and in it she’d pleaded, just like her voice mail, that they—he—not come down. Not hunt her down (there was the flurry of those “not” words again). That they (he) leave her be and allow her to come to them. On her own terms. She was eternally sorry for all the hurt she’d caused (he saw what he swore were tear stains all over the letter)—and was still causing—but that she didn’t know how else to deal with it. She said she felt “close” to figuring it all out, but it was still a tenuous thread, at best, one that could easily snap, should he come running...
Yet, through all this letter had to say, one thing surfaced through the haze as he put it down, Emily screaming in the background: all this assumed he’d take her back.
Would he?
Should he?
If she’d done this once, what was to prevent her from doing it again? Would another catastrophic event again elicit the same flight response? Could he risk raising their child in a family like that? Could he risk getting emotionally reinvolved?
And what did he really feel toward her?
Mark stared at his daughter, suddenly conscious of the fact he hadn’t fed her in several minutes and that she’d been wailing away, hands hanging uselessly, palms up, on her high-chair tray. Mark realized, with perhaps the greatest clarity of his entire life, how much he really, really loved his daughter, and would never, ever, allow anything—or anyone—to ever hurt her, again...
3
Harry sat behind his desk back in his Sunset Harbor office, studying documents at just the other side of nine p.m. He leaned forward into a pensive steeple with his fingers pressed against his lips. These people—to the man and woman—had committed the crime, there was precious little doubt of that—but there was something distinctly odd to the entire case. And now this latest development of the Mongolian characters scrawled across an entire jail cell’s floor, walls, and ceiling (how had she done that?), by a another suspect who’d also taken her life. What was it with all the languages? What was it with him understanding the Japanese Tiger had spoken to him?
Had he imagined it?
Had it really happened?
He hadn’t the time for this shit!
He had a trial to win. And how the hell did his so-called “Japanese experience” fit into any of this?
Did it?
Or was it just a case of repressed imagination suddenly set free? An ill-timed coincidence? Japanese... Chinese. Were there any so-called facts tying the two together? He was seeing a shrink because of sleep and stress problems, while Ronda had committed murder, been confined to a jail cell, and just seemed to spontaneously begin writing a no-longer-used Asian language she knew nothing about. Yes, she’d been a teacher, but her background professed absolutely zero knowledge of anything Asian, let alone Mongolian.
And that had been an interesting and unexpected tack Benét had taken—past lives? Jesus, what’d possessed her? Okay, so Benét was obviously playing the insanity card, but... as much as he’d argued against it—for he didn’t want any insanity pleas to win this case—he really wasn’t as confident as his rebuttals presented. Past lives? How could something like that really exist? He supposed anything was possible, when you got right down to it. If there really was a Supreme Being, One so all-powerful, he supposed He/She/It could create a world where past lives existed. Exist.
What would be the tense?
But, short of that documented lady who went off to Ireland in search of her then-seventy-year-old “kids,” and that little “WWII pilot boy,” where was the proof? Even all that could be explained away. Nobody knew better than a lawyer how easily and convincingly arguments could be made for either side of a coin. Who’s payin ya, baby...
Harry’s head suddenly drooped forward... then snapped back awake. Man... he needed some serious sleep. A year off. He’d had a long day, a long week, and now he had to do some serious research into what to do next...
As Harry’s eyes closed, he swore that there were more plants in here than he remembered... tall, tree-like things... the scent of an ocean, and who was—
* * *
Harry wasn’t just watching a movie, he was actually participating in it.
But how had he ended up in a theater—he was supposed to be home... in bed?
And he actually smelled trees... a briny sea?... felt the energetic wash of sea breeze across his face...
Watched as foreign warships approached.
Good God, they just kept coming! Filling the ocean before them; noticed how one man in particular (he wasn’t sure how he knew it, he just did) a samurai, oversaw some kind of... bakufu (the word just popped into his head) operation.
Samurai?
He was the one from his experience with Arnot.
The very same guy... and he stood on a shore... no, it was more than that... he stood on a beach before some sort of fortification... a wall... ishitsuiji was the word...
Thousands upon thousands of ships... it was mind boggling... the most he had ever seen in his entire life, and, most likely, he—or anyone else—would ever see... they stretched from horizon to horizon. It was unimaginable the amount of ships he saw on the ocean, and a new emotion began to fill him, one with which he wasn’t familiar... an abysmal sense of impending dread. Battle was near, and they all might very well perish...
* * *
The entire flotilla lay anchored out just beyond the island... ships full of horse and men. Harry not only inhaled the smell of air and sea, now, but of camphor.
Camphor trees.
Already they had repelled the advancing horde twice: once at the north end of their ishitsuiji, and the other at another beachhead elsewhere. The samurai’s—his—pulse quickened. They were ready for a new plan, a daring plan...
* * *
Under the cover of night, Harry gave the go ahead, and hundreds of Kamakura bakufu samurai loaded up hundreds of skiffs and fishing boats and took to the water. They commenced hit-and-run attacks—slayin
g the invaders and burning their ships. Night and day they did this. The fear that he’d felt earlier had quickly dissipated, as he and his warriors turned the siege into a bakufu victory.
But what was fear?
Samurai knew not that word, nor the concept, as much as he might. Was he feeling it—or the samurai? Was there a difference? Samurai were built for fighting.
Not fleeing.
Gripping the railing of his seat, Harry watched as ships burned in the night.
Railing? There were no railings attached to theater seats...
Standing in the boat, Harry looked behind him. They were all there, right where they should be. His men. Pikes and swords at the ready. Quiet. Focused. Harry looked to himself. To his samurai general garb. Looked to his hand as he gripped his sword—not too tight, not too loose. He looked up. They were closing in fast on their target—
* * *
No thinking was involved. Harry boarded the ship.
He saw from the light of their flames and closer proximity that what they’d boarded was actually three ships lashed together. He smiled. So much easier to complete their task. Harry led his troops against the foreigners amidst a blur of steel and smoke and blood. Harry worked his way through the carnage like a scythe through wheat. Every opponent before him met death, swift and bitter. Their other ships worked their way around their foes, brutally decimating them in like manner. The enemy fought bravely, but they were no match.
And their ships stank; they were doing them a favor—so many horses.
Into the sea, they poured...
Suddenly, Harry turned to himself in the midst of battle, and stared into his own hot, severe gaze. The battle faded away into a distant background... but Harry felt something about a massive storm... a typhoon... brewing.
The two stood before each other, alone, on an empty deck, sails snapping above. They remained so for what seemed an eternity. Harry couldn’t turn away. Didn’t want to. There was something in those eyes. Determined, willful—pleading. Harry studied those eyes. Their message. He sat down behind his desk, as the battle-weary general stood before his desk and spoke:
“Nani wo mananda no? Nani wo mananda no?”
* * *
Harry shot wide awake. Stood before his desk. His eyes were wide open, his hands outstretched. His clock ticked softly in the background. Before him stood no samurai. No ocean. No battle. He stood alone, all nerves afire. He slowly sat back down.
Kare ha nani wo mananda no?
As Harry mentally said the words, he physically spoke the translation: What had he learned?
Again, he spoke the words. “Kare ha nani wo mananda no?”
Where was this coming from? How was he able to speak and understand Japanese?
He shot back to his feet. He actually understood each and every word—he’d been asking himself what had he learned!
Harry looked to the vase on the pedestal over by the entrance to his office, and thought: Mukou ni aru watashi no doa no yoko de, dai no ue ni aru kabin wo mite iru.
He translated the thought with ease: I am looking at a vase on a pedestal, over by my door!
Harry collapsed back into his chair.
He knew no Japanese. He knew nothing about Asian languages. But here he was thinking and speaking this language as if he’d grown up with it—when he realized he was thinking about all this in Japanese.
Ittai nani wo yatte iru no...
4
Tiger, was, in all honesty having great difficulty in sorting out reality from fantasy, from the sounds and visions that continued to fill his head in increasing volume.
It was starting all over again.
The ghostly images were parading before him in greater and greater number. He lay on his cot, all lights off, everyone secure from the first round of cell checks, and stared into the darkness above. The sound of the wind had grown more insistent since his move from the hospital, and the images... he wasn’t sure where he was. Was he on some wind-blown desert steppe, in south Florida, or back in New York City?
Was he in an office building, punching a clock, or slogging down through Georgia?
It was all so dizzying, and it didn’t matter if his eyes were open or closed, because his mind was a-ragin, pure and simple—
Now, he was hoofin it down a stairwell amid horrendous screams and confusion.
Had there been an earthquake?
He was flying down the stairs as fast as he could, hordes of similarly impressed people on his heels. One false step and he’d tumble to his death, trampled down stairs that never seemed to end, heart beating wildly, deathly afraid of something...
Or was he really back in the recesses of an alley in North Carolina, behind a dumpster, ravaging for food?
But none of this could be, because he was really in the midst of unfathomable carnage... his family dead and dying about his feet. Everywhere he looked, death and destruction, death and destruction!
He’d just been daydreaming to get away from the unspeakable reality he lived.
He was a young man, and it always ended the same way... first there was the arrow that screamed through his body, piercing his chest, but continuing on through to the wall behind him (he saw that it actually stuck into the crude mud-brick wall for a moment before crumbling away from loosened chips), then came another warrior riding toward him, arm outstretched. Stunned, he looked to the man, whom he saw lower a hand toward him. Choking on blood, and trying to inhale through the new hole in his chest, he clutched at the arrow shaft and tried to reach out for the hand—but this warrior was not trying to help... he was delivering the coup de grace of a beheading stroke...
For but a moment, he’s looking up at his body as it slowly crumpled to the dirt where (confused!) the rest of him (what rest of him?) lay. As the blood gushed out from his neck and his vision faded, he found himself feeling extremely tired, staring at his body at an angle that made no sense. He remembered asking himself... how can this be? How can he see his entire body on the ground before him like that...
* * *
Tiger bolted upright in his cot. Felt for his neck.
Still there.
Attached.
But he didn’t feel all there. Something was wrong... skewed... he might be laying on a cot in a Florida jail cell, but he knew damned well that that wasn’t necessarily where he was. Something was coming... was very near... and it was ripping his reality apart. He closed his eyes and felt his neck; rolled his head about.
Yeah, still attached.
Chapter Twenty-Four
1
Harry jerked awake to the blaring noise of an explosion going off inside his head. Jolting upright, he found he’d fallen asleep alongside his office phone.
He was still at his office.
Shaking his head, he also saw the sun had come up and found out how stiff a body can get after having slept the entire night hunched over one’s desk.
Harry grabbed the phone, immediately trying to speak as if he hadn’t just been sleeping at his desk, but his vocal cords weren’t cooperating. What initially came out, instead, was an embarrassing half-squeak, as his dulled and dry cords tried their best to perform. Clearing his throat, he again tried.
“Hullo?”
“Mr. Gordon?”
Harry again cleared his throat. “Yes?”
“This is Arty Ofo, from—”
“Oh, yes, professor, good morning—what’d you find?”
“Well, this is really strange, but this lady had written—and it utterly baffles me—an almost page-by-page rendition of sections of an ancient text, called The Secret History, about Chinggis”
(Chin Gas)
“Khan and his rise to power.”
“Chinggis what?”
“Yes—well, I’m sorry, but most in our western world know him as ‘Genghis,’ with a ‘G.’ ‘Chinggis,’ though not literally translatable, is thought to mean ‘body of water,’ or something like that. ‘Oceanic,’ or ‘all-powerful ruler’—”
&nb
sp; “Genghis Khan? Why would a Wyoming elementary school teacher write about a Mongol warrior hundreds of years old—”
“Almost eight-hundred, actually—”
“Let alone in ancient Mongolian?”
“That I can't answer... but the script does contain portions of The Secret History.”
Dr. Ofo paused and Harry could hear a rustling of paper across the phone lines.
“She even writes about other stuff that doesn’t appear in any known texts of that period, though has been greatly speculated. Some of it in minute detail. She also devotes a fair amount of her writing to the more spiritual aspects of the ruler and his people... in the first person, I might add. It’s really creepy. As I read the stuff, I kept checking over my shoulder. Swore I was being watched. Some of this stuff we have absolutely no records of—and though it has been greatly speculated, especially in numerous texts and websites I’ve researched, this actually spells it all out.”
“Huh.”
“I’d write it off as fantasy from a delusional mind, were it not for the corroborative detail she includes... stuff only scholars—or someone who’s actually been there, lived there—would know.”
“You’re kidding.”
Ofo chuckled. “It’s like... she was actually there, experiencing all this stuff first hand, then writing it down. She talks of their Koko Mongke Tengri concept, for instance, or ‘The Eternal Blue Sky’...”
(Coco)
“... it was long thought to be more of a western, monotheistic deity, but she spells it out in no uncertain terms that it was more than that... that it was, indeed, more of a representation of the all-encompassing nature of so-called ultimate Cosmic laws and pantheism. Soul transmigration, or reincarnation, also figured heavily in their lives, which, perhaps, explains their sheer ferocity and determination in battle. And their creative and skilled use of water to both deny and drown adversaries during sieges is rather ironic, considering Chinggis’s name. Perhaps a morbid irony not entirely lost on the minds and souls of his victims. His signature exploit, if you will. His original name, before he was declared Chinggis Khan, ruler of all the Central Asian tribes during a great assembly, or kuriltai, was ‘Temujin,’ which meant ‘blacksmith.’ That was in 1206—or the year of the Tiger, in Chinese. I thought that interesting, given the defendant’s name, you know, in your trial? On the whole, a curious choice of names, all around, don’t you think? The whole thing is simply... uncanny... fascinating... for all that lady’s disturbing accuracy—”
The Uninvited Page 28
