by Weston Ochse
“I think you’re right,” Preacher’s Daughter said. “He’s definitely an accidental traveler. He probably doesn’t know how to communicate to you.”
“Have you wondered if you can create a construct—a reality for him that he understands?” McQueen asked. “Sort of like a video game in your mind for him to live in?”
Boy Scout stared at the big man for a moment. “I understand the concept, but I am not sure of the process.”
“Have you tried to re-enter The White?” McQueen asked.
A memory plowed through reality and took over.
Boy Scout was nowhere and everywhere. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t see anything except a kaleidoscope of spinning shades of white, dizzying, sickening. His essence had broken into so many parts that he couldn’t even form a sentence. Unintelligible jabbering filled his mind. Were these his own thoughts? Or was it from something else? The spinning was beginning to slow. His mind was coming back together. He could see pieces of himself forming as if he’d been a porcelain doll and his parts were flying back together of their own volition.
A hand.
A forearm
A booted foot.
The mating call of a monkey came from behind him.
He spun and in his dizziness, fell to the ground. Only there was no ground. He was now upside down in front of the nightmare creature running towards him. In the split second he took to take it in, he saw a giant spider with more than a hundred legs coming toward him. Instead of central eyes, it had a face that was constantly changing into everyone he’d ever known.
Again came that sound, emanating from the lips of his mother’s best friend, Rebecca. Then from the mouth of his drill sergeant, Sergeant First Class Reddoor. Then from the mouth of a girl he’d dated three years ago, Connie. The same sound, but different faces.
The monstrous entity was closing in.
More pieces of him were coming together but he wouldn’t be whole by the time it arrived.
Boy Scout willed himself to flee, then found himself moving backwards at impossible speed.
Again the universe shrieked like the scream of the King of all Kings and he was once more blown apart.
The dizzying kaleidoscope returned, and after a time of sickness, piece by piece he came together once more.
The mating call of a monkey came once again but this time much softer. Then another and another. There seemed to be dozens of monkeys. Then he saw them. The spider creature had blown to bits as well, but instead of reforming into a whole, it was now hundreds of smaller spiders, all rushing toward him. He’d barely started to reform when three of them crawled up his essence. He batted at them, but he only had a single hand. He struck one and it flew off, shattering into even smaller spider monsters that came back at him. One got onto his back and he tried to reach for it. That was the moment when one skittered onto his face and climbed down his throat.
He gagged, trying to rid himself of it. He could feel its greasy spider legs pulling itself deeper inside of him.
Then another spider entered his mouth, following the first.
He fell to his knees, back arching in dry heaves, trying to spew them from his system. But it was to no avail. They held to his insides, going deeper, clawing at his insides for purchase.
Then everything switched. Gone was the pure white of Sefid. Boy Scout felt himself slow and his body become someone else’s… something else. Something ancient.
Visions—no, memories—began to spin by.
A family chased by a saber-toothed tiger on a flat brown plain. The tiger took down the girl child, ripping into her bowels.
A man on horseback, firing an arrow directly into Boy Scout’s point of view, then disintegrating as a ray of white-hot energy was returned.
Alexander the Great’s Macedonian phalanx—fifteen thousand Macedonians with sarissasholding off the Persian swords and allowing the phalanx to mow through enemy units.
The Sacred Band of Thebes—he recognized it right away from history books, now from the point of view of a warrior battling through them.
Sensual sex with an Indian woman of incredible beauty, her lips the color of brown sugar and tasting of mangoes.
An up-close view of a knife fight with another man, his own hands a blur of razor-edged steel, then still as they stopped in his opponent’s chest.
And fire in the sky, burning incredibly bright, but feeling joyous at the sight of it.
Boy Scout gasped with the power of the memories—surely the instigating action that had brought the travelers within him, each one the moment of their death. He held his head was between his knees as he hyperventilated.
When he finally straightened, McQueen was standing, concern plastered on his face.
Preacher’s Daughter was beside him, a hand on his back.
When Boy Scout was finally able to straighten, the scent of mangoes and the stench of death in his lungs, he shook his head emphatically. “Wow. Where did that come from?” He paused, gathering his breath. “Listen. The White? That’s the last thing I want. I was hoping to do what Sister Renee said to do, but this astral projection is not easy. Too many thoughts. Too many memories.”
Preacher’s Daughter bit her lip and observed him carefully as she returned to her seat. “I’d say that there might be a way to reduce those distractions through stimulants, but the others might attempt control.” She held up a finger, clearly working something out in her head. “Let me try something.”
“Go ahead,” Boy Scout said.
She cleared her throat and said, “If you understand what I am saying then stand on one leg.” Then she waited.
“Very funny,” Boy Scout said.
She grinned widely. “What did I say?
“You said if I understand what you are saying then stand on one leg.”
She clapped her hands together once. “Do you know what this means?”
“What are you talking about?”
“McQueen, what did we just say?”
“I have no earthly idea. Boss, when did you learn to speak Afghani?”
Boy Scout’s eyes narrowed.
“Boy Scout, we are talking in Pashtun right now and you don’t even know it,” Preacher’s Daughter said.
“But that’s imposs—” He switched to English as his eyes widened. “How am I doing this?”
“You must be able to tap into the consciousness in your brain. Because the traveler is in you, you can speak the same language it can speak. If it was a rocket scientist, you could also probably build rockets. If you only knew how to take advantage of these things inside you, you might be able to be better and more effective than you are now.”
“As good as it could be, as much knowledge as they impart to me, I want them gone,” he said firmly.
She nodded. “I understand. But at least you can take advantage of it in the meantime. Conversely, those inside of you should be able to speak English. You share all the knowledge in consciousnesses within you.”
Boy Scout closed his mind and reconstructed the images of the phalanx and the saber-toothed tiger and the man on horseback and everything that had flashed through him yet again. Then he thought of the suicide bomber and the man in the pile of dead bodies pretending to be dead and the view of the boy left on a train platform as the train pulled away. The last left him with a feeling of such grief he had to struggle not to sob.
“I feel—I feel as if there are only four inside of me, but there seems to be memories of more. These four can’t possibly have all the memories I’m trying to account for.”
“That’s because you have something much more powerful inside of you,” came the voice of a woman he recognized.
He opened his eyes and beheld a vision he wouldn’t have believed.
Poe entered behind the woman and closed the door.
“This is Charlene,” he said, pronouncing the first part of her name like something you might do to a steak—CHAR-lene. “She says she knows you.”
Preacher’s Daughter st
ood. “But that’s impossible.”
Then everyone started talking at once.
Chapter Twelve
China Lake Command Center
SHE STOOD ABOUT five and a half feet tall, even on her three-inch glittering heels. The candy-apple red hair piled on top of her head like a 1960s sorority girl perfectly matched the hue of her lipstick. She was beautiful in the way women are when they spend five hours a day preparing themselves. She wore shorts that were about as tight as they could possibly be and barely covered what needed to be covered for her not to be arrested. A skin-tight T-shirt, with a glittering Julie Newmar-era Catwoman silhouette with the words I Am Not That Kind of Cat Lady printed on it, hugged a small waist and medium-sized breasts and was somehow the same hue as her lipstick and hair.
“Hello,” she said, managing to break through the cacophony of voices. “You guys have met me but I don’t remember it. Problem is, I remember you but I don’t know how I do.”
Boy Scout, McQueen, and Preacher’s Daughter all looked at each other and the cacophony broke out once more. Finally, it was Poe who yelled for everyone to be quiet. When they did, he said, “Maybe someone can explain to me what’s going on. You first,” he said, pointing to Preacher’s Daughter.
She seemed about to say something, but glanced at Boy Scout for approval.
He nodded but kept his eyes on Charlene, the look on his face the same he’d have had had he met someone else from a dream.
“While we were in a fugue state and still in the cistern we traveled to Guadalupe, Arizona, and met this woman so that we could get access to Narco. She was able to read Boy Scout’s mind and explain what the girl with the goat we were all dreaming about really was. She seemed to be the real deal, then we all woke up and realized that she was only a figment of our imagination.”
“For a figment, my feet sure are hurting.” She sat down on one of the chairs and pulled out a package of Virginia Slims. “Mind if I smoke in here?”
“I actually do,” Poe said.
“Maybe they wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t wear those FMPs everywhere,” McQueen said.
“Said the gay hipster like he knows.”
McQueen laughed. “You called me the same thing in the fugue.”
“Narco knew me better than most.” She flashed her eyes at Boy Scout. “I felt it when he died. Maybe you can tell me how later.”
Boy Scout shook his head. “This is so surreal.”
“Says the guy with four entities who was taught by a possessed nun how to astral project,” Preacher’s Daughter said.
“Oh.” Charlene’s eyes widened. “That sounds interesting. I wasn’t aware of the nun. Who is she?”
“Let’s figure out what to do with you before we begin parsing out information,” Poe said.
She turned and gave him a cold stare. “There’s very little you can do with me, Maurice. You should call your mother. She’s been out of rehab for a month and desperately wants to talk to you. Plus, your cat is pretty pissed because you’ve left it at a friend’s.”
Frowning, he mumbled, “I actually gave the cat to them.”
“Then you need to explain that to the cat.” Turning to the rest of the crew, she added, “And as far as parsing out information, I’ll be the one doing the parsing because you sad lot don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”
McQueen whispered, “She’s really unbelievable, isn’t she?”
“Positively a force of nature,” Boy Scout replied softly.
“Are you sure I can’t smoke in here?” she asked the room in general.
Fifteen minutes later and on her fourth cigarette, she finished telling them how she’d felt their need, understood that inside Boy Scout resided a being of tremendous power, and how she’d arrived on base from the Phoenix area despite her car breaking down in Blythe. Apparently, she convinced a truck driver on his way to Los Angeles to drive her two hundred miles out of his way because she was able to tell him where to find his brother, who had gone absentia the previous year. (He was working in a hospice in Costa Rica after having a mental breakdown and had forgotten who he was.) By the time the driver dropped her off near the front gate of the weapon’s center, he’d arranged for a flight from LAX to Juan Santamaria Airport in Costa Rica.
With Boy Scout’s nod of approval, Preacher’s Daughter began to tell the story of Narco and how he’d been both in and out of reality. She told Charlene how they’d rescued him from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s work detail using camels with boom boxes and pictures of the sheriff on them to distract the sheriff’s deputies, only to find out that they’d been in a fugue and none of it had actually happened, including them meeting her. Preacher’s Daughter also shared the moments when Faood had sent them into a fugue just to show them what the dervishes were doing and how they were actively trying to get Rumi’s soul to come home. Finally she related the events when he’d actually died, defending them in a vicious final fight they’d had against a dervish QRF force, which had turned the cistern into a slaughterhouse. The QRF had used a block of explosive like a grenade, except the explosive power was more like five grenades.
As Preacher’s Daughter spoke, Boy Scout remembered Bully lying face down next to the entrance, her head sheathed in blood, and Narco, sitting as if he’d just gotten tired and plopped down, his head lolled back at an impossible angle, his eyes endlessly open, a piece of sharp stone protruding from his neck.
A feeling slung through his chest, twisting his heart. The sudden emotion was so powerful it almost reached his face, but he wouldn’t let it. Instead, he sat there with nothing more than a frown as Preacher’s Daughter explained reality to Charlene.
After a moment, he excused himself and went to the bathroom. He left the light off and sat down on the toilet seat, his head in his hands. A wave of survivor’s guilt swept through him and he tried desperately to ignore it. But like Charlene was to the universe, some things were virtually impossible to ignore. No matter how Boy Scout felt about his abilities, the truth of the matter was that he was the cause of other people’s deaths. His decisions, his actions, his failures—all had led to the deaths of those who’d trusted in him to keep them alive.
And now he had two left—Preacher’s Daughter and McQueen. He didn’t know what he’d do if they died. He’d never once considered killing himself, but for a brief, sizzling moment he knew that if both of them somehow died, he might just do it.
Three, five, ten minutes later—he couldn’t be certain how long it was—he heard a knocking sound.
Glancing towards the door, he said, “Go away.”
The knocking came again, this time echoing strangely.
“I said go away,” he said miserably.
Still, the knocking came.
He jerked himself up, grasped the door knob, and jerked it open.
The doorway was empty.
The knocking came again.
He let the door close as he backed up and again sat on the toilet seat.
Except he must have missed the seat... because he fell farther and farther and farther, his body in freefall in a dark universe that was made of knocking. Loud knocking. Soft knocking. Rapid knocking. Slow knocking. Knocking of all shapes and sounds assaulted him until he wanted to scream. And he would have, but he had no mouth. Instead, his body was gone and all that remained was the idea of himself.
And then he saw her. Or at least he thought it was her.
A figure floated next to him, a glowing silver in the void, looking more like a ghost than anything that could possibly be human.
He tried to back away, but without a body, he was unable to move.
“Boy Scout,” the figure whispered, the words almost hollow in the darkness.
The figure reached out to him and he tried to scream but he had no mouth.
It touched him and in doing so, crystallized into a ghostly facsimile of Sister Renee.
“Is that you?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “But we have a problem. The being insid
e you has taken over and you have been pushed back inside of your own mind.”
“For how long?” he asked, thinking of the enormity of her claim.
“Hours,” she said.
And Boy Scout felt the true horror of it.
Chapter Thirteen
Astral Plane
“WELCOME TO THE astral plane,” Sister Renee said quickly. “There are conventions here that you need to learn. For instance, everyone is generally anonymous until youinteract with them. Then features snap into place. The more you know the person the more the features make sense. If you don’t know the person, the features are a basic male-female visage, like a generic avatar.”
Boy Scout thought about this. “So, I see you as you are because we’ve interacted on the physical plane and then we touch.”
“Yes and no. We don’t actually touch because we aren’t actually here. We interact. No words are perfect for what we do here. We don’t stand, for instance, we float—except we aren’t really floating either.” She nodded. “It’s all words, as imperfect as they are.”
Boy Scout looked around. He saw a group of huddled figures nearby but nothing more. Beneath him lay lines of white-hot power that ran in multiple directions. Dots of light were also nearby, but with little detail. In the sky, if he could call it a sky, was a globe of darkness darker than everything else. But other than those features, there was nothing.
“What you see beneath us are ley lines. They’re invisible in the material plane, but clear here. The dots are living beings—animals, reptiles, people, but not plants. And in the Up you can see what some refer to as the dark sun. Be careful of that. Do not go too far into the Up or you will find yourself unable to break away from the dark sun’s gravitational pull.”
“What happens if I do?”
“We don’t know. No one has ever been able to return.”
“Point taken.” He tried to inspect himself but couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t feel anything either. It was as if he wasn’t even there and he said as much.
