by David Beers
Christian finally turned and looked at the building. At his mansion.
It was a paradox that he didn’t understand, yet he looked on all the same.
He stared at a single story house. It was a hundred yards off, maybe more. He hadn’t seen this house before; it wasn’t the one he grew up in with his mother. It wasn’t anything he’d seen in Luke’s past either. It was simply a house, one that might have been built in any lower middle class neighborhood across the country. A blue collar house, where people woke up daily and went to work, came home, then ate dinner with their family.
All of the rooms? How do they fit inside?
Christian held no false notion that this wasn’t his mansion; he knew it was, a priori.
He didn’t want to go to it, but there was nothing else here. He could walk across the fields, but he knew that to do so would lead him nowhere. He built this place to protect himself, and the fields wouldn’t end, or if they ever did, it would be on the other side of this house. He would simply look all the way back around.
So Christian started walking toward the house, toward what had once existed as a mansion—or at least he thought it had. And, as he walked closer, the gap between him and it drew smaller—the house shrinking. Either that, or it had never been as big as it looked in the first place, but it came to the same. The closer Christian got, the smaller the house was.
At about 50 yards out, Christian thought he was nearly as tall as it.
He kept going, watching as it shrank or he grew larger—he didn’t know which. A minute or so later, he arrived, seeing it wasn’t even up to his knees. It looked like a dollhouse, something a child might play with.
Christian saw straight over it, looking at the dead fields in front of him. He turned around, checking to make sure that everything was the same behind him.
He couldn’t go inside the mansion even if he wanted. There was no way he could fit into the tiny front door beneath him. He did the only thing he could think of: he went to his knees, and realizing that still wasn’t low enough, he laid down on his stomach. Christian was finally at eye level with it. The curtains were drawn on the inside, so that he couldn’t see in, but the front door was there. He reached forward, his hand nearly too big to grasp the tiny door handle. He used two fingers and finally got hold of it.
Christian pulled.
The door didn’t open.
Christian laughed, his breath hitting the dirt beneath him and sending plumes into the air, surrounding the tiny house.
First, the goddamn thing had collapsed around him, and now it wouldn’t even let him in.
Christian pulled again, but the door didn’t budge. He looked at it, slight anger arising in him. He could stand up and smash it to bits if he wanted, simply bring his foot down on the roof. Two times and the structure he’d built would be only splinters.
But he wouldn’t do that. If the thing collapsed around his head or refused to let him in, he wouldn’t destroy it. He’d spent far too much time building it to go about breaking it. If the mansion now had a new master, or was its own master, then so be it.
He would let it stand.
Christian rolled over on his back and stared up at the sky. Rain was coming, a storm in fact. Dark clouds moved slowly across the sky, blotting out the sun. Christian could see them in the distance, the clouds were darker out there, but they were moving toward him.
Had he ever seen rain in his mansion? He didn’t think so. The weather outside had never played into what happened inside the building.
Christian didn’t feel frightened of the coming storm. Perhaps it would drown him. He wasn’t allowed in his mansion and he certainly had no wish to live in the real world. To drown underneath this coming flood might be the best thing for him.
Christian awoke on his side, his eyes looking at the wall in front of him.
He sensed someone was behind him, but he didn’t turn over. He knew who it was.
“How do you feel?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know.”
“The apparitions, have they stopped?”
Christian nodded, still staring at the wall.
“I told you they would.”
The two were silent for a moment. Christian’s head hadn’t been this clear in what felt like years. He heard nothing, saw nothing—just the simple stillness of the barren room.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“They’re beneath ground. Don’t worry, not buried. This place has a basement of sorts, tunnels and such. Survivalists built it years ago.”
“When did you purchase it?” Christian asked, unsure why it mattered, but a question that had simply fluttered to the top of his mind.
“Some time during the last decade. I told my accountant to find houses with certain parameters and buy them.”
“You have several like this?” Christian asked.
“Yes.”
“We never found them, Tommy and I. They weren’t in any records.”
“No,” Luke said. “They aren’t.”
Again silence. Luke waiting on him and Christian unsure of what to do. Finally, he sat up, pushing his back against the wall. He looked at Luke standing in front of the window. The sun cast light all around him, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I brought them. They’re here. I’m here.”
“It’s important that you see things with a certain amount of clarity before we continue. I’d like to spend a few days with you, just you and I, Christian. Everyone you brought here is perfectly safe. No harm will befall them unless you say it should. Can we do that?”
Christian’s eyes narrowed as he fought to see through the shadow the sun created on Luke. It was tough to views his eyes, whether they were gleeful or calm. Maybe they held the rage that Christian had seen in the asylum.
Why does it matter what his eyes look like? You know your decision. You’ve known it since the first time you showed up at his house, knocking on his door and wanting to talk to him. Of course you’ll spend days with him, Christian. You’ll spend years. You were made for him, and perhaps, he for you.
Christian closed his eyes, a determined wave of depression rolling across him. He had found out who he was, finally. He wouldn’t tell Luke no, and they both knew it. Luke asked his question and then remained in silence, but they both already knew the answer.
“Okay,” he said with his eyes closed and tears behind them. “Okay, Luke.”
They spent the first night in the desert. Luke built a fire among the dunes and mountains, grabbing dead wood from great distances. Christian hunted for wood too, both taking part, but Luke seemed to have a knack for discovering exactly what was needed.
The night grew cold and the two sat in the darkness, their small fire fighting hard against it. Neither of them spoke until dinner was finished. It was as if neither wanted to break the fragile peace that they both felt. They didn’t ask what they should do, they simply did it, operating on some wavelength that could not be seen nor measured.
They ate, and then sat in front of the fire.
“You’re feeling better?” Luke asked.
Christian nodded.
“The apparitions?”
“Gone,” Christian said.
The two fell silent again, listening to the wood popping in the fire before them.
“Why did you choose me, Luke? Out of everyone in this world, why did you choose me to do this to?”
Fire reflected in Luke’s eyes, dancing across them like a cabaret woman. “I did and I didn’t. I truly was going to let you die inside Bradley Brown’s house. You were a side project. I was going to manipulate you some and then let you die, mainly because if there was anyone who could figure me out, it was you. Keeping you around would have been ill advised.” Luke chuckled, still looking at the fire. “And then, before I let Brown kill you all, I thought, why not see how far this goes?”
He looked up.
Christian didn’t. “That’s no
t an answer to my question.”
“I know. After I killed Brown, my choices were stripped from me. Not all at once, but slowly they disappeared. The more I came to know you, the more I understood that I needed you.”
“Why?”
“And that’s the question isn’t it, Christian? The one that we’ve come all these years to answer. Don’t you know it yet?”
Christian shook his head.
“Then it’s not time.”
“That’s not fair,” Christian said.
“What in life is?”
“My mother.”
“So was mine,” Luke answered. “But, life was unfair to her.”
Christian still didn’t remove his eyes from the burning wood in front of him. The flames licked and tasted, finding the nourishment to its liking.
“And so life must be unfair to mine, is that what has to happen?”
“I didn’t want it to, but yes, I think that is the case.”
“Can you tell me why for that?” Christian asked.
“It rests on you. You refuse to free yourself from the chains cast on you. I had hoped Tommy might set you loose, but he didn’t. Not truly. The only thing powerful enough is your mother, because then you hold no more allegiances, to anyone.”
“I’ve seen Tommy.”
“Now?” Luke asked.
“No. But since I let you escape, I’ve seen him. He’s one dimensional, missing the complexities of life, but it’s still a part of him. All he thinks about is killing you. Nothing else is important. He is pissed that I let you go.”
“Perhaps that’s not so far off from who he was at the end,” Luke said. “I’m not sure much else consumed him besides finding and killing me. You two were the same in that.”
“And yet, here I am, having found you, but not killing you.”
“Now, Christian,” Luke said, “you tell me why that is.”
Silence fell across the pair. Minutes passed with neither daring to speak. One could only wait and the other only think. A lonesome coyote howled somewhere in the distance, perhaps alerting his pack to food, or perhaps only laying claim to its territory.
“I don’t know if I have a choice any more, Luke.” Tears rested in his voice and his eyes. “If I’m not around you, I lose my mind. I can’t tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t. It’s all real, I guess, in my head.”
“You could kill yourself,” Luke said.
“I almost did, until my mom brought me to you at the hospital. And now, you’re asking her to pay a price for that.”
“You could still kill yourself, Christian. Why don’t you think of that as a viable option?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You do. You just don’t want to confront it. That is your chain. That is the weight that holds you down, that won’t let you finally rise and take your place next to me. But you must confront it, Christian. You must come to see why you refuse to kill yourself. Why you won’t kill me.”
The two were quiet for a long time. Perhaps hours. Luke and Christian alternatively fed the fire, and as the night grew later, Luke stood and went to his sleeping bag. “We have time, Christian. Sleep.”
Luke rarely dreamed. Indeed, he rarely slept at all, which is a prerequisite to dreaming. The night in the desert was no different. He lay awake for a long, long time, looking up at the sky. The fire burned down next to him, its glow dying. He listened to Christian’s breath for a while, hearing it nearly as well as any predator that stalked the lands around him.
Luke thought upon that for a while. The gifts bestowed on him. It was another reason he thought God might have been looking for a fight. Alan Waverly could think him insane. The entire world, in fact. None of that mattered to Luke; he recognized that no one ever truly thought they were insane, but that was inconsequential as well. Nonessential, even. Luke had been granted near superpowers, both in his mental and physical abilities. He knew with certainty, that he could have played sports professionally. Could have dominated them, in fact.
All of these things, combined into one human being—and then given a life such as he. That is the problem he had with people who both believed in God, and yet thought Luke delusional. If God existed, and his hand touched everything, then what else was Luke supposed to do but take up this mantle and challenge his very existence? God’s authority. There were no other options available to him. If God existed, then this was the natural reaction to that existence, given everything put inside of Luke and placed before him.
So God had wanted this fight.
Perhaps if Luke was crazy, it was in accepting the bout.
Luke thought about the dying fire, too.
His mind drifted to death, and how many times both he and Christian had escaped its clutches. In what world could that possibly take place? Only in one where God had arranged things a certain way, one that would put the three of them on a collision course.
Luke would die, and so would Christian. One day. Yet, they had tomorrow, that much appeared to be promised. Luke believed though, with the same surety that he held about everything else in his life, that the two of them had many years left—and in those years, God would come to regret his earlier decision.
Was it boredom that made God do this? Was he tired of his throne and looking for a challenger, one that he couldn’t find in the vast universes? Luke didn’t know. God gave him no more answers now than he had in his brother’s hospital.
Luke’s vision of God was not that of the Bible’s. God did not create the universe. No, such a being as that couldn’t be challenged. God was a creature like any other, finding himself in a vast and unexplained blackness. His womb had been different than Luke’s, but it had existed all the same. He did create much inside this universe, perhaps in others as well, but eventually, everything must change.
Luke was that change.
Christian was that change.
Christian saw Luke as cruel for what was coming (and it would come, Luke held no doubt now), but just as God had changed Luke, Luke must change Christian.
The night wound on and Luke continued thinking. He had looked at God as his nemesis for so long that it felt awkward to think of him as anything else. Maybe, though, God was ready to step away from his throne. Maybe that was the overall purpose of all this, and in the end, Luke was simply playing his role. If that was the case, had he been duped? Was he a pawn in a grander scheme?
It was a futile thought, because it no longer mattered. The choice had been made long ago and now he was here, lying in this desert.
Luke closed his eyes hours after Christian had finally dozed.
He let sleep embrace him, silencing his resting mind, ready for the next day—and days, if need be.
In the desert, the sky was clear and the night calm.
In Christian’s mind, the world was anything but.
Clouds crackled with thunder and lightning overhead—loud bangs ripping across the very fabric of where Christian stood. He looked up in awe, the lightning illuminating what was happening above him. The electrical shocks didn’t just shoot for the field, but also directly up into the sky. He didn’t know what it aimed at, nor what it hit, but the aftereffects were incredible.
The sky rippled and stretched with each explosion, looking like it might actually split open. Christian had thought his mansion would collapse, but now it was only a small house that sat beside him. As he looked at the world surrounding him now, he thought its very existence might be …
Destroyed.
Only that wasn’t the right word. Because he didn’t know what lay outside that dark sky. When he was inside his mansion, he understood that collapse meant destruction, but that might not be the case out here.
Its very existence might simply change …
There had been fear when he watched the mansion collapsing. He had feared destruction, because with that came death. Was change to be feared though?
Lightning struck out across the sky, but not vertically—neither up nor
down. Instead, it ripped horizontally, flying a thousand miles in a second, slamming into some dark border Christian could only see because of the bolt. Sparks flew and again the ripples spread outward.
The world feared change. Indeed, that was the entire reason for the existence of religion. There is no need to fear what might come, because something is looking out for you. Something cares deeply. Something will always be there, even when everything around you is in constant flux.
But should I fear this? Christian wondered as he stared up at the sky. Whatever is happening here, it’s happening in my mind. I’m asleep, but I’m also awake. This isn’t even lucid dreaming. This is something far beyond that.
I don’t feel afraid, though.
For so long he had never felt any fear in this place, and then with Luke’s introduction (even if Christian hadn’t been aware of it), fear had suddenly taken hold of his mind just as it did in the outside world.
Yet now, as he looked at something he didn’t understand, he felt …
What? What is it you feel?
Curiosity.
And … peace?
What does that mean? Are you okay with what’s going to happen? Are you okay with the death that Luke—and you, don’t even deny it—have planned?
He had no answers as more lightning raged.
Christian turned and looked at the small building, the dollhouse that had once loomed so large in his mind.
“Will you let me in?” he whispered, though his words were drowned in the coming storm.
It gave no answer either.
While Luke slept in peace, Christian stood looking up at the black sky, punctuated by terrific bolts of white fire, feeling oddly at peace, too.
The two woke the next morning in silence. They cleaned up after themselves, put their backpacks on, and walked deeper into the desert. The sun granted them no quarter, and each of them wore large hats and slathered on sunscreen. They stopped often, sitting down in the sand and drinking water. The travel was slow, but progress was made, if progress could have no destination in mind.
Christian didn’t know where they were going, and if Luke did, he gave no indication. The only purpose seemed to be to walk.
