“You can’t blame us, then,” Ellen said indignantly. “If he had taken our advice, he’d still be alive, now wouldn’t he?”
“We can’t know that,” Cyrus said. “Another path might well have ultimately led to the same regrettable end, or a far less heroic one. And those whose lives he saved, may not have fared so well either. Who can say for sure?”
“So, then either way it’s a good thing we never started dating, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If you two had gotten together, who knows how that might have altered the course of events? He was an excellent match for you.”
“Oh, come on, so now I’m to believe that you possess some sort of supernatural matchmaking powers? Sorry, buster, but parapsychology doesn’t cover that ability.”
“Maybe it should,” Cyrus said.
“So you don’t deny it? You actually have the audacity to think you possess extra-special insights into people’s love lives?”
“Let’s just say I’ve had a lot of experience in that field.”
39
Dear Diary
Ellen groaned. “Oh, please. I’m really not interested in your love life. I don’t doubt that you have racked up quite a list of conquests, but I really couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t speak of myself,” Cyrus said. “I have no interest in conquering anyone.”
“Well, my love life is none of your business,” Ellen snipped. “Besides, how should I have known way back then about Tim? I was young and clueless.”
Cyrus nodded. “You most certainly were. Clueless, I mean. More clueless than you will ever know. I suspect that had you overcome your fear demons, you might well have married him. I believe you’d have been very happy together. And, that would have been a really fine thing for you, and for the world.”
Ellen gaped at the mysterious stranger. Her stare elicited a smile from Cyrus, who merely shrugged in reconfirmation of his outrageous statements.
“My gawd,” Ellen said, crossing her arms. “Does your arrogance know no bounds? My demons? What could you possibly know about my ‘demons?’”
“Everyone has them, wouldn’t you agree?”
“First of all, this is the 21st century. We don’t talk about demons. Of course, everyone has certain psychological issues that need addressing, but that you think you could know mine without ever having met me is stunningly pretentious.”
“You don’t talk about fear demons. But you have seen them.”
“I most certainly have not,” Ellen retorted.
“At Jill Taylor’s wedding. You sensed things. They gave you goosebumps.”
“What I observed was what happens when people mix large quantities of alcohol, testosterone, sugar, and bad music.”
Cyrus ignored her protest. “Afterwards, at Starbucks, you asked Professor Matterson if he believed in ghosts.”
“How do you know these things?” Ellen said, confounded and feeling the return of her goosebumps. “You weren’t at the wedding. You weren’t at the Starbucks.”
“I just do.”
“Yeah? Well, for a guy who claims amnesia, you sure have a good memory.”
“For some things, I suppose.”
“What do you want from me?”
Cyrus leaned in closer to her. “I want you to follow your heart, slay your demons, and save the world.”
“What?” Ellen squawked, staggered by such a bizarre mix of accusation and assumption. “You are not asking much, are you?”
“I realize that I’m asking quite a lot. But I also know that God never gives us more than we can handle.”
“Oh, please,” Ellen groaned, offended by his platitude. “That’s a thought-terminating cliché.”
“And so is that,” Cyrus grinned.
“What does God have to do with any of this?”
“God has everything to do with everything, in His inscrutable way.”
“Yackety-yack,” Ellen said with a bored roll of her eyes. “I’ve seen some three-hundred and fifty weirdos traipse into my office in the past couple of weeks, but you are the first to claim divine knowledge. Wait, no, the second. Do you speak to aliens too?”
“No.”
“Just checking.” She paused, and then asked, “Do you believe in aliens?”
“I’ve never seen or met such a creature.”
“So, you view yourself as some sort of prophet then, is that it?”
“Huh? No! God forbid I should ever make such a claim.”
Ellen found herself being drawn into Cyrus’s pellucid, sincere eyes, and had to shake her head to snap the trance. She cleared her throat.
“How do you know these things you say you know? Where do you get your information?”
“Isn’t that your job? I saw your flyer posted nearby, and thought I’d see you to learn if I fit into one of the categories in which you are an expert.”
“Unlike you, I don’t claim to be an expert. I’m merely a researcher.”
Cyrus brushed off Ellen’s peevish jab with a smile. “I’m a researcher too.”
“What are you researching?”
“You,” he answered.
“Well, stop it. You don’t have my permission. And frankly, you creep me out.”
She was going to add something about calling the police or getting a restraining order, but she didn’t. She didn’t because he didn’t frighten her. His demeanor was so artless, almost childlike, that fear never entered her mind.
Only now did she take notice that her dog, Carl, had slipped from the couch to sidle next to Cyrus, and that Cyrus had been stroking the dog for the past few minutes. She knew that Carl was a friendly dog, but he never went looking for affection from strangers. This too confirmed for her that the man before her was harmless.
“I apologize if I ‘creep you out.’ That is certainly not my intention.” He kissed the dog on the snout and stood. “I’ll go now.” He took a step towards the door. The dog whimpered and followed him.
“He likes you,” Ellen said, thinking of no other way to stall the stranger. “It’s almost as if he knows you.”
“Maybe he does,” Cyrus said, turning.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Dogs are very perceptive. They see things that we can’t.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not a dog, so I can’t answer that.”
Ellen stood and faced Cyrus. “I wish you hadn’t come.”
“I can see that, so I’m leaving now.”
“What I mean is,” she said, stuffing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, “I was ready to abandon my project and move on. But you had to come in here at the last second to mess up my plans.”
“Are you telling me that you want to continue our research?”
“Our research?”
Cyrus grinned. “Why should you have all the fun?”
“I’m not the one claiming paranormal powers.”
“Neither am I.”
“That you could know such details about my past is not normal, I can assure you.”
“Maybe you kept a diary and I somehow had gotten a hold of it,” Cyrus offered.
“Those things you told me were not in my diary.”
“You’re right, they weren’t,” Cyrus said. “You didn’t begin your diary until one month after the incident in the cafeteria with Timothy Cooper. And you weren’t very consistent at it either. You never wrote in it more than twice a week, and when you got to college it dwindled to once a month, and by the time you were twenty-four, you had ceased writing in it altogether.” He paused and said, “Shall I continue?”
Ellen opened her mouth to answer, but only nodded.
“At age twenty-six,” Cyrus resumed, “fearful that someone may one day find and read your diaries, and feeling ashamed of what they revealed about you, you threw them into the bathtub to make sure they would be unreadable. Every entry had been written in a fountain pen that you had received from your grandfather for Christmas. You figured that the
ink would surely wash away. Afterwards, you put the soggy diaries into a plastic garbage bag and tossed the bag into a dumpster. But not the dumpster near your home. One a mile from your home. A little paranoid, weren’t you?”
Ellen could no longer pretend that the man before her hadn’t been speaking the truth all along. “How could you know such things?”
Cyrus smiled. “That is the point of your research, is it not?”
40
Crossroads
“Did you have to tie it so tight?” Virgil said.
“We’re almost there,” I answered, leading my blindfolded friend through the forest. I had purposely taken a confusingly winding route to ensure that Virgil would be unable to retrace his steps.
“Why couldn’t you just tell me what you have to say?”
“Words can only go so far,” I said. “Okay, stand here. Don’t move, and don’t touch the blindfold, or else.”
Virgil, who had the strength and build of Samson, laughed. “Or else what?”
“You don’t want to find out,” I said confidently.
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Virgil mocked. “Why all the secrecy?”
“Relax. You’ll have your answers soon enough.”
I cleared away a thick covering of leaves, located the iron ring, and yanked up the heavy wooden hatch. Like always, torches blazed up along the wall’s spiraling staircase.
“Okay, Virgil,” I said guiding him to the entrance. “You’re going to step down onto a stone staircase. Hold on to the wall next to you, descend five steps, and wait for me to join you. I’ll be right above you.”
Virgil did as ordered, and I closed the hatch behind me. I walked down to him and undid the blindfold. Virgil looked around in amazement.
“Cool,” he said. “Where are we?”
“You’ll see. Keep going.”
We continued down the rest of the steps until we reached the bottom, whereupon we proceeded through a tunnel that led some twenty yards to the Midrashic Cave.
“There’s nothing here,” Virgil said. “It’s a dead end.”
“Not the end. The beginning. Push on this granite block.”
“Are you joking? It must weigh ten tons!”
“Come on, muscles,” I said. “Show me your stuff.”
Virgil stepped up to the massive stone and gave it a mighty push. Nothing.
“Put some shoulder into it,” I said, parroting Cyrus’s own taunting words to me.
Virgil braced his shoulder against the stone and pushed with all he had. After a few seconds, he gave up.
“Impossible,” he declared.
“Yeah? Stand aside, weakling.”
I set the palm of my hands on the block, put myself in the proper frame of mind, and murmured the secret Aramaic phrase the requisite three times in three different orders. With a steady, light push, the granite door surrendered to my will, revealing the cave behind it.
“How’d you—?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I grinned. “Come on.”
We entered and Virgil looked around the chamber of polished granite with wide-eyed wonder. He walked over to one of the walls and ran his hand against it.
“Smooth,” he purred. “Where is this strange light coming from?” He waved his arm through its sparkling iridescence. “It’s like a bright fog or something.”
“Or something,” I said. I pointed to the center of the room. “Sit.” He did as told, and I sat cross-legged on the cool stone floor across from him.
“How long has this place been here?” he asked, still marveling at his surroundings.
I chuckled to myself. We were having the same conversation that I had had with Captain Cyrus. “No one knows,” I said. “But at least as long as there have been cupids.”
“How long has that been?”
“As long as there has been love.”
“What is this place?”
“The Cave of the Midrasha.”
“Who was he? I never heard of the guy.”
“Not a who; a what. From here, one can access the Midrashic Records, an archive containing all the lives of every human being that ever lived.”
“Get out of here,” Virgil said, dismissing my words with a wave of his hand. “There is nothing in here. Or is it hiding behind one of these walls?”
“The only wall it is hiding behind is the one in your mind.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to show you something,” I said. “But before I do, you must make me a solemn oath that you will not share what I am about to show you with anyone else, and I mean anyone. If you want out of your oath, tell me now. And remember that a cupid’s vow is sacred.”
“Of course I won’t tell anyone.”
“Today never happened,” I reiterated.
“Yes, Kohai. I got it. You have my word.”
I raised my right hand and Virgil raised his. We pressed our open hands against one another’s to seal the oath.
“I’m going to take you on a little journey, Virge.”
“We won’t be going far,” he cracked, indicating the size of the chamber.
“You’re right,” I said. “It will be a short journey, because you are not prepared for anything longer than a few minutes. But I guarantee you that the distance we cover will be greater than a few feet.”
Virgil squinted at me in puzzlement, his mind jumping about in an attempt to understand what the heck I could be talking about.
I said, “You think that we were born with truth, that it’s a part of our very essence, and that we can know nothing other than truth. I’m going to show you that that is incorrect. I am going to show you that Eros is a putz.”
Virgil gasped. He looked around the chamber; horror-stricken that someone might have heard my blasphemy.
“Kohai, take that back right now!”
“Why?”
“You can’t speak that way about Eros!”
“A putz and a schmuck.”
“Kohai!”
“Calm down, Virgil. He can’t hear me.”
“He can’t?” he said, looking at the thick walls as if they might be sound proof.
“No, and it’s not because we’re in an underground chamber. Virgil, there is no Eros. There never was, and there never will be.”
Virgil looked at me in trepidation. I read his mind and quickly saw that his alarm was not so much at my cavalier sacrilege, but at the fear that I might be right. An angel was having an existential crisis before my very eyes. For Virgil, if there was no Eros, then who was Virgil? What was Virgil? He knew he was created to serve, but what was a servant without a master?
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
“I’m…I’m not—”
“You are. But don’t worry. I was too when I first learned the truth. You are not alone, Virgil. Do not fear.”
After a long moment he said, “Now what?”
I knelt behind him. I placed one hand on the crown of his head and the other around his solar plexus, just as Captain Cyrus had done to me.
“Close your eyes. Relax and breathe, slowly and deeply.”
“What are—?”
“Shush! Your questions will soon be meaningless anyway.”
“But—”
I popped Virgil on the head.
“Ow! Okay, okay…”
“Allow what I am about to tell you to permeate your consciousness,” I began, heat emanating from my hands. “Don’t think, just hear. As I speak you will become more and more relaxed…
“We are sinking into a deep calm. Without thoughts, without words. We are lifted on the wings of eagles and hover circling above the clouds. The north and the south are ours; the east and the west are ours. We are bigger, much bigger, and greater, much greater, than we ever thought…”
Virgil’s spiritual energy was so low that I had to, in a sense, carry him piggyback as I flitted up into the ethereal vastness of the Midrashic archives. I could feel him holding onto my astral body for dear life. I couldn�
�t see his face, but I knew his mind, and it was filled with wonder, and questions.
Fearing for Virgil’s safety, I didn’t want to spend too much time at such elevations, and so I planned to give him only a glimpse at a mere scintilla of what was contained in the Midrasha. I chose a record at random, a glistening jewel that caught my eye not far from where I was hovering.
I zipped over and accessed it to give Virgil a taste of what one looked like. Upon activating the record, we were introduced to a holographic-like form of a typical, young American woman. The record opened in the most recent present, and was continually updated second by second in real time.
The young lady was a waitress, and we came onto the scene as she was delivering pastrami and corned beef sandwiches to a couple of businessmen at a busy delicatessen. She was a pretty gal with short black hair, stunning blue eyes, and a winsome smile. It was a smile that would surely help earn her a good tip from the two businessmen who were trying to chat her up.
I demonstrated to Virgil how, if we cared to, we could switch to the record of either man and begin examining it by merely tapping the guy’s forehead. I also showed him how the six degrees of separation could work, and breezed through hundreds of ‘snapshots’ that linked to the young woman. I did the same with one of the men, rifling through his past to reveal how thousands of lives were, in a cosmic kind of way, brought together in just this one simple setting alone.
Next, I stroked the glowing, plum-sized crystal to show how I could scroll backwards into the woman’s past—an hour, a day, a week, a year—back all the way to the very womb that birthed her. I explained to Virgil how especially useful it was for us to view an individual at specific crossroads in his or her life; moments when major, free-willed decisions were made.
Such decisions, I informed him, were indicative of a person’s spiritual and mental make up—that their choices contained moral consequences, and that the moral is the real. The truly important decisions that determined an individual’s destiny, I told him, always contained an element of the moral: a choice between right or wrong, good or bad, elevation or descent, courage or cowardice, faith or faithlessness.
Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Book 1: Hell-bent (Shooting Eros Series) Page 25
