“Now comes the Jesus part,” Ron said, elbowing Elaine. He was joking, of course. Pretty much the entire population had been exposed to an explanation in one form or another as to what had happened. Jesus was a popular one. Galactic Alignment was more obscure.
“The second significant change was the cessation of time,” he said. “This also defied rational science. When the Maya Long Count Calendar ended, the door to a new dimension—a timeless dimension—opened, and an incalculable number of persons passed through. For them—rather, for us—reality stood still.
“But for everyone else… reality went on as normal, except that now a percentage of the population had vanished. That would be Dimension A, or the normal dimension of space-time. The dimension we exist in, Dimension B, is outside of space-time.”
Ron grunted, stroking his chin. “That’s an interesting approach.”
“It’s like the Rapture,” Elaine said, prompting Diana to look at her. Diana hated when she mentioned Christian ideology. She had her own reasons for disliking it, namely its condemnation of homosexuality.
But Elaine was on to something. “Think about it,” she said. “If, on December 21, millions of people suddenly disappeared, then it would be just as the Bible predicted—the Rapture, God’s taking away of the saved.”
Ron grunted. “Yes but it remains to be determined who, in fact, are the raptured ones, and who are the damned. Both dimensions, arguably, could be considered hell on earth.”
The old man suddenly pointed at Elaine, his eyes burning into her. “You there. Who did you lose that day?”
She swallowed hard. Everyone was looking at her. “I lost my son, Jamie.”
He nodded, then put the same question to Diana. At first she didn’t answer, but at last she said, “Alonso, my husband.” Elaine noticed tears in her eyes.
The old man went around the crowd asking people to name who they had lost. There were so many. He finished by confessing that he had lost a daughter and a grandson on December 21.
He aimed his staff at the floating black door. “Which leads us to the phenomenon that has brought you all here. These Golden Doors we keep hearing about, what are they? Can anyone say for sure? What about these Black Doors?”
He chuckled; paused, as if thinking; then: “I, Bartholomew Radcliffe Elphinstones, stand here today claiming to know the answer, which I will share with all of you.”
A gasp swept through the crowd, but he silenced it with a wave of his staff. He said, “The doors—like the door that opened on December 21, 2012—are passageways between dimensions. The Black Doors lead to Hell for the soul, the pain of being, eternal suffering, a futile existence.”
“And the Golden Doors?” shouted someone.
“The Golden Doors lead to the Next Age—the Golden Age—the highest degree of human consciousness. They lead to paradise, the Garden of Eden, Heaven in the most profoundest sense of the word.”
“Which one leads to our old reality,” shouted another, “back to Dimension A?”
The old man gave a kooky, childlike grin… and shrugged his shoulders.
The crowd went berserk, and he was forced to thump his stick to regain order. When they had settled down, he summoned another man carrying a ladder. The ladder was set up in front of the Black Door.
“Come,” he said. “Who will be first to peer into the depths of human suffering?”
A number of hands shot up. A woman was selected and escorted to the front. Slowly, she started up the ladder.
“She can’t be allowed to do this,” Elaine said.
Diana reached down the front of her jeans to draw the gun, but Ron stayed her hand. “No. None of that.”
She gazed at him fiercely. “Why do they want to go through there? It’s suicide.”
“I do not think they’ll go through. They only want to have a look because they’re curious. Anyhow, it’s time for us to move along. We’ve seen enough.”
They turned as a unit, heading away from the crowd, out of the forest and through the tall grass. As they got back onto the highway an agonizing scream pierced the eerie calm and quickly died out.
Ron said merely, “Don’t look back; keep moving.”
And so they did.
* * *
They stopped in some small town to load up on supplies. They scored additional inhalers from a ratty young woman. All she wanted in return was for Ron to read to her from his book of English poetry and hold her in his arms for a while. She missed her father, she said. Ron happened to be his spitting image.
They crossed the Canadian border and continued north. Diana soon became a near-perfect shot with the pistol. Almost every day some psycho or nightmarish beast came running out of the trees. Diana could usually spot them a mile away and lay them flat with a single shot. Her precision helped conserve bullets.
Everywhere they went, people were talking about the Golden Doors. All claimed to have seen one, however none could disclose a location. Ron, Elaine, and Diana spent hours interrogating, interviewing, and listening to these folks. But they always came up empty-handed.
Then one day they met a man of Arab descent who spoke English and who looked quite out of place in a yellow cape, white fluffy pants, blue vest, and black turban. He was armed with a razor-sharp scimitar, which, sheathed in leather, lay flat against his thigh.
When they came upon him, he was lying off the side of the highway beside a fast food restaurant. He was dying. It was against their normal behavior, but Diana, who sympathized with ethnic peoples, persuaded Ron to give the man a dose from the inhaler. The medicine fixed him right up and in no time he was breathing normally.
He thanked them, introducing himself as Ahmed. He had once been an exchange student from Saudi Arabia, attending the university in Montreal, but now he wandered the dying forests like a nomad.
When they told him about the Golden Doors his eyes widened and he began recounting an experience he’d had in the woods. They’d heard similar tales enough times to know they were usually fabricated. However when Ahmed claimed to know an exact location of a Golden Door and even offered to lead them to it, they exchanged hopeful glances.
They traveled north up the highway for the next several weeks, braving the hardships of the wild, talking to each other and getting to know Ahmed. They told him everything they knew about the Golden Doors, and he listened carefully.
Then one day as the sun pierced the network of noxious clouds, he turned from his spot at the forefront and pointed into the trees. “There,” he said simply.
Elaine felt nervous leaving the highway. She had grown to like Ahmed, despite all of her inborn religious prejudices. She even
trusted him. Still, her father’s voice ran through her head. He’s a lousy sandnigger, Elaine. A terrorist. His God is murderous and vicious. He will betray you in the end.
She slowed to walk alongside Diana. Taking the young woman’s hand, she smiled.
“You OK?”
Elaine nodded. “Just nervous. And scared.”
“Me too.”
The highway had been cut into the side of a mountain, and the incline leading away from the asphalt was treacherous and ungainly. The higher they climbed, the more they struggled over bulging roots and loose terrain.
Ron remarked, “What in God’s name possessed you to come up here in the first place? Ahmed, still in the lead, looked back. Bits of foliage and grass covered his turban, and his long yellow cape was in tatters. “To be honest I was going to kill myself. I was looking for a very steep cliff to hurl myself over. I’d have done it, too, if not for that Golden Door. For some reason, when I came across it I saw everything in a different light. I felt I could go on if I kept my faith in Allah and remained strong. So instead of throwing myself off a cliff, I had a vision, and I decided to continue down the highway.”
“Surely you’d heard of the Golden Doors,” Ron said. “Why not go through?”
Ahmed chuckled. “Go through? My friend, that would require more strength than I alone possess.”
/>
* * *
The trek up the mountain lasted thirty minutes. Every step was a hazard and each level of elevation grew more distressing. The ground was like a bed of serpents and the trees were stony, petrified things, more mineral than living organism.
Elaine looked to the sky, to the vile green clouds hanging closer than ever, and wondered at their chances for survival. She wished they’d left their packs by the base of the mountain. Her shoulders were killing her.
At last they reached the top, which was rocky and craggy and covered in ash. Ahmed said, “We are here.” Elaine stopped and collapsed on the ground. Diana fell down beside her, and they held each other a moment, breathing noisily.
The Arab took a seat, but Ron remained standing. The philosopher had directed his gaze toward a clustering of ash-gray trees sprouting from the cliffs. “I see it,” he said. Abruptly, he started walking.
“Yes,” Ahmed agreed, “it is over by those trees.”
Elaine watched him go. Her excitement was building, but she needed a second to relax. She lay on her back, watching the sky. Orb-shaped amoebas the size of zeppelins moved through the dark-green cumuli. It reminded her of looking through a microscope.
Ahmed rose next, followed by Diana, and Elaine rose last, joining them by a row of ash-colored trees. Bolts of silent lightning cut the distant horizon.
Standing in the center of the trees, upright and attached to nothing, was the Golden Door.
Ahmed approached it, hand resting on the hilt of his scimitar. His reflection materialized in the metallic golden surface. He stood admiring his own image, tracing the contours of his face with his free hand.
“That day,” he said, “I was thinking about my wife and son, whom I miss so greatly. I had hoped that killing myself would reunite us. But then I saw this. I saw my face staring back at me forged in gold… and I knew I could not do it.”
The others gathered behind him, their faces also reflected in the door.
“Do you think it’s true?” Diana asked. “That it leads to a… Golden Age?”
Ron began to answer, when suddenly a noise—a fiercely insistent scraping—caused them to turn. They were surrounded, blocked at every direction.
“I knew this wouldn’t be easy,” Ron said.
Ahmed drew his scimitar, its metal clang ringing down the mountain. “Demons,” he said.
In the next instant Diana had raised her handgun, leveling it at the silent creatures. Elaine, gripped by fear, quickly patted down her pockets in search of a weapon but found nothing. “Jesus Christ, what are they?” she cried.
But no one answered.
The creatures, like the ones in the sky, reminded Elaine of the microscopic organisms she had studied in her college biology classes. They were round and lumpy, purple blotches housed in warbling cellular walls, like amoebas yet with zinging orbs of light inside them.
“These are the demons mentioned in the Koran,” Ahmed said. “They are the enemies of mankind, of Allah. They wish to stop people from going through the Golden Doors. But they will not stop me this time.” He swung around, grasped the sparkling gold doorknob, and began to turn it.
The creatures released a keening moan, an irritating, animalistic howl. Their strange, amoebic bodies began to open, revealing cavities of sharp teeth. In the next instant they were gliding forward on a current of air.
“Shit!” Diana screamed. She began to fire. She caught the first three effortlessly, slicing off big watery chunks, which flopped on the ground and wriggled there like dying fish. The holes she opened in their bodies were quickly covered over again by warbling cellular wall.
Ahmed shouted something in Arabic as two bounced over the boulders to nearly land on top of him. They hopped back and forth, squishing off the ground like animated water balloons. Ahmed swung at them with his scimitar, its lightning-shaped blade arcing above his head. Their teeth gnashed, caught on his blade, producing sparks and clanging sounds.
He spun around behind them, slicing and chopping at their liquid backs, sending pieces of them raining upon the ground. He came around front, still swinging his blade and taking off more until he’d reduced them to tiny portions, which were beginning to evaporate. He shouted again in Arabic, “Death to Pharaoh and his demons!” raising the sword triumphantly.
Diana, meanwhile, was firing and reloading as fast as she could. Each time a bullet struck one of the creatures, it sent a piece flying and the thing was thrown back several feet. Stunned, it then sat there a moment, as if confused, before advancing again. Because of this, she’d been able to keep them at bay, however dozens more were approaching.
Elaine was suddenly tortured with fear for her lover’s safety. “Diana!” she cried.
The young woman glanced over her shoulder, still firing. “Go now! Get through the door, I’ll bring up the rear!”
Ron’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. She looked at him, and he was nodding. “Come,” he said. “We must let her do the killing and escape while we can. There is no time.”
“But what about…” She choked back a sob, and Ron began leading her away.
Ahmed was already in front of the Golden Door, half a dozen amoebic creatures bouncing toward him.
Why the hell did he sheath his weapon? Elaine thought. Why isn’t he helping Diana?—
Outrage flooded her. Her blood boiled as she witnessed him open the door, slip through, and close it without so much as a glance in their direction. For a split second while the door had been open, a sliver of brilliant white light poured through.
The creatures went crazy, bouncing up and down, coming out of the crags and the trees, issuing their awful keening wails. Elaine realized it was their battle cry.
Told you the sandnigger would betray you, her father whispered in her head. She stopped and let go of Ron’s hand.
If only you’d listen to me, your father, the one who loves you, the one who introduced you to Christ’s love. But you don’t. Instead you push your face into the crotch of some slutty woman, carrying on as if this were Sodom and Gomorrah. But don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll be praying for you.
Ron glanced at her. “What’s the matter? We have to keep moving.”
“Did you see him?” she snarled. “That dirty Arab went through without us. He left us to die!”
Ron looked around and registered Ahmed’s absence. “He was our guide,” he said. “That’s all. We can expect nothing more. Our main concern is getting through the door—now come on.”
He took her wrist, pulling her behind. When they reached the door, he drew her close and said, “I’ll go first, but I want you coming right after me.”
“What about Diana?”
“She can handle herself.”
He swung around, placing his hand on the doorknob. His tall, regal reflection stared back. When he opened the door, there was a feeling like an earthquake passing through the ground. The lightning flashed and fresh thunder boomed. Ron’s silhouette framed by the door was engulfed in white light.
“Make sure you follow!” he cried, stepping forward. Then he was gone.
Light continued to spill through the opening, bathing the area, rejuvenating the dead trees and the parched earth. At once everything began growing back green again.
The creatures shrieked and recoiled. They swarmed Diana, gathering about her, gnashing their teeth and lunging. She fired in endless succession, making cheesecloth of the watery bodies, reloading with the speed of Annie Oakley, and Elaine felt so proud of her.
“Go on, girl, get going!” Diana yelled. “I can’t hold them off forever!”
“I love you,” Elaine whispered.
Then she turned toward the Golden Door and her heartbeat was like the hooves of wild horses. The light falling over her was soft, warm, and comforting. Yes, she belonged to that light. She felt safe in it.
Stepping forward, she squinted her eyes, eventually having to close them completely. She continued blindly, the warm light spreading through her, filling her, h
ealing her.
I’m made of it, she thought. We’re one, this light and I. Now I’m heading into The Golden Age, into Heaven. And this is home…
Some uncontrollable impulse made her look back just before she passed through. She opened her eyes and saw Diana fighting off dozens of the amoebic creatures. She saw the gun knocked from Diana’s hand, saw the rest of the creatures pounce on her, saw them tear into her flesh and fill the air with blood.
And yet she couldn’t feel sad about it. Couldn’t feel pain, sorrow, or regret. She felt only oneness, inner connectivity, and a union with the divine. She caught a glimpse of a world full of love, of human beings frolicking together in the manner of children, where there was no war, no hatred, and no more death.
She peered eyelessly through the bright white light, her body evaporating and becoming pure ether, like a transparent vessel. She could barely make out the amorphous profiles of Ron and the Arab just ahead of her, moving as if through water. Both extended ghostly receptions to her.
At that moment mercy descended, and as she greeted them she suddenly felt like she was home again—really home—back in a world of goodness and virtue, a world she once knew well, but which she had been ripped from ages ago.
Then her father’s voice—that plague-demon always in her thoughts, chastising her every action—simply went away, receding as if it were a breaking wave gliding back down the shore. She stopped hearing his judgmental words about the Arab, her sexual preferences, and her love of Diana, and she stopped hearing his endless Bible quoting and his mean, condemning remarks.
She felt okay with herself. She just simply felt okay.
Finally.
And as she took hold of Ron’s hands, she realized she had never been so much at peace.
PALADIN
The Holy One: a beauty and a demoiselle. Lives in the house on the green hill, at the end of the road through rugged wilderness, full of clumping cypress and bushy spruce, where the crest of the hill appears to merge with the horizon; she stands on the balcony of her large wood-and-brick home, surveying the surrounding forests and the farther ocean beyond. Circles of black and white birds wheel in the sky. Her long reddish hair gets pulled by the wind.
Aberrations of Reality Page 14
