Morningstar

by A. J. Curry

  Responding to Case’s emails in a way that meant I might have a job when this was all over took some time and thought, but I eventually realized I didn’t really care and just hit “send”. The neighbors who have my spare key/front-door security code and a fondness for cats were next, to make sure the fuzzy little bastards didn’t starve if I didn’t make it back.

  I almost sent an email to Caroline’s last known good email address, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that I hadn’t said already back when she would still write me back. I could tell her that the idea of dying without ever seeing her again was the most lost and lonely feeling I’d ever had, but there wasn’t much reason to believe it would matter.

  I rummaged around in the trunk containing my old field gear, found a few things that still worked that might come in handy. When I’d done everything else I could do except have a drink I didn’t really need, I said goodbye to the kitties, jumped in the old Porsche, and headed off to whatever the hell I was heading off to.

  ten: murgenstaern

  There was a highway not far from my mountain, a diner on the highway not far from Murphy’s home. It was there I had asked him to meet me.

  I found him there in a back booth, drinking black coffee and staring at nothing in particular from under the bill of a nondescript black baseball cap. “I guess the ‘squatch got all taken care of?” he said as I sat.

  “Most certainly,” I said, sitting in the opposite side of the booth. “I don’t think he will be slipping into town again anytime soon.”

  “That probably makes two of us.”

  “You can still stand down from this.”

  “No, I can’t. So, what’s next?”

  “Just to confirm. The facility you describe as ‘Area Fifty Whatever’ is a location you can find?”

  “Yup. I checked while I was logged into The Company network. They haven’t moved it − still Northern Nevada. It’s not the easiest place in the world to get into, but this…” He pulled a plastic ID badge from his pocket. “This gets me in.”

  “What gets me in?” I asked.

  He rummaged in his pocket, produced a second item. “Guest badge. I’m not supposed to have these, but they do come in handy.”

  “Do you have a full tank of gas?”

  “That too.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Murphy laughed. “Unless you have another trick or two up your sleeve, it’s still a twelve hour drive.”

  “Show me the route.” Murphy pulled a computer tablet from his bag, handed it to me. I made a couple of adjustments, handed it back.

  “That’s more like sixteen hours − and that last stretch ain’t exactly a road”

  “As you say… I have a trick or two.”

  I waited until we were east of the Cascades and the sun was low in the sky. “Is this a fast car?” I asked.

  “It’s old, but it’s still a Porsche, dude. It’s as fast as you want it to be.”

  “In that case, please drive as fast as you possibly can.”

  “It’s as fast as you want it to be on a good road − this ain’t a good road.”

  “Trust me on this. And please take no offense if I am slow to answer further questions. This takes a fair amount of my attention.”

  As he increased his speed, I focused my attention on three things: The car’s engine, it’s contact with the road, and the road ahead to ensure nothing obstructed our way. After a while, Murphy realized what I was doing and sped up even more.

  Then more.

  The forests gave way to fields that soon became desert, the night sky clear and stark above us. Even with my attention and my powers engaged, part of my mind could still be spared to seek the Seraphim Stone. Through the night sky in my mind’s eye, a piece of heaven’s fire burned on the horizon before us. Not close, but within my grasp. I willed the Porsche to go a little faster. I was going home.

  eleven: murphy

  I was headed south toward Nevada in the old Porsche, with Lucifer Morningstar riding shotgun. I was already going too fast on the back roads he’d insisted on taking when he told me to speed up, but I did it anyway. The ride started getting smoother and the sound of the engine mellowed. On a whim, I sped up. The ride got even smoother. So, of course, I sped up even more.

  At one point I looked at the speedometer. That was a bad idea. Either what he was doing to the engine was causing it to read wrong or the old Porsche was well on its way to the current land speed record − not useful information in either case. I just focused on driving and Murgenstaern focused on whatever the hell it was he was doing. In no time at all, we were in the high desert, rocketing down barren and empty roads.

  A kind of highway hypnosis took hold, and an odd state of detachment. Part of me began to wonder if any of it was real. Any of it.

  I thought over my life, every moment since childhood, and began to wonder just how real any of it was. The Order, The Company, the fallen angel seated next to me. To anyone who had not lived my life, quite a bit of it would sound like fever dreams or extravagant fantasy. My secrets had driven my wife away, but what if they weren’t secrets? What if she had simply done what any other sane person would do, finding themselves married to a delusional psychotic? Was I even here now? I thought I was in an old Porsche with the speedometer pegged out on a barely paved desert road. Maybe that was a delusion as well.

  And what was I supposed to do when I got to this place I was supposedly going? Bluff my way into a top secret facility so a fallen angel could retrieve a piece of the firmament and fly home? None of it made sense, none of it. The only real question was whether the psychotic break had occurred before or after Caroline had left me.

  But what if Caroline was a delusion as well?

  I remembered loving with all my heart and soul someone who, at least for a while, actually loved me back. But what if that fond and bittersweet memory of love was simply the biggest delusion of all? No love, no real life, no purpose − just a road to nowhere, haunted by my own delusions and pain.

  As I continued south across the desert and the eastern sky began to lighten, I realized what I had come here to do, what my real plan was.

  Of course. It was so simple.

  I began to slow to make sure I would not miss the turn. The figure in the seat next to me said nothing − was, in fact, as motionless as stone.

  And perhaps not even real.

  I recognized the turn just in time and took it. The road I was on now was steep with many switchbacks. As I climbed, the eastern sky grew steadily lighter.

  Finally, the switchbacks gave way to a short straight stretch pointing up a gradual slope ending in a cliff. Yes, this was why I was here.

  I gunned the engine and took my foot off the brake. The car leapt forward into the abyss.

  Act 4: Disorder

  one: caroline

  They say it takes a couple of years to figure out whether or not you like the Pacific Northwest. As many times as Murphy and I had been there, I didn’t expect it to take that long − and I was right.

  Within a few months, I knew that I hated it.

  It was everything, it was nothing. Or maybe a whole lot of nothings. I’d told Murphy I sucked, he didn’t believe me. OK, I guess he does now.

  My job was everything it was supposed to be, my coworkers were all awesome, nice people.

  But they weren’t my friends.

  Shannon had warned me about it, but she lived in rural Alaska and had picked up the local attitude toward the big cities in Washington and Oregon. It had never been easy for me to make friends, now it seemed close to impossible. I felt awkward, felt like I didn’t fit in.

  One time, I heard a recording of myself in a meeting. I was so embarrassed, I thought I’d die. I’m not a native Texan like Murphy, but I’d lived in Houston since I was a kid. I didn’t think I had a Texas accent. I was wrong.

  It was other things as well. The people I worked with were nice enough, but most of them were younger than me, had never lived anywhe
re else, and had figured out their careers a long time ago. They were also a pack of pretentious little tattooed hipsters. I never once thought of myself as “conservative” − after all, I lived in Montrose. Only I didn’t live there anymore, and I’d picked up more of the Houston-at-large attitude than I’d ever realized.

  And dear god, the weather. The rain wasn’t a big deal, the lack of sun was. Murphy and I had always joked about having “Summer Seasonal Affective Disorder” back in Houston when days on end of triple digit temperature and humidity meant not going anywhere that wasn’t air conditioned. Real Seasonal Affective Disorder’ hit me… hard. I began to realize what it meant to not see the sun for weeks on end.

  And then there was Murphy.

  He hated being called a “transplant”, worked on acclimating to the Northwest the same way he’d once asked me to help him be “normal”− only this time, I couldn’t help him. Not that he needed it. For a native Texan, he had even less of an accent than I did and had turned it on and off for years. He stopped saying “y’all” the day we arrived, picked up on “you guys” without missing a beat.

  The same way he’d once traded silk shirts for button-down oxfords, he traded out the oxfords for flannels and went back to wearing jeans. The day we went to the DMV and got rid of our Texas drivers’ licenses, we stopped off at REI and got rainjackets. “That makes it official,” Murphy had said. “We are now part of the club.”

  Only I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a part of the club.

  The one thing I had hoped would change for the better actually got worse. Murphy still had secrets. His home office in our new house was more open and accessible than his old one. But in no time at all it seemed just as cold and strange. The cats stopped going in there for whatever reasons of their own, I stopped going in for mine. The same way no one had ever been invited up to his office in Houston, no one was really welcome to know what he was working on now.

  I thought about all the rumors I’d heard over the years. He’d always described what he did as “confidential”. I joked with him about it − or at least I’d thought I was joking.

  “There’s not a single person from your office anywhere within a thousand miles,” I said. “Can I ask you how your day went − or is that still a secret?”

  “Baby, there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know. The stuff I work on is… confidential. What differences does it make? I didn’t take one penny in paycut, and now we get to live here.”

  Of course, he loved it. Loved everything about it. Drove around in the rain with the top down, turned into a total beer snob. He’d already been a coffee snob before we left, got worse. The rampant Northwest hipsterism bothered him not at all, after spending almost his entire life in one of the most hipster neighborhoods in the world. “This whole damned city is Montrose with better weather, decent beer, and legal pot− what’s not to like?”, he’d said.

  “The weather,” I replied. “A little sun would be nice.”

  He shrugged. “I had enough sun back in Texas to last several lifetimes. If I never see a thermometer hit a hundred again in my life, I’m okay with that.”

  We were sitting under an umbrella on a deck behind a pub near my office. Murphy had picked me up after work. As usual, he wanted to stop for a drink on the way home. The one thing he didn’t like about being a telecommuter was being home all day. We had the deck to ourselves. None of the locals were going to venture out unless the sun was out. The waitress had given us a dirty look for sitting outside, which Murphy had ignored.

  I didn’t want to have this conversation in public. I didn’t want to have it at all. “I don’t know if I’m good with it or not.”

  “What do you mean?” It was that same puzzled/hurt look he had any time he thought I was unhappy. I used to think it meant he loved me. Now I just thought it was annoying.

  “I’m not sure I want to stay here, Murphy. You ever think about moving again?”

  He heaved a long sigh. “No, but I guess I need to now. Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t like my job.”

  “You never like your job. Not ever, not once.”

  “I don’t really like the climate, and I’m tired of hipsters. I can find another job, you can take yours with you.”

  “What about the house we basically put our entire savings into?”

  “We could sell it; we could rent it. We have options.”

  He looked pained, hurt and confused. I felt like I was talking to a child. Was it time to tell him what I really felt?

  I couldn’t yet, but it was getting harder not to.

  When I first met Murphy, the fact that he was older than me didn’t matter. “I like older men,” I’d told him − and it was true. But I had no idea how old he really was. He looked maybe ten years older than me. Good genes, or maybe something more − it was more like twenty.

  He still didn’t really look that old, but he was acting old. He wanted to settle down. Being with him was as settled as I’d ever wanted to be… and now I wasn’t even sure I wanted that.

  He didn’t say anything until after the waitress had come and gone with another round.

  “I’m not going to lie: I do like it here. It felt like coming home to the home I never knew I had when we moved here.” He looked down into his beer, shook his head sadly. “I left behind everything and everyone else I ever knew or loved to come here and make a home with you. I did it because you’re the one I can’t say ‘goodbye’ to.

  “Come up with a plan, Caroline. Figure out a place you’d rather be. I reckon I got a move or two left in me.”

  This was the part I really didn’t want to talk about. “What if it takes more than ‘a move or two’?”

  “I don’t know, baby. This isn’t a perfect place − there aren’t any − but it ain’t bad, either. And I used to think you loved it here… which might’ve even been why I fell in love with it, too. I do sometimes wonder if you’re ever going to find what you’re looking for − or if you’d even know it if you saw it.

  “I just know one thing. Every time I wake up and see you, I know I found what I was looking for. There was a Caroline-sized hole in my life I didn’t even know was there… until you showed up and filled it.” He took a long drag on his beer, looking into the rain at nothing in particular. “We’ll figure out something.”

  two: murphy

  It wasn’t until the old Porsche was suspended in thin air hundreds of feet from anything else in particular that it occurred to me that what I was doing might qualify in some circles as suicidally crazy.

  By which time it was a little late.

  As the old car sailed out into the void, I remembered that someone or something was supposed to intervene right about now, but I didn’t remember much about the details.

  Then something did intervene.

  When the disc-shaped craft materialized over us. My first thought was that it was just another hallucination. Then an opening irised out in its lower portion and moonbeams reached for us, strangely visible in the early dawn light.

  The moonbeams drew us in. This was beginning to seem very familiar.

  By the time the hatch irised shut and my old Porsche had come to rest on it, things were beginning to piece together in my mind. I looked at the person in the seat next to me. No longer a statue, Murgenstaern returned my gaze with a wry smile.

  “Not quite as planned, “ he said. “But interesting.“

  Jocephus bounded down from a hatch that had opened above us and took station next to the Porsche. Moments later, a familiar figure drifted down thru the same hatch.

  Evangeia had traded the boardroom attire of our last encounter for beatnik classic black leggings and turtleneck, drawn her coppery hair into a braid that revealed the gracefully pointed ears. Barefoot, as usual. She was floating through the air in full lotus, came to rest on the hood of the Porsche and unfolded her long legs, looking vaguely like a car commercial model. Except for the ears, of course.

  “You ma
y not realize this, “ she said. “But you have been under psychic attack for most of the last hundred miles. So have you,” she said, nodding toward Murgenstaern. “Which I had not thought possible.”

  “Your adversaries have acquired some interesting new abilities, Evangeia,” Murgenstaern said. “Good to see you, of course. It has been what? 800 years?”

  “On that order,” she replied.

  “You guys know each other?” I asked.

  “Somewhat. “ Murgenstaern said . “I did not found your Order, but you are hardly my only acquaintance within it.”

  “Well, that’s good to know − now.”

  “I have a reasonable idea of what you were attempting to do, and even a vague suspicion as to why,” Evangeia said. “Under ordinary circumstances, it might’ve even worked. These are not ordinary circumstances.”

  No kidding, I thought.

  As her ice-blue eyes settled fully upon me, I once again had the feeling a mouse has when it realizes it’s about to be the main course on someone’s menu. “You should not have withheld from me your dealings with this… person, but it is understandable that you did. Describing him as persuasive is something of an understatement. It is somewhat a given as well that you have been under a certain amount of personal stress.

  “Any lapses in your behavior as a member of this Order to date are a matter I am prepared to overlook, but no more. And while I appreciate the delicacy of your situation as a double agent, I must insist that you remember that your primary loyalty is to us, not The Company. We will do everything possible to preserve your cover, but it is far from our highest current priority.”

  She turned to Murgenstaern. “As for you, this is hardly the first time you have suborned our people or endangered those I am sworn to protect. I am sure you feel you have good reason for all this − you always do − but you know better than anyone which particular path is paved with good intentions.

  “I can no more truly compel you than could any mortal, nor do I wish you any particular harm. But you may find yourself in true need of allies, not entertainment, for the first time in a very long time… perhaps ever.”