Lord of Time

by Michele Amitrani

  The young man blinked several times in disbelief. He looked at Pacific, his mouth half-opened.

  “Don’t look at me,” Pacific said, pointing at Steve. “Look at your man.”

  Alfred obeyed. Again he pictured the square in his mind, and again he thought about the man’s life.

  “Good.” Pacific nodded. “Keep looking. Concentrate on his story, on his life, and visualize the image of a square in your mind. Evoke it, seize it, and use it to see.”

  Alfred did it. The second time was easier than the first. Again the spark of light flashed and disappeared almost immediately. Then appeared again. Alfred kept staring at the spot where the light had appeared, six feet above Steve’s head, putting all his effort into the task, concentrating on keeping the image of the silver square sharp in his mind. Finally, he was able to see it for more than a moment.

  The spark of light became a stable streak of light that settled into a defined shape. Alfred’s eyes widened when he understood what it was. It was a number—a red number, or rather a series of numbers. There was a two, followed by the number forty-four. No. Forty-three. Forty-two … forty-one … forty. Every second, the number decreased.

  It was a countdown.

  “What in the name of Jesus is that?” Alfred gasped.

  “What do you see?” Pacific stared at him with anticipation.

  “I see numbers,” Alfred said, still stunned. “A countdown, I think. Two minutes and fifteen seconds. Fourteen, now.”

  “Well done.” Pacific nodded approvingly. “That, young man, is Steve’s remaining life span.”

  Alfred jerked his head toward Pacific. “What?”

  “You heard me. That is how long Steve has left to live. Just over two minutes.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Now gather yourself.” Pacific pointed to the camera Alfred was holding. “Take a good picture of him.”

  “A picture?”

  “Yes, a picture.”

  “You mean—”

  “Take a picture of that man,” Pacific ordered. “And be quick about it. We don’t have much time left.”

  “Okay.” Alfred aimed, zoomed, and took a couple of pictures.

  “Let me see.” Pacific snatched the camera from his hands. They both looked at the picture’s preview.

  The pictures were sharp. The numbers were there, too, clearly visible above Steve’s head.

  “That’s good enough,” Pacific said, looking pleased.

  Alfred licked his lips. “Are those numbers real?” he asked, glancing at the countdown and still debating its reality. “I mean, the pictures show them, right?”

  “This camera is special,” Pacific explained, patting the camera’s body. “If you were to take a picture of that man with anything else, you would see nothing. A normal camera freezes a moment in time. This one freezes time itself.”

  Alfred had no idea what the hell that meant. He looked back at Steve and realized the countdown was almost up.

  “It’s go time,” Pacific said, pushing back his sunglasses. “Twelve … eleven … ten …”

  Steve suddenly yelped, and dropped his cheeseburger on the ground.

  “What’s happening?” Alfred asked, astonished.

  Steve grabbed his chest with both hands and started howling in pain as he fell on his knees.

  “Oh my God,” Alfred said, both hands over his mouth. “He’s … he’s having a heart attack or something.” He looked at Pacific with expectantly. “We gotta do something!”

  “We’re doing something,” Pacific said, his arms crossed. “We’re watching him die.”

  Alfred could not believe what was happening.

  He moved a couple of steps forward. He didn’t know what to do, but he needed to do something.

  Seven …

  Steve screamed in pain, a high-pitched stream of blurted words, begging for help. Alfred ran toward him.

  Four …

  Alfred got to him. Steve’s eyes were filled with horror.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” Alfred assured him, looking around frantically. “Hang on. I’ll … I’ll get somebody to help. I … I …”

  One …

  Pacific clapped his hands, and the countdown disappeared.

  Steve stopped moving. His eyes were still open, but there was nothing beyond them, only blankness. Only death.

  Alfred ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh my God,” he murmured. “This is not … This is not happening.”

  He placed his ear to Steve’s chest. There was no heartbeat.

  “No, no, no,” Alfred muttered. He started shaking Steve’s body. “Come on, buddy! Come on!”

  He needed to do something. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, maybe? But how? He had no idea how.

  His phone! He could call somebody. An ambulance. Yes. Alfred took his phone out of his pocket, but his hands were shaking so hard he dropped it. He could not move, he could not see clearly, he could hardly breathe. His gaze returned to Steve’s horrified, wide eyes. Alfred’s head spun. He coughed, and his chest felt heavy. He was going to be sick.

  “Breathe.” He heard Pacific’s voice behind him. “It’s just a corpse. Can’t do you any harm.”

  Alfred swallowed. He left Steve’s body, which slumped to the ground. “I … think I’m going to be sick.”

  Pacific sighed. “If you must,” he said.

  Alfred could do nothing more than bend and puke right there.

  “And there goes your lunch,” Pacific said, his hands resting on his hips. “What’s the matter? Can’t stomach death?”

  “I’ve never seen—” Alfred cut himself off. He was fighting for air. The world kept spinning around him. He managed to sit on the ground, and took some seconds to gather himself. “I’ve never seen somebody … die.”

  Pacific clasped his hands behind his back. “I see somebody die most days.”

  Silence stretched between them. The street was still empty. Nobody seemed to have heard Steve’s screams. Nobody had come out of the convenience store.

  “We need to call an ambulance,” Alfred said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “What for?” Pacific asked.

  “I … I don’t know.” Alfred was gasping for air. “They could try to revive him, or something.”

  Pacific shook his head definitively. He bent over Steve’s body and, looking at the man’s blank eyes, said, “He has passed that point. He’s never coming back.”

  Pacific took off his sunglasses, and for the first time Alfred could see the color of his eyes. They were a deep gray that reminded him of cold stone. A thin, red rim surrounded his pupils, separating them clearly from the gray irises.

  “You did well,” Pacific said, glancing at Alfred. “I didn’t expect you to see much your first time.” He turned on his camera and took a picture of Steve’s body up close.

  Alfred looked at Pacific, and what he saw made him shiver. There was nothing on the man’s face. No sorrow, no excitement, no worry, no delight over the man’s death. No emotion at all. Pacific reminded him of a businessperson talking about last quarter’s earnings.

  It did seem like Pacific was used to seeing people die. What kind of person saw death on a daily basis?

  Now that Alfred’s mind was clearing, it became clear to him that Pacific had known Steve was about to die.

  Pacific stepped away from Steve and offered Alfred his hand. “Can you stand?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Here. Let me help you.”

  Alfred took his hand, and Pacific helped him up.

  “Now look at me.” Pacific said. “You need to calm down. Breathe in, and breathe out. Yes, just like that. Now do it again.”

  Alfred did. After a while, he felt a bit better.

  “Sit here.” Pacific pointed to the hood of Steve’s car. Alfred dragged his feet and sat. Pacific rummaged inside his pocket and emerged with a small, round object. “Eat this,” he said.

  “What is it?”

&
nbsp; “A candy. Caramel flavor.”

  “I don’t want it,” Alfred closed his eyes and waved the candy away. The thought of food made him sick again.

  “You do want it,” Pacific insisted, pushing the candy to Alfred’s hand. “This is a special candy. It will help you feel better. Trust me.”

  “What do you mean by special?”

  “Just eat it. You’ll feel better. I promise.”

  Alfred clenched his jaw but didn’t argue. He had no strength for it. He unwrapped the candy and ate it.

  Alfred felt an inexplicable wave of heat as soon as he swallowed the candy. It felt strange but invigorating, like drinking a mug of hot chocolate in the middle of winter. His muscles relaxed instantly.

  “How do you feel now?” Pacific asked.

  “I … I feel better, actually. Much better.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  A crow came down from the sky and landed on Steve’s stomach. It stayed on top of it for a while then scampered toward the half-finished burger and started picking at it. Another two crows soon followed the first one, joining the feast.

  “Is he really dead?” Alfred asked, trying not to stare at Steve’s face.

  “As dead as it gets.”

  Alfred had a million more questions and no way to ask them. He felt devoid of everything, numb and confused. He didn’t remember the last time he had felt so lost and scared.

  “Come on,” Pacific said, gesturing for him to stand. “Steve is going to attract attention soon enough, and we want to be far away before that happens. Besides, we’ve got another appointment with Destiny, remember?”

  The tall man turned and walked away from the corpse.

  Alfred looked over Steve’s horrified expression one last time then stood awkwardly and staggered behind Pacific.

  7

  The Richest Place in the World

  They walked a couple of blocks in silence, Pacific leading the way and Alfred slightly behind, deep in thought.

  Alfred glanced at Pacific. The tall man was whistling joyfully. Alfred looked away. Whistling! A person had just died in front of their eyes, and he was whistling! It was so wrong it wasn’t even funny.

  Alfred wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to calm down. He needed to analyze what had happened.

  The fact that Pacific knew when Steve was going to die, the appearance of the countdown, the camera immortalizing the event and showing the red numbers. All of that had no right to be.

  For this reason Alfred looked for answers outside the realm of reality, to what society labeled inexplicable, impossible, and completely, utterly mad.

  Magic was the answer that came to him first: dark magic, like sorcery, the stuff of fantasy books and fairy tales.

  The thought made him shiver. Here he was, an adult person thinking of wizards and fairy tales to make sense to what had happened.

  Of course he didn’t believe that kind of stuff. His mind wasn’t going to accept the inexplicable. It was going to fight it, to constrain those events to something familiar, something Alfred understood. But it was a useless effort.

  You can’t explain magic when it happens, he found himself thinking. You either believe it or you don’t.

  Again Alfred looked at Pacific. This time he studied his lean figure in the raincoat. He tried to unveil the mystery behind the person who had come into his life so suddenly. The sunglasses once again shielded Pacific’s gray eyes, and the beanie he always wore covered his forehead and ears. The only portion of visible skin was the lower part of his face, clean shaven and as pale as a hospital wall. Had that man something to hide?

  Alfred looked at Pacific for so long that it became staring.

  Other questions surfaced like bubbles in the pond of his mind.

  Who was this person? Why had they met? How could he possibly know when people were going to die?

  “Are you the Devil?” Alfred heard himself uttering the question, but couldn’t believe he’d actually asked it. It had been a passing thought, no more than a glimpse of awareness at the back of his mind. But the question was there now, in the real world, and Alfred could not take it back. So he waited, and hoped the answer would not be the one he feared.

  A wry smile flashed on Pacific’s face. “The Devil is an idea made up of stories and faith,” he said. “I’m flesh and bones. There is no Devil without Christianity, there is no story without a storyteller.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am a fact of life,” Pacific explained. “Think of it this way: if you were to erase every single religion from the history of mankind, I would still be standing in front of you. No, Alfred White. I’m not the Devil. I’m just a fellow trying to make ends meet.”

  Alfred didn’t know if he could trust Pacific’s answer. However, a part of him suspected that if the Devil really existed, he would probably answer that question the same way.

  “But you can see when somebody is going to die,” Alfred pointed out.

  “I can,” Pacific agreed, “but so can you. Does that make us the Devil?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Alfred thought a bit about that. “I could see the countdown, yes, but why? Because I was with you? Maybe because you did something special to me and—”

  “There’s nothing special in seeing those numbers,” Pacific said, cutting him off. “I’m not special because I can see death coming, my young friend. I’m special because I can use that knowledge to my advantage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Understand this: death is a commodity, a resource that can be used,” Pacific said. “That is the main reason why I’m here. I’m here because I can use death and what it brings with it.”

  Alfred was very confused. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can death be a commodity? Death is just death. The cessation of life. The end.”

  “That is true for a person who can’t see anything beyond that point. But trust me when I say, there is much more than simply an end for somebody who understands that death is only one part of a bigger truth. When you are able to see death as a commodity, it becomes a story, just like money. And a story can be a good one or a bad one. It depends very much on the person who’s telling it, and on who’s listening.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. It just doesn’t make any sense!”

  “What, precisely, is puzzling you?”

  “Um. Everything!”

  “Well, you’ll have to be a bit more specific than that if you want a meaningful answer.”

  Alfred sighed. “Okay, let me get this straight. Basically, you just know a bunch of random stuff about a person, picture a square in your mind, and you can see his or her remaining life span? Is that how it works?”

  “No.” Pacific shook his head. “It’s not random stuff, it’s information that makes up that person’s life. And thinking of a square only works for men. You need to picture a circle if you want it to work for women.”

  “Why a circle?”

  “Because the circle is the perfect shape,” Pacific said with a knowing smile.

  “Oh.” Alfred had no idea what that meant, but he also had no idea how to explore the subject further. “I … I don’t know what else to say,” he admitted.

  “Then say nothing,” Pacific suggested. “Don’t be in such a rush to understand. To figure things out. The path to knowledge is a marathon, not a sprint. Watch, and learn. Words can bring you only so far. Experience is a far better teacher.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that knowledge is a double-edged knife. You have to be trained to handle it without hurting yourself. I always choose words carefully when talking to you because I’m aware that the wrong word in the wrong place could crush you and cast your sanity into oblivion. You are not ready for the knowledge you seek, Alfred White. Not yet.”

  Alfred muttered under his breath but said nothing more.

  Pacific turned left then right. Alfred followed him to a part of the city he
had never been before. They walked for a few minutes along a commercial street with lots of stores and street vendors. Eventually the stores became scanter, and they found themselves in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of the West End. It was a residential district, with cars parked along the street but almost no stores.

  In the middle of the neighborhood there was a massive building of gray marble that stood out in the jungle of houses. It was beautiful and imposing and seemed quite old. A white cross as big as a tree dominated the entire structure.

  Around the building, a metal fence spanned from left to right as far as the eye could see.

  “Speaking of the Devil,” Pacific said, looking at the white cross with a smirk. “Here we are. Our second meeting with Destiny is about to begin.”

  “A church?” Alfred asked, taken aback. “You want to go inside that church?”

  “We’re not going inside it,” Pacific corrected him. “We’re going behind it.” Pacific walked past the gate, and so did Alfred.

  The church was not the only building inside the fence, only the biggest one. There was also a smaller building that looked like a chapel, an apartment unit, and a parking lot covered by solar panels.

  Alfred didn’t see a living soul on the property, but he heard sounds and voices coming from inside the church. People were praying and singing. Apparently, there was a mass going on.

  They walked past a line of trees that flanked a small garden with statues of angels and a couple of small fountains. A few steps beyond the fountains, the garden ended, and they reached the limit of the church’s massive structure. Alfred looked in front of him, where there was nothing except a very large and very empty square. It was plain and bare, surrounded by the same enclosure that protected the entire property.

  This was a graveyard, and a very big one at that. Alfred had no idea there was one so vast inside the city.

  Hundreds of rectangular shapes stuck out of the ground like the white, gray, and black fingers of a multitude of buried giants trying to emerge from the ground.

  “The richest place in the world.” Pacific looked around, arms spread wide as if he owned the entire place. “As author Les Brown poetically put it, ‘Where you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.’ ” Pacific looked at Alfred and smiled his half smile. “Don’t you find it a fitting quote?”