Chronicles of Ara: Perdition

by Joel Eisenberg

  Once in, however, a puzzled Carlo loses sight of the boy. But he continues onward, still looking, refusing to end the renewed enthusiasm he feels on this most beautiful of afternoons.

  One hour later.

  Carlo again passes the tour group. They are still in the Uffizi, studying canonical frescos. As he looks for the missing troublemaker, Carlo overhears the following from the tour leader, in Italian, thinking nothing of it: “Michelangelo’s final fresco is suitably painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Ara, the Latin derivation of altar, is a southern constellation and, in Greek mythology, the inspirational space from where their gods formed alliances before defeating the Titans.

  A member of the tour casually scribbles in a notepad: Michelangelo as St. Bartholomew sheds his skin. He pauses, for a moment, then writes, simply: Significance?

  Meanwhile, Carlo is ready to give up. He turns to exit, but as he does he finds a most curious pair of specs in a tiny wall enclave just feet away. Carlo puts them up to his eyes, in a quick, renewed effort to locate the thief. To no avail; he can barely see through them. Still, the glasses are unique enough to pocket and keep.

  Defeated, he leaves the Uffizi, and heads back homeward.

  ~~~

  Present Day. London.

  Authorities have arrived at the embassy. The fires are being extinguished. Thomas is present, searching, yelling for his daughter amidst the damage. She is still nowhere to be seen. His cell phone rings repeatedly. It’s Denise. Upon seeing her name, Thomas ignores the call, preferring to leave the line open.

  Thomas contacts Daniel. He reaches him. Daniel states he is looking for her as well. When Daniel clicks off, however, we see that he is walking the streets of Florence, only a block away from the Uffizi. He seems to be in a rush, and does not appear to be particularly disturbed. As he walks, he passes several street stands, most of which are selling various models—wooden and otherwise—of Collodi’s greatest creation, Pinocchio.

  What he notices next stuns him. Daniel glimpses Denise, on her cell, nervously making a call. Within moments, she is joined by none other than Samantha . . .

  And Thomas continues to try his daughter as, elsewhere, apparent lies and deceptions occur within his inner circle. He is momentarily interrupted by an older, senior gentleman, wearing a carpenter’s apron, who excuses himself and asks if he could be of any help. Thomas shakes his head, briefly mentions he’s looking for someone, then asks the stranger if he has any family he cannot find. “Not family,” he curiously replies. “Though I had always longed for a child of my own, I’m afraid . . . I couldn’t possibly abide this suffering today.” He pauses, and pats Thomas on the back. “I found these. Maybe they’ll be of better use to you.” He hands Thomas the same specs once found by Carlo Collodi so many years ago.

  “Good luck, friend.”

  Thomas regards the strange glasses then looks up to thank the stranger. But the old man has disappeared into the crowd.

  We conclude on a flashback. Collodi, sits in his study, striving to write, yet suffering through a frustrating bout of writer’s block. Taking a break, he stands from his desk and steps away. The drafting of Pinocchio is in progress. An etching of Geppetto looks very much like the old man who gifted Thomas with the glasses. A quill pen rests alongside the manuscript. A canister of ink is to the pen’s left, along with an open encyclopedia. The page?

  Once more, Ara. In this case, the constellation.

  Collodi has walked outside. Telescope in hand, he searches the cosmos. Holding back tears, he says, to no one in particular, “I would have saved that boy. I would have adopted him as my own.” The tears come. “Was he my last hope?” He breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably.

  ~~~

  “Sid!” Denise, from outside. Sidra looks out the window as Denise points to her watch.

  “Coming . . . coming,” Sidra says. “Why does everyone always have to be in such a damn hurry?”

  She places the papers back in the envelope, drops the envelope in her suitcase, zips up, and leaves the room.

  Her last thought as she leaves: Someday, I’ll get the rest of what she’s trying to tell me.

  BROOKLYN BRIDGE

  As Denise walks the bridge, she realizes time seriously does fly.

  She recalls that Sidra stayed at Searle’s school for two years, and she learned to trust him like no other because he understood. Denise moved back to Brooklyn following her stay. She was more manageable and better able to express her feelings, but she was still ruled by her emotions. “He’s no shrink,” Sidra once told her mom in explanation. “He focused my creativity, not my mental state.”

  Months later, Denise offered her the Soho apartments in exchange for some apartment managing.

  Once she wanted the relationship to work . . . but that was then.

  This is now.

  You blew it, Denise, she thinks. And now she is in Egypt. God knows when she’ll be back . . . you really did blow it this time.

  Denise arrives in the city and decides to cab it to her office.

  MIRKWOOD

  Contrary to popular myth and storytelling, the boundaries of man’s observable universe represent too the void of the gods, being the great unknown of The Infinity Pass. The gods’ realm includes man’s imagination, implying, in a vague fashion, a symbiotic relationship. The essence of man, including his deepest imaginings and dreams, remains the primary source of hope for the gods in the attainment of their own Truth. In this regard, the gods have defined their limitations; though nearly all-powerful, on this matter most are accepting and self-aware, as they do not believe man, the only being who could possibly attain the stars, will ever do so.

  Most, save for the muse. Ara.

  Ara is not imprisoned by limitation or self-awareness.

  Neither she . . . nor I. And thus they call me a “mystic.” And thus I am as accursed as she.

  All of this, the mystic S’n Te contemplates as he sits, still, in the bowels of the former king’s castle, legs crossed and palms up, atop his knees, eyes closed. The demons have left temporarily, informing S’n Te of other pending business and warning him of an imminent return. From his position—lotus, which will be adapted by various cultures over the ages and as drawn on his cave wall—he narrates his vision, contrary to the recent threat:

  The muse must be disempowered. To do so risks the wrath of her immortal sisters. I must open the Infinity Pass to those who can effect this change. I must, in the name of all that is holy, make this work. Who will convince, then? Those whom the muse has inspired. She must be disempowered and turned back to the light.

  Eron. She will not rest until she is reunited with Eron. She will meet him again. She must meet him again. This I shall engineer, and I cannot be responsible from there.

  An Open Letter to the Media

  Before we go further . . .

  Allow me to address the following two concepts: Our world, and our world-building.

  I wouldn’t usually interrupt so egregiously—well maybe I would, actually—nonetheless the present digression matters in the here and the now.

  Trust me.

  And we’ll go off on tangents, as usual, from there.

  I’ve discussed in these recent letters that you may or may not see (a matter which should also account for my occasional lapses into uncharacteristic boldness and hyperbole, not “public meltdowns” as Daniel self-righteously called it, though we all know I can veer outside the purview of stream of consciousness and into outright jabberwocky at times, right?),but—just in case—religion and belief, among a host of other concerns.

  I’m being facetious about the jabberwocky, BTW. There’s purpose to my ramblings. Words and thought that emanate from the soul is where The Truth lies.

  It’s in the editing and censoring where we’ve gotten into trouble.

  Ara exists. She has always existed. She is all too real.

  How I wish she was a fiction.

  Ara no longer exists as a muse or an immortal. Tha
t shell has been discarded (and discovered, yet another illustration of history leaving its own answers). In its place are eight human beings—mortals—of flesh and blood and a nagging agenda. All are drifters, not all that different than Wolfstein, he who bargained with the alchemist Ginotti in Percy Shelley’s St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian, A Romance. All are aware that they wander for a reason but none are aware of exactly what that reason is.

  Yet.

  Unbeknownst to them, they are fulfilling Ara’s sentence. And so, their day to day becomes an ongoing adventure of trauma and discovery.

  Within this explanation of our world and world-building, are several conclusions I need to revert to here. If any of my words or messages in these letters have appeared either hypocritical or inconsistent, keep the following in mind:

  1) a) The world has been overseen by immortals from the beginning of time. Or, more accurately, what those of us of inferior intellect and capability would typically refer to as the beginning of time. b) S’n Te is correct; man and god are symbiotic for the reasons he expressed above.

  2) God does not exist. Heaven does not exist.

  3) Your concept of hell is not only alarmingly accurate, but largely informed by Dante and his Inferno. (We’ll get to Dante in an upcoming volume; Ara spent much time with him. Also, the poet Virgil, who guided Dante in that aforementioned work. That was one soulful son of a bitch right there.)

  4) Big Bang theories and other simple hypotheses as to the reality of our origins are false. These theories emanate from the same place as do Adam and Eve and Pinocchio.

  5) The Bible, The Qur’an, etc. See No. 4 above, but also this, maybe not what you’re expecting: The holy books, which we regularly allude to here, are all adapted works. So there’s no misunderstanding, none of the spiritual texts that we know of today are original material. Not a one. Case in point: As I write this, a current British study is suggesting that fragments of the world’s oldest Qur’an appear to pre-date the commonly accepted time period of the prophet Muhammad’s founding of Islam.

  They’re on the right track.

  6) What we have yet to explore is the existence of the era of art history that preceded Eron’s death. Until then, the universe’s collective artistry was unaffected by any corrupting influence. Much of the artistic creation during this period—a period which, for convenience’ sake, we will refer to hereinafter as Pre-Genesis—passed from generation to genera-tion and was immortalized, no pun intended, upon the crea-tion of proper instrumentation that was also influenced by Ara.

  7) Pre-Genesis. Why adopt a biblical title for my reference? Because . . . how’s this? They almost got it right. Those writers (plural) responsible were this close.

  Explanation: The Codex Vaticanus, presently preserved in the Vatican Library as originally composed—759 leaves of vellum, or calf-skin—is our oldest complete bible. However, many of the Vaticanus’ original leaves of Genesis were lost and later replaced with a new hand transcription.

  Furthering this fact, as briefly referenced in our first volume:

  Day and night offered no differentiation for Ara and still less comfort. She will one day witness both the Big Bang and the events as written in Genesis, yet her accounts will be in stark contrast to what would gradually devolve into simplistic, uninformed debates over science and religion.

  So . . . Ara witnessed Genesis . . . yet not our Genesis? And then the coincidence of the missing Genesis sections of our oldest remaining Bible, and a widespread agreement from there, among scholars, that other sections of this codex were also lost and replaced?

  And those replacement parts supplementing what has remained have survived through the ages to become the basis of what so many believe today, because the original work has faded with the ages?

  No.

  The pages were not lost. They were hidden, folks.

  Pre-Genesis? The missing record. Of all of it. Genesis? That section of the Bible containing the words that survived or were replaced and the beliefs that built from there.

  And the rest had been revised to fit the new agenda.

  Thomas McFee knows:

  The word. All things begin, and all things end, with the word.

  But . . . the word that had begun all things has been hidden for eons. Suppressed.

  That’s also an Ara thing. Convenient.

  And as for Ara, the first of her corrupted stories to be recorded was indeed the pages from the missing book of Genesis, her first influence following the death of Eron.

  So who or what was responsible for hiding the complete work, and why? Any record of any creation—pre-Eron— including the missing original word(s) of the original holy book—The Truth—has been missing for ages and ages.

  I meant what I wrote when I wrote, “I beg you to take me seriously; we must not allow The Truth to be suppressed.”

  8) The only way from the dark is the light. The only way to combat the demons expected to be unleashed by Beleth is much the same solution as saving us from a return to darkness.

  To find (reclaim?) the light, we must first find what has been hidden and follow the figurative roadmap that Ara had drawn before. Before Eron.

  9) Such a map does exist. A map that does indeed direct the way back from the dark. They are the scriptures that form the first true Bible, and they remain hidden. Yes, I know this for a fact. I did my research after meeting some fool on the subway.

  I have his index cards. And I’ve contacted Aragranessa Flameleaf.

  Don’t bother about the coincidence of her name. One has to do with the other, but in a way you would never expect. I will address that association as well, but this is not the time.

  10) Right now, at this late hour, finding these scriptures can be our only solution, so pray for our girl, Sidra. Or, less sarcastically, keep her in your thoughts. That one will have MUCH to do with our success moving forward.

  She has privately acknowledged her burden. This burden, among a host of others.

  AIRPORT DINER, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  Five minutes driving time to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Sidra meets with X one last time before traveling to Egypt for a pre-dawn breakfast at the twenty-four-hour hotspot.

  “How could you have offered me a lift?” she asks. “If you had a car, I may have accepted.”

  “I’m sure I could have gotten one from somewhere,” X responds. “Maybe I just didn’t want to twist your arm.”

  “You’re so strange.”

  “Thank you,” X says. “I try to stand out,” he deadpans.

  “I admit, you do that much. Still, you should thank your stars I met you here. They were gonna send a limo anyway. What the hell do I need a limo for?”

  “I’d have taken the limo.”

  “Well, you’re obsessed.”

  “What does that mean?” X asks.

  “Meaning, I have a flight that’s almost twelve hours long. I’ll sleep on there. If it goes down, I’ll sleep longer, but still, it’s not everyone I’d meet at 4:00 am on a flying day, so what can I do you for? Obsessed boy—”

  “When was the last time you flew?” he asks.

  She smiles. “First time.”

  “Yeah, thought so. Scared?”

  “Nah. If I survive, I got reason. Now, what do I have to lose—”

  “Such an ass.”

  Sidra laughs. “I’ll start again. I’m not laughing at you.” X earnestly awaits her next words. “Actually, I sort of am, but . . . can I just say anything without you trying to analyze me?”

  “I’m not—”

  “You’re a disruptor. I guess that’s intentional, right?” Sidra asks. “Like everything you do or say because you’re so controlled?”

  “Yeah that, but you’re scheduled to fly eleven hours and fifty-six minutes to Cairo. That’s a long flight, that’s all.”

  “Jesus. Searle was right about you.”

  “You spoke to him?” X asks.

  “I—”

  “Serious?” X is more hop
eful than he’s been in forever. “Did he ask about m—”

  “No.” X’s disappointment is magnified when she catches him fidgeting with his napkin. “That napkin do anything to you?”

  “No.” When X is embarrassed, he’s humorless. X is nearly always embarrassed around people, and right now is no exception.

  Sidra had told him of her history with Searle, that she had left his school months before X had entered. Unlike the boy, though, she has stayed in close touch with her former professor.

  Sidra watches X with a keen interest as he mopes but will not, deliberately, embarrass him any further. “What do you want to talk about?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. You asked me for breakfast.”

  She pauses, and looks him over. “Maybe I just wanted someone to hang with.” Her response is only partially honest. The statement was meant to probe.

  X is touched. “Well . . . we’re hangin’.”

  “That we are,” says Sidra. “Yup.”

  No further words are spoken for nearly a minute.

  Breakfast is served. X eats like he’s never had a meal before. He grasps the fork with a tight overhand grip that lightens his knuckles and he appears to eat without breathing.

  Sidra cannot help but stare. “The coffee’s good,” she says, breaking the silence. “Thanks for asking.” X nods. She gives up; it’s time for business. “I wanted to meet you, because I read what you sent me.” He pauses, grabs and pours ketchup from a red plastic squeeze bottle in an instance of quick-thinking, and quickly goes back to his food. “I think you can write.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean, I know now you can write, I’ve read some of what you sent—”

  “Already?”

  “Your story, maybe writing an autobio makes sense—”

  “Not into non-fic.”

  “What about a novel?”

  “A novel is too daunting,” he says, between chews. “But you know I may be ly—”

  “Then write a short story.”

  “I have too hyper an imagination.”