The Quest for Immortality: From The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  Darius led her to a nearby bench and the two sat side by side, not noticing Claret slip away. Once they sat, Delia spoke first. “She’s gone, Darius. She left.”

  Darius stared ahead into the passers-by, past the traffic and towards the other side of the street, but all he saw was his face staring right back at him. It stood before him big and tall, staring right back in his face, and then the face was all he could see.

  He was sitting alone in darkness, watching the skin on his face drop farther and farther; lines and creases forming right before his eyes; his eyes were open wide with terror and fright, his hands drawn up to his face to feel the skin melting away to the bone, and he thought that he heard himself screaming.

  But it wasn’t him.

  It was Delia.

  They were still sitting on the bench, but the sky had turned red. The clouds had painted themselves black. And the demons were coming.

  “Get out of here!” Delia screamed at him, pushing him off the bench from where he had been sitting. “It’s you that they want! Not me!”

  Darius snapped out of his trance and rose from the bench, not taking the time to question Delia or her motives, but instead he looked down the street before him. And a large dark figure, so large that it seemed like a giant black cloud in the distance hovering at ground level.

  And growing larger.

  “It’s coming closer Darius! Get away! Get away now!”

  He did not waste any time. He turned east, towards the darkness above the Atlantic, and looked one last time over his shoulder, to the west and the setting sun, to the red sky, and the growing black mass that was getting much closer.

  “Go below!” he had heard Delia say, what sounded now so faint and far away, and when he looked at the bench where they had just been sitting she was gone. All that was there was some blowing crumpled up papers in the wind that was steadily increasing in speed.

  *~*~*

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Darius thought he was in searing pain, opening his eyes to the sun penetrating the window, seeking out his eyelids and rousing him from his sleep. He never felt like this when he was immortal. He never felt so ungrateful to see the morning. He pulled the covers up over his head, trying to ignore the invading light, and pulled the pillow over his head, ignoring the aches and burns in his arm and legs, making it feel as though he were burnt out and tired.

  Is this how it feels to wake up mortal? He pondered that thought as he sighed, threw the comforter off his body, and sat up.

  He looked down at himself.

  He drew is breath in, seeing a fresh sore standing out in the pale skin of his inner thigh.

  “Shit,” he said out loud, letting his breath out.

  He picked up the remote that laid next to him on the bed all night long, and flipped on the news. Darius was becoming more and more human each day.

  And he didn’t like it.

  What he didn’t like – more than feeling all the little aches and pains and everyday feelings of being mortal – was knowing that his destiny was spiraling out of control, and that, right now, he had no say in when he would die, and he didn’t know whether he would live. He missed the control that he once had when he was an immortal – one of the things that he knew that would always be in his control is his life. He would always be alive. But now, human again, as he swung his bony legs over the side of the bed and into his slippers on the floor, he lost that security.

  He grabbed his phone and dialed. “Can you see me this morning?” he said, walking into the bathroom, putting on a bathrobe in the process while cradling the cell phone in his ear, and flicking on the light.

  But he stopped talking.

  He looked in the mirror and saw his reflection, and dropped the phone right then and there.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

  *~*~*

  Darius hovered outside the Cathedral and looked up towards the sky.

  The cloud cover continued and kept the daylight a filtered grey. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, as he felt a breeze flow lightly against his cheeks. The first raindrops gently pelted against his eyes, but he kept them shut tight. They flowed down the crevices in his cheeks like tears; a tiny rivers flowing through the carved desert and rocks; reaching downwards towards a pool of despair.

  And then he felt a hand touch his shoulder.

  Gently.

  A light squeeze.

  “Hello Darius,” Father Bauman said. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Darius opened his eyes.

  Father Bauman stood before him, with his same old tired smile, dressed in the same black and whites that he was wearing when they first met, the same salt and pepper hair. But Father Bauman’s face shifted a moment. “You have lost weight, my son.”

  Darius shifted back and forth on his feet.

  “Your cheeks look sunken.”

  Darius shook his head. “Just help me find Delia. I need her back.”

  Father Bauman put his arm around Darius and ushered him inside. “Come in, dear boy. It’s about to pour. We will find her.”

  *~*

  A large, black Mercedes sedan pulled up in the pouring rain outside Ponce De Leon. The windshield wipers wish-whooshed back and forth violently, spraying water to the side. The streets were deserted – the shoppers inside the small havens of retail escaping the tropical downpour.

  A tall man in a black trench coat and hat emerged from the back of the sedan as lightning struck farther down the street, followed by a deep clap of thunder.

  “I hate Coral Gables,” Darius said, closing the door with a bass-filled thud. The driver opened his door, standing up and looking at Darius, who was concealing himself in dark sunglasses and a black hat.

  “Go inside to see her, sir,” the driver said. “I will wait on the next block. See that café there?” He pointed across the street to a small storefront with bright orange umbrellas open out front. “I will sit and wait for you there once I park the car.”

  “I hate Coral Gables,” Darius said. “Too many fucking pretentious people here.”

  “And Antoine?”

  Darius opened his umbrella with a pop and turned back to face the driver. “He fit right in with them. But don’t get it wrong – he trusted too much – and now he is gone.”

  “Good luck, sir,” the driver said, getting back into the car.

  When Darius turned around, he stopped immediately, staring into Claire’s face. Her red hair was always so imposing.

  “Claire, your red hair is too imposing,” he said as they turned around and walked into the pale green building. Darius held his hand up to his face to shield his eyes from the intrusion, despite his wearing sunglasses. They walked down a long hallway, and the walls were still pale green. When they arrived at a stainless steel elevator, Claire finally spoke.

  “Darius, I understand you are – Darius?”

  Darius fell to the floor in a pile of dark black trench coat, and closed his eyes. Claire didn’t know where he was.

  But Darius knew.

  He felt like he was flying. He felt like he was flying through a red sky painted with black clouds, and he saw a large winged figure carrying a small boy, but he couldn’t be for sure. They were so dark, they were only silhouettes. But once he turned his head away from the sky, he understood.

  He saw Antoine.

  His face, his long dark hair, his smile.

  “Hello Darius,” he said, reaching his arm out to smooth the hair away from Darius’ face. “It has been too long.”

  “Too long?!” Darius exclaimed. “What is too long? The fact that I am here dying? Or that I haven’t seen you for years?”

  Antoine smiled softly. His dark features did not move. “Darius, there is only one way that you can stop this process.”

  But Darius was roused from his daydream by a large, brown wooden door with a brass nameplate in the center.

  “Darius, have you been listening to anything that I have been saying?” Claire asked, as she
turned a small key in the lock and opened the door to a waft of cool air conditioning.

  Darius shook his head.

  “Well then,” she said. She snapped the overhead florescent lights on and flung the keys on a large desk in front of a wall of windows covered with white vertical blinds, closed tightly. The sun shone through in small slits, and Darius noticed that a few of the slats were moving back and forth as the cool air poured in.

  “Darius, please, have a seat on my sofa,” Claire said. “I have a degree in Psychology from Princeton. I have more than ten years of counseling experience, and…”

  Darius sat on the sofa, sighed and looked up at Claire with sad, tired eyes. “Your resume doesn’t interest me. I seriously doubt you can help me, anyway.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  *~*~*

  Miami Police strapped yellow crime scene tape across the door, and Claire’s apartment was now a crime scene. The apartment was in the Brickell section of town, just south of Downtown, with a view of the water.

  It opened to an expansive outdoor hallway which overlooked Biscayne Bay, and the marina. Several uniformed police officers gathered outside of Claire’s door in a small huddle. Two of them leaned against the concrete barrier, and the others stood and waited for their next orders.

  Detective Jenson lifted the yellow tape and stepped outside the door with a deep sigh. He fished a cigarette from his breast pocket and shook his head as he struggled to light up in the winds. “These upper floors. Shit. Always windy.” Deputy Rickson came out of the apartment next.

  Detective Jenson finally got his cigarette burning. He threw his arms up in the air. “Hallelujah! Now what do we do with this one here?” He waved his hand towards the door. “I swear I saw fuckin’ movement in there.” He peered inside the door. The long, black body bag still lie in front of the coffee table, in the middle of light colored rug.

  There was no movement.

  Detective Jenson shrugged his shoulders and took a drag. He turned around and looked at his Deputy. “Any thoughts?”

  “Other than she was still alive?”

  Detective Jenson laughed. “A white worm crawled out of her eye. And that was dangling out of its socket. I doubt she was still alive.”

  “From an eye? People can still live after losing eyes.”

  “Oh, whatever, man. You’re just a deputy. What the fuck do you know?”

  The two peered through the window and examined the body bag.

  But the body bag lie still.

  The heat of the afternoon sun gleamed against creamy stucco walls of Claire’s apartment building. The police, detectives, blood splatter analysts and EMT’s peppered in and out of the apartment, as photographs were taken of just about every nook and cranny of the apartment – although the main focus was on the bathroom – where Claire’s body had been found on the toilet. The blood splatter analysts spent a great deal of time looking at the upwards splatter of blood and greyish brain matter on the wall behind the toilet, and the death was initially ruled to be a suicide.

  When Darius had learned of Claire’s death, he felt a deep sadness. Although he was paying her considerably for their weekly sessions, he felt, deep down in his soul, that the sessions were working, at least in some small way, and then he thought of the dogs again. The dogs that had been running and playing around the courtyard when he and Claire had been in session one afternoon.

  “But that was just a dream, wasn’t it?” Claire had asked. She jotted down some notes on a yellow legal pad and crossed her legs. Darius turned around. “Yes, I believe it was. But lately, I don’t know what is dream, or what reality is. The lines have been blurred.”

  “How so?”

  “Because when I look down below, I see the dogs playing. But in my mind, I don’t really know if they’re there. I just don’t trust myself anymore.”

  Claire set her legal pad on the coffee table and came over to the window. She put her arms on Darius’ shoulders and looked out the window with him. “You see?” She pointed down at the courtyard. “The dogs are there. They really are playing.”

  Darius closed his eyes. “But what about the times that they aren’t there? What about those times?”

  Claire returned to the sofa. “There will be times that you will think that you see things, when they aren’t really there. And when that happens, you need to separate yourself from that situation, and ask yourself – am I awake? Or am I dreaming?”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  But Darius never came to trust himself.

  That session ended abruptly, and he never got to finish his conversation with Claire. Because the next day, he learned that she was dead. But when he learned the news, he sat promptly down on the sofa with widened eyes. He turned on the news, hearing a local anchor’s voice fill the room but not listening to a word. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He just couldn’t have, could he?

  Do you remember me? Do you see me remembering you?

  Antoine.

  Is that you?

  Darius looked forward but saw nothing.

  He could still hear the news report in the background, but it sounded far away, and the light appeared to be fading. Like the room was moving. Like he was inside a bubble. Everything was shimmery with tiny rainbows, but he felt so much darkness. The light kept fading.

  And then he knew he wasn’t in his living room anymore.

  He snapped his head to the right and saw the shadow. “You!”

  But it grew. The darkness expanded and swallowed the rainbows, and the shimmery and fuzzy feelings subsided.

  It grew cold.

  Darius looked up and saw nothing. Just blackness. “Hello?” he called out. But there was no answer. But then the voice spoke again.

  Do you remember me, Darius?

  He tried to remember. For the voice sounded so familiar.

  I am you, Darius.

  He stopped breathing.

  He felt his lungs grow hot and heavy.

  He clutched his chest, but did not perish. There was a distinct heaviness to where he was, but he did not feel the need to breathe any longer. For the darkness comforted him, it consoled him, and he was able to lie back and close his eyes and listen.

  I came to you, Darius. So many times I came to you. You accepted me, you loved me. I still love you. For so many years I have been trying to contact you. I remember you so well, you were always so shiny and shimmery. You gleamed with rainbows all the time. Do you not remember me?

  And then Darius opened his eyes.

  He saw the same eyes that he remembered. Piercing and blue through the darkness. He remembered, the same eyes from before.

  And it took him back to that same night.

  The same night that he stared into a glass of red wine, watching the reflection of light in the dark liquid, studying the nuances of the drink, until he looked up. And he saw those same piercing eyes. The same deep blue.

  Come with me and drink from the blood decanter…

  That is the first thing he remembered.

  And then do you remember? The eyes?

  And then later, when he had finished his wine, when he rose to leave the bar, he remembered the long, golden hair. It was very long and full, at least halfway down his back.

  He knew that much.

  Darius was led to the door. He followed the man with the piercing blue eyes, out into a night filled with stars and moonlight. There was a horse drawn carriage waiting, and the man opened the door, got inside and sat down, but Darius still saw blackness before him. He could remember the purple velvet seats inside the carriage, the heavy drapes pulled back by golden cords, he even remembered the view of the cobblestone streets through the windows.

  But the man…there was something about him that he could not yet remember. And it brought him back to Claire.

  When they were speaking of Tramos.

  And as he sat in front of Claire, his fingers clasped on his chin, rubbing the stubble, he remembered the day
s that Tramos visited him.

  And then it came to him.

  Those piercing blue eyes.

  Tramos the Conqueror.

  That night so long ago, Darius had studied his wine, waiting at the table in the bar, for quite some time. He saw the man with the piercing blue eyes sitting in front of him, among darkness and shadows. He could see the activity and dim light behind the darkness before him, but still the view was so dark and hazy.

  Come with me and drink from the blood decanter.

  Darius looked up.

  Of course it could be.

  Of course it always was.

  The man-beast who was always pursuing him for years and centuries, sitting before him at this small table in a forgotten corner of the bar, under a hanging small chandelier, amongst walls of mirrors and woodworking.

  It was he.

  Darius finally spoke. “I remember you now. I remember when you first came to me, when you carried the candles to light my way. Oh, it was so many, many years ago. But now I do remember you.”

  And then Darius could see.

  The darkness cleared and showed the long golden hair, the warm smile, the piercing blue eyes. For this was the Tramos that Darius would always want to remember. It was the Tramos of a kind and gentle man, a man who would appear to him only when his mind willed it to do so.

  There was a long pause.

  A silence which permeated the room.

  Darius stared down into his glass of wine, looking at the tiny bubbles that hugged the side of the glass. And then he looked beyond Tramos, to the activity, which had stopped.

  As if frozen in time.

  As if it were a beautiful work of art; patrons dotted the bar in various states of euphoria, a barkeep stood watch in the background surrounded by mirrors and multicolored bottles.

  “So come with me,” he finally said as Darius returned his gaze to Tramos. “Drink with me from the blood decanter. It will bring you life eternal…”

  And then the visions stopped.

  He was back in in his living room, back sitting on the sofa, wishing Claire were still alive so he could share the visions with her. For now, he remembers.