Vision2

by Brooks, Kristi

  Tigaffo nodded and backed to the door, knocking on the wood with his hands clasped behind his back. The yellow gnomes immediately began to open the door, and he backed out, his head lowered.

  When the yellow gnomes secured the door, Darelle leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  After a few minutes, he unlocked the top right-hand drawer and pulled out a black pouch that contained a small vial of glowing purple liquid. He took a small sip before recapping the vial and staring at it as he twirled it around in his hands.

  Roger Fulright was proving to be an enemy worth watching, and he was glad he’d secured Tigaffo’s loyalty early. If the treasonous thoughts harbored by renegades like Firturro contaminated the others, drastic measures would have to be taken. Every trick he’d tried so far just encouraged the damn human more. There was no broken look in his eyes or quiver in his voice. He took everything in and worked it to his advantage. This was not common among humans who rode the fence between fate and free will. Normally, the ones that did this were either too lazy or too scared to make a decision, but Darelle now realized that Firturro was right: Roger wasn’t like that. He had learned to walk the line between the two by utilizing parts of each.

  According to the records, the hardest struggle in Roger’s life had been during the long illness and death of his mother. She had gotten sick when Roger was in high school, and he’d ignored the oncoming illness. At the same time his mother was undergoing chemotherapy, the young Roger had received a full scholarship to a good university. Out of fear of his mother’s approaching death, but yet not wanting to acknowledge the sickness, he had ignored both until the scholarship offer had lapsed and his mother had died. He had refrained from choosing fate and dealing with his mother’s illness while at the same time not taking the path of freewill and attending college.

  Darelle had tried to turn this instance of fear into something that would consume Roger’s confidence, but so far, it had only seemed to increase the stubborn human’s resolve.

  Without opening his eyes, Darelle reached out and grabbed the Kalika on the edge of his desk as he thought about another night a long time ago when a dying human had whispered a name to him. Then, he’d believed the man had been trying to call out to someone from his past, but now the face of the unknown boy in the ceiling and the situation in front of him made him wonder if he hadn’t been wrong all those years ago.

  Down the hidden corridor and safely tucked away from prying eyes, Trulle was also feeling the restless surge of bad energy. Lately, his father had become more and more distant, which meant that he was practically living in another dimension. Trulle had had enough time alone to pour through his recent science fiction novel three times in the past five days and had even gone back to reading the history of Obawok and human interaction out of sheer boredom.

  Usually, Darelle would force him to study the religion of the Obawok ancients. He would stand over Trulle and quiz him on what he was reading. If he got something wrong, Darelle was there with a few harsh words and the occasional light smack to the back of his head to correct it. But he hadn’t even seen his father for more than an hour over the past five days. The only time they saw each other was at their nightly prayer meetings where they sat in silence and observation to worship the ancient ones, but even then, Darelle was withdrawn and distracted.

  Trulle put the worn paperback under the chair and picked up the even more worn ancient texts as he heard the latch tumble on the front door. Next week he would be able to set aside the ancient text studies when he began learning French. It was mandatory that all Obawok learn at least three earth languages, and those in the upper echelon of the class structure, like Trulle, were required to learn six. French was going to be his fourth.

  Darelle glanced at Trulle.

  “Are you still on track with your learning schedule?” he questioned.

  “Yes, but next week, I’m starting on French, and I’m going to need help with my conversation and pronunciation.”

  “You should be able to deal with that on your own. I have larger problems.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If that’s settled, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Darelle strode into his bedroom, ignoring their nightly prayer.

  Trulle sighed and returned to his novel. It was the most recent installment of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series that he could get his hands on, and he couldn’t wait to get to the end, even though he’d already read it. The travelers making their way through the many parallel dimensions and the trials that they encountered served to remind him of his belief that some select humans were allowed to see into their world. He hoped that he could read Through the Looking Glass soon, but even as he submerged himself in the words, he couldn’t keep the worry from seeping into his thoughts.

  The restlessness didn’t stop with Trulle; even in the dead of night, the halls of Obawok were alive in a way they hadn’t been before. Everyone sensed the approaching change. Tendille and Predinne, the night watchmen posted in front of Roger’s door, played a card game to pass the time. They barely talked, but they didn’t need to. They could feel the difference. Something was changing, and they weren’t sure if they liked it.

  Up a corridor and to the right, Councilman Garette looked over the ancient writings as he tried to squash the doubt Firturro’s ravings had stirred. Instead of finding comfort, he saw what Firturro was talking about for the first time. His mind was opening to a new realm of possibilities. He closed the first set of texts and opened the second, being sure to reread everything with close attention to the details he had always taken for granted.

  Omiralle also sat back, the files of Trey and Roger side by side on his table. He knew he was backing the losing horse, but he still hoped Trey would make a strong stand in the Mezoglike. It was hard to continue watching and supporting these extraordinary creatures only to know that they would ultimately die.

  He’d never told anyone, but there had been a couple of humans he’d not been able to bring into this world. They had been so close to choosing a path he had falsified his reports and let them be. It was a move that not even Firturro dared, and a secret he kept only with himself. In the encroaching darkness and worry, he found himself wondered what happened to their souls, and he hoped they had lived every moment he’d granted them.

  In the barrens below, even the women felt the approaching changes. They shifted restlessly in their community dorms. The men that usually frequented their rooms hadn’t been around as much. The only excuse they could find was that a few of the men had mentioned that two humans were about to take the test, but that had never slowed down their routine visits before.

  One woman, number 5287, called Del because she was the President’s favorite, sat in the dingy corner and dreamed of the possibility for a better life even though they had once told her it was dangerous to do so. Several women had gone insane thinking about things they could never have, but she had heard beautiful stories of earth from the watchers that had come to her before the President claimed her. Now, she knew nothing but hope.

  The President favored her because he tried to beat the hope out of her. She had spawned him four children, but she still didn’t belong to him, and he hated her for that. Early on she’d learned how to emotionally detach herself during those horrible experiences. She usually left his company physically wounded, but her emotional self was somewhere safe, flying through beautiful blue skies she could only dream of.

  For now, Del closed her eyes and focused on the shift that twanged its way through her nerves. It ran deeper than a lot of them suspected, and she could feel it heralding the beginning of something major. She drifted back to her daydreams, but she didn’t sleep. She hadn’t really slept in a long time.

  207

  Ten

  Never whisper a secret out loud.

  The rattling of keys broke into Roger’s sleep. He opened his eyes carefully, feeling the dull throb in his lower back that would follow him the rest of the day. He wasn’t surprised to find
that he had slept in the chair. He had thought about everything over and over until falling into a light stupor that couldn’t even really be classified as sleep because, thank God, he hadn’t dreamed. He stood up, stretched, and immediately winced.

  One of the guards opened the door, saw that Roger was awake, and nodded. Roger walked over to the kitchenette and started his morning coffee. The door shut as Roger stretched and waited for his tightened muscles to relax.

  A minute or so later, he limped across the floor towards the bathroom and took a quick shower. When he got out, he ran his towel across the small steamy mirror so he could study his face while he brushed his teeth. He had never been one for beards, but they hadn’t provided a razor, and so he was forced to wear the stubble. “It’s really not that bad,” he commented out loud.

  He changed and ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t bothered to comb it after he got out of the shower, and pieces stuck out at odd angles from where he had towel dried it, but what did he care? He was sure the Obawok didn’t mind, and in truth, it felt good not having to worry about how he looked.

  Roger went back to the kitchenette and poured his cup of fresh coffee, grimacing at the funny aftertaste as the coffee mixed with the mint remains of the toothpaste.

  As he was rinsing the remnants of cold coffee out of the old ceramic cup and coffee pot, he once again heard the lock kick over in the door. Roger looked up as the door opened and the clumsy trio entered. He had to stop himself from gasping out loud at the dark brown hue when Tigaffo came in.

  207

  Kristi Brooks

  Last night, he had been worried about Tigaffo’s digression, but he didn’t have to worry now because Tigaffo was already there. The dark brown cloud had grown so dense that it was now difficult for Roger to make out Tigaffo’s features. A balance had shifted, and it mainly worried him because it was a sign that things had suddenly gotten a lot worse.

  The great hall was unusually crowded, and Roger immediately saw that the Obawok milling around looked as tired as he felt, indicating that last night had been a restless one for a lot of people. As his little envoy approached, almost all of them quit talking and turned to look at him. There were at least thirty of them huddled together in groups, and those groups were sharply divided by the color of their auras. Roger found himself wondering if this was what Mississippi looked like in the fifties.

  The Obawok with the greasy brown stains leaching into their skin were clustered around the far right side of the room near the grandly carved door that led to the council chambers where they’d tried him. The Obawok with bright, clean beautiful glows emanating from their skin were huddled together near a group of plain benches on the opposite side of the room.

  The extremity of the difference between the two groups was something new. While the dark hues had claimed their victims like a cancer, the others shined with a brilliance Roger associated with stained glass windows in cathedrals.

  As they passed by, Roger looked back at the receding groups of astonished Obawok, catching a reproachful look from Tigaffo in the process. When he’d been dragged in front of the President, there hadn’t been an aura around him, just the strange bile odor of violence and death on his breath. However, there had been danger in the President’s eyes. Roger wouldn’t be surprised if he had been a ruler of a thousand different dimensions of hell before coming to rule lord supreme over this desolate group of people.

  “How old is the President?” The question slipped out, and its unexpected presence broke through the normal silence, startling the others.

  “What do you mean?” Tigaffo answered with another question, his face furrowed in concentration as he stared straight ahead.

  “What I mean is, if he were on earth, how old would he be in human years? For that matter, how old are you? How old is Firturro? I’m just interested in the average life span for an Obawok.” Roger spoke in quick spurts, trying to hide his mistake.

  “I’m not sure what the exact measurement of human to Obawok years would be, but I believe I am around 20 years old, and Firturro is close to 70. Is that good enough?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” And no, it’s not good enough, Roger thought.

  They continued in silence until they came to the rock door.

  Firturro smiled when Roger entered, the corners of his oddly shaped green mouth tilted up, but it was forged and locked tightly on Firturro’s face.

  Roger tried to return the smile, knowing it probably looked just as fake.

  They shuffled into the classroom and waited as Firturro walked up to the front of the room.

  “Following tradition, I will lead the last training session.” Firturro glanced around the room before continuing. “First, we will cover the checkpoint requirements. They have not been mentioned before now because it was the ancient’s belief that if the participants knew about them, they might become more stressed than was necessary. So we are required to wait until the last day of your training to explain them.

  “You already know there are three trials, but you also have to check in between each one. You get thirty hours between each check in, and you’re not allowed to have any instrument that will help tell time.

  “You have to travel on foot to each test and complete them before you can officially check in. The Signas, or test givers, are the indisputable keepers of the time. What they say is all that matters in the eyes of the council. They are fair and accurate; they won’t lie.”

  No, Roger thought, they wouldn’t mess up something as all consuming as this duty. Not after they’ve spent their whole lives chasing after it.

  Firturro’s voice deepened.

  “The Signas will be monitoring your progress. If they sense you are doing something illegal, they will terminate the test immediately.”

  “What happens if the test is terminated?” Roger asked, worried now about how far they might go to keep him from finishing the trial.

  “You are taken directly to an isolation chamber where your soul is preserved and you body is killed. It was the belief of the ancients that roaming souls, either human or Obawok, would be a danger to the society, so they are taken from the body just before death. Human souls are returned to earth and released; Obawok souls are recycled.”

  “Recycled?”

  “Yes, we are continuously reborn from the same pool.”

  The room began to double. He could still see Firturro standing at the front of the room, but behind him where there was usually a normal wall there was now the wall to a different room, a darker room. In this room there were shelves and shelves of jars with different colors of glowing liquid, and each jar was intricately marked.

  The President stood in between the two shelves.

  The room he was physically in was on pause. Nothing was moving, and Roger couldn’t hear a single sound. He turned and looked at Tigaffo and noticed that his mouth was partially open and his eyes half closed.

  Roger looked back at the scene unfolding behind Firturro. The President uncapped one of the jars of liquid sitting on the shelf and took a couple of sips from it.

  Roger looked back down at his table, and when he looked back up, the scene was gone and the room had started up again as if time were nothing more than a VCR tape.

  Firturro continued explaining the test without hesitation.

  “At the first checkpoint, you will meet with Vetene, who will administer the logic trial. From here, you will have thirty minutes. You will have only one chance at figuring out the puzzle, no matter how long it takes you. If you give Vetene an answer after only ten minutes, then that is the end of the session, so you are advised to take as long as you need to answer the problem.

  “The second trail is a little more complicated to explain. At the second checkpoint you will meet Adenitril, and he will induce you into a hypnotic state. You will remain in this limbo for an hour while you experience the various aspects of human nature. After Adenitril revives you, he will ask you several questions to establish your capacity to finish th
e trial. If you can’t answer his questions coherently, you will be taken away and the test will be over.”

  Roger put his fingers against his temples and rubbed his forehead as hard as he could to clear the angry throb that only continued to build as Firturro spoke.

  “The final phase of the test deals with the subject’s ability to tell reality from delusion. The administrator of the third phase, Idrian, will meet you at the checkpoint. This trial cannot be discussed beforehand, and part of its completion is that you face it with no prior preparation.”

  207

  Eleven

  Dark houses often contain darker secrets

  Darelle paced the floor in the dingy room, the half beaten whore curled and weeping against the far wall.

  Once, female Obawok had been equal with men. They were cunning creatures, but they had become sympathetic to the human’s plight. They wanted to end the tests, and he couldn’t have that. So, he had begun to strip them of rights after the last of the other ancients had died. He had managed to slowly edit the texts until women Obawok were seen as being beneath the males. Eventually, they were not longer trusted or allowed to hold positions of power, and then they were finally relegated to this lower existence.

  No woman was any better than this crumpled specimen as far as Obawok were concerned, and that met his needs just fine. Each time a solid blow landed into her flesh he felt a surge of adrenalin that rivaled his potion.

  He turned and looked back at her, smiling at the damage that he’s been able to inflict. Although she looked like a very young woman, she was at least twice, or even three times, Firturro’s age. Darelle enjoyed beating her so much he had done something he’d never done for the others: he kept her alive.