by C. W. Trisef
Enthralled by the story, Ret subconsciously began eating the food Virginia had prepared for him.
“As always, Lye raised a silent alarm among his underground network of aboveground agents. He needed information on the Coys—clues, tips—any and all knowledge about what they were doing or where they were going. With unseen tentacles, Lye wormed his workers into the Coys’ lives, granting him eyes to read their notes, ears to overhear their findings, and a mind to learn their plans. Lye has ways of getting his informants in and out, putting them where they need to be in order to get what he wants: they tip off the cleaning lady or impersonate a repairman, bribe the landlord or intercept the mail, lobby the phone service or stir up a neighbor—his methods are as endless as the ways to corrupt the human heart. I know because I’ve done my share of it for him. He is the master of deceit and disguise, the father of lies and lechery, the world’s oldest student of the art of evil.”
“And in all my years of servitude to Lye, there was only one time when I saw him truly worried. It was when he learned that Helen was decoding the molecular structure of the water samples she had collected from some of the hot springs at the Deep, with the intention of duplicating and mass producing it. None of us knew what the big deal was about that natural spring water, but the fact that Helen had figured it out threw Lye into a panic. Fortunately for him, one of his aides informed him that Helen had administered some of the precious liquid to herself—a small detail that hatched a wicked plot.”
“Soon thereafter, Lye poisoned Helen. He didn’t do it himself, of course; he had one of his minions do the dirty deed. How? I don’t know—spiked her drink, coaxed a waiter, dared a wayward teen. Promise a person whatever they want and they’re bound to do whatever you want. He capitalizes on the unstable hearts of the earth—the weak-willed and wanton-eyed—and corrupts them with bribes of money, promises of power, pledges of prestige, or assurances of revenge. And that’s how he was able to reach into Helen’s life. He poisoned her, and when she drank another sample of the so-called magic water, he poisoned her again. She fell ill, and when no local doctor could find a cure, the Coys did exactly what Lye knew they would do: they went to their colleague, Dr. Victor Cross.”
In dismay, Ret suddenly spoke, “You mean Dr. Cross is—”
“—A fraud,” Stone finished, “just like I was as principal. Mind you, Cross is a brilliant doctor. He’s a board-certified, fully-legitimate, world-class physician, which is why the Coys had associated with him before in their humanitarian work. But Cross also happens to be one of Lye’s top-dogs, higher up in rank than I was. I’m not sure how Lye got him to join the cause, but whenever Lye needs to take out someone swiftly and secretly, he usually goes to Cross. So all that time when Mr. Coy thought his good friend Victor was taking care of Helen, Cross was actually ensuring her demise. It was Cross who undid every operation behind the scenes; Cross who nullified every medicine behind closed doors. He did exactly what Lye told him to do.”
“But destroying Helen wasn’t enough. No, Lye had to figure out a way to bring down Ben. Through his observations, Lye learned of the profound love Mr. Coy had for his wife. Lye knew if he killed Helen, then Mr. Coy would stop at nothing to carry on her legacy and expose the Deep’s identity. And so, Lye would ruin Ben by spoiling his love. Lye waited until Helen had finally unraveled the secret of the liquid. He kept her alive just long enough, which was easy since her life was in Cross’ hands. When that time came, Helen wrote the information on a piece of paper that she intended to present to her husband. She asked Cross to call for Ben. Cross, whose allegiance to medicine falls second to espionage, figured out what was going on and reported to Lye that the moment had arrived. Then, according to Lye’s plan, Cross waited for Helen to nod off, which was easy to do by tinkering with her IV. He took her slip of paper and replaced it with one of his own, having studied her penmanship enough to forge her hand. Then he called for Ben, and instead of reading his sweet wife’s decoding of the secret water’s molecular structure, he read the Cross-written words of How could you do this to me? Then Cross finally pulled the plug on Helen’s life, and she died.”
Ret couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His heart felt sick to learn of such a wretched tale. He grieved for Mr. Coy. The outcome of the whole ordeal was bad enough, but now that he had learned the truth about how it had taken place, it was downright sinister. Helen’s death, Coy’s tragedy…it was all Lye’s fault—and just so he could hide his stupid headquarters! Ret heard Virginia sniffling close by, tearing up as she listened in from the kitchen.
“When it became obvious that the event brought Mr. Coy to the brink of insanity,” Stone resumed, “Lye knew he had triumphed. His great threat lay dead, and her husband was as good as dead. Lye called for a celebration, for the secret society had been saved. That’s when Cross and I took that picture together—the one that Mr. Coy saw in my former house, where we’re shaking hands. I was congratulating him on the successful part he played in Helen’s demise.”
“But that night at the restaurant,” he carried on, “when I heard the account given from Mr. Coy’s perspective, I came to a staggering realization. For the first time, I realized Mr. Coy and Helen’s husband were the same person—that the man living in the strange house just across the creek on Little Tybee Island was the same man whose wife and life Lye had destroyed years ago. You see, I was not involved in Lye’s scheme to take out the Coys; I never knew them by their real names because, like most other individuals on Lye’s hit list, Lye had given them code names. It’s like I told you, Ret: it’s all about secrets! That’s how undetectable and multi-faceted Lye’s secret society is. I mean, for crying out loud, I worked for the guy and didn’t know what he was up to most of the time. And even though Lye surely knows by now that Coy is helping you, Lye never told me his history with Coy. It wasn’t until that night at the restaurant, hearing Coy’s story and realizing it sounded a lot like another one I had heard of, when I made the connection. And, to Lye’s credit, it was wise of him never to cue me into Coy’s past because, as it turned out, getting the true story broke my heart.”
Stone’s voice trailed off. He paused for a few moments, his head down. When he looked up again, there were tears in his eyes—tears of pain.
“Shattered it into a thousand pieces!” he wept, throwing his arms up in grief. “Something changed within me that night. I didn’t see Helen’s death as a victory anymore; I saw it instead as one man’s misery. You see, that’s what Lye does to you. He brainwashes you, manipulates you. Whether he hits you over the head with his staff or with his lies, he indoctrinates you with his twisted concepts until you live in a false reality. He makes you dead to emotion and puts you past feeling until you feel nothing—not even the coldness of your own heart. He removes you from the pain that his programs cause others until you come to believe there’s no such thing as pain—that there’s no such thing as right and wrong, that what you do doesn’t have any consequences. And you hear and see and do these things so much that you eventually come to believe them yourself. But that night, I began to see things as they really were. I saw all the pain that I had caused and would cause by doing Lye’s bidding. I couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t live with myself. That’s why, when I got the call from those vigilantes who captured you at the delta of the Amazon River, I told them to let you go.”
“That was…that was you?” Ret asked in surprise, never having learned why those bandits mysteriously turned away that day.
“Yes,” Stone confessed, wiping his wet cheeks. “Once I did that, I knew I had to go into hiding. Lye had put me in charge of keeping tabs on you. I was to monitor you at all times and report everything to him. That’s why he placed me at your school. He was especially concerned about the scars—which one was active, which one was next. That’s why he stationed guards all along the Amazon—each one would act as a buffer against you getting to his Vault before him. He couldn’t lose the Vault, Ret; that’s where he kept his money to fund his
schemes. But I duped him—a total slap in his face. He had no idea where you were, that you would make your appearance at the Vault in a matter of days.”
“Then why was he already there when I arrived?” Ret questioned.
“He was?” Stone said, flabbergasted.
“Yeah, he was totally ready for me,” Ret recalled.
“So you didn’t get the element then?” Stone wondered. This was all news to him since he severed his ties with Lye. “Is the Vault still intact?” A part of Stone hoped this was the case, as it would mean Lye might not be as upset with him.
“No, I got the element, and the Vault is history,” Ret told him, “but it wasn’t easy. Lye was expecting me.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Stone said. “Someone must have tipped him off, but it wasn’t me. No, it wasn’t long at all after that phone call from the Amazon when I sat Virginia down and told her everything. In her infinite compassion, she forgave me. I told her we had to leave immediately—go to someplace in the middle of nowhere and live out the rest of our days in hiding or until the threat of Lye was gone. I figured you’d sneak into the Vault right under Lye’s nose, then collect the element and, as a result, destroy his treasury. He would be furious, and he would release his rage on me. So we left, taking very little with us. We enrolled Charlotte in a retirement community along the way, then bought a trailer and didn’t stop until we felt we had reached a place where no one would ever find us. And no one has.” He picked up his untouched glass of milk and drank it dry. “Until today.” Reaching the end of his narrative, he placed the empty glass back on the table and slouched in his seat with a sigh.
There was silence in the tiny tin trailer for several minutes. Ret sat ponderously, his mind digesting Lester’s words and his stomach Virginia’s soup. Stone’s cheeks were still moist from his tears—tears which Ret wanted to believe were genuine, but, for all he knew, Stone could very well have made up his entire story in an effort to “foster friendship and then betray confidences,” which he just said was one of Lye’s tactics. It certainly was a good story, but didn’t Stone also say his so-called former boss was “the master of deceit”? Sure, he had been kind to Ret today, carrying him into his home and feeding him a meal, but such behavior is faked all the time. Who was to say this pretend principal had really, truly changed?
And, for that matter, what is change? Is it a real, tangible object that we can hold in our hands like the coins in our pocket? Or is it merely a temporary, nebulous concept that ebbs and flows like waves or comes and goes like seasons? Does change actually exist? Can it be bottled and measured or only observed and supposed? The widowed Ben Coy changed because of something that happened to him, yet the penitent Principal Stone said he changed because of something that happened in him. So where does change even come from? Is it an unavoidable force of fate upon us or a voluntary power of soul within us? Is it a true desire of the heart or a weak wish upon a star? What exactly is change? Is it even real?
Perhaps, then, one proof of the reality of an unseen force is its seen effects—not so much the changer as its changes. We know autumn primarily because the leaves are seen changing color, not because of the unseen changing of the earth’s orbit. We know old age better because of the seen changes to the body’s skin than the unseen changes to the body’s organs. We know repentance because we see changes in behavior, not the unseen change of the heart.
And so, for being such an unseen thing, there was a definite change to be seen in the person of Lester W. Stone. His mannerisms were more mild than mean, his words more kind than cruel, his tone more soft than stern. But nowhere was his change more apparent than in his eyes, those windows to the soul. They used to be shifty but now were steady, used to be pointed but now at peace, veiled but now vindicated.
So what is change? Ret still didn’t know exactly, but he could tell you what it’s like. Change is like the wind moving through a field of grain: itself unseen but its influence seen moving through something, working within someone. Change is like the invisible signals of communication: it can emanate from a source and be picked up by an attuned receiver. Change is like the magnetized bits of a computer hard drive: a state of being—an orientation—that is hard to read with the natural eye.
Is change real? “Yes,” Ret would say, “yes it is.”
Finally, Ret moved to end the pensive silence. He started, “Principal Stone—”
“Please,” Stone interrupted kindly, as if displeased with his former title, “call me Lester.”
Still employing his sense of propriety, Ret revised, “Mr. Stone, what was it exactly that caused you to change?” Ret’s question struck at the heart of what he needed to know if he was ever going to fulfill the mandate to “cure the world.” Maybe Stone could offer some insight as a newly changed man himself.
But Stone was at an apparent loss for words. He scrunched his face, looked around, and even scratched his head in search of an answer. Seeing him struggle, Virginia emerged from her hideout in the kitchen and went to her husband’s side. She lovingly sat on his knee and wrapped her arm around his back. Stone smiled to find that his answer had literally come to him.
“It was love,” Stone said, grasping his wife’s hand. His eyes were moist again, his voice stifled by emotion. “It was true love that caused me to change. I saw the immense love that Mr. Coy had for his wife—so real, so pure. How could anyone not see something like that? His pain and anguish gave me a glimpse into what lay in store for me if I didn’t change course. You see, there is no love with Lye. He’ll tell you there is, of course, but it’s not real love—it’s love’s counterfeit: lust. Everything he does is for himself—to satisfy his wants and his desires, never someone else’s. That’s what lust is: to love self at the expense of others. And that’s why Lye is miserable: because he doesn’t know true love.” Then, smiling at his wife, he added, “Real love is about others; fake love is about self. And that’s what I learned from Mr. Coy that night. I realized Lye’s world revolves around himself, but Coy’s world revolved around everyone but himself. And when my mind caught hold of such a stark contrast, my guilt and emptiness were replaced by light and hope. I wanted what he had. That night, Mr. Coy rescued me. Please thank him for me the next time you see him.”
“I’m not sure when that’ll be,” Ret informed him. The Stones stared at him with a look requesting explanation. “I ran away. Like you, I needed to escape from all of this.”
“Now why would you do a thing like that, Ret?” Stone asked tenderly.
“Because…” Ret stuttered, convicted by his own conscience, “because I was selfish.” He was speaking methodically, drawing conclusions from knowledge gleaned thus far on his great northern trek. “Because I let my own useless cares eat away at my love and concern for others.” Stone’s introspection had spurred Ret’s own. “Because I doubted people’s ability to change so much that I started to believe they couldn’t.”
As Ret looked down in shame, the Stones looked at each other with compassion for their castoff guest. Virginia got up to prepare a place for Ret to sleep for the night.
“Lye must be stopped, Ret,” Stone said soberly. “He is raining down his wicked influence over the peoples of the earth. The rising floodwaters largely go unseen, but their damaging effects are very easy to be seen. His might may seem unmatched and his darkness impenetrable, but, in reality, his authority is very limited. He only has as much power as we give him. Not long ago, I was a slave to Lye; I let him have all power over me. But not anymore. Today, his power has shrunk a bit. Today, his dominions are less one heart—my heart.” Stone rose to clear the table. “People can change, Ret,” he told the morose young man with a soft clasp on the back. “I did.” Then Stone grabbed the dirty dishes and walked away, his heavy steps booming along the suspended floor.
With the weight of the world on his shoulders again, Ret spilled out of his chair to get some fresh air. He dragged himself to the backdoor, down the makeshift steps, and out into
the small clearing behind the trailer. He felt so conflicted—so displeased with his life, with the world, with everything. He felt singled out by the sages—picked on by the planets—knowing what was expected of him but not sure if he wanted to do it. He felt the universe asking him to settle it in his heart, once and for all.
The sun had set on another day, engulfing the world in shadow. And yet, despite the arrival of night, there seemed to be an unusually bright gleam coming from above. Ret looked up, expecting to find a full moon or a starry expanse. But instead of celestial bodies, Ret saw something in the sky that would change his life forever.
CHAPTER 8
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT (AGAIN)
Mr. Coy’s trip home to Little Tybee Island was very different from his initial flight to Waters Deep. Instead of traveling alone, this time he had Jaret to keep him company. The two of them quickly became immersed in dialogue, which prevented Coy from drowning in his own dismal thoughts again. While Jaret’s heart was aflutter with memories of his past matrimony, Mr. Coy’s heart was soaring on his high hopes for the future, for he had made out like a bandit at the Deep, sneaking away with an important member of Lye’s personnel—a commander, no less. It was Coy’s intention to free Jaret from his brainwashed condition and make an ally out of him, simply by telling him the truth about the Oracle.
But oh, where to begin! Coy commenced with that day, a few years ago, when it all started for him—when the United States government asked him to investigate an incident off the coast of Florida, involving the sinking of an unidentified ship, the disappearance of a Coast Guard captain, and the washing ashore of some unusual wreckage.
“Yes, yes!” Jaret interjected. “I remember that now!”
Then it was off to Sunken Earth, that surreptitious civilization whose equality Lye had undone in his quest to seize control of the earth element that was protected within the peak of the land’s great mountain.
