“Right.”
“Wrong. For the crucial difference between these lines and others navigational tools is that they are always in motion too. What use are they, then, if they are no more constant than the people they might help you find? It works like this. Once one has located the desired person, or animal, or anything else that does not remain in the same place at all times, in order to catch up with them, one must only find the horizontal and vertical lines that travel around with them, and follow them to where they intersect. The person will be there, every time. They can run as fast and as far as they like, but they will always be there. To escape from it is as impossible as being separated from ones own shadow.”
Tad nodded, gently massaging the back of his head. “I think I see what you mean. But how does that help me?”
“I’m getting to it. Now, you were able to find me easily enough, weren’t you?”
“Right.”
“That’s because, in reaching out, even though you didn’t know it, you had pinpointed me at the center of these navigational lines. You moved along them until you reached the point where they intersected, and there I was. As I am standing now, and as you are standing, I can do it to you without any trouble, and vice versa. But there is a way to prevent being found through that method. There is a way to make yourself appear invisible and undetectable. I want you to reach out and find me again, as you did before.”
Tad did it. The pain in his head was beginning to recede, and he was pleased to discover that the process was not as strenuous as it had been before. The necessary mental state was achieved more easily. Stitch was right; it all began with the breathing. But don’t get too pleased with yourself now. He’s only standing five feet away from you! “There,” he said.
“Okay. Now, I want you to release me and back away, but this time don’t snap it off. Return to yourself as slowly as possible, and try to be mindful of the texture of the air around you. The empty space isn’t as empty as it seems! Try to concentrate on the horizontal and the vertical.”
Tad tried to do as he said. In his state of heightened sensitivity, concentrating on the surface mass of the objects in the room, the walls, the ceiling, Stitch himself, he found that the quality and, indeed, the texture of the very air was indeed noticeable. The previous time he’d noticed the currents that were constantly in motion, which he’d never recognized before; now he noticed something else as well. There seemed to be very fine filaments, like the cords of a spider’s web, quivering, nearly insubstantial, but undeniably there. There were many, many of them, hung in the air like strings of gossamer, and they were, in fact, traveling in both a vertical and horizontal direction. And Stitch was at the intersection of two of them; he was where they terminated, or perhaps he was where they started, and they traveled out from his body. Tad could not have said. He practiced moving up and down the lines, back and forth, and was delighted with the result. It was like learning the use of a new musical instrument.
“That’s good,” Stitch said. He took a step to the left, and Tad noted how the strings moved with him. He took two steps to the right, with the same result. “You have found me, and you have a lock on me. Now, I’m going to do something, and your job will be to try and keep that lock. Ready?”
“Yes.”
And then, with no further warning, Tad’s hold on the man slipped off. It happened so suddenly that Tad blinked and held his hands out to steady himself. It was like a lifeline that had been holding taught to a solid object had snapped, and he felt momentarily as if he was drifting away. But he tried to redouble his concentration, feeling out carefully. But to no avail. This was different than when he’d been hunting for Daddy. He could see his target, standing just a couple of feet away. But every time he tried to narrow his concentration and hold Stitch fast as he had before, his grip slipped right through him, as though the man had become completely transparent, a ghost. He felt himself becoming angry, and he stopped trying, letting out an exasperated breath. “Okay, I can’t do it,” he said. “Are you going to tell me how you’re doing that?”
“Yes, I am, and as you’ve probably guessed, this little trick is how James is concealing himself from you.”
“From me.”
“Yes, but not only from you alone, don’t be under that misapprehension! James is an unfailingly suspicious and wary person, whatever personality he’s wearing on a given day. Knowing this method of locating people, and being better at it than almost anyone, he is only too aware that it could be used against him by an enemy. Every waking moment he has himself protected, so that he will be invisible and untraceable. But I will explain this skill to you also, if you let me, and that will even the odds between you, if only slightly.”
“Do so,” Tad said, grinding his teeth.
“You know now what I mean when I speak about the lines that can be utilized for locating. Horizontal and vertical, and when you find the intersection of the right two, there I will be. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Think now of your body being open, unguarded, accessible. For even though you are not aware of it, that is how you are, there, as you stand, this very moment. You are in my sight, but even if I should close my eyes and reach for you in the way I’ve explained, finding you would be swift and easy. To close yourself off to me and the world, the best and only way is to cause the collapse of the individual guiding lines that lead to you. That way you will blink out of sight like a light bulb being extinguished, and neither I nor any other will be able to track or monitor you that way.” He raised his hands out in front of him and held them with the palms facing each other, about six inches apart. He nodded for Tad to do the same, and the boy imitated him. “Start once again by breathing. Slow your heart rate and be aware of yourself. Come into yourself. This time no traveling will be required. Become aware of the two lines of intersection that correspond at all times to your position. Have you done it?”
“Yes…”
“Good. Now, here is what I want you to do. Feel the horizontal line running through you. It passes through your body, not harming you. There is a similar one for me. Now watch, as I take that horizontal line and turn it vertical.” Stitch was rotating his palms, keeping them the same length apart as he did so, as if he held an object of a certain size in the air. “It is like a key turning in a lock. The horizontal line is turned so that it is lying atop the vertical line. And once it is done, no one will be able to reach or find me in that way. I will be like James. Untraceable. You see?” He rotated his hands back and forth. “Open. Closed. Open. Closed. Just like locking and unlocking a door.”
“Do I have to do that? With my hands?”
“No. I find that it’s easier the first couple of times with that visual aid. But like sending yourself out to find someone, all that is required for this to happen is the right mental state. That is all.” Tad tried this new technique several times, at first with his hands held in front of him as he’d seen Stitch do. That seemed to make things a bit easier. It was similar to what he’d done before, he found. It all started with control of his mental state and awareness of his physical presence and the presence of objects around him. He could feel the lines, the filaments in the air, hung softly, and he could feel the individual ones that were his and his alone. Once he could feel them, and he had a firm grip on them, he could slowly begin to turn the horizontal one that was running through his midsection. It was a very strange sensation as it rotated. It felt almost as if an internal gear that he’d been unaware of was turning within him. When it had turned as far as it could go, he did indeed feel differently; he felt strangely keyed up, as if he was tensing one of the larger muscles in his body and holding it that way. There was a tightness in his head and the back of his neck, his shoulders.
“Does it always feel that way?”
“It becomes easier the more you do it, like the rest of what I’ve been showing you. But you are a natural, there can no longer be any doubt of that. Using only my crude explanations you’re able to pic
k it up intuitively, faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.” The big man crossed his arms over his chest again and shook his head slowly. “You’ll have to excuse my awe, it’s just that it’s really quite remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Tad tried locking and unlocking several more times. Stitch looked on approvingly and eventually seated himself again and picked up his knitting once more. Tad went on with his practicing in silence, until he was satisfied that he could block himself off and hold that position with a minimum of discomfort.
“Thank you for that,” he said at last. “That is yet another question answered, and the knowledge will come in handy. Now if your friend wants me, he’ll have to seek me out himself, and he can’t track me with his mind.” He glanced over at Stitch and grinned, but the man looked back at him soberly, not returning his smile.
“It would be a mistake to think that. Haven’t you been paying attention? Haven’t you started to grasp now the sort of person you’re dealing with? This is a way to counter one of his tricks, but there are many more. James is a veritable engine of plots and ploys. This is only one of his many weapons.”
Tad’s smile faded, and he sighed. “I know,” he said. He stepped over to the doorway, looking out through the next room to where the sunlight played on the warped boards of the porch and the shadows of the clouds flung themselves across the pockets of high grass. “Which is why I have more questions for you.”
“Ask them then, if you feel you must. I told you, I will answer if I can.”
“It’s something else I’ve noticed, that happens on certain occasions when Daddy is around. It happened the first time I met him, and it has happened more than once since then. It happened at Decadence. It’s about the passage of time.”
Stitch glanced up at him knowingly. “Ah,” he said.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The time manipulation. It seems like only a few minutes have passed, but the whole afternoon has gone by. Or it seems like the one night should have been over ages ago, but it just lasts, and lasts, and lasts. Sometimes time expands, and sometimes it contracts. He’s responsible, isn’t he? How does he do it?”
“More tricks, as you might expect. Tricks of the body and of the mind. In order to understand how this particularly disorienting sleight of hand is accomplished, you must first look, once again, to a rather ordinary bodily function, and another one that people take for granted every moment of every day. Take for granted as long as it’s functioning properly, that is. But let things get just the slightest bit out of whack, and you’ll start paying attention to it very quickly! Think of it like so. In the typical, healthy human body, the heart beats approximately seventy times per minute. There is a constant swing between the systolic and diastolic pressure, as the muscle goes from contraction to relaxation. Now, you’ll find that it is possible, with practice, to slow your heart rate. It comes, once again, through self awareness, and regulation of what, class?”
“Breathing.”
“Breathing, yes. Precisely so. Yogis, fakirs, and other mystics have been known to be able to reduce their heart rate to sixty beats a minute, or even fifty, or less. With their minds quiet, drifting in the far reaches of tranquility and insight, they reach a near catatonic state, during which time they are closest to achieving enlightenment, and their earthly vessels are capable of receiving messages from other places and other minds. But there are other, more odious uses for this ability too. In the time that I knew Remy, I always found it difficult to determine his exact age. Though well traveled and marvelously informed in so many areas and disciplines, he always appeared strangely young to my eyes. It was years later, through James, that I understood why. Remy knew, and James knew after him, how to manipulate the breathing to achieve things far beyond the simple slowing of the heart rate. They knew how to slow their biological processes so drastically that time itself was speeding up around them, leaving them, and those around them, virtually frozen and immune to its effects. That is how it seems that time has sped up. What is happening at those moments is that time itself is moving along at its regular pace, but James and yourself, if you are near to him and he is exerting his influence over you, have temporarily stepped outside of it.”
“What reason would he have to do that?”
“Surely you understand that by now. It’s yet another form of disorientation, designed to keep you off balance. James’s cruelty and his propensity for vicious and ill conceived pranks are another trait common to all of his characters. Think of the occasions that time sped up around you, making you late for familial obligations. Yes, I know all about it. He tells me everything, remember? He has delighted in causing trouble for you, and driving a wedge between you and the rest of your family.”
“And it’s not as though that was very difficult to accomplish,” Tad said, half to himself.
Stitch nodded. “You were too free in revealing to him the details of your personal life. But I don’t blame you for that. You thought he was your friend.” Tad glanced at him. He was thinking again that Stitch could have long since cleared up that misconception, and he felt again that stab of anger at the man for standing idly by and allowing things to progress as far as they had. But he held his tongue. He would vent his frustration more, but not now. At this moment he was seeking information, anything that he could use in the struggle that he was becoming more and more sure would be forthcoming, and Stitch was speaking again. “There is a side effect of that particular ability, which perhaps you might not yet have realized. The slowing of one’s heart rate to the point that time is literally passing you by is a method by which it is possible to significantly prolong one’s life. If you are doing it continually, it follows that you could be able to live several lifetimes in the normal span. That is how it is that Remy always appeared so young, and in the time that I knew him did not seem to age at all. On the surface level, if you wanted to live far longer than the time normally allotted to a human being, this would be ideal. But there is a price, and this I have ascertained from watching both mentor and protégé.”
“What price?” Tad said, feeling a sudden chill.
“A strong body is capable of resisting any ill effects for some time. Remy’s power came, and James’s still comes, as I’ve explained, from knowledge of biological processes. It is through the knowledge of oneself that power is garnered. But the mental strain is quite another matter. If one is to master this technique, then it is done through practice of a mental state similar to the one we were just toying with. If you become proficient enough at it, then you’re able to keep that state and hold onto it, or slip in and out of it easily, whenever it suits you. But the mind was not meant to function for long in such a heightened state of stress. The body is out of sink with the natural pulse of the world around you, and it frays the clarity of the mind’s thinking. For James, who has fallen in love with the method as his father had before him, it is yet another factor contributing to his absolute and total insanity. What remained of his capacity for rational thought (and of course, I wasn’t convinced there even was any, after the death of his parents,) has yet another self imposed cancer eating away at it. And that’s not even taking into account his other addiction, Essence.”
“I was getting to that next. I have to say I have more vested interest in that than just about anything else. I drank the stuff, and the effects haven’t gone away. When will they? What else can you tell me about it?”
Stitch shook his head ruefully. “Unfortunately, I can tell you precious little. Remember, Remy was the real expert. He’d practically made the stuff his life’s work. He was obsessed with it. And I don’t think what I do know about it is going to make you very happy either. I don’t know its origin, or its structural makeup, but it is old, as I understand, ancient beyond what you or I, with our life spans, could ever conceive. It is an elemental substance, lifeblood of the earth, and it comes from beneath, only appearing on the surface sparingly, in certain spots, at certain times. As I said, Remy came here because of the
undiluted source, and he built the house directly over it. When it is imbibed, the effect is like a drug, but unlike any other drug that I have ever done or heard of. I could speculate on whether the voices that you hear are coming from an external source or an internal one, but I don’t know the true answer. It has always been my belief, though, that Essence gives voice, or many voices, to your subconscious. These are the voices that are given form in dreams, to ask you questions that when you are awake you are afraid to even think of, and they are also there to warn and cajole, or even to threaten, if a part of you feels that something you are doing is wrong, or that you are negligent in some duty or task. I do not think that you will come to harm from drinking Essence…in limited doses. But when has James ever done anything in limited doses? He is as dependent on the stuff and as addicted to it as a drunk is to alcohol. You’ve seen for yourself, he’s into it all the time. And let us, for the sake of argument, view Essence as a drug, for the moment, similar to other recreational drugs. Excess in any drug will lead to harm, and here, once again, the toll will be taken mentally. It is yet another erosion to the mental faculties of James Crawley, helping to make him the person that he is today. For the more you drink, the more what is lurking in your head will be given voice, and the louder those voices will clamor.” He shuddered. “I would hate for one second to be trapped inside James’s mind.”
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