by Aiden James
I couldn’t fight off the urge to cry, and began to weep. I wanted to wade through the throng of hate to reach the old me and see if I could talk some sense into that unenlightened, waste of a human being. But when I took a step forward, the guard assigned to protect my Roman ass from harm stepped into my path. The guard’s face began to change, morphing into someone quite familiar. For a moment, I hoped it would it be my beloved son, Alistair, but then recognized a pair of steel blue eyes....
“Time’s up, Willie Boy!”
Viktor Kaslow peered at me from inside the guard’s armor. Although he had changed somewhat from our last face-to-face encounter nearly two years ago, it was definitely Kaslow. Same cold features, but no longer cartoonish.... If not for the deep scars along his cheeks, neck and forehead that he received from the demons he now ruled, Kaslow looked much like he did before being turned into an immortal—during our battle inside the Garden of Eden that had since been buried deep within a cavern in the Alborz Mountains.
“Let’s see how you do on the pop quiz, Judas, Emmanuel, William, or whoever the hell you are!” he sneered. “We’ll know that answer very soon.”
He laughed meanly, and as he did, the world around me began to blur. Unprepared, I was pulled out of that terrible place at lightning speed, and didn’t slow down until I returned to the porch chair I had sat in while holding the coin....
I still held the damned thing tightly in my left hand, and the edges of my fingers were white from lack of blood flow. For a moment, I thought someone had turned on all the porch lights. But once my eyes adjusted, I saw it was daylight. The experience felt like it had taken an hour at most, but had likely lasted seven to eight hours instead.
“There you are!” said Amy, as if I had purposely been hiding from everyone.
She and Jeremy were already showered and dressed to meet the day, and I could hear Roderick and Beatrice laughing in the parlor across the way from where I presently struggled to my feet. I looked for my cell phone and found it lying on the floor beside the chair I had apparently not moved from after embracing the latest coin ride to my regrettable past.
“Shit... it’s going on seven-thirty? Why didn’t anyone come wake me?” I didn’t immediately realize the harshness in my tone.
“You were asleep out here?” Amy sounded shocked, and her brother looked just as surprised.
“William?” Beatrice sounded worried, as she slowly made her way to the porch. She looked back at Roderick who quickly came up behind her. “He’s here, Rod—you were right. He must’ve fallen asleep outside.”
She moved over to me, and before I could respond, my wife wrapped her arms lovingly around my waist.
“Are you okay? I was worried sick—and I damned near called the police when you didn’t answer your phone....” She sniffed.
Despite my complete disorientation, I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close while whispering apologies, and hoping no one saw me thrust the coin into my jeans’ front pocket. I mouthed another apology to Amy and Jeremy for my initial response to them, and said hello to Roderick, who eyed me suspiciously.
“You didn’t hear us call for you half an hour ago?” he asked. “We stood on the veranda above, and I guess we should’ve checked here, too.... You must’ve been out cold.”
I nodded in response, eerily acting as I had behaved as the mute Roman officer seemingly just an hour earlier... although obviously it could’ve happened around midnight and just felt recent.
What about Kaslow? Was any of this real, or was it just a bad dream sequence and I never actually made it to Jerusalem this time?
“You don’t look so good, hon’,” said Beatrice. “Let me take you upstairs, and you can rest for a while. I’ll be happy to bring you a Danish from the dining room, or maybe they can whip up an omelet for you to eat in our room.”
“I’ll be fine, babe... just let me take a shower and I’ll be ready to join you for breakfast.... Or have you all eaten already?”
“We wouldn’t think of enjoying a meal until we knew you were okay,” said Roderick, eyeing me in a way that I could’ve placed a safe wager on him gleaning from my thoughts most of what had happened since I reclaimed my coin from his possession last night. “We can wait for you.”
“Actually, it will work out perfectly, William,” said Beatrice, smiling as if a great idea had just occurred to her. “Jeremy spoke to the owner of the antique store a short while ago, and they are ready at any time for us to come and pick up the secretary. So, why don’t Amy, Jeremy, and I go on over right now to pick it up? Then by the time we get back, you’ll be ready to join us in the dining room.”
It sounded like a great idea... provided Roderick didn’t pester me for details on what had happened—or worse, demanded an explanation for why I had betrayed his trust by not waiting to deal with my coin until someone else could be present to keep me from getting into trouble, as ended up happening.
“Sure,” I said, though suddenly feeling out of sorts again... like this wasn’t real. I felt dismayed that I was just as lost as I had been before my coin experience. I had failed to figure out the cure for the uneasiness that continued to haunt me. Fat good all of last night’s nonsense did! “Just be careful, my love.”
I bent to kiss her, and we lingered a moment longer than was modest, prompting an ‘ah-hem!’ from Roderick.
“We will,” she assured me. “It’s just a few blocks away, and Jeremy’s driving, so you won’t have to worry about the baby kicking my back and causing a wreck.”
Beatrice brought a smile to my face, as well as my heart, pushing my worries away. To my surprise, Roderick didn’t follow me upstairs; apparently he was content to wait for us all to reconvene in the parlor. He picked up a copy of the morning paper and found a quiet spot to read it near the bay window facing the main drive that runs past the B&B. It wasn’t until my wife, Amy, and Jeremy were headed to the parking lot, that I noticed Roderick suddenly put down the paper and walk to the door, and I assumed he decided to join them in their little jaunt to The Sorrel Gelding after all.
I trudged up the stairs to the room I shared with Beatrice, when the rest of The Lot of a Soldier popped into my head....
A noble adventure
How it called to my soul!
Yet, death oversees this path unsure
Harvesting young that’ll never grow old....
I paused at the door, while mentally picturing the rest of the words as they scrolled before my mind’s eye....
Who hears the whisper?
Through the night’s bitter cold
A cruel harbinger
Warning I’ll soon be alone....
Not sure what prompted it, but I suddenly pictured Kaslow’s face in front of me from what I was beginning to believe had been just a dream, and not a genuine coin penance experience....
My blood on a saber
Betrayed by my own
My soul lost forevermore
A ghost for eternity... I now must roam....
Time’s up, Willie Boy!
I dropped the room key on the floor and ran downstairs. Before I made it outside, I heard the explosion. I sprinted to the adjacent parking lot, and knew when Roderick was on his knees on the lawn crying that I was too late—we both were far, far too late.
The Escalade and what looked like a small sports car parked next to it were engulfed in flames.... Or, what was left of the two vehicles now formed two unapproachable mounds of extreme heat. Amy, Jeremy, and the only woman I have ever truly loved were gone... forever.
I finally understood what ‘Tit For Tat’ meant....
But that answer came all too late.
Chapter Six
Two months have passed since my life ended in Corinth, Mississippi. Even now, I can barely think straight, not knowing how to carry on without Beatrice by my side.... Surely this is pain many can relate to, unfortunately, and it’s something I would never wish upon anyone this side of Viktor Kaslow.
If he was seeking
a kill shot to gain a permanent ‘one upmanship’ over me, this soulless fiend more than succeeded. I quit caring about anything; since in the end my efforts to do the right thing have failed the only two people I loved so deeply, namely Alistair last year to Ratibor, and now Beatrice to Kaslow.
“Are you going to just sit there and continue to feel sorry for yourself, Willie Boy, or do I have to kick your scrawny ass out of your bed and keep kicking it all the way downstairs and out of this house?”
Cedric Tomlinson stood next to my bed, an ornery twinkle in his warm brown eyes that defied the sternness in his tone. My former CIA boss shook his head while flashing his pearly whites that stood out sharply against his barely-lined ebony skin, his smile somewhere between cynical disappointment and compassion.
He and Roderick had returned after spending the morning fishing on the Holston River, and I overheard Cedric tell Roderick, “It’s time to get his ass out of bed and do something about Kaslow before the fucker takes over the world!”
As loud as he said it, from the grand foyer in Roderick’s spacious antebellum home, one might believe this would motivate me to at least get up and get dressed in a robe and slippers that had been set out for me nearly two weeks ago. Really, I needed a damned shower first... but would I ever give a shit to get it done?
“I suggest you shit, shower, and shave this time, William, and then come down to the library,” said Roderick, peering in through the bedroom doorway, bedecked in a true fly-fisherman’s wardrobe, complete with home-tied flies hooked to his cap and vest. “A package came for you today.”
“Why don’t you open it yourself, Rod?”
I bit my tongue to avoid saying something unkind about his latest peek into my thoughts. Granted, there wasn’t much going on in my head other than the repeated loop of events from the fateful June visit to Shiloh and Corinth. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to figure out a different outcome, despite Kaslow’s apparent advantage of time and space. If only I had understood that his abilities in that regard more than rivaled what Krontos could do with dimensional manipulation, perhaps we could’ve avoided the trip from Vicksburg to Shiloh, and for certain never bothered to visit the General Johnson House in Corinth. We could’ve come straight home to Abingdon. We could’ve chosen differently... we should’ve....
“Cedric, you’re going to have to forgive me for this, since I know how much you hate it when I comment on the thought impressions I get from William,” Roderick advised, stepping into the room and pulling up a desk chair to the side of my bed. “But this needs to be handled right now while it’s happening. All right?”
“Sure. Just don’t make it a habit like it used to be,” he said.
Roderick returned his attention solely to me.
“It ends today.”
“What ends today?” I asked, coyly.
“Don’t bullshit me, William. You know exactly what I’m talking about,” said Roderick. “The endless cycle of thinking you could’ve changed anything that happened. It wouldn’t have mattered if we had skipped our visit to Shiloh, Corinth, or even Vicksburg. Hell, as you would say, it wouldn’t have mattered if we had skipped the entire damned Civil War tour and purchased a Ken Burns DVD and watched it on the big screen downstairs instead. Kaslow was coming for you... for all of us. Whether here or any place else, he wouldn’t have spared Amy, Jeremy... or even Beatrice. I wish it could be different—more than you know, my cherished brother. But it can’t... and punishing yourself like this won’t bring any of them back.”
“But why, Rod? Why?” I began to weep, and the deluge of pain felt like a tidal wave welling up from my soul. If only it could envelope me in one fell swoop and kill my bitter emotions and forlorn memories....
“I wish I could tell you, William... Judas,” he whispered, nodding to Cedric before going on, as if this were a cue previously discussed, perhaps that morning while fishing for sunfish and small-mouth bass. Cedric responded in kind and stepped out of the room. “I know of what you feel.... Surely you realize I have never fully healed from my losses either. True?”
“That’s what worries me,” I said, thinking of the wife and two children he never talked about from one of the happier times in our long shared existence. I could picture the joy we both felt in those days, when we lived carefree for the better part of two hundred years, and the last three decades of the third century were the very best in that Mediterranean paradise.... But it ended badly for Roderick, when his beloved wife at the time died after a difficult birth that also claimed one child. As for me? Suffice it to say that I wasn’t anywhere near the husband or father I would eventually become nearly seventeen hundred years later, and promptly forgot the nagging wench who provided the lone blight upon those years....
“You form scar tissue over time, and you cherish the hope of eventual reunion,” he said, his voice still subdued. “I know you have never heard me speak of it, but it’s the truth—and a notion that I hold more dearly since Alistair’s passing. Do you know why?”
I hadn’t a damned clue. In fact, all I could think of at that very moment was why he hadn’t killed himself before now. He could die—we both deduced that fact from the near misses he had endured down through the centuries. Unlike me, if ever Roderick were to suffer a fatal wound, it would be permanent. There wouldn’t be the surprise of waking up naked in another location and time, as always had happened to me whenever a physical body of mine became damaged beyond what my cells could repair.
I shook my head, feeling a moment’s relief from my own thoughts’ assault since he had caught me off guard.
“The world on the other side of the veil that Alistair’s spirit described to you seems so wonderful,” he said. “I don’t know why other descriptions of the place haven’t affected me so... but Alistair’s words painted a picture of exactly where I want to be someday.”
“Why don’t you go now?” I asked. “What are you waiting for? Hell, if it were me, I’d go there right fucking now!”
“Yes... you would go,” he acknowledged, and his tone sounded as empty as I felt at present. The specs of gold in his eyes had been swirling steadily for the past few minutes, but slowed down, and his brilliant lavender eyes grew dim. “That is where you and I are different, Judas.... You would leave me to be with those whom you’ve loved on earth, and understandably so, since it is what most people would choose. But as for me... I would never go as long as you are here walking the earth. Until your existence ends, I will continue to fight off the urges to end my immortal state. I will always be your brother, and will always be here for you.”
I had no idea Roderick felt that way about me, and a burning dagger pierced my soul. As I have stated, I felt my life was over without Alistair and Beatrice... and I had carelessly discarded the devotion of the very best friend I ever had. Despite our differences at times, and the fact that we could disappear from each other’s lives for nearly a century at a time, we remained brothers in every sense of the word except by physical birth. And I had long loved Roderick as he did me.
How could I heal from such a terrible event as losing Beatrice? Perhaps never... but I had to try to carry on somehow. I couldn’t let Roderick down any more than I could turn my back on trying to make things right with Jesus Christ by offering my reclaimed thirty silver coins as restitution to The Almighty.
“I’m sorry, Rod,” I told him, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t choke on them as I spoke. “You are a better friend than I have ever deserved, and I cherish our bond.... So for you, I will get up out of this bed and bravely face the day once more.”
“You need to do it for you, Judas,” he said. “Otherwise, it won’t last.”
“In time it will be for me, too,” I assured him. “And, who knows.... Maybe I will finally make peace with the Lord soon, and then we can share a blissful afterlife together.”
It’s all I could give him for now. But it was a significant first step.
For the first time in many weeks, I was ready to resume my
life. Beatrice and Alistair would always be the biggest part of me, and my beloved wife would forever own my heart. Yet, I could take more steps and in time I would move on... finally.
* * * * *
“Well, look who’s decided to join the land of the living again!” Cedric enthused, as I stepped into the library. He and Roderick sat at a long cherry table that would be as suitable for a corporate boardroom as it once was for the founders of the original thirteen stars of the United States when they would meet here in secret long ago. “Come on over here, Willie Boy, and pull up a chair.”
Admittedly, it would take a while for me not to flinch from hearing Cedric’s pet name for me after Viktor Kaslow had stolen and used it to taunt me in Corinth. But I resolved to not let it deter me from embracing our task at hand with urgency. Roderick had briefly informed me before my shower that Kaslow kept a continual flow of correspondences to Abingdon from various points in Europe; and the occasional emails from the Russian that had miraculously skirted past the expensive firewalls Roderick installed this past year had increased tenfold during the past two weeks.
Not only that, but also several letters came in the mail. Interestingly, all were addressed to Roderick, until the one received that afternoon. It was addressed to me, as if Kaslow somehow knew I would return to the land of the living that Tuesday in late August.
