“So what about you?” I thrust an accusing finger at Norma. “The hospital sent you?”
“Honey,” she said, “Annabelle hired me to look after your crazy ass. I work for a private mental institution—one that would’ve been more than happy to admit you, but she insisted on keeping you here. I don’t know what it is. She must love you or something. All these people must love you. They’re here, aren’t they?”
I shrank back in the bed. I felt like I would be sick, and then I was, and so I threw up in an empty box beside the bed. When I sat up, they were all watching me but I didn’t care. I knew it was true. I knew I had lost my mind.
* * *
Sometime later, Annabelle and I were left alone. Dr. Li gave me a prescription for an herb tonic that he told me to take regularly before Jenny drove him back to the city. My first wife and I said a hasty goodbye; tears welled up in her eyes a little. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to say. The years were too many and the pain I thought I’d endured on her part made it so I couldn’t be open. She left the way she always tended to leave: without looking back. I imagined she had a husband somewhere waiting for her.
Celeste was still in the house, probably downstairs talking on her smartphone, or perhaps talking to Norma. I thought I could hear her distant voice as Annabelle and I sat in the quiet bedroom.
“It’s all so much,” I said. I’d managed to get out of bed and into the chair beside her, but my body was aching.
She placed her hand on top of mine and gently pulled it into her lap.
“I think the worst is over,” she said. “Now that you’ve revisited that memory from your childhood, you can start to process it, and then heal. Dr. Li said he’d help you get through this.”
I shook my head, overcome with sadness. “I can’t believe this is all true. I was convinced James and I were two separate people. Christ, it still feels like we are. How can Roger Borough not exist? I thought I was Roger Borough? What does that mean, that I don’t exist?”
“You’re James Steiner. You have always been James Steiner. Mentally you divided yourself to deal with the pain. Doesn’t it say something in the Bible about a house divided?”
“A house divided against itself will fall.”
“That’s it—which explains your impending death.”
It doesn’t explain anything, I thought. Only…
“What is it?” she asked. “Why are you frowning?”
“The craziest thing is that deep inside, I actually feel fantastically better. It’s just…”
“Yes?”
I lowered my voice. “What about the Time Eater?”
Her eyes widened. She leaned forward, hissing, “Don’t mention it ever again. What do we care about some stupid delusion of your Roger Borough self? We will just pretend it never existed.”
“But we know it did exist!” I blurted. “We both saw it. Dr. Li even saw it!”
“Dr. Li assured me the Time Eater was just your own personal demons, the side of you split off from yourself, which you projected into the physical world.”
“What? Come on. What about those dreams he said he had about fighting an evil spirit, and the book, and everything else!”
She sat up, letting go of my hand. “He did know about the book, and he did battle an evil spirit—but that evil spirit was you!” She jumped up from the chair and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind her. I was alone again. Out in the hallway, I could hear the sound of her sobbing.
* * *
As I lay back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, mulling things over, Celeste entered the room. She stood by the door for a second, just watching me. I turned slightly to look at her. I remembered her olive complexion and hooking jawline, her rich and curly hair. How many times had I held her face in my hands, how many times had I kissed it, lay beside it, adored it?
Memories crept back in through the crevices of my unconscious; they joined with the other memories that had recently resurfaced, and suddenly I had the full picture and I knew everything that had happened. It flashed before my mental eyes, all the sex and the lies, the fighting and resentment, even her cutting episode. I realized that it had happened to me; I was the one who took her to the hospital the day when the doctors and nurses kept her on suicide watch. This was my life—this whole thing.
I gave an amused grunt. “You been dating anyone recently?”
She blinked at me, then laughed. “Sure, a few flings here and there. Mostly I’m on my own, still get to see my former stepchildren, so that’s a nice part of my life. But of course, I cannot have children myself. As you can imagine, I’m still in therapy. I have discovered there’s a part of me that hates men and wants to rip their balls off.”
For some reason, this made me laugh. I said, “Sounds like it’s a good thing I got out when I did.”
“Hey, I let you out, and don’t you forget it.”
The air softened as we fell into our old repartee. She came over and sat in the chair beside the bed. When she was closer, I could see a few lines in her face and under her eyes. Those hadn’t been there when I was married to her. She had been through a lot.
“I wonder if I can blame you for all this,” I said jokingly.
“The hell you can. Blame that man who raped you. He’s the one who taught you how to be a rapist yourself. He’s the reason you were able to rape me.”
“For God’s sake, Celeste, how can you say that? The sex was always consensual. I never did it when you didn’t want to. I’m not a rapist.”
When she didn’t reply, the room hung heavily with silence. I decided to change the subject. “Is that who you were talking to on the phone downstairs, your therapist?”
She nodded.
“Is it the same guy we saw for our marriage counseling? Dr.…”
“No, it’s a new one. Her name’s Mary Swede. She’s very good. I can give you her number, if you like.”
“No thanks. I think I’ll stick with Dr. Li.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself. So what are you going to do now?”
My eyes had strayed to the window. Through the opening, I saw the treetops and roofs of the neighboring houses. I listened for the traffic on the street, heard voices, and the sound of a mass transit bus pulling away. I felt totally lost.
“Actually, I have no idea what to do next,” I said. “I thought I was one person, and now I am suddenly another. Well, it’s more like I thought I was one person who had a friend. It turns out that friend was just my alter ego.” I chuckled. “I guess I should be glad. I’m getting two lives for the price of one.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. And what about Annabelle?”
The thought of her brought a smile to my face. “I think I’m in love with her. I just hope I can keep it together long enough and not drive her away.”
“I know how you feel. At this point that’s basically the attitude I have to take whenever I get to know someone—which, in my case, never lasts for too long. Hopefully you’ll have better luck.”
She surprised me by getting up suddenly and climbing onto the bed. I recoiled, not because I was repulsed by her (honestly, I felt drawn to her), but because the idea of sex right now scared the shit out of me.
She sat on her knees and gently hiked up the brown one-piece dress she wore, exposing her bare thighs. With her other hand, she reached up to hold her left breast.
“Come on, what do you say?” she said. “How ’bout once more, for old times’ sake? Don’t you remember how we used to fuck like bunnies? Please, I want you inside me, I want you deep in my soul—”
She fell forward into me, locking her lips around mine, tongue darting out like a savage eel. I returned the kiss at first, overcome by the suddenness, but when she reached down to pull off my shorts, I stopped her, pushed her back.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to do this.”
Her gaze sharpened. “What are you talking about, of course you do. Are you not a man? Are not all men stupid?”
Her pupils blazed an intense color, hazel mixed with green, and I was reminded of the robot Dr. Stetson had said she could turn on, that part of her that could function by blocking out all her hurt feelings and emotions. I saw her mental illness dancing behind her eyes, the person who wanted to die, die, and die again. I imagined I was seeing her Roger Borough, and that terrified me. I shoved her away, sending her back onto the floor.
Immediately she jumped to her feet, indignant, and said harshly, “Well, it looks like you’re just the silly little faggot I always knew you were. Have fun fucking that black-haired freak. That is, if you’re able to fuck her.”
She snatched her Gucci handbag from the chair and stormed out of the room, slamming the door. I listened to her angry footsteps on the stairs. Only when they sounded far away did I allow myself to breathe.
* * *
A number of days passed. I lay in bed, recuperating, Annabelle attending my needs. Dr. Li returned to perform another acupuncture treatment. He said I was healing nicely and promised to make the trip out once a week to see me—at least until I was well enough to go see him. He gave Annabelle a copious supply of herbs for me to take, wrote her a bill, and went on his way.
We spent a lot of time talking, Annabelle and I. With her help, I was able to form some kind of coherent picture of my past. However, it was far from perfect. My life, I had realized, was like a photograph viewed through a broken glass frame. The lines and shards and cracks distorted the image, so that really there was nothing to see. Only fragments.
But we loved each other; of this there was no question. Despite my obviously “fragile” condition, she had decided to date me and let me live with her in Brooklyn. She offered to help me out of my apartment lease and she even paid someone to move in my things. She was so nice and understanding. I felt I was in danger of being happy.
After a week I was up and walking around, but I got exhausted easily. Part of it, I knew, was the trauma I had undergone while lying reclined in that bed. It was like I had put my muscles through a weightlifting marathon. But part of it was also re-acclimation; I was like a child who had reached the age of toddler.
Annabelle put up with my tantrums, fed me, prepared my herbal tonics, bathed me, and talked with me into the night. We hadn’t done much more than kiss since I broke on through to the other side, as Jim Morrison would say. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to have sex again. My final encounter with Celeste had put a bad taste in my mouth, and I still wasn’t sure what to make of it. But even with this, Annabelle seemed to be all right.
We never talked about the Time Eater. Not once. Instead, we avoided the subject, and it began to fade into the background of lives. But I thought of it. Oh, how I did. Every night as the sun went down and the night performed its gradual darkening of the window and the room, I thought about it. Sometimes I would get out of bed and throw open the curtains and stare up at the night sky. The stars, the ever changing moon. And I’d remind myself, those ones over there, the non-twinkling ones, those aren’t stars; those are planets…
But by and large, life was good. We had finally started to move on. No longer did we remain frozen in the past. Time, it seemed, had managed to catch up with us. The way it always does.
Epilogue
Annabelle came through the door, carrying a tray with my dinner and my herbal tonic. She set it on my lap, then took the seat beside the bed. I thanked her and started to eat the steak and peas she had prepared.
“Delicious,” I said. “But what about you?”
She patted her stomach. “Ate mine, thanks. You go ahead and enjoy.” She watched me intently, her mystical blue eyes burning me down; her long black hair was tied in a ponytail and hung limply over one shoulder. She looked gorgeous.
“What is it?” I said. “Do I have egg on my face?”
She chuckled. “I was just thinking.”
“Uh-oh. Any subject I know?”
“Yes, actually, you know this subject well. You’re it.”
“I’m a bit sick of thinking about myself.”
“Did you know it’s been six months since you arrived here?”
“It has?”
She nodded. “I remember when I picked you up at the terminal. I couldn’t believe how handsome you were.”
“I thought you were beautiful,” I said, forking steak into my mouth.
We sat quietly while I finished my meal and then downed my tonic. Annabelle took the dinner tray from me and set it on the floor. Then she said, “I need to talk to you about something.”
As soon as she spoke the words, I felt it, the old familiar dread, that sense of unease. I couldn’t imagine what she might need to talk about.
“Yes. What is it?”
She reached into her corduroy coat and withdrew a folded red cloth. Slowly, she undid the folds, revealing what lay hidden inside. I nearly passed out.
The book—the one I’d used to summon the Time Eater back at Ohio State; the one Dr. Li and his master had found in the mountains around his village—that book lay resting on the cloth. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like the most evil thing in the world.
“Where the fuck did you get that?” I asked.
“I found it,” she said. “It was underneath the bed mixed in with some of your clothes and things. I noticed it while I was cleaning.”
“Well, what should we do with it?”
She shrugged. “I have no clue. I was hoping you’d have some idea.”
“Burn it,” I said.
But then I began to wonder. What if this book proves Roger Borough really did exist? If the book is here, a part of this reality, what’s to say all the rest isn’t real—the Time Eater, James (me), Roger (me)?
My excitement bloomed. “Give it here, let me take a look at it.”
She hesitated, then extended it to me, but before handing it over she gave me a look that said, You’d better not fuck with me, pal.
Once I had it in my hands, my whole body thrummed with some inner power. I opened the binding, flipped through the pages, remembering snatches of text. The more I remembered, the more it all started coming back to me, and I felt like a man waking from a very strange dream.
Outside, the sky turned from purple to black. The room became so dark that only the book shone, seeming to glow with supernatural light. A strong breeze picked up, ruffling the pages.
“James?” Annabelle said, her voice filled with terror. “James, what is this? I don’t like it. Give me back the book.”
She leaned forward reaching out with her hands, but I struck her in the face with the edge of my palm, sending her to the ground. She cried out and tumbled to the darkness below the bed. I felt myself carried upward, toward the ceiling.
“Quit your crying,” I said, and suddenly, filled with the most insane feeling of maniacal joy, I laughed. “Me and Roger got a lot of work ahead of us, so you can just fuck off!”
I started to read. My voice filled the room, strange Latin phrases and guttural sounds, words I couldn’t even comprehend, let alone pronounce.
“No, James, stop!” came from the floor, but I ignored it. Instead I lost myself in the text, and I closed my eyes, and deep in the darkness of my mind I could see all the stars and planets of the universe being sucked out of existence. I watched the hazy purple form, the giant blotch of darkness, glide silently across my field of vision. It drew everything into its vast, black depths—time, matter, reality—devouring all…
…and I began to grin, like a child, like a happy crazy child…
…reveling in the thought of the world cracking apart.
About the Author
AARON J. FRENCH (a.k.a. A. J. French) is currently a book editor for JournalStone Publishing and the Editor-in-Chief for Dark Discoveries magazine—a professional, internationally distributed print magazine specializing in dark fiction, currently on its tenth year of continuous publication and distribution. He has worked with and edited such authors as David Liss, Norman Partridge, Gary A. Braunbeck,
Thomas Ligotti, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jonathan Maberry, F. Paul Wilson, Glen Hirshberg, John Shirley, and many others. In 2011 he edited Monk Punk, an anthology of monk-themed speculative fiction and The Shadow of the Unknown, an anthology of Lovecraftian fiction. Aaron has also served as co-editor for The Lovecraft eZine.
Aaron’s fiction has appeared in publications such as Dark Discoveries, Black Ink Horror, Something Wicked, After Death…, Beware the Dark, Chiral Mad, The Lovecraft eZine, and others. In 2013 “The Order,” Aaron’s occult thriller novella about a Lovecraftian secret society was published in the Dreaming in Darkness collection. He is currently an active member of the Horror Writers Association. His collection of mystical fiction, Aberrations of Reality, was published in 2014 by Crowded Quarantine Productions. The Time Eater is his first novel.
Aaron is currently pursuing a Religious Studies PhD from the University of California, Davis. His nonfiction articles on Thomas Ligotti, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Karl Edward Wagner have appeared in Dark Discoveries magazine, while his online column “Letters from the Edge,” focusing on the occult, spirituality, rogue scholarship, esotericism, and speculative fiction, is featured on the Nameless Digest website. His academic papers “Toward Christian Renewal” and “Journeys of the Soul in the Afterlife: Egyptian Books of the Afterlife and Greek Orphic Mysteries” were published in the peer-reviewed journal The Esoteric Quarterly. He is currently a member of the ESSWE, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.
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