by J. Bryan
The sound of Ward’s voice brought Junius’ wandering mind back to the present.
“...can do this quick and easy or quick and painful, Senator,” Ward was saying. “Where are Seth Barrett and Jennifer Morton?”
“Don’t know,” Junius said. Doh nuh.
“I find that hard to believe, Senator,” Ward said. “Did you not help to hide them? Did you not help the White House to bury the entire situation?”
Junius didn’t speak, but he felt relieved. He didn’t personally know where Seth was, that hadn’t been part of the arrangements. Only one or two people inside Hale Security Group knew the answer to that one.
“Senator, I’m afraid we’ll need the answer immediately,” Ward said.
“What do you want with him?” Junius asked, and it sounded like Wah ooh ooh ah wah heh?
“You’re not making much sense, Senator. But that’s all right. Just think about your grandnephew for me.” Ward grabbed Junius’ right hand. Junius tried to pull away, but he had no strength in his arm. All he could do was make his hand tremble like a frightened mouse.
Junius found himself thinking of the arrangements they’d made with Hale. Jenny and Seth would live in a location known to almost nobody, but the family was assured it would be quite pleasant there. A tropical island, maybe.
“You really don’t know.” Ward dropped his hand back onto the bed. “But Hale Security knows, don’t they? And it just happens that Eddie Cordell is a friend of mine, so I’ll go ask him where to find Seth. Good night, Senator.” Ward started for the door.
Junius kept his face as stoic as a poker player’s. He didn’t want to signal that the man was on the right trail, although he was. Junius retreated into silence, usually the best move when you didn’t know the score. He didn’t know who this man was, what agency he represented, or what his intentions might be toward Seth. Junius would need to make some phone calls after Ward left.
Ward halted and turned back to him. “Oh, Senator, there is just one more little problem. Eddie Cordell might continue protecting Seth out of fear of crossing you, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. We’ve been waiting for you to die, Senator, but you’re taking too damned long. Avery?”
One of the younger men, the one not holding Junius’ remote control, drew a small sheath from his inner coat pocket and slid out a syringe filled with clear liquid. He approached the bag of fluids hanging over Junius’ bed, which fed right into Junius’ arm.
Junius squirmed weakly, but he was helpless to stop the man. He tried shouting with as much power as his lungs and vocal cords could manage, but that wasn’t much.
“Please, Senator, consider dying with some dignity,” Ward said, while Avery injected the poison into Junius’ fluid line. “You’ll feel some pain, but if I were you, with your history of sin and corruption, right now I’d mostly be worried about the devil waiting for me on the other side. Good night, Senator.”
Junius felt a cold burning in his heart as the three men left. He reached for the remote, now dangling from its wall cable, and managed to catch in his arthritic fingers. He dragged it up onto the hospital bed with him, and he lay a finger on the red EMERGENCY button. Before he could press it, his heart stopped and his eyes glazed over.
Outside, the barn owl took flight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
On New Year’s Eve, Jenny, Seth, and Mariella took the train west across France, traveling to the small town of Carnac on the coast of Brittany. The place was a tourist destination in the summer, but in January it was freezing cold, and much of the town lay empty and quiet.
Jenny had suggested they find very old ruins, since Alexander had taken her to an ancient Mayan pyramid half-swallowed by the jungle when he’d helped Jenny recover her past-life memories—the ones he’d wanted her to remember, anyway, the lifetimes she’d spent as his consort.
Mariella had suggested the standing stones of Carnac, the oldest known structures in all of Europe, built about five thousand years earlier. Thousands of stones, some of them more than twice as high as a tall man, were arranged in straight rows that stretched for half a mile or longer. Their original prehistoric purpose remained unknown, but might have been related to religion or astrology.
Carnac itself was a pretty little village of centuries-old houses and cobblestone streets. A “campground” near the standing stones offering camping sites for tents, but also rental apartments and mobile homes. Seth rented a two-bedroom trailer for their stay, joking that it made him feel like he was back home in South Carolina.
They dropped off their overnight luggage in the rented trailer, including paints and canvases, which would provide their cover story if local authorities caught them among the standing stones late at night. Tonight was a full moon, providing plenty of light for painting, and Jenny thought the full moon might even help with their real purpose, too.
They ate at a local restaurant, enjoying a thick stew called Pot au Feu de Homard, full of lobster, scallops, shrimp, oysters, and mussels, all locally caught. Jenny peppered Mariella with questions about her life in Milan, and was rewarded with stories of lavish parties at her family’s palazzo, crowded with Italian politicians, film directors, and fashion models—sometimes exciting, often tedious, according to Mariella, but it all sounded insanely glamorous to Jenny. Mariella had quietly offered “palm readings” to those who wanted them, just for fun, but her parents strongly discouraged it, as did their priest.
They walked through the little village during the sunset, browsing the shops and playing tourist, and later returned to the “campground” to pass time on the water slides at the heated indoor pool, an unexpected treat on a cold winter night.
When it was late enough, they sat in the living/dining area of the trailer, and Mariella placed a large camera bag on the table, with a sticker warning that it contained exposed film that should not be exposed to the light. She opened it up and took out a camera, followed by a plastic bag full of pointy, dark brown dried mushrooms.
“He told me the name of these, but I forgot,” Mariella said. “They were supposed to be the strongest ones the guy could get.”
The sight of the mushrooms made Jenny a little frightened, remembering how intense her previous experience had been. She was glad she wasn’t taking any tonight.
“I also brought some smoke, in case we need it to take the edge off.” Mariella tossed a half-ounce of shaggy purple marijuana buds onto the table next to the mushrooms. “And I brought wine, because...just because.”
“Looks like a wild night for you two,” Jenny said.
“So what do we do now?” Seth asked. “Is there a ritual? Do we have to chant or strangle a chicken or something?”
“The chicken sacrificing doesn’t start until later,” Jenny told him. “Y’all just eat the shrooms, they take a while to kick in. Then we’ll go walking.”
Seth picked up one of the brown mushrooms. “They look like...little shriveled brains.”
“Does that make them more appetizing to you?” Jenny asked.
He put in his mouth, chewed, and gagged, looking disgusted. “They taste like shit.”
“They grow in shit, so it makes sense.” Mariella curled her lips as she placed one in her mouth, then took a swig of wine. She and Seth passed it back and forth, washing the mushrooms down with more wine.
“Okay,” Jenny said. “Now we wait. Who wants to go to the beach?”
They walked from the lighted campground out to the endless darkness of ocean, where they shivered in the icy wind off the water.
“Who feels like swimming?” Mariella asked.
“Or freezing and dying,” Seth said.
“At least we have the beach to ourselves,” Jenny pointed out.
“Let’s make the most of it.” Mariella took a joint from her coat pocket and lit it up. She and Seth passed it back and forth, coughing, while Jenny watched the dark waves roll in under the shimmering night sky.
“Tell me something, Jenny,” Mariella said as sh
e exhaled blue smoke. “You have the memories. What are we, really? I mean...we have something supernatural, but obviously we’re not, um...vampires or werewolves or...zombies...”
“I’m a werewolf,” Seth said. “I’ve just never mentioned it before. But with the full moon, I think I should warn both of you.”
Jenny tried to figure out how to answer Mariella’s question. She pointed out at the sky over the ocean. “What do you see up there?”
“Stars,” Mariella said.
“Beyond that?”
“Nothing. Darkness.”
“The darkness beyond the stars,” Jenny said.
“What does that mean?”
Jenny thought about it. “In almost every ancient myth, the universe begins in darkness and chaos, and then order and light take over.”
Mariella nodded quickly. She’d attended a Swiss boarding school, Jenny knew, so she must have studied classics there. Jenny had studied classics herself, in the actual classical age.
“Imagine...” Jenny closed her eyes. “Imagine the entire universe is just a single mind. At first, it’s all alone, and it knows nothing, and there’s no one else to explain anything, so for a very long time, it’s just confusion, fear, nightmares, lost in its imagination. But, after a very long time, a small little portion of the mind sorts itself out and becomes....sane. The little patch of light grows, turning the raw chaos around it into order. An ordered universe begins to emerge.”
“Man,” Seth said, pulling on the joint, “Are you sure you haven’t smoked any of this?”
“Quiet, Seth. So, there are these isolated bits of chaos left scurrying around in the new, orderly universe,” Jenny said. “That’s us. Have you ever read any H.P. Lovecraft?”
Mariella shook her head. She was listening intently.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jenny said. “So our kind had nowhere left to go but to infiltrate the living. And here we incarnate again and again.”
“But why?” Mariella asked. “Do we have a purpose?”
“Our purpose is to destroy the new order and bring back the original chaos, where we thrived instead of scurrying around like rats in the basement,” Jenny told her.
“That’s all we want? Destruction?” Mariella asked.
“We don’t have to be that way. We have a choice,” Jenny said. “Many times, I used plague as a weapon of war...some king or emperor would send me to destroy the armies or the cities of their enemies. And it was fun, to my old self. But I will never do that again, not for anyone. No man will use me as his weapon again.”
Mariella nodded, thinking things over, the moonlight making her green eyes glow like a cat’s. Seth was gaping silently out at the waves.
“It’s all waves,” Seth whispered. “One after another, it’s all just waves, waves in the universe of the ocean...or the ocean of the...what was I saying?”
“I think the mushrooms are starting to work,” Jenny said, and Mariella laughed. She kept laughing, and Seth started laughing, and Jenny shook her head, watching them stumble around the beach, laughing so hard they toppled over into the cold, wet sand.
“Okay, kids,” Jenny said. “Let’s go back in time. We’re trespassing, so try to keep quiet.”
A wooden fence surrounded the nearest field of standing stones, but a few boards were missing, so they were able to slip right through. That was lucky, because Jenny doubted Seth or Mariella could climb a fence in their current state. They kept bumping into each other and giggling.
“Sh!” Jenny whispered. She pointed to the small farmhouse on the far side of the field. “Someone might be home. Stay quiet.”
“I wonder who lives there,” Mariella whispered.
“Old French ghosts,” Seth whispered, and they both laughed, and Jenny had to shush them.
They found themselves in the middle of nine perfectly straight rows of tall standing stones stretching away into the distance, where Jenny could make out the remains of what looked like a megalithic house, with a few gigantic stones for walls and equally large stone cross-pieces across the top. She wondered why Stone Age people had built such things.
“Stand over here, next to each other, and look at me,” Jenny said. She thought back to the few previous lives in which her memories had been fully awoken.
“You’re glowing, Jenny,” Seth said. “You’re glowing blue.”
“That’s just the moonlight. Concentrate,” Jenny said. “Close your eyes, both of you. Imagine...imagine there’s a door right behind you.”
“What kind of door?” Seth asked.
“You tell me,” Jenny said. “What do you see?”
“My door’s made of colored glass and crystal, and sunlight is glowing through it. It’s so beautiful,” Mariella sighed.
“Good. What about you, Seth?”
“My door’s awesome. Like a big castle door, with big spikes and torches all over it.”
“Okay...This door leads to all your past-life memories,” Jenny said. “Imagine it slowly opens, and through it, you see a long hallway of doors. Each door on that hall opens to one of your past lives. Now, open your eyes, turn around, and step through into the hall.”
“Ooh!” Mariella gasped as she turned and opened her eyes.
“I can see it,” Seth said, looking at the long rows of standing stones that stretched out of sight. “I can see the doors! Are there supposed to be ducks?”
“Open the first door you see,” Jenny told them.
Seth and Mariella each took a step forward and touched one of the tall stones, which now represented doors to them.
“Oh, I see it!” Mariella told them. “I see both of you...and General Kranzler...and...” Mariella’s chest hitched and she gave a loud sob. “Oh, Jenny...”
“Barrett,” Seth said. “He betrayed us. I told you I had the worst great-grandfather in history.”
“Now imagine all the doors opening, all the way back to the beginning,” Jenny said. “Don’t hold anything back. Don’t hide anything from yourself.”
They kept walking, touching one stone after another as if looking into each door, sometimes running away in horror, or laughing at some long-forgotten moment of happiness, or crying at some tender memory. She watched as they awoke to themselves, overpowered by all that they’d forgotten.
“Good,” Jenny said, though neither seemed to be listening to her anymore. “You’re doing fine. Just take it easy, don’t rush...”
“A jester?” Seth laughed, shaking his head as he stared at the blank face of a standing stone. “I was a court jester, can you believe that?”
“Yep,” Jenny said, catching up to him.
Mariella cried out in horror as she stared at a tall stone ahead of them.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny hurried to catch up with her, then hesitantly took her by the arm. “Mariella? Tell me what you see.”
“I...see...” Mariella’s face turned ashen. “Plague, suffering, war...”
“Keep talking,” Jenny encouraged her. “Remember, it’s in the past, it’s not happening now.”
“There are men in armored masks, plates, chains, they have swords and hammers...”
“Do you know where you are, or when?” Jenny asked.
“It must be medieval Europe...” Mariella’s eyes closed. “I think those are the Alps in the distance. I serve a minor prince. He’s going to war with his brother, who has conquered a lot of territory and never been defeated in battle...I am his witch. I touch the prince I serve and see his future.” Mariella’s lips twisted in disgust. “In the future, I see his armored men in rows for the battle. His brother, the ruthless war-maker, has his own witch, and she casts a spell. My liege’s men begin to die of the plague. They rot on their feet, the tattered flesh dropping between the plates of their armor, blood running out from the slits in their face visors...This witch, I tell him, is the reason his brother has never lost. He listens to me and sends assassins to his brother’s camp the night before the battle, to kill the girl with their crossbows.”
“The next day, your prince tried to surrender to mine, because he couldn’t win without you, Jenny,” Mariella said. “My prince defeated yours and carried his head on a pike until it rotted. His own brother.” Mariella looked sadly up and down the row of stones. “So many lives, full of so much suffering and death, so little love.”
“That’s true,” Jenny said, touching her arm. “It’s hard, but it’s better to know the truth. It’s up to us to make our lives different now. Don’t let your past trap you.”
Mariella nodded and wandered toward the next stone, looking dazed, but Jenny had successfully calmed her. Far ahead, Seth let out a high scream, loud enough to wake the French farmer on whose land they were trespassing.
“Seth! What’s wrong?” Jenny ran to catch up with him. He was gripping one of the standing stones and leaning against it, his eyes closed. She took his hand. “Seth, talk to me.”
“You tortured me!” His eyes flew open, and his mouth curled into a snarl. “You tortured me, Jenny.”
“Can you be more specific?” Jenny asked, thinking of too many past lives that he might be seeing. “Sorry.”
“Egypt,” he said. “I was an Egyptian swordsman, the best in the kingdom. I’d come home from battle without a scratch, and so would the men around me. But then you...and Alexander...invaded from Persia...”
“Cambyses,” Jenny remembered. “That was Alexander’s name. Son of Cyrus of Persia, the king of kings.”
“Cambyses and the famous ‘immortal’ swordsmen of Persia,” Seth said. “They were immortal enough. Undead. Not very skilled at fighting, but relentless and almost impossible to kill through their armor and shields. Thousands of them came into Egypt with you and Alexander. He conquered and declared himself pharaoh, making all the Egyptians worship him.”
