by Ward Parker
“It was merely a nightmare. Please give them my apologies.”
He closed the door and dropped back on the bed. The wallpaper looked perfectly normal and there was no sound coming from within the wall. Yet the presence of Isabel still clung to him at the edge of his consciousness.
* * *
“I apologize for not arranging an appointment, but a new line of inquiry has occurred to me,” Follett said to Diana when he arrived at the cottage. “Can Darryl spare a few moments from his studies?”
“I heard you went on a romp with him the other night,” she said with the barest hint of a smile. “Did you ask him to go?”
“No, he invited me.”
“He must like you a lot.”
“Have you accompanied him yourself?”
“Once or twice.”
“Did you see…” He wasn’t sure if he was about to violate a confidence. “Did he show you any strange creatures?”
“The Houtani? Yes, I saw them. So Darryl does indeed like you.” She smiled, sincerely. “Go on in. We’re done with the lessons for today.”
Darryl was seated at the table in the study poring over a book. He greeted Follett without looking up.
Follett sat down across from him and without any small talk plunged directly into his entreaty.
“You want me to contact your wife? But I’m not a medium,” Darryl replied.
“Mediums and séances are pure bunkum. But you do have a gift. I have witnessed it.”
“Telepathy. I can read people’s thoughts. That isn’t the same thing as communicating with the dead.”
“You had some communication with those ghosts on the beach.”
“They manifested themselves in front of me so I was able to focus my thoughts on them. I have no idea where you wife is or even how to search for her.”
“Can’t you at least try?”
“I would have to recognize her voice, or her thought patterns, or something. Too many souls have departed from this life. I simply have no idea how I could find hers.”
“She needs to find a portal to this world. That’s all the Angel Worm was. If you only were to open your mind, call to her and listen, she would find you and come to us.”
Darryl frowned.
“This is very unusual. And you’re my doctor.”
“This has nothing to do with that. I’m asking a personal favor. Please.”
Follett sat down at the table across from him and stared into the dark pools of his eyes.
“My wife is trying to reach me, I’m sure, but she can’t without the Angel Worm. Isabel seems to be trapped in a purgatory-like state and she’s tortured with anguish. I need to comfort her and help her move on. Don’t you see that this is torture to me, too?”
Darryl’s eyes softened. “I can try but I’m not exactly sure how to go about it. I don’t know what you mean by ‘open up my mind and listen’ and she’ll find me.”
“How do you read people’s thoughts?”
“They simply come into my head unbidden. I hear them like an overheard conversation. I can focus on a certain person’s thoughts and try to block out the others’, and sometimes I can make myself more open to receiving someone’s thoughts, but that’s all the control I have.”
“Can you see images that are in people’s minds?”
“Strong ones, yes.”
“I’ll think about my wife and you can work from there.”
“We can try. Allow me to hold your hand.”
Follett nodded, sad that Darryl would sense his slight reluctance to touch him so intimately, even after having examined him before.
“No offense taken,” Darryl said.
Darryl’s hand grasped his. It was large and strong, the hair on the back of it thick and wiry. But his palm wasn’t calloused like a dog’s pads. It was smooth and cool, slightly moist.
“Now think of your wife. Picture her face and her scent. Call to her in your mind and imagine the sound of her voice answering.”
Follett tried to push aside awareness of Darryl and the room they were in and focus on Isabel’s face, her pale complexion with its riotous spread of freckles, her mischievous green eyes, her dark red hair—almost chestnut brown—that he loved to see cascading down her neck once she’d freed it from its confines piled atop her head in the latest fashion. Her delicate nose and slightly protruding chin framed prim lips that seemed to always hide the hint of a smile. The smell of lavender and the sound of her breathing with her head using his chest as a pillow.
“Isabel,” he called, unsure if he had said it out loud or not.
He couldn’t feel Darryl’s hand anymore, but his arm buzzed as if encased in bees. He called her name again and again.
Then, finally, she answered.
“I’m here. Help me!”
His stomach dropped as if he had plunged off a bridge—
—and suddenly he was somewhere else.
He walked through empty, windowless rooms that were dimly lit, though he could see no source of light. Each room had two to four open doors leading into other rooms and though each room was of different dimensions, he couldn’t tell them apart and soon became lost within the maze. The rooms reminded him of those in the squalid tenements of New York where he had occasionally gone to visit patients. Formerly white paint turned yellow with the smoke of oil lamps and tobacco, of handprints and neglect, of decades spent without the touch of sunlight. It was the color of hopelessness.
“Frank, I’m here,” Isabel called over and over in a desperate voice.
He followed her voice but couldn’t find her. And as he moved from room to room the volume of her calls didn’t change, so he had no idea if he were moving closer or farther from her.
But he gradually realized it wasn’t he, himself, who was walking. He was within Darryl—not Darryl’s actual, material body, of course, but his consciousness projected into this world. He was viewing the scene through the windows of Darryl’s eyes. And as Darryl moved about, in the periphery of his vision he caught glimpses of Darryl’s shoes and his gloved hands.
“Darryl,” Follett whispered, whether through his mouth or his mind he did not know. “You don’t need to be here. All I ask is to speak with her. You should not be here, it’s an afterlife of some sort. Leave at once—it is dangerous.”
Darryl did not respond. He only continued trying to find the source of Isabel’s forlorn cries.
Now Darryl was in a much larger room with only one other doorway aside from the one he entered through. And this other door across from him was the only one so far that was closed, heavy oak covered in gouges and scratches. Darryl moved toward it and reached for the knob with his gloved hand. The knob turned easily and the door swung open outwards.
Before Darryl lay a broad expanse of grass with marshland on the horizon. The landscape was similar to the Everglades, but this vista did not look quite right. Instead of the sharp sunlight of winter, a weak greenish light suffused the landscape. There was no sun visible nor any sign of where it hid behind the uniform stretch of stratus clouds that covered the entire sky.
Darryl stepped outside and suddenly a shadow loomed over him. A frightening two-legged creature stood nearby, tall, gaunt, covered with dark fur. In some ways it resembled Darryl, but was incalculably more monstrous, with long, bony arms and fingers with reptilian claws, true horns instead of Darryl’s nubs and a large, gaping mouth filled with spiky teeth and oozing saliva. Its eyes glowed yellow and the nostrils of its black snout flared as it greedily tried to inhale the scent of what was not the flesh and blood Darryl.
Follett wanted Darryl to flee, but he remained where he was.
“Hello Darryl, it’s me,” it said, in an unexpectedly human voice, through its fangs. “Finally we meet in person, our first time together on the same plane of existence.”
It was the “person” Darryl was heard speaking with in his room.
“I had thought you were a man. What are you?” Darryl asked.
“I have a
lot in common with you. Or had, I should say. Now I’m condemned to spend eternity wandering between worlds.”
“Where am I?”
“In one of the Lands of Death.”
“Am I dead?”
“Apparently not. Don’t worry, you’re just visiting. I noticed your mind probing beyond your world, so I brought you here. There is someone who wants to meet you.”
“Who?”
“That will be explained later.”
“Darryl, get out of there,” Follett said.
“I heard that,” the creature said. “He can’t get out of here. He’s our prisoner until we decide to send him back.”
Instead of resisting, Darryl followed the creature along a path through tall grass, prickly pear cactus, and bayonet palms. There were no birds or any other living things. Everything was quiet and empty as if they were on an uninhabited planet.
Darryl smelled an odor of death that overwhelmed the scent of muck and decaying plants. It was the corruption of rotted flesh and it came from the creature as well as from all across the landscape.
Soon glimpses of water appeared through gaps in the weeds alongside the path and the creature motioned for Darryl to follow it into one of the gaps. They descended a slight incline to the dark brown sand of a beach at the edge of a wide creek that twisted and turned. Ahead of them, a maze of tea-brown creeks twisted back upon one another and split into smaller branches, each separated by narrow islands covered with grass. It was endless, stretching as far as he could see ahead and to both sides.
The creature pulled a small, weathered skiff made from unpainted wood from the weeds on the bank and pushed it into the water. Darryl climbed in and sat on a half-rotted bench near the bow above a pool of water that sloshed about in the bottom of the boat. The creature waded into the creek, pushing the boat into deeper water until it had enough draft, then climbed aboard without making the boat rock at all, as if the creature was weightless, a mere apparition. It stood in the stern, propelling the boat with a long pole.
“Where are we going?” Darryl asked.
“There’s no name for it,” the creature said. “I suppose you could call it the Underworld, which would put me in the role of Charon, the ferryman of the dead.” It bared its fangs as if smiling. “But that’s way too simplistic.”
“But what about Heaven? Is it possible to go there?”
“I know nothing about Heaven, and even if I did I doubt I’d be invited in. Where we’re going is the only world I know of after death.”
“I’m looking for a woman named Isabel Follett,” Darryl said. “Have you seen her here?”
“There is no one here but you and me. And that other person whose consciousness clings to you.” He chuckled, then grunted with exertion. “I do feel rather like a Venetian gondolier. But He’ll be pleased that you’re finally going to meet Him after all those times I’ve tried to persuade you.”
“But you’ve never told me exactly who he is? Satan?”
“Satan is a product of the human imagination. My boss has been around since long before humans. Long before the Earth was created, I’d wager.”
“Darryl,” Follett whispered. “Go! Get out of there!”
“He can’t go anywhere. Especially not now. Darryl, look at your reflection in the water.”
Darryl leaned over the gunnel of the boat and stared at the image of a human face, a young man with long hair and elegant features.
“That isn’t me!”
“Oh yes, it is.”
Follett, seeing what Darryl saw, believed the creature was right. There was a strong resemblance to the portrait of Darryl’s mother that sat on a table in the beach cottage. And the face seemed to fit the individual Follett had come to know if he hadn’t been cursed with so many deformities.
“It’s your human side,” the creature said. “You need to reject it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The creature never answered. The plunks of the pole stabbing the water and the gurgling of the hull moving along were muffled by the stillness that weighed upon them. They followed the twists of the stream winding through the maze, but more of the same landscape stretched toward the horizon. They didn’t seem to be getting closer to anything. It felt as if hours had passed, but there was no change in the light. It remained the same greenish glow without a burning disk of sun visible anywhere.
“Are we any closer to the Underworld, or wherever it is we’re going?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even quite sure where we are anymore. I just know that we keep going. The scenery is different every time. We just keep going until He decides to contact us.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Of course. We have many troops in the army, but few leaders, so we’re always recruiting.”
“The army? What is the army?” All this evasive talk was making Darryl angry.
“The ones people call evil, who else? The truth is you are a monster, but you are not evil, Darryl, so you have to make the choice whether to become so and join the army. The army has grown immense and you could be one of its leaders.”
“I don’t want to be evil. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“No one? Is there not anyone you hate?”
“Of course there is.”
“All you need is hate, Darryl. You’ll do fine.”
Slowly and subtly the segments of land separating the capillaries of water thinned out until they were truly in a river delta. Soon the ribbons of water became solid water and they were in a great sea that stretched to every horizon and was covered by clusters of tiny islands. The islands were barren, save for the gray skeletons of dead trees. Occasionally rocks protruded from the sea, but they were devoid of any mollusk or seaweed. They were sharp, black, tooth-like stones that may have been hardened lava.
The setting no longer bore any resemblance to Florida. The light was dim, the air frigid and the water steely gray. Icebergs floated in the distance. The sky was bruised with purple and black clouds, behind which lightning flared, scattering in random directions.
“What exactly is the Underworld like? Darryl asked.
“Like nothing. And I don’t mean that in jest. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”
Hours passed, it seemed. Earlier, the creature had tied the pole alongside the boat’s hull and was now rowing with oars, its back to the bow, while Darryl sat in the stern. Though the creature faced him, it had ceased talking or answering any questions. Its face was a dark shadow and the glow of its eyes had dimmed. It rowed steadily like a machine, never once turning around toward the bow to see if they were on course.
The islands of dead trees had disappeared and now there was nothing visible on the gray water. Nothing altered its completely still surface, not even the slightest ripple from wind. The air was no longer cold; it had become an unnoticeable temperature. The dark clouds had left the sky and now it was the same gray as the water and it became impossible to distinguish the two or find the horizon. It was as if the boat were engulfed in thick fog, but there were no swirls of mist or dampness in the air.
The creature had stopped rowing and sat slumped in its seat, unmoving. It was fading away into the grayness. The last Darryl saw of it, its mouth hung open and its eyes rolled up in its head.
The creature disappeared, and then the boat. Darryl hung suspended in the grayness.
Suddenly, Darryl felt the presence of another entity. He was being watched. Something was examining him, probing him, assessing him from all directions at once as if he were a kernel of thought inside a tremendous mind. It was something that had no language, that was pre-language or of a consciousness utterly beyond words.
It welcomed him.
“Who are you?” Darryl whispered.
“He is no one,” said the voice of the ferryman creature, from somewhere nearby, but invisible in the grayness. “He is nothingness, the antithesis of being. He is darkness as opposed to light, death as opposed to life, emptin
ess as opposed to substance, silence as opposed to sound. He is the enemy of anything that exists, organic or inorganic. He is the opposite of God and his creations. He existed before God and the universe and he will be alone at the end of time. The most basic, most primal urge of everything that exists is to resist His power and to continue to exist. But he always wins in the end.”
“What does He want with me?”
“You’re a freak—humans have never accepted you. They call you a monster. Well, he wants you to be a true monster.”
“But why would He even care?”
“Because he feeds upon fear, especially fear among humans. The stronger a person fights to live, to deny Him, the stronger it makes Him when He ultimately wins—when the person’s fear turns to despair and he or she surrenders. The dread of death and its ultimate expression, the fear of evil, is what sustains Him. Most people need to personify death and evil in order to understand it and fight it. So they created Satan and demons. Unfortunately, over the years, the power of these beings has faded as mankind’s belief in them died, as science has grown in its place. That’s why He needs you.
“Don’t you understand now, Darryl? He needs new demons, new monsters, new tools with which to terrorize humans. Think of the power you could have. You could create so much terror in humans that you’d become legendary, myth-like. You could become immortal.”
Then Darryl got a glimpse of the entity.
It was only a quick look into the bottomless awfulness of the concept of negation—of hate and waste and destruction and pain and disease and death. It was so overwhelming and sad that he tasted ultimate despair, which is what defeats that most primal will to live. He was more afraid than he had ever been, an all-encompassing, existential horror.
Darryl screamed, “No! I refuse! I deny you!”
Suddenly everything went black and the entity was gone. Darryl floated in the blind nothingness.
Until the voice of the ferryman creature came, quietly at first and then increasingly loud.
“Then I will have you. There is so much in life I hunger for.”
Two glowing yellow eyes came shooting up from the darkness below along with the buzzing sound of millions of insect wings and Darryl jerked, hit by the force of a locomotive.
