Bridge Burner Hyperion by Jared Rinaldi
The wheel is in perfect shape, although several of the spokes are bent. Two are completely broken, sticking out like the legs of a dead fly. No two bikes will be doored the same way, each wreck as unique as a snowflake. This particular bike frame is an old twenty-two inch black Nishiki, medium weight steel. A couple of paint blemishes here and there, but the frame is in otherwise perfect shape. Road worn, which is how a bike should look. Aesthetics aside, you want the bike to move as effortlessly as possible. Friction is a fickle mistress, and weight distribution on the wheels and frame will either appease or disgust her. A set of broken or loose spokes tends to provoke the latter response.
Pulling one of the broken spokes out of the hub flange, I wonder how long the guy whose Nishiki this is rode it like this. He’d been doored, and had proudly told us how it had happened. An embassy car, he said. Flying down east 68th street, and then wham, the guy throws open his door without even looking. Some road burn on his arms, but otherwise he was just shaken up. He got the plate number and the driver’s information, but his complaint got lost in New York’s infamous sea of bureaucratic red tape.
We all heard him out, and humored him with varying degrees of feigned interest. As mechanics, we wear all the chain grease and scraped elbows with a sort of silent pride. Fresh bandages or bruised knuckles are met with faint nods of approval, with no minute details needed.
The toilet flushes from the room behind me. A voice from through the doorway says, “Oof, don’t go in there. You can grab lunch, if you want.” I finish threading the new spoke, and then reach for the rag in my back pocket.
“Sounds good. Want me to grab you a coffee?” I turn, but there’s no person coming out of the bathroom, no other mechanics in the shop. The front part of the store is a similar story, nothing but an empty cash register and cold sunlight blasting in through the front window. The water in the toilet isn’t even running. It’s completely silent.
“Hello?” There is a rustling of fabric from behind me, softly echoing around the store. I turn quickly, expecting to see my boss, messing with my head. Still no one. The door to the office at the back of the shop lightly flutters in an unfelt wind. Could he be in there, hiding in the darkness?
“Hey man, where are you?” I try to come up with my boss’s name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I try to think of his face, but can’t. “Wait... what is this place?” It’s the bike shop I work at, up on 72nd and Amsterdam. Isn’t it? The familiarity has gone, shifted into something... off. The light from the front window, just a short while ago bright with daylight, is fading, the angular frames of all the bikes becoming more knife-like in the gloom.
The dark doorway at the back of the shop opens wider, creaking on its hinges. There’s a moan from within, a dissonant sound that digs right into my chest. It makes my heart sink, with a power greater than the dying light. It’s been drawing me towards it this whole time, I just didn’t realize it. The tools and bikes around me shrink back into their surroundings. This entire shop is an illusion, a cooing camouflage for that which is in the darkness. What is lurking in that doorway, beckoning me towards it? Why is it taking such pains to keep itself hidden?
“Will...” It’s a different voice, faint, calling from the front of the shop, by the window with the fading light. “Will... go towards the music...”
“Who’s there? Hello? I... I can’t move.” My legs are heavy and cold, the darkness from the door having reached around me with icy fingers. It’s not going to let me go.
“Yes you can, Will,” The voice says. “Just take the first step.” I hear ropes being tightened in the darkness, the subtle twanging of hemp cords.
I’m finally able to get my foot in the air, and turn around, away from the door. Strength begins to return to my body. It’s as if a weight is lifted or a tether undone. One step after another, I’m able to make my way away from the door and towards the window.
As I pass the bikes in their racks, my eyes are drawn to the empty spaces within their frames. There are things watching me through those empty spaces, millions and millions of eyes. Billions. I feel entire worlds are staring at me, every being, great and small.
The pull of the darkness makes it hard to speak. “What are you all... looking at?” The spaces within the frames are glazed over with semi-translucent film, like soap bubbles. Underneath are faces, rows upon rows of faces in all different shapes, sizes and colors. They watch me silently, unmoving save for the flaring of their nostrils. It’s the same no matter which bicycle I look at.
“Will...” It’s the man’s voice again. “Will, don’t look. Just make your way to the window.” I clench my eyes shut, and do as I am told. There’s a pain in my stomach that wasn’t there before, like a knife in my gut. Each step is another twist of the blade. I’m within six easy feet of the window at the front of the store, when I can’t help but fall to my knees and vomit.
“Oh god... it hurts...” Phlegm hangs from my nose to the puke on the floor, viscous and pink. The water separates from the chunkier stuff, and I can see reflected in it even more eyes, even more faces. These writhe and contort into ugly shapes, opening their mouths wide as if to scream.
I have to get away from these bikes. I struggle up to my feet, and stumble forward, until the cold glass of the front window is beneath my sweaty palms. The light trickling through the glass has faded to a bruised purple. There’s another rustling behind me, so close its like a whisper in my ear.
“Who’s there?” Nothing answers. All is silent. The shop looks ordinary, all the bikes neatly in their racks, the tools on their tables. The taste of vomit is still fresh in the back of my throat, my stomach churning in pain. The questions just keep piling up, like puzzle pieces from completely different pictures and no rhyme or reason to how they fit together. Did I drink too much coffee? Maybe it was something I ate. I can’t piece anything together. The pain is becoming everything.
Then I see it, a red door which wasn't there a moment ago. The knob shines like the day's first sunlight. It turns on its own, the door swinging into the shop, crisp outside air diffusing the stuffiness of the shop. It’s beckoning to me with a gentle timbre, the same voice that had urged me away from the dark doorway. I have to walk hunched out of the doorway. Ancient cobblestones run up and down a narrow city street. Stone buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, two to three stories tall, all of varying faded pastel colors. Gas torches sputter and spit in their black iron cages, two to each building, darkening the pastels with soot and dancing shadow.
The street is curved much like my back, the windows like dark eyes looking out onto the cobbled streets. There is a gold light down by a bend in the street, casting a warm and welcome glow on the buildings around it. I start towards it.
The street is mostly silent, save for my labored breathing and the soft pat of my feet on the stone. But whether from the pain in my stomach or something else entirely, there’s a soft humming in the back of my head, like a mantra being repeated over and over by a vast conglomeration of voices. The sound is soft and calm, but the longer it goes on, the tighter the vice around my stomach becomes. I have to prop myself up against one of the buildings, the stone a faded rose. I hold my stomach, trying to will the pain away. That’s when I feel something move beneath my hand, under the skin. The sweat on my brow turns cold, my hands tremble. Like the fin of a shark cresting ocean froth, a bump rises up from under my skin, and runs a diagonal path up my abdomen before disappearing back beneath without a trace.
“Oh my god...” Tears gather at the corners of my eyes, quickly escaping and trickling down my cheeks. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god...” I’m starting to lose it.
“Will...” The voice. It's coming from the gold light from around the bend.
“Please,” I shout. “You have to help me.” But no one comes. Whoever is basking in that light is not coming to me, perhaps cannot come. It’s I who has to go towards it. I know there’s no other choice, for whatever is writhing around in my gut is going to tear me apart if I don’t get help
.
There are other voices when I get close, the murmur of a restaurant or festival. I round the bend in the road, and find that that’s exactly what it is. Assorted men and women sit around at small cafe tables, half-full porcelain mugs and glassware dotting their surfaces. From what I can gather, the clothing of all the patrons seems somewhat antiquated, like out of a Sherlock Holmes novel, with broaches and petticoats aplenty. The faces are impossible to make out. Every time I try to look into a person’s eyes, or take in the shapes of their face, it blurs and my vision is repelled away, as if meeting a magnet with the same charge.
“Ah, Will. Looks like you’ve finally made it.” It’s the voice from before, as warm and smokey as a fireplace. He sits at a table all by himself. His tone is as familiar as a sunrise, but I still can’t place where I know it from, just as I can’t place the face, which blurs in and out of focus. He has an extraordinarily large ashtray in front of him, a pile of cigarette stubs rising up within it like a whitewashed Pyramid of Giza. I can’t make out his eyes or hair; even the skin hue oscillates between a dark ocher and that of pristine snow.
“Who are you?” I say.
“It really doesn’t matter all that much, buddy boy. I’m a whole lot of things, plus a whole lot of nothing. It all depends on how you look, I guess. Now come over here, and sit across from me. I got some things that might help you, especially with that little pain in your stomach there.”
I start towards the chair, but then a pain so severe rips into my stomach like a surgeon clumsily wielding a blunted knife. I fall to my knees, spittle hanging from one of my front teeth, swinging above the cobbles like a pendulum. “Stand up, William,” The blurry man says, his voice stern.
It’s hard to focus. I see flashes of faces, rows and rows of people like in the empty spaces of the bike frames. Their faces have devolved into feral caricatures, with snarling, gnashing teeth and froth on their lips. Orange lightning flashes above images of long bridges, extending from a nexus like spokes on a wheel. My teeth start to chatter, and my muscles throughout my entire body begin to swell with ache.
The pressure that builds in my head is like a million little hands pushing out on my skull. My mouth unhinges, and the hot froth pours out from my throat. Hot tears stream down my even hotter face. I puke once, twice. As the pain subsides a bit and I can brush the tears away, I see writhing shapes in the chunkier stuff, so small as to be almost unseen. Worms, I tell myself, parasites. Yet the figures have the requisite four limbs, hanging longly from their tiny bodies. They’re humanoid.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god...” I say. The shock has me so firmly in its grasp, that I barely notice the hands that take me up, and drag me over to the table. They sit me down in a chair made up of metal filigrees, around which the world spins, in time with the calliope music from the cafe.
“You’re okay, Will. Look at me. Come on, kid, get it together.”
“But I... I can’t see you...”
“You got to focus on the music, okay? Not that carnival music, though. The sound underneath.”
“The... music... I can’t hear it right... I can’t see you...”
“Look, there are certain disguises a guy has to take on in a place like this. ‘Cause we’re deep, Will. We’re real deep.”
“What? I don’t know what you’re... talking about. Please, you have to help me with this. There are things in me. They’re making me really sick. Please.”
“There’s nothing I can do for you, William. It’s out of my power to stop it.” The people in their petticoats and vests spin and dance around us, their faces as blurry as ever.
“To stop what?” I say.
“To stop the forces of desire, William. They’re all taking the bridges that were just built to get to you. All the whispers.” The blurred man leans closer, the color in his face staying fairly dark and immutable. “They’re building worlds inside of you.”
“Building worlds... inside of me?”
“That’s what I said, buddy boy. But they’re worlds built around a hunger of the worst kind. Insatiable desire. They’ll all consume themselves, you see. Because desire is never fully satisfied, William. No, never, never, never.”
He picks a pack up from off the table, from next to the ashtray. He shakes a cigarette from it and places it between his lips, before striking a match on his boot heel and lighting it. He takes a long drag. The exhaled smoke hangs above his head like skinny skeleton arms swimming through the air.
“I know you...” I say.
“I would hope so.” I can tell he’s smiling, can see his extra large teeth in the shifting face. A pair of sharp cheekbones seem to alternate time with frizzy muttonchops.
“Dad?” I say.
“Sh! Not so loud, Will.” He looks around at the figures dancing around us. “You’ll blow my cover. Though I think all these whispers are so desperate to get inside you, they wouldn’t notice me if I farted in their Cheerios.” He chuckles, and takes another drag on the cigarette. Typical humor for the old man, my memory tells me. It eases the pain in my gut a bit, but then I remember something.
“Dad, you’re dead,” I say.
“Well, of course I am, Will. Haven’t we been over this before, back when you were stuck in that basement, about to get eaten by that pudding-brained inbred with the overalls?”
“Pudding brain... overalls...” Flashes of scenes appear in my head, but they’re like clammy hands desperately waving above the roiling waves before being wholly consumed.
“Damn it, kid, these worlds they’re building must be knockin’ your brain around like nothing else. Come on.” He gets up, and for a moment it appears his lower face is consumed by flame. Just as quickly, the vision is gone, and he is motioning for me to follow him, his skinny arm knocking around in his baggy sweatshirt.
I get up, knocking the metal chair to the cobbles. The clang echoes in and out of the calliope tune, distorting the music into something fiendish and fake, like a music box being melted by a hair dryer. The dancing figures stop their graceful steps around the edges of my periphery, and dart away, the swish and crack of fabric like angry whispers.
“Come on, Will, we have to be quick,” Dad says, moving through the maze of tables, their shapes growing sharper and angular as I get up to move past them.
“Just stay focused on me, okay?” He says, making his way for the gold light emanating from a small hut, past all the tables. It’s a light that flickers and pulses in time with a music I hadn’t heard before. Or had I, long ago?
“It’s a beacon fire, to draw you here. If I hadn’t set it for you, you would have languished away in that bike shop, writhing on the floor in absolute misery until the hungry little whispers finally ate you from the inside out. Would have been an awful way to go, bud.”
“Sounds that way,” I say, crying out as one of the table edges catches on my leg.
“Watch, they’re wise to us now, sharpening up. The illusion is slipping, the veil is coming off. But it’s alright. It’s all going to be burned up anyway.”
“Burned up?” We enter into the small hut, and are greeted with the gold light. An extremely large effigy sits at the otherwise empty room’s center. It’s a yellow gold fire, touching every inch of space with pure light.
“It’s... beautiful,” I say. I feel better just looking at it. “There’s music in it, too.”
“Yep. They call it the Song of the Father.” He stalls, his gaze transfixed on the large flame. “A little bit of me, right there.”
“The fire?”
“Yep. ‘And the father and son spun in a great circle of green and gold.’ Do you remember ever hearing that?”
“Can’t say I have. But a lot of things are sort of cloudy right now,”
“That’s alright. You’ll remember when it’s time. But look, we’re going to set this flame loose, alright? We’re going to destroy this bridge which we’re standing on. We’re going to stop these whispers in their tracks, so no more can get inside you and build their al
l-consuming worlds.
“But, and look here, Will. Look at me, dammit, I know it hurts something awful, but you’ve got to stay with me, kid. Once this bridge burns, and this fake little town shows itself as the illusion it is, you and me are going to be back in someplace really, truly bad. If you think being with that Digger character was tough, that was nothing, compared to this. Hell exists, Will, and when you wake up, you’ll be smack dab in the middle of it. We’ve got to go there though. It’s the way the music is guiding us. It’s the way deeper into the spiral.”
There’s the feeling of a tree snapping in half in the lowest part of my abdomen, causing the ground to fall out from under me. “Oh god, the pain is starting again. I can’t take it anymore.”
“You’ve got to, Will. Or else that’s it. All will be lost.”
There’s a Charybdis of angry voices gyring around each other, tearing at the lining of my intestines, at the essence of my very being. They want everything, and they’ll destroy all of me to get it. I can hear these whispers, billions and billions of them, building monuments to their gods of want and insignificance. They’re all clamoring for something I can’t provide them, for superlatives without bounds. I’m being torn apart, and there’s nothing I can do.
“But there is, Will,” My father says, as if reading my mind. “You can set this bridge alight. Burn this illusion down.” There’s a hurried swish from just outside the door of the hut, as of fabric rustling about. Dad’s face is grim, the furrowed brow saying that we’re just about out of time. “The light won’t keep them out much longer, I’m afraid.”
“Show me what I have to do,” I say. He quickly grabs my hand, and pulls it towards the fire.
“No, Dad, no!” I try to pull my hand out of his grasp, but it’s surprisingly strong, an intractable vice grip. He plunges my hand into the gold flame, just as tattered clothes and long ropes start billowing around my peripheral vision, reaching for us. The flames are hot, but I can tell that my flesh is not burned in any way. In fact, there’s no pain at all, but rather a feeling of cleanliness and purity, like sand smoothed by a series of softly lapping waves. There’s something growing in my palm.
“You feel it, don’t you? Now bring your hand out, Will. But hold what you got there tight. That’s it, kid. There you go. Look what you got there. As bright as the sun it was birthed from.”
I pull my hand free from the gold light, and extending from my balled fist like a sword is a beam of hot light. The pain in my stomach retreats a bit as I wave the beam of light above and around my head, as do the rustling pieces of fabric and rope that had been crowding in behind me.
“They’re scared of it? The whispers?”
“Yes, very much so, William. That’s truth right there, the power of understanding. Illusion is no match for it.” Dad’s hard face glistens in the light from the gold flame and the beam of light in my hand. He’s crying.
“They can’t stand the purity of it, Will. The unadulterated quality of it. The light is part of a balance that doesn’t exist in this world or any other. It’s a symbol of order that negates everything these whispers are striving for. And they can’t bastardize it, no matter how hard they try. Wielding it, Will, you can turn this world to ash. You better do it soon, too.”
There’s a rumble in my stomach, as if the whispers that have infested my insides are aware of what I’m about to do. I tighten my grip on the beam of light in my hand, on the sword that my father says is made of everything, that is a weapon of balance and order. The rumble quiets. It is afraid. The world around me is bathed in music, the Song of the Father. I can feel the tables outside and their sharp, pointed edges brace for what they believe will be their ultimate demise. And they’re right.
I run forward, my hands trailing the beam of light behind me. It arcs over my head like a comet ripping across the firmament, on towards one of the metal tables in front of me. The light touches upon the filigreed metalwork, and it goes up, an eruption of gold flame that spreads like a brushfire to the adjacent tables. The buildings, even the cobblestones all go up in flames.
Cobblestones, I think. What an odd thing to catch fire. My surprise makes me hesitate a moment, and before I can react, a long, tattered piece of fabric comes over my head, and is pulled tight, like a hood. The air is musty and old beneath the fabric, and it muffles all the sound from the outside. I can hear my father yelling, but what he’s saying is lost.
“I want to rule... I want to crush them beneath my toes...” A raspy voice whispers. It sounds like the voices from the desert, from the holes that grew in the sand. I can feel ropes or cords wrapping around my entire body, tightening the fabric in place. The glow from the light beam in my hand is fading, and the pain that had overwhelmed me from before returns, tearing into my stomach with a newfound enthusiasm.
Then I hear my father. “Dibayanda Do,” He says. The words resonate within my ears like a steeple bell.
“Dibayanda Do,” I repeat, and it’s like digging up a forgotten treasure from under brown silt and sand. They’re words that connect everything, the refrain in the music. I can feel a surge in my hand, a strengthening of the light beam.
“Dibayanda Do,” I say again, and the musty cape blows to tatters, as the light from the sword explodes outward. The pain has gone. Everything around me is covered in gold fire. By my feet lies a frail creature, its face like a mule’s. The teeth are razor sharp, its off-centered eyes opaque. Its breaths are shallow, and its skin charred black.
“I... I...” It says, pink froth on its cracked lips. Then it sighs, a last breath, before the fire consumes it.
“Will, you’re almost done here,” My father says, coming up behind me and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Take care of the rest of the buildings. Then this place will be done with, and the illusion will slip away. But what comes next, huh, well,” He coughs and shakes his head. “It’ll be hell, that’s for sure.”
I nod, before rushing forward, towards the pastel colored buildings, their soft angles having shifted into sharper shapes. The torches on their walls are belching shadow, angry at the sword of light lifted high above my head. Once I cut through them, they quickly burn to nothing, revealing empty black space beyond, as if they were nothing more than a Potemkin village. All that is left are the cobbles I stand upon, themselves almost nothing more than black ash, the warm flame tongues licking around my legs. From the darkness comes a wind, not so much cold as empty, plumbing goosebumps up from the depths of my skin with a beckoning sigh.
“Be strong, Will,” Dad says, but he’s gone. There’s only me and the light in my hand. The gold flame has died down to the height of freshly cut grass, then dies, with nothing more for it to consume. There’s only black space around me, and the empty wind. It carries with it threats and curses from whispers with nowhere else to go.
“Dad,” I say, but he’s gone. There is only waiting for something to shift, for something to change...
“Enough!” Bart shouts, startling me awake. The void I was standing in was nothing more than the black behind my eyelids. My breath expires in wispy little clouds, quickly becoming hexagonal crystals in the cold air. The room is as cavernous as a cathedral. Dusty snow motes flurry through dull blue light beams, which cut through the dark space from unknown windows high up in the eaves.
“So, you’re awake.” Bart says from somewhere unseen. I can’t see him, it’s too dark. My head is bound down by leather straps pulled tightly across my chin and forehead. I can’t move my arms or legs either. They’re pulled tight, my wrists and ankles lashed to the floor by chafing ropes. My face feels hot, especially the gash on my cheek from where the Digger hit me with his shovel. A draft comes up through the loosely joined floor boards.
“Nah, please, don’t get up.” Bart has a deep, syrupy drawl. He’s taunting me. “Now why’d you have to go and burn it all down like that? What, you didn’t like the little ol’ bike shop I made for you? I tried to get the details just right. Just like back in ol’ New York City. If
you wanted customers, all you had to do was ask. Still, you’d never have noticed if your old man hadn’t come along, I can tell you that.”
I hear a rattling of chains, followed by the dull thwack of meat on meat. “That’s for me being reminded of how sneaky you are, Daddio!” Bart’s cursing under his labored breath.
“Please, no...” Dad grunts under each blow he’s given.
“Dad!”
“Will, it’s alright. I’m_” The words are punched back into his mouth, the room echoing with the dull sound of knuckles on teeth.
“Shut your stink hole, old man! You already caused enough of a ruckus as it is. Jesus H. Christmas. Look, I’m the new head honcho in Golgotha, you hear me? You can’t be just sneaking over bridges like that. Now stay quiet in your cage, and we won’t have any more problems. Alright, Daddio?”
There’s a sound to the opposite side of Bart and my father. I can’t see, but it sounds like several people shaking the bars on another cage. “And you, goddammit all, you have way too much hutzpah for a lady without a head!” There’s another series of dull whacks until the shaking cage goes quiet.
“There we go.” Bart steps into the low blue light, his fat face covered in glowing symbols, all of them carved deep into his skin. He’s double the size he was before, if not triple. His teeth shine like yellow sponge at the bottom of a phosphorescent ocean bed. “How you feeling?”
“I... it hurts... please let me go...” There’s a pain in my stomach like before, when I was with my father in the courtyard. It’s a dream that I can barely remember.
“You have to hold on to the dreams, Will_”
“Shut up, old man!” Bart’s eyes bulge out of his head, and his face takes on a terrible grimace. “Don’t make me smack you around again.” He turns back to me, smiling again. “It hurts, does it? Well, a’int no surprise there. Right, daddio? You told ‘em everything that’s been goin’ on in his gut. He knows what’s tearin’ all his insides to tater tots.” He leans in close to me, so close I can feel his greasy stubble, can taste the ancient nicotine and rot on his breath.
“He told you all about them whispers, did he? You gotta understand, now, Willy. They be a mighty hungry bunch, and you, yes, you, you got a whole lotta stuff for them to eat up. So much so, their hunger might be satisfied for a time.”
“But... why? Why me?”
“Why? Well, a’int that the magic little question. You want to know what keeps all these whispers stuck here? They can’t perceive. You understand, Willy? They don’t got no powers of perception. Without that, they can’t make any worlds of their own. They go through their miserable existences just wanting, and desiring. That’s what this place is all about. Un-quench-en-ab-le desire.”
“I don’t... I don’t understand...”
“I know you don’t. And quite frankly, I want to keep it that way. I want you to sleep, and let me do what I got to do up here. See, I might be able to take some of that pain away. And then it won’t be so bad, will it? I’ll keep you alive as long I can. Dark arts, from the chaos outside the spiral. And you just dream. Come on now, that won’t be so bad. Go on, sleep Willy.”
The tears begin to well in my eyes. I just want to see my father one last time. I want to say goodbye.
“It’s not goodbye, Will_”
“I said shut up!” Bart darts back into the darkness. My father’s metal cage shrieks as its ripped down and tossed away. I hear it bounce and roll far away. Bart steps back into the blue light.
“Now where was I.”
“Dibayanda Do.”
Bart starts breathing hard. The veins on his neck look ready to burst. “What the hell did I_” The room is suddenly awash with an explosive bloom of white gold light. There’s the smack of flesh, then Bart is screaming, “What have you done?!”
I struggle at the leashes around my head, trying to see. The light has dimmed, reduced to a point in the room. I can just barely make it out: it’s the sword of light that I pulled from the gold fire. My father is holding it. The blue light gives his shirtless torso a vermillion hue, the freckles on his shoulders like sunspots on a dying sun. He was swimming in his sweatshirt when last I saw him in the courtyard, though it was hard to tell with how blurry his whole person was. His muscles have returned, the sinewy knots tightly wrapped around his bones. It’s how I remember him before he was sick. Whenever I’d fall as a child, he’d pick me up with his calloused hands and carry me.
He comes over and starts to cut my ties away. “It’s okay, Will. I’m here.” It’s the voice of a man who has smoked cigarettes since he was thirteen years old.
Bart’s down on his knees, shrunk to the size he was when he was a mere gas station attendant in Grady. He holds the stump of his right arm, black blood pouring out and through the slats in the floorboards. “What have you done...”
“Come on, we’re almost out of this. You’ve just got to stay strong for me, alright?”
“Now, now, a’int that a touchin‘ sight.” Bart’s voice has no trace of pain in it, only smugness. He stands, and from where my father cut off his forearm, a new one has grown, as white as a dishpan hand. “A real tearjerker, that is, boys. Now look, here’s what I’m going to do. First, I’m going to kill you Daddio. Then, I’m tying you, Willy, back to the floor, and you’re going to sleep. What do you think about them apples?” Bart runs towards us. His ham-hock hand is thrown back, in a balled fist.
Dad’s quick. He parries Bart’s fist with one motion, grabbing the fat man’s wrist with one hand and launching him over his shoulder. He tries to bring the sword up and through Bart’s chest, but the naked man dodges it. Bart rolls when he hits the floor, into darkness. His laughter echoes around the huge room. “You’re in deep shit now, boys.” His oily drawl comes at us from all directions.
“Where’d he go?” Dad waves the sword around so that it shines like a spotlight around the cavernous room. We don’t see any sign of Bart. Above us, the headless suit of armor rattle the bars on its cage with its six arms. As if in answer, shapes start rustling around in the blackness, the familiar sound of fabric snapping in the air. “Whispers,” Dad says. He jumps up and quickly cuts at the bars of the other cage. The armor comes tumbling down, crashing atop the runes I had been laying in the middle of just a moment before.
“We’re leaving this place, fat man,” Dad says.
“Oh?” Dust falls as Bart’s laughter echoes through the room. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Daddio. You gotta understand, now, it’s not me. It’s them. They don’t want Willy to leave just yet. They really like him.” The shapes in the dark shuffle closer, their fluttering capes like huffy giggles. All at once, the pain returns, so hard I fall to the ground.
“Will, you have to follow Mag_ Ack!” Dad is cut short as a brood of caped beings fly from the shadows and wrestle him to the ground. The sword flies out of his hand, it’s shining blade sliding across the slatted floorboards towards my feet. There are so many of them, piling on top of each other like flies on a carcass. Their faces are all asymmetrical and beastly, with hot, cutting teeth and white eyes.
“Magdala... Will...help...” I stagger towards him, but I can’t move far because of the pain. It’s Magdala, the headless suit of armor, who rushes forward. She barrels into the throng of whispers, pulling as many of them off of my father as she can. Her presence acts as a catalyst for violence, agitating the throbbing mass of capes into a total frenzy. The sword is so close. I reach out a trembling hand, and grasp its hilt.
“Aw, no,” I hear Bart whisper. A blanket of silence settles over the room. The whispers turn their hunched bodies towards me, confusion and uncertainty plastered on their mule faces. I can see my father’s face from underneath their capes, blood and bruises in the gristle on his chin. He’s smiling. I look at the sword, which is softly vibrating in my hand. The light emanating from the blade is humming at me, singing in a harmony that seems to span an infinite range of octaves. It’s singing to me, for me. I know this song, have k
nown it for a long, long time.
“Will!” Dad’s shout carries above the song. I feel a coldness on my back, like a sigh from the mouth of sadness and despair. I arch the sword through the air, at Bart, who is descending upon me from the eaves above. Even before the blade touches him, his body is repelled by the light, twisting it into a misshapen assortment of limbs and body parts. Once the sword cuts through his flesh, the room lights up with a blinding flash. When it settles, there’s Bart, struck down on the ground, his chest cut open, his eyes winced shut in pain.
“Damn you...” He moans. His body dissipates with a bang. It’s the signal for the whispers, the pistol shot, the dropped hat. They all scramble off my father and run towards me. The sword moves quickly in my hand, gracefully. Each beastly faced apparition gets a taste of the blade, falling with black blood gurgling from their wounds. I pull the sword from the last of the whispers, its body slumping to the floorboards. Magdala is helping my father up, but her body is tense, and she is trying to move quickly.
“Will, you have to get out of here,” He says. “You have to go with Magdala. She’ll take you where you need to go. Hopefully you can find a bridge out of here quick enough.” His body is bruised and hurt. He looks like a warrior whose sun has finally set, a man whose path through life has been violently carved out of stone.
“What do you mean? You’re not coming?”
Dad laughs, his gums so prominent and pink. “I can’t, Will.”
There’s a rumble from below us, and the building starts to shake. “What do you mean you can’t?”
“What I mean, is that I can’t leave here. This is my world, Will, the reality I inhabit. My own personal hell. I’m the keeper of this twisted place.”
“You? How? We were both trapped here.”
“Look, Bart just took advantage of a situation. He’s a manifestation of will, bud. The desire that all these beings possess, the desire that I have, too. All I wanted was my son, buddy boy. I wanted you. But with things as they are, it’s simply impossible to have my wishes fulfilled. Bart is the redeemer for all these whispers, Will. He was called here from the chaos by their insatiable hunger. He dragged me out of the dark room that you visited me in before. Remember?” I think back to the long hallway, the wood-stove burning like a far off sun in the cold depths of space.
“My own personal hell. He dragged me from it, put me in that cage. But those words you muttered when that giant mouth dragged you away from Phyrxian, what you also said when we were surrounded by the whispers in that creepy little courtyard...”
“Dibayanda Do,” I say, and he smiles, bright pinpricks of light coming to life in the depths of his eyes.
“Yes, yes, you remember. It’s how it all begins. It’s how it all ends. It’s the key that will help you unlock the next door you’ll find, the way out of this place. You got to go, because Bart’s getting a second wind. He’ll be up here with more whispers soon enough.”
“Dad,” I say, going to him. He hugs me close, the floorboards groaning beneath us, the entire room shaking. Dust rains on our heads, mixing with the hot tears on my cheek.
He runs his rough hands through my hair, and whispers, “Go, Will. You’ve still a long way ahead of you.” He kisses my head, and then pushes me into Magdala’s waiting arms. She grasps me tightly, holding me to her as she runs for the far wall. She holds out one of her hands, signaling for the sword. I give it to her without even thinking. There’s a stampede of footsteps coming up from below. My eyes are plastered to the shape of my father, who crouches low with his muscles taut, awaiting what’s about to burst into the room. The sound of serrated voices echo off the chambered hall, angry, desperate voices.
“Dad, please, you don’t have to do this! Please, Dad, come with us! Dad!” I start fighting against Magdala’s grip, but she’s too strong. The wall of stone, plywood and sheetrock is coming close, and through its cracks, I can see a silvery light, like moonlight on a spider’s web. That same song I heard while holding the sword can be heard through the wall, faintly.
“Get going down the bridge, Magdala,” Dad shouts. “Find Kokole. Once you’re well on your way, I’ll burn it. I’ll burn this whole place down.” The darkness above the stairwell begins to glow with a dark red, pulsing like red lightning in a thunderhead. A shape starts to coalesce, black clouds on a desert plain. Within the billowing shape is the crude shape of an anguished face.
“The boy is mine,” The cloud says. It’s Bart.
The whispers burst onto the scene all at once, like a throng of starved cockroaches bound for fresh excrement. Their mouths are gnashing, their capes lashing.
“I want to eat him,” They say.
“I want to tear him up.”
“I want his sweet little pauper bones.”
The wall looms up, and Magdala throws all her weight into it. She’s meaning to crash through it. She tucks me in close to her chest, as the plaster gives way underneath her armor. The breath is sucked out of me as the ground leaves us, and we’re falling through the air. We’re scraping the cold clouds we’re so high up. I look back, and the last sight of my father is him charging into the throng of tattered capes and cords, his body glowing in the silvery light, Bart’s dark cloud descending on top of him.
But I quickly lose sight of them, as we continue to fall. The ground is rushing up to meet us so quickly that I have no time to think about loss, about my father and my sadness at having it all come to this. There is only the packed snow below, and the cold air whipping past my ears.
Magdala points her sword towards the ground, out of which streams a beam of light. She squeezes me hard, as if urging me on to do something. My mind is one big panorama of snow and bent metal buildings, a mach speed kaleidoscope.
“I’ll see you again, Will,” Dad says, his voice so low that only I can hear it, like a drip of water at the base of my skull. It’s like there’s an underground cavern in my head, dark, with a deep pool of water. There’s an island in the middle, on which my father sits, a cigarette softly glowing between his fingers. He smiles, knowing I see him. His lips move, without a sound. But the shapes they make, the intake of breath, the way his chapped lips form around his teeth, I know what he’s saying. The beginning, and the end.
“Dibayanda Do,” I say, and the music takes me.
The adventure continues in part two: Pyronic Technique.
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Pulling one of the broken spokes out of the hub flange, I wonder how long the guy whose Nishiki this is rode it like this. He’d been doored, and had proudly told us how it had happened. An embassy car, he said. Flying down east 68th street, and then wham, the guy throws open his door without even looking. Some road burn on his arms, but otherwise he was just shaken up. He got the plate number and the driver’s information, but his complaint got lost in New York’s infamous sea of bureaucratic red tape.
We all heard him out, and humored him with varying degrees of feigned interest. As mechanics, we wear all the chain grease and scraped elbows with a sort of silent pride. Fresh bandages or bruised knuckles are met with faint nods of approval, with no minute details needed.
The toilet flushes from the room behind me. A voice from through the doorway says, “Oof, don’t go in there. You can grab lunch, if you want.” I finish threading the new spoke, and then reach for the rag in my back pocket.
“Sounds good. Want me to grab you a coffee?” I turn, but there’s no person coming out of the bathroom, no other mechanics in the shop. The front part of the store is a similar story, nothing but an empty cash register and cold sunlight blasting in through the front window. The water in the toilet isn’t even running. It’s completely silent.
“Hello?” There is a rustling of fabric from behind me, softly echoing around the store. I turn quickly, expecting to see my boss, messing with my head. Still no one. The door to the office at the back of the shop lightly flutters in an unfelt wind. Could he be in there, hiding in the darkness?
“Hey man, where are you?” I try to come up with my boss’s name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I try to think of his face, but can’t. “Wait... what is this place?” It’s the bike shop I work at, up on 72nd and Amsterdam. Isn’t it? The familiarity has gone, shifted into something... off. The light from the front window, just a short while ago bright with daylight, is fading, the angular frames of all the bikes becoming more knife-like in the gloom.
The dark doorway at the back of the shop opens wider, creaking on its hinges. There’s a moan from within, a dissonant sound that digs right into my chest. It makes my heart sink, with a power greater than the dying light. It’s been drawing me towards it this whole time, I just didn’t realize it. The tools and bikes around me shrink back into their surroundings. This entire shop is an illusion, a cooing camouflage for that which is in the darkness. What is lurking in that doorway, beckoning me towards it? Why is it taking such pains to keep itself hidden?
“Will...” It’s a different voice, faint, calling from the front of the shop, by the window with the fading light. “Will... go towards the music...”
“Who’s there? Hello? I... I can’t move.” My legs are heavy and cold, the darkness from the door having reached around me with icy fingers. It’s not going to let me go.
“Yes you can, Will,” The voice says. “Just take the first step.” I hear ropes being tightened in the darkness, the subtle twanging of hemp cords.
I’m finally able to get my foot in the air, and turn around, away from the door. Strength begins to return to my body. It’s as if a weight is lifted or a tether undone. One step after another, I’m able to make my way away from the door and towards the window.
As I pass the bikes in their racks, my eyes are drawn to the empty spaces within their frames. There are things watching me through those empty spaces, millions and millions of eyes. Billions. I feel entire worlds are staring at me, every being, great and small.
The pull of the darkness makes it hard to speak. “What are you all... looking at?” The spaces within the frames are glazed over with semi-translucent film, like soap bubbles. Underneath are faces, rows upon rows of faces in all different shapes, sizes and colors. They watch me silently, unmoving save for the flaring of their nostrils. It’s the same no matter which bicycle I look at.
“Will...” It’s the man’s voice again. “Will, don’t look. Just make your way to the window.” I clench my eyes shut, and do as I am told. There’s a pain in my stomach that wasn’t there before, like a knife in my gut. Each step is another twist of the blade. I’m within six easy feet of the window at the front of the store, when I can’t help but fall to my knees and vomit.
“Oh god... it hurts...” Phlegm hangs from my nose to the puke on the floor, viscous and pink. The water separates from the chunkier stuff, and I can see reflected in it even more eyes, even more faces. These writhe and contort into ugly shapes, opening their mouths wide as if to scream.
I have to get away from these bikes. I struggle up to my feet, and stumble forward, until the cold glass of the front window is beneath my sweaty palms. The light trickling through the glass has faded to a bruised purple. There’s another rustling behind me, so close its like a whisper in my ear.
“Who’s there?” Nothing answers. All is silent. The shop looks ordinary, all the bikes neatly in their racks, the tools on their tables. The taste of vomit is still fresh in the back of my throat, my stomach churning in pain. The questions just keep piling up, like puzzle pieces from completely different pictures and no rhyme or reason to how they fit together. Did I drink too much coffee? Maybe it was something I ate. I can’t piece anything together. The pain is becoming everything.
Then I see it, a red door which wasn't there a moment ago. The knob shines like the day's first sunlight. It turns on its own, the door swinging into the shop, crisp outside air diffusing the stuffiness of the shop. It’s beckoning to me with a gentle timbre, the same voice that had urged me away from the dark doorway. I have to walk hunched out of the doorway. Ancient cobblestones run up and down a narrow city street. Stone buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, two to three stories tall, all of varying faded pastel colors. Gas torches sputter and spit in their black iron cages, two to each building, darkening the pastels with soot and dancing shadow.
The street is curved much like my back, the windows like dark eyes looking out onto the cobbled streets. There is a gold light down by a bend in the street, casting a warm and welcome glow on the buildings around it. I start towards it.
The street is mostly silent, save for my labored breathing and the soft pat of my feet on the stone. But whether from the pain in my stomach or something else entirely, there’s a soft humming in the back of my head, like a mantra being repeated over and over by a vast conglomeration of voices. The sound is soft and calm, but the longer it goes on, the tighter the vice around my stomach becomes. I have to prop myself up against one of the buildings, the stone a faded rose. I hold my stomach, trying to will the pain away. That’s when I feel something move beneath my hand, under the skin. The sweat on my brow turns cold, my hands tremble. Like the fin of a shark cresting ocean froth, a bump rises up from under my skin, and runs a diagonal path up my abdomen before disappearing back beneath without a trace.
“Oh my god...” Tears gather at the corners of my eyes, quickly escaping and trickling down my cheeks. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god...” I’m starting to lose it.
“Will...” The voice. It's coming from the gold light from around the bend.
“Please,” I shout. “You have to help me.” But no one comes. Whoever is basking in that light is not coming to me, perhaps cannot come. It’s I who has to go towards it. I know there’s no other choice, for whatever is writhing around in my gut is going to tear me apart if I don’t get help
There are other voices when I get close, the murmur of a restaurant or festival. I round the bend in the road, and find that that’s exactly what it is. Assorted men and women sit around at small cafe tables, half-full porcelain mugs and glassware dotting their surfaces. From what I can gather, the clothing of all the patrons seems somewhat antiquated, like out of a Sherlock Holmes novel, with broaches and petticoats aplenty. The faces are impossible to make out. Every time I try to look into a person’s eyes, or take in the shapes of their face, it blurs and my vision is repelled away, as if meeting a magnet with the same charge.
“Ah, Will. Looks like you’ve finally made it.” It’s the voice from before, as warm and smokey as a fireplace. He sits at a table all by himself. His tone is as familiar as a sunrise, but I still can’t place where I know it from, just as I can’t place the face, which blurs in and out of focus. He has an extraordinarily large ashtray in front of him, a pile of cigarette stubs rising up within it like a whitewashed Pyramid of Giza. I can’t make out his eyes or hair; even the skin hue oscillates between a dark ocher and that of pristine snow.
“Who are you?” I say.
“It really doesn’t matter all that much, buddy boy. I’m a whole lot of things, plus a whole lot of nothing. It all depends on how you look, I guess. Now come over here, and sit across from me. I got some things that might help you, especially with that little pain in your stomach there.”
I start towards the chair, but then a pain so severe rips into my stomach like a surgeon clumsily wielding a blunted knife. I fall to my knees, spittle hanging from one of my front teeth, swinging above the cobbles like a pendulum. “Stand up, William,” The blurry man says, his voice stern.
It’s hard to focus. I see flashes of faces, rows and rows of people like in the empty spaces of the bike frames. Their faces have devolved into feral caricatures, with snarling, gnashing teeth and froth on their lips. Orange lightning flashes above images of long bridges, extending from a nexus like spokes on a wheel. My teeth start to chatter, and my muscles throughout my entire body begin to swell with ache.
The pressure that builds in my head is like a million little hands pushing out on my skull. My mouth unhinges, and the hot froth pours out from my throat. Hot tears stream down my even hotter face. I puke once, twice. As the pain subsides a bit and I can brush the tears away, I see writhing shapes in the chunkier stuff, so small as to be almost unseen. Worms, I tell myself, parasites. Yet the figures have the requisite four limbs, hanging longly from their tiny bodies. They’re humanoid.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god...” I say. The shock has me so firmly in its grasp, that I barely notice the hands that take me up, and drag me over to the table. They sit me down in a chair made up of metal filigrees, around which the world spins, in time with the calliope music from the cafe.
“You’re okay, Will. Look at me. Come on, kid, get it together.”
“But I... I can’t see you...”
“You got to focus on the music, okay? Not that carnival music, though. The sound underneath.”
“The... music... I can’t hear it right... I can’t see you...”
“Look, there are certain disguises a guy has to take on in a place like this. ‘Cause we’re deep, Will. We’re real deep.”
“What? I don’t know what you’re... talking about. Please, you have to help me with this. There are things in me. They’re making me really sick. Please.”
“There’s nothing I can do for you, William. It’s out of my power to stop it.” The people in their petticoats and vests spin and dance around us, their faces as blurry as ever.
“To stop what?” I say.
“To stop the forces of desire, William. They’re all taking the bridges that were just built to get to you. All the whispers.” The blurred man leans closer, the color in his face staying fairly dark and immutable. “They’re building worlds inside of you.”
“Building worlds... inside of me?”
“That’s what I said, buddy boy. But they’re worlds built around a hunger of the worst kind. Insatiable desire. They’ll all consume themselves, you see. Because desire is never fully satisfied, William. No, never, never, never.”
He picks a pack up from off the table, from next to the ashtray. He shakes a cigarette from it and places it between his lips, before striking a match on his boot heel and lighting it. He takes a long drag. The exhaled smoke hangs above his head like skinny skeleton arms swimming through the air.
“I know you...” I say.
“I would hope so.” I can tell he’s smiling, can see his extra large teeth in the shifting face. A pair of sharp cheekbones seem to alternate time with frizzy muttonchops.
“Dad?” I say.
“Sh! Not so loud, Will.” He looks around at the figures dancing around us. “You’ll blow my cover. Though I think all these whispers are so desperate to get inside you, they wouldn’t notice me if I farted in their Cheerios.” He chuckles, and takes another drag on the cigarette. Typical humor for the old man, my memory tells me. It eases the pain in my gut a bit, but then I remember something.
“Dad, you’re dead,” I say.
“Well, of course I am, Will. Haven’t we been over this before, back when you were stuck in that basement, about to get eaten by that pudding-brained inbred with the overalls?”
“Pudding brain... overalls...” Flashes of scenes appear in my head, but they’re like clammy hands desperately waving above the roiling waves before being wholly consumed.
“Damn it, kid, these worlds they’re building must be knockin’ your brain around like nothing else. Come on.” He gets up, and for a moment it appears his lower face is consumed by flame. Just as quickly, the vision is gone, and he is motioning for me to follow him, his skinny arm knocking around in his baggy sweatshirt.
I get up, knocking the metal chair to the cobbles. The clang echoes in and out of the calliope tune, distorting the music into something fiendish and fake, like a music box being melted by a hair dryer. The dancing figures stop their graceful steps around the edges of my periphery, and dart away, the swish and crack of fabric like angry whispers.
“Come on, Will, we have to be quick,” Dad says, moving through the maze of tables, their shapes growing sharper and angular as I get up to move past them.
“Just stay focused on me, okay?” He says, making his way for the gold light emanating from a small hut, past all the tables. It’s a light that flickers and pulses in time with a music I hadn’t heard before. Or had I, long ago?
“It’s a beacon fire, to draw you here. If I hadn’t set it for you, you would have languished away in that bike shop, writhing on the floor in absolute misery until the hungry little whispers finally ate you from the inside out. Would have been an awful way to go, bud.”
“Sounds that way,” I say, crying out as one of the table edges catches on my leg.
“Watch, they’re wise to us now, sharpening up. The illusion is slipping, the veil is coming off. But it’s alright. It’s all going to be burned up anyway.”
“Burned up?” We enter into the small hut, and are greeted with the gold light. An extremely large effigy sits at the otherwise empty room’s center. It’s a yellow gold fire, touching every inch of space with pure light.
“It’s... beautiful,” I say. I feel better just looking at it. “There’s music in it, too.”
“Yep. They call it the Song of the Father.” He stalls, his gaze transfixed on the large flame. “A little bit of me, right there.”
“The fire?”
“Yep. ‘And the father and son spun in a great circle of green and gold.’ Do you remember ever hearing that?”
“Can’t say I have. But a lot of things are sort of cloudy right now,”
“That’s alright. You’ll remember when it’s time. But look, we’re going to set this flame loose, alright? We’re going to destroy this bridge which we’re standing on. We’re going to stop these whispers in their tracks, so no more can get inside you and build their al
“But, and look here, Will. Look at me, dammit, I know it hurts something awful, but you’ve got to stay with me, kid. Once this bridge burns, and this fake little town shows itself as the illusion it is, you and me are going to be back in someplace really, truly bad. If you think being with that Digger character was tough, that was nothing, compared to this. Hell exists, Will, and when you wake up, you’ll be smack dab in the middle of it. We’ve got to go there though. It’s the way the music is guiding us. It’s the way deeper into the spiral.”
There’s the feeling of a tree snapping in half in the lowest part of my abdomen, causing the ground to fall out from under me. “Oh god, the pain is starting again. I can’t take it anymore.”
“You’ve got to, Will. Or else that’s it. All will be lost.”
There’s a Charybdis of angry voices gyring around each other, tearing at the lining of my intestines, at the essence of my very being. They want everything, and they’ll destroy all of me to get it. I can hear these whispers, billions and billions of them, building monuments to their gods of want and insignificance. They’re all clamoring for something I can’t provide them, for superlatives without bounds. I’m being torn apart, and there’s nothing I can do.
“But there is, Will,” My father says, as if reading my mind. “You can set this bridge alight. Burn this illusion down.” There’s a hurried swish from just outside the door of the hut, as of fabric rustling about. Dad’s face is grim, the furrowed brow saying that we’re just about out of time. “The light won’t keep them out much longer, I’m afraid.”
“Show me what I have to do,” I say. He quickly grabs my hand, and pulls it towards the fire.
“No, Dad, no!” I try to pull my hand out of his grasp, but it’s surprisingly strong, an intractable vice grip. He plunges my hand into the gold flame, just as tattered clothes and long ropes start billowing around my peripheral vision, reaching for us. The flames are hot, but I can tell that my flesh is not burned in any way. In fact, there’s no pain at all, but rather a feeling of cleanliness and purity, like sand smoothed by a series of softly lapping waves. There’s something growing in my palm.
“You feel it, don’t you? Now bring your hand out, Will. But hold what you got there tight. That’s it, kid. There you go. Look what you got there. As bright as the sun it was birthed from.”
I pull my hand free from the gold light, and extending from my balled fist like a sword is a beam of hot light. The pain in my stomach retreats a bit as I wave the beam of light above and around my head, as do the rustling pieces of fabric and rope that had been crowding in behind me.
“They’re scared of it? The whispers?”
“Yes, very much so, William. That’s truth right there, the power of understanding. Illusion is no match for it.” Dad’s hard face glistens in the light from the gold flame and the beam of light in my hand. He’s crying.
“They can’t stand the purity of it, Will. The unadulterated quality of it. The light is part of a balance that doesn’t exist in this world or any other. It’s a symbol of order that negates everything these whispers are striving for. And they can’t bastardize it, no matter how hard they try. Wielding it, Will, you can turn this world to ash. You better do it soon, too.”
There’s a rumble in my stomach, as if the whispers that have infested my insides are aware of what I’m about to do. I tighten my grip on the beam of light in my hand, on the sword that my father says is made of everything, that is a weapon of balance and order. The rumble quiets. It is afraid. The world around me is bathed in music, the Song of the Father. I can feel the tables outside and their sharp, pointed edges brace for what they believe will be their ultimate demise. And they’re right.
I run forward, my hands trailing the beam of light behind me. It arcs over my head like a comet ripping across the firmament, on towards one of the metal tables in front of me. The light touches upon the filigreed metalwork, and it goes up, an eruption of gold flame that spreads like a brushfire to the adjacent tables. The buildings, even the cobblestones all go up in flames.
Cobblestones, I think. What an odd thing to catch fire. My surprise makes me hesitate a moment, and before I can react, a long, tattered piece of fabric comes over my head, and is pulled tight, like a hood. The air is musty and old beneath the fabric, and it muffles all the sound from the outside. I can hear my father yelling, but what he’s saying is lost.
“I want to rule... I want to crush them beneath my toes...” A raspy voice whispers. It sounds like the voices from the desert, from the holes that grew in the sand. I can feel ropes or cords wrapping around my entire body, tightening the fabric in place. The glow from the light beam in my hand is fading, and the pain that had overwhelmed me from before returns, tearing into my stomach with a newfound enthusiasm.
Then I hear my father. “Dibayanda Do,” He says. The words resonate within my ears like a steeple bell.
“Dibayanda Do,” I repeat, and it’s like digging up a forgotten treasure from under brown silt and sand. They’re words that connect everything, the refrain in the music. I can feel a surge in my hand, a strengthening of the light beam.
“Dibayanda Do,” I say again, and the musty cape blows to tatters, as the light from the sword explodes outward. The pain has gone. Everything around me is covered in gold fire. By my feet lies a frail creature, its face like a mule’s. The teeth are razor sharp, its off-centered eyes opaque. Its breaths are shallow, and its skin charred black.
“I... I...” It says, pink froth on its cracked lips. Then it sighs, a last breath, before the fire consumes it.
“Will, you’re almost done here,” My father says, coming up behind me and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Take care of the rest of the buildings. Then this place will be done with, and the illusion will slip away. But what comes next, huh, well,” He coughs and shakes his head. “It’ll be hell, that’s for sure.”
I nod, before rushing forward, towards the pastel colored buildings, their soft angles having shifted into sharper shapes. The torches on their walls are belching shadow, angry at the sword of light lifted high above my head. Once I cut through them, they quickly burn to nothing, revealing empty black space beyond, as if they were nothing more than a Potemkin village. All that is left are the cobbles I stand upon, themselves almost nothing more than black ash, the warm flame tongues licking around my legs. From the darkness comes a wind, not so much cold as empty, plumbing goosebumps up from the depths of my skin with a beckoning sigh.
“Be strong, Will,” Dad says, but he’s gone. There’s only me and the light in my hand. The gold flame has died down to the height of freshly cut grass, then dies, with nothing more for it to consume. There’s only black space around me, and the empty wind. It carries with it threats and curses from whispers with nowhere else to go.
“Dad,” I say, but he’s gone. There is only waiting for something to shift, for something to change...
“Enough!” Bart shouts, startling me awake. The void I was standing in was nothing more than the black behind my eyelids. My breath expires in wispy little clouds, quickly becoming hexagonal crystals in the cold air. The room is as cavernous as a cathedral. Dusty snow motes flurry through dull blue light beams, which cut through the dark space from unknown windows high up in the eaves.
“So, you’re awake.” Bart says from somewhere unseen. I can’t see him, it’s too dark. My head is bound down by leather straps pulled tightly across my chin and forehead. I can’t move my arms or legs either. They’re pulled tight, my wrists and ankles lashed to the floor by chafing ropes. My face feels hot, especially the gash on my cheek from where the Digger hit me with his shovel. A draft comes up through the loosely joined floor boards.
“Nah, please, don’t get up.” Bart has a deep, syrupy drawl. He’s taunting me. “Now why’d you have to go and burn it all down like that? What, you didn’t like the little ol’ bike shop I made for you? I tried to get the details just right. Just like back in ol’ New York City. If
I hear a rattling of chains, followed by the dull thwack of meat on meat. “That’s for me being reminded of how sneaky you are, Daddio!” Bart’s cursing under his labored breath.
“Please, no...” Dad grunts under each blow he’s given.
“Dad!”
“Will, it’s alright. I’m_” The words are punched back into his mouth, the room echoing with the dull sound of knuckles on teeth.
“Shut your stink hole, old man! You already caused enough of a ruckus as it is. Jesus H. Christmas. Look, I’m the new head honcho in Golgotha, you hear me? You can’t be just sneaking over bridges like that. Now stay quiet in your cage, and we won’t have any more problems. Alright, Daddio?”
There’s a sound to the opposite side of Bart and my father. I can’t see, but it sounds like several people shaking the bars on another cage. “And you, goddammit all, you have way too much hutzpah for a lady without a head!” There’s another series of dull whacks until the shaking cage goes quiet.
“There we go.” Bart steps into the low blue light, his fat face covered in glowing symbols, all of them carved deep into his skin. He’s double the size he was before, if not triple. His teeth shine like yellow sponge at the bottom of a phosphorescent ocean bed. “How you feeling?”
“I... it hurts... please let me go...” There’s a pain in my stomach like before, when I was with my father in the courtyard. It’s a dream that I can barely remember.
“You have to hold on to the dreams, Will_”
“Shut up, old man!” Bart’s eyes bulge out of his head, and his face takes on a terrible grimace. “Don’t make me smack you around again.” He turns back to me, smiling again. “It hurts, does it? Well, a’int no surprise there. Right, daddio? You told ‘em everything that’s been goin’ on in his gut. He knows what’s tearin’ all his insides to tater tots.” He leans in close to me, so close I can feel his greasy stubble, can taste the ancient nicotine and rot on his breath.
“He told you all about them whispers, did he? You gotta understand, now, Willy. They be a mighty hungry bunch, and you, yes, you, you got a whole lotta stuff for them to eat up. So much so, their hunger might be satisfied for a time.”
“But... why? Why me?”
“Why? Well, a’int that the magic little question. You want to know what keeps all these whispers stuck here? They can’t perceive. You understand, Willy? They don’t got no powers of perception. Without that, they can’t make any worlds of their own. They go through their miserable existences just wanting, and desiring. That’s what this place is all about. Un-quench-en-ab-le desire.”
“I don’t... I don’t understand...”
“I know you don’t. And quite frankly, I want to keep it that way. I want you to sleep, and let me do what I got to do up here. See, I might be able to take some of that pain away. And then it won’t be so bad, will it? I’ll keep you alive as long I can. Dark arts, from the chaos outside the spiral. And you just dream. Come on now, that won’t be so bad. Go on, sleep Willy.”
The tears begin to well in my eyes. I just want to see my father one last time. I want to say goodbye.
“It’s not goodbye, Will_”
“I said shut up!” Bart darts back into the darkness. My father’s metal cage shrieks as its ripped down and tossed away. I hear it bounce and roll far away. Bart steps back into the blue light.
“Now where was I.”
“Dibayanda Do.”
Bart starts breathing hard. The veins on his neck look ready to burst. “What the hell did I_” The room is suddenly awash with an explosive bloom of white gold light. There’s the smack of flesh, then Bart is screaming, “What have you done?!”
I struggle at the leashes around my head, trying to see. The light has dimmed, reduced to a point in the room. I can just barely make it out: it’s the sword of light that I pulled from the gold fire. My father is holding it. The blue light gives his shirtless torso a vermillion hue, the freckles on his shoulders like sunspots on a dying sun. He was swimming in his sweatshirt when last I saw him in the courtyard, though it was hard to tell with how blurry his whole person was. His muscles have returned, the sinewy knots tightly wrapped around his bones. It’s how I remember him before he was sick. Whenever I’d fall as a child, he’d pick me up with his calloused hands and carry me.
He comes over and starts to cut my ties away. “It’s okay, Will. I’m here.” It’s the voice of a man who has smoked cigarettes since he was thirteen years old.
Bart’s down on his knees, shrunk to the size he was when he was a mere gas station attendant in Grady. He holds the stump of his right arm, black blood pouring out and through the slats in the floorboards. “What have you done...”
“Come on, we’re almost out of this. You’ve just got to stay strong for me, alright?”
“Now, now, a’int that a touchin‘ sight.” Bart’s voice has no trace of pain in it, only smugness. He stands, and from where my father cut off his forearm, a new one has grown, as white as a dishpan hand. “A real tearjerker, that is, boys. Now look, here’s what I’m going to do. First, I’m going to kill you Daddio. Then, I’m tying you, Willy, back to the floor, and you’re going to sleep. What do you think about them apples?” Bart runs towards us. His ham-hock hand is thrown back, in a balled fist.
Dad’s quick. He parries Bart’s fist with one motion, grabbing the fat man’s wrist with one hand and launching him over his shoulder. He tries to bring the sword up and through Bart’s chest, but the naked man dodges it. Bart rolls when he hits the floor, into darkness. His laughter echoes around the huge room. “You’re in deep shit now, boys.” His oily drawl comes at us from all directions.
“Where’d he go?” Dad waves the sword around so that it shines like a spotlight around the cavernous room. We don’t see any sign of Bart. Above us, the headless suit of armor rattle the bars on its cage with its six arms. As if in answer, shapes start rustling around in the blackness, the familiar sound of fabric snapping in the air. “Whispers,” Dad says. He jumps up and quickly cuts at the bars of the other cage. The armor comes tumbling down, crashing atop the runes I had been laying in the middle of just a moment before.
“We’re leaving this place, fat man,” Dad says.
“Oh?” Dust falls as Bart’s laughter echoes through the room. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Daddio. You gotta understand, now, it’s not me. It’s them. They don’t want Willy to leave just yet. They really like him.” The shapes in the dark shuffle closer, their fluttering capes like huffy giggles. All at once, the pain returns, so hard I fall to the ground.
“Will, you have to follow Mag_ Ack!” Dad is cut short as a brood of caped beings fly from the shadows and wrestle him to the ground. The sword flies out of his hand, it’s shining blade sliding across the slatted floorboards towards my feet. There are so many of them, piling on top of each other like flies on a carcass. Their faces are all asymmetrical and beastly, with hot, cutting teeth and white eyes.
“Magdala... Will...help...” I stagger towards him, but I can’t move far because of the pain. It’s Magdala, the headless suit of armor, who rushes forward. She barrels into the throng of whispers, pulling as many of them off of my father as she can. Her presence acts as a catalyst for violence, agitating the throbbing mass of capes into a total frenzy. The sword is so close. I reach out a trembling hand, and grasp its hilt.
“Aw, no,” I hear Bart whisper. A blanket of silence settles over the room. The whispers turn their hunched bodies towards me, confusion and uncertainty plastered on their mule faces. I can see my father’s face from underneath their capes, blood and bruises in the gristle on his chin. He’s smiling. I look at the sword, which is softly vibrating in my hand. The light emanating from the blade is humming at me, singing in a harmony that seems to span an infinite range of octaves. It’s singing to me, for me. I know this song, have k
“Will!” Dad’s shout carries above the song. I feel a coldness on my back, like a sigh from the mouth of sadness and despair. I arch the sword through the air, at Bart, who is descending upon me from the eaves above. Even before the blade touches him, his body is repelled by the light, twisting it into a misshapen assortment of limbs and body parts. Once the sword cuts through his flesh, the room lights up with a blinding flash. When it settles, there’s Bart, struck down on the ground, his chest cut open, his eyes winced shut in pain.
“Damn you...” He moans. His body dissipates with a bang. It’s the signal for the whispers, the pistol shot, the dropped hat. They all scramble off my father and run towards me. The sword moves quickly in my hand, gracefully. Each beastly faced apparition gets a taste of the blade, falling with black blood gurgling from their wounds. I pull the sword from the last of the whispers, its body slumping to the floorboards. Magdala is helping my father up, but her body is tense, and she is trying to move quickly.
“Will, you have to get out of here,” He says. “You have to go with Magdala. She’ll take you where you need to go. Hopefully you can find a bridge out of here quick enough.” His body is bruised and hurt. He looks like a warrior whose sun has finally set, a man whose path through life has been violently carved out of stone.
“What do you mean? You’re not coming?”
Dad laughs, his gums so prominent and pink. “I can’t, Will.”
There’s a rumble from below us, and the building starts to shake. “What do you mean you can’t?”
“What I mean, is that I can’t leave here. This is my world, Will, the reality I inhabit. My own personal hell. I’m the keeper of this twisted place.”
“You? How? We were both trapped here.”
“Look, Bart just took advantage of a situation. He’s a manifestation of will, bud. The desire that all these beings possess, the desire that I have, too. All I wanted was my son, buddy boy. I wanted you. But with things as they are, it’s simply impossible to have my wishes fulfilled. Bart is the redeemer for all these whispers, Will. He was called here from the chaos by their insatiable hunger. He dragged me out of the dark room that you visited me in before. Remember?” I think back to the long hallway, the wood-stove burning like a far off sun in the cold depths of space.
“My own personal hell. He dragged me from it, put me in that cage. But those words you muttered when that giant mouth dragged you away from Phyrxian, what you also said when we were surrounded by the whispers in that creepy little courtyard...”
“Dibayanda Do,” I say, and he smiles, bright pinpricks of light coming to life in the depths of his eyes.
“Yes, yes, you remember. It’s how it all begins. It’s how it all ends. It’s the key that will help you unlock the next door you’ll find, the way out of this place. You got to go, because Bart’s getting a second wind. He’ll be up here with more whispers soon enough.”
“Dad,” I say, going to him. He hugs me close, the floorboards groaning beneath us, the entire room shaking. Dust rains on our heads, mixing with the hot tears on my cheek.
He runs his rough hands through my hair, and whispers, “Go, Will. You’ve still a long way ahead of you.” He kisses my head, and then pushes me into Magdala’s waiting arms. She grasps me tightly, holding me to her as she runs for the far wall. She holds out one of her hands, signaling for the sword. I give it to her without even thinking. There’s a stampede of footsteps coming up from below. My eyes are plastered to the shape of my father, who crouches low with his muscles taut, awaiting what’s about to burst into the room. The sound of serrated voices echo off the chambered hall, angry, desperate voices.
“Dad, please, you don’t have to do this! Please, Dad, come with us! Dad!” I start fighting against Magdala’s grip, but she’s too strong. The wall of stone, plywood and sheetrock is coming close, and through its cracks, I can see a silvery light, like moonlight on a spider’s web. That same song I heard while holding the sword can be heard through the wall, faintly.
“Get going down the bridge, Magdala,” Dad shouts. “Find Kokole. Once you’re well on your way, I’ll burn it. I’ll burn this whole place down.” The darkness above the stairwell begins to glow with a dark red, pulsing like red lightning in a thunderhead. A shape starts to coalesce, black clouds on a desert plain. Within the billowing shape is the crude shape of an anguished face.
“The boy is mine,” The cloud says. It’s Bart.
The whispers burst onto the scene all at once, like a throng of starved cockroaches bound for fresh excrement. Their mouths are gnashing, their capes lashing.
“I want to eat him,” They say.
“I want to tear him up.”
“I want his sweet little pauper bones.”
The wall looms up, and Magdala throws all her weight into it. She’s meaning to crash through it. She tucks me in close to her chest, as the plaster gives way underneath her armor. The breath is sucked out of me as the ground leaves us, and we’re falling through the air. We’re scraping the cold clouds we’re so high up. I look back, and the last sight of my father is him charging into the throng of tattered capes and cords, his body glowing in the silvery light, Bart’s dark cloud descending on top of him.
But I quickly lose sight of them, as we continue to fall. The ground is rushing up to meet us so quickly that I have no time to think about loss, about my father and my sadness at having it all come to this. There is only the packed snow below, and the cold air whipping past my ears.
Magdala points her sword towards the ground, out of which streams a beam of light. She squeezes me hard, as if urging me on to do something. My mind is one big panorama of snow and bent metal buildings, a mach speed kaleidoscope.
“I’ll see you again, Will,” Dad says, his voice so low that only I can hear it, like a drip of water at the base of my skull. It’s like there’s an underground cavern in my head, dark, with a deep pool of water. There’s an island in the middle, on which my father sits, a cigarette softly glowing between his fingers. He smiles, knowing I see him. His lips move, without a sound. But the shapes they make, the intake of breath, the way his chapped lips form around his teeth, I know what he’s saying. The beginning, and the end.
“Dibayanda Do,” I say, and the music takes me.
The adventure continues in part two: Pyronic Technique.