Excerpt From Book 2
Notice: The following is a sample from One Over X Episode Two: A Game of Hangman. It is presented here for the promotional use of this Blog. It is copyrighted material (c) 2003, Elgon Williams and may not be used except for its expressed purpose without the written permission of the author, Elgon Williams.Solarium
The solarium wall dripped condensation, tiny droplets colliding, combining their volumes and forming trails down the panes. The outside world bathed in the slate and silvery blue of the full moon’s light. On the inside light spread its eerie limited spectrum, giving ghoulish grandeur to the forest of black that in daylight was lush green and tropical.
It felt right. Friday the Thirteenth seemed somewhat appropriate for the long anticipated deed. Soon enough it would be midnight. A moment later would be another day. It would be too late and that would never do. Saturday the 14th was not the same thing as it lacked the power of triskaidekaphobia.
Brent hurried about his business. His attention once more returned to the rope that dangled from the rafters and particularly the skillfully fashioned noose at its termination.
He wasn’t really dressed for the occasion either. Then again how would one dress for a suicide? It was too late to bother. Anyway, the bowels loosen and the clothes become soiled. He had fasted three days yet there would be a little something in him to come out and whatever he wore would be ruined. It wouldn’t matter to anyone except those unfortunate enough to find him. He figured that would take several days, perhaps even a month as no one ever bothered him. By then he would be very ripe anyway. The putrid smell of soiled clothes would be the least of anyone’s worries. Dying was not a clean business. regardless. It was a serious business.
He remembered death, the intimacy he’d felt in youth to pets that had perished and relatives that had passed on. He’d lost grandparents, aunts and uncles. A cousin had committed suicide when she was a teen. He knew death without understanding it. Even so he had never feared dying. How ironic that the disease was upon him and under any other circumstance he would not know his death for at least a very, very long time. There was a chance that he could not die. That was a chance he was unwilling to accept as fate.
Earlier in the afternoon he decided against dressing up for the occasion. He had forgotten why. Maybe it was because he never dressed up. He hated blind obedience to convention. His wardrobe generally consisted on jeans and sweatshirt in the winter and cutoffs and tank top in the summer. In the spring or fall he might wear a tee shirt with jeans. At any rate he wanted to be comfortable. It was too bad that his thoughts were so disjointed. It was so very hard for him to concentrate.
In cruel irony he had thought of wearing the tuxedo that his wife had bought for him. It would be only the fifth time in his life that he had ever worn a tux. He hadn’t even worn a tux for his wedding. Brent laughed at the thought. Go out in vogue! That had been the idea. The tux was old and out-of-style, epitomizing him. The tux fit him just about as well as it suited him. He had decided in the end not to do it because the tux was so oddly out-of-date. It might give an unintended message. He was not offing himself over fear of growing older. He simply did not want to endure the monotony of life.
He had the disease, what Andy called a curse. It was to him beyond a curse. It was the disease that was killing him, slow, malignant agony as each passing day became the more unendurable. He chose to live away from others because he had so very little in common with any of them and was so patently aware of their every thought and conniving intention. They hated him. He also hated them. Whatever anyone thought of him mattered very little in the balance. He would die soon. In time so would they.
He shrugged, sighed, “Oh well.” Giving up any thought of formal attire. He finished his work on the knot. He opened the loop wide enough and poked his head through, gently positioning the robe beneath his bearded chin before tightening it. Somehow feeling the noose tightening by his hand was strangely comforting. It would be over soon. Very soon the ordeal would conclude.
He had brought the penalty upon himself, of course. There was no other way out. He had asked for it. The chosen one had chosen. Call him crazy, call it a messiah complex, but this was the only reasonable way it could end.
“Time to call for the check,” he mumbled to himself.
“What are you doing?”
He turned to look. Silhouetted by the moonlight that spilled through the doorway from the wall of glass in the adjacent hydroponics solarium was the familiar shadowy essence of his late brother.
“Just coming to join you,” Brent chuckled.
“Fine time for a sense of humor.”
“Hey, gallows humor,” Brent shrugged. “I’m doing what I can. I mean it is not everyday you get to talk to dead relatives and…well, come to think of it, it is everyday lately that I speak with a dead relative. Damn, suicide under those circumstances might be justifiable.”
“Death is not all it is cracked up to be. And for the record, suicide is never justifiable,” Barry said.
“Haven’t heard many good things about it, really. Taking your word for it. It’s hard to find verifiable experience. I only see my relatives and they only exist in my mind.”
“Only in your mind is it?”
“You don’t count. That’s what I mean. You’re not real.”
“I am as real as you are.”
“Then I am not real either.”
Barry smiled. “You have a point there, I suppose. But if you and I aren’t real then what are we?”
“Had that all figured out, I thought. We are characters in a book that someone else, someone like me is writing. Neat, huh?”
“Plausible.”
“Yeah, well, I got it from Andy being in my books and all… and well. Anyway, I thought there must be a layer beyond this one. It doesn’t seem to pan out. I mean I know Andy but I have never met anyone that has come here saying that they write about me.”
“Not yet. It still could work out that way.”
“I wrote some things about me that should have come to pass and they did not.”
“It just hasn’t happened. Besides you are not the one writing. It is someone else. Someone that you do not know. Right?”
Brent smiled. “But the point is that if I can’t force Andy to do something then someone writing about my life could not force me to do something either.”
“You are merely reporting what you perceive of another world.”
Brent considered this briefly, and then nodded. “That works better, I guess. But think, in the next few minutes will it even matter.
Barry had ventured into the room, walked around the base of the ladder upon which Brent was sitting, analyzing the makeshift gallows. “A noose? Why hanging? Has to be pretty painful, especially if you do not break your neck right away.”
“All in the knot. If you do it right, the neck snaps right away.”
“I see. By the way, when you die like this, there is no return. Check out on your own ticket and you do not get the return engagement.”
“I don’t want to come back. Do you?”
“Can’t say I did. I miss people. Found out I could visit. Then you came along. Didn’t seem as important for me to watch over the loved ones. Everyone needs to watch out for themselves, I think.”
“Ever bump into guardian angels?”
“Not intentionally.” Barry laughed.
“But you came back to torment me.”
“Oh, I have always been here and about. It’s just that you attained the ability to notice me. I was as surprised by that as you, if you recall.”
“It was when Andros told me to keep the frickin’ stone that the Old Bachelor gave me. That started everything going downhill. Anyway, I don’t want to ever come back.”
“You say that now.”
“I’ll say that always.”
“So what triggered all this depression? The wife again?”
“The ex-wife.”
“Temporal terminology. Marriage is forever regardless what you do after the commitment.”
“I didn’t break it off.”
“You didn’t resist.”
“How could I?”
“How could you not? There were the children. You could have stuck it out a while longer for them.”
“Children cannot sure-up a failing marriage.”
“Wasn’t suggesting that. Only that they are a result of your union, whether the union seems in the long run to have been a mistake or no.”
“She doesn’t love me, perhaps she never did. She went back home, leaving everything in disarray and me holding the bag.”
“You play what you get dealt.”
“I hate game analogies, especially card game analogies.” Brent snapped.
Barry smiled, “It is apt, though. What about the children?”
“The children were all taken care of, as well you know. I don’t have that over my head anymore. The girls stay with Joy a lot.” Brent stretched his neck, positioning the noose about it. “Joy has become more a friend than a sister to me over the years. She had been a mother to the girls. The boy was fine anyway. He was like me. I went out on my own when I was fifteen so he will survive as well. And for a fall back, there is Gerard.”
“Not that that is right.”
Brent shrugged. “They made it alright! Granted some of that has to do with the quality of character that my sister and brother-in-law have.”
“I wish I had known Joy while I was alive.” Barry said. “We could have had a lot of fun.”
“She might have never been if you hadn’t…”
“I know, I know, the folks were trying to replace me. I would have probably been an only child.”
“Honest to God, mom was a prude,” Brent said. “I still have trouble figuring out how any of us were ever conceived.”
Barry smiled, “It is a private matter. People are very different when intimate.”
“Yeah, well you’re probably right. I talked with Joy and Jean about that when we were together last year at dad’s funeral. That was the first time any of us talked about how dysfunctional our family was.”
“You never speak of Jean so I don’t know her very well. She seems very closed.”
“Yeah, she is for the most part. She is very focused. She needs to be fore what she does,” Brent said.
“Military.”
“Yes. I thought about doing that as a career, too. I just had a lot of trouble with all the structure. I wasn’t cut out for that strict of an environment. To Jean I am just who I am and I am thinking that she generally regards me as a failure. Joy doesn’t judge me quite so harshly. She understands me…a little bit anyway. I could live with the consequences of life that I have caused for myself. Besides all that has nothing to do with by desire to die. It’s all the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“The Guardianship.”
“Oh that.”
“Yeah, oh that.” Brent entered. “I don’t want the responsibility. I have enough on my plate. I am the reason that three humans are alive in this world, okay? Andros shows up and all of a sudden I start seeing dead relatives. I am responsible for guarding a gateway to other worlds. I don’t need any of this.”
“There is more to it than that. It is hardly a reason to be suicidal.”
“Andros can pick ‘em, huh? The craziest man in the world is okay to serve as the keeper of the Amulet.”
“You really are insane, you know.”
“No! Really? “ Brent countered. “ I’m only sitting on top of a 16-foot ladder with a noose around my neck talking to my brother who died when he was 8, 12 years before I was born. No, I’ve got a really amazing grip on reality right now. Geeze. You’re killing me.”
“You’re killing you.”
“Yeah, well that too,” Brent laughed. “By the way is it midnight yet?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Symbolic. It needs to be midnight.”
“Time of death will depend on when the coroner determines you died, not the real time.”
“But I will know.”
“I haven’t paid attention to time for many years. No need. But,” he looked at the moon through the wall of glass, then surveyed the feel of the ambience of space and smiled. “Fifteen seconds to go.”
“Well here goes,” Brent stood.
“One last thing.”
“What?” Brent’s voice resonated with annoyance for the further delay. “Ah, now I have to work up the nerve again.”
“You can’t die, not really.”
“Come again?”
“Only this aspect ceases to exist. There are an infinite number of other aspects. You will awaken somewhere else and maybe in a worse lot. The equation reads infinity minus 1 equals infinity!”
Brent sat down again. “Oh, really?”
“How else do you explain me? All souls are conserved and kept each at their own level. I happen to be at the level that is immediately beyond the veil and not into The Continuum. I would say that I am trapped but I am not so much trapped as dislocated.”
“I never wanted to explain you. Didn’t think it was possible for a ghost to exist until a few months ago. I don’t even know you really.”
“Except you are virtually identical in genetic terms to what I once was in life.”
“That isn’t saying much as I am virtually identical to a chimpanzee from what I understand.”
Barry laughed, “Guess I should qualify that. You’re right. We were identical in almost every way.”
“The difference being?”
“Your soul and mine. That’s pretty much it. Oh by the way, it is now the 14th!”
“Damn you! You did that on purpose!”
“Too late for condemnations, in my case anyway,” Barry turned to depart. He seemed satisfied that he had prevented Brent doing something very, very stupid.
“Hey wait!”
Barry turned, “What?”
“When is the next one?”
“What the next Friday the 13th? Do you really think that I would know? Its in October I think. You may as well hang on pardon the pun, until Halloween and really do it right!”
Brent considered this for a moment as he slowly removed the noose from his neck but left it dangling as he descended the ladder.
“You just leaving it there?” Barry asked.
“Why not?”
“Until October?”
“I was considering it, why?”
“What if someone sees it?”
“Who comes up this way anymore? I’m the crazy old man who writes weird stories that scared the turds out of a lot of otherwise calm, polite and relatively sane people. I’m a good-for-nothing. I am a reclusive hermit with whom no God-fearing soul from town willingly associates. I talk with dead relatives and probably even consort with witches and for all they know I may be possessed of demons. This house has quite the rep and in due course I have acquired its funk through osmosis. I am the only person that has been known to live here for more than a few days since the original owner died after…”
“Spare me the gruesome details. I already know the story.”
“I don’t recall telling you before.”
“Who is the ghost here? I know. All right?” Barry paused to allow Brent time to nod concurrence. Then he continued, “Another difference between you and I is that I can communicate with all the ghosts. You happen to be the only living human that sees me. I assure you though that I am not the only ghost hereabouts.”
Brent laughed boldly. “You know what it is like getting a plumber up here when the pipes clog? Hell yes, I know this place is haunted. I also know that other than present company, none of the ghost bother me.”
Barry paused for a moment, considering his next words. “Do you really know what people are saying about you or is that just paranoia?”
“I know what people think. It’s only paranoia if suspicions aren’t true.”
Barry shook his head, “My little brother. That is not what I asked.”
“I know. Yes, damn it I know.”
“You could always get a job in a magic show,” Barry suggested. “Mind reader, Brent.”
“Well, I got that going for me, don’t I?” Brent smirked, “Not that I really want to hear the cacophony of a large audience’s thoughts.”
“You get used to it, I hear.”
“From whom did you hear that? Andy? He’s more a basket case than I am.”
“He is adjusting.”
Brent shrugged, “Then I’m relieved. He is a better man than I am even if he is barely a man anymore.” He passed through his brother’s ethereal form on his way into the next room. “By the way, big bro, thanks for screwing up my plans for the evening.”
“I saved you the aggravation of an experience that transcends death.”
“How do you know? You were a kid when you died.”
Barry followed Brent into the adjacent room. Could it be possible that the moonlight was brighter in the next room? “I still died. The experience is in no sense diminished by youth.”
“While we are on the subject of youth, why don’t you appear to be a kid?”
“I do not prefer to. That’s all. Do you want me to? I can.”
“You would have been twenty years older than me. I doubt I could cope with you appearing as a kid. But I am not comfortable with how much you resemble me. Why do you have to appear to be my age?”
“I thought it would be better for us to be equals in age.”
“It irks the living crap out of me.”
“There you are then.” Suddenly he appeared to be his real chronological age had he lived.
“Yes, here we are: the ghost and his unwilling host. There is probably a story in that somewhere. I suppose I should write something like that,” Brent settled into his chair at his desk that constituted the only furnishings in the room. He slid a keyboard tray from beneath a monitor and pressed the key to reactivate the computer from deep sleep mode. “I need a faster computer.”
“Have Andy get you another one.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You have the tools to do it.”
“What sort of operating system would I use? The one he gave me is strange enough.”
“They have similar needs in Andy’s aspects, they must have comparable solutions.”
Brent chuckled, “Imagine someone seeing one of his computers in here! They’d start really thinking I’m an alien, on top of everything else.”
“You have been to other worlds.”
“A lot of people go to other worlds.”
Barry smiled, “In their dreams.”
“Exactly,” Brent said.
Barry paced the floor. Although there was no friction against anything physical, he preferred to maintain the illusion. He navigated the plasma within a given space at a given time. He could have just as well been floating a few feet above the floor but preferred not to.
Barry appreciated the roominess of the house, as did every other ghost that was present. It was too large for Brent to have all to himself. It’s sum total contents were maybe ten pieces of furniture and a closet of well-worn and generally out-of-style clothes. That Brent had the whole house to himself seemed very odd indeed. Granted no one else wanted to live in the house. The house was haunted. Everyone knew. It was obviously haunted whenever Barry was around.
Barry could attest that even ghosts could not remain long in the house that contained a Mandorla. Ghosts were drawn unwittingly toward the threshold like iron filings to a magnet and whenever the threshold was unlocked they were quickly dispatched. The reason for the present rather crowded conditions in the spirit world was the fact that the present Guardian, namely Brent, did not know how to use the key to exorcise the haunts. So at least with less furniture about the rather spacious manor, there were no abnormal conditions like a spirit and some inanimate object occupying the same space at the same time but on different aspect planes.
Brent had little need for anything but his desk, his chair and his bed. He had a computer, a refrigerator, a stove, a washing machine and a dryer. Brent rarely ate until he was nearly famished. He washed his clothes only when their odor offended even him, which was generally once every other week. He bathed daily in the summer and maybe not so often in the winter. He went out to obtain the mail and to post letters - mostly the payment of bills and occasional and infrequent correspondence with his Jackson publisher. Sometimes he exchanged mail with his older sisters but he wrote to Jackson more often.
There was a TV somewhere about but he hadn’t even bothered to hook it up. It was an artifact really. There had been three TV sets in the ‘happy’ home when the divorce was finalized. He ended up with one of them, the worst of the lot. He never watched TV so quality hardly mattered. He had TV Cable installed but that only served him to access the Broadband Internet. TV was there if he ever cared to connect. He would likely as not only watch news and that would depress him. So he had decided to leave the TV and all its bad omens relegated to the reality that he was purposely trying to avoid.
“Are you planning to stay for a bit?” Brent asked Barry.
“Do I bother you that much?”
“Only when I write.”
“I just came to ask you the status of the Mandorla.”
“Mandorla?”
“The threshold. You are the Guardian of the Mandorla that is resident here.”
“Oh, Oh, Oh, that. The crystal thing is the key right? All I know about it is that the Amulet is the key.”
“Yes, the Mandorla is the thing for which the crystal serves as key.”
Brent slid his desk drawer open. There was a pile of papers within it and as he rummaged through them he said, “I really have to get rid of some of this.”
Barry shook his head in disbelief. “You put the Amulet, one of the most powerful things in the Universe in that drawer?”
“Why not? It’s pretty safe. Even I never look in here.”
“Well, that would make it safe, then.” Barry shook his head in disbelief.
“Andros said to protect it.”
“I think he intended you to wear it about your neck and protect it with your life.”
“Uh, or not. I never signed on to any of this. I found this in the Old Bachelor’s trunk when my dad bought the farm, house and all its contents.”
“There needs to be a full accounting. Some sentient, living being has passed the threshold and penetrated a Mandorla. Not this Mandorla but another. So someone with a key…an Amulet…”
“How many of these thresholds are there?”
“There are many. How many I don’t know. I’m not sure that anyone but possibly a Spectral would know. I can tell where they are only by a larger number of incorporeal spirits that are drawn to them.”
“Well, I can assure you that no one left this world from here. I can’t even find the damned threshold…or the Amulet.”
“Don’t curse the Amulet.”
“I’ll do whatever I want, I am the Guardian after all…Ah, there it is! Such a little thing to be about so much trouble!” Brent dangled it from a chain. “Andros said there are other Amulets.”
“All have been accounted for. All but The Rogue.”
“Then this is The Rogue, it must be…”
“Of all the stones The Rogue is the key of all keys. It cannot be destroyed as the others might. It can link all the other six stones and channel their combined might. A Great Sorcerer once held it. That was long before the era of man, before even the Sabatin intrusions into the Earth. A charlatan, a minor wizard calling himself Magus was The Sorcerer’s apprentice. He stole the Amulet, entered The Continuum through a Mandorla and was not seen again for eons. The Rogue is assumed to be in his possession still as it has not been seen since.”
“And this Magus is also lost in The Continuum?”
“No, no, no. Quite the contrary. Andros knows his whereabouts. He has admitted to Andros that he no longer has the Amulet. He gave it to a Wolfcat.”
“A Wolfcat. The old Bachelor spoke of Queen Ela’na the Wolfcat.”
“Oh really?” Barry considered the implication. “He knew this creature?”
“He was in love with her. She traveled around with some magician named Master something or the other.... ”
“Master E?”
“Yeah that was it.”
“He is no magician.”
“Well the Old Bachelor said that he wasn’t as good as Ela’na at doing tricks.”
“No, no, no. You misunderstood. Master E is a Spectral. They are sorcerers for lack of a better term but they can be whatever they desire.”
Brent silently considered the implications and more importantly how it affected him. “This Wolfcat. The Old Bachelor told me that she could transform into a Wolf or a Cat and that it was a pretty impressive illusion.”
“Hardly an illusion I’d venture. A Wolfcat is a very powerful creature of many levels of contradiction,” Barry said. “A Wolfcat is a gentle blending of the best attributes of both Wolf and Cat but is neither. There is also a human part to the Wolfcat and so it is possible for a mature Wolfcat to appear as either Wolf, Cat or human. Wolfcats are magical beings and would therefore be perfect bearers of an Amulet as they would be least inclined to ever usurp the power.”
“You think he’d give up the most powerful stone…”
“Magus knew that the Amulets were powerful and may have suspected that the Amulet that he had was The Rogue but he had no clue how to use it properly. He claims that it is safe where no one will find it.”
“And I am the one that has it safely hidden in a junk drawer.”
Barry shook his head at the ironic possibility. “I am still unclear as to why you came by it.”
Brent shrugged, “The Old Bachelor used to have it stored in a trunk. He said the Wolfcat left it for him.”
Barry smiled, “Interesting. The fact remains that an intruder has entered Anter’x through a Mandorla.”
“And the problem is?”
“He is someone from this world. He does not belong there.”
“Then send him back.”
“That is the problem. The Mandorla has sealed behind him.”
“Oh, I see, I see. You want me to use this Amulet to open the Mandorla here and bring the intruder back.”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“What do you mean? This opens the Mandorla, I cross the threshold and drag…”
“Drag the intruder back? So simple and yet so wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes. Pardon the expression, dead wrong. You can’t force the intruder back. It must be voluntary. The same Mandorla must be opened with the same Amulet, else the turbulence of the discord in the Continuum would destroy the intruder and destabilize the worlds.”
“Did the intruder volunteer to go through the threshold?”
“It was necessary. It was meant to be.”
“Then Andros knew about it.”
“You would think so.”
“Is it possible that he didn’t?”
“Andros sent me. Why would he send me to do his bidding?”
“Andros is busy, always busy,” Brent said sarcastically.
“Andros hates you, too. Maybe that’s why he sent me.”
“Yeah, well that too. He has no use for artistic types. I don’t really hate him. I just do not appreciate this gift that I have. He trusted me with an Amulet? I must be worth something.”
“He had no options,” Barry laughed. “He can’t understand how you are an artist.”
“It’s an insane world. Therefore, I fit right in!” Brent flashed a wide smile.
“I hadn’t considered that Andros might be involved and that his sending me to account for your Amulet is but a red herring. I must admit that I have never understood why you were even a candidate for Guardianship. Maybe it is all in the possession. The ways of the Spectrals are mysterious.”
“This red herring smells fishy, pardon the expression.”
“You seek no pardon for that and you know it. You probably even thought that it was funny.”
“Witty? Yes. Funny? Well, maybe not.”
Barry shook his head in disbelief.
“I think the selection had more to do with my being the current owner of the ‘manor of the damned’ than no one else wants to own the Amulet.”
As Barry wondered how Brent could be so astute at times while at others be so stupid, Brent for his part decided to wear the Amulet about his neck, its crystal seeming cold and lifeless. After playing with the crystal for a few moments, he turned his attentions back to his computer. He checked his email, and then opened the file containing his novel-in-progress. “Uh, Barry old boy. I am beginning to write. I would see you to the door but you never seem to use it anyway.”
“I’ll take that as a not-so-subtle hint.”
“Later Bro!”
E
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