My feet are bare and the floor is cold, the darkness just shy of absolute. There’s a door ahead, a soft light seeping under and around its frame. Opening it, I step into a long hallway, almost as dark as the room before. There’s a wood stove at the far end, its flames caressing a square glass door. The fire barely casts any light. In fact, it seems to be swallowing the little of it that’s around, burping up shadow with each pop of its cindery logs.
My teeth begin to click together. It must be winter, though there are no calendars on the wall or frost-kissed windows through which to see snow. How can a house be this cold? I guess this is where Dad would say I was lucky to have hairy legs. “Keeps you warm on cold winter nights,” he would say. “Why do you think you think I loved your mother so much?” He got happy talking about her. He had to love her for more than her hairy legs, or he would not have missed her so much. Here I am, missing him missing her, in nothing but a torn Joy Division tee-shirt and a pair of bike shorts. Funny how things work out.
This cold bites deep. It feels like the lack of something, that there is a desperate want in the air. The room is growing with it, reaching for that which is just beyond its grasp. The wood stove and its light recede, though I’m walking towards them. I’m like a planet that has fallen out of orbit, drifting further and further away from its sun.
“Boy, you’re all doom and gloom. Why the long face?” A familiar voice says. It’s raspy and deep, as if seasoned over long years in a steaming cave. “What took you so long?”
My mind must have wandered one way, and my feet the other: the fire now crackles within the wrought iron stove several feet before me, my nose hairs crinkling in the dry heat. The wood that burns smells of oak, maple and meat. Turning around, I see there’s a chair in the corner, its foot rest propped up, the back reclined at forty-five degrees. A man sits in it, skeletally thin, a baseball cap over thin wisps of hair and a cigarette burning in his hand. A blanket covers his legs with two feet stuck out, as swollen as inflated latex gloves.
“What’s wrong, Will? You don’t recognize your old man?”
“Dad?”
He takes a long drag. “Surprise.”
A log pops in the stove, an air pocket found out by the fire and quickly consumed. “What’s wrong?” He asks.
“I... don’t know. You’re...”
“Dead? Gee, thanks for the reminder.”
“If you’re dead but I’m speaking to you, then I must be dreaming.”
“Very logical, buddy boy, but not quite the whole truth. It may have started as a dream, but it’s grown into so much more.” He laughs on the last few words, his cheeks tightening back. His mouth is like a hole which his teeth have cut through. He’s so thin, barely one hundred pounds, and his arms move about in his baggy sweatshirt like insect legs.
“What do you mean?” It’s then that I remember where I was before this cold place, of the man who attacked me with the shovel. New Mexico, Grady, the basement under the hill. The storm and Crick. The man with the flowers on his head and the shovel. “I have to wake up. Dad, if this is a dream, then I have to wake up. There’s a man who is going to kill me. I think_ oh no. I’m already dead, aren’t I?”
“Relax, bud. You haven’t been home in how long now?”
“Dad, answer me. Am I already dead?!”
Dad chuckles, and it’s like an old rooster bocking. “You’re not dead, Will. You’re built of stronger stuff than that.” The light from the fire grows stronger, bringing certain pieces of furniture out of the shadows, old familiar friends. Next to my father’s easy chair is a side table in the shape of an inverted ‘H.’ A stucco-style lamp is atop it, with faded magazines strewn about its base. Over the black leather couch is a photograph of Dad on a roof beam, his frame carrying his former 200 pounds, his hair full, a drill in his hands. Several men stand under and above him, but their faces are hard to make out, as if they were smudged out with chalk.
“You finally recognize it?”
“I’m home. When I left, it was the beginning of summer. How is it that it’s this cold, and the house is so... different? Where are the windows, and why is hallway so long? What is this place really, Dad?”
“Things tend to change a great deal when you’re away from them a while. Sometimes they fall apart, bud. A house is what you put into it, don’t you remember me telling you that. It’s also what you take out of it. I was taken out of it when I died, Will. You took yourself out when you decided to go on this bike trip to California. That’s why you see it like this, a real fixer-upper. Quite the grand trip you’ve undertaken, though, I must say.”
“You don’t even know the half of it,”
“But I do. Truly. I was with you the whole way.”
“Now you’re the one who is dreaming.”
He laughs, and it’s that same rooster bock. “When you were climbing those coal-country roads in West Virginia for days on hand, who were you crying over, wishing you could have done more for in his last months of life? I heard you, bud. I was right here.” He pokes a bony finger at my chest.
“When the sky turned green and the rain tore through, I saw that old man stop and help you with your bike. I saw him drive you to town, buy you a cup of coffee and share a few words. He was a good man, a father.” He pauses, seems unsure of the words he is going to use. “I’d like to think he felt my pain at seeing you be in such a state. He helped you because I wanted it so bad. And despite this place, this very sad place, I was able to make it happen.” He takes another drag on the cigarette, then ashes it in a coffee mug. He sits back, thinking over all that was just said.
“Your bike may be at the bottom of a hole, this trip is just beginning.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“California was never your real destination. We both know you were hoping you’d get lost somewhere in between. That you’d find something you didn’t even know you were looking for in the first place.” My fingers alight on a heavy curtain, on what feels like velvet.
“Well?” My father asks.
“What?”
“Did you find anything?”
I grab the fabric between my fingers, and give it a pull. “I think I found myself.” I say, as the floor to ceiling window comes into view. The entire sky is a pale green or faded blue, cloudless above a snowy ground far below. Snow crystals scratch at the glass, and all around us are sharp metal structures, like burnt out buildings, their metal frames twisted, interiors dark. They reach just as high as we do, some to even greater heights.
“What is this? Where are we?”
“Far from New York, bud. Far from New Mexico, too. Far from everything,” In the crisp light he looks even more skeletal, the shadows in the nooks and crevices of his face even sharper. His feet, on the other hand, look ready to burst, they’re so swollen.
“I guess I’ll come clean, Will. This isn’t home. Sure, it may look a little like our house back in New York, but it’s just a facade, a fake Hollywood set. The rules and laws of the universe don’t really work here as they do where we’re from. Kinda contradictory, like in a bad dream. Whatever you want, the opposite happens. The more you want it, the more likely you’ll be frustrated. Take my swollen feet for example. Oh boy, there’s nothing I wouldn’t like more than a foot rub, cool those puppies down. But as long as I want it, and focus on it, and desire it, well... it just a’int happening.”
“I could massage them for you,”
“As much as I’d like that, bud, I don’t have any moisturizer.” I go down onto my haunches, about to massage his feet anyways, but feel something bulky in my back pocket. In the faint, orange light, I can still make out the label on the bottle as I pull it out: hydrating moisturizer. I look to my father and show him the bottle.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” He says.
I lean down again, and squirt a generous amount of the liquid into my hands. I start out slowly, working it in to all the cracked, red crevices, before starting a stronger massage of the swollen feet. The skin drinks it up
deeply. “That’s real nice, bud.” He says, lifting up his blue U.S. Coast Guard hat up and scratching his patchy head.
“Do you realize what you’re capable of, Will? By dreaming, you’ve opened up a limitless world of potential. Sweet little cocktails of everything you’ve ever known: the smell of summer rain on fresh mown grass, rock candy popping on your tongue, the way your mother ate her pizza with a fork and knife,” His mouth arches up as he smiles, touching his pointed cheek bones. “All your memories, ideas, and experiences are seeds, and your mind the loose, rich soil they’re planted in. When you dream, you allow them to grow. You dreaming made it easier for me to guide you along that bridge you took to get here.”
There’s a noise from down the long hallway, beyond the door I came through. It’s a sound like chains being pulled across broken glass, low at first, then right outside the door. A pattering of soft feet flutter into the room, with no person visible who could have made the noise.
“There is something in the room with us,” I say. The curtain over the window closes suddenly. Again, there is no person around who could have done it.
“Look, don’t worry about all that. I got something to show you.”
“Something’s not right about this place,” I start towards him, but now there’s a different look to my father’s face. What I see is desperation, some sort of insatiable want.
“I think there’s some one else in the room with us,”
“Could be. But don’t worry. They won’t come near us. Not yet. Now shut that curtain, and look up there.” He nods towards a television mounted in the corner of the room which I had not seen before. The screen is layered in brown dust, but the image is clear enough in the darkened room. It shows a long plastic table, of the kind used at office picnics, in a dark room with an earthen floor. There are three people seated at the table, Crick, myself and a figure robed in shadow. The image zooms in on Crick, who is tied to a chair, his eyes closed and blood dried on his chin. Then it pans to me.
“What is this?” On screen, I’m also tied to a chair with rough hemp ropes. There’s a gash on my cheek and mud around my mouth.
Dad coughs. “This is what’s going on in that world you just left. That guy with the shovel has got you under his house. You’re in quite a pickle.”
A faded gray line fizzles up the screen. The image sputters, then angles back on Crick again. I watch as a squat figure with sandy skin and a head of white flowers saunters up to Crick and pinches his cheek between thumb and forefinger. Satisfied, he walks off, back to the other end of the table.
“That’s the man I met today when I was biking. His name is Crick. He said he was looking for his son, but was wandering around in the grass when I found him. No car, no anything, just the shirt on his back. And then that other guy, the man with the shovel_”
“Narcissus,” Dad says.
“Narcissus? That’s his name? Like, in Greek mythology?”
“As far as I can tell, yes, the very one.” Dad shifts around, tries to lift himself up in his chair. “Can you help me over here, Will?” I help prop him up. The cigarette’s long ash flops off and falls in between his blanket and the armrest of the chair. “No matter. The space under this cushion must be full of ash by now. I don’t smoke ‘em much anyways. Holding ‘em is just a habit, really. Let ‘em burn right down to the filter. Scratch my back, will you?”
My fingers run over each rib like they’re folds in a carpet. “Dad, I have to wake up before my face winds up on a milk carton.”
“Relax, relax. No use getting worked up, bud. If he’s gonna kill you, he’s gonna kill you. Just enjoy being back home for a little while.”
“Dad...”
“Kidding, kidding. Geez, still can’t take a joke, I see. Alright, bud, look. This is what you’re going to do. And you better listen, because you don’t have much time. This Narcissus guy, he wants to eat you. That’s what he does. He eat stories. Maybe you noticed the jars of meats lining the walls of his basement. He likes to pickle things and save them for later.”
“I was knocked out. I didn’t see a thing.”
The image on the screen begins to crackle with static, then suddenly goes black.
“Damn thing,” My dad says. “You mind hitting it?”
I go up to the screen, give it a whack on its side. There’s a flicker, and then the image comes back to life. We’re on a wide shot of the table, with me and Crick in the middle, our faces towards the screen. The Digger is to our left, carving a hunk of meat with a sharp, triangular knife. Across from him, on the other side of the table and bathed in shadows, is a withered corpse. The hands sit neatly on the table, like delicate ashen filigrees.
“He didn’t eat her,”
“No. That’s his wife, or so he likes to think. Make no mistake, though, he will kill you, Will. That’s what happens to every person, every story, that wanders into Narcissus’s world. They don’t leave. He kills ‘em and eats ‘em. He’s so self-absorbed that he doesn’t want anything else to compete for his attention. Talk about being narcissistic. Did you see that mirror he’s got?”
“No, Dad. Again, I almost got choked to death by a shovel. I missed the grand tour.”
“Watch it, smart ass. I may look like Pappy Grim Sheets over here, but I can still kick your ass.” Dad flashes me a mercurial smile. Reflections from the wood stove dance up the wall, billowing on the white paint like a brahmin’s long robe over snow. My old man has been gone for half a year already. I buried him in a hole with a pile of frozen dirt next to it, covered with a blue tarpaulin. It was the start of a winter much like this one, and there were only a handful of people to watch his casket go into the ground. It was a polished wood, as brown and tight as his skin in his final months of life. “Listen, and listen good: you’re going to wake up on the other side of that screen. And when you do, don’t lose your cool.”
“Don’t lose my cool? That guy is going to eat my skin!”
“He prefers the meat underneath, actually.”
“Very funny. I’m about to be cannibalized, and you’re cracking jokes. I have to get out of here.” I start pacing. “How the fuck am I going to get out of here?”
“First, do as I say and keep your cool. Second, that man you met today, ol’ glass jaw red beard, Mr. Crick, there’s a lot more to him than you think. He’s the key to getting you out of this mess. He just needs a little coaxing. You might even call it ‘reminding.’ His memory is a little raw.” Dad puts the cigarette out in the clay ashtray I made for him when I was in middle school. He pulls another Parliament from the pack and sticks it between his thin lips. “You have to tell him a story.”
“What?”
A match flares on the strike strip. He puffs, the cigarette smoke forming question marks around his head. “You heard me. You have to tell him a story. A pretty important one, at that. Biblical proportions. Bigger even. So big, it’s only just begun. Oh, that’s good, make sure you start with that. Once you say these few words, just sit back, and watch the show. What’s wrong? You look boondoggled.”
“Telling Crick a story is going to keep me from getting killed?”
“That’s about the gist of it.”
“Okay,” I look back up at the TV, and see a drop of drool loose from Narcissus’s lip onto the hunk of meat. “What’s the story?”
“Tell him that the story is about Helios and Hyperion. Can you remember those names? It may seem easy to remember here, but things don’t translate well between worlds. You might forget once you wake up. But hey, you’re a smart kid, and you can do it. So, tell this Crick guy, tell him that Helios and Hyperion...”
The static from the television is increasing in volume, and Dad’s voice is swallowed up by it. The television screen has grown to the size of the entire wall in a matter of seconds. Black roots have emerged from the glass, cementing themselves in the sheetrock behind. Beneath the static, I can make out a close-up shot of my face at the plastic table. Narcissus stands behind my dreaming self, his hand
poised above his head. The slap sends an arc of spit careening from my mouth through the air. My cheek burns as I watch.
“Wake ups!” Narcissus says from the television, his voice riding the static.
“Dad!”
“That’s your bridge out of here. Quicker than the way you came in, and you won’t have any of those whispers you’ve drawn here to bother you. Might make for a rougher trip though...” His words reverberate above the static before being totally washed up in it. I reach out to him, but the floor slips out, as if it’s been pulled out from under me. I go head over heels, through a floor which has completely dissipated. Below me is a sea of static, stretching from horizon to horizon.
“Dad!” I scream, but he’s gone, the entire room is gone. There’s just the sea of static below, and all else is dark. I cover my face, and realize just before hitting it that it’s one huge television screen, the same as had been on the wall in my father’s room. Surprisingly, there’s no pain as I break through, only the sound of the static rising to an unbearable crescendo. I’m floating in a sea of it, settling to a soft sizzle as I float upwards, into a pink world that slowly takes the form of my body.
“Death has a way of smoothing out life’s wrinkles,” my father’s voice echoes around my head, as I struggle to open my eyes. “Wakes you up to a few things too.” His voice flutters away. Then, a white flash, a dull thwack on my temple. I see a plastic table with a coarse surface as my head recoils from the blow.
“Wake ups! Id is rude sleeping ad da dinner pardy,” The Digger’s voice echoes through the entire dark space. The table blurs, then steadies. I can’t focus. Each moment crumbles away, sifting through my fingers. There’s a dried lake of coagulated yellow liquid on the table, with pink and red islands of flesh and meat cresting its surface. I bring my head up, but my neck’s not having it. It feels as if it’s been clamped in a bear trap. I go to massage it, but my hands won’t move from behind my back. They’re bound, knotted together in thick, coarse rope behind a flimsy fold-up chair.
“This... this can’t be happening,” Translucent purple blots float across my vision, then burst. There’s a tarnished candelabra aways to the left, close to the empty chair which Narcissus plops himself in. The fierce orange light reaches into every pockmark on his face and gives his washed out skin the hue of a pumpkin.
“Oh, yes, my friends. Dis is cerdainly happenings. Da best dinner in down, dat’s for sure!” He starts laughing. The knife in his hand looks like a trowel with a serrated edge. The chunk of pink meat jiggles as he cuts into it.
“Liddle Derra, Liddle Derra, clicky clacky sad, Liddle Derra, Liddle Derra, everybudy mad... Dad’s your favorid song, yes, dahling?” The Digger looks up from his carving, straight across the table. “Dahling, yous are awfully quied dis evenings. Did you say hello do our friends?” I turn my head slowly in the direction Narcissus’s knife points. Crick sits next to me, his chin still tucked into his chest, blood dried in his beard. Past him, at the other end of the table, sits a dusty corpse, draped in heavy shadow. It’s a woman, I can tell by the delicate features, even though she’s as shriveled as a raisin and just as dead.
“Dahling?” Narcissus watches the unmoving dead woman at the other end of the table. A soft breeze streams in from behind her, the white hairs on her head waving at the deranged man like albino spider legs.
Narcissus slams the table and rises to his feet. “I will nod have you beings so rude do our friends!” He throws his plate at her. The steaming hunk of flesh unplops itself midway through the air, sailing to one side of the mummified woman, the plate to the other. It lands without a sound in the darkness beyond.
The Digger is seething. He brings his fists to his temples and stamps his feet. The flowers on his head pop open, the air immediately awash with the smell of a crusted dumpster. He picks up the carving knife from the table, and starts slowly for the other side of the table.
“Oh, you makes me so mad somedimes, dahling.” The breeze blows from behind the woman, displacing more white hair, ruffling her blouse. The Digger stops. He’s staring into the blackness past the woman. There’s a yawn, far-off, but deep. The Digger leans his ear towards it. The yawn is speaking, though it sounds like it is being transmitted via an antiquated phone from the bottom of a fish tank. I can’t make out what it’s saying, but it has a tone of hesitance, of timidity.
Something goes off in the Digger, some sort of angry latch is unhinged. He starts to slice at the air around his head, outlining nonsensical letters and shapes. He punctuates it all with a throat tearing scream.
“Beez quied, you! I love her, nods you!” He shuffles over to the woman, drops to his knees at her side. He plunges his face into her dusty blouse, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Oh, dahling, do nod lisden to da likes of her. You came from me, my love. You came to me in da mirror. I know, I pud you dere. And den I durned around, and dere you weres, in my home. Oh, dahling, please do nod lisden.”
The breeze catapults in, with a final, forceful push. There’s a deep sobbing from deep in the darkness that is quickly choked off. Then all is quiet.
“You knows, when fadder buried me, he says, ‘Boy, I ams going to pland you, dis way you can look ad yours reflection all days and never worries aboud drinkings or eatings.’” The Digger says. He has wrapped his arms around the dried out woman, who looks ready to crumble under all the pressure. There’s a sheen on his loose skin, despite the cold. It contrasts with the muddy denim of his overalls, though in the back pocket, something catches the candle light, and gleams with the same muted orange as the Digger’s skin. It’s pointed, and looks sharp.
“But I says, ‘Fadder, I likes my reflection above da ground, in da wader.’ Bud, dat bad, bad man, he never listens to me. No, dahling, nod never. He says, “Boy, you musd kills all da sdories, cud dare droats and keep them sleepsy, sleepsy,’ and I say, ‘No, fadder,’ and he say, ‘yes, boy,’ and den drew me from da highest of towers, and when I fell I wend deep indo da ground, and came up a flower dat nobody likes,” He wipes his eyes on his forearm. When he looks up again, he has a line of dirt across his small eyes.
“He says dis jobs is da mosd impordand of all, keeping da sdories sleepsy. He never thoughd aboud a whole nudder world buried benead da ground. He never thoughd my true love would find me.” The Digger walks proudly away from the dead woman and stands behind Crick, proselytizing to the darkness with the gusto of a televangelist. “And now I am kings. Everyding in dis world is me, me, me.”
His brings his voice down to a whisper. “Bud somedimes, da stories, dey wakes up. Dey come to me in dreamzy time. I says, ‘No, dis is my world, yous sday sleepsy,’ bud dey never listen. So, whad do I do? Whad musd I do?! I go oud in da desserts, and I finds dem, and I kills dem. Jusd as fadder asked me. In dere sleeps.”
The Digger stands just behind me, speaking to the darkness. The pointed stick in his back pocket catches the candle light. It’s sharp, and not all that far. It could cut through the ropes. If my hands weren’t bound, I could reach it without even bending my arm. I could reach it with my teeth, but my neck is so stiff, I don’t think I could do it without Narcissus realizing. The Digger, he’s tense, fingers curling madly at the air. Despite his state of mind, he’ll see me lunge for it, without a doubt. I have to get out of here, though. I have to take the chance.
And then, like a tape recorder, a voice clicks on in my head.
“That Narcissus fellow, well, he’s going to kill you and your friend.” It’s my father’s voice, resounding in my head in a tone as clear as the New Mexican summer azure. “Probably eat you, too.”
I leave all the second-guessing at the door, and reach my head back. My neck burns as I turn it, feels too swollen in my neck to move any more, but the bone is so close. I’m right underneath him, no doubt coloring the fringes of his vision. He should see me. Or if he does, he doesn’t show it, not moving a muscle save for his small fingers typing at the empty air. I close my teeth on the bone and draw it out of his pocket, s
lowly, carefully, not so much as disrupting a crusted wrinkle on the pale man’s overalls.
“And when dere’s juicy juices splosh out on my toeses, I geds so happy. Because dey are bad old stories, from da beginning, and... hello? Friend, just what do you dink you are doing?” He turns, just as I am about to drop the bone behind my back and and into my upturned hands. His small black eyes pop open, the sclera as jagged as Mars lightning. The bone is barely out of my mouth before he’s on top of me, his claws around my neck. the chair toppling over, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact.
“What do you dink you are doing?” I stare up into his ruddy face. His hands are around my throat. “I said, what do you dink...”
“I heard what you said, you inbred son of_” The chair slides a few inches from the force of the punch, the fresh scab on my face leaking open. Purple blots explode around my vision again. I’m pulling hard at the rope, hoping to find a loose knot in the dozen or so loops around my body as he pummels my face with his cold knuckles. My fingers alight on a pointed object with a sandy finish.
“Dis is my world. My fadder pud me here, under da ground.” He’s swaying over me, a topsy turvy turnip man, with clenched fists and a cantaloupe head, thin green stalks springing from it and standing at attention. “My fadder pud me here, he told me dad dis would be bedder for me, dad he would nod see his sweed liddle boy wasde away by da wader.”
“My father told me... my father...” I can’t quite get the words out. They seem to be drowning in my throat, unsure of which way is up. With each of the Digger’s hits, a new image flashes before me. I see my father in his easy chair, a cigarette between index and middle fingers. There’s a television mounted in the corner, caked in dust, static roaring on it’s glass screen. I see his reflection in the screen, and my father’s lips, they’re moving, they’re mouthing something...
“...Helios...” His voice echoes off the television’s glass screen.
“Helios... this is his story...” The Digger stops his assault, and takes a few steps back from me. My face is already beginning to swell, and the room is spinning. The bone is still in my hand. I can feel its serrated edge, and start to cut through the ropes.
“Whad did yous say?”
“I said... that this is a story about Helios and...” I literally spit the words out. I look over at Crick to see if any of this is registering, but his chin stays tucked in his chest, a strand of saliva hanging from his lips. His body softly glows in the dark.
“Shud up, you dummy man! Do nods ever say dad sdory here!” The Digger screams, stomping the ground. He picks up his shovel from the side of the table and starts back towards me. “I am da only story!”
“Crick! Crick, wake up! Helios, it’s the story of Helios...” The Digger stumbles a bit, and grasps on the back of one of the plastic chairs. His lower lip begins to tremble, a bulbous thing, a grub worm.
“Shud up! Dey wills hear you!”
“This is the story of Helios, and...” There’s something I’m not remembering, words just waiting to be exhumed. There is a brightness that is welling up within me, green and gold fireworks, whirligigs in forest-filtered sunshine. The light is a turbine, a spinning gyre, helping to plumb the depths of my memory and clearing the haze from my mind. I remember the dream, my father, sitting in his blue easy chair, cigarette holes burnt into the fabric, his eyes black and mercurial, the fire licking the glass door of the wood stove with a snaking orange tongue.
“That guy, Crick, he’s the key to getting you out of this mess.” My dad had said. “He just needs a little reminding.”
The green and gold spinning intensifies, trying to find that last bit of the story. “Crick! Wake up already! Come on, this story is for you!” Crick shakes, as if in the throes of a bad dream. His eyes snap open. When he snaps his head around towards me, his gaze is resoundingly clear.
“Crick, I’m telling you a story, a big story, of biblical proportions.” That’s part of it, I can tell by my father’s big smile flashing in my head. Crick, though tightly tied to the chair, appears to be on the edge of his seat.
“This is the story of Helios...” The ground shakes, and the Digger trips forwards onto his knees. He scans the dark eaves above, his eyes moving like a pair of hummingbirds, a perplexed groan rising from his throat. A soft drizzle of dirt and small pebbles rains down upon us. Crick screams, with a force that’s throat-tearing, and his skin begins to glow like a fluorescent light.
“It’s the story of...” The shaking earth jostles the images of my father and the spinning lights around so that they slip, become hard to concentrate on. My father grips the sides of his chair, pushes himself as forward as he can. His voice is drowned out by my throbbing temples, his face washed out by Crick’s luminescent body. He reaches out a bony hand. He blows the smoke of a Parliament upon his fingers, and as it clears, I see a spinning light, two glowing balls, one green, one gold. He smiles, and mouths the word, four syllables long.
“It’s the story of... Helios, and... Hyperion,” I repeat after him. Crick explodes in luminescence. The Digger’s darling, her dried up body, becomes awash in light, sloughing off the wrinkles and growing smoother, as if life were reentering her. Crick’s skin bulges against the ropes lashed around him, all muscle and straining veins.
“Whad is dis? Whad is goings on?”
The Digger is tired, confused. He’s searching the whitening expanses of the cave, questioning the light that pushes back the dark. It’s dawn in the underground dining room, Crick the rising sun. High up, the eaves begin to take form as the light touches them, revealing series of delicate carvings and design. The basement is not infinite after all, but a long-neglected dining hall, medieval and expansive, but with definite dimension. At one end is a narrow hallway, whose walls curve away like the bowels of some giant beast.
“Whadever yous are, whadever sdory, yous will cerdainly be delicious for my belly.” Then he turns to me. “And yous, dighty-pands, you will beez a wonderful appedizers.”
My wrists strain at the hemp, frayed to it’s final strands by the bone, which stubbornly hold despite my struggle. “I cerdainly does enjoys da screaming.” His nervous look betrays his words. He stops when he’s standing above me, his fingers kneading the shovel handle. “Nod very ofdens dad da sdories comes awake, you knows,” I fumble with the knife, try and get the sharp edge under the remaining strands of the rope. My hands are numb, clammy. The sharpened edge of the bone keeps slipping, too dull to go through the last bit of twine.
“Always scares me do dink dey will wakes up.” I can smell his boots, the earth from the highlands, the rot and decay baked into his soles. He lifts the shovel. It eclipses Crick, casts a shadow over my face. With the light gone, so is any hope I had left. I close my eyes. And here, I had thought we’d get out of here alive. A dark outline of my father is sketched on the back of my eyelids, and I feel ashamed at giving up, at dying like this. I start to slip away, to let the darkness take me to a soft place.
“Will!” It’s my father. He’s straining from his chair, screaming, struggling to be heard above the madness of the dark world.
“...Hyperion...” I hear him scream it, but it’s far off, like an echo bouncing off the walls of a subterranean cave. “Say it again, goddam it!”
“Hyperion.” I whisper.
I open my eyes when the Digger’s blow doesn’t come. He has retreated, shielding his eyes from Crick, who glows brighter than ever.
“Whad sdory are yous?” The Digger asks. His voice is barely a whisper, but it can still be heard, perhaps because it asks a similar question to the one I’m asking myself. These quickly dissipate, pushed out by the power of Crick’s roar. It has layered itself in echo upon echo, bouncing back with a multitude of intonations and pitches, until it sings like a cathedral choir. It’s a sound that seems to come from beyond him, from the place where that green and gold spiral call home. The light quickly intensifies, until the entire cavern is whited out. The table, the meats, the Digger, a
ll are enveloped by it. It sinks in through my eyelids, washes away the panic that had been seizing my mind. My senses melt into the white. The final thing I hear is my father’s voice, floating through the void like a piece of driftwood.
“You kept your cool, kid. I’m proud of you,” He smiles, then goes on his way. I go mine, off into the white.
Chapter IV: “The Fade”