"Quiet, old man. Oracle, are you me? Are you my inner thoughts?"
"This is the Garden of Truth," she said. "There are no lies here, and everything that you can see or hear is truth."
"Supposing, of course, that truth exists."
"Of course."
"But then why can't my prisoner hear you? Is it as he says—are we in different gardens?"
"No one can know everything. We are all in the same garden, but different parts of this garden are seen by different people; there is no one who can see the whole garden."
"Then why are we here? What is the point?"
"I was able to feel that your girl is in the Land of Lies, but nothing can be certain of that place. I had to come to this garden and breathe this air. This was my only way of knowing what happened to your Starla."
"You must be an apparition. There is not a chance that the real oracle would venture through the Land of Lies with no escort, especially considering that I, an immortal, could have offered it."
"I told you," she insisted. "There is only one thing that I need from you. Nothing else."
"And you shall have it if you can bring me to her. Tell me where."
"It's so tragic… she's not far from here. You may have even passed her on your way."
"You say with a certainty that she is in the Land of Lies?"
"I did tell you—did I not?—that she is in a horrible place. But I could not have known it for sure until now. I am so sorry."
I finally found the courage to ask the obvious question. "She no longer lives?"
"It is as you say."
"But what if I never left the Land of Lies? Maybe I'm still in it. Maybe you are a lie."
"If this is not the Garden of Truth, then where is it?" the crazy old man asked. "How far must we go until you'll believe we've made it?"
"This is all a lie," I insisted.
"Then say a lie," suggested the oracle.
"What?"
"There are no lies in the Garden of Truth."
And so I tried to say a lie. I tried to say that my vest was purple, but I could not say it.
"But, oracle, I said that this was all a lie."
"And you were not lying."
"What is happening? What is she saying?" the crazy old man asked.
"Quiet, old man" I said. I looked back at the oracle and asked, "Oracle, tell me: is God real?"
"This is the Garden of Truth, not the Garden of Knowledge. Some truths are unknown."
"Then tell me: what is the purpose of my life?"
She had no eyes, but she looked straight at me. "Kill yourself now."
"I cannot kill myself, oracle," I ridiculed.
"And that is why it is the purpose of your life."
"And Starla—did she leave this world in peace?" I asked.
The oracle's reluctance to answer was enough for me. I turned to the crazy old man.
"You will now tell me the truth, old man. Are you here for revenge? Are you here because I have harmed someone that you love?"
The crazy old man wept. "Yes, I… I've taken this too far. It is true that the devil took my little one, but I gave him your Starla, as well, because of what you did to my love. I lured you here, to the garden, so you would know the truth… so you would know my pain."
"Kneel down and prepare yourself for the end. It will be swift and painless for you, just as it was for the one I took from you."
"I beg you, my lord, to remember the promise you made to me. When you leave this place, do not bring harm to my little one if you find her." He lowered his head in anticipation of his demise. "I'm so sorry, Gertrude."
Chapter 12
The indestructible door before me I named Padempire. He was always watching and always listening. Any misdeed done in that pitch black could be clearly seen, and any silent thought could be easily heard.
I spent days (or perhaps months or years—I had no concept of time) sliding my fingers over the grooves that separated Padempire from the rest of the vault. It was an orgasmic high to feel it because it was the only thing that there was to feel. Even the bloodlust was still long gone… I'd have given anything to feel the torturous longing of blood once again. Padempire, my new friend, my old friend, was all I had now. There was truly nothing else for me.
I would kneel down at his feet and spread my arms like eagle wings, feeling my way up from the threshold, standing when my arms got high enough, and meeting my two hands at the top. I tried to get as close to the middle of the top of the door as I could. And when I'd get there it was time to go back down again, retracing my path so I could do it all over.
I didn't really care about anything else anymore. I just kept running my fingers along the grooves. It was the kind of thing that you might catch yourself doing and then, upon realization of it, you would stop because—even though you were finding it somehow pleasurable—you knew that you were wasting your time. But I didn't ever stop. I don't remember ever stopping. I had no reason to think that it was a waste of time. I just kept mating my fingers with the crack, and all was right with the world.
Chapter 13
The blind oracle just vacantly gazed at me, waiting for me to ask my next question. She already knew what I was going to ask.
"Where is Starla?"
"She is dead."
"Where is she?"
"You cannot turn her; she is too far gone."
"Do not try my patience, oracle."
"She is still in the Land of Lies. I can take you to her."
"Why would you do that? If she is dead, as you say, then I will not give you your reward."
"I am doing all that I can, and I am trusting that your judgment will be clear after some time."
"And so," I concluded, "you're saying that I'm still trying to save her because my judgment is not clear?"
"Yes."
"I will go alone. How do I get out of here?"
"The truth is at the center of any lie."
I nodded my head in acceptance and began to peel a strip of cloth off from my vest so I could make another blindfold out of it.
"That is not necessary," she said. "You will not lose your way in the Land of Lies because you can leave at any time you wish."
"How is that possible?"
"You must accept Starla's fate."
"Why?"
"You must go through the Land of Lies to get back to your world, but you cannot ever leave the Land of Lies if you believe in a lie."
"How do I know I'm not still in the Land of Lies right now? How do I know you're really the oracle?"
"You have already proven it to yourself. You cannot tell a lie here."
"And what if that is the lie? How do I know this place isn't the biggest lie of all? There's truth in any lie—you told me that."
She couldn't tell me a reason why I could trust her. She knew it and I knew it. Truth cannot ever be expressed with words.
Chapter 14
Since the truth is at the center of any lie, it would follow that I needed only to walk a straight line until I was back in the Land of Lies. But the garden seemed to stretch on forever and without repetition of landscape. After having wandered for hours I retraced my steps and found the remains of the crazy old man. The oracle was long gone. I started off in a straight line in another direction and again there was nothing but infinite greenery and scenery before me. The echoes grew louder in my head as I began to focus more and more on the fact that I was alone, and the fear started to set in. Would I be stuck here forever?
And then it happened that I saw Starla in the distant fog. I ran and shouted for her, but, as I got closer and as she began to turn and face me, I saw that it wasn't Starla.
The little girl just looked at me for a while, and then she spoke: "Help me. I'm lost. I don't know where my father is."
It was the crazy old man's little girl. I suddenly felt so horrible. I'd killed her father and I wasn't even concerned with her safety at
all. I only wanted to find Starla, and this little one here could have perished and it would've meant nothing to me.
She was so young and innocent… there was no possible way that this little girl could have crossed over any of the bridges leading to the garden. I suddenly realized that I must have, at some point, wandered out of the garden and back into the Land of Lies. It looked like the Garden of Truth, but I must have left at some point and was now seeing nothing but lies. And then that meant that it was possible that this little girl before me was no girl at all, but rather some horrific monster indigenous to this place.
"What is your name, little girl?" I asked.
"Gertrude."
"Gertrude, I've come to take you home, okay? Your father sent me. He loves you very much, but he had to leave. He told me to come and take you home."
"Okay."
A lie. I was able to tell a lie.
I took her by her little hand and my thumb filled the entire valley of her palm. We wandered through the garden and at last we came to a well, but there was no water that did fill this well. In this well was black tar, the same black tar that had taken me into this terrible place.
I did not know what game this place was playing. I knew only that this endlessly swirling slop of black and darkness would definitely not take us home. But what else could I do? I had to play the game. I had to go inside.
Chapter 15
This place was doing its best to convince me that I had returned to the other side. We were on the road that the crazy old man and I had taken to get to the Land of Lies—or, rather, I should say that we were in the Land of Lies and on a road that felt just like it. I turned to Gertrude, expecting her to molt her false skin and reveal her true self. But she just looked at me, dried tears halfway down her cheeks and ash all over her little body, wondering what I was thinking. So I kept on with her and we reached the end of the road.
But I could only think of Starla. And I was doing something wrong. This did not seem like the right way to go.
"Go home, Gertrude. Back to your village. I know that you can find the rest of the way."
After dismissing Gertrude with yet another lie, I went back to the tar pit. I ran as quickly as I could, but the tar had already disintegrated into ash. I clawed through the ashes in vain; I was being mocked. I lifted myself up with my ash-stained hands and turned around to go catch back up with Gertrude, but right when I turned around I saw her lying on the ground before me.
I rushed to her side and tried to check for her human vitality, but she was already pale and cold to the touch. Even in death I could tell from her face that it was the blind worms that had gotten to her. They fed on innocence and fear, and little children have those things in far more abundance than terrible old men.
This was the game. This was how this place would try to break me. Gertrude was only preserved this long so that this could happen. I told a lie to a little girl in the Land of Lies, and because of my lie she died. I was a monster, no different from any other abomination in this place.
I looked at her little fingers that barely had any wrinkles of daily wear on them and I saw in a flash all of her life that she would never be able to live. And I wanted to die. I wanted to trade places with her, I wanted to be buried in the deepest tomb, I wanted to disappear. The crazy old man had taken my Starla, and now I had taken his little one, and everything was so fucked up now, and I held Gertrude close to my heart and spilled my tears on her scalp, telling her how sorry I was, and this place had finally broken me.
I was broken to pieces, but I was not driven to madness. I was just driven to sadness. I could never love again. And I knew that this was what was necessary for me to finally accept and believe Starla's fate. And so I closed my eyes, but there was no darkness because the sun had returned and its light was coming through my eyes and I was out of the Land of Lies.
But the story ends in darkness, just as it began.
Chapter 16
Padempire started to inflate like the foil top on a popcorn pan, a big, huge bubble of bobbling metal that was finding some kind of buoyancy like an inflating balloon, bouncing and boinging until finally bursting. And I could see outside, and it was full of stars, and I was the only life left in the universe.
Perhaps, in a few billion years from now, the sun will not expand so far out into space that it will swallow the earth. Perhaps the earth will instead just keep going around the dead sun, forever and ever. Or maybe the stray rocks and pebbles intersecting the earth's orbit will, after an eternity, bog down the planet enough so that it will apathetically fall into the sun and melt in the charred remnants of what was once a star.
But before that happens the end will come. I will be trapped in this vault until the half-life of the proton has been doubled, and then the deconstruction of matter will dominate the universe. My invincible hands will whither before my blind eyes as all form and shape in the universe is bled dry. Madam Entropy will at last finish her masterpiece, and all evidence that life, beauty, and happiness ever existed will be irrevocably erased.
The last man on Earth will watch his last bleak sunrise, and he won't even care as his cold, lifeless body is claimed by the dirt. The worms will rot, the oceans will be dry as chalk, the volcanoes will belch out ice, and the sky will crumble into dust as the final curtain closes on the universe. And I will be backstage, staring, forever and ever, into the void.
Chapter 17
The phisher of men dangled on the T, arms stretched wide, eyes turned out, blood leaking down his ribs.
"To be honest, I don't know if he's telling the truth or making it up," Father Brahm said. "I don't know why he would make it up, but I just don't feel certain about this." He paused. "Reserve your judgment."
I looked down at the crude paper that held Mr. John Tilger's information. "As always," I said, "I will lie in wait and catch him in the act."
Father Brahm and I had an arrangement: he was to listen to confessions and give up to me the name of anyone confessing to the rape of a child, and it was my duty to substantiate the claims and then take the monster from his home. Father Brahm also ran the orphanage that adopted the children in the event that there was no one left to care for them after I had done my part.
My abominable nature was acceptable to Father Brahm, as was my refusal to acknowledge his rank in the vile hierarchy of perverse old men, because we both believed in what we were doing. He must have thought that I was an angel or else some other kind of supernatural being, being totally above him and anyone else in the priesthood.
And so, having received my target, I took my coat and departed. As I rode on horseback, the rain began to descend and the ink on my document ran. My pocket became an abyss of black slime, and anything written down was useless; it didn't matter, though, because I'd long since memorized it all.
Mr. Tilger was not very wealthy, although he did have his own residence. Any further remarks regarding this man's description will be withheld. Also, his name was not Mr. Tilger but rather something else that will not be revealed. I refuse to honor his legacy by immortalizing his name in print, in the hope that time has forgotten him.
I dismounted my horse around a corner and hitched the reins, opting to finish my journey on foot. From a distance I noticed some small clothing, soaking wet from the rain, that had been left on the clothesline in Mr. Tilger's small yard.
I silently marched up to the rickety property. I could see by the gate a small footprint in the mud, and my mind was flooded with images of Starla and how I had failed her. I pushed the memories aside as I pushed open the gate, and, remaining ever so silent, I tiptoed to the front door and pressed my ear against it.
I could hear shouting and crying, but audible words were a luxury that I was not afforded. I crouch-walked to a window and spied inside, and I could see Mr. Tilger violently yelling at his two daughters. The older of the two could not have been more than seven or eight years aged, and, judging from her
bruised face, I surmised that she tried to shield the younger one by taking the brunt of the punishment.
As my eyes oscillated between the father and the daughters, I noticed a faint bloodstain on the crotch of the older daughter's dress; despite being the older sister, I can assure you that she was definitely not old enough for that to have occurred naturally. I was already invisible due to the darkness, and, upon receiving this sight, my eyes only grew darker with hatred.
I thought about the best form of entry for this particular situation. I definitely needed to intervene now, and my two choices were to either knock on the door or kick it in. I did not want to traumatize the children beyond the unfair measures to which they'd already been subjected, so I took the diplomatic approach.
There was no answer, so I knocked again. Then the tattered man in his tattered clothes finally opened the door. And I knew the best lure for a man in Mr. Tilger's financial situation.
"I am a marshal and I have an emergency," I said. "A prisoner in transport has escaped and I am trying to hire hands to retrieve him. It is a good pay for a short amount of work."
I ironically flashed the weathered dossier that Father Brahm had given me with the obvious suggestion that it was an official document. I could see, in Mr. Tilger's pitiful eyes, that he was greatly considering the job and that he didn't want to refuse. Those eyes looked beyond me, to the left and to the right, and then back at me.
"You have no carriage," he said. "How will you transport the fugitive once he is captured?"
"I am parked down the street, and I've been going down to each house in search of good men. I have very little time. I need to know if you will join the posse or if I must ask another."
"I'll join," he grunted. "But what about my daughters?"
It sickened me to hear him speak as though he was concerned for their well-being. "He's wounded and I have a good idea of where he is. We won't be gone but for a few hours," I said sharply. "Get your coat, for we must be on our way."
During the moment that he was gone, the children, in their curiosity, filled the doorway and looked up at me. They were confused, but the older one seemed to partially understand what was happening (at least, on the surface) and she appeared to be glad that she would be relieved of her father's company—if only for a short while.