7.

The fasthold tops a sizable hill that overlooks a plain of brown and crepe-thin grasses. Two central doors give access to the stone fortress; each can each be opened by a single person, although they are the height of two men, and heavy. The doors give way to a courtyard surrounded by different types of quarters——freestanding barns and huts dot the edges of a huge parade ground and inside the edifice are many chambers and halls. Most of these were inhabited when I arrived. I learned this exploring politely yet, oddly, I had no hesitancy. Odd, because I clearly remember the emotions appropriate to situations for the living, rightfully cautious of the new, for fear of embarrassment, damage, or death. My current sentiments run differently in this place, where I am calmly comfortable with my right to pursue my good, yet I feel unshakably respectful of the others I encounter.

Of course I was disappointed that I had not been greeted by my mother. But part of my new emotional equanimity was that I knew her love for me, for Ricky and my father, and that there should be no blame placed on him for my mother’s passing. I didn’t dwell on these facts, but climbed some very roughhewn and steep stone steps to the third floor of the fortress. I knocked on a few doors and encountered the inhabitants within.

The first door was opened by a woman of mature youthfulness that I would come to recognize: peak of one’s abilities.

“Tristan,” said the woman, surprising me until I realized that I knew her name as well.

“Chrissie,” I greeted her in return. She was wearing garments I recognized as a chemise and kirtle, although I knew they weren’t of her original time—she was new here like me.

I would soon realize that nothing here is in contemporary production on the leading edge of the worldlines; there are no instances of “living” objects. Only the terrain (the ground and rocks) are features that are identical at home.

I also realized about Chrissie that, like us all, she had a sense of purpose here; all mind is restless and seeking, no matter the realm. She sought the relief of this place, where nothing is a necessity but much is available.

Leaving the woman to her peace, I soon found unoccupied rooms. They were hung with tapestries showing winged men in long tunics and conical horned crowns, leading lions while catching large birds. There were no spare clothes but I don’t need them because nothing gets dirty. I could have searched for different garments but I have never been an aficionado of fashion, especially for archaic pieces. I realized as I aquatinted myself with the rooms that there is no need for anything here, and where there is no need, there is no desire.

My room has a view of the plain toward the nearest woods, which consists of stands of petrified trunks and branches. That day, I stood for a long while and watched on the flat expanse the people doing what we like to do best, gazing up at sky that seems to be either darkening or lightening, and watching the worldlines of those we love.

Lately I am focused on a couple that I never knew in life, but who are already aiding Ricky and who may also give me entry to an adjacent realm. It’s right next mine and to yours: Dreamland.

Dalton’s Worldline—October 20, 2024

The alchemist stood up. Morning light was breaking over the side street that bound his corner lot. From this vantage, atop the highest point of land for miles, he had a clear view of the procession of Victorian mansions that queued up either side of the green boulevard, the longest remaining such avenue anywhere in the country. The view was relief from the yellowed papers written in a crabbed hand, directing him to fill this alembic with a pinch of sulfur or that retort with a drop of mercury. But despite his physical fatigue, he felt more enlivened now than when he’d climbed the stairs in the predawn hours.

He had come to his third-story sanctuary last night to escape sleep, a state haunted by a dark shape that slipped seamlessly from one dreamscape to another, an insidious and relentless backdrop. Even this morning, he felt that it could thrust itself into waking view at any moment.

His eye was drawn to movement at his sight’s periphery. It would be the dark-haired girl he had observed for years moving in rooms of the house next door, across a narrow street. He regularly had good view of her from his higher vantage, yet didn’t even know her first name. Potalovich was the family name. The father was an attorney and a state representative, who he rarely observed at home, or the mother either. The brother lurked in the Potalovich mansion, but late in the day and at night.

The brother, he reasoned, must be a half- or step-brother to the dark girl, since he was blond, with the kind of golden skin that usually accompanied green eyes. Dalton observed him too, big and blond; just the features that might draw the man’s eyes to him if the boy were not also cruel. And smug. And completely thoughtless. Not just about the girl, but toward every element of the environment he moved through. A thing would be broken here, and clothing flung there. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to think as she moved. Clever and kind.

Dalton knew she was kind because she would often help the uniformed housekeeper get something from a closet or move a piece of furniture. He knew she was clever from the evasive maneuvers she took to avoid her brother. She would tuck into a closet just before the blond brute entered the room. And the brother appeared to be looking for her. He would swing his head slowly from side to side, then kick something over before he stalked out.

Good for the girl that she had her own source of knowing, a true source. That was, after all was said and done, all that any of us had. Thinking this, he turned back to put away his papers and lie down for a couple of hours. His dreams did not trouble him so much during the daylight. He would sink into blackness, safe in the sun’s rays.

Ricky’s Worldline—October 29, 2024

This had come to pass: Ricky’s brother was dead and her father was a stranger.

She put the photo of herself and Alphonso back on the nightstand and reached for the phone. Please let Starr Ann be home, a prayer answered on the third ring.

Ricky’s speech was pressured. “I know you think I was losing my mind in Arkansas about the whole cave thing and seeing with my eyes closed. But tonight, at the group home? Something happened that was real. One of the residents freaked out and said something that seemed like a prophecy.”

“Prophecy? Of what?”

“He drew Alphonso’s tattoo. He couldn’t know it unless… “

“Unless what?” Starr Ann’s tone rose, indicating she had an idea what.

“Maybe it’s supernatural.”

“Or he knows Alphonso somehow. What did he prophesy?”

“He said I’d find him. Then he stabbed his hand.”

“Kind of a conversation stopper.”

“Yeah. They took him to the Psych Ward.”

“What do you think it means, Ricky?”

“I think something bad is going to happen.”

“Come over,” and when Ricky paused, Starr Ann provoked, “It’s Halloween! Remember my neighbor? Mr. Mabinogion?”

Ricky did. She remembered when Starr Ann first said the name, long ago, just a couple of years after they first met. Ricky had made her say the syllables slow: Mab˗in˗oh˗gee˗un.

It was another Halloween, when Ricky slept over after they had gone trick-or-treating in Starr Ann’s neighborhood. With a mouth full of candy Starr Ann said, “Let’s go spy on Mr. Mabinogian. Last year he had a party with a ghoul greeter who sat up in his coffin every time a guest showed up.”

The small figures in black—a cat woman and a ninja—skulked across the side street to peer up into windows from the front bushes. No one moved in the large rooms and they finally tired of looking. Ricky remembered feeling sad, as if the amusement park ride had broken down just as they were the next to get on.

Now, years later, Ricky couldn’t see how Mr. Mabinogian, elusive party-thrower and probable sophisticate, could know anything about Tony’s prophecy and Alphonso’s disappearance.

Starr Ann said, “I hear he’s psychic. And having a party.” Into Ricky’s skeptical silence, she added, “There’ve been delivery vans.”

This year, especially, Ricky didn’t need disappointment. But instead of saying this, she asked, “He’ll help me?”

“The neighbor thing should carry some weight. Besides, you’ll move him with your neediness.”

“Nice to know.”

#

Starr Ann answered the door and then stood stock-still, although it took a second for her feathers to settle. Her silhouette, outlined by the hall light behind her, was a bird’s. She had glued feathers to a pair of black opera gloves and made a yellow beak out of paper maché. Ricky couldn’t see Starr Ann’s mouth behind her mask, but she heard a sharp intake of breath.

Ricky understood; just hours ago she had chopped her light brown, shoulder length hair short enough to just tuck back from her pointed chin. Then, dressed in in narrow black pants and a button-down shirt of vintage pattern. She knew that, in the dark, looked like her brother. Makeup made her skin chalk white and her lips were dark, life-hungry next to the dead pallor.

They said nothing but walked toward the mansion next door. It was ablaze with lights and parked cars jammed the street. In the side yard, they hid in the deep umbra of adjacent bushes. In a bay window, Ricky saw a harlequin, in garb as if painted by Picasso. The clown took what Ricky knew must be an invitation from a young man in very little except the paint that put the bones on the outside of his body, his face a perfect skull.

“How do we get in?” Ricky asked.

Alarmingly, a voice came out of the dark. “Perhaps I could simply escort you.”

The girls started, although the tone was mild and the clipped accent was that of a British gentleman.

Reflexively, the friends moved toward each other.

“Your reconnaissance could be observed from above, from my laboratory window.”

They gaped at the tall figure in a dark cloak with a hood. The prominent nose of an older man flashed within the shadow of the garment. Despite the masquerade of the cowl, they got glimpses of a grim, hawk-like profile.

Starr Ann took a half a step toward the specter. “Mr. Mabinogian.”

“Yes,” as if he begrudged it.

“My friend needs help. She has a problem.”

“The problem has long been coming but I did not anticipate so innocent a form. Come along then.” They trailed the tall man to the front entrance.

The three crossed the threshold to a disorienting combination of sounds, the odd booming of medieval instruments entwined with the crooning of a man in tails at a baby grand, “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, am I...”

Ignoring the people hailing him as they passed, their host strode toward a group of revelers to stand beside a man, then threw back his cloak. The two were dressed in tandem. Each wore a black body suit with a single Roman numeral “I” printed on the front, from chest to groin. When they stood together, they created the Roman numeral “II.” But otherwise, they were opposites: Mr. Mabinogian was tall, grey-haired and pale, whereas his complement was slight and young and the color of molten sugar.

Starr Ann pushed up her mask. The beak rode above her head like a yellow helmet.

“This is Ren LeFontayne and I am Dalton Mabinogian.”

“The kind and clever girl!” said Ren.

Starr Ann looked at him, confused. “I live next door.”

Now Dalton turned to Ren, his tone once again as dark as the night in which he had found them, “When I saw these interlopers cross the street, I knew they brought closer the threat we have feared. Imagine my surprise.” He made the last comment as if he was intently searching for a word that’s just on the tip of his tongue.

Looking at the two girls in earnest, Ren’s eyes rested on Ricky and his cheeks lost the high color of a party in full swing. “You, there’s death all around you, and more than that. Let’s have a little chat. Gentlemen, permit me to show our young friend the buffet table and become better acquainted.”

Although neither ate, Ren and Ricky stood near the food.

“The work you do, your job,” he said, “is important to your coming here, cher.” When he added the endearment, it reminded her of her mom, but sounded like mangrove swamps or islands. Disarmed, she spilled as many details as she could think of. Ricky told Ren about Tony drawing Alphonso’s tattoo at New Foundations and how, because Alphonso had disappeared right after, it may have had to do with her brother’s death.

Ren looked at her as if she was a patch of damp on the carpet. “This is clearly not the occasion for a reading. Please come tomorrow. It is urgent, since the threat my partner spoke of, comes for you. This means you are the one to stop it. You need training. At no charge, since you will protect us all. For the reading…whatever you can afford.”

Ricky had expected that Ren would give her a message from Tristan or give a clue to Alphonso’s whereabouts. Or at least give her the usual psychic affirmation that she is special, but only as all people are special, not singled out for others to count on… to what? It was so vague, she was more confused than afraid. Although she had an unsettling certainty that that would come later.

So she merely said, “I can pay.”

“We will help you prepare for what’s coming, for your dangerous task. But tonight let’s forget. Before it comes down on us with both feet.”

Ren left her at the buffet table. His predictions had quelled her appetite, but she was grateful that maybe now she would get confirmation that she wasn’t crazy. Maybe. Her family members had excuses—her father mad with grief and Tristan unhinged due to unknown influence in the cave. But their derangements still felt like a sentence hanging over her head. As she watched Starr Ann appear and disappear among the party-goers on the dance floor, she wondered what possible task Ren could mean. Maybe she’d save Alphonso from whatever abyss had swallowed him. Wherever he was, she’d find him, and also figure out the darkness at the center of her brother’s death.

#

The confrontation she had imagined with Belquis, where her boss would quiz her about why Tony stabbed his hand, never happened. Instead, Belquis appeared before her in the Med Office, the program director’s feet planted a distance apart, her toothsome smile full in greeting.

“You OK? That was some drama.”

“Yeah, fine.” If only.

“Tony is still at St. Luke’s. He was scheduled to go to St. Peter’s to stabilize, but he admitted cheeking his meds, so he’ll come back here in a couple of days. He should be fine if we monitor that he’s swallowing everything he’s prescribed.”

The sickly prospect of seeing Tony’s open mouth, his teeth and tongue, jarred with her eagerness for more knowledge about Alphonso’s tattoo, which could only come out of that mouth. However, she would not press him. She would especially avoid an open confrontation in front of other staff, although embarrassing references by Tony would be tallied by staff in the crazy column. Nevertheless, Ricky would not provoke Tony.

After Belquis went up to her office, Shanice said to Ricky, “Don’t let that Tony get to you. He’s whacked.” Shanice continued, “I knew him from before.”

“Before New Frustrations?”

“Yeah, he came into the shop where I tattoo.”

In Shanice’s life outside the group home, she adorned human bodies. One shift, she brought in her book of original tattoo art with its surreal dreamscapes and optical illusions. She would do the usual, pedestrian AK-47s, hearts squeezed in barbed wire, and butterflies; but one-of-a-kind works were her specialty. Her preferred approach was to interpret a client’s dream images and she considered her tattooing quite psychanalytic. “It’s all about the latent content,” she’d told Ricky with a shake of her soft halo of hair.

“He did?”

“Yeah. He came in with his head shaved. He wanted this cryptic shit on his chrome-dome. Just writing,” she said with disbelief and a shake of her locks. “That man is insensitive to art.”

Later that shift, OD also broached the subject of Tony. He was demonstrating Kasparov’s use of the Sicilian opening, Scheveningen version, and teaching her how to avoid looking defensive while readying a big attack. During their chess games, he was very directive, like he was instructing in life moves, not chess moves.

OD said, “I heard about Tony.” He canted his head, as if listening to something in his lap. “I have my eye on him.” The vision joke made him grin, but it was skeletal, and full of foreboding. She got his meaning; he was not without power of his own.

Ominus Dominum’s Worldline—July 517 AD

OD’s first visit to earth was nothing like being patiently sequestered in a group home for the mentally ill. His first time here from Astral, he had been a new Form, worried that mimicking human shape and behavior would make him more like them, wanting more, always more, like Beddy. But gratefully, OD remained content to reflect human nature the way water takes color from the sky.

However, that first time did not happen without complications. He abhorred Beddy’s body-snatching and, instead, summoned the molecules to the human template that was, after all, his Form self. But OD let earthly color get the better of him. It was the encapsulating green of the tree canopy, the underbrush, and the verdant mosses that ensnared his attention. Then, as he forged his body, his hulking legs and arms, his block of head, and the massive war horse he straddled, all over innards; blood to pump, guts to shit, lungs to fill and empty, it reflected his amazed perception. All of it was green.

He flexed the green gauntlets holding the green reins and pommel. Yanking off one glove showed him the river-stone smoothness of his olivine skin. He pulled away the finely wrought helmet to stare into a polished cheek plate, onto heavy features as if chiseled from pale jade.

His color, an error in his molecular summoning, surprised him, but was all to the good; the better to strike fear in hearts. He needed clout to counter the Red Woman, who, like a sun, burned her shadow onto Physical. It was bad enough that she, wherever she had high-jacked a worldline, ordained loyal priests (a class that caught on) to conduct the rite to make objects, to stoke her power. But now she had let a king of this Age, someone not under her direct control, get hold of an object, and the object was literally out of hand.

Ominus Dominum flicked his emerald spurs at the sides of his khaki steed and dubbed him Barrow Dancer. The two cantered toward the choke point on the road to Caerleon. With many men at his disposal, Arthurus should be able to defend the nearby roads, not just the hillfort. High banks topped by large rocks on either side made for perfect lookout points; Ominus Dominum was sure he would be intercepted here.

As he anticipated, at the narrowest place in the road, two figures stepped out, one from either side.

“Godne Morgen!” Ominus Dominum projected from his humongous chest cavity, delighted with the excuse to sound fearsome.

The men, clad well in leather jerkins and boots, looked at each other. One returned his greeting, “Godne morgen. An huh attest wu?”

“Ominus Dominum seeking Athurus Pendragon,” he told them, thinking how he could kill them both; a spear through the quicker-looking one, then ride toward the other to lower a slicing sword blow. He took to this part of Physical; the need for strategy and tactics. Then dutifully, instead of testing his prowess, he followed the men to the end of the road to enter the wooden palisade of Caerleon.

The court was assembled inside the big thatched longhouse emblazoned with a huge wooden shield that hung under the decorative roof joists; there two dragons wrestled, one red, one white. Entering the house, he paused in the anteroom to set aside his spear and unbuckle his weapons, sword, axe, and knife. Then Arthur’s men carefully shut the doors behind them against drafts that would smoke the house.

At the sight of him, the domestic scene in the big single room shifted. The men at long tables, the elders at benches around the central fire, and the women in a far corner busy with spinning and weaving, all drew to the dais against the far wall, where they congealed in tableau around the man in the chair.

Ominus Dominum would come to know them over the following hours, Agravain Hard Hand, Golden-tongued Gawain, Galahad Mild Murderer. And the women, Gwenhwyfar and her best lady Iseult. A bit apart, the only woman who did not cluster around the queen, was Lady Morgana, a person whose hazy nimbus, by which a sentient being could be seen from Astral, was stamped with a distinct pattern of flickering firebrands. He would have known that pattern anywhere, not visual in an earthly sense, but essential, the core of fight, fuck, birth—the Red Whore.

He expected her, was ready to contend with his foe to gain his quest’s goal. He felt the pull of the object strongly as he approached the throne. It was propped to one side of Arthur, the sword Caledfwlch or ‘hard cleft,’ from the death to anyone in the cleft where the stones were made to float. Arthur had not pulled the sword from a stone, rather, he acquired a sword that had been transformed in the stone chasm, where the ritual was cast.

The blade had been dropped a millennia ago in the Stonehenge quarry field. It happened like this: a traveling sell-sword was chosen as the Druids’ stooge and led to the quarry site where rocks had been prepared for a henge. The traveler was instructed how to enact the rite that would bestow buoyancy on the huge blocks for the Druids to move, the same rite that would kill him. But, unseen by the supervising priest, a blade was tucked inside his cloak. Alone in the cave, when the man felt death overcome him, he pulled his sword, dropping it as he weakened. It fell to the side of the cave to be found hundreds of years later. The bronze blade that eerily flashed was brought to Arthur. They knew it did eldritch things and that Arthur and the men who had handled it, were changed.

Ominus Dominum had a simple plan: Take the sword, ride away, put the sword where no one would ever find it. No one here could stop him, although the Red Woman would try. The idea of attacking anyone went against his principles, yet he felt excitement at the unhallowed possibility.

The Red Thing, Morgana, would not let him near, but he had come prepared. Carrying precious amber and obsidian bed within his belt pouch, he showed them first to Arthur, who in turn called the women over. As the group handled the beads, he quick-stepped to the spinning wheel to grab the pointed spindle. Then in one decisive move he jammed the implement into her side, just enough to dislodge the heinous Form. The lady half turned to stare wide-eyed at her accoster, but grasping both the arms of the Lady Iseult for support. Ominus Dominum readied himself for the Red Whore be flung back to Astral and body of Morgana to fall dead. He would grab the sword in the confusion that would surely follow.

But, stunning him, Morgana yet lived. The woman looked around in a daze, as if just coming to from unconsciousness. Had he been wrong about her tactics? No, he reasoned. He had seen the deaths she had incurred from his Astral vantage. This meant that the Red Woman had discovered how to take without killing, discovered a way around the objections so often shouted out during the Synods of Perpetual Oblivion. Why had she not announced this? There must be a reason even more diabolical than the willingness to kill her human hosts.

At least the Red Woman had gone, but he needed to understand how he could have chased the Whore from a body while the person returned! Later.

He charged to the throne and seized Caledfwlch, then rounded on the five swords that had been drawn when the Lady had looked at him askance. The men yawped and jeered as he parried the blows of the men closest.

He bellowed, “I beg you to stop me. Only cleave my head from my neck, and I will not fight you.” The men laughed, relieved that Morgana was not badly harmed, and also astonished at the intruder’s stupidity.

Gawain stepped forward, “I am the least brave here, unless the feat is like this one, so easy a child could do it.”

OD gathered his emerald hair from his neck as he knelt.

Gawain’s sword factored flesh from flesh. At the twanging of his rent spinal cord, Ominus Dominum’s hands reached out to catch the blood-gushing globe of his head. Blood also fountained from his neck and he was now not so towering above Arthur and his doughty knights. Ominus Dominum stood and presented the face in his hands from one side of the gathered group to the other, the mouth on the head saying, “I hope my survival will prove that this had to be done.”

Leaving the longhouse in mayhem, Ominus Dominum bolted to the doors which, left open, spread a confusion of smoke. Barrow Dancer was close at hand and, his head tucked securely under his arm, he out-distanced his pursuers. Once free from the chase, Ominus Dominum broke the sword and put it in a lake. From that day, the Forms united (all except the Red Whore) to proclaim: Under no circumstances should humans possess an etherized object. And from that time until this, the Forms had managed to contain their rebellious member.

One of Ominus Dominum’s great gains that day was his discovery of the Red Whore’s ability to kidnap and keep a living human. Her quietus about it (news that would be welcomed in the Synod!) was an intuition that he could use this knowledge when he least expected it.

But how had the human, Morgana, avoided death when the Whore took possession of her body? He mulled over the observations he had made of the company surrounding Arthurus—he had watched and absorbed everything. This told him secrets, Morgana pushing her son Mordred toward his uncle Arthurus; but by looks, the king was also clearly Mordred’s father. This was a woman who was divided from herself, yet lived in greedy self-fulfillment. Was it, in fact, her faithless, reckless love of living allowed her to split apart psychically, to gain, hold, and preserve what was wanted?

Ominus Dominum thought he may at last have had an upper hand in this war for the great chain of being; he would use this information to foil his nemesis. If he won, Physical would stay physical. But if the Whore prevailed, Physical would be etherized, and then no longer the bed of human desire that unfolded their future.

Starr Ann’s Worldline—November 4, 2023

Starr Ann had always loved the geometry of the herb garden across the street. So she welcomed Dalton’s invitation to come over for tea that week after the Halloween party. On a day that was mild for so late in the year, they took cups of oolong into the garden and, Dalton, in a billowy smock, moved among triangular and hexagonal plant beds like a wandering tree. As he harvested the last of the kale inside a border of die-hard marigolds, Starr Ann pulled weeds.

“How’s Ricky?” he asked.

“She found him, you know.”

“Found him?”

“Her brother. The body. I mean. After it happened. You know he killed himself?”

“How is she coping with that?” In Dalton’s way, he continued to attend to the task in front of him, but the sideward cant of his head proved his divided focus: How are you coping, too?

“She won’t talk about it.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“How bad is it, this threat, and will it affect Ricky?”

“And will it affect you? Yes, you are her very best support.” Bees hovered unsteadily as if levitated by wires. They muzzed the silence. “But aside from all that, how are you finding your life at this young juncture?”

Starr Ann smiled and wrinkled her nose, translating, then weighing. “I can’t tell yet.”

“But my dear, ‘yet’ will never really come. All we have is the present moment.”

“Well, then, perfect.”

Ricky’s Worldline—November 6, 2024

Although she knew it was rude, Ricky was early for her first psychic reading with Ren. Her shock at the revelations of last night, of encroaching doom, had faded with sleep. She was certain that this was the day Ren would tell her about Tristan and Alphonso. Surely the two had an interconnection, beyond the chance meeting during the picnic with Alphonso, aside from the books in Arkansas, but it was encrypted behind her memory of their beautiful faces.

Dalton greeted Ricky at the door and left her in the library to wait for Ren. She felt immediately at home in the room that was crammed with an eye-goggling array of stuff. There were books everywhere and any cranny without them was jammed with objects. Rows of ivory scrimshaw flanked bronze busts in feathered headdresses under displays of swords, halberds, and battle-axes. A knife had been flung into the mahogany of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. They held, she would learn, the essential great works, rare references on the occult, a collection of quaint erotica, and every book the Mabinogian Press had ever printed. The scholarly and the arcane.

She had time to handle one of a pair of dueling pistols and try on a beaver hat before Dalton returned with a tray. Ren was with him, dressed in a smartly cut suit, as if their appointment was an important board meeting. When Dalton left them and Ren was comfortably seated, he came right to the point. “You were told you’d find a person associated with a certain symbol and you think I can help bring that to pass.”

“I was hoping...”

“So you have no psychic ability yourself?”

“I’m studying in that area.”

“Really?”

“In the Craft.”

Ren looked at her as if she’d just begun to tap dance. “So, the Craft, with its murmuring mumbo-jumbo and gaudy divinations.”

“We don’t say spells. It seems like it’s mostly about meditation and visualization.”

“Praise be for that. Some Wiccans I know practice skyclad and it gives me goosebumps!”

Ricky stared at him, waiting for clarification.

“Skyclad, girl. Naked!”

A warm flush suffused her face.

“The answer you need involves a man. He has not told you the truth. Hmm. You have not told him the truth either, but let’s leave that aside.” Ren sipped his tea. “The truth you seek has been withheld from you by many. Death hangs over all, but the person to consult walks among the living. However, he is very troubled.”

Ren returned his cup to its saucer. The sound was of a complex yet delicate component clicking into place.

“The person you need to speak to has grappled with dark forces at the deepest level.”

Ricky pushed away the thought that Alphonso was involved in Tristan’s suicide; rather, they had both been harmed by something fiendish. She needed a change of subject. “You mentioned a death. I want to contact that person, my brother. I want to know why he died.”

“He died by asphyxiation, but I can rarely access the reason why, since the communicant spirits don’t remember or care. Those answers must be given by the living.”

Ricky chanced asking about Alphonso again, “Where is this person I’m supposed to find?”

“In a place surrounded by strong religious thought forms.”

“Thought forms?”

“Yes, all of our ideas spring immediately to life on, as one might say, the astral plane. The more people that think them, the stronger these thought forms are. Although they have no reality in the spiritual sense. I can feel this one distinctly. Old, given much reverence and respect for its sanctity. A history of joy and pain and tears like all human ideas.”

“How will I find this person?”

“You can’t fail.” He looked down and smoothed the silk of his tie. “I can feel your skepticism.”

“I wish you could tell me something that would make me believe.”

“Here’s something: Starr Ann will soon meet a person who could be very special to her. He could be ‘the one,’ if she’s open to it. Although I should add that all relationships in the future, like all events, remain in potential until realized. They are not foregone conclusions.”

“Any intel on ‘the one’ for me?” she asked, still angling for information on Alphonso. “Oh no; the one you come here seeking is not a romantic partner. It is someone even closer.”

Ricky’s mouth was a wreath around her surprise as she recognized Ren’s description. “You mean my father?” she snorted, “He’s just broken up about my brother dying.”

“Actually, trying to find your brother, your father has partaken of a fearsome darkness and is suffering. More than that, your relationship will help you with something very important when you are in gravest danger.”

Ricky felt ashamed. She had come here seeking information about Alphonso and Tristan, but now this man was telling her that she had completely misjudged her father, that he had needed her, but had not reached out to his only daughter, probably because she had been so faithless for so many years. As Ricky pulled some bills from her jeans pocket, she knew where to go next.

Ren accepted the payment from her jeans pocket. “Thank you, cher. Your training is urgent; we must begin soon.” He took her crumpled bills. “Rendering unto Caesar as I must, I am grateful.”

#

The Hyundai shuddered alive on the third try and bore Ricky toward the river, to the one person who could confirm the psychic claims of Ren LeFontayne. Coming through the small canyon of downtown, Ricky felt grateful that her Aunt Clo, who had come after Tristan died, was still in town. If she talked to her aunt in person, she was sure to get the full story about her dad. She parked in the ramp adjacent to LaughRiot, where Aunt Clo had picked up a bartending shift so she could MC the early and the late shows and filling in standup slots.

Clotilde Bessette regularly visited from “Gollywood,” where she was trying to make it in stand-up comedy. During Clo’s trips home to the Twin Cities, she would take any job telling jokes. Like her sister, Ricky’s mother, success had eluded Clo. Just as her sister had, she worked gleaning, picking over opportunities in small-time jobs that paid little, but worked her hard. Her life made her mad and when she was mad, she was mean. When she was mean, she was funny.

The air inside the club expanded her lungs like dough rising. From the right, warm yeasty air wafted from the pizza oven; from the left, came the hoppy scent of beer slop from the club.

Ricky sat under the bar sign reading “Absolutely No One Allowed Under the Age of 21.’ She couldn’t use the fake ID in her wallet, so she waited. Soon, a waitress walked past.

“You know my aunt? Clo Bessette?”

“Low Clo? You’re kidding. She’s the bluest woman on this circuit.” Then, observing Ricky’s surprised expression, “But, a great person!”

“Could you tell her I’m out here?”

Then a surprised Clo stood in front of her saying “Kiddo, let’s grab a booth quick,” and they entered the restaurant.

“You need anything, Clo?” asked the woman working the back section.

“No hon, I have to be back in two minutes.” Then to Ricky, “I wish I could let you into the show, it’s going to be good. What’s up?”

“There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Something important, I figure, since you’re here instead of calling.”

“Where’s Dad?”

Clo gazed off but Ricky persisted. “Something’s going on with him that you’re not telling me.”

Clo looked at her niece over lips that pursed sideways. “What was the tip off?”

“He’s not in a psych ward.”

There was a random moment of silence among the wait staff. “Your father’s in trouble. He’s in a monastery.”

“He’s with an exorcist,” Ricky said quietly. She felt the defeat of someone who has not just failed to save themselves, but lost others who had no one else to help them.

“More like rehab for the soul.”

“Do you know if he mentioned Tristan at all?”

“I do know, honey, that he was sleeping in Tristan’s room and talking to him. Apparently he’s been ranting about a ‘barrier’ and a ‘book’. His soul is sick.”

Ricky hung her head and stared at the placemat. Clo must have seen his bizarre behavior. The clink-clank of cutlery on flatware was a perversely normal background to announce her father’s trials with a grand inquisitor. Clo must have been scared.

But now the woman revved up some enthusiasm and said, “Hey, good news! They’re releasing him in a couple of days.”

Her father’s mental cliff-dive was bad, but not the worst of her situation. Yet, she couldn’t say to Clo, Whatever this is, it’s hunting me next. She couldn’t say it yet.

“The bad news is, Kiddo, I have to leave shortly after.” Clo touched her niece’s face with one finger, “You and me, right?”

Ricky nodded. Ren had been right about her dad. Then she thought of Ren’s other prediction: Starr Ann had met someone important.

#

After the exorcism, life was more serene on Kyrie Lane. The contempt James Jameson showed before was now a vacant mildness, so it was easier for Ricky to pick up his bandwidth of her Old Father, his stolid kindness and dedication to the truth. When she thought of him quietly posing questions to Tristan, into the dark, recording device beside him, she felt her old loyalty resurface.

Nevertheless, his eyes still ceaselessly moved, like ships searching for a vanished port. After one bad night, marked by his clumpish footfalls up and down the hallway, she brought him breakfast. He was asleep, so she put the tray on the night stand. The food would keep, but she reached to take back the coffee, to bring him a hot cup later.

Suddenly his hand slid over hers. He said, in a voice so hushed that the words were breath, “You can contact him, Ricky. He’s not with the angels.” James Jameson smiled cagily, and his grip tightened.

“You’ll find him. He’s in the land of the dead. And they’re coming here. They’ll bring my Tristan back.”

Ricky wrenched her hand away. Just as she felt the warm coffee splash. She blotted at the coffee on the carpet and told him, “Go back to sleep, Dad.” But afterward, she avoided being near him for very long.

#

Ricky ate fast through their shared meals, during which, James now drank large quantities of wine.

“In the words of Sir Isaac, ‘Let ye, old men, drink wine until ye piss!’ ” He downed his jelly jar of red and rejoined it to the table with a smack that made Ricky wince. His slack features stitched themselves together until they were draped in unpleasantness.

Lewd-eyed, he mocked her. “I don’t give a fig for Newton.”

Ricky rolled her eyes.

Riled, he countered, “What are you looking at?”

She asked to be, and was, excused. If ever she checked to see if he watched at her, cared whether she walked away, the ghost ship of his eyes would sail right past. The axes of some inner chart had flipped. X had become Y, certainty had become Why?

Spending less and less time at the University, he roamed the house. One day, she tipped from frustration into disgust.

“Dad, can’t you find Tristan? Find out what happened?”

She shouted at his retreating figure in the upstairs hallway, “You’re a fake! Renowned parapsychologist. What a joke!”

James turned to his daughter and flipped her off with the crudest gesture. Stunned, she stared at him, trying to make the connection between this man and her memories of her dad. But it only got weirder. His upraised finger began to glow in the dark hallway, like a floating obscenity, then it discharged plasma filaments around the two of them. As a crackling blue light spackled her, her father, and the walls of the narrow hallway, her hair lifted, like a Tesla globe around her head, her hair mimicking the bolts of charge dancing everywhere.

She had the horrible though that her aunt had been right: he had needed an exorcist. Would he kill her with a Satanic lightening bolt? Horrifyingly, the two poles in her family had shifted. Her father and Tristan were no longer opposites; something now joined them. Something bad. As the blue light faded, leaving her father merely a zombie, she recognized the sad irony that this was the very first verification of anything supernatural happening to her father. Ever. In so many ways, her past meant nothing.

#

She wished she could look to Alphonso for answers to her questions about her brother’s and her father’s transformations, and she visited the apartment where they had had the Druidic Craft get-together. Although the buzzer to still showed his name, there was no answer. And there was no one around to ask about him, not even a corner drug dealer. Ricky didn’t linger.

Back at home, in Tristan’s room, Ricky scanned its surfaces; the bed and pillow retained the impress of someone lying there. Nothing on the floor under the bed. Who has nothing under the bed? Someone, she answered herself at his desk, who simultaneously consulted Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Divine Revelations of Julian of Norwich. His notes showed him reading and cross-referencing, but no sign of his ‘masterpiece’ that he claimed would change the world.

Then she spotted something that had been too familiar to stand out. It was a Convent of the Temptation in the Garden library tracking card: The nuns still used the old system of signatures to check materials out of the library.

This book was not from the Bishop’s Collection, where Tristan spent his time, but from the regular stacks. She could tell, because it had been signed out, an option disallowed for a Bishop’s Collection book. On a grid for names and dates, lent and returned, was an entry so familiar, she even recognized the handwriting. “Carley Currier” was printed in shaky and slanted capitols. The vampire-white face of her childhood friend appeared in her mind’s eye, but Carley attended to Melvin G. Laird Public High School, not Convent of the Temptation in the Garden. Carley’s name on a book from Temptation was just as weird as the idea of Carley in a library at all. This was the first evidence of Carley Currier reading books. Ever.

There was no title on the card, just a Dewey decimal number, Ricky tried an on-line lookup to find out the book’s name, but the site was useless. The hope was too great that this was the book her Aunt Clo had spoken of, the book she said her father raved about.

Ricky now had a picture of her father’s demise. It must have been his impression on the bed. She had misjudged him completely. He had sought contact with Tristan while recording EVP’s or electric voice phenomena, then tried to hear meaning in the stream of scratchy white noise. She knew mainstream psychologists regarded the “words” heard on EVPs as products of the mind’s tendency to make patterns in meaninglessness; mere cloud pictures. But her father would have been convinced that he had heard ‘book,’ a word that caused a number of things to gel. She tried to remember anything from her lunches with Tristan in the Bishop’s Collection cube, but all she could dredge up was that the books looked properly ancient. She needed to get into the Temptation library.

That meant opening the closet. The door was mere steps away, but the knob was foreboding. Thoughts crowded at the edge of her consciousness, like a cloud of gnats coming for a traveler in the forest. They were vicious; she pushed them away for now and went to New Foundations.