Warlock, p.37
Warlock, page 37
Alex shake with his head, and read some days of Antony once again, trying to tune in to the atmosphere of his new collocutor. He knew his mind perfectly for this moment, but he tried to understand how that mind worked, how does he done such conclusions from things that was happened with him.
In that way, turning pages and reading a bad script, Barns spent all time before his smartphone buzzed. He walks out from a van, carefully shut the door, and tap a green button:
“Yes, hello.”
Strong woman’s voice said:
“At the back door in five minutes”
Then she broke up the connection. Alex walked to the black door, and hided in a shade. Once again, he regretted that he quit smoking – the universal way of brightening up of any expectation. That’s why he done thing that helped him in such situations – he lifted up an empty palm to the lips, and inhaled wet night air. Rain was still come, but it seems that he got used to it.
A couple of minutes later door opened, and a little but large woman looked on the narrator:
“Are you Alex?”
He closes his eyes for a second, trying to look at the woman that stood in a bright corridor, and nodded:
“Yes. I am.”
Joke that he stood at the head of a line of night visitors, and it is his turn he kept for himself. She looked at him for a second and said:
“Money first”
Alex gave her two bills, and she allowed him to enter. There was warm and nice inside, light shut down after she closed a door, and it occurred that all building is dipped down into the calm night atmosphere. She said that he must go after her without delays and led him through the corridors. Even if she would go without any word, Alex thought that he wouldn’t stay on the same place in such institution. Despite the profile of this hospital, it seems neat to Alex. From all his references he took a hospital from “Terminator 2”, and hoped that T1000 would visit it another night. They walked up long corridors, and their steps were reflected from the walls and in total silence it’s seemed that there more than two persons here. Alex was glad that there was not any screams or shouts of locals, but then thought a little about worse option – dead silence or a screams.
One or two times his own shadow jumped ahead of him. He was so deep into his mind that it scared him, and he stopped for a second. One glance through the bars, and he saw an outside lamps, that create such an effect. The woman stopped and looked at him:
“Do not stop, she said. It’s not an excursion.”
All that he left is just nod, and walk after her.
Two corners and two corridors, and she stopped near the door without any sign on it, only a number – 720.
She opened a door and said:
“I’ll come to you in five minutes.”
Alex was struck:
“Five… It’s… This is miserable...”
She looked at him and without any changes on her face said:
“It’s enough,” she opens a door wide and nods to it. “Well?”
He stepped inside. He does not know what he thought to find here, but he awaited something else then a dark room with a chair in the center of it. In the light of the street lamp, back to him sat someone and looked at the window. All pictures about mental institutions that he saw in the movies, cartoons and shows were wiped out with the adrenaline.
Alex cleared his throat and said:
“Good evening… My…” he cleared his throat once again, and said in much calmer tone, because of great acoustics of calm night place. “Hi. My name is Alex Barns.”
He makes a step to back of a person, then one-step to the left side, where bed stands:
“I’m a narrator of the internet show.”
Another step and he saw that part of head of this person is totally silver, as streetlight itself. He saw his cheek, covered with soft teenager’s hair. He continued with small steps:
“You know this show, you wrote an email for me, and I’m came to …,” and then he stopped. Words stuck in his throat, and he heavily sat on the bed. Rapidly it’s become clear to him why nurse gave them five minutes…
In the center of the room on the chair sat a sheath, not a living person. One part of Antony’s face was shifted, like a wax of a candle that stood near the fireplace. There was saliva at the corner of the shifted part of the mouth. Hair on his face were all silver. His eyes were directed to window to the streetlight. First, Alex thought that he doesn’t blinking at all, but then he catches this moment.
Barns shut his mouth with palms of his hands and looked at the former Antony Tychov. He took a shot with his smartphone, and just at this moment, he noticed that mouth of the boy is moving. Alex moved closer, trying to recognize something, but it was a slight whisper.
“Antony…. Antony?” There was no reaction. Former Antony Tychov continue to say something, but don’t pay attention to the Alex, who stand on his knees above him. “Antony…”
He shook his shoulder and a boy began whispering a little bit louder. He listened to closer, putting his ears to the boy’s head. Harshly he took out smartphone and recorded his words. It was a chain of simple words that Antony repeated continuously and randomly. He said:
“Eye-mote-little-like-universe-mote-mote-in the eye-God-like-comb-eye-universe-like-honeycomb”
Alex’s eyes gleamed in the dark and he shake boy once again:
“Honeycomb, Antony. Hexagon. What does it mean? Hm? Antony?”
Rapidly, in a part of the second, he turns his head to Alex and continued to say this chain of words. Alex looked in empty Antony’s eyes, and saw their total darkness, he thought that something like these scientists would see in the black holes. It was a singularity – without a time, without a sense, without a sole – pure solid emptiness, and around it words flying, words that tried to suck him into his eyes, into his emptiness inside:
“…mote-universe-eye-like-eye-in-in-God-mote-like-Universe-God-eye-like-universe-like-in the-mote-God-comb-like-mote-God-the-in-in-honeycomb-God-like-mote-univercse-God-lik-God-mote-eye-like-Universe-God-like-eye-God-comb-like-eye-God-honeycomb-eye-like-God”
These words filled Alex’s mind, slithering like a huge snake, filling all space with coils of its body, and trying to eat its own tail:
“…mote-universe-eye-like- eye-God-comb-like-eye-God-honeycomb-eye-in-in-God-mote-like-universe-God-eye-like-universe-like-in the-mote-universe-God-like-eye-God-mote-eye -God-comb-like-mote-God-the-in-in-honeycomb-God-universe-like-a-mote-in-the-eye-of-God-like-honeycomb-God-comb-like-eye-God-honeycomb -like-mote-univercse-God-lik-God-mote-eye-like-universe-God-like-eye-God-comb-like-eye-God-honeycomb-eye-like-God”
Moreover, when he almost drowned in this never-ending torrent of words, someone shakes his own shoulder. He woke up and looked to the nurse that stands above him. Alex saw that he still sits on the couch and looking on a boy, who still looks on the streetlight. He shakes his head and stand up. Nurse, without any words lead him away, and he was grateful for the total silence, and for the echo of the steps around them.
Outside still rain comes, but he was not care about it. He walked slowly to the van, and sits to the passenger seat, looking ahead. Jim woke up and looked at the watch. He tears his eyes and said:
“Hm… I don’t hear when you walk way…,” he looked at Alex. “So, what did we get?”
“Nothing,” said Alex. “Absolute and total.”
Helper looked at his friend and yawned:
“As I said,” he stretched up and starts an engine. “So, what do you think to do with ending?”
Alex looked on the torrents of water on a windowsill for a second, and then backed to himself:
“I got it. We have an ending.”
Jim frowned:
“But you said that you got nothing?”
Alex nodded:
“I was wrong. For this case, it’s a perfect option. Sometimes ashes is the great ending of creation, and sometimes emptiness – the greatest proof of existing.”
Saying this, he gets from his case a spare coat, and change his wet one. He put his cap on and closed his eyes.
Jim looked at him for a moment, and then pressed the gas pedal. A big black van, like a monstrous hornet turned, slightly slipping on the road, and headed to where they had come from a week ago
---
“Diary entry #65.
I know how it all would end… I saw it yesterday in my dream…I saw everything…
I saw our school. I saw an autumn ball, dance night where nobody waits me. But Mara went there anyway. Weather would be pretty bad – grey skies and a small rain. Despite all of this everyone would be cheered up – at last, it’s a ball. It’s an important event.
You even can call it a rite. Why not? Everyone meet’s everyone told the same words to the same company, and even jokes would be the same. In an alcohol, dances themselves and sex weren’t any changes for centuries too. So, Mara would interrupt one rite with hers.
There she would lead her mass. I’ll skip through the metal detectors easily, because my knife is made from a glass. People looking at me, and stepping back, giving me way. I do not know why – I’m scared to look at myself in a mirror. I guess, I’ll see an exhausted and tired guy, with a pale skin and bruises under the eyes. Hell, I guess that it would be a nice view, comparatively to real one. I’m entering a main hall, and then, in a flash of a lightning I see a landscape of lands from another dimension that Mara showed me long time ago. Dead land, where warlock tried to perform a similar rite. That picture I see just for a fracture of second, like an imprint on a retina, but see it clearly.
I walk to the Stephanie, and with a light application of force I take her to dance with. That brings Mary and Fred to me. They talk something about that they ask me to let her. They try to talk with Steph, but that bitch is under hypnosis. Then Mary slaps my face. I do not know why – because of our old issues, or because of her friendship with Steph, but when I look around once again – I see that couple of guys came to us to figure out what’s the deal.
Six of us. Perfect.
I took a knife from under my shirt, and stab Mary. Next that I see – time around me slowing, and I can see how everything around me become thinner. Our dimension becoming transparent and I can see through it that land, where warlock lived long time ago. I know why – our worlds become closer, and more blood I’ll spill – the closer it would be. Next I stab Mary. Blood from her heart makes pillars of that distant world red. I saw how stones of that far temple become to recall their shape and rebuilt themselves. Blood nourishes them. In a flash of the thunder, I see stone guardians near the pillars. Statues blinks, and make a silent roar. I think they’re recognize me, I think they know that I’m their old master. I see image of a hooded figure, old reflection on the surface of time and space, and killing Fred, combine us to one.
I am the warlock.
Lightning strikes to the hall, and time stopped totally.
I draw honeycombs with blood in a constant white glow of the pure energy, that sew up sky of this world, and empty sky of that old world. I draw tricky multiply honeycombs, feeling wind from that wastelands, feeling smell of that air. Images become more and more complicated, and I kill last two participants of the mass. With their last breeds I see a dark passage between a pillars. I know what I’ll see there. I want to see it by myself. I make one step forward it. There is no moving air there. I think that he doesn’t need air at all. He is an answer. New alpha and omega beyond any alphabets and concept of word at all. He is a response…
…
“Diary entry #....
…
I’m sorry …”
…
(Two handwriting, scattered across the diary across the main records, made in red pencil)
Bad one: think that you can trick them? You took my life, took my hands and head, and now – you took my dreams and right to write them down. You think that someone believes that it was my dream?
Good one: It’s no matter in what do you believe, if you want to. Necronomicon – was your idea. You are believed in that religion that you had created. What the difference? A reader of this diary would believe in anything.
BO: Religion?
GO: Think of it. You are wanted to break old gods, create new religion, using roots of the old believes, then you’re took two followers, then you’re died, then – resurrected, and now – you’ll rise and leave after you this diary – your own Testament.
BO: I’ll destroy it… I’ll destroy you with it…I’ll hide it, I’ll write a warning… Whatever strength it would need…”
Chapter 18
Alex pours himself a whiskey and sit on an office chair.
He looked at the numbers of likes below the video player on their site, where he just downloaded a new episode of their show. It was about a ghost of the museum keeper from Chicago. He smiled looking how numbers are raising, knowing that every one of them do not even watch until the end. Barns sipped his drink and leaned back. Janine appeared in the doorway. “Good night,” she said. “Yeah,” he answered looking on her, but his eyes were turn someone else, beyond her.
She frowned a little, but after a moment went home.
Telephone call pulled him out of his mind. His finger set slider apart, and eyes become consciousness. He said with a theatrical impression:
“Good evening, Mr. Colonel. You’re maybe the last man on Earth who’s call I expected to hear.”
“Hello, Alex. Nice to hear that you don’t miss your sense of humor”
Barns nodded, and sipped a little:
“How did I deserve this call?”
“I just finished seeing your episode. About Antony…”
“And?”
“You lied.”
Alex smiled:
“So what?”
On the other side was a dead silence, and a moment before Barns want to say something Rick Colonel said:
”Thank you, Mr. Barns.”
Now was Alex’s turn to keep silence. However, after half a minute he finds what to say:
“Thanks. I mean, you are welcome. I hope you know that I didn’t do this for you, Rick.”
He heard that police officer smiled:
“Actually, that’s why I call, Alex. Why do you do this?”
Barns swirled whiskey in his glass, thinking.
“If I tell you, that I liked your town, you would believe me?”
“No, Mr. Barns”
Now both men smiled:
“As I thought. Moreover, your opinion, Mr. Colonel? Why had I done such a nice review about your situation? Hm?”
Alex was ready to swear that Rick sit in his own office with a bottle of something like beer in his hand, and something like a sad ironic smile on a face:
“I think that you scared.”
Barns shivered a little, and was glad that his opponent doesn’t’ see him:
“And why do you think so, Mr. Colonel?”
“Because I'm scared myself. I am like a dinosaur, Mr. Barns, who look up to the sky, and see a falling star. But unlike a big lizard I know what does that mean”
The throat of narrator of the ABnormal became dry:
“And what?”
“That we are understand nothing, Mr. Barns. That beyond our world, our mind, our universe lays something huge, and unknown. Something that I can’t even imagine. But I saw a glimpse a faint shadow of it in my town, as you did.”
They sat for a half a minute in a total silence immersed in their own thoughts.
“So, I have one new dedicated viewer?”
“Ha! Good night, Mr. Barns” answered Rick. “Say hello to Mr. Helper”
And he hangs a phone.
Alex held his hand near the ear a minute or so before he put it with the dark screen on the table. His glance became even dreamier. After of ten minutes of watching in one spot, he drinks whiskey that left in the glass with one gulp, and shut his computer.
He walks outside and watches on stars. For a moment, he thinks that billions of lightning spots above his head remind him something. Something that he someday knew. On the other hand, maybe that knew of his ancestors, that someday just as he now watches at the night sky, and see gods, glimpses of infinity wisdom, and proportionate fear of powers that they cannot even imagine. He remembered last worlds of Antony “Like an eye winker… Infinity… Just an eye... Eye of a God… We are all there.”
Alex began to walk to his car when something makes him look up again. He saw a falling star. He stopped and looked at the starry night without any vulgar attempts of making a wish. Not anyone at that moment can even say what kind of thoughts was in his mind. He looked at the enigmatic infinity above him, without any move. In addition, it has seemed that he became part of that greatness, stillness and grandeur, dissolved in it without residue with a slight smile on his face that reflected in the universe above him.
The End.
Yevhen Busiiok, Warlock
