Black Jack (29 page)

They spoke in hushed whispers, their heads close together. ‘What happened to the strange men who came to take you away? What did they want? What did they do?’ Sometimes she reached out and touched his face wonderingly. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘After all these years.’ They had so much to talk about. They giggled at things. Suddenly she told him with some alarm, ‘I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. It’s not right, I feel it. I mustn’t sleep. Don’t let me sleep.’

And he saw that what she said was true, she could no longer keep awake. The more she tried to keep her eyes open the heavier they became. ‘It’s OK, Mum. Go to sleep. All will be well’

She gripped his arm hard; there was so much desperation in that grip.

‘I’ll always love you,’ he said.

She went to stand, but her body would not cooperate. She looked at him with fear. ‘Don’t let me sleep,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let me sleep. Please. Pass me that mug. Hurry, Black. I want to splash some water on my face.’

He turned to look at the mug and felt the grip of her hand on his arm slacken. By the time he turned his head to look at her she was already deeply asleep, her fingers trailing down his arm. He smiled gently at her sleeping form. ‘It’s OK, Mother. Sleep.’ With great care he lifted her leaning body and put her poor head on his lap. He watched her sleeping for a while, and then he extricated himself from under her and laid her head gently on a cushion. He lifted her feet up onto the sofa and when he was satisfied that she was as comfortable as he could make her he covered her with a blanket and stood looking down on her.

Time’s a passing, Black.

OK, OK.

He switched off the light and went into her room. It was a small box room with a single closet and a dressing table pushed up against one wall. On the surface of the dressing table there was a hairbrush, a lipstick, a pot of hair bands, and a plastic container of black eyeliner from India. He picked up the lipstick and twisted it upwards - orangey-red. He smelled it - awful. He looked at the alarm clock face on the window ledge. Time’s a-passing. He must hurry.

He opened the first drawer. There was a flat box. Inside lay a necklace and one earring. He closed the drawer and put the box with its lid open on the surface of the dressing table. Then he moved back to assess the closet. It was made of cheap, light wood with a laminated surface. Easily he pushed it away from the wall and reaching around the back ran his hand along the bottom edge until he came across the other earring. It had fallen there many months ago and been jammed by the vacuum cleaner into a crack between the wood and the laminate. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blew the dust away and returned it next to the other earring.

He opened the closet. Quite bare, and smelling of mothballs. He caressed the few items that hung inside. The wedding sari, which she had had dry-cleaned, still hung inside its plastic covering. He raised the plastic and touched the intricate gold edge. He tried to think of her on her wedding day and felt unhappy.

He left the room and went into the kitchen. He stood at the doorway and smelled the air - the familiar smell. She had been making egg curry. There was a covered pot on the stove. He opened it and breathed in the aroma. He dipped a finger in and licked the curry. It burned his tongue. He turned the tap open and held his burning tongue in the running water. It was a delicious feeling. The heat evaporated.

He opened a cupboard door. It was crammed full of vitamin and mineral supplements, all his. All went into the brown goo that was poured down his throat. He opened the fridge. Crammed full with fresh vegetables. Of course. All for him. She lived on egg curry and rice. He closed it and his eyes were drawn to a teacup. It was chipped. He sighed. He didn’t have to turn the cup upside down to know it was a Limoges. Her great ambition was to own a Limoges tea set. How many times she had told him about the cake stand and the sandwich plate and all the wonderful accoutrements that made up the setting for a civilized tea. Had he not come into her life she would have had her set by now. He set the cup down carefully. There was an ache in his heart.

Slowly he walked to his bedroom to wait for Green.

The evil spirit said, “Jesus we know and Paul we know. But who are you?”

 - Acts 19:15

Black stared unseeingly out of his bedroom window. The sky was midnight blue and moonless. Few stars shone. The sounds of the traffic on the street below stopped and the windowpane became hazy and speckled. It must be 3.29.a.m. He could still see the sky outside but it had taken on an other-worldly appearance. As if it didn’t exist. It was just a mirage and only what was in his room was real. He watched the dry shower behind him turn to a display of dazzling lights and a being materializing in it as reflections on the glass. This will be the last time, he thought.

‘Hello, Green,’ he greeted quietly.

‘You’re not coming, are you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re using the word of power on me? Your only friend in the whole wide universe?’

Black turned to face him. He was no longer yellow, but an intense red. Black tried to remember what he had looked like when he had first seen him. The memory seemed very far away. Another lifetime ago. ‘What does red stand for?’

‘Life, growth, decay. What else is left in the endless cycle, but death.’

‘Mine?’

‘Of an opportunity.’

‘Opportunity for who?’

‘In this case, me.’

‘You know I would never have suspected you, until I suddenly realized that you were using me, exactly as you described how they use celebrities. Let the celebrity tap all the energy then simply tap the celebrity. All that energy of hundreds of millions poured into me. You want it. You’re the one they are praying and sacrificing to, aren’t you? The one with the codes they want.’

‘Yes.’

Black shook his head in disbelief.

‘You won’t understand, but I was only doing my divine duty.’

‘Divine duty?’

‘As did Judas; as does Satan. We are the tools by which humans must show themselves worthy of transcendence.’

‘Who are you really?’

‘The dark is always best nameless.’

‘But if you are the dark, then where does all this light,’ Black said, indicating the glowing fractals, ‘come from?’

‘I earned it in the performance of my duties.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Look at the patterns on my body, but this time command yourself not to hide from the truth.’

Black looked at the fractals racing to form ever more beautiful patterns and willed himself to see nothing but the truth. And suddenly he was a tiny microscopic creature who was hovering near the fractals. Now he could see what the glowing fractals were made of. Faces. Millions and millions of human faces. Every race, every gender, every age. All of them screaming silently as more and more were birthed. Black closed his eyes at the terrible sight and the microscopic view vanished.

‘Who are those people?’ he gasped.

‘Don’t concern yourself with them. They sow; I reap.’

‘Is any of what you showed and taught me true?’

‘I am not allowed to lie, only dance around the truth a little.’

‘You didn’t come to me because I was the purest human on Earth, did you?’

‘No. The only reason I could approach you was a little chink in your armor. Your envy of others. Their limbs, their freedom, their lives.’

‘Envy, the mark of the Archons.’ Black shook his head in disbelief. ‘All this while. You? A shape-shifting parasite!’ He paused. He had heard so much about them. A perverse desire had grown in him. ‘I’d like to see what you really look like. Will you show me your true self?’

‘You will not like it.’

‘I don’t care. I just want to know.’

He laughed and when he spoke his voice was sarcastic. ‘I am uncertain if you will be able to retain the love you have declared for me if you see the
real
me.’

‘Let me decide.’

‘So be it.’

He took two steps backward and smiled. From him came an intense buzzing and pulsating sound, and suddenly the door sprang open as if someone had kicked it. A gust of freezing wind and dead leaves came shrieking through, and whirled around Black. The air in the room began to vibrate so strongly that the walls and ceiling became pieces that shifted like flapping bats’ wings. The wings moved apart, spread out, and the wall and ceiling opened up until they were no longer in the boy’s little bedroom, but in a vast cave. The only physical object that had roiled into that space with them was his bed. A taunt, no doubt. Green began to grow. Here was no boy. He grew until he must have been at least ten feet tall with a thick neck, huge bulging muscles, and a gaunt, bony face.

Black stared, unable to move.

The fractals were next to mutate. They darkened rapidly and began to resemble black veins on his large body. These fractals didn’t have soft, rounded edges, but barbs, like fish hooks, or the spikes of arrowheads. They were attack fractals. The attack fractals thickened and bubbled as if they were trails of thick ink running on the surface of his skin. They rattled like rattlesnakes and seemed it be
angry
. And in that changing kaleidoscope the ink became shifting soot that blew away from the being’s body in twisting plumes. The black dust took the shape of worm-like protrusions attached to his body. They waved frantically in the air.

Underneath the soot tentacles Green’s face was reforming. A visage of terrifying ugliness. And the smell; rotting meat and the expensive incense that Black’s mother saved for special occasions. It made him feel sick. The waving tentacles morphed into solid snakes. They hissed and writhed fiercely around his face and bloated body. He appeared to have no sex organs of any kind. The frantically waving snakes trained their eyes on Black. Each with a cold, deadly stare.

Black looked away from them, and looked into Green’s eyes. Searching for something familiar, something he could hold onto in that awesome transformation. Green’s eyes were glowing like rubies in the sun. Incredibly beautiful but emanating such hatred and evil that Black felt it like static electricity on his skin. His heart was pounding hard. He felt the beast that Green had become drawing something from him. He understood what was being extracted from him. The collective energy of all the people who had voted for him and those that had not. With every second he felt himself become weaker. He felt so weak he could hardly stand. He looked at his bed. He wanted to go and lie on it, but he didn’t. Later. There would be time for that later.

‘Well, do you still
love
me?’ the dark being asked, laughing sarcastically. His mouth was black. Inside there were no sharp teeth but what looked like a rotting pine cone. Strange.

Black moved forward as if in a trance. He took a step and raised his hand. All the snakes reared and prepared to strike.

‘Be careful, boy. Snakes are poisonous.’

‘If you are evil in nature, why do you care if they bite me?’

‘I don’t, but I am bound to warn you. Remember free will. At every step.’

The boy stopped and considered what the being had said. He remembered Green’s voice soft: kind, caring, as if from far away, from the past. ‘When you can see yourself in a grain of sand, a leaf, a disgusting fly, a stray dog, a king on a throne, a murderer on death row, a raving madman, a rock. Then you may enter and exit the matrix at will.’

‘Free will. Yes, the parasites remind us all the time about it.’ His voice was only a weak whisper. ‘Snakes are poisonous, but these are not…’ Boldly Black put his hand out. A snake, the biggest, lunged forward at impossible speed, and sank its fangs deep into his hand. Black screamed. The pain that shot through him made him rigid. Only his eyes rolled down to look at the state of his hand. Bite marks and blood. He could see the blue poison running up his veins, searing and burning its way into the depths of his being. The pain was so intense it made him feel faint.

He fell to his knees. He wanted to cower on the ground, but forced himself to rise. ‘Come to me, my own envy,’ he gasped. And like Milarepa before him, he lurched toward the being and allowed himself to fall forward, so his head was put into the fanged mouth of that largest, most ferocious snake on Green’s body.

The demon snake turned to dust, and Black fell through it to the ground. He lay on the blackened ground and watched as one by one the hissing snakes returned to soot and followed the process through which they had been created, melting into ink fractals that eventually shone with their original light. The dark being was changing too, like a film rolled backwards. Finally Green stood in his place. Exactly the way he had come to Black on that first afternoon. Green and so beautiful. A being that had offered him the most amazing adventure he could have asked for.

Green was no longer looking at Black, but at a transparent tube softly lit from inside that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere into their midst.

What has been is what will be, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

 
-
 
Ecclesiastes 1:9

The air began to pulsate and the surrounding scenery was morphing once more, into a much greater size. As if a vast inter-dimensional hall had been called in from some non-material realm to house the presence inside the tube, flawless crystalline hexagrams were multiplying quickly and precisely until they formed an astonishing doomed hall many stories tall. Where the edges of the hexagrams met they glowed softly. It was very beautiful and other-worldly. Black tried to peer into the growing tube, and had the impression of a head and arms and legs, although no such thing was there. Instinctively, he understood that the humanoid form was designed to make him feel comfortable with her, and it was a
her
, a soft, yielding female, a mother, a creator of life, of many lives.

When the tube was almost six feet long it began to radiate a soft light that changed the lighting in the hall in such a way that Black began to perceive everything differently. The first thing he felt compelled to do was to look down at his own hands. They were alive with dazzling colors. Quickly, he looked over to Green. He had become an unstable patchwork of glowing white and black light that appeared to be turning on and off, wavering from black and white stripes to a mosaic of uneven black and white squares. Many faces struggled to form, only to turn into beast-like countenances that were discarded. It seemed to Black that Green could barely keep his humanoid shape.