Ghosts of Eden (17 page)

Garty lifted his head as if he’d been dozing. “What?”

“Come up here please.
Assist
me.”

Garty pushed his chair back and walked up to stand next to Uncle Xander by the whiteboard. “Bullshit,” he mumbled.

Uncle Xander lifted a small duffle bag he’d brought with him from the floor and rummaged through it, ignoring Garty’s comment. “Ah, here it is,” he said. He produced a small glass jar with a cork stopper and handed it to Garty. “Take that to Kayla.”

Garty, shaking his head, walked over and placed the jar on the table in front of Kayla. It was empty.

“Some of us seem to have an increased, innate proficiency with such abilities. Would you like to try as well, Garty?”

“What are you going to do?” Garty asked.

“We are going to fill these jars,” Uncle Xander answered, lifting another identical jar from the duffle bag.

“Sure we are,” Garty said, snatching the jar from Uncle Xander’s outstretched hand and returning to his seat.

“Now,” their uncle said, drawing the outline of a jar on the whiteboard with an arrow pointing into the middle of it. “What do you see inside the jar? Kayla?”

Kayla looked at her jar, then up at her uncle. “Nothing?”

“Are you sure? What would you like to see?”

Kayla shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“How about an insect?”

“Okay.”

“Look closely into the jar. See the insect you want to be there. If you can see it, if you can believe it’s actually there, it will be.”

Kayla stared at her jar. It was empty. She concentrated. She pictured six long legs in her head, and a glossy carapace shell. She could see every detail: the tiny feelers, the eyes elongated on stalks. The bug moved; it seethed on its hind legs. In the jar. It was in the jar.

But when she looked: nothing. The jar remained empty.

She looked at Garty. “Can you do it?” she asked him.

He shook his head. He didn’t even look at his jar. “No. Of course not.”

Uncle Xander shrugged. “Keep trying. See if you can fill your jar before our next lesson tomorrow. That will be all for today. You are dismissed.”

THREE

Days passed in this way, going to “lessons” (which were nonsense), then being too exhausted to do much of anything else, hanging out in his room, passing out. He was lethargic, when he wasn’t frustrated. Something about his uncle, all this craziness, really wore him out. The pills kept him passive—he knew that. But they also kept him sane, level; they kept the anxiety away. The fear growing within him was like an electric charge, hardly perceptible, but slowly amping up, his muscles jittery and tense despite the drugs, his head filled with images and thoughts swirling briefly into view—oily vines like snakes wriggling; chittering things in dark trees; Kayla’s childish smile fading, becoming terror, and pain—then circling away.

He was never sure if this was a dream: the night before the next lesson he awoke to a dreadful noise—a wet bubbling pop—and he realized he’d been hearing the noises for a while, something thick boiling, like sticky caramel burning on the stove, or escaping gas pushing through excrement at the bottom of a port-a-potty, because suddenly the stench was overwhelming. It seemed like he was awake as he staggered to the window, holding his nose, taking shallow gasps of breath.
I’m dreaming this
, he thought. But his legs ached and wobbled beneath him, the cold biting at his bare knees. He looked out the window, across the empty backyard and down the side of the house to the dark corner below his window where that rotting trashcan smell had seemed to come from the other day. The moon was a thin sliver in the dark. Then he saw something in the faint lighting that was so much like something from an opiated dream he knew later that it must have been. The wind blew in forceful gusts, making the distant forest shake like a looming mass, whistling by the window. A woman stood in the shadows, working at something beneath her, something he couldn’t see. When she lifted her head, the moonlight caught on the mask she was wearing—gaping hollow openings, fangs stark and white, horns curling from her head. She removed her mask and the face beneath was white as the moon. She looked up at him, but there was something wrong; she was eyeless, her face incomplete; it rippled, too smooth to be real skin, then her eyes came forward, forming wide and horrible.
Not a fucking ghost
, Garty thought.
Not another one of Kayla’s fucking ghosts; go back to bed.
But he was too tired to move and as he stared the woman’s face changed, seemed to sag for a moment. She lifted her arms up and they were indistinct lumps, smooth and wet. Then something erupted from the side of her head, as if she’d been dealt a blow, and a second head, reeling and whimpering faintly, emerged blinking into the night. The second head tried to speak—it tried to wail his name. Garty stumbled back to bed.

* * *

The next morning, he decided to ease up on the pills. He had to keep level, but he didn’t have to get high. He needed to keep his head straight. Something was wrong. This house, his uncle…something was fucked up.

At breakfast, he watched Kayla eat, stuffing her face with hash browns and sausage. How could she eat so much, such a small girl?

“I did it,” Kayla said.

“Did what?”

“What I’ve been trying to do for days.”

Garty’s mind was raw and blank. “What’s that?”

“The bug! I conjured the bug!”

Garty shrugged, confused.

“In the jar,” Kayla said. “I made it appear in the jar.” She sprung from her seat. “Wait here.” Kayla dashed from the room, leaving Garty gaping after her.

A minute later, Kayla burst into the room.

She held the small glass jar carefully with both hands. “Look,” she said, coming up to him, holding out the jar so he could see inside.

He nodded. “Did you find that thing in the woods or something?”

Kayla shook her head, smiling.

“Strange bug,” he said, looking more closely. And it was. Very strange—but familiar somehow. The insect bobbed when he brought his face in close to the glass. It had six single-jointed legs like bent twigs, it’s body a segmented carapace of glistening armor. It looked at him from eyes on elongated stalks.

Garty stepped back.

“It’s neat, huh?” Kayla said.

“Yeah.”

“Come on. It’s time for class.”

Kayla walked from the room, holding the jar out before her, clearly proud of herself.

Garty followed—slowly. He’d seen that strange otherworldly insect before, blinking at him, looking at him as if it could actually understand who and what he was, when he was very young, at his grandparent’s house, before one of the adults stomped it flat.

* * *

“There are powers within us,” Uncle Xander said, sitting on his stool like always, a nonsensical diagram of crudely drawn planets and stars and arrows pointing every which way on the whiteboard behind him, “that are not learned, but forgotten. These powers lie deep within each of us, waiting for release, if only we have the wit to recognize them.”

Kayla had the jar hidden in her lap under the table. She couldn’t stop smiling. Uncle Xander hung his head, like he did when he was about to go on a personal introspective rant. Garty sighed.

“Let us, for a moment, consider other worlds.” He settled himself more firmly at his stool, his lab coat drooping about him. “To reach even the nearest star by any conventional means, one would have to travel for millions of years at the speed of light. Any speed faster, were we capable of such a thing, would warp the dimension of time beyond reckoning, and the results are incalculable. Neither are we able to communicate technologically using any currently accepted scientific means. We are, therefore, as many of my former colleagues would tell you, isolated, forever trapped on one world, in one meager stretch of time.

“But what have we learned over these past few days? That our understanding of the universe places limitations on what we can do within it. What if there is more to reality than what most are willing to believe? What if we are created with worlds within us, only we forget as soon as we’re born into one of them, that we submit to authority almost immediately instead of growing our abilities independently?”

He glanced up, eyes scanning over Garty, coming to rest on Kayla. “You have something to show me?”

Kayla’s eyes lit up. “Yes, I do.”

“Let’s see it.”

Kayla lifted the jar up from under the table. She set it before her.

Uncle Xander stepped up to take the jar, a look of confusion knitting Kayla’s face. Uncle Xander lifted it to the light; he looked down at Kayla, then back at the jar. “You’ve created something, certainly,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Kayla said. “There was a bug, just like you wanted. Garty saw it.” She looked at him.

Garty shrugged. “Yeah, I saw it.”

Uncle Xander smiled faintly. In the bottom of the jar, some sort of liquid substance—opaque and faintly pink—swirled thickly. “Interesting,” their uncle said. He put the jar back on the table and Kayla immediately snatched it up. Kayla looked at the liquid, then popped open the cork. “Yuck,” she said. “It stinks.” She hurriedly put the cork back on.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Uncle Xander said. “You’re doing very well. Better than you know.” He returned to his stool. “Now,” he continued, “as you both know by now, my first love was psychology. I’ve always been fascinated with the motivations of the human mind. I believe it was this interest that originally helped me to free my mind from the constraints of the physical sciences…”

* * *

Later, he went to see Kayla. He tapped lightly on her door, then pushed it gently open. “Kayla?” She was lying on her stomach on the bed, a book folded in her hands. She smiled as he stepped into the room. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Kayla said.

Garty sat on the bed next to Kayla. The jar with the opaque sludge in it sat on the end table nearby. “Why don’t you come and talk to me anymore?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said. She looked down at her hands. “You just seem so tired all the time. I guess I thought it’d be better if I left you alone.”

“Are you still having nightmares?”

“Some. They’re better now.”

“That’s good.”

Garty licked his lips; his mouth was very dry. “I, uh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t…feeling well. I’m better now. You can always talk to me about whatever, okay?”

Kayla nodded, continued to look at her hands.

“I think…I don’t know… maybe, we should think about getting out of here.”

Kayla looked up.

“I think,” he sniffed, “there might be something strange going on. I’m not sure what it is, but it might be dangerous.”

Kayla blinked. “Dangerous?”

“Yeah. Can’t you feel it?”

Kayla dropped her eyes to her hands again.

“I just…let’s think about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Something stirred on the bed behind them. Garty jumped, startled. He gaped. His palms began to sweat; his hands tremble. He watched, fascinated, as a large white cat rose from where it had been sleeping and sauntered up the bed to sit between him and Kayla. The cat looked up at him; he’d never seen it this close. Its eyes were round and blue, its mouth turned up in a semi-smirk. Its eyes seemed intelligent, knowing. He jumped to his feet.

Kayla laughed. “It’s only Eustis,” she said, taking the cat in her arms and hugging it close to her.

Garty didn’t know why he was so terrified. “How long has that cat been here?”

Kayla shrugged. “He lives here.”

Garty got the hell out of there.

FOUR

Kayla noticed right away her uncle looked different as she entered the library for the day’s lesson. His beard had grown in considerably over the past couple of weeks and was straight and scrappy and white. The skin along his hairless scalp clung tightly to his skull. Only his eyes seemed alive, as if at any moment his old, leathery skin might simply crumble to dust, and she’d find herself face to face with death itself. His eyes watched her take her seat.

And he was smiling. Not one of the slight ironic smiles he sometimes let through, but an actual close-mouthed smirk. It was the smile of one whom was pleased with himself, of one with privileged information.

At her uncle’s feet, there was a sealed box, about the size one might use for moving a few books or some office supplies.

Garty sat next to her, the sourness of his sweat making her head swim. She was getting a headache.

Uncle Xander began as he always did, by talking as if in the middle of a conversation: “M Theory suggests there are nine dimensions of space and one of time. Most of these dimensions are curled up in such a way it is impossible for us to perceive them. Just as three-dimensional objects appear two-dimensional from a distance, so these dimensions conceal themselves from our limited human faculties.