Mask (5 page)

He sat up straighter
— the time had arrived.  He waited, glancing anxiously toward the revolving glass doors.  Finally, he saw his younger self emerge through the glass portal wearing that remembered self-satisfied grin on his face.  He waited for the couple to come closer, basking in each other’s momentary joy.  At last, as they approached the bench, Rachael stopped to look at a flower vendor’s cart.  The old man stood up, blocking the sidewalk.  He reached into his jacket and began to pull out the ancient automatic pistol.

“Doctor Sorenson?” the old man asked.

“No. What?  Excuse me?” the smiling younger man asked, glancing from the old man in the sunglasses and then back to Rachael, confused and completely unaware of the rising weapon.

“Goodbye, we’re all free now
.” The old man leveled the gun as the young man turned back to stare.  Doctor Sorenson the Old pulled the trigger.

It was a heart shot.  The younger man looked incredulous
— the look of a man stricken down in the prime of his life, and then he collapsed.  Doctor Sorenson looked down at his own young corpse bleeding across the sidewalk.  He was oblivious to the chaos around him as people ran from the scene to call police and rescue services, screaming and pointing.  He ignored their cries of alarm.

He laughed out loud
, thinking of the science fiction writers who always prattled on about paradoxes in time travel.  Well, here he was — still alive — and there he was, too, dead in a pool of blood fifty-six years before.  He had not winked out of existence.  He had committed suicide, not murder, though certainly not in the traditional sense.  He pondered how long it would take his keepers to notice he had left his laboratory through a different door.

Pointless thoughts
, he mused — this was a one-way ticket.  He pushed his sunglasses down his nose and then bent down to look at himself one last time.  He was so young, so healthy and so full of potential, if only — if only.

Then he saw a shadow fall across the sidewalk and he looked up, expecting the police, but it was Rachael silhouetted against the crowd.  He saw, for the first time on this return trip, he truly saw her face, her eyes
— her emotions.  She was staring, her face raw with shock, horror and incomprehension, a look that was shared by the older couple beside her — his parents.

He stared with confusion, then with growing comprehension.  What had happened here?  What had changed?

And then, trying to pull away from Patty and Thomas — could it really be his parents? — both arms jerking wildly to escape, was a toddler — a child with thick blonde hair and piecing blue eyes, screaming over and over, “Daddy!”

Sharlle leaned heavily onto his walking stick and stood upright again, leaving the last tomato to dangle alone on the vine.  He looked up at the large glowing sun that illuminated the sky into an iridescent shroud of azure.  Even the clouds paid homage this day to the sun god, leaving its pilgrimage across the sky unblemished.  Sharlle turned from the sky and leaned his tanned and leathery face into the breeze, his long beard tickling his neck as it laced around his worn and faded collar.

He glanced back at the tomato, the last of the growing season.  He smiled to himself and turned to slowly make his way back to the temple, his shelter from the night, his home.  He studied the small conical building as he drew near.  It stood only twenty feet high and was fifteen feet at its base.  The sloped stone walls rose to meet the steel tendrils of a crown that reached into the sky like fingers atop the building.  The smooth and brilliant white reflective coating of the stone had worn away long ago, leaving only small patches of glitter in the cracks and joints.  What an amazing sight the building would have been in its glory under the watchful eye of the sun on this fine day.  But the building was very old now, as was he.

Sharlle
again wondered how old the building was.  Had it looked like this when he had first encountered it?  But that memory was as faded as his tunic, but he dreamed sometimes of seeing it when it was younger, surrounded by trees, wandering walks and fountains.

The temple spoke to him upon those occasions, telling him stories in his dreams and what it once was.  Sometimes the building was the center point of a grand plaza that garnered attention from all whom passed.  People came in brightly dressed silks and flowing robes to see the structure and walk its perimeter.  The temple was special for them, as it was for himself, and they sat on beautifully carved marble benches and discussed the arts and philosophy, lounging in the splendor of intellect and achievement.

Other dreams woke him in the dark morning hours, images of the pyramid dripping with dark thick rain and emanating fear and solitude from its very core.  Citizens of the city that surrounded the building lay in dark shallow still pools, women and children lying quietly in the night, unmoving.  The pyramid was a force for anger and fear — destroying the elegant marble benches and fountains.  Sharlle would wake shivering, pulling his meager bedding tightly around his tired body, frightened, as though a child, at the horrific images that pierced his mind.  Why did the temple show him such images?  He did not understand many of them; he only knew that sometimes they frightened him.

He cringed slightly as the worst of the dreams came unbidden into his mind.  He shook them away and stopped in the tall grass field that separated the building from the small vegetable garden lower down the hill.  He again settled his thoughts on the lone tomato, nearly gleaming under the sun — celebrating its ripeness with the most intense red of its short life.  Sharlle turned back to his garden and then gripped his walking stick as he slid cautiously to the ground, pulling his legs up to cross them.  He leaned forward and held his walking stick across his lap and scanned the horizon.  He wondered if somewhere below him, under the soft grass and rich soil, graceful paths of stone and colors wandered around the hill, maybe near the clear brook that ran along the side of the hill, a landmark for better times and a reminder of possibilities.  Maybe the brook was what was left of one the fountains?

The blue of the sky came down in a softly lightening wash to break against the bright green of the tall grass prairie.  As he absently caressed the wood of his staff, long since worn smooth, he briefly tried to remember where he had acquired it.  He could not see a tree from horizon to horizon — a field of green under a sea of blue, unblemished and unmarred except for the temple behind him up the hill, himself and the small vegetable garden that cradled his last tomato.  He had trouble remembering a great many things lately, or at least he thought it was only lately that his memories had grown dim.

He wondered how old he was as well.  He vaguely recalled something called ‘seasons’ that marked the passage of time.  Days growing longer and shorter, rain and winds, frozen rain heaping upon the ground in piles, but here on his hill it was always pleasant and mild.  Each new day was the same as the last, sunny and always the soft breeze to tickle his neck.

He looked down to see his hand was now smoothing his long, gray beard.  He watched the grasses wave under the gentle guidance of the wind, tracing small patterns in the field — a gentle rustle joined with the babbling of the brook.  He would sit sometimes and just listen to the soft delicate sounds of his hilltop home, as he did now.

As he listened, Sharlle examined his small garden.
It was becoming smaller with each planting.  He tried to remember how large it was when he first planted it, but he could not recall.  Perhaps the garden was already here when he had arrived, planted by another keeper, but he could not recall seeing anyone here before, although he knew he had.  Or was that a dream as well?

Normally his dreams took him under the uneasy calm of sleep, a time of duplicitous thoughts and misleading streams of consciousness, but occasionally the dreams would take him during the day, leaving a void in his afternoon or morning.  But then he had trouble separating his dreams from memories.  Daily routines were often forgotten as well, only to be unknowingly repeated.

The building always seemed to be central in these dreams, either in the center of the images or as a backdrop for some other story of people long since returned to nature.  He knew these people were a part of his past, the history of this place.  Sharlle also knew that they were not mere dreams, but rather memory fragments, visions — glimpses into his and the temple’s history.  These visions connected him to the temple, or rather the temple connected the visions to Sharlle, as the lone tomato below was attached to the ground through the vine — circuitous and indirect, but attached just the same.

He decided he was tired today.  His thoughts were wandering more than usual, about the temple and his relationship with it.  What was its purpose?  He thought he should know, and somewhere deep inside he felt that he did know once, but that memory had joined the others on their quest for —
for seasons, perhaps
, he mused.

He felt his tunic flapping lightly in the constant gentle breeze, ruffling against his knees.  He glanced down at the frayed hem. 
I should get a new tunic
, he thought, as though a common enough daily decision, but then he could not understand why he would think such a thing.  There were no more tunics.  There was no cloth, no means to sew a new tunic.  But he had acquired this tunic somewhere, from someone.  He knew his mind was fragmenting, like the gleaming shell that once coated the temple, but he was quite certain he had never learned to sew. 

Sharlle pondered again how he came to be in this place of beauty and contentment, but for all his longing to understand, to know — the memories were beyond his grasp.  And then, a flicker of an image, an insect fluttering near his mind’s eye, once, long ago he had talked to someone here.  Someone had kept him company, someone — special.

It was a man he recalled now, a very tall man who would block out the warming morning sun as he stood near Sharlle and spoke with him in soft comforting tones.  An image of sitting in this very field came to him, his new and colorful tunic wrapped around him, dragging in the grass.  Was it the same tunic he wore now?  If it was, it got smaller.

Sharlle tried to focus on the face of the man that hung in shadow in the bright glow of the cool morning.  He tried to see the man’s eyes.  He should know this person.  He was connected to him as well — like the temple, but the images would not remain fastened, like a train th
at became uncoupled, each car drifting further apart from one another on the same track.

The image struck him, resonating.

I remember going for a train ride
, he thought.

He was a small boy and had sat near a window looking out across the wondrous spires of a sprawling city of gleaming white and glass.

Sharlle started at the image as it struck him like a jolt.  Trains?  Cities?  Had he really been there, or was it yet another dream he was confusing with reality?  No, he could remember the fabric of the seats on the train; they had the look of rough cloth, but were smooth like glass to the touch.  He asked his father how they did that.  His father had leaned across the aisle between the seats and whispered to Sharlle that it was magic and grinned.

He had a father?

The train was connected to him as well.  The images began to filter through the old corroded sifter of his grasp on reality and grow.  He suddenly felt the sense that he was waiting.

He saw himself standing on the long, crowded, steel-decked platform, waiting to board the sleek form of the train, waiting for the doors to slide quietly open so he could get a glimpse inside the machine.  His father bent down to lean in his ear and explain how fast the train was and how quickly they would get to — to New Chicago.

That was a place; he was sure.

He recalled staring out of the train as it shot across the prairie, whisper quiet and smooth, like it was gliding on air — like the birds in his dreams did, riding elegantly on rising thermals.  That prairie was not unlike this one today.  Were they the same prairie?  Was this expanse of grass and sky very large?  He had never left this place to explore beyond his hill.  He did not know if the prairie was large or not, but the fields of green from that day long, long ago was very large indeed.  He had watched the grasses and the clouds throughout the day as they had made their way — home?

Sharlle smiled to himself.  He was having many memories today, but then his smile turned to a grin as he wondered if he had these dreams every day and merely forgot about them upon waking anew.

He bent over and plucked a blade of the long field grass from its resting-place and twirled it in his hands, studying it casually.  The blade was elegant and beautiful, long and gently curved, simple in its functional form and yet complex under the fibrous skin. 
My father was like this
, he thought, simple yet complex.  The temple was like that too, simple of function, yet complex in its life.  The temple was connected to many things he thought — many places he suddenly recalled.

He started to turn and look upon the temple and then decided he would sit here a time longer as he caressed his forearm with the tip of the blade, which pulled goose bumps out of his childhood.  The breeze caught the delicate hairs of his arm and gave him a wonderful chill that made him quiver.

Sharlle stared at the tomato as he continued to tickle his forearm with the grass, but he was disappointed that the sensation the second time was not as satisfying as it had been at first.  And as his mind shifted thoughts, again a sense of waiting and again the shadow-faced man was above him.  But he was not afraid of the shadow man.

In his mind Sharlle thought about where the sun would be, where he was sitting, what direction he was facing.  He sensed rather than comprehended his position.  Gently
, he pushed with his legs and wiggled his lean body into the same position as that day so very long ago when he was but a child.  Yes, now he could remember more.  The images came to him.

He suddenly swallowed hard as the images of his dreams resurfaced with a memory of the train.  New
Chicago was not his home. They had been — running?  Escaping?  Was he in danger?  Was his father in danger?  They had been going somewhere, somewhere safe — somewhere they could be happy.  Sharlle remembered being happy on the train and being with his father.  And even though he felt the sense of urgency in hiding, he also felt the safety and protection of his loving father — secure in the knowledge that no one could ever hurt him — he would always be safe.  And apparently he was, for now he was older than he could recall and had been happy and safe — his father must have protected him in the end.

And again it came, that sense of waiting.

What had he been waiting for?  This was different than waiting to board the train or waiting to see the elegant needles of glass of New Chicago come gliding across the prairie to greet them; this was a more intimate sensation.  Again, Sharlle wanted to go inside the temple and sit in the shade to think.  But he was afraid he would lose the fragile thread of these few memories, and even if this was a forgotten daily ritual, he tenaciously clutched at the images, trying to hold them, trying to reel them in — into the light of this morning’s sun.  He wanted to share his memories with his last tomato, the small red orb also coming to the end of its life.   He grinned to himself at the thought, even though he knew that tomatoes did not have memories, but then he mused,
this last one can, it can have some of my few memories.  We will share them.

He shifted slightly and stared at the tomato as he hoped for more images of his past to settle over him, and he would let the tomato listen.

You’ve been waiting too haven’t you,
he thought to the tomato,
you were waiting to rest in the moist soil under the shadows of your vine.  And now, we are much alike you and I, tomato, very much alike.

He thought about the tomato lying in the dirt, covered and protected for a brief time by the shadow of its vine when the shadow man returned to his visions.  The shadow man had spoken to him
. He was quite sure of it.  They had talked that morning, and even though he knew that somehow it was not intended to be their last time together, it had been.  The shadow man had never returned.