The Cauldron (26 page)

Chapter 43

Carl Johnson

They were in Evergreen back at Ellen’s resort, one of the cabins that had not been touched by either the brunt of the storm or the ship’s weapons. They’d nearly picked Sunset, the largest of the cabins, but Evergreen was closer to the lake, and Carl was not afraid of the water. In truth, they could have had their choice of any of Ellen’s cabins: all the guests had fled after what the news stations reported as “multiple deadly lightning strikes.”

Carl told Ellen about
otherspace
. Everything, as if he were reading her the highlights from the evening paper. Even as he listened to himself speak, though, he wasn’t sure why he rambled on. Maybe it was simply momentum. Once he had begun to reveal all of it, for whatever reason, it was impossible to stop. It had sometimes been that way when he had been John Miller and shared his life with her, and Petey the Clown and she was Tina. And when she’d been Ceecee back at his high school. And now, for a few more minutes, it was that way once again. Ellen was not someone he could hold back from; she was someone with whom you shared, no matter what.

It was more than that. Something else prodded him to talk, something that was not from the life of Carl Johnson or John Miller or Petey the Clown or Esbiorn the divine bear … one of the few lifetimes he had not shared with her. It was something that emerged from the mists that still shrouded his most ancient memories of how it had been to be One Who Sees.

“Can you show me again?” Ellen asked.

“
Otherspace
?”

She nodded. “Now that I understand what I’ve traveled through, I want to see it with different eyes, as more than just a cold, cold fog I’ve somehow skipped through in these years … decades … centuries.”

He held out his hands as he moved around the table toward her. Her hands felt dry in his. He gripped her fingers tightly, closed his eyes, and let his instincts take over. Sharply, he—

—moved.

In an instant, the room vanished and they were surrounded by the icy grayness of
otherspace
. A sound—a gasp—came from a shape he recognized. Forlorn Frank from the circus! It was as if the clown had been waiting for him.

Shapes and sounds were distorted and blurred beyond conventional recognition. He could tell Ellen tried to make sense of it. Somewhere in the distance, something glowed faintly, and all around them the shapes, dark and indistinct, wavered and drifted and hovered. One shape, separate from the others, moved toward them, but no matter how close it came, it remained insubstantial.

Carl knew it was the navigator he’d freed, come to say goodbye.

Then
otherspace
vanished.

As quickly as they had gone, they returned to the warmth and light of reality. Ellen swayed slightly, but his hands steadied her. They’d been gone some time, he realized. She’d grown younger still. She was the youthful Tina, and the Ellen he’d met and married. She was the nurse on the World War I battlefield, and a dozen other women before that. She’d somehow attached herself to his soul and moved through one life to the next, reconnecting with him.

It had happened more than three hundred years ago, when he met her in 1647. She went by Sarah, and he by Samuel. They’d married and settled down, and a year later were accused of being witches. It was when he had pulled her through
otherspace
the first time.

And she knew—all of it—with her eyes opened to what
otherspace
truly was and the touching of their consciousnesses as they hovered, they shared the memories of their past lives. She was why he’d never asked Shelly to marry him. He needed Ellen, not Shelly. He needed Ellen and Tina, and Sarah and Ceecee.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Those shapes—”

“You saw them?”

“Before, yes, but distinctly now. Some of them almost familiar.” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes seemed to go unfocussed, to look straight through him as if he wasn’t there. Finally, she shook her head and frowned thoughtfully. “I should be with them, shouldn’t I? My spirit should drifting in that cauldron of souls. I should be there with old friends from lifetimes ago.”

“I don’t know, Ellen.”

“Or is it Sarah?” She smiled. “Tina? I didn’t like the name Tina. I thought it sounded brittle. But it was good for a performer, wasn’t it?”

“Ellen suits you.”

There was the sound of the front door slamming open, and then of running feet pounding through the small living room. A moment later, Jerrah appeared in the kitchen doorway, skidding to a stop against the frame. Her lean, angular face was animated, flushed; the mask of resignation she often wore replaced by one of exultation.

“Melusine’s still with me!” Jerrah said. “In the back of my mind, I can feel her.”

“But she—”

“—said she would go. I know. She would have, too, except I asked her to stick around for a little while.”

Ellen studied her and opened her mouth to say something, but Carl cut in.

“Melusine is still with you? And you’re all right with that? You’ve complained about the ‘it’ riding around inside of your head, making you do things and—”

“That was the bad ‘it,’ that shipkeeper person. I sort of like this one. Like I said, I told Melusine she can stick around a while.”

“Melusine, you should leave,” Carl said. “Lose your hold on Jerrah and let your soul go free.” He told Jerrah/Melusine about his confrontation with the shipkeeper, the resolution, and finding Melusine’s body. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be—”

“Dead, I know.” The voice was Jerrah’s but the speech pattern wasn’t. Carl realized Melusine was in control now. “I do not know why I did not die when my body did. There was a pull always before. It took work to stay connected to someone else’s mind. Always my body tried to pull me back. But I stopped feeling that. There is a different pull now, lighter, probably to this place where … souls … go. A pull I’ve never felt before. So unknown. I will not stay here long, as I am curious about this destination, this cauldron Ellen calls it. But I will stay awhile. Jerrah says I must truly see this world.”

“So Jerrah’s really letting you stay?” Carl asked.

“Until Melusine’s ready for
otherspace
,” Ellen said softly.

“Yeah,” Jerrah said. “I figure I’ll take her to Disney World and to see the big redwood trees on the west coast. Maybe go to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. All the touristy things. Maybe we’ll even take in a couple of plays on Broadway and go to one of the big circuses. It’ll be great. It’ll take everything in my bank account for grad school, but it’ll be a blast. I’ll have company and will only have to buy one ticket to get in. And I figure we better get to planning all of this.”

***

Epilogue

The Coles Bros. Circus had changed in the decades since Carl and Ellen had last seen it. The circus was playing for one week only in New Jersey, and Carl had driven them up for what he believed was his first real vacation in a very long while.

It was called the Coles Bros. Circus of the Stars now, and it boasted being “The World’s Largest Circus Under the Big Top.”

Jerrah, Carl, and Ellen sat halfway up the center section of bleachers where they could clearly see all three rings. So different, Carl thought. All glitz and garish music. The simple calliope was gone, replaced by a sound system with speakers that blared from every corner. But it was at the same time familiar, the feel and smells of it, and the sounds of the animals, and mostly the delighted squeals of the children as the clowns paraded by.

There were the Cartoon Poodles, colorful canines performing an amazing array of tricks; the royal Bengal tigers, which Ellen declared her favorite; the “world’s largest canon” that shot an acrobat called the Human Canon Ball across the arena; the Angels of the Air from Guatemala, and a woman who could stand on one finger. Carl liked the elephants the best, though none on display could match Freida’s size.

Carl intended to spend the rest of his life, however long that may be, on Earth with Ellen.

And he knew that if he could help it, he would not use
otherspace
to cheat death again. In a way, he looked forward to his soul mingling with Freida’s again, and with Tycho, Oscar Pinno, and others he’d left behind, the little Egyptian boy he’d once taught. Maybe together they would all discover what lay beyond the other side of death.

Carl recalled the phrase he’d taught the boy: “
Auk er heh en heh aha en heh.
” Thou shalt exist for millions of millions of years.

***

About the Authors

USA Today
bestselling author Jean Rabe has written 33 fantasy and adventure novels and more than 70 short stories. When she’s not writing, which isn’t often, she edits … two dozen anthologies and more than 100 magazine issues so far. She’s a former news reporter and news bureau chief who penned a true crime book with noted attorney F. Lee Bailey. Her genre writing includes military, science-fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery, horror, and modern-day adventure. Rabe occasionally teaches genre writing courses.

Website:
www.jeanrabe.com

Facebook:
Jean Rabe
(https://www.facebook.com/jean.rabe.1)

Goodreads:
Jean Rabe
(https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3406.Jean_Rabe)

NYT Bestselling author Gene DeWeese was well known for his
Star Trek
novels. He authored more than 40 novels, among them Gothics, mysteries, science fiction, romance, horror, young adult, as well as nonfiction books on doll making and computers. His first published fiction was a
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
novel written with Robert Coulson under the pseudonym Thomas Stratton. His YA novel
The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf
was made into a television movie.

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