The Whitering Sun

Mary lay asleep, her face pressed against the mattress. A blanket covered her up to her bare shoulders, but left the lower part of her legs exposed. Her dreams had tossed her around while in sleep.

Adam watched her face as moonlight drifted over them, wondering if he loved her. The moon watched from beyond the window and was soon hidden behind clouds. Mary’s eyelids trembled, and she frowned; then she turned the other way, refusing to wake.

She was beautiful, sleeping peacefully as she was. He did not want to wake her up. So he simply sat beside her, watching her sleep, thinking about his life.

Soon the day would begin, and perhaps the looming terror enveloping his heart would vanish.

It had happened soon after Mary fell asleep, after upsetting grips and caresses that left Adam drained, and not a little depressed.While she slept, Adam returned to the library planning to collect his notebook. He figured whatever was written inside could tell him who he was, and perhaps help him recover his memory.

Then, he entered the secret room.

Even in the encompassing silence, he couldn’t hear the shelf scraping the floor as it swung inward. Within, the soft, weak light seemed eerier than before. The fallen book still lay on the floor, covered in dust that had accumulated inside the place. Adam bent to pick that book and put it on the table.

Without Alexandra, he was free to investigate as he pleased, and soon he found a safe behind one of the bookcases. He removed the bookcase from its place, and studied the box of metal inset on the masonry. He did not know the combination. No, that was not correct; he did not remember the combination.

He heard he spent at least six months with Oliver in this mansion. Whatever he was doing here, tricking the deceased man, or something else, he would have found the combination for this safe, just as he already knew the location of this room, and Alexandra had something to do with it. Did he use her to find this room, or was it for something else? It was all conjecture, but he believed he was right.

He looked around. Was Oliver the type to write the combination somewhere? No, that was wishful thinking.

Adam felt dejected in the face of this obstacle. But standing alone, with nothing but his dejection to face, made him ponder. Should he do this? He was unsure, but from the little he knew, it was certain his actions were despicable. Mary suggested the presence of a risk to their lives. He did not want to die, but what risk exactly was that? Pence? Would that fatty take revenge if whatever scheme they planned failed?

He was trapped in a mire of uncertainty.

He opened his journal randomly. It was full of drawings, diagrams and what appeared to be recipes and instructions on some sort of strange and complex project. How exactly would he make a spider out of moonlight, and why would he want that? He closed the book feeling a headache, and decided to read more later.

In any case, there was a nice, fine scroll lying over the table. He read the scroll, half-deciphering the text as he did. In what language it was written, he had no idea, but he could read it and that was enough.

By the end of it, he was no closer to finding the safe numbers, but he understood that fragments of light escaped through the cracks of dreams from somewhere higher. It was a very strange scroll, and explained in the meaning of certain symbols, but their apparent use needed a previous understanding Adam was unware of. As he caressed the paper, he realized that he held something old in his hands, something belonging in a museum.

Next, he took the book.

His fingers shook, and the book clattered upon the table, falling from his grasp. His hair stood on end. His mind reeled away. His heart hammered against his chest, and his breathing intensified. He felt a coldness creeping up his back, like an icy breath from over his shoulder, standing behind him, leaning close to see what he read.

He almost heard their soundless footsteps tiptoeing behind his back, from side, to side, to side.

He almost heard their voice, whispering gentle questions at his ear.

Their hand upon his shoulder as they looked upon him with large, wide eyes, filled with child-like wonder.

He whipped his head around. But naturally, nothing stood there.

Adam looked upon the cover of the book he dropped. A bat in mid-flight was drawn over the leather volume, staring ahead, fangs bared, wings spread open.

He reeled away from it, jumping back like a startled cat, the chair falling on the floor. He rushed back to his room, hurrying through the hallways and stairs, like a kid scared of the dark, or maybe of monsters hiding in the shadows.

He sat beside the sleeping Mary, half-panicking, sweating, trying to control his breathing.

His head hurt, and something terrible had frightened him, but he could not define what.

Mary moaned, turning in her sleep. He stopped his movements and eased is breathing, trying not to wake her.

She slept fitfully, but with calm, even breathing. Somehow that soothed him. His fright that had been so intense, felt like it was hidden behind a veil. He put it out of mind.

Adam drifted at some point, but dreams of large shadows dancing under the moonlight woke him long before dawn.

§

He watched her throughout the night. Before he knew it, morning had arrived.

She stirred awake lazily, not willing to get up. She half-sat, looked toward the window from where light shone down on her, frowned and greeted him with the familiarity of a long-time couple, not minding her dazed, sleepy eyes, her face, or her disheveled hair. She yawned and flopped back down on the bed, then looked at him with more care. “You didn’t sleep well.” It wasn’t a question.

“I didn’t sleep at all,” Adam said, words dripping melancholy.

She yawned again. “Why? Something on your mind?”

He sighed, feeling tired, and scared. “I went to the secret room last night.”

She turned toward him. “Oh, right. Did you get my books?”

“Sorry I forgot about the books. There is a safe there.”

She glared at him. “And?” she asked, as if urging to not be held in suspense.

“And I don’t know the combination.”

She appeared confused enough to make Adam think his secret was out now. Yes that would be good.

“You forgot something that important?” she asked, and Adam wondered how long it would take her to realize he had forgotten everything. “I guess Alexandra wouldn’t know. But Evelynn or Sarah should, why didn’t you enter their dreams?”

Adam was about to ask what she was talking about, when he remembered his journal had notes on that. Strangely, he almost had a good idea of how to do it, actually.

“Evelynn never wakes before noon,” Mary said, checking her cellphone. “There’s still time.”

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She pulled a trunk from under the bed. That was there? Several small labelled cases lay within. She opened three of them. One was a powder, one a perfectly round pebble, and the other was a strangely colored intangible substance that moved by itself as though propelled by a wind that was not present.

The strange-colored thing slowly bobbed around in the air, fluttering this way and that while Mary used the powder to draw a variety of symbols on the wooden floor. After a moment of this, she looked up at Adam with questioning eyes. “Come help me.”

“You’re doing so well,” Adam said. “I don’t want to be a bother.” He studied the symbols. He knew them; he saw them inside his head and in his journal.

“Adam?” she asked, and looked at him as though seeing something unfamiliar. “You’ve been acting weird ever since the accident. We should go to the hospital again; I don’t think you’re fine.”

“Just finish what you’re doing.”

Mary scowled, but continued to write. Soon, the symbols were complete.

Adam flipped through his notebook and found the rite before him. Seventeen symbols around a certain meteorite, written with fool’s gold. Then you needed the fragment of a purple dream, a dream of The Sphere.

The strange-colored thing was drawn into the center of the drawing. Once on the center, it collapsed on itself as the air shimmered and twisted. The air rippled like water or molten glass.

As though moved by a will that was not his own, he approached the ripple. No, he had not moved, neither had the ripple. But suddenly he found himself before it, entering it.

His eyelids felt heavy, and he wished nothing more than to sleep.

He was hurled through space, feeling a terrible sense of smallness before what appeared to be an infinite distance. He was falling at terrible speeds. He screamed desperately, his mind unable to wrap itself around what was happening. Then all was dark.

§

A brick wall with pipes running around it rose before him. A door three steps above ground stood to his left. He looked behind and saw another brick wall. Left and right led to the exit of the alley.

Adam was utterly confused, not understanding why or how he was thrown into a street.

This was an alley between two edifices. The sun was directly above his head, but it was not hot. It felt cold.

A distant rumbling far beneath his feet pulled his attention to the ground. It was porous, as if not all there. Dust swirled toward the sky in thin, long and twisted spirals.

He saw the sun, and was awestruck by the bizarreness of its appearance. The sun was red, seemingly far more solid than the real sun, like a distant round stone and connected to the earth by an enormously tall spire of a far redder shade. And that spire…was it moving? Its light felt cold. It seemed alive. No, it was alive, and it knew they were there.

“It looks rather nice,” Mary said. Only then did Adam notice her. She was not wearing a pajama, but a white and black dress that showed very little skin. He looked over himself, realizing he wore the clothes he was wearing for the funeral.

Mary went to the door and gave him a strange look.

Masking his confusion, he followed her.

Inside was a cozy room, comfortably dark, with wooden panels for walls, red couches, red curtains and fluffy brown carpets. The room was cold as winter, but on the far side, a fireplace crackled at the investiture of a poker held by an old, withered hand. A reddish light poured over the room from a single window on the wall to the right of the fireplace, shining over stone busts in the image of Oliver’s children.

Adam could only be awed by the intricate weirdness of the room as he followed Mary toward the person by the fire. It was a woman, dressed fully in black, face covered by a veil. She sat on an old rickety chair, and sighed wearily, letting her neck bend backward.

She noticed Adam and Mary, but merely glanced at them, utterly disinterested, as if they were part of the scenery.

Evelynn, Adam recognized once close enough to see her face beneath the veil. She was at least ten years older, her lustrous golden hair gone white and lifeless, her eyes unfocused and colorless; her skin was like pulled parchment folded over itself. Why did she look like this?

“Would you like to?” Mary asked, gesturing toward the woman.

Adam had no idea what she meant, so he shrugged and gestured for her to go instead.

Sighing, Mary stood before the old woman, held her face and made her turn her eyes at her. “There is a safe within a secret room inside the library of the mansion you have lived in since you married Oliver Good, but left last year when the two of you had your last fight,” she said, spacing every word apart as if afraid she would not be understood. “What is the code for that safe?”

“Oh,” Evelynn uttered, dazedly as though she were not fully aware of what was asked of her. “Yes...no...no. I can’t speak of the room,” she said, trembling. “It’s forbidden.”

“Forbidden,” Mary said. She smiled, and carefully, as if playing with a newborn, lifted the veil from Evelynn’s eyes.

Evelynn shook and moaned as though suffering some terrible pain.

Suddenly, Mary held a chalice in her hands, filled with thick, red liquid. “Worry not, Mrs. Evelynn. I shall not ask about the room again. Would you like a drink? It goes very well with a cold afternoon.”

She placed the cup in Evelynn’s hands, who looked curiously upon it with her dazed eyes.

“Is it wine?”

“The most delicious wine there is, or can be.”

“Oh,” Evelynn muttered. “That sounds delicious. I like to drink. I like to drink too much, especially when Oliver gets angry with me.” She took a sip and her eyes brightened, though only for a moment. She drank the rest in thirsty gulps. “This is incredible!” She became agape at the cup, and looked upon Mary. “Is there more?” she asked, like kid asking for candy.

“But of course,” Mary said, sitting on the couch and refilling her drink.

Finding this situation very bizarre, Adam sat beside her. The room suddenly shifted, but visibly as if twisting over itself. The chair Evelynn sat in faced the couch, and the reddish glow from the window diminished as brambles grew on the other side of the glass.

“But before drinking more, why don’t we talk about secrets?”

“Yes.” Evelynn nodded. “When you drink, you have to speak, it is only polite. And we share secrets over drinks, of course.”

“We do, don’t we?” Mary laughed, making Evelynn smile a little. “You have two sons, right?”

“And two daughters!” she declared, proudly. “John, Lucas, Louis and Delilah. Delilah’s husband is almost like a son to me. But Louis’ husband, oh she could’ve done a lot better than that sniveling mongrel.”

“Your children look a lot like you.”

An upset expression appeared on her face. “Too much. I wish they’d look more like their father, honestly. Then that—” she stopped herself from saying whatever bitter word was coming out. She grinded her teeth, but relaxing, continued. “Then Sarah wouldn’t make her snip comments. Oh, how I envy those children of hers; just like Oliver they are, just like that god damned bastard.”

“Oliver was quite the catch wasn’t he?” Mary asked. She shot Adam a playful glance. “He was very handsome.”

Evelynn sighed, wistfully. “I suppose he was.” Then she shook her head. “But good looks only make so much in a man. He was obsessed, obsessed!”

Mary fell silent. She looked upon the old woman with a gentle gaze, almost kindly, sympathetic even. She quickly shook her head as if to rid herself of whatever feeling was affecting her and continued. “He had a hidden safe, did he not?”

“He had, in the hidden room,” she continued.

“Oh, and did he ever tell you the combination? He must have.”

Evelynn smiled wryly. “He would never tell me a thing like that.” She looked at the ceiling as if searching for something written there. “But he may have written it in his journal. He carried one, you know, wrote everything in it. He was quite forgetful. I always had to remember him of stuff.”

“Forgetful is it?” Mary shot a smile at Adam.

He smiled wryly to hide his discomfort.

“And where is that journal?”

Evelynn did not answer at first. Then she frowned, displeased. “Sarah must have it,” she said. “She was the first to arrive, and made all the arrangements for his body before I arrived. The gall! Making arrangements for my husband!”

“It should be in her room then,” Mary mused, and looked at Adam. “Right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Adam said. “Should I look for it?”

“How could you not know?” she asked, exasperated. Then she frowned. “This is not some kind of test is it? ‘Cause I’m sick of that.”

Should he know it? “Let’s leave,” he told her, hastily, trying to hide his lack of memory.

She looked at him, wonderingly, silently. She seemed to be trying to see through him. “I love you,” she said, suddenly.

Adam wondered why she would say that now.

“You’re not exactly good to me, but I still love you,” she continued. “I even continued to love you despite Alexandra because I believe in you. Sometimes I think I am idiot for that. Either way, I love you; so, tell me, what is it that you’re hiding from me?”

Adam froze. She had realized, of course. It would be hard not to, after all that happened. “Maybe we should leave here first before having this conversation,” he said, looking at Evelynn, who was still sitting, apathetic, perhaps not even seeing them. She was doing embroidery.

“No.” Mary turned around and gazed directly at him, as if daring him to break eye contact. “Don’t think I don’t know that you hide things from me. I decided to let you tell me when you want to. But something changed. You’re acting strange and I want to know why.”

Adam felt his heart beating wildly within his chest. His hair stood on end. He felt like an electric shock ran through him.

The wood of the room groaned as though splitting.

Mary was startled, and looked around at the room. “What are you doing?”

“It’s not me,” Adam said, defending himself. The wood started to crack. The fire went out with a puff. The room shook. The door broke open. Evelynn shrieked as a powerful, cold draft invaded the room.

“Stop it!” Mary screamed.

“It’s not me!”

A long, loud moan came from outside, as if some large creature were approaching. Red light and white mist poured through the open door and cracks on the walls. The glass of the window melted in a torrent of light and mist.

“It’s not you,” Mary whispered, frightened. She clung to him, trembling.

Adam embraced her, having no idea what to do. She raised her eyes, pleading.

Adam calmed down. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Suddenly he knew what to do. He had done this many times before.

The world became a tunnel before him, and he was forcefully propelled through it. At the end of it, was himself.

All was black, and then he opened his eyes.

He was in the room. Mary was at his side, taking deep breaths, clutching her head. “What was that?” she asked, looking toward Adam.

But what could he answer, when he felt more confused than ever?