Mystery Lake

[42] The Hold of Memory

He was a curious figure. With all the presentation and posturing earlier at the ranger station and then outside the restaurant, she was expecting something else at this point. Maybe looming and leering like a mysterious figure or a wannabe vampire boy. But he just looked like a common man, even more so than in any of their previous encounters. His face bore some traces of a faint Asian inspiration, especially indicated by his sleek, shiny black hair. He glanced over at her, but without intent or concern. Instead, it was as if he had just happened to notice her there, as if he had been expecting her.

The agent brought up similar concerns she had about conflicts in dinner plans from his perspective. Roxy found it immensely surreal to be talking about something so humanly mundane with what seemed to be a next-level entity. They let the romantic compromise play out as they drifted through some of the more intricate store displays, including ornate old clocks. A Mesoamerican display flanked the wall with very tiny, weathered off-white price tags.

All of the prices seemed way out of Roxy's range for even a frivolous purchase, but they didn't seem totally unreasonable. She considered picking something up as at least a memento of their stay here, even if there were aspects she didn't want to remember. Cerberus leaned to the side and then tilted back. They regarded each other before Cerberus spoke again.

"When do you think the world will end?" He asked her frankly. Roxy shifted her eyebrows around a few times, taking in the question.

"Is that one of the questions you and Rydia wanted to ask me?"

Cerberus shook his head. "No. I'll tell you when we get to one of those. This is just a question of personal curiosity. You don't have to answer. But then you don't have to answer anything."

Roxy accepted this and weighed it inwardly before coming to the conclusion, "I don't know. I just hope it's a long time after my lifetime."

The agent accepted this answer with a simple nod of the head, then gestured to an object under glass that looked like a stylized representation of the sun. "I assume you heard all about the end of the Mayan calendar back in 2012."

"I was just a kid back then. I know there was a movie—probably a bunch of movies. Same thing as Y2K before I was born."

Cerberus tipped his head back, as if he had just come to a realization. How old was this guy? Cerberus cleared his throat and continued, still gesturing at the sun token, "There have been studies done on various ancient calendars like that. The Mayans, in particular, held Venus in high esteem. Their calendar begins with its birth. It's closely tied to solar phenomena. Some speculate that a massive coronal mass ejection lit up the atmosphere of Venus like a second sun. And the end of their calendar also seems to follow solar cycles. But nothing happened, right?"

Roxy had a sneaking sensation that this was starting to sound like one of those early morning lectures Joel had to take and couldn't quite stay awake for. She shrugged in response. Cerberus continued his presentation.

"Anyway, solar cycles are about an eleven-year thing. It takes that long to flip polarity. 2012 plus eleven-ish years would put the end of something solar right around the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024."

"Are you saying the world is..."

Cerberus preempted her. "Oh, no, no. I'm not saying anything of the sort. Not presuming, not professing. I'm just thinking. Besides, the world has ended before." The look Cerberus gave her was oddly maternal without being condescending. Roxy shifted in front of him, looking for something steady to hold on to, but found nothing.

She swallowed and asked him, "What do you mean by that?"

"Mythology and history are cyclical. Everything that's happened has happened before. At least, that's what's suggested. Creation and destruction. Some believe that reality is reproduced over and over again by some guiding hand that creates the world and strives to perfect it. Others think that the cycle is more like taking an old magnetic tape and making a copy of it. It has to start over; there has to be an apocalyptic event that wipes out all the problems. But each iteration is less than the one before. The colors are less bright, the world is less vibrant, what once was has been dimmed, and it will only grow darker and weaker, but it is a necessary step to save all things from oblivion. Traditionally, it is believed that this has happened about five times before. And there is a finite limit."

Roxy stood there, feeling like she was being blasted with a firehose of thoughts. All of this clearly meant something to Cerberus, and strangely enough, he was drenching her in knowledge as thoroughly as she'd been drenched in the dead fairy sex water. She wasn't quite sure what to say to all this, but offered up, "OK. You must be great at parties."

She worried about how flippant that sounded and whether it might irritate or even piss him off. But the agent took it with a crooked, amused grin. "I'm afraid I don't go to parties anymore. I prefer to talk one-on-one. But I am far from the reason we need to talk at all. We just want to know if you've seen anything particularly out of the ordinary."

"Like those Hollow assholes?"

Cerberus softly scraped his foot against the wood before looking at a set of trinkets that looked recently cleaned and dusted, with no case to contain them. "Something like that. Anything you might consider unusual."

Roxy took several long moments with that. She was not under the comfy illusion that she was perfectly safe. Rather, the feeling right then was somewhere between swimming beside a shark and holding raw steak fingers in front of a wolf. If she wasn't particularly careful, it didn't matter how many others were around to see her being scooped up and taken away by these creatures. Jake drifted between the aisles, trying to be the same sort of shark but a protector. Roxy did her futile best to hide him from Cerberus's sight whenever he passed by. And she considered the right answer.

"I got propositioned by some asshole at a truck stop, just because I was acting perky and happy. The bastard wouldn't leave me alone. And I needed help to get him off me. He ran away. He sure seemed like something you should take care of."

Cerberus listened and lightly folded his arms. "There are terrible things out there. I wish they weren't after you and those you travel with, but these things happen. We have actually been keeping an eye on your group, which is probably not surprising considering our last meeting."

Roxy clenched her jaw. "So you knew about what happened to me, and you just let it happen when you clearly could have done something?" She knew she should have softened that accusatory question, but she didn't feel like it.

Cerberus swiftly pointed out, "You had help, as you just said. Besides, my form of help tends to make more of a mess. I am truly sorry that you had to suffer. It's not something that goes away, no matter how much time you give yourself. The only thing you can do is persevere through it. Is there anything else that happened that needs to be mentioned?"

His answers felt belittling. He could have done something; he could have helped. She knew that it may have just been this small encounter where the asshole ripped her out of the regular world and tossed her into his private place to do whatever he wanted. It didn't matter in any grand scheme, and nothing actually happened, but she still felt like a wildly disturbed pool of water fighting its way through eddies and chaotic currents. She could move on, but this crap was still right there, at the surface. Just saying he was sorry felt like more than she could ever imagine he might offer her, compared to gnawing off her face or limbs on a whim. She should just be happy about that...

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"Fuck off... You don't care about me. You don't care about us. You're sorry. Big whoop. I had to fight off a pair of whatevers hunting us in this building. A pair of black smoke spirit creatures that looked like contorted humans and walked like wolves. Somehow, we fended them off. Without any special help."

Internally, Roxy regretted the way she had phrased her answer. She could have softened so many words or framed them differently. But it was the truth as she felt it right then, and not speaking truthfully would probably have been worse. She omitted the text message sent to them as a warning that she'd sliced through reality like a curtain, the voice in her head giving her pep talks, and the fact that Ross vomited on the creatures, and they had melted away. But otherwise, it was the truth.

The agent's face hardened at her words, but anger didn't surface. "Don't presume to know what I care about. I am truly sorry for what you have had to go through, but there are bigger considerations. Some days, all we can do is cry and get angry at things we can't possibly control, and try not to lose ourselves in the trap of useless hope. Instead, keep fighting as hard as you can. Persist. That's all you can do."

Roxy wobbled in place, accepting that this was really the best compromise she was going to get. At least the wolf made of the places between stars wasn't going to bite her head off. The tension between them released slowly, like a hidden but palpable pressure valve that let out hissing steam. They both looked around at all the objects collected and presented on this side of the store.

Clearing his throat, Cerberus tapped on the glass and drew her attention to some classic rings on velvet cushions. "Quite a menagerie of memories contained in this place."

She raised an eyebrow, inquiring as to his specific meaning of memories. These were just trinkets, old artifacts, and totems of the past. She had her own ideas about what memories meant with these artifacts, but she wanted to hear his side.

"Every single object has a certain spirit that saves and stores what it knows. An impression or a record. All that it lived, all that it encountered. Wouldn't it be fascinating to talk to any one of these old pieces and get a sense of what it went through?"

Roxy nodded, even if she wasn't particularly enthused by the notion. From behind them, Layla emerged, wandering the aisles with quiet curiosity, sifting through. Cerberus noticed and paid attention to her for just a few seconds before returning his gaze to Roxy, who was trying to come up with an answer to all that.

"I suppose. Though, maybe it's more frightening to actually know what some of these things have been through. More than a few have probably been shoved up someone's ass for reasons I don't wanna know. And that's just the start. It might be better to just appreciate them on a surface level than to get all their deep, dark secrets."

"Fair enough, if that's how you feel," Cerberus replied, rubbing his hands together gently. "Have you felt any strangeness occupying you since we last spoke? Not an external force but an internal one. With all you've seen, I doubt it would be a large leap to surmise unseen entities in our world, wandering about, looking for the brightest light to parasite. One must be careful, especially in moments of overflowing happiness, not to open oneself up to dangerous things."

Not exactly a subtle suggestion, but Roxy figured she could play dumb. She asked if Cerberus was talking about ghosts. Fortunately, they were among certain memorabilia with sinister histories, like a cursed football, creepy dolls with real human hair, and death-related items. Eugene really did have a strange range of eclectic interests. Considering how sparse the place was for customers, Roxy wondered if maybe they should just turn it into a Ripley's-style museum instead of trying to sell any of the stuff around here. He probably had his ways of making a go of it at this point, but she was just curious. The background provided points of emphasis for her comment. Cerberus reflected silently before responding.

"There are various names. But I assure you, anything that wants a piece of your spirit or body is not beneficial company." Cerberus' eyes narrowed and his nostrils faintly flared, as if he were hunting the air for something only he could detect, like a drug-sniffing dog. Roxy responded with a raised eyebrow and waited.

He scanned her eyes and looked all over her entire body. She had no idea what was going on but stayed still as if this were some medical scan or a metal detector procedure. Nothing much happened for a few seconds, except for the waft of giggling words from across the room. Slowly, Cerberus dipped and sniffed with a frown. She hoped it was a positive sign and nudged him with the simple question, "What?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. My only remaining question is, did you happen to notice anything out of sorts about your cohorts?"

Roxy picked up on that. She was clear. Or at least Cerberus acted like she was. But he hadn't scrutinized the others yet. And he was looking for something bad. Possession? Sure sounded like it. What would he do if he found out that one of them had something bad inside? Did she have suspicions about someone else in the group? She couldn't let the notion hang for too long, or this guy would get suspicious for sure.

"What would you do if you found something?"

"That would depend on what I found. Do you know anyone I should talk to?" Cerberus shifted his head. Most of the man's former congeniality had faded. He was being sharply serious.

Obviously, the first name that occurred to her with suspicious things, beside herself, was Ross. But no matter what Ross or Alyssa had done to her or anyone else, they didn't deserve this man pursuing them. Maybe it was just a bad spirit on him, and maybe this guy wasn't going to do anything to harm any of them, even if he found what he was looking for. Maybe maybe maybe maybe... but that was a big risk to take. He had helped them once, but that didn't guarantee that he was helping them now.

"You can talk to whoever you want, but we've been through some shit. I trust everyone in this group with my life. There's no one who I think is a danger to me, myself, or anyone else. We have arguments but that's natural. That's all. Nothing I would call out about anyone."

Cerberus narrowed his eyes but gave a subdued nod. "All right. Fair enough. But if anything happens, remember that you had this opportunity to tell me. You may not be in danger right now, but danger has found you and your group a lot lately. But I have my business and you have your business, and I just thought I could help in some way. And that's all."