"No, please don't tell them I did it" I screamed as the pendulum blade swung slightly closer to my abdomen.
"I'll stop the blade as soon as you tell me where you hid the body" were words a raven squawked from across the room. It sat on the window sill and looked down at me. It's beady eye piercing my skin and searing my flesh where ever it gazed.
"You know you should really hold off on Poe before bed. It interferes with your cognitive abilities and makes it harder to lucid dream. Something about a mad mans rambling. You should see what happens when you read H.P. Lovecraft before bed." Clara stepped out of the darkness and came to the side of the bench. I couldn't tell if she was real or if she was just part of the dream. I knew I was dreaming at least. The crow flew off from the window out into the night sky and the blade disappeared. Clara untied the restraints around my body and walked off to the edge of the room. I stumbled down from the high torture bench and followed over to a wall with a normal looking door.
"This is your exit if you want it to be. Try and open it" Clara motioned for me to approach the door. I firmly grasped the knob and opened the door strong and swiftly. My escape didn't seem so assured.
"It's just a brick wall" I said as I reached out and felt the rough red bricks.
"Try again, but this time concentrate on where we need to be"
"And where would that be?" I said, confused.
"Look inside your mind and feel for a place that you are called to"
I thought for a bit and remembered that feeling I had the first time I left in the middle of the night. I needed to go somewhere and help someone. It was a small convenience store on the edge of darkness. Once again I felt the cold metal door knob in my hand and I pulled the door open slowly this time. I heard a the chime of bells knock against the door and beyond the door was the store I saw that night. Clara nodded in approval. I felt different as I walked through the door. It was a feeling of strength and confidence that I felt that night that I first visited this place. Clara stood at the front of the store watching out the window as I walked down the isles. This place didn't seem too usual. The products on the shelf were all in different languages. There were a few things in English and many in languages I recognized. The store wasn't what I thought I saw the first time. I grabbed a candy bar in what seemed to be Japanese packaging. It looked like a chocolate bar with hot peppers in it. One of my favorite candy bars was chocolate with hot peppers. I brought it to the front counter and placed it in front of the girl with pink hair. She smiled and scanned it into the register.
"An odd choice for a midnight snack." She said as she held out her hand for payment. I reached for my pocket and realized that I was still in my pajamas.
"I'm sorry, I seem to have left my wallet at home." The woman grinned with a bit of a mischievous look after I spoke. Something told me she didn't want cash.
"Your new here aren't you?" The woman said.
"This isn't a convenience store" Clara spoke up while still staring out the window. "This is a way-station isn't it" Clara turned and faced the cashier. "I thought the old shamans were extinct. But then again you aren't old now are you" Clara looked with a squint at the cashier.
"I'm old enough. Shamans still exists. We live here, on the edge of reality. Those who need us are drawn to us. It's safe out here. As for you, mark. I see that there is a great divide in your future. You are going to be very powerful someday. Learn to control it and it won't control you." The cashier lent out her hand for me to shake. I hesitated but greeted her. There was a hot searing sensation in my palm when she pulled her hand away. It felt like she tore away part of me.
"Is that all?" Clara asked and walked forward to the counter.
"We don't sell candy here" the woman smile and tapped the counter. The candy bar I had chosen was gone and in its place was a folded letter with a wax seal. I picked it up and examined it. "This is the answer to a question you haven't asked yet. Open it when you're sure you know what the question is."
"Yes, but you never told us your name" Clara was less intrigued with the letter and more interested with the woman. The cashier smiled sweetly and brushed her bangs out of her face. "My name is Cathy. This is normally when I fade out and leave you to find your way home." After she said this she faded becoming translucent until she disappeared. This happened quickly and suddenly.
"That was a shaman. She was one of the last of her kind. They are a lot like us but they are at the complete disposal of the continuum. They are taken where they need to be without their control. They feed off of those they help. It's the least we can do to support them."
Did she say feed off of? I thought to myself. I felt a little violated. It isn't everyday that you visit someone for dinner and you are the main course. "What do you mean she is like us and last of her kind." I asked this but I was starting to piece it together.
"I suppose it’s time that I sit down with you and teach you about some of this world" Clara had a tired look in her eye as she said this. She didn't seem to want to bring me in on this extravagant secret. Clara walked to the glass door at the front of the store and smirked quickly. "You're going to like this" Clara grabbed the door handle and started to slowly pull the door open. You could see through the glass a shimmer outside. The world through the view of the door stretched and warped. Then reality seemed to peal away and I could see what I can only explain as the inner workings of the universe. My mind couldn't comprehend the full magnitude of what I was seeing. It was an oddly inspiring feeling.
As the door swung open I could see the inside of a coffee shop. The world I was stepping into was warm and dark. It was a black, bleak night out. There was one other patron in the store front. Clara rushed me through the door and closed it hurriedly. She walked up to the counter and ordered an iced chai tea latte with soy milk and cinnamon sweetener. "And my friend here will have one as well." She pulled out a wallet and paid in cash. We sat at a table near the corner. The tea was the best I had ever had. The chai spices blended well with the black tea and the milk was creamy but not fatty or assertive. The extra cinnamon gave the tea a heat that I never got with a drink before. I drank the entire cup way too fast. I should have savored it. Clara sat silently enjoying her beverage for a long while before I decided I should try to get as much information out of her as possible before I loose the opportunity.
"What are we?" It was a simple question. We were something more then an average human and there seemed to be more like us. After I asked this I thought I should have phrased the question, how are we.
"We are one of the highest classes of the celestial order. There are nine divergent corners of the planes of reality. There are also nine different types of beings. You met a shaman tonight. There aren't many left in the multiverse. It's a great honor to be guided by the continuum. You must be destined for great things." Clara sipped her tea and looked off toward the entrance. "There are the sensitive, who can sense the future or are connected deeper to the multiverse in some way. There are the insensitive, they are normal, powerless individuals. Then there is Carl." As Clara said Carl a short red haired man entered through the door. He was rather plump and wobbled when he walked. His face was round and specked with freckles. He wore a devilish grin as he approached our table.
"Mark, I would like you to meet Carl. A low life, a blemish on the continuum." Clara had a bit of disgust in her voice every time the name Carl slipped through her teeth. She glared at this man as if she was trying to repulse him with a look.
"I'm touched that you remember me Clara. It's been too long. I see you got summoned here as well." Carl reached over and noisily dragged a seat to our table and sat next to Clara. He seemed uncomfortably close to her and she was plainly put off by it. Clara scooted her seat away from him and turned to me.
"Carl is a dreamer. He can move about the continuum in his astral form as he sleeps, just like you're doing now. But he, unlike you, has to be anchored to the universe his body resides in. He was from our earth originally but his annoyances and blatant opposition to order earned him banishment to a secluded corner of the multiverse. He was banished to the very planet he was interfering with. How is that working out for you anyway?" Clara smirked sidedly to Carl and an evil look passed through her eyes. Carl's happy go lucky look faded from his face and his brow sunk. "Not so much fun living there if you can't influence them with technology or machines."
"I was helping that world" Carl snapped out with a resentful glare cast across the table. "That world had nothing before me. No culture. No meaning. Those Neanderthals needed me. It's not my fault if they misunderstood my help for a deity!" Carl was fuming. He spoke like he was in the right even though, even as an outsider, he seemed to have crossed an obvious moral boundary.
"There are rules. Your actions weren't approved by the counsel. You have remained an outlier from day one. Your punishment may have been my choosing but you were going to be reprimanded with or without me. You're lucky banishment was your only reprove." Clara must be higher up on the ladder of power than I realized if she had the authority to decide someone's fate. She has so much hidden from me. I think I may never find out everything that she knows. I can't think like that. If I am to live up to my title I must start taking notes and figuring out things for myself. Mental note number one, it's against the rules to create a position of power by bringing objects across universes. Mental note number two, banishment is a light sentence for such crimes.
"The rules that exists were created by some unknown group of old men. The rules get bent and broken all the time and yet I'm the only person who has been sentences for crime in a century. I am being bullied, plain and simple."
Clara looked over to me in a desperate attempt to change the conversation. "When a group is called together it's a sign that a great event about to happen. We are either here to witness a beautiful phenomenon or experience a tragedy. Tell me, what do you feel is coming."
I looked around the late night cafe. There was an eerie tingling sensation on the back of my neck. The man sitting across the room ruffled the newspaper he was reading. He seemed agitated. He was breathing in short huffs. The tingling on my neck grew into a vibration. The air filled with buzzing and the floor rumbled. I looked over to Clara and got the feeling that she knew now that something nice wasn't about to happen.
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Clara got up from the table and walked over to the window. She stood there and looked out in what seemed to be awe. I had to see what brought Clara to shock. I walked over to her side and saw the biggest swarm of insects I had ever seen. The street lights dimmed as the cloud passed over them. There was a distinct motorized roar as a beam of light slowly passed by the window. The sound was made by an old motorcycle. The rider was shrouded in shadow but his eyes glowed red.
Clara grabbed my arm so tight I had to hold back a yelp of pain as she pulled me quickly to the door behind the counter. I turned my head just in time to see the back of Carl bolt ahead of us and pull the door open to another world. We ran through, behind him just before the door shut. I rubbed my arm where Clara had grabbed me and wondered if there would be a bruise there when I woke up.
"Who was that?" I dared ask.
"It's bad luck to speak of them but I've never believed in luck. He was a harbinger of the apocalypse. We call them horsemen. They go from world to world, called to bring about destruction. They're not evil. They don't kill... In a sense. They are the clean up crew. Without them, worlds would overpopulate the multiverse and all that we know would collapse into a singularity. They are outcast from the order of waves and operate solely on the whim of the continuum." The phrase Clara said, "order of waves", it sounded familiar but I didn't know why.
"If they aren't evil why did we run from him." I didn't understand the whole concept of purging entire universes and killing off worlds of innocents on a whim for an unknown unspoken force.
"Universes that are going to be eliminated get locked... Or at least that's what they say. It's considered very bad luck to see a horseman." Carl spoke to me as if I was under him. He looked at me as if he had authority over me. I didn't like him, he rubbed me the wrong way.
"Where are we now?" I looked around a dark room. My eyes started to focus and I could make out shapes. There was a large desk with a lamp on it in front of me. I turned the light on and saw we were in an office.
Clara looked to Carl with a worried look on her face. "Carl, where did you bring us?"
Carl gave Clara an expression that I didn't understand. It was as if he was saying goodbye to someone for the last time. "I'm sorry, so very sorry Clara."
All hope and life seemed to fade from Clara's face. She bowed her head slightly. "Shit" Clara murmured down at the floor. I had never heard Clara swear. She always seemed so in charge and restrained.
There was a buzzing sound that faded in from off in the distance. I walked to the windows in the small corner office and looked outside. We were on a third or fourth floor high off the street and off in the distance the lights were flickering. The lights faded in and out and then the next street light started to dim. It spread quickly to the next one. It was coming toward us. Did that man know where we were. I backed away from the window and looked to Clara for some sign of hope. She was sullen. She looked like she was going to die and that's when I knew we were completely doomed. Clara walked to the large important looking office chair and sat heavily in its soft looking leather seat. Her brown hair matched the dark brown tinge of the headrest. She slumped down in the chair and grabbed a small wooden box off the desk. She opened the dark mahogany box and pulled out a half smoked cigar and lighter. As she pulled the cigar to her mouth and lit it her skin seemed to melt and sag her long curly brown hair turned a clean white. She aged 50 years in a matter of seconds. As she exhaled a breath of smoke she seemed to relax as if she just took off her work clothes.
"So we’re just giving up?" I exclaimed. I had no true idea of the gravity of the situation but I thought that there must be something else we could do. After I spoke the lamp light flickered. A pen that rested on the edge of the desk rolled onto the floor. I felt a subtle shift in the building. We all paused and looked out the window. The glass shattered and the desk shook. There was a sound of destruction that came from all around us. I dropped to my knees and grabbed the desk. Carl pressed his back into the corner with a look of uneasy fright in his eyes.
It was over in a matter of seconds. Glass glistened in the pale moonlight and the room was littered with it. The embers from Clara's cigar glowed orange as I heard a long inhale.
"Clara, we aren't actually here. Right? You said we are just dreaming. How do we wake up?" I could see Clara's face in the glow of the cigar. She was quiet, and the silence lasted in an awkward pause. I could hear the doomsday motorist ride up the street, away from the building we were in.
Clara spoke, breaking the silence with a few words that collapsed my proud moment. "It doesn't work that way" Clara turned her head and looked out the hole where the windows used to be. She didn't seem to be planning any explanation so I turned to Carl. I didn't do it because I wanted him to explain it but I thought that it might spark something in Clara.
"Carl, you must have some idea of how we can get off of this world." Carl looked to me and stood up straight. He puffed out his chest and just as he was about to speak.
"Ha! That numb skull. He couldn't even tell you where we are, let alone how to leave. He is not to be trusted and further more he doesn't have any useful skills to contribute." Clara was harsh. when she yelled this her age fell away and you could see her youthful vigor.
"What about my note?" I posited as I pulled out the wax sealed envelope from my pajama pockets.
"I don't know if even that can help us now. What we are dealing with, no one has ever managed to survive." I looked to Clara and frowned. I could not see this being the end of my life. This is not the way I wanted to die. I tore open the wax seal on the envelope and unfolded the brown parchment.
A few moments passed and Clara was growing increasingly more anxious. "What is it? Spit it out!" Clara stood up from the desk and flicked the dead end of the cigar out the window. As she walked over to me I turned the paper over and back again as I had done for the past couple minutes.
Clara turned to me and with a pale weak look looming over her. "Ask it something"
I took the brown tinged paper from her hands and spoke quietly. "How do we escape a locked world". I flipped the paper over and examined both sides again and then said it once more with might. "How do we escape a locked world!". Clara grabbed the paper from me and held it up to the moon. There was nothing on it. "Is that the answer? There is no escape." I needed to be the all knowing now more than ever. "Not everything" I thought aloud. "We just need one good idea" I looked to Clara. "How do we lock a world."
Clara looked to me and had a look as if I was asking very basic questions. "Only the horsemen can lock a world".
"If a horseman locked the world doesn't that mean they can still escape. Maybe if we talk to it, maybe if we ask very nicely, we can be granted a way out."
Clara had a grin on her face. "We would be the first to escape a doomed planet."
"We would be the first person to seek out a horseman and find one." Carl spoke with a tone that bordered pessimism.
I folded and tucked the paper into my shirt pocket. I took lead and grabbed the doorknob behind me and set out for the first floor. The staircase was unlocked and pretty much every door on our way to the front entrance. That's when we hit the first road block. I was leading. I wasn't about to slow down for a locked door and I was itching to try my new abilities. I looked out the locked glass door and spied a pub across the street. I turned and grabbed the last door we went through and focused. I wanted the door across the street. I pulled the door open and for a second I thought I saw the street. For a moment I was sure I mastered this new ability and for the first time in a long time, I was full of myself. There was nothing there. I had opened the door to the stairwell once again. I turned to Clara and Carl hoping they hadn't noticed my U-turn. They were walking through the obvious hole in the side of the building where the windows had shattered. I felt like a fool. How could I think that I could summon this new ability without any training. When is Clara going to stop and finish explaining things to me. I pulled myself out the window and spoke up to Clara. "How are we going to track down this horseman?"
"He should be easy to follow. Look at the path of destruction he leaves in his wake. We just need a way to keep up with him." Clara looked over to Carl and smiled. That was the first time I ever saw a hint of appreciation directed at Carl. She looked up and down the street surveying the various cars parked along the road. She approached a beat up looking green Oldsmobile two blocks down the road. She placed he hand gently on the door handle and looked back at us as we walked up next to her. She held up two crossed fingers by her ear and slowly pulled up on the handle with the other. The door clicked and pulled open. She took her two crossed fingers and pointed them at Carl. "You think you can manage this?" She seemed giddy. Was she really having fun now, in the middle of a glass littered street just as the apocalypse is about to happen. Furthermore, are we about to steel a car? Carl climbed in across the passenger seat and laid under the dashboard.
"Are we hot wiring a car?" I was shocked. I had never taken part in this kind of criminal activity before. There was a pressure in my chest and my heart was pounding loudly.
"Hot wiring is nothing. I could take this car apart into its most basic pieces and assemble it in the middle of your living room with nothing but a stick and a pocket knife." Carl seemed a lot more useful than Clara would have me believe. The way Carl spoke made him seem like the authority on all things technological. I was thinking of a way of showing how impressed I was in a way that might not call attention to myself when Carl interrupted my train of thought.
"In fact I have taken apart a vehicle to assembleit in another dimension. I was nearly done moving the parts over when I was banished. You would be surprised how hard it is to make a proper screw driver out of forest material." The car sputtered and then started. The street was silent and the glass on the car glittered in the new light of the cab. Clara walked around to the drivers side and gave Carl a mean look that let him know there was no chance he was driving this car. I sat in the back seat behind Clara. I didn't think I had the seniority to kick Carl out of the front seat.
Clara sat with her hands at ten and two on the wheel for a few seconds and then swung her body around in the seat to look at me. She spoke to me and put in in a position I was not expecting. "this is your show. I think you should drive."