Briarpatch by Tim Pratt (20 page)

“Be as cruel as you like,” Ismael said. He thought for a moment. “You can even tell him you’re working with me, if you wish.”

“Because . . . you want him to bash your head in with a rock as soon as he sees you?” The idea seemed to amuse her.

Ismael shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll know the truth soon enough. Once he’s broken, once he can see the briarpatch clearly, I’ll be able to enlist him to my cause.”

“Riiiight. Because you know the guy really well. Me, I think it’ll be more like the head-bashing scenario, but what do I know? I’ve only been fucking him and listening to his pillow talk for months, right? Doesn’t matter to me either way.”

“That indifference is what I value most in you, Echo. When will Darrin be out of the house?”

She shrugged. “I doubt he’s even out of bed yet. I’ll call in a while and make sure he’s gone, then we can head over.” She belched. “Mind if I just hang out here until then?”

“You want to pillage the legacy room again, don’t you?” He picked up his coffee cup, feeling the remnants of heat through the ceramic.

“It’s not like you use that stuff, and I made a killing last time I went to the vintage store to sell some. It’s like the ’70s died and went to heaven in there. What, did you convince a whole disco to commit mass suicide?”

Ismael didn’t answer her. The smell of her cigarette smoke made him crave a few drags of his own. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d craved anything other than oblivion. Perhaps the prospect of venturing into the briarpatch again was revitalizing him. Even if his companion this time would be utterly clueless about his own origins and nature, and would view Ismael as a hated enemy besides. No road trip or walking tour or pilgrimage could be perfect, he knew. Once he told Darrin what he wanted to hear most, Darrin would go along with Ismael willingly. He might not know Darrin as well as Echo did—certainly not as
carnally
—but he understood how Darrin felt about Bridget, and that was the only tool he needed. Ismael was capable of far more complex psychological manipulations, but they were seldom necessary. Most people were simple.

“Ransack away,” Ismael said. He didn’t hold onto material things out of a desire for them—it was just easier to shove it all into a room. The people he helped, the ones he led successfully or unsuccessfully in their search for the light, left all sorts of things with him. They brought the detritus of their lives into his house during their last weeks of existence, and then gradually stopped needing them, and left everything piled on Ismael’s floor. After tonight, Echo could have the whole place . . . though she’d probably just burn it down in a fit of pique at losing her chance to make Ismael pay. She had no idea he planned to disappear forever with Darrin tonight. He’d made promises to her. To Nicholas, too, for that matter, though the promises he’d made to Nicholas were ludicrous, and the man was too blind and hopeful to realize it. Nicholas and Echo would both be profoundly disappointed when Ismael vanished. The thought gave him some pleasure. They were vile people. He respected Darrin far more than either of them. At least Darrin knew what he wanted, and wanted something pure—a life with Bridget, in love. Darrin just had the misfortune to have something, to
be
something, that Ismael needed, which meant Ismael had to take away all the things Darrin loved. It was a sad arithmetic, but there was the light of a better world to consider. The touch of that light washed away all doubt and regret, Ismael knew, and he had long since reached the point where he would do anything to reside permanently in its splendour.

He sat in silence for a while, looking at the sky, thinking about the light.

“I’m bored. You’re boring.” Echo went back into the house, leaving her cigarette burning on the edge of the steps.

He was not sorry to see her go. He continued sitting. Some time passed, as it always did.

“Hey, Ismael, somebody’s at your goddamned door,” Echo yelled from inside, startling Ismael from his reverie. His reveries were becoming more frequent, and he feared they were approaching catatonia. Unconsciousness was pleasant, yes, but he dreamed of something better than simple coma, and besides, he knew no matter how deeply he slept someday he would wake up again, and be right back where he started. It was good to try a new approach. “The
door
,” Echo yelled again. “I’m not your maid.”

Perhaps Ismael should have contrived to sleep with Echo. He had many exotic STDs, and if anyone deserved to have her enthusiasm checked a bit, it was Echo. But using his weight of worldly misery as a weapon was distasteful—fundamentally, he wanted to
decrease
the amount of misery in the world. He had an aura of depression about him, true, something that tended to make people dour and reflective in his company, but that was nothing he could control, just the long-accumulated power of a particularly exothermic personality. He wasn’t a bad person, just a tired one.

“I’ll get it,” Ismael said. It might be Nicholas. It might be someone more useless. He would go and see. No outcome would please him. Life was nothing but a million little disappointments punctuated by larger tragedies.

The knock at the door was tentative but constant, and Ismael kicked his way through the debris in the hallway—scattered clothes rejected by Echo, mostly, because she was a walking disaster—and opened the door.

The man on the steps was vaguely familiar, but almost everyone in the world was, after all. There were only so many types of bodies and faces, and Ismael had encountered nearly all of them during his years wandering the Earth. “I can’t help you,” Ismael said, because saying “May I help you?” only sowed false hope in solicitors and the religious.

“Ah,” the man said. “You don’t remember me. We met at a little café, it was only a couple of days ago . . .” He trailed off, cocking his head at Ismael, looking at him searchingly. This man was ordinary, but for a certain peculiar intensity that made his eyes shine.

“I meet many people,” Ismael said, but he did recognize the man, now. One of his outreach cases, someone who was a near-perfect candidate for letting this world go—someone who didn’t have to be convinced as Bridget had. With this man, it had seemed enough to let him step into Ismael’s field of resignation and sorrow, and make a few reasonable suggestions. “Did you want something?”

“You told me . . . you told me if my life was so empty, I was better off killing myself.”

“And yet you spurned my advice,” Ismael said sadly. “I’m afraid I have no other wisdom to offer you.” He began to close the door.

“Wait!” the man said, and Ismael paused a moment. “But I did take your advice. I tried, anyway, but I didn’t manage to . . . to kill myself.”

“I remember you,” Ismael said at last. “I thought you manifested a tremendous lack of competence. Might I suggest, next time, leaping headfirst from a great height, perhaps one of the bridges that span the bay. That should prove sufficient to the task. Now, good day.”

As Ismael began to close the door, the man said, “When I tried to kill myself, when I almost died, I saw light. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

Ismael sighed, opened the door again, and said “I suppose you’d better come in.” He stepped aside and gestured, allowing the man to pass. “What’s your name?”

“Orville Troll,” he said, and when he entered the foyer, he was trailed by faint shimmering apparitions, near-duplicates of his own form wrought in a sort of coloured smoke. Ismael cocked his head, frowning. He’d only seen that particular sort of phenomenon once before, after he’d taken Bridget to the strange hospital in the briarpatch, after she was mauled by the bear. Her new body was trailed for a few days by such ghostly shapes, invisible to all but Ismael. He hadn’t mentioned them to her, in part because he liked having secrets, in part because she would want to know what they were, and he had no answer—possible bodies that
hadn’t
been drawn up from the depths of potential? A sort of ghost of the old, abandoned body? He had no way of knowing. The briarpatch was more a place of mysteries than a land of revelations. The fact that this man, this Troll, had such a trail meant he was something more than he seemed. Had he been to the strange hospital too, and traded in an old shape for a new one? Or had he undergone some similar but variant experience?

“Since then I’ve been seeing things,” the man said, and Ismael nodded. “Things like hallways, stairs, bridges that lead nowhere . . .”

“Come, sit.” Ismael led him past the junk room, where Echo was still opening and closing drawers, but she didn’t come out to socialize. He took Orville to the living room and indicated that he should sit on a heap of cushions. Ismael sank into his customary place. “There is a world beyond the world you know,” Ismael said. “Your experience has opened your eyes to it. Most are unable to see that world without assistance from men such as myself, but you must be truly prepared to leave this world behind if you saw the light unassisted.” It was that fact, that he’d already seen the light, that made Ismael decide to help Orville. A man that close to the better world deserved to be guided. “Most people require a great deal of meditation, ritual, preparation, the careful stripping-away of their egos. When we met, I sensed there was nothing in your life but hollows and darkness, and it seems I was correct. You are a very lucky man.”

“That light. What is it?” He leaned forward, expression serious.

“I have every reason to believe it is heaven.”

“Harps and halos?” Orville asked.

“Not that, nor a happy hunting ground, nor virgins and a walled garden, though the yearning for all such heavens throughout human history may be a debasement of the just and proper yearning for the light. It is a place where all care, pain, worry, and tension are washed away. To live in the light is to be forever ecstatic. In the better world, there is no disappointment. And you, Mr. Troll, are ready to reach that world. Your soul yearns for it, without reservation. You need only leave this body behind.”

“I’ll shoot his head off if he wants,” Echo said, emerging from the bedroom. “Is that gun still in the backyard, Izzy?”

“Please leave us, Echo. I am trying to help this man.”

She snorted. “So am I. You said he’s ready to cast off his flesh and so forth, and I’d get a kick out of doing the damage. Everybody wins.”

“I—I don’t think I want—” Orville stammered.

Ismael waved his hand. “If someone murders you, there will be fear, there will be a clinging to life; it doesn’t work. Even if you give consent, the actions of another upon you can make things more difficult. No, it is best if you take your own life. I recommend leaping from a high bridge, headfirst, because that is one of the most certain ways to kill oneself, more sure than drugs, which the body can reject, more sure than bullets, which can graze or ricochet, more sure than strangulation, which can fail. Please leave us, Echo.”

“Whatever.” She walked off.

Orville nodded. “Headfirst. That makes sense.” He looked up at Ismael. “So if I jump from a bridge, I’ll go to this other world, this better world you’re talking about? For sure?”

“Nothing is sure,” Ismael said, thinking of Bridget, and the absence of light beneath her when she fell. “But I believe you will pass through, yes.”

“Why don’t you tell him what happens if he fails,” Bridget said, stepping from a nowhere-space in a corner into the centre of the room. This house was at a nexus of branching corridors leading to various parts of the briarpatch, a sort of magical crossroads, quite convenient for Ismael’s comings and goings—but it did have the potential for the occasional adept and traveller to come wandering in. He hadn’t expected to see
Bridget
, though.

Ismael gazed at her, and felt something he had not felt in a very long time: the cold weight of fear in his gut. But he would not reveal that fear to this ghost of the woman he’d once tried to help. “Hello, Bridget. I’m sorry you couldn’t reach the light.”

“You’re
sorry
? You son of a bitch. I wondered if you’d be able to see me.”

Ismael shrugged. “Anyone who can see the pathways in the briarpatch can also see things like you.” He paused. “Alas, such people are few, so it will not expand your social circle much.” He nodded to Orville. “Now, to answer you more fully: If you were to undergo certain preparations which I generally advise, you could loosen your spirit from your body. If you followed this path, and leapt from a bridge in hopes of finding a land of peace and wonders beyond this one, your last act before hitting the water would be to let your spirit leave your body, so that it might pass into the light of a better world. But if you had not properly released all the hungers, needs, and desires of this world, your spirit would be unable to make the transition.
Your
spirit, Orville, is already unburdened, and would pass to the better world naturally, without all that tiresome study and preparation. But if, for some reason, you failed . . .” Now he turned his eyes to Bridget, still in the shape of a body, the poor girl, still in the ghost of the
clothes
she’d died in, how sad. He went on. “In that case, your soul might be trapped between worlds, lost, angry, hopeless, and worthy of pity. Inhabiting the memory of a body, walking around in a trite human shape, a poor imitation of life—”

Bridget slapped him. Ismael let her. Being touched by a dead woman’s hand was peculiar, but not really painful. Her hand moved, and there was pressure, but the impact was minimal. The dead could do more dangerous things—wield knives clumsily, or throw crockery, that was always a favourite—but their attacks were generally easy to avoid if they didn’t catch you unawares. They were clumsy because they didn’t really have bodies, just the persistent memories of bodies. Orville—who was somehow bound to Bridget, it seemed; ghosts sometimes got entangled that way—stared at them with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry, Bridget,” Ismael said. “I truly thought you were ready. You were serious, and fearless in the briarpatch, and always striving for what came next, but I failed you. I should have held you back. You did not divest yourself of all your worldly wants and wishes, loves and hates. I should have realized, but you convinced me you were prepared. I’m sure you even convinced yourself. But you were not ready.”