Dirty Eden (3 page)
We were standing in front of the park bench again suddenly. I don’t know how we got there. I refused to ask. I simply sat down against it.
“And you?”
“Ah yes, me,” the Devil began with a peculiar smile that suggested both pleasure and regret. “I was the one that sat in the back, head lowered, dreading being called to go to the board and show the class my skill. Goddamned Nothing nominated
me
to be God’s partner in Its little science project.” He threw his hands in the air surrendering.
Rising up, I rested my forearms upon my knees. “Okay, so then what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Nothing.”
I gave the Devil a quick, sharp look.
“Well, that part has nothing to do with you, really,” he said, “but everyone plays a part in the Project, even you—Alright, alright, I’ll get to the point—You people are
so
impatient.”
The Devil looked down at himself, for the first time showing dissatisfaction with the odd clothes he wore. “Look behind you.”
Hesitantly, I did, just like before after reading the contents of the note I never should’ve opened.
“Okay, you can turn around now.”
The Devil wore an expensive black suit, the jacket buttoned right up to his throat. His long black hair pulled behind him in a ponytail. Twigs and leaves gone, toothpick still wedged in the corner of his mouth as if mandatory with every outfit.
“What exactly do I get out of this?”
The Devil put up his index finger. “Now, you were doing alright until then,” he said, clicking his tongue. “It doesn’t work that way. I tell you what you have to do, you do it to the best of your ability, and
if
you finish The Task, then you’ll get more than you ever dreamed of.”
He added, “Well, that is if you do it right. If not, it’ll be a really bumpy road.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“Of course,” the Devil laughed, “but you really have no choice in the matter. It’s my way, either way—they did tell you that, right?”
I closed myself up in my trench coat as the wind began to pick up. A storm was arriving nearly on time for once and I cursed myself quietly for forgetting my umbrella and then wondered why I even cared; there were two dead people, each no more than a few hundred feet away from me.
“Oh, you won’t need an umbrella where you’re going,” said the Devil as if reading my mind. “Your first stop will be quite hot and dry. It
al
ways is.”
Waiting for the Devil to go on, I forgot how to make obvious inquiries. I swallowed hard instead.
“But before you get started,” he said, “it’s only fair I give you a few pieces of the puzzle.” He moved forward and stopped directly in front of me. “There are three pieces
—
pieces, keys, whatever
—
and each one you’ve already been given.”
“The people I saw in the alley?”
He playfully slapped me against the shoulder.
“Maybe you’re not so stupid after all,” he said with what seemed like sincerity. “Now, think long and hard about your encounter. What did they say? What did they wear, possess and look like? How did they speak, look at you, and move?”
The Devil paused.
“Each one is of equal value,” he said. “After you’ve thought about it, you get to choose who you’ll be taking along with you
—
if it was me, I’d definitely take the legs.” The Devil raised both brows and gave them a little wiggle.
The time I sat there felt much longer than it really was. I hated the unknowing feeling; every bit of it churned and twisted in my stomach. I was never any good at making important decisions—Amanda, my ex-wife, always made those—but I had a feeling that this particular decision was nothing like taking out a second mortgage, getting a vasectomy, or switching from boxers to briefs. Still, for the first time in two years, I wished Amanda were there, glaring at me with wild, unblinking eyes. She would jump right in and tell me exactly what I needed to do. Granted, her decision-making only ever benefited her, but nonetheless, I didn’t have to be the one to make those decisions and that was always just fine by me.
I glanced at the Devil and his face briefly faded into thoughts of the hour before.
“Hmm...I’ll take the boy,” I answered after a long pause. “Yes, it has to be the boy,” still contemplating the decision just to be sure. “I’d be an idiot to take a woman. And the twins, well they’d probably kill me with their riddles before I made it halfway to wherever it is you’re sending me.”
I reached up and scratched my head, still thinking, mostly aloud to myself and hoping my decision was the right one.
“The boy seems to know what he’s talking about,” I added. “He’s the most logical choice.”
Grinning, the Devil brought up his perfectly manicured hands and ran his fingers down the lapel of his jacket, giving each side a tug as if to straighten it.
“Nice choice. Should’ve picked the legs, but this is your journey, not mine.”
“Yes, it is,” I snapped. “Besides, if I need the company of a woman, I’m sure I’ll find one along the way. Women are everywhere.”
Wait a second...did I just agree to do this? What the fuck is going on?....
The Devil threw back his head and roared with laughter. “It’s true, they are,” his laugh faded into a chuckle, “but...ah, never mind.”
“No, what?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re scaring me.”
The Devil shook his head. “You
should
be scared.”
“I knew you’d pick me.” The boy from the alley joined us and I stood from the bench. “See, I told you he’d pick me, now pay up.”
He held out his hand and while grumbling, the Devil slipped something into it that I assumed was money.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, the sky blanketed by rolling black clouds. Smoke still rose from the burning building beyond the park, and out ahead of me, blue and red lights bounced sporadically off a hundred nearby windows. I couldn’t focus on the dead woman in the street, or the dead jogger to my left. I was looking. Straight at them both in turns. But I couldn’t see either of them clearly. A layer of condensation coated my eyes. I heard the sound of traffic buzzing and the grinding of skate wheels against the concrete. But I couldn’t hear the little wheels moving on the stretchers, or the guilty voice in the back of my mind, the one kicking me just behind the eardrum. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t hear it.
And even now, moments before I was to set out on some journey, staged by the Devil, with a tag-along that appeared no older than ten and had a sharper tongue than the Devil himself, I somehow believed it. Doubt, which any normal human would have about such an experience, barely existed in my mind. I tried to understand what was happening to me. Because that’s the human thing to do.
“Okay, I’m ready,” I lied.
The Devil grinned, the toothpick dangling stylishly from his lips.
“Wait a second,” I interrupted suddenly, holding out my hand. “Where’s my five hundred bucks?”
The Devil laughed and slapped five bills in my palm and then my wallet.
I shoved it and the money in my pocket.
“Alright,” I said. “Now what?”
“Well, look behind you, of course,” the Devil said with the flourish of his hand.
I did, and in an instant, nothing was the same anymore.
“
It inflicts the same damage even in small sizes.”
--
IN A BREATH, THE city was gone. Peering down at my shoes, I saw that dead grass had replaced the concrete; heat had cruelly replaced the wind. The sun had burned away the stormy clouds that were going to bring exactly the kind of relief I already needed here...in this place...wherever it was. The boy and I stood in a massive field, a perfectly flat landscape of nothingness. No flowers, no rocks, no hill or hole as far as I could see.
Only behind us, in a dense patch of forest did there appear to be any relief from the heat.
I took a moment to myself, dumbfounded by what had just happened. Bending over, I rested my hands upon my thighs. Deep breaths. The city I grew up in seemed only a memory. Little about my life mattered anymore. I didn’t care about being late for work, or returning the money I borrowed from the petty cash box. I didn’t care about the alimony check I was due to put in the mail before the end of the day. I cared little about my favorite seat at Lou’s Coffee, the one close to the south window that allowed me to watch Kate as she worked with that beautiful smile of hers. I didn’t care about the laundry I left in dryer #6 of the apartment complex I lived in, or that my recently widowed mother was to arrive at my home in just two days. These things were strangely insignificant.
Fear? Worry? Concern? Had the Devil lifted such nuisances from my mind? I thought that was supposed to be the job of someone else, someone higher up who, according to the Devil, was nothing more than a smartass that liked to raise His hand and show off with all the answers.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I said to the boy.
“Tsaeb.” He nodded once as though satisfied with the name he had only then come up with.
“Tsaeb,” I quoted. “Odd, but alright, Tsaeb, I think you’re the brains of this operation, so what now?”
He blinked his dark eyes.
“Hell if I know,” he answered with a shrug.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know as much about any of this as you do.”
My forehead had become a magnet for my fingertips. At first, it was a gesture of disappointment, but then I began wiping away the beads of sweat dripping from my hairline. Finally, I took off my trench coat and the suit jacket underneath. I loosened my tie, unbuttoned the top three buttons of my dress shirt and rolled the sleeves up past my elbows.
“Aren’t you hot?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Well, I’m getting out of the heat.” I looked behind us toward the dark forest. With my coats hung over my forearm, I walked quickly toward the shade and sat against the nearest tree, hardly looking back out at the massive field that I wanted so soon to dismiss. But to ignore it entirely was futile.
“I’ve never seen a field like that,” I said. “It’s...well, it’s not right.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be,” said Tsaeb, finding a tree of his own and sitting at the base of it. “You aren’t exactly in any place you’ve ever been before.” He drew his knees up, relaxing his arms over them, his hands dangling at the wrists. “That’s the Field of Yesterday.”
I needed much more than a fancy title.
“My advice, if you want it,” Tsaeb said, “is that we don’t go that way.”
“Obviously,” I scoffed. “And of course I want your advice. I thought that’s what I brought you for.”
Distracted, I looked up; my eye sockets felt larger in my skull. Carefully I stood, nearly breaking my craning neck. Dangling amid the black and eerily twisted branches above us were hundreds upon hundreds of...cocoons.
Enormous
cocoons.
I turned sideways to get a better view. The sound of a branch cracking and popping underneath my foot nearly startled me right out of my shoes. I froze, heart pounding so rapidly in my chest I swore it was loud enough for even Tsaeb to hear.
The twisted tree limbs were thick and strong, with branches that coiled upward and around each other like a mass of unmoving snakes. Only in spots here and there could the hellish sun beat upon the leaf-littered land below.
“Oh, man,” Tsaeb said, “I really hate bugs.”
“Shhh,” I said with a forceful gesture of my hand.
“Maybe the field is a better choice,” he added in a whisper.
“I get the feeling that either way is going to suck.” I moved my way quietly back toward the edge of the trees, stopping next to Tsaeb. “Maybe if we go through really quiet....”
“Norman!”
I snapped around.
Perched on a protruding black root not fifty feet away was a bizarre woman. Her arms twisted backward at the elbows like a bendy toy, her legs abnormally long and thin with knees like fists and toes as long as fingers.
She slinked off the root and onto the ground, like a beetle scuttling over a log.
I swallowed my throat.
I moved the rest of the way around with a mechanical ease to face her. She held out a pale, slender hand from afar, but I could be nothing but motionless and so she withdrew it.
Finally, I stepped backward, stumbling as my foot caught in the folds of my trench coat.
“You must leave here,” said the creature with words as soft as powder.
I bent over, clumsily untangling my heel from the sleeve of my coat. “Sorry to disturb you,” I said, feeling like any second now I could shit on myself and it would be perfectly justified. “We’ll just be on our way then.”
“Not you,” she said, her hand coming up, index finger unfolding slowly. “The child.”
I looked over at Tsaeb.
“The company you keep is evil,” she added. “This is a place of light. We do not permit black souls to pass through our forest.”
My brows drew together. Light? This forest hardly knew the definition. Wait a second.
We
? There were more of them?
“But I’m supposed to help him...I think.”
“He cannot pass.”
She moved closer. Tendrils of red hair fell against her chest, tumbling past her waist like silk.
“Let’s just take the field,” Tsaeb spoke up.
“Wait, Tsaeb.” I turned to the creature again, trying my best not to run away in complete fear of her. “Can’t you make an exception? That field will kill us both, and I know I can’t go anywhere without him.”
“You should reconsider,” said the creature.
“But he’s just a kid....”
“
Is
he?” She inched toward me, her movements so awkward, yet strangely ethereal. “Smells more like treachery.”
Tsaeb lingered just inches from the border of the trees, his back to the field. My eyes passed between them, but more often to the creature who continued to move closer every few seconds. I caught an unfamiliar, intoxicating scent lingering in the air.
“Umm, by chance, could you tell me where I am exactly?”
“You are in the Forest of the Cursed,” she said, looking up for a long moment at the many cocoons. “And out there is the Field of Yesterday, a dark place living under a lie of the light, just as this forest is a place of light living under a shroud of darkness.”
Absently, I took another half step backward.
“If you tread through that field,” she went on, inching ever closer, “the past will come back to haunt you and will surely kill you before the heat has a chance.”
I turned to Tsaeb. “Is that true? Please tell me she’s kidding.”
Tsaeb manipulated his lip tensely between his teeth. “I would’ve told you if you decided to go that way.”
“
Would
you have?”
Tsaeb clenched his fists at his sides and shot a cross glare at the creature.
The irresistible scent, which I still could not place, became even stronger, whipping up into my nostrils, sending me into a brief high.
I shook off the daze.
“What are you?” the creature asked me.
“What
am
I?” I glanced down at my own hands, and then the rest of my front. For a moment, I wondered if maybe I had been turned into something unnatural. Maybe there were scales on my arms, or I suddenly had a tail.
Anything was possible now.
“Well, I’m a man....”
“Man?” she said, inspecting me from top to bottom. “Allow me to view your ribs.”
I stiffened. Tsaeb, back to being his little pompous self, giggled insanely from behind.
She reached out her hand and I staggered backward quickly.
“My...
ribs
?” My arms crossed defensively over my stomach.
The creature tilted her head to the left, her gaze penetrating me.
“Yeah, she wants to view your ribs, Norman,” said Tsaeb, chortling.
I was really beginning to dislike that little shit.
“Ummm, can’t we just shake hands?”
The creature stopped in front of me and I could not move. She sniffed me, starting at the neck and moving down each leg before her face found its way to my mouth.
I felt like I was in a full body cast and all I could move was my eyes. I had stopped breathing at some point.
“I can sense it in you,” she said leaning away. “Your simplicity, your ignorance, the saltiness of your sweat.”
“Maybe you can tell me something, anything about what I’m doing here.” Finally, I could breathe. “Just minutes ago I was in a city. Everything was normal, except for him,” I glanced at Tsaeb, “and the Devil himself.”
No reply.
“I’d appreciate some answers.” It was not a demand, simply a desperate inquiry.
But she didn’t seem to have any more answers.
“You are welcome if you need a place to lay your head,” she said. “We have all the provisions you need here.”
I gazed beyond the creature, behind her, everywhere. There were no ‘provisions’ here, nothing that a human might eat. There were black surreal trees with thick serpent-like vines hanging from the branches. Moss-covered stones, dead leaves and various strange nuts covered the ground. The only source of live food that I had seen were insects; not even a rabbit or a squirrel had come out of hiding, if even there were such things as rabbits and squirrels here.
“What about me?” said Tsaeb.
“That one is forbidden.”
“Yes, we’ve already established that,” I said, “but I won’t leave him and we’ll die if you don’t let us pass.”
“You’re wasting your breath, Norman.”
“Well, we have to do
something
!”
“Where is it that you are traveling?” she said.
“I don’t know! I just asked where I was
—
”
“Because you know not where you are, does not mean you know not where you are going.”
“Ahhh!” I threw my hands up in the air.
“They should take the carriage,” said another voice.
The voice was close; could’ve been feet in front of me, yet no one was there. Panicking inside, I looked over at Tsaeb, hoping that maybe he had unraveled this mystery ahead of me.
He looked as clueless as I knew I did.
I waited...and waited...and waited some more until I couldn’t stand it.