Sloughing Off the Rot (30 page)

“Let’s see what I find,” said Gog, and he plucked the ace of spades from the top of the deck. Gog’s confident smile faded and he said, “Oh my,” as he took in the card’s image of a faceless man dangling from a noose. “Well I’m sure there’s an explanation. We cannot judge him on a single act, can we? We have to evaluate the whole man.” And Gog flipped the ace of spades in the direction of the scale, landing the card in the gold plate on the left side of the beam. When the card landed, and the beam slanted to the left a little bit more, Gog cringed.

Gog and Magog pulled more cards from the deck. Magog smiled and commented on the blackness of John’s soul and John’s contemptible treatment of his fellow man. Gog’s face demonstrated his disappointment and concern more than his words did. And the indictment of the cards weighed heavily on the left side until the downward left slope of the beam forced John to shift his position on the seat to avoid the feeling of sliding off.

John cared not to witness the proceedings against him. Clearly Magog opposed him and was prevailing. And Gog tried to come to John’s defense, but with little success. To have come so far and see his quest shut down at the hands of shrunken-headed Siamese twins was more than he could accept. John closed his eyes and directed his thoughts upward, trying to call down a pillar of fire. But he was too weak, or the walls of the building prevented it.
Or maybe
, John thought,
maybe this is all a big joke and I don’t have any powers. Maybe this is a dream and I should just wake up
.

So John closed his eyes and ears to the proceedings, not wanting to hear as Gog and Magog went into more detail about the meaning of each card they pulled, about the meaning of John’s past. John hummed to himself to block out their words and give himself something to concentrate on. On his eyelids, the flickering flames of the candles played out a picture show of dancing, indistinct black images on a red backdrop.

“Don’t you think you should be paying attention?” said a voice. And John kept his eyes closed, but on his own eyelid picture show, John saw that his fiery doppelganger stood before him, frowning and shaking his head, disgusted. “They are taking account of all of your life up to this moment. They are measuring the ledger of your actions, weighing your spirit, quantifying your value. This is your story. Don’t you want to know these things?”

“I do not,” said John. And he realized that he could keep his eyes closed and be confronted by his doppelganger, or open his eyes and watch Gog–Magog level harsh accusations against him for things he could not even remember. John clenched his eyes even tighter, opting to argue with himself. “That doesn’t matter. I don’t know about anything I did before I came to this place. And I don’t care about all of that. Whatever that was, it’s not me now. I’m not bad. I’m not evil. I don’t do anything to intentionally harm others. I’ve actually helped people, laid hands on them and cured them. I know there is good in me. I’ve seen it in the eyes of my friends and felt it when I looked down at the faces of my children in the valley.”

“Of course there is good in you,” said the doppelganger, sitting on a flaming stump and leaning his back against John’s clenched eyelid. “What do you think this is about? I’ve been telling you, you split. The skuzzy loser that was you is lain up in a sickroom, rotten with festering bedsores and weak with atrophy. That is the blackness that consumed you and it is growing weak, losing its energy. And that’s because you are here and you are good and growing stronger. You are doing that because you are meant to go back and unite your split halves.”

“I call bullshit,” said John. “I’m here and I’m happy and strong. I’m good and this is what I was meant to be. I think that’s why I’m here. It’s me moving on from what I was. I cannot and will not go back. If that other me dies, then it’s all for the better.”

And Doppelganger leapt up from his stump. His white hot hands buzzed with electricity as they throttled John’s neck. “If your other half dies, you die, I die, everything here dies. Say that you will go back. Say that you will make Lovethorn send you back or I will end it all for us right here. I will choke the life out of you and give you what you are going to cause if you do not return. Your path is one back to yourself. And if you are going to stray from that path, then there is no point in struggling on any further. If that is your goal, then we are all going to die anyway and I will end it here and now for us.”

But the burn of Doppelganger’s hands did not hurt John’s neck, nor did the pressure of the throttling. Doppelganger’s touch shot John full of energy. And from somewhere within, John drew the power to break Doppelganger’s grip and throw him against one of John’s eyelids. Doppelganger fell to the floor but left a burning smudge on the wall of John’s eyelid, and the fire blazed and formed into the image of a burning eye staring back at John.

“Do as I tell you or we are all dead,” shouted Doppelganger, and he disappeared in a burst of flames, leaving only the smoldering fire-eye on John’s eyelid.

“I will do as is right,” said John to himself. “I will go where the flow of the path takes me. If it takes me back to myself, then so be it. But if the trail ends here, then here I shall stay.”

And when John opened his eyes he saw Gog and Magog before him, their shared body flopped over the wooden chair like a wet towel set out to dry. John realized that the belts that had bound him hung from his chair. And the beam he sat upon tilted to the right. Cards littered the floor, mostly scattered around the left side of the beam. More cards filled the left-hand plate than the right, but still the beam tilted to the right under the weight of the cards on that side. Both Gog and Magog drew in heavy breaths and neither bothered to stand when they saw John looking at them.

“He is the guy,” said Gog, sitting up a little and lifting his weary head.

“That he is,” agreed Magog.

“Go,” they both said to John, waving their hands feebly as if shooing him away. “Go through the door and follow the red brick floor. It will take you where you need to go.”

Behind John, opposite the door he crashed through, waited another door. John turned and looked at the door and then back at Gog-Magog. They nodded and waved him away, giving every indication that they had no more interest in him.

So he turned his back to the twins and walked to the door. Behind John, a raspy exhalation released from Gog and Magog as they fell from their chair. There they remained, deflated and defeated on the floor. John turned in their direction to help.

“Go,” said Gog. “You cannot help us.”

“He’s right,” said Magog. “Help yourself.”

And they waved John away again, refusing his help. John turned back to the door and found that it was unlocked. The door creaked on its hinges as he pushed it open and a torch-lit hallway opened to him. And the red brick trail continued down the hallway. John stepped through the door and knew that he was still on the path. The flow of energy almost pulled him along. Doorways opened to unlighted paths on both sides of John as he walked on down the hall. But the red bricks did not take John along those paths. As he passed the openings, John felt the same emptiness that he experienced when he neared the caves of silence. The lack of sound thrummed from the black holes in the walls and pushed down on John’s chest. The absolute void down the unbricked hallways cast John into deep depression as he passed and made him feel as if it were not worth it to go on, as if it would be better to turn off and walk down into the void. The strong current of the red brick pathway pulled him along past those dark caves of oblivion.

Once past the doorways, John felt like himself again. And he walked on down the hall. The red brick floor took John up and down ramps and around corners, twisting him around until he lost his sense of direction. The only thing he could do was follow the path to wherever it led him. So he walked deep into the cool, moist bowels of Abaddon until he felt that he must be well below the mountain. And then the path rose and twisted and carried him back toward the top of the La Montaña Sagrada and to a stubborn door.

And the door stood firm, refusing entry, despite John’s kicking and slamming his shoulder into it. John stood, sweating and shaking, his shoulder throbbing from the efforts to bust the door open. He readied himself to patiently sit at the door and wait it out, just as he had done at the front gate of Abaddon, and then heard the noise behind him.

“Stand back,” said the gnarled old guard behind John. He flashed a gummy, edentulous grin. “Kicking and pounding on that door is not the way to get through.”

John moved aside. He did not try to run or fight with the guard, although he had no doubt that he could easily overwhelm the smaller, feeble-looking little man. There was only one way to go – forward – and someone had to let him through. So John moved out of the way and watched. The man ran a hand along the edge of the door, stopped at a spot that looked no different from the rest of the door, and pushed. And a latch the same color as the door popped out. The man grabbed the latch and pulled the door. And the guard swung the door out, instead of pushing it in as John had been trying to do.

“It only goes one way,” said the guard as he opened the door. “And so does the trail. Where are you going?”

“Where is Lovethorn,” asked John. He sensed that the Man in Black was close. He sensed that he was near the top of the mountain. He sensed a mounting tension just beyond the walls around him.

“He is where he is,” said the guard. “I will take you to him. Just follow me.”

So John followed in the draft left by the quick-moving little guard. And they climbed spiraling stairs, scaled ladders, rounded corners, all the while staying on the red brick path. Winded and lightheaded from following the guard, John found himself in circular room much like the one where Gog-Magog strapped him to the scale.

“Sit down,” said the guard. “Make yourself comfortable. Someone will be with you soon.”

The red brick path intersected the room and led to a door on the other side. The guard continued on the path and exited the room. And when he shut the door behind himself, it blended in with the wall, as did the door through which John entered the room. He studied the walls and felt at them where he knew the doors to be. But his eyes only saw stone walls and his hands failed to discern handles or knobs or latches for the doors he knew to be there. John found himself once again trapped and waiting at a door until someone let him through. There was no going back through the door which he entered the room, even if he would have wanted to. But John knew that the only direction was forward on the red bricks and wouldn’t have turned back even if he were able.

A skylight far above him opened to the heavens. Looking up, John saw the flow of the river of clouds directly above. And as day turned to night, the clouds morphed into the blazing river of fire. The star Wormwood shone down and tinted the circular room a warm shade of green. Though he had nowhere to go and none of his supplies on him, John did not fret about his situation. He knew he was still following El Camino de la Muerte. The river of fire above confirmed that for him. So he lay himself out on the red bricks and watched the sky above, knowing that he was following the path and would sooner or later find himself face to face with Android Lovethorn.

The red light illuminated the room and the early morning chill shivered John awake. As soon as he moved, they were on him. The old, toothless guard stood above John and said, “Get him before he starts moving.”

And another guard – younger and stronger and fully blessed with a wide, straight grimace of sharp teeth – leapt on John and pinned him facedown on the red bricks. He wrapped twisted hemp ropes around John’s wrists and ankles, and then stood and yanked John to his feet. Holding tight to John’s biceps, he leaned in close. The whiff of breath from the guard smelled of death and contrasted sharply with the bright, white grin. And he asked, “Who are you?”