Black Jack (16 page)

‘You can create and destroy universes with the kind of power you have inside you.’

‘That’s great, but where and how do I start?’

‘You already have the means in you. You just have to recognize it.’

‘And if I find her, what do I do?’

‘Not if, when. Give her crayons.’

‘Crayons?’

‘Yes, what human children use to express themselves on paper and their parents’ walls.’

‘Why crayons?’

‘Slaves are always under hypnotic suggestions to forget what they have experienced. The brain only appears to comply, but secretly records the event. The crayons will help bring the memories back. One by one they will come pouring out onto the paper.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. The rest she will do herself. I told you before she is a very powerful shaman squeezed into a small girl’s body.’

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

 - John Milton,
Paradise Lost
(1967)

‘You’ll never believe what happened to me today.’

Black gazed up at his mother expectantly. She used merry chatter as an armor, but he could see that she was secretly worried about something, something other than his impending death. Not only did he see it in her eyes when she forgot to be happy; he had heard her having nightmares. Last night she had sobbed and shouted, ‘Get out, you ugly, little man.’

‘I was at this new shop buying a hairdryer for Lady Carrington, and the girl at the till suddenly congratulated me. Apparently, I was their one thousandth customer and I’d won a water filter.’ Bumi lifted up the bag she had brought into Black’s room and showed him the water filter. ‘Looks good, doesn’t it? The manager, such a sweet man, explained that it filters out even fluoride, which he said is put into the water, but shouldn’t be. He told me it’s the main ingredient in rat poison. Imagine that! I wonder why they put it in the water system. Anyway, Lady Carrington didn’t want it and she said I could keep it. So now it’s ours.’ She beamed.

Black looked into Bumi’s eyes and formed the question, What’s the matter, mother?

And the thought must have reached her, for a split second it stopped her in her tracks, but then she flashed another bogus smile, and soldiered on with her monologue.

When she left to install the water filter, Black made a mental note to ask Green what was distressing his mother. Then he returned to trying to figure out what Green could have meant when he had said, ‘Use your imagination.’ Meticulously he went through every conversation he had had with Green and suddenly it occurred to him.

Of course. Green had taught him how to do it in the desert. Lucid dreaming. He would find her in his dreams. With his mother gone to sleep he followed Green’s instructions, and awakened in what looked like a deserted three-dimensional mural.

He had entered the internal world of the core personality.

Under a dull gray sky, a black and white checkered floor served as the base for a confusing jumble of staircases, all of which seemed to lead nowhere, either simply stopping in mid-air, going off in horizontal directions, or ending in mirrors. At a glance it was impossible to know whether one was coming or going. Something squeaked under his foot. A headless doll. He saw that the floor was strewn with broken toys, some so gruesomely mutilated that they made him feel quite uneasy.

A gust of wind blew an abandoned metal bed onto the tiled floor. It had steel manacles, and a shelf underneath that was full of dangerous-looking, blood-caked instruments. Its wheels creaked eerily. He shivered at the sight, and was nearly startled out of his skin when he heard a strange cry coming from behind him. He looked back and a screaming monkey, its long teeth bared, was running toward him. Without thinking he ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. He slipped into an odd enclosure, which turned out to be a graveyard. He looked back to check how near the monkey was and stepped into air.

He had fallen into a freshly dug grave with an open coffin inside. And landed on a bed of writhing snakes. He was so petrified he froze. The coffin’s lid closed with a loud thud and the darkness became alive with movement and sound. Snakes in search of warmth slipped and slithered onto his bare skin. From outside the coffin came first the scary sound of hammers nailing down the lid, then soil being shoveled onto it. He was being buried alive. Overcome by a primordial terror of certain death, he began to gasp for breath, until Green’s voice said in his head, ‘This is her world. These things happened to her. But it is only a dream. Physical laws need not apply.’

Physical laws need not apply.

Quickly, he grabbed hold of a thick snake in his hand. ‘Poof,’ he said and the snake disappeared. He touched the lid of the coffin. ‘Poof,’ he said and it disappeared. You can fly.
You can do anything
. He sprang lightly out of the six-foot hole. He looked at the gnarled dead trees around him. ‘Become a meadow full of life,’ he said and suddenly the empty boughs were covered with green leaves. The graves became full of tall grasses and wild flowers. He could smell the flowers and hear the lazy buzzing of the bees.

He looked to the gray sky. ‘Sunshine, please,’ he said, and the sun drenched his landscape golden. He built swings and benches. He changed the black and white floor to a myriad happy colors. The hospital bed became a gazebo with climbing roses. Pleased with his creation he decided to look for her.

‘Find her,’ he said, and in the distance he saw a black, shiny cube sitting on a briar. He went to it. There was no entrance. She was a prisoner. He thought up a pathway and a door to the cube, and entered it. She was on the floor hunched over something.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

She did not look up. ‘I have to watch that the sand in the hourglass does not run out. If it does I will die, and I’m afraid to die.’

Black moved closer. The hourglass was so small that it was barely a minute before she had to turn it. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. If she ever did, or was accidentally distracted, it would surely run out. It was the most pitiful thing he had seen. He knelt down beside her and yet she did not dare turn her face away from the hourglass.

‘Become much bigger,’ he said and the hourglass grew right before their eyes. ‘There, it will now be an hour before you have to turn it again.’

She fell back and looked at the enlarged hourglass suspiciously as though it was a trick of some sort. She seemed almost afraid of it. Then she turned to him with huge eyes. She looked the same as Winter, but he did not recognize her, or she him. Her eyes narrowed. She came forward slowly, her hand outstretched, and touched a bead in his hair.

‘I dreamed of these.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Do you know an Indian woman with long, black hair?’

‘That sounds like my mother.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘With me in England.’

She nodded thoughtfully, her hand dropping to her side.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Dakota.’

‘Do you live here?’

‘No, I come here when the others take over.’

‘I see. What is this room?’

'I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘But I have always been alone here. It’s not a good place.’ She turned her eyes away from him and back to the hourglass. ‘Thanks. Turning the hourglass was very difficult work.’

‘No problem. In fact I’m going to make an even bigger one and put it into a self-turning machine.’ And the hourglass was immediately part of a rotating machine. ‘This way you never have to worry about it again.’

Dakota stood and backed away from him. Kindness always came with a price. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’

‘My name is Black and I came to give you something. Now that you don’t have to watch the hourglass all the time you probably could use these,’ he said, and reaching into his pocket took out a handful of crayons. He held them out to her.

She reached for them, biting her lip uncertainly. ‘I have no paper.’

He reached into his back pocket and fished out a large art pad. He gave it to her. She took it with both hands.

‘Well, I have to go now, but before I go I want to show you something. Come,’ he invited, his hand outstretched.

She shrank back in fear. ‘I can’t go outside. It’s too horrible.’

‘I’ve changed it,’ he said. ‘Please, just peep out of the door.’

He led her to the door and stood aside so she could see the flowers, the balloons, the ice cream cart and the sunshine that he had dreamed into existence.

For a while she said nothing. ‘You did all this?’

He nodded.

‘What about the graveyard?’

‘Gone.’

‘And the boy ghost?’

And suddenly Black knew. The graves were the people she had had a hand in killing.

‘He’s gone too.’

She nodded slowly.

‘What about the monkey?’

Black put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. It was loud and clear, the way he had always dreamed of doing. And the monkey came running, but it had a bow around its neck and looked tame.

‘I have to go now, but I will come back to visit you soon.’

‘Please do. I get so lonely here.’

‘I promise to. Be sure to use the crayons now.’

‘Thank you, Black.’

‘My pleasure,’ he replied. He waved to her and walked down the colorful checkered floor. A song in his heart.

‘I want to go to Green,’ he said, and just like that he was back in the white room without walls.

‘Very impressive,’ Green complimented. ‘I knew you could do it, but never so proficiently. It becomes more and more obvious why you were chosen above all others.’

‘What is the significance of the hourglass?’

‘Her thinking is buried in fairy tales. She has been programmed to see herself inside them. Even her handlers will pretend they are fairy tale characters. She has been led to believe that if she is good and obedient the sand will not all fall out. If at all she is disobedient, the sand begins running out, and her life is on the line. There is no room for mistakes. If she is careless death will come.’

‘She seems very pitiful.’

Green eyed him thoughtfully. ‘That is not all you feel about her. You have to be very cautious with her. She has many angry and cold-blooded alters who have killed before and will again. Her alters do not have a chance to understand what they are doing and she does not have any control over them. Any moment, another hostile aspect, and they are mostly that, can take over. Some of her alters have been victimized so much that given half the chance they will immediately take on the addictive power of victimizing someone else.’

‘One last thing: what’s worrying my mother?’

‘I’m sorry, Black. Telling you would be infringing upon her free will. She doesn’t want you to know.’

Hold out baits to entice the enemy.
Feign disorder, and crush him.

 - Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
,
6
^th
century BC

Sitting across from the girl, Teddy realized that something was amiss. ‘Were the coordinates for the boy’s address correct?’ he asked, his eyes watchful.

‘Yes,’ she answered, her expression bland.

‘He was there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you saw him in his physical form?’

‘I did.’

Teddy frowned. The brief, barely informative replies were out of character. Just then, he knew. It was not Winter who sat across from him, but Shekina. Shekina had disobeyed her orders. He had never come across such a situation. Looking intently into her bold face, he said, ‘Shekina?’

‘It is I.’

‘Your instructions were very clear - only Winter was to interact with the boy. Why did you not leave and let her handle him?’

‘I kept the body when I realized that the boy is totally paralyzed. He is unable to even blink! There was nothing Winter could have done with him.’

Teddy couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Totally paralyzed?’ That was a game changer. Still she had disobeyed - and that was a ruinous game changer too. ‘I suppose you did the right thing. I will see you tomorrow as usual.’

‘Teddy.’

‘What?’ he asked, never suspecting what she would do next.

She smiled at him, coldly, deliberately, and did the unthinkable. She looked into his eyes and remote viewed him, her controller, her handler. She felt the malice in him and smiled that cold smile. His eyebrows shot up.

‘Return to sender,’ she said, and heard his howls of rage in her head.

‘Bitch,’ he cried, his voice shocked, strangled, strange. No longer the cool, cold, military man. The mental intrusion was intolerable. He had been designed to retaliate, he wanted to reach for the gun on his person, but he could not.

She looked at him from under her lashes. It was a gesture that did not sit well with her innocent child’s face. ‘I take full responsibility for myself,’ she said, and curiously watched a vein in his forehead bulge. He appeared to be fighting for control of himself.

He stood, in great pain. Cold sweat was pouring off him. As he lurched from the room he saw her calmly depress the button that summoned Miss Monroe and reach for a pen. Unable to bear the horror in his brain any longer he clutched his head and hurried down the corridor, which seemed to stretch for miles. He glanced back every few pain-filled steps, the feeling of being pursued was so strong. What had she done to him? He rushed into his office and fell into the chair behind his desk. From a drawer he pulled out a syringe and pushed it into his vein. Then he lay back in his chair with closed eyes and waited.

When the black menace had passed he picked up his phone. Strangely he felt no animosity toward her. She had proven herself able to elevate the information up the channels to a higher level of responsibility than him. But at his level of responsibility he had to let Owl know. A threat. Beyond anything he had known before. His hand was shaking as his fingers moved over the telephone keypad.

‘Yes,’ answered Schooner Klaus.

‘There is a problem. The Sparrow has turned.’