Ghosts of Eden (14 page)

For the high school kids, “mountain parties” are a popular activity. Since the town is so quiet at night and there is so little to do, many of the kids drive up into the mountains and camp out to socialize, and drink, and engage in other teenage activities. These parties are mostly harmless, but sometimes there are accidents. Last year, a high school senior, Greg Timber, drove his car through the guardrail going too fast down the mountain road, swerving and drunk, and killed himself and his girlfriend, Catherine Donovan, when they struck a tree.

For the intrepid explorer, there are vast areas of ancient wilderness surrounding the town, and one can often find caves marked by the fires of long-gone Native American tribes, and pottery shards, and hieroglyphics. There are backpacking trails that still lead to ancient burial sites and hallowed ground, such as the stone-carved Lions’ Heads, where the air is said to be sharper, the colors in the forest more vibrant.

Beneath the town there are tunnels, a secret network put in place by the government in case of an impending air raid or hostile takeover. These tunnels can be accessed from the sewer system beneath the high school and have been used by high school students in the past as a means to break into the school after dark, flinging toilet paper through the halls and over the trees, putting dead fish in the air ducts, sliming the floors with laundry detergent, and other such nonsense in the name of senior pranking.

No one has ever been lost in the tunnels, so no one thinks Peter Jeffrey could be there.

A few days ago, Zach Morgan, a local fourth-grader who spends a lot of time wandering around by himself, is supposed to have seen a man standing at the top of a small ravine by the side of one of the town’s many hiking trails, looking down at the crevasse cut into the rock. The man was wearing a large-brimmed hat filled with lit and sputtering candles and was smiling widely. In one hand he held a plain wooden mask carved from a simple piece of pine. Zach, from his hiding spot in some nearby bushes, watched the outsider lean forward, peering carefully into the darkness below. “Thank you, Mr. Jeffrey,” the outsider said, and then threw his head back and laughed.

Zach’s story is, of course, dismissed by his parents, who don’t understand their strange overly-imaginative son. “Too much television,” his parents agree, turning dismissively back to the program at hand. The man their son saw was an outsider after all, not anyone of any importance, even if the man with the hat
was
real.

Peter Jeffrey is still missing.

SCIENCE AND ILLUSION

“But in a flash, as of lightning, all our explanations, all our classifications and derivations, our aetiologies, suddenly appeared to me like a thin net. The great passive monster, reality, was no longer dead, easy to handle. It was full of mysterious vigor, new forms, new possibilities. The net was nothing, reality burst through it.”

—Conchis in
The Magus
, John Fowles

ONE

When he opened his eyes, he was instantly awake. The morning sunlight was bright and orange, gave the room a vibrant glare, making everything appear crisp and clear, the pictures on the walls, the texture in the carpet, the iridescence of the fly buzzing through the dust-spinning rays of light streaking from the skylight. His heart was beating too fast and, for a moment, he wasn’t sure why.

He nearly tripped, stumbling down the stairs. “Fuck.”

The door to the library at the end of the hall was closed. He coughed quietly, and opened it.

“You’re late,” Uncle Xander said as soon as Garty stepped into the room.

“Sorry.” He made his way to the large table where Kayla was sitting—turned in her chair, staring at him with concern—and took a seat next to her.

“You missed breakfast,” Kayla whispered.

“That’s alright. I’m not really hungry.”

Uncle Xander forcibly cleared his throat. “Punctuality, you will soon learn, Garty, is of the utmost importance.” He fixed Garty’s gaze with his own. “So many things are a matter of timing. There are moments in our lives, rare and fleeting, when we have certain opportunities, if we have the wits to recognize them.” He turned and walked quickly to the dry erase board, still covered from one side to the other in mathematical equations. “This nonsense, for example.” He flicked the palm of his hand across the board, wiping a streak clean through the middle of the equations. “Rubbish! All of it rubbish!” He furiously wiped the board white, and then turned his blackened palm out so Garty and Kayla could see. “Nothing.”

Garty noticed Uncle Xander was actually panting, eyes blazing. He was wearing some sort of lab coat, white, that opened in the front to his usual slacks and collared shirt. In one hand he held one of those telescopic pointers, like an old radio antennae, swinging it about as he spoke, striking the whiteboard for emphasis.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Uncle Xander said to Garty. “You’re here to assist, but perhaps you’ll learn some things as well.”

“Assist?” Kayla whispered, but Garty ignored her.

“Now,” Uncle Xander said. His eyes turned to Kayla. “Congratulations are in order. Welcome, Ms. Kayla Greenwood, to your first lesson with the illustrious Masterson School of Science and Illusion. I have been chosen to be your guide and mentor. Let us begin with a story. I want to tell you how I came to be called a magus…”

“Wait. I have some questions,” Kayla interrupted.

Uncle Xander frowned. “Hold your questions to the end of the session.”

“But I don’t understand…”

Uncle Xander held up his hand.

Garty stood. “Yeah, hang on a minute. All this is just too weird. What kind of game are you playing? What is all this shit? What…”

With a speed Garty would not have thought possible, Uncle Xander leapt forward, striking his pointer across the table between Garty and Kayla. There was a flash, white and hot. Garty stumbled backward, blinded. He heard the table splinter, and the room went dark. For a moment, all he could see was Uncle Xander standing over him, lab coat glowing faintly, and his eyes. Then, with another flash, the lights returned.

Garty blinked. Uncle Xander was standing rigidly by the whiteboard again; Garty hadn’t seen him move. Kayla was sprawled on the floor, her chair having tipped backwards, and he went to her. The table was in two equal pieces, cut evenly, as if by a very sharp blade or saw.

“No questions,” Uncle Xander said.

Garty helped Kayla to her feet. Her eyes were wide and staring. Garty righted her chair and Kayla sat on it, stunned.

“Take your seat, Garty. Shall we begin?”

Garty wobbled to his chair.

Uncle Xander slapped the whiteboard with his pointer and Kayla flinched next to him, but he was only pointing to a list of things now written on the board. Garty was numb inside.

“These are the topics we will be discussing.”

Garty glanced over the list:

Mirrors

Quantum Reality

Uncertainty Principle

Entropy

Illusory Principle

Conjuration

Altered Time

Cycladic Consumption

The Word

Simulation

The Council

“There will be tests,” Uncle Xander said. “Trials. Garty will help me with the necessary demonstrations.” He looked from Kayla to Garty and back to Kayla. “Now, are you ready?”

Garty glanced at Kayla. She looked frightened. Garty looked at this strange man, nodded reluctantly.

“Good.” Their uncle cleared his throat. “Then let us begin.”

Uncle Xander pulled up a stool. “As I was saying, after university, when I came here to start my new job with the Los Alamos National Labs, I began to experience some strange things, things I couldn’t explain, that I couldn’t rationalize. I have always considered myself a man of science, you see, and these…visions disturbed me. I thought I understood the physical universe, that the laws of physics were irrefutable, that, despite our various perceptions of reality, there was still only a single real world, and that that world functioned in a singular fashion. I was blind. I did not yet see the various ways in which our realities can be manipulated.

“For example, animals were watching me. I’d leave the house and be about to get into my car to go to work when I’d realize there was a family of raccoons by the edge of the forest, a mother and her six pups, in a line, standing on their hind legs, looking right at me with all those black-ringed eyes. Another time, I made tea and took my mug with me up to the window, and when I looked out on the garden there was a deer—a full-sized white-tailed buck with an impressive set of antlers—glowering at me, as if it had been watching the window in case I were to appear. It was unsettling, but dismissible. I didn’t give it much thought.

“Other things were more intense. One day, no more than a week or two after my friend’s untimely death, I made my way up the steps to my office building, pulled open one of the swinging doors, and froze; I nearly lost consciousness, right there on the steps. I didn’t see what I knew was there—the beige hallway, and the fluorescent lights, and the doors made from glass leading into people’s offices. I saw, for a second or two, a dark churning emptiness, vast and open and endless, and, just out of sight, there were things writhing in that darkness, like vines, worm-like and hungry. A dank humidity struck my face like an expelled breath. I staggered, feeling the power of that place, the energy that lurked there, brooding and immense. Then I saw someone—
something
—standing in that darkness. It stepped forward, but I couldn’t see its face. I was terrified. I felt my heart might jump from my chest. And then it was gone. People walked in the halls, opening the glass doors, going to work. ‘Don’t want to be late,’ a colleague said behind me, brushing past.

“These things began to occur more and more frequently. I began to hesitate before I opened doors for fear that darkness might lurk on the other side. I saw more animals, always watching, always waiting. I had a dream I was running through the forest and the animals were chasing me, hunting me down. I opened the curtains on my bedroom window one time, and there was the darkness, the vines wriggling and tapping at the glass to be let inside. I thought I was losing my mind, that my loneliness and my grief had driven me to madness. But, at the same time, I welcomed the visions, found them strangely fascinating, empowering even. It felt as if I was seeing what was really there, behind the veneer of the mundane forces of gravity and magnetism, the true nature of things. The scientist in me was intrigued by that darkness, could sense it held secrets to the true workings of the universe.”

Uncle Xander paused. His pipe had appeared and smoke drifted up amongst the high-shelved books. Garty noticed then that the old man hadn’t shaved in several days, gray and white-flecked stubble shading his uncle’s chin and cheeks. Garty looked at Kayla and he could tell she was mesmerized by their uncle’s story, watching the smoke curl, listening intently. Garty squirmed; what time was it? He was beginning to feel uncomfortable. When did they get a break? He needed his pills.

“Then, one day, I peered out my kitchen window and saw a man walking in the garden. He was familiar to me; I’d met him once before, but only briefly, and at the time I couldn’t place where I’d seen him. I’d not spoken with him, knew nothing about him, but there he was. I hurried through the house and flung open the door, nearly falling down the steps as I approached the man. The man began to smile widely even before he looked up and saw me coming. He watched me cross the cobblestones, his head bald and shining, his eyes brimming with repressed hilarity. ‘Dr. Xander,’ he said. ‘I think you’re ready. I have some important things to discuss with you. Let’s take a walk. It’s a beautiful night, don’t you think?’

“I said I would talk with him and we took the path through the trees. He was a strange-looking guy, short, with over-sized facial features, especially his mouth; he had very big lips. He told me his name was Wrigley and that he’d been sent on behalf of Dr. Matheson to arrange a meeting.

“‘What would Dr. Matheson care to discuss?’

“‘Many things. He’d like to show you many things. Get to know you better. See what you think.’

“‘Does he work for the Labs?’

“‘Oh, no.’

“‘The university, then?’

“‘Definitely not.’

“‘Then what business do
I
have with him?’ I thought for a moment. ‘Does this have anything to do with Dr. Thayer?’

“Wrigley continued to smile, but said nothing.

“I nodded. ‘Fine. I’ll meet with him.’

“He told me to be at a place called The Black Hole the next morning, then said he’d see himself out and darted into the woods before I could say another word, flashing me that smile one last time, that seemed to grow wider and wider the more I looked at it.”

Uncle Xander paused. “Why are you shaking your head?”

“It’s just…” Garty said. “All this is crazy. I don’t know what else to say. You’re nuts.”