I Will Rise (29 page)

“You don’t have to say anything,” Eddie responds to my thought.

“Mind reader. Shit, I forgot.” I hate that.

“You know me, Charles. You know me better than you think you do. You do not have to feel uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” I lie.

“As you shouldn’t be. I’m not really here. You’re dreaming me, remember? So there is absolutely no logical reason why you should feel uncomfortable, or at loss for words around me. Unless of course you are uncomfortable around yourself.”

“At times I am.”

“And that’s why I am here.”

“So you’re not alive?” The idea that Eddie actually may have been molested or murdered, bloodied and broken somewhere in the real world, resurfaces and sends a shudder throughout my dream form.

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. Chances are I am dead, but it really doesn’t matter. This isn’t about me. Like I was starting to say, I am here for you. It’s about you. I’m here to help you get your mind straight, to sort through the muck and make sense of the senseless.” As an afterthought he adds, “If that’s possible.”

“That would be wonderful,” I say. As an afterthought I add, “If that’s possible.”

A little clarity?

Shit yes!

Relax. Hold your horses. It’s easy to look at this, this…representation and think he is genius Eddie with all the answers. He’s not. He, like this dark banquet room and this beautiful furniture, is all in my drugged, dreaming head. He is me, and believe you me I am no genius and I have zero answers.

Eddie clears his throat and signals for my attention. “Before we begin, let’s go through a quick rundown, shall we?”

I sit quietly trying to get past the fact that this is me dreaming Eddie. I try to focus in and listen closely, should my dreaming brain cough up anything of importance.

“This is all important.” There he goes reading my mind again. “So do listen.”

“I’m all ears,” I say as I try to close off my mind from further intrusions.

“First off,” he says in an officious tone, “is this matter of the dreamer, the digital blue, the so-called human virus, all that Annabelle-inspired nonsense. I think we can readily rule out all of it. Agreed?” He looks at me and waits for a response.

I shrug my shoulders.

“Well, what do you think about it?” he asks.

“I don’t know what to think. I mean, I saw it. I was trapped in it. The digital blue, that is. I suppose it makes about as much sense as any other explanation.”

“It makes no sense at all, Charles. We all see things and hear things how we want to see and hear them. All this human virus, grand dreamer nonsense is solely how Annabelle sees things. You only see it because you want to believe in her. Make no mistake, these fabrications are how she justifies the end and nothing more. If there is any great dreamer in danger of being prematurely awakened, it is you right now before I am able to finish getting things in order.”

Who am I to argue with myself? The dreamer is out then. For now anyway.

Eddie continues, “On that note, we better keep moving. Who knows how long we have before Allen Michael and his goon squad decide to revive you.

“Excising Annabelle’s red herring still leaves us with plenty to work with. Your seizures, your defective left palm, your dreams of a dead planet, along with your starring role in the dreams of the living, and the on-again/off-again presence of Alice Michael in your life all factor in. We can’t put a definitive finger on it just yet, but Alice’s death, on the day of your birth, on the same day Annabelle went blind, has to be more than strange coincidence. This theory that has the human race cowering, this notion that the dead will rise, and those speculative claims that Allen Michael can talk to his dead wife also add to the pot.

“Having said all this, let me put the pieces together and tell you what we think is going on.”

“Enlighten me.” Please. My mind is mush.

Eddie takes a deep breath and then he’s off: “I believe—or rather,
you
believe, on a subconscious level—that Alice Michael is the key. Somehow, someway, she’s coming back, or orchestrating the end, or pulling the strings. Whatever the scenario, this is her show. It is safe to assume that her husband can talk to her and those coincidences, your birthday being her death-day being Annabelle’s blind-day are not coincidences at all. They are interconnected. They are linked. Somehow Alice has infected you and Annabelle with unfathomable evil. She has caught you in her intricate web. The three of you form a spindly triangle of need. Alice needs you to usher in the end—the dead—whatever comes next. She needs Annabelle to get to you, to get under your skin and to keep you focused, at bay and cooperative. Her husband is her point man here on earth. Basically Annabelle controls you, Allen Michael controls Annabelle and Alice Michael controls the three of you in varying degrees.”

My mind is mush.

“Concentrate.” Eddie frowns at me. I nod and he continues. “We suspect she would have liked to do it herself, but again with the need. Alice can’t, not where she’s at, and a physical being, someone here and now and lovely and sad like Annabelle is a much more effective lure than an opaque specter hovering about the mind’s eye.”

“A lure for what?” See, I’m paying attention.

“Someone to lure you over and to ensure that you kill, I guess. Annabelle went blind and you were born with your seizure affliction to keep you down. This is where Annabelle’s got things right. You were designed to fail and hate and in time destroy. Same thing goes for Annabelle. Her blindness has kept her in the dark for so long, trapped for so long, built up the hate and resentment for so long, she gladly accepted any freeing mythology. She gladly accepted anything that would enable her to free herself and to free the world she hates from itself. No offense, but you’re not much of a revolutionary. You’re a closet romantic. You fight it and blame God and watch your organs splat to the floor every time you start to get a hard-on, but woven deep into your chemistry, perhaps put there by Alice Michael oh so long ago, is a desire for love. It takes more than a movement, more than a hate for people, more than a sob story about a noble, dying planet to push you into action. It takes lust and love and all the emotions you have been purposefully denied your entire life. Your pairing, you and Annabelle, is one forged from pain, loss and need. She needs an able-bodied savior, you need someone to care for and Alice needs the both of you to help her burn the earth to ash.

“Sound good so far?” Eddie stops to check on me.

“Sounds about right,” I answer.

“Good. Now, about the dreaming masses: there isn’t much to say about the human element. They are what they are: defense. If a woman can communicate from beyond the grave and devise a takeover plan thirty-three years in the making, then the anima in us can surely develop a defense system to ward her off. It is quite clear that they are out to stop you, but your instability keeps them away. If they could kill you or capture you without the fear of setting you off, you would be dead or imprisoned. If they had more time, perhaps they would be a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately for them, time has run out.

“Lastly, you are dead.”

“Dead as they come,” I agree.

“That’s the trigger. The moment the officer shot you down, the process began, the proverbial pin had been pulled. You became toxic, an infectious soldier of the dead. Your emotion tied to the ugliness within makes you a veritable time bomb.”

I let out a huge sigh. My brain is mush.

“Tell me about it,” Eddie agrees, “this is quite a mess. But alas, there you have it: the supposed history of our fragile little world in a nice compact nutshell. A cracked, paper-thin shell, but an orderly little bundle nonetheless. Of course there’s no proving any of this. And there’s no end to the questions. What are Alice’s intentions? Why? Is this a battle between good and evil, life and death or is this a war in your head? There are no easy answers. Life’s funny that way. What’s really going on is anybody’s guess. There’s your plot though. It’s loose and riddled with holes, but it gives us something to wrap our brain around. Anyway, it’s not important. Most of it’s in the past. What we need to concentrate on now is where we go from here. Who are we and what have we become? What do we do and where are we going?”

Again, I shrug my shoulders. Sometimes I wish I were back in my shit-hole apartment still wishing I were more or that I had more. To quote Kurt Cobain, I miss the comfort in being sad. “What now, Eddie?”

“Now we go deep.”

“What?”

“Think T.H. White’s
The Once and Future King
. Think the cerebral sequel,
The Book of Merlyn
. Think about yourself and how you perceive humanity and how we can make discoveries based upon such. Think about how those perceptions shift. Think about your relationship to the fates and the behaviors of humankind.”

“I’m losing you, man.”

“Envision it. Here you are, Charles, just like King Arthur, bruised and worn down and near the end. Mordred’s army is dead tired, but then again so is yours. The outlook is grim for both sides. Many are going to die, all hope will be lost, but it doesn’t matter. Death is inconsequential. What matters in the end is that you have learned something.”

“You’re stretching it, Eddie.” How is he going to compare my journey to that of the great King Arthur’s? The little guy is obviously on a roll, in his element, gabby as ever and he may be reaching, but I must admit it’s endearing and fabulously entertaining. It is too cute the way his eyebrows rise and his expressions jump. His logic is far too abstract and he is really far too smart for his own good. Regardless, this should be fun.

“I am not stretching it,” he defends. “It’s like Merlyn says, ‘You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you.’”

I hate learning.

“Do you remember in
The Once and Future King
,” Eddie goes on, “when Merlyn educated Arthur by turning him into various creatures of the animal kingdom, thereby imbibing him with a well-rounded understanding of man?”

I nod.

“And do you remember in
The Book of Merlyn
when Merlyn revisits Arthur just before his final battle and together they sit with a council of animals to reassess humanity?”

“A little, it’s been a while.” Those books meant everything to me at one time in my young life.

“Well”—Eddie points up—“your brain still remembers; it’s filled with T.H. White’s images and ideas and ideals.”

Oversized book pages, complete with lavishly illustrated scenes of Arthur, young and old, Merlyn, old and young, inlaid with swirling gold filament for text, float and dance overhead. I arch my neck and stare at them in wonder. The fantastical drawings tap into fondest memory.

Eddie snaps his little fingers to get my attention and the book pages disappear. “You are about to make a similar peace with yourself. Like Arthur, you are about to learn from your journey.” The little guy gets up and walks around the table to the far end and takes a seat in the chair at the opposing head. He looks even smaller, dwarfed as he is by the huge chair and now, the considerable distance (the table is very, very long). “This is so cool! I get to play Merlyn!” he shouts from across the table. “Watch this!” Eddie snaps his fingers yet again and
Poof!
A figure appears in the chair next to me.

I am startled and I jump a little and do a double take and after a second or two of disorientation I realize it is none other than Logan, the queer car thief. He looks exactly how I last saw him—thick, dark, greasy hair, and wild, wild eyes.

“What’s up, man? I guess I’m first.” Logan smiles at me.

Surprised, nervous, and struck by the thought that in the real world he might be dead and I directly (did I touch him? I can’t remember) or indirectly might be responsible for his death, I am compelled to avert my eyes and look at the table.

He clears his throat and then stands up.

“It’s not necessary to stand,” Eddie calls out from his end of the table.

“Fuck off, squirt.” Logan dismisses the little guy and continues. “The most important thing to get, no matter what anybody says, is that it’s not how things begin or end, it’s what happens in between. I stole a Porsche. I may have killed someone. I do drugs. Big fucking deal. I went to a Nevada rest stop and had some casual, immoral sex with a complete stranger. Big fucking deal. In between I helped you search for your little boy. That’s what matters. That’s what stands out. That’s what I want to be judged on and you should expect the same.”

“I don’t think you can choose how you are judged,” Eddie chimes in.

“Blow, man. It’s my turn and it’s my lesson.”

I look up at him.

“All I am trying to say is that you are born and then you die and you do fucked-up things all along, but as long as you keep your heart grounded and you do a little good, you’ll be okay. A little good is worth a whole lot of bad, you know? And Charles”—Logan points at me—“you’re one of the good ones. They want more than anything to tear you down and demoralize you and tell you your choices are wrong when you don’t even have a choice in the matter in the first place. I didn’t choose who I am. You didn’t choose who you are. All that matters is that you care about others and you feel right with yourself. No regrets, holmes.” Logan sits down and nods. “I’m done. Next.”

“Not quite like White’s work, but you get the idea. Right, Charles?” Eddie has taken to cupping his hands over his mouth and projecting. His voice comes out more garbled, not clearer.

I nod. Not anywhere near White.

Eddie disassembles his makeshift megaphone and snaps his fingers again. As quickly as Logan has appeared he disappears and another has taken his place.