In the Night Room

15

Cyrax:

it is an endless

oh, y do I call u buttsecks? is that wht u ask? 8e

And why am I writing that way, you ask, Underhand? I was writing that way, and I will write that way whenever I feel like it, which is to say when you’re acting like a jackass, for the simple reason that it is a pleasure for an ancient laddie-buck (so to speak) like myself to learn a new language every now and again, and presently I am feeling my way around HAXXOR, a language exclusive to juveniles addicted to mIRC and other chat programs. Of course it isn’t a real language, merely a system of jokes and substitutions, but it’s a hoot, n’est-ce pas? Between my birth in Byzantium during the reign of Michael II, known as the Stammerer, and my premature (by your standards) but not all that untimely (by mine) death under Michael III, known as the Drunkard, I acquired a good working knowledge of six languages, a matter quite useful to me in my work as a gatherer and disseminator of information. (Since my disappearance from the surface of the Earth and gradual introduction to eternal realms, I have learned perhaps six hundred, including a great many “lost” dialects.) You could say, I was a journalist of sorts. A gossip columnist, to be specific, though of course we did not call it gossip at the time. What we did call it was “news,” and to come up with this commodity on a steady basis I dragged myself here and there about the empire, dropping in on the local satraps and princelings ever eager to have their accomplishments publicized at court.

& y 4m I 73lling u thi5?

Because like you I was a writer, and they felt that you needed One who could communicate with you in a familiar manner. So I, Cyrax, will be your Familiar Spirit.

Underdog, it is necessary for you to LISTEN! Acting recklessly and ignorantly, you have sent winds of disorder, tides of resentment, waves of confusion through the Eternal Realms, or the Other World, or the Other Side, or whatever you want to call it. You have created DIFFICULTY & TROUBLE! You have given a WEDGE to CHAOS.

Oh how, you ask, as if any such answer can be simple, can be even what your kind would call Answer. But let me try, Underdown, let me try. My enormous pleasure at the possibility of communicating directly with a 21st Century man—and having him communicate with me!—much outweighs the irritation of having to deal with such obdurate material as yourself.

For the sake of clarity, I will employ the vulgar typographical device known as the “bullet”:

• 7 years after the dawn of your life, your wings brushed this REALM—April your Sister preceded your spirit here as its Guide, and you were CALLED BACK, but only after you had established a FRAGILE CONTACT with HIGHER POWERS, THE WORLD BEYOND, the fringes of THE GREAT HIERARCHY.

• Since that day, Intimations of Connectedness, Coherence & Secret Order have sweetened your existence: suggestions of a GRAND FORMALITY. These Intimations have proceeded directly from your near Approach to the REALM.

• April your Sister is ever your guide and will be for a time after your Entrance to the Mysteries, for which you may and should thank the PRIME.

• Alas, yours was the 1 case in 1,000,000 in which Proximity = Influence, so that what You did in your Realm could, were the correct conditions to prevail, affect us Here, particularly Those of Recent Induction still learning what you call “the ropes.” Recent = within roughly the past 80 years.

• We Figures & Spirits of the Formerly Living are of 2 Kinds. What I next shall tell you is a cruel simplification, but for our Purposes it will have to do.

• Those Recently Deceased are of the category sasha. Sasha are the Living Dead, Remembered still by those whose time on Earth overlapped with theirs. When the last living person to know a sasha departs into Death, the sasha enters the category of the zamani. (I use a category system of the Kiswahili peoples.) Sasha retain sharp memories, cling to urgent lusts & passions, fret & worry abt. their reputations and those of people once known. Zamani let such baubles drop from their hands. The Zamani’s task is to understand, to see, to Inhabit the correct Position in the GREAT HIERARCHY, and to serve the PRIME.

Oh how duz this rel8 to u?

Fool Underground, & yet I have grown fond & fonder of you. Hold on, here comes a bullet with your name on it.

• No HELL or Infernal Region exists within the Infinite Space of the REALM. The wicked & sin-deformed have their Places, too, as do the Mad & Criminal, & within their Places endure the sasha term in a Kind of Suffering of Recognition. Their Crimes & Misdeeds & Lunacies come back endlessly to them in sharp Relief, & thru their Torment they cleanse their eyes, properly to see.

• As the sasha draws nearer the condition of zamani, he is givn knowledge of our great Libraries & allowed access to the Beauty & Wisdom gathered therein. Our Libraries contain every volume written by mankind lost and unlost & Completed if left unfinished by the Author at the time of his/her death. Each volume is as its Author wisht it to be & dreamt it might be, in its Perfect State. Unflawed, Uncorrupted, Undamaged by the fevers & intoxications & hastes & forgetfulnesses of the human Author, Raised Up to the individual Perfection of its Kind. And yes, some few of these Perfect Books have transported or have been transported across the Border, thru the Curtain or VEIL, into yr Fallen & Corrupt world, there to Shine.

• Wandring dazed within the Treasures of a great Library of the REALM, a particular sasha encountered a particular tome, and upon reading same, the which named LOST BOY LOST GIRL, the sasha grew maddened and enraged. Ancient Passions & fevers again took hold, and the crack-wit sasha roared wild through those small portions of the REALM known to it, howling for justice & retribution & revenge. The name of the sasha should be known well to you: on Earth, he was Joseph Kalendar.

• Spirits as yet barred access to zamani may betimes slip from REALM to Realm and enter the plane from which their death had lifted them. There, they may be witnessed, described, and identified as GHOSTS.

• GHOSTS are of many kinds & arrayed along a continuum from entirely insubstantial (a haze, a wisp, a curl of smoke, and how how how I wish I could smoke, 4 I know I wd a-door it) to entirely substantial & corporeal, at least as to sight, touch, taste & smell, & tho this latter is quite rare, such is the case with yr Mr. Kalendar.

• For this u have only yrself to blame, Underdone. GHOST-KALENDAR HAS ALL THE ATTRIBUTES YOU PERMITTED HIM IN YR SILLY FLAWD BOOK! Thus: He can change his Form & appear in various Guises, he is in Possession of Great Strength & Subtlety & may show Himself as a savage Beast neither Swine nor Canine but a creature Hideous in-between. He possesses the Power of Invisibility!

If u had never brushed against our REALM, yes, u r right, Undercooked, JK your angry reader wd still be angry but his anger would be confined to This Side, where easily it wd be contained, Suff’red Through, Endured & Understood. BUT!!!!!!!!! U BUTTSECKS, U OPENED THE WEDGE!!!!!!!!!

Wht can I doo, poor poor me?

Oho u are looking for Advice frum Cyrax? Okeydokey, artichokey, Cyrax Sez: U will know the Right Thing when the Time comes. We hope. We trust. We must Nipp this Intrusion in the Budd, and u will be Aided Toward that End.

by whom Aided?

By one of the HIGHER BEINGS, u stupidity, a representative of the class known to u as Angels, beings made Visible in the Class 3 Manifestation, a CLERESYTE (or approximately that) to us, by name in your tongue WCHWHLLDN . . . He is impatient of success in his most unwelcome mission, and u must be wary of his wrath, for WCHWHLLDN’s morality is not yours & in no way prohibits him from inflicting upon you an agonizing death. In his appearance before u on Grand Street u saw how great WCHWHLLDN dislikes detests loathes the tight & unclean surround of Earth. His Task is to CLEANSE.

what is our structure, here, within the REALM??????

u ask what cannot be answered bcuz u r not capable of comprehension & arrogant besides. But this is what we enjoy about your kind & what I in particular like about u in particular, buttsecks. A kind of Valor—blind, unconscious, oft-foolish, never without greed, but of value nonetheless, for are not u in all your measures and qualities the raw material of the REALM, even as to its Upper Reaches? So try this on for size. U have yr Holy Books, Scripture, the Koran, the Hebrew Bible, the Upanishads, necessary to you all & Images of the True and the PRIME, and within Scripture there exist the Gospels, and within the Gospels exists a wise passage about many mansions. Picture each mansion as a Plane or Level, and u will have som idea. With Plane Upon Plane, Level Upon Level, until Mathematics scarce can encompass them all. Of suchlike is the Structure of the REALM, tho of course it is really not.

& why have u received e-mails from departed classmates?

Becuz, as u should have figured out by now, those who knew u and r not long dead, the newest of the sasha, being confused and dis-located unlocated, perceived immediately the opportunity to establish thru u contact with their lost world, thence to complain, to beg for help, to ask for directions & mouth off in the lisping baby-babble that is their only mode of speech. Ignore these & leave them 2 find their way or not. For in time, all will find their way, if over millennia. I myself have attained but Level 4, and in this Station I know bliss.

now keep your hands off the keyboard, stop interrupting, and take a few more bullets 2 yr brain:

• Yr sister April, a tender GHOST in Alice-garb, will manifest herself be4 u when she can, but April cannot act against yr enemy Kalendar 4 they r of the same KIND.

• WCHWHLLDN the CLERESYTE can oppose Kalendar on yr behalf, but in his outrage may destroy u as well as he. He is yr Guardian, yes, but more so he is the Guardian, a Guardian, one of many, of the Lower Realm.

• U MUST CO-RECK AN ERROR, U MUST MAKE IT RITE! it is what u wr0te that opened the WEDGE to CHAOS, 4 Kalendar saw the ERROR in yr book & ran am0ck & now u must stay alive although u face a 2ble peril now becuz u created a 2nd Dark Man, did u not? Kalendar was not threat enuf & so u MERGED him with the dark dark villain almost instantly to b in pursuit of yr lovely gamine & now a problem U MUST FACE.

• Becuz the shite is about to hit the fan the wall the floor the ceiling 2, buttsecks, and u will have 2 b nimble & imaginative & brave as u have never been be4!

what, u ask, is the great ERROR discovered by the madman Joseph Kalendar in yr book & which enraged him so that he found entrance to yr Lower Realm?

What do u think it was? U accused the stupid beast of repeatedly raping & eventually murdering his own daughter, Lily, and HE DID NOT DO IT!!!! Mr. Kalendar is MIGHTILY PISSED OFF, IN FACT U CD SAY HE IS TIGER-PISSED OFF, which is why he wishes to deface the errant book, not to mention its libelous author!

and what then is yr task?

buttsecks, you disappoint old Cyrax, you must do better than this! Yr task, as u should already KNOW, podner, is to get on yore cayuse, hit the trail & go west 2 yr own Byzantium & the beginnings of this story. To Lily Kalendar’s real fate, which has been much on yr mind, after all.

& as if by magick, are u not being sent out very soon to perform the odd & self-referential act u call “Readings”? & is not 1 “Reading” in yr own Byzantium? & is not yr brother to wed beauteous China Beech? GO! ATTEND yr brother’s nuptials! Have u lost all civility and kindness along with yr poor VVits?

& deer buttsecks, if you do, u will have a chance of achieving something extraordinary & incestuous & ravishing unto heart-melt & impossible for every crack-brain author but u!

& know this also: a terrible terrible thrice-terrible price must be paid & paid by u—a great sacrifice, as if the heart were to be torn from yr body & yr brain crackt & yr spirit engulfed. yrs wuz the crime, yrs will be the punishment.

4 now I say no mor.