The Golden City

14

When Gabriel had first crossed the barriers, the experience was terrifying. After a series of journeys, he had learned how to guide the movement of his Light. Though his physical body had nothing to do with this knowledge, the process reminded him of skydiving or bodysurfing-activities where a shift of weight or a slight movement of the arms could propel you in a different direction. Crossing over, his consciousness sensed the right direction and was able to guide his Light to the First Realm. The arrival itself was always unexpected. After passing through the barriers, you were suddenly there. It was like lying down in one bed and waking up in another.

He opened his eyes, scrambled to his feet, and saw that he was standing in a long, narrow room with a shattered window at one end. Out on the street, a gas flare blossomed like a bright orange flower from a crack in the pavement. He was in a store that had once sold refrigerators, washing machines and stoves. These appliances weren’t the modern devices with stainless steel facades that were displayed in New York or London; instead, the washing machines had wringers fixed over an open tub, and the refrigerators were white metal boxes with cooling coils mounted on the top. The old-fashioned technology made each appliance look like a squat little idol-once worshipped, now abandoned in the ruins.

Gabriel turned again and found a shifting patch of darkness on the wall behind an overturned stove. Although this shadow could only be seen by a Traveler, it was a passageway that could be used by Maya, a route back to a specific access point-the hidden chapel at St. Catherine’s monastery. He pushed some of the abandoned machines across the room to mark the way out and walked over to the broken window. The appliance store was on a boulevard lined with other looted shops. A half-burned sofa and a pile of concrete rubble were on the sidewalk in front of him. The trees that had once shaded the area were now blackened trunks and leafless branches that reached toward the light of the flare.

Once again, he wondered if his father had explored this dark city. Gabriel’s Pathfinder, Sophia Briggs, had said that only a few Travelers crossed over to the different realms. Many thought that the power to leave their bodies was a hallucination. Others were so terrified by the four barriers that they refused to go any farther.

During Gabriel’s previous visit to the First Realm, the Commissioner of Patrols had mentioned the “visitors” who came from outside the island. Perhaps one of these people had been Matthew Corrigan. When Gabriel thought about his father, he recalled moments when Matthew was driving the pickup truck or working in the garden. Nothing was frightening or dangerous on their farm, but sometimes an expression of great sadness would appear on his father’s face. Perhaps he had been thinking about the anger and hate that imprisoned the inhabitants of this dark world.

Gabriel slipped out the entrance and headed down the street, moving with an alert and cautious rhythm-like an animal that knew it was being hunted. The last place he had seen Maya was at the abandoned school that was used as a headquarters for the patrols. Although it was dangerous to return there, he decided that it would be the center point of an invisible circle. He would start searching at the edges of the city and then spiral inward to the streets around the school.

Hell was a permanent reality, trapped in an endless cycle of destruction, creation, and destruction again. Perhaps everyone in the city was dead except for a few wolves and cockroaches. When the last survivor perished, the city would somehow return to that first morning when the sky was blue and hope was possible. The pain of Hell was all the more powerful because of what had been lost.

He had no idea if Maya was alive, but it didn’t look like the cycle of destruction was over. Light oozed through the thick cloud layer that covered the sky. The air smelled like burning tires and bits of ash covered the street. Everywhere he looked, he could see words and numbers scrawled on the walls and sidewalks. X Cross the Sky. Green 55. Here is the place. Remember. Some of these words delineated certain territories or fiefdoms that existed in the past-like the gang signs in his world. But most of the graffiti was put up by people who believed they would be reborn in a new cycle. Before they died, they left clues and coded directions to hiding places and caches of weapons.

He paused at the corner of a building and peered down a side street. It was dangerous to be here. Eventually, he would be seen by the wolves. He considered different strategies and then decided to leave messages to Maya all over the city. After searching through a burnt-out grocery store, he returned to the street with two pieces of charcoal. Feeling like a teenager in a deserted subway station, he scrawled a Harlequin lute on a brick wall with the words: WHERE U?

The next street over had been turned into a dumping area for broken chairs, two faceless grandfather clocks and a pile of smashed crockery. Someone had dismantled a carousel and left the wooden horses leaning against a brick wall as if they were chasing each other down the block. Gabriel touched one of these carvings and felt the smooth surface of the black saddle and the flowing mane. He decided to leave another message, but when he raised the piece of charcoal, he noticed faded words written with red paint. Each letter had dribbled at the edges as if they were bleeding. Are you the Traveler? Asked the writer. Have you returned? Below the words was a red arrow, pointing down the street.

Had Maya painted the message? That was possible, but Maya probably would have included the lute or interlocking diamond shapes-Harlequin signs. Gabriel stood beside the carousel horse for several minutes as he considered the possibilities. Then he headed down the street in the direction of the arrow. Two blocks away, he found a second message that led him onward to additional signs. The words were always written in red paint, but the size of the letters varied. Sometimes the message was splattered high up on a building like a billboard. But usually there was only a red arrow, painted on the hood of a smashed delivery truck or on a door still hanging from one hinge.

As he drew closer to the center of the city, footsteps appeared in the soot that covered the pavement. On one block he found a dead man lying on his back. The corpse had been there for some time and was dried out like a mummy. With shriveled lips and yellowed teeth, he appeared to be grinning at the destruction around him.

The red arrows were smaller now, as if the messenger had sensed the growing danger and decided to hide. Gabriel found no further clues on the next corner, so he doubled back and discovered an arrow pointing to the building across the street. The massive structure looked like a bombed-out church with a tower on each corner. Its entrance was a semi-circular archway; similar arches shaped each window. Someone had cut words into a marble plaque over the door: Museum of Art and Antiquities.

Wary of a trap, Gabriel stepped into the entrance hall formed by two intersecting arches. The museum once had a ticket booth, a cloak room and a turnstile, but everything had been destroyed. Apparently, someone had felt particular hatred for the turnstile and had taken the time to heat up the brass bars in a bonfire, and twist them into pincers that reached toward the ceiling.

He had heard about the city’s museum and library when he was a prisoner, but he had never been allowed to see the ruins. Turning to the right, he stepped into an exhibit hall filled with smashed glass cases. One still had a brass plaque that read: Ceremonial Drinking Cups from the Second Era.

There were no flares to light the interior of the museum, but the windows on one side of the room looked out on a courtyard with a fountain at the center. Gabriel stepped through the window frame and approached the fountain. Sea monsters with gaping mouths had once spat water into the fountain pool, but now the green marble was covered with soot and delicate flakes of ash.

“Who are you?” a man asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”

Gabriel turned around, looking for the speaker. There was no one else near the fountain, and the smashed windows that faced the courtyard looked like picture frames displaying sections of the night. What should I do? He thought. Run? In order to escape to the street, he would have to pass back though the museum to the turnstile.

“Don’t waste your time trying to find me.” The speaker sounded proud of his invisibility. “I know every part of this building. It’s my refuge. Not yours. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve never been in the museum. I wanted to see what was inside.”

“There’s nothing here but more destruction. So go away.”

Gabriel didn’t move.

“Go away,” the voice repeated.

“Someone painted messages on the walls. I followed them here.”

“That has nothing to do with you.”

“I’m the Traveler.”

“Don’t start lying.” The voice was harsh, contemptuous. “I know what the Traveler looks like. He came to the island a long time ago and then vanished.”

“I’m Gabriel Corrigan.”

There was long pause, and then voice spoke with a cautious tone. “Is that really your name?”

Gabriel had once seen photographs of an army sniper wearing something called a ghillie suit-a ragged assembly of dark green fabric that changed a person’s silhouette and allowed him to blend into the countryside. The dark man stepping through the doorway had created a similar costume for hiding in the corridors of the abandoned museum. Swatches of gray and black fabric were sewn together in a haphazard manner to make a smock and trousers. Rags were wrapped around the man’s shoes. A gauzy black veil hung from the brim of a hat and covered his face. Silently, the dark man glided across the courtyard before stopping ten feet away from Gabriel.

“Matthew Corrigan told me that he had two sons named Gabriel and Michael.”

“And who are you?”

The ghost hesitated and then raised the veil covering his face. He was a tired-looking older man with thinning hair and very pale skin. Even his brown eyes seemed to have lost most of their color.

“I’m the museum director. When I woke up that first morning, the keys to the museum and some paperwork for a new installation had been left in my apartment. A bill for a new display cabinet was in the folder and my name was at the top of the page.” The man closed his eyes as if reciting a sacred incantation. “Mr. T.R. Kelso is my name. At least, that’s what the document indicated…”

“How did you manage to survive?”

“I hid in the museum during the first wave of fighting and remained here during the different regimes. So far, we’ve had one emperor, two kings and various generals.”

“Do you remember when the Commissioner of Patrols was in charge?”

“Yes, of course. He’s dead now.”

“How long ago was that?”

“We don’t have clocks and calendars here.”

“I know that. But does it feel like a long period of time?”

“It was recent,” Kelso said. “The current leader is called ‘the Judge,’ but there have never been any laws on the island.”

“I’m looking for an outsider, a woman who is a very good fighter.”

“Everyone knows about her,” Kelso said. “Sometimes, I leave the museum, hide in the walls and listen to the patrols. This woman frightens the wolves. They tell stories about her.”

“Is she still alive?”

Kelso surveyed the entire courtyard as if expecting an attack. “It’s dangerous to stand here. Follow me.”

Gabriel followed the ragged figure back into the museum and through the vandalized display areas. Bits of glass and crockery covered the tile floor and they crunched and cracked beneath his shoes. The dark man’s movements were completely silent. He knew where to step and what to avoid. Finally, they reached a room with a mural that showed men and women in blue overalls working the levers of enormous machines. Someone had attacked the picture with an ax or a knife, destroying every face.

They reached a wooden door with a smashed lock in one of the corners. Kelso opened it cautiously, revealing a staircase and a dried-out corpse hanging from a noose.

“What happened?”

“You mean the dead man? I found the body on the street and hung it up here. This is better than a lock or secret entrance. People open the door, see the body and turn away. You would think they’d go up the staircase, but that never happens.”

Kelso slipped around the corpse, and Gabriel followed. They climbed up a circular staircase that ended at the top of a tower with a stone balustrade. It was a perfect place to survey the island-the shattered buildings, the over-grown parks and the dark river. Gas flares rose up from different parts of the city and smoke drifted past the jagged spires of the half-destroyed buildings.

“In the beginning, this really was a museum. The historical exhibits were on the ground floor and works of art were displayed in a first floor gallery. Whoever designed this place paid a great deal of attention to the details. The relics and antiques have vanished, of course, but I’ve done a study of the display case labels. All of them are very specific, mentioning the Twelfth Era or the Third Regime. The island once had a recorded history, a shared story about the past.”

“So when was the Third Regime?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a special book or a government report, but I haven’t been able to find it. The people living here can understand what history is, but we can’t remember the past. History doesn’t exist in this world.”

“And what kind of art was upstairs?”

“Painful images.”

“Torture? Murder?”

Mr. Kelso smiled for the first time. “It was something much worse than that. The museum had paintings of mothers and children, food and flowers, epic landscapes of great beauty. Naturally, the people trapped here hated these images. One of our first dictators said that the gallery confused people and caused discontent. So a squad of men smashed all the sculpture with hammers and burned all the paintings in an enormous bonfire. In this world, the foolish are proud of that fact. They find strength and certainty in their own ignorance.”

“It’s your world, too.”

Kelso raised his arms of his ragged costume and pushed the veil away from his forehead. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. The only desire I share with others is the need to escape. Your father disappeared into a passageway and I couldn’t follow him.’”

“I’m here to find Maya.”

“You mean the demon? That’s what the wolves call her. I’ve seen her twice, from a distance. She carries a sword and walks down the middle of the street.”

“So how can I find her?”

“Why would you want to do that? She’ll kill you. Perhaps she once had some goodness in her heart, but goodness can’t exist here.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Mr. Kelso laughed. “She kills everyone. No exceptions. I’ve heard some people say that she’s lost her eyes. All you see are little chips of blue stone.”

“Can you guide me to her?”

“And what’s the benefit to me? Can you get me out of this place?”

“I can’t promise that,” Gabriel said quietly. “I’m from another world, but you started your life in this place.”

“But I’m not like the others here. I swear that’s true.”

“Everyone has the power to make certain decisions in their life. If you think you’re better than the others, then prove it. Maybe your actions will free you when everyone is destroyed and the cycle starts again.”

“Do you think that possible? Really?”

“I need to find Maya, Mr. Kelso. If you want to be a good person, you can start by helping me.”

Kelso’s mouth twitched as if it was painful to standing there without the veil covering his face. “I heard the wolves talking. They’ve trapped the demon in what used to be the library. They’ve probably killed her by now.”

“Take me there.”

“As you wish.” Kelso lowered the veil over his face and started down the stairs. “You remind me of your father, Gabriel.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t lie to me.”