The Everborn Read online

  “My husband’s dead?” Melony was strangled by anguish.

  “And I will be, too,” Andrew responded, “and many will die after me, I assure you, if we don’t move together to defeat this thing....”

  “What thing?”

  “We haven’t time now. I must get you out of here. You know enough. Simon BoLeve...you know of him...surely you noticed him at The Crow Job when you sought to hook up with me, you know of him from your husband’s research, and I’m sure you watch the news. Tonight, as surely as Bari and I are here, he’s coming too. And he’s coming for you."

  Melony dropped backwards upon the opposite end of the couch, distressed, her eyes still never leaving him. “Bari is with you?”

  A crash came forth from the direction of the kitchen just then, startling them to attention.

  ***

  When Andrew rose and went for the kitchen to investigate, he requested that Melony stay put there upon the sofa.

  He did not hear the doorbell ring.

  Instead, he entered the kitchen until his shoes met with a toppled plastic bowl and its spillage of empty candy wrappers spewn across the kitchen floor. There, in the midst, was an inches-wide portion of gooey splotch heaped quaintly like a goat tird upon the no-wax linoleum: partially digested Watchmaid refuse.

  Bari had been into the M&Ms.

  She’d made it clear to Andrew that she intended to place herself out of the scene, of the trick-or-treat confrontation between her ‘Born and Melony, for fear her outright presence would be too much for Melony to handle all at once, what with Andrew’s oh-so-alien Vogue new look and all.

  Hell, Bari was too much for Melony to handle the last time.

  And Bari had to ruin it all by causing this kitchen calamity, for the minute reason of her fondness towards the ability to still taste and enjoy food.

  “Son of a bitch,” Andrew cursed to himself as he stood.

  But.....where was Bari?

  A tremendous shadow encompassed the very dim backyard porch light at the sliding glass doors in the rear corner of the kitchen just then, which did little to prepare Andrew for the sudden crescendo of surprise and cascade of thick flying glass shards that followed instantly thereafter.

  Andrew side-stepped in a heartbeat past the section of cabinets behind him to his left to avoid the spectacle, stumbling to his knees in the process, the palms of his wizened hands seeking stable support to raise himself up again from the obstacle course of the floor.

  Lifting his gaze, he instantly caught sight of none other than the coppery-skinned personage of Bari, flailed and having been flung back-first into the floor tile, sliding to a halt before the rear living room entrance.

  “Bari...!”

  “Andrew,” came Bari's fervent command, “get Melony. Take her away from here! Now!"

  Andrew managed himself to his feet and darted over her and past her for the living room, the flowing black gown of his costume virtually taking flight as he went and he did not look back.

  The disorienting shove through the glass held Bari at a disadvantage, though only momentarily. When Andrew was clear of her, she lifted her hands and parted the thicket of long black hair from her blazing orange eyes, and bounced forward in a manner not unlike a Weeble that wobbled after falling down.

  Her senses rejuvenated with a keen prowess, Bari readied herself for another assault from the outer pitch night of the patio’s rear yard; she couldn’t resist a taste of the M&M candy treats, no doubt about that, but suddenly Salvatia’s presence was detected outside and in the yard and she did not hesitate to defend. In fervent abandon she’d sped from the kitchen and through the reaches of the back porch to engage in sixty second Championship Wrestling with the Magdalene Queen.

  Bari heard the silence as she regained her posture and surveyed, and the longer this silence went, the further went the possibility of a second assault from beyond the glass shards still stuck in the encompassing threshold of the door’s metal frame like a jagged mouthful of teeth.

  Her wit slow to respond, it came to Bari now after the toss through the glass that Salvatia could have made herself a decoy and she spun around swiftly to follow after Andrew.

  She whisked herself past the living room, only to meet her Everborn who faced her dismayed and confounded just inside the wide-open front doorway.

  Hung from a piece of orange and black Halloween decor Scotch tape was a partially torn scratch pad page, with a black Magic Marker message:

  WE HAVE HER NOW

  AND SOON SO MUCH MORE

  TO THE SWEET HORIZON OF SUCCESS,

  ON TO THE NEXT,

  AND HAPPY

  The Halloween portion was mangled off, perhaps even bitten off.

  All Andrew could mutter was....

  “She’s gone.”

  On to the next.

  It was time to visit Ralston.

  43.

  Company for Ralston

  Ralston Cooper had always been the chip on the shoulder of his own ego, always immersed in his own fabrications of personal importance and glory, never pausing for even one admitted moment to discern the meaning of his own life, to find himself.

  Until, that Fall, himself found him.

  Funny, this time period, this season called Fall.

  For just about everything did fall...and, for Ralston, things even fell from the sky.

  ***

  The inside of the Cooper residence seemed as lifeless and abysmal as the bowels of an empty church sanctuary in the dead of night.

  Bari had materialized in the downstairs weight room after making sure the coast was clear from antagonistic elements, to unlock the sliding glass door and allow Andrew to enter from the outside pool court.

  There was something about Bari and sliding glass doors lately.

  Andrew emerged from the early morning air as cautiously as a catburglar, but feeling himself looking like a gargoyle returning late from a masquerade party disguised as a gargoyle. He hadn’t been fully used to the entire experience of this whole transformation gig since he first began losing his hair and by this point in time he’d practically sworn off him own human mentality. His enigmatic self-identity was pretty damn well crystal clear about now, and though Bari had maintained the entire truth well beyond arm’s reach until now, she recently pointed out it should’ve been clear to him all along. In retrospect, everything was to Andrew as much of a Catch-22 as it was existing as a human being anyway, this ignorance to foreknowledge, and that was the excuse he gave.

  Of course, Bari understood that. For Andrew, she had meant for it to be that way. Any Everborn carrying the privilege of a conscious relationship with his Watchmaid throughout any given lifetime held more than a clue to the answers to his own existence, but one of the many specialties of a Watchmaid’s power was a profound influence over the mind. That was the excuse Bari gave.

  Andrew’s sneakers hit carpet, and he clicked the switch of a dollar store plastic flashlight in one hand to reveal the time on the other hand’s wrist. He assumed the time was around one a.m., give or take. He still wore his costume, sans the mask, and even with his real hands he found it difficult to lift his sleeve to check. It took long enough to arrive here in Brea all the way from the Politos’ in Malibu, long enough for Salvatia to have already struck. The outlook to Andrew thus far was that Salvatia already had. The only way to know for sure was to investigate.

  Bari then moved toward him, pressing him backwards and outside, shushing him before he could utter an offended objection. She gazed into him with a sobering stringency, which never failed to win over Andrew’s undivided attention, each pupil a blazing orange sun mirrored by the dual black holes of Andrew’s own as he reacted to her.

  “Don’t be too hasty and listen to me,” Bari decreed. “I’ve been through the house, inside and out. Ralston is alone in the upstairs bedroom and all the lights are off as if he purposely wishes for people to think no one’s home. Even the phone’s answering machine’s outgoing message is Ralston’s v
oice insisting he is away in Bermuda sipping Coronas beneath a bamboo umbrella and living out the Chris Isaak video Wicked Game.”

  “Tell me what you sense, and what you think we should do....” Andrew’s impatience was mounting, “Goddammit, Mel’s life is on the line and there’s no time to lose. Has Salvatia been here, Bari?"

  “There’s no indication, but that means little,” Bari reported, then turned solemn. “Andrew, you need to confront Ralston, now, one on one. I’ll leave you two alone until you summon me. Ralston isn’t himself anymore, and....”

  Andrew beckoned her as Bari paused to think, “And what? We don’t have time for this....”

  “The Watchers have been here. Twice they have, since you completed Ralston’s last book and gave him his manuscript copy.”

  “The Watchers. I’m a Watcher, until all is said and done and I forget what I know all over again between the two legs of a new mother.”

  “Andrew, my beloved, you must talk to Ralston. We can resolve this turmoil. You asked me what I sense and this is what I think you should do. You’ll understand why, shortly. Hopefully, soon afterwards, we’ll all come to an understanding together. As you know, I’ll be around when you need me.”

  Bari’s physical coppery flesh became translucent before disappearing altogether, leaving Andrew by himself. Her words well conveyed, Andrew took in a sigh and exhaled a vaporous stream of frosty air before reentering the house, mindful to secure the sliding glass door behind him as he went.

  Alone and with flashlight in hand, Andrew again commenced his venture inside.

  ***

  So Bari insists Ralston and I have a little chat together. Maybe smoke a blunt and confess secrets old and new. Andrew’s mind wandered as he steered his course through the weight room, past the bar and into the hallway. Curious, he flicked on a light switch on the nearby wall before thinking it best not to, and for a second the fluorescent bar lights flickered then died; his entrance had been unannounced and he knew he must not startle Ralston prematurely. What with Andrew’s dramatically tweaked physical appearance as of late, darkness was a good idea.

  The Watchers have been here. Twice they have....

  As soon as Andrew found himself contemplating what Bari had said to him, he suddenly realized a new truth: yes, he must talk to Ralston. And, with a sense of urgency, he understood exactly why.

  Spontaneous revelations were becoming to Andrew more and more common these days.

  He killed his flashlight and carried on through the downstairs corridor past framed obscurities dotting the walls, square structures of what Andrew knew to be preserved front covers of each published Ralston Cooper novel.

  He was no stranger to this house though he’d always felt himself one, especially now, and he easily navigated out of the corridor and into the shadowy vestibule of the main entranceway, a spiraling staircase uncoiling to his left.

  He approached the first step of the staircase, set one hand upon the metal railing, and boldly made his ascent, all the while cautious and inquisitive of what was in store for him at the top.

  He reached the upstairs corridor. The bathroom door he immediately faced yawned open into an abysmal rectangular hole. Tempted for the moment to pause for a quick flashlight scan, a soft light from a source all its own succeeded his impulse. It trailed until expiring into the dark just in front of him, out from the direction of a room down the hall to his right. The hemmed border of his costume’s black cape caught a snag along the foliage of a potted synthetic plant as he rounded the hall corner and he wrenched it free with a carelessly firm tug which could have given him away.

  It was a dim illumination, as like from a shaded bedside lamp; Andrew could see where he was and where he was going more clearly now, could see that the light came from the opened doorway of Ralston and Jessica’s bedroom a few yards ahead. He went forward another step, and as if by the very act of taking that step there came the somber strum of acoustical six-string guitar chords, lazy chords. Andrew slowed as soon as he heard them before he found himself standing still in the bedroom’s doorway.

  And then there came a voice singing in melancholy blues, almost as if in half-ass parody:

  “I don’t care if it rains or freezus

  ‘long as I got my plastic geezus

  glued onto the dashboard of my car....”

  And then the music silenced.

  ***

  “Andy-man,” Ralston said. “You secretly despised me calling you that. If I were you I would’ve hated me, ever since we first met at the school playground when I thought you were a pervert...quite frankly. Considering the changes lately in all those involved in this...this saga, you won’t ever have to worry about writing a single word beneath the guise of my name again. You see...that last book, the one you don’t remember typing, was about us. I sense Bari hasn’t fully let you in on it, but I doubt Bari’s been aware of no more than a few pieces of the total pie herself. The point is, anyway...well, I read most of the book. Until a band of Watchers paid me a visit and slapped my hand as they took it away.”

  Andrew crept closer a pace or two, in silent disbelief of the sight displayed before him. He had an idea what to expect as the reality dawned on him, but then again he hadn’t a clue it would be like this.

  Ralston had removed all furniture from the room and covered the section of carpet in the far corner with bed sheets, a section squared off in a corral of perhaps every damn pillow in the house. A sea shell statuette table lamp sat table-less upon a blanket in the corner, its light a ricocheted image off the room’s low-set windows, shades pulled up revealing Brea’s vast starry nighttime. Flickering globules of fire swelled from several candles dispersed on teacup saucers on the outskirts of the lamp, like a shrine.

  Ralston was nestled facing the window, lounging propped against the pillowed border, legs crossed and a six-string in his lap.

  It was apparent by his appearance that he was well on his way into that Ol’ Time Regression each Everborn’s life was supposed to amount to. His stature was stunted like one of the undead Jawa creatures out of the film Phantasm, and the London Fog black trenchcoat he wore was so disproportioned and oversized that it added to the effect of this not being Ralston at all, but a hairless and alien facsimile of Ralston. Andrew perceived that the start of Ralston’s regression may have preceded his own.

  But how could that be?

  “Ralston, have you gone mad?” Andrew took an assertive march toward the window and yanked the dangling string that released a succession of vinyl blinds downwards, ensuring their privacy.

  “Hey, my view!”

  “People might see us,” Andrew rebuked him.

  “Indeed, if people were twice as tall and dwelt in exaggerated houses to accommodate their height,” Ralston replied. “Chill out and pull up a pillow. We’re safe here and there’s much to discuss.”

  Andrew stood where he was. Ralston’s facial features were not unlike Andrew’s, exhibiting the same broadening of bone and structure and elasticity of skin, of eyes a cavernous black and teardrop-shaped, lips and nose tightened, plain, as if retreating into his face. His countenance echoed a greater percentage of all the attributes uniquely Ralston, relieved of most of the intolerable qualities such as the cockiness which always made him a bastard. Granted, a subtle sarcastic quality revealed he was still a know-it-all, but Andrew suspected that maybe this time Ralston practically did.

  “We don’t have time to pull up pillows,” Andrew said, hurried and anxious. Then, “What happened to Jessica?”

  “She took a hike before I could persuade her otherwise, I suppose.”

  “She left you?”

  Ralston set his guitar to one side and resorted to clasping his hands and lazily twiddling his thumbs. He wore black Levi’s, legs rolled back high enough to oblige his shrunken stature, a droopy grey sweatshirt beneath the coat.

  He sighed. “Jessica’s pregnant, but then we both know that. I gotta tell you, I nearly pissed my pants at your old pad whe
n Bari came to your rescue. At the time, I felt I had every right to kick your ass. I thought you were selling me out. William Behn had me convinced and paranoid and I went off on a mission not entirely aware of the facts.”

  “I understand that,” Andrew replied,

  Ralston released his clasped hands and tapped a single finger to his cranium. “Now I’m aware of the facts. Hear me out. The Watchers have been...well, watching my agent for a long time. They knew he would be one of the recipients of a typewritten message from the future. They knew about the book, Andrew. This particular group of Watchers knew about the book because they’re from the future and they’re aware of what it takes to send messages back in time. Some of them had done it themselves and apparently in the future they taught me. They have a keen grasp of the ins and outs of linear time...sending messages, traveling themselves...yet I don’t believe anyone’s sent an entire novel before, and I don’t believe I was allowed to do it in the first place.”

  “So what of your agent William Behn?” Andrew asked. “He did receive a manuscript?”

  “I suppose the Watchers are having their way with him,” was Ralston’s response. He leaned forward, with a serious look about him. “Andrew, if I knew what I know now and was still completely human, I would tell all the world about it. I mean, the thing is, I’m not the human I once was. I can’t tell the world now....being the state that I’m in, they’ll crucify me. I have a feeling that somewhere in the near future, I get my chance, for writing about all of this the way I did...well, at least the way I’m going to...is the only way to get away with it. Besides, writing all about it and sending it back in time is crucial to everything that’s happened so far, don’tcha think? And furthermore, it gives our side the advantage against Salvatia, even if your twin brother did accidentally receive portions of the book.”