The Everborn Read online

  I did not like where this was leading. I was recalling more and more of the truth in the words the Watcher spoke of and I detested more and more both what he said and how he said them. I had not been summoned here to discuss my marriage nor cigarette smoking, had not been prepared to be grilled beneath the thrift-store-flowery lampshade of a motel room I did not enter on my own accord. The recurring fears of my wife’s safety were becoming replaced with a swelling conviction that it was I who had been kidnapped, if anyone was at all. I slid a pink plastic wastebasket I found at the desk’s side across the carpet with my shoe to catch my ashes.

  Then I spoke my mind.

  “Just a minute. Just a goddamn sixty seconds. Can I say something, here? Are you through? I can’t believe I’m here to listen to this, can’t fucking believe I’m sitting here, smoking a fucking cigarette, with you talking to me like this, smoking a fucking cigarette yourself! Hell, I can’t believe I’ve finally met one of you, and I’m talking to you like this! Is that what you do to people, how you abduct people, ‘cause I’ve been under the impression it had nothing to do with smoke sessions in motel rooms and goddamn electric typewriters and letters to meet somewhere at Joe-Billy Bob’s Breakfast in the Boonies if you survive the Death-diesel Brigade getting there---.”

  “Are you finished speaking your mind?” the Watcher spat an interruption of smoke and words from an exhaled first drag of a new cigarette, another of which I had not noticed until it made an announcement all its own by a flaunt between fingers.

  And then he rose from the bed and turned to face me fully.

  He stared straight into my own eyes; I knew he did, yet his eyes bore no pupils, therefore this knowledge was more of an awareness than anything, yet this awareness was so strong I felt his glare blazing headlong through my own, locked into mine. If it were laser beams they surely would have blinded me and pierced clear the hell out of the back side of my fragile human head. His head appeared even more flimsy, almost ghostly white, yet darker, an off-white, almost grey, although I do admit the color of his skin, particularly the skin of his face, played with the shadows of the lamplight and the perceptions of certain dull reality within my mind.

  I witnessed infinity in those eyes. I do sincerely mean infinity...those two optical crevices, slanted diagonally as decades of research and even more decades of reported encounters have made me come to have expected, those two eyes drew me into them, and the further they drew me, the more I found I could not escape their gaze, or at least the ultimate attention their gaze commanded me into. Those black, glossy, infinite eyes were hypnotic unlike any human hypnotist I had ever encountered, almost impossible to describe on human terms because human was most definitely what they weren’t, yet, somehow, in that motel bathrobe getup, standing still and silent and facing me as he did, he looked like Yoda. Even still, Yoda’s white, earless, second cousin. Smoking second cousin, the one out on parole.

  “In speaking your mind,” he told me as I sat, forgetting my own cigarette, the one I wasn’t smoking now, its ashes falling where they may within the pink wastebasket or the shaggy shabby carpeting, I didn’t care or notice at that point which, “have you taken into account that I can read your mind? That I know your thoughts? That you haven’t really said anything to me at all yet, haven’t told me anything I didn’t really already know, let alone told me anything?”

  I could not release my gaze from his. I understood what he was saying to me, yet I could not feel any reaction to what he was saying, like the occasional times past when someone would talk to me and I was so incredibly tired or dazed I would find myself more attentive to who was talking rather than to what they were talking about. His words were seeping into me, however, and I would remember them enough to carry them with me as though what he said were to remain a part of my very existence for the remainder of my life and beyond into eternity.

  He continued, and in doing so, he proceeded to explain what I did not know and what I already knew, my past, present, future, my situation with him and my destiny in the tasks which I have even then performed by my very presence there and the tasks that I was to perform still, for his sake, for the sake of my wife, myself, and for the sake of time untold.

  ***

  He explained to me a few things. Only a few. Everything else I needed desperately to know would be explained to me soon, over the course of time and over the hours I would spend in the endeavor I was about to undertake, with his help, for his benefit and for the benefit of all involved. He was about to explain to me that I was about to do this for him and willingly, I might add, though the way he imposed this upon me came about so naturally that likewise naturally I could not refuse him. To refuse him was inevitably to refuse what I had come there for, or rather what he summoned me there for. I had come there for many reasons, but he, I found, had summoned me there for a matter of utmost importance, a matter I was as of yet very much unaware.

  I was about to become aware.

  And this was how the Watcher made me thus.

  This was what he explained:

  “Although you may not have said very much, you must have thought a great deal, ‘cause I’ve gotten a Goliath of a headache from your thoughts, Mister UFO Busybody, Mister Detective or Private Investigator or whatever you call yourself. For starters, don’t get the idea that I’ve achieved this mental capability from something as mundane or universal as evolution. I am not a being as simple as having been evolved from humanity’s future, am not an example of what you guys are gonna look like a thousand years from now, am not a volunteer space cadet on a rescue mission to preserve the species, any species, except maybe to preserve my own interests for the time being. Any preconceived notions you have learned or heard or yearned for can be put to rest right now, before we begin, before you fuck things up with limited vision and observation. You terrestrial people, for crissake...always looking for something beyond yourselves for the answers to everything. The answers are right where you are. Right where you’ve always been. And they’ve always been there with you.

  “For instance, this reading of minds....you can do it, too. It’s not something the human mind will evolve into. It’s a matter of tapping your strengths. It’s a matter of needing to tap into your strengths to do so. It’s also a matter of fucking things up if you don’t know how to control it. People will learn all about that, in time. Don’t try too hard to harness it. Remember, everything is meant to be.

  “Oh... you haven’t learned that yet, have you? Don’t worry, I’ll teach you all about things meant to be. That’s pretty much the core of why I’ve sent for you.

  “You see, there is something I need you to do for me. That is where this business of typewriters comes in, that is the purpose of that typewriter at the desk behind you. Funny things, typewriters. Typewriters, computers, word processors, the pen. Not just mightier than the sword, I should say. They’re mightier than diddlydamn Doomsday. Words and the conveying of words, thoughts which are essentially preconceived words, communication, all are the building blocks of the universe. AND GOD SAID.....IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, and so forth.

  “You following me?

  “Oh, and sorry for calling you Uncle. My sarcasm is vented through my circumstance. All that shall be explained in the task which I am about to ask of you, what you are about to write for me on that typewriter behind you. It’s a magic typewriter; I say magic only in the context of showmanship, in being the master magician you have foreseen me to be. I made use of that very typewriter to project that letter you received from me into the one on your wife’s desk, the one you woke up to.

  “And you, my friend, are about to write a story for me, which will be projected from that typewriter to another one back in time, back six months ago, because we need to reset the course of things meant to be. If you don’t do this, we’re all fucked. You, your wife, a few other people you may be familiar with throughout all that UFO research of yours, and, not to mention me. I am risking my goddamn neck for this. Other Watchers, guys l
ike me, that look like I do, serve a certain important purpose once they become the way I became. That purpose isn’t to meet with UFO researchers in remote motels to dictate international bestselling novels. I can get in deep shit for this, if this doesn’t work out the way we want.

  “We have very little time. We must work fast. I have a story to tell, a story you may find yourself partially familiar with, a story you never knew had been going on amidst your kind, right under your noses. Right smack dab under my own, I might add, in my last life as one of you.

  “In this story, you’ll find the answers you seek, as long as you do what I say, type what I say, and you’ll find yourself unlocking an entire ecosystem of doors, let alone a boulevard.

  “And when we are finished, we shall experience the results, hopefully the fruits, of our combined efforts. Let us kick ass together, my friend.

  “Are you ready....?

  “Do you understand...?”

  5.

  No True Beginnings

  True beginnings are but simple reflections of what had always been, mirrored images of similar beginnings enacted time and again in ceaseless encore. Every beginning owes its existence to another beginning before it, ultimately reaching deeper into eternity past. Locate a mirror, if you will, and see for yourself.

  Where does your reflection begin? Does it begin with the mirror before you, or with yourself within the mirror?

  If you were to pause, curiously and attentively, before the mirror of your own beginnings, you just might catch the sight of your infinite self. Either that, or of something watching you from out of the corner of your eye.

  I became aware of my own perspiration as I readied before the electric typewriter in anticipation of the Watcher’s first words. My fingers poised and hovering less than a centimeter above the keys, I curled them tightly into clenched fists several times to keep them from trembling.

  Previous to this, my Master Magician revealed to me what seemed to be many things, perhaps not in their entirety, but in any case just about as much as I needed to understand at the time. He assured me everything else, all the major importances, would be revealed in time.

  As long as I did as he requested.

  And they were requests, not orders.

  They were only, in the end, orders put in force by myself, requests that I required myself to obey to the fullest and with the most complete of faiths, because they adhered to my interests and to the interests of those around me which I held dear. This had been no kidnapping, not of my wife nor myself, no frivolous runaround the likes of which swelled within the deep, back edges of my sanity as I had feared. This had been a desperate plea for help, from a Watcher to a human, a human who had made himself involved long ago, a human who had been involved unawares (at least to a knowledge of this extent) and maybe the only human who could side with and cooperate with a being such as Mister Watcher (who, by coincidence, claims to have been human many times around...).

  One of the insights he had given me within that motel untold led to an offspring of A.J. Erlandson. A.J. was the famous B-movie director who’d been a friend and employer of both my parents, and his son had been an object of mystery and scrutiny to varying degrees in my career.

  What I was about to undertake was to write about what the Watcher had revealed to me and the entirety of what he was about to reveal to me still, which, according to our plan, should set the course of events that have already occurred but couldn’t have occurred unless I typed what the Watcher had yet to dictate.

  I wouldn’t expect you to understand just yet.

  The Watcher remained silent at first and for what seemed to be quite some time.

  Then he spoke, his first uttered command before I was to actually start.

  “Let’s begin with the son of A.J. Erlandson....”

  I began to type, to work the Watcher’s magic.

  To learn the whole story of how I ended up here.

  To continue the story.

  To find out where I’m going from here.

  And you...you’ve followed me this far....

  Follow me still, and keep close.

  I’ve a story further I’d like to tell you....

  PART TWO:

  INFORMAL INTRODUCTIONS

  “You shall find out how salt is the

  taste of another man’s bread,

  and how hard is the way up

  and down another man’s stairs.”

  -Dante

  6.

  Swapping the Story Again

  —August 26, 1994—

  The obscure configuration of a slender shadow stood still

  behind the bathroom mirror’s misty residue.

  A slight hesitation, a blurred agitation...a sudden, dark sweep....

  And then there were eyes.

  Smeared from the beads of moisture, yet visible and apparent.

  The surrounding dimness provided a welcomed surreal backdrop rather than the otherwise sobering brightness of the vanity light, the nightlight’s orange lucidity reflecting first from pools in lampblack pupils and then from the mirror image itself.

  From the image of the eyes.

  Staring.

  Andrew Erlandson took the towel and gave the mirror a second stroke, then a third.

  He continued to stare at himself. At his face. At his stalwart chin and thickset eyebrows. At his pale nudity. At his dark brown hair cut modestly behind the ears giving him a juvenile semblance even more evident in baby’s-butt-smooth flawless skin and a face of innocent charm.

  At his twenty-eight-year-old eyes.

  Andrew held an ardent fascination for the mysteries behind those eyes.

  Some of those mysteries, he believed, could be revealed at the right moments, at the quickest flicker or slightest dilation, if only he could ever just manage to notice those revelations some day.

  Mysteries inhabiting the darkness beyond those eyes.

  And the darkness itself was indeed another fascination as well. There was something oddly mutual about human eyes and darkness, something curiously ironic.

  Andrew wondered what it was.

  Quite often, he wondered.

  But his thoughts scattered with a knocking at the bathroom door, and in the abruptness he answered; timidly, although thoroughly annoyed.

  “What is it?”

  A voice, Ralston Cooper’s half-drunken slur, echoed from behind the door. “I got the manuscript myself, Andy-man. Found it. On your desk, in your bedroom. You knew it was there, didn’t you? I got a gig at The Crow Job, man. You almost screwed it up, makin’ me wait for you to get outta the goddamn shower.”

  Ralston’s voice trailed, faded. He was headed for the living room, possibly for the front door.

  Impatient bastard, Andrew thought, but did not answer. Andrew threw the towel onto the toilet seat and lazily reached for the mound of clothes piled upon the hamper to his side.

  He had risen a little more than an hour ago to an incessant ringing of the doorbell, finding himself seated at his desk and slumped over his typewriter, his head pillowed by the cradle of folded arms. He had been working undisturbed for hours and hours on end, hours which seemed like days, attempting to finish the newest novel ghostwritten for Ralston before he arrived to retrieve it. Today had been the day Ralston’s agent anticipated its delivery, and Andrew had laboriously slaved in preparation.

  Slaved so hard, in fact, that in his extended weariness he had completed the final pages just before the electric buzz of the typewriter managed to lull him to sleep, without so much as allowing him the memory of having typed anything at all.

  He simply awoke, his finished work before him, a shower beckoning, his impatient employer at the front door.

  It had been 9:00 p.m. then.

  An entire morning, noon, and evening had swept by.

  And Andrew Erlandson had things to do, places to go, asses to kiss.

  And a shower to take.

  ***

  Ralston Cooper was seated on the bla
ck leather recliner in the living room of Andrew’s apartment. His attentions riveted now from the room’s eccentric environment to the vivid rock images of MTV on the projector television.

  That’s the place for me, Ralston maintained, the crystaline line of meth he had snorted before his arrival maintaining the rhythmic flutter-tap-tapping of his black leather-booted right foot against the shag carpet. Rock videos, man. Not books all my life, no siree Bob. ‘Specially books written this way. He gazed down upon the thick black and white of the manuscript in his lap, its pages corralled by a topless cardboard stationary box. I wanna be known for something I knew I did myself for a change. Although, fame and fortune for this writing shit is still heaven and a bag of chips...

  With the exception of the flickering T.V. light, the only illumination in the room was from the single lamp protruding from a clamp situated on a shelving fixture above Ralston’s recliner. This annoyed Ralston; it was the brightest Andrew allowed the room to be regardless of time of day. The man lived his life like a reclusive elderly mole for godsakes. Ralston was also for that matter accustomed to space, and with the princely sum he typically paid Andrew for his literary services, he’d expect the fool to at least lounge in spacious luxury.

  And then there were the books... shelves streamed across the expanse of wall space, filled with diverse volumes of both fiction and reference and whatever else could conceivably be of interest or fancy to Andrew enough for such a library. All Ralston could see of this was uselessness and wasted space, but then again Ralston had never been much of a reader.