3 AM. Helen waited patiently on the fence, tapping the mossy brick with her heels. She held the black box in her arms, stroking the small beads that made up the latch and staring at the silver crescent moon etched onto its side. She looked up as she heard Kelley approach, her face half lit by faded lantern light. Beyond the bridge, the silhouettes of trees from the forest below sawed at the skyline with the jagged teeth of black cardboard cut-outs.
“I’m surprised you made it,” said Kelley. He wasn’t. Something was off about him. Squinting at the ground or across the bridge, his eyelids pressed together like a pair of slugs huddled for warmth. Wherever he looked, it was not at her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Helen, tracing the crescent moon with her finger. “I woke up to a face-in-the-wall. I think it was some ghost or maybe a demon. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”
“Oh?” She could hear the interest rising in his voice. “What did this ghost look like?”
“At first he pretended to be an angel,” Helen could see her breath as she spoke. When had it gotten so cold? She couldn’t feel it but the proof was right in front of her. “But then he started to talk about God. He said all kinds of horrible things.”
“Right, right,” said Kelley impatiently. “What did he look like?”
“A clown with one yellow eye and two black horns that flopped around on either side of his face. They looked like bugs.”
A gust of wind tossed Helen’s hair in front of her face. She could hear Kelley thinking.
“Did he hurt you?” he finally said.
“No,” Helen paused, a little annoyed at how much the question came across like some kind of obligation. “He wanted me to kill myself. But I didn’t. So instead, he gave me this.”
She held out the box with both arms, which she then nervously began to twirl.
“Do you remember the night we buried Daddy?”
He didn’t like the way she said that.
“Yeah.”
“He told me that Daddy,” she tried to swallow, but whatever was in her throat wouldn’t go down. “That Dad is in Hell. That he made a deal with the face-in-the-wall and now he’s enslaved in a carnival world. I saw it. I saw him. But he’ll let my dad go if I open this box…”
“Give me that.”
Her eyes flashed and she held the box tighter to her chest.
“Don’t touch it,” Helen growled. “Don’t touch me, Kelley. Get away from me.”
He grabbed her by the fat of her palm to peel off her grip before snatching the box with his other hand. When he turned his back to her, she scratched at his arms.
“You never said what cult your dad belonged to,” said Kelley, looking at the insignia of a crescent moon dangling from a scimitar. Beneath it was an etching of a pudgy little gremlin wearing a crown and riding a donkey. “But I have a pretty good idea.”
“What are you doing?” She dug her nails into his arm until she broke the skin. In the lantern light, slick, black trails oozed down his elbow. “Give it back.”
He ignored her. Click. The hatch popped open. Helen froze. Silence hung in the air like a guillotine. Laying atop the red-velvet lining was a vial filled with a worm. White, hardly thicker than a strand of hair. Underneath, a shred of paper read “eat me” in looping cursive.
Relaxing her grip on his arm, Helen peered over his shoulder.
“What is it?” He could smell her breath. Orchids floating in stale pool water.
“It’s a worm,” Kelley said. “Your face-in-the-wall, what else did he say?”
“He wanted inside my body. He said that there would be an eclipse in one week, maybe two, and that by the end no one will survive.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No. I don’t trust anything he said. But still…”
“So what if he’s right? We’ve all got to die sometime. Did you have plans or something?”
She felt a numbness in her arms. She hated when he talked like that.
“Do you believe in a soul, Kelley?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not just death. He said that the ‘angels’ would return to harvest our souls. But I would be spared if I gave him my body or if I killed myself and gave him my soul to hide in his world behind the wall.”
“Kill yourself for your own safety. Wow. I didn’t realize we’re dealing with a politician.”
She gave him an insinuating look, “You don’t always have to sound so bored when you’re hiding something. What’s going on? Have you seen him before?”
“I…don’t think so. It’s the worm, Helen. I’ve seen these kinds of worms before.”
“Where?”
Kelley’s eyes spiraled into the box. His temple pores relieved themselves of saccharine sweat. Eat me? He grinned nervously. Sure, why not? What was one more foreign soul in his belly? What could it do that hadn’t already been done? Mr. Face-In-The-Wall. What if there was a use for you? If you all wanted a human host so bad, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to share. Though it would be a shame if you couldn’t all get along. God forbid you tear each other apart.
An image ricocheted from temple to temple of a pale man devouring the foul, fish flesh of January. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his fingers twitch. All that meditation. Sitting on his ass, believing he was doing anything better than pretending to be someone. Worthless. His whole journey the spiritual equivalent of a bumper sticker. All those journeys into dreams and distant hells and still he felt the fear hot in his blood. It didn’t matter what he did. He could lie to anyone, himself easiest of all, but his body betrayed him every time.
“Don’t ignore me,” said Helen, tugging on his arm. “Why won’t you talk to me? You can’t even look at me.”
She grabbed the back of his head by both cheeks and twisted it to the sound of popping cartilage.
“Look at me!”
Caught in the spotlight of her blue gaze, Kelley’s eyes began to fade like the bleaching of rocks by a desert sun, pupils like black bullets bound to a spinning silver wheel. He smiled at her, his oak carved lips old and uncanny.
It’s all I ever wanted, he said. And I was punished for it. It is good to see you again. I had almost forgotten the extent of your beauty. I never noticed it then, but I can see it now. The blue flame of your soul.
He pointed.
It’s right there, behind your head. Too proud to enter its body. No, it carries it around with a lead.
Helen froze. There was something in his voice that reached out and brushed her cheek with a hand made of smoke, as tender as it was cold. She held herself away from him with her arms tightly crossed. He had opened the box.
“Is it you?” she whispered. Her top lip trembled, revealing a speck of tooth.
“Who is it you think I am?”
“Is it you, face-in-the-wall?” she spat. “Kelley opened the box and let you out. Why would he do that?”
“Oh,” he breathed through partly parted lips. “No. Do you know how these parasites operate? To interact with the world of matter, every spirit needs a vessel. But it is difficult to commandeer a human. Most are filled with the light of a soul, of the same sort that trails you like a blue flame. They will fight you. But with a parasite, it is much easier to find a way inside. Stimulate the right levers and buttons of the brain and it is simple enough to confuse the host as to who is in control. Worms make such good empty vessels for spirits. They do not put up much of a fight. And they are such good infiltrators. So if you’re looking for your face-in-the-wall, look back inside your box. He is safely wriggling inside his vial.”
“Who is he? Do you know him?”
“I did. A long time ago. His name is Momus. That is his sign on the box. I heard you say he has taken your dead father for a puppet. Is this true?”
Helen was taken aback.
“He has his soul…”
Philip nodded. “Would you like me to save him?”
“Can you do that?”
“I traveled the depths of Hell for you. I saw the red light and now exist outside the webs of fate. Yes, I can do that.”
She stared at his silver eyes hollowed out with black pupils.
“What does it matter if the world’s going to end?”
“The world will not end. The world never ends.”
“So Momus was lying to me. ”
“If you were to scour the world of its underground bunkers, you would see that they are empty. You should have every faith that the crisis will be averted, just as it had been the time before, and the time before that.”
Philip hesitated. At the mention of bunkers, he felt Kelley’s consciousness rummaging around his temple like an unattended migraine. It was of no concern. If the boy wanted to listen, he had no intention to stop him.
“The last time it was averted,” asked Helen. “Were the bunkers empty then too?”
He looked at her curiously.
“I do not know.”
“Who are you?”
He turned away from her and began to walk towards the bridge, just past the two lanterns at its mouth. He turned back and smiled at Helen, “You knew me once. Before you were you and before I was me.”
“Who was I before I was me?”
He held out his hand for hers to take. She moved towards him without thinking, hypnotized by the concentric circle streams of mercury in his eyes.
“It will come to you. I am sure it will. It is better that way than if I tell you. I don’t want you to have to trust me. I want you to know it all on your own.”
“What should I call you?”
“You may know me as Philip. Until the time that you know me as we first met.”
He stared at her crossed arms, then back at her face.
“Please, walk with me,” he commanded softly.
Despite herself, Helen placed her hand in his. He closed his fist and began to lead her across the bridge and down the wooden steps that led to the forest beneath the bridge. Graffiti of names and the bodiless heads of modern martyrs faded into grainy darkness as they descended, every one a slaughtered goat on the altar of novelty.
They hopped across rocks over a small stream, where Philip began climbing a steep hill. Helen let go of his hand.
“Are you a worm too?” she asked.
“No. I am not a worm.”
“Then what are you?”
“I am a soul in confinement, trapped between one thing and another. I was not permitted to reincarnate, as I had discovered and drank from the waters of memory. Nor could I ascend to another plane, because I would not relinquish all of my humanity. There was a piece I could not give up.”
“Why not?”
“It did not belong to me. There was still a part of me that belonged to you, and therefore it was not mine to give up. So I came looking for you. “
“You came to give it back to me?”
Philip hesitated.
“No…not yet. Not now.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Helen caught the shape of a stout figure in a hat leaning behind a tree. Then she blinked, and he was gone. She returned her attention to Philip.
“You sound very sad,” she said. “Would you not like to move on?”
“It is easy to say. Another to do.”
“But you should do it.”
“Yes. Perhaps. Eventually.”
“Philip, are you a ghost?”
Philip paused, “It’s hard to say what I am. Sometimes I wonder if I was ever real. To be a ghost, you would need to have lived and died in this world. I believe I was. But perhaps I was constructed just the way I am today. But that is of no matter. My desires are real. It is enough that I want, because desire sits at the core of being.”
“It wouldn’t bother you if you weren’t real?”
“Why should it? Are you real?”
“I don’t know if I can answer that question.”
“Yes,” Philip nodded. “You’re real to me. And so even if I am just a story, at least we have that in common. To me, that is a comforting thought.”
Helen looked at the veins running up to her knuckles.
“I would hope that I was real.”
“Why?” Philip stooped under a bush where the ground began to dip. “Do the dreamed deserve any less happiness than the dreamer?”
Helen said nothing. She did not think he would like her answer.
He led her into a small alcove, where a canopy of branches knitted overhead like a basket, finger thick gaps winking with the pale light of urban stars. Philip sat down with his head hunched, resting an arm over his knee and taking a deep breath. Helen sat on the other end of the alcove, shoulders hunched.
“I will say this much. There was a night we once spent in a cave, waiting for the tide to recede before we could leave. We sang the whole night. You had no fear of being stranded. Nor of death. Sometimes I wished you did.”
The back of Helen’s neck rippled with gooseflesh.
“I want to know about Kelley,” she said coldly. “I want to know that he’s alright.”
“He is more than alright. I’m ready to give the boy everything he ever wanted. We had a deal. I could see you once more. In exchange, I offered him the freedom to leave this world forever. What did he call it… ‘this ugly world, where everything is small and petty’. For him, it was almost poetic.”
“‘Freedom from this world.’ Why can’t you just say what you mean? Are you going to kill him?”
Philip curled his fingers under his jaw.
“I have not decided. What else can I do? If I am to retain this body, I don’t see any other way. ‘To walk the world of the dead and the worlds beyond that’. That was what he told me. It is not impossible for a living man to do. But this one? Him? I don’t think so. It would be easier to sever his soul from his body and be done with him. He can find his own way around the etheric realms.”
“Cancel the deal,” she said. “You can’t have that body. I want him back.”
“I have loved you longer than most empires have risen and fallen. I have loved you beyond the confines of flesh and blood. You may want him back, but I want you more.”
“Give me back that part you said belongs to me. Free yourself. Give Kelley back.” she pleaded. “Why can’t you see that this is the right thing to do?”
“Because,” he said. “What you gave me was your love and it has carried me this far. I have no strength without it. No desire.”
“Oh?” she sneered. She took the box out from behind her back, swiftly uncorked the vial and held the tip up to her lips.
“Give me back Kelley or I’ll eat it. And then you won’t have me anymore.”
“Stop that. What about your father? Have you already forgotten about him?”
“I’ll never forget. But I don’t want my father. I thought maybe I did. I thought it was the right thing to want. But the way I feel right now. This is different. I’m not confused. Things have never been clearer. I know what I want. And I want Kelley.”
You don’t know what you’re playing with. He’ll–”
“Possess me? Make me a puppet? A slave? And you’d let him do that? If you really love me, you’ll leave and never come back. You don’t love me, you love some idea. Because if you did, you’d know I wasn’t bluffing.”
Helen’s upper lip quivered. The silver streams of Philip’s eyes swirled furiously, begging her to put down the vial. In the spotlight of her cold gaze, all he felt was resistance.
“That idea is who you are. Not this mask of memories you wear. Not the skin on your face. Please, put that down.”
“I told you what I want, demon. I am not scared of you.”
“Fucking Christians,” Philip said, gritting his teeth. “I could tame the heart of any beast. Bring Hell to its knees and fill its rivers with the tears of the dead. And now, I can hardly convince a young woman not to throw her life away. And is it no surprise? I am nothing without you. I had to steal another man’s eyes just to see you. I made one mistake many lifetimes ago. Only one. Must I be punished for eternity?”
“You need me, huh? Isn’t that nice,” she said callously, tipping the vial against her lips. The worm began to vibrate frantically the moment it touched her tongue. “Too bad. Be a man. Live for something.”
Rushing to grab the vial from her hand, Philip grabbed Helen by the shoulders and watched helplessly as her body convulsed, eyes rolled into the back of her head in ecstasy. He shoved his fingers down her throat to tickle her uvula, but it lay lax against his fingers. Suddenly, her eyes rolled back forward.
“No gag reflex,” she said, “You like that?”
“Hello, Momus,” said Philip coldly. He tried to hold his composure by tilting his head higher. It was no good. His spine slackened like gelatin. “How is your mother? Is she well?”
“Look around you. You’re inside her. A little like me and, uh, whatever her name was. The girl-behind-the-wall.”
“Her name is Helen, Momus.”
“Helen, huh,” Momus smiled from ear to ear, and then began to undress. “Kind of a boring name, to be honest.”
“I can’t believe this is what you like,” he added, squeezing Helen’s tits together. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen pointier knees in all my days.”
“Will you relinquish her body, Momus?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the stars. I like this.”
“She was very important to me.”
“I’m not saying you can’t enjoy her. I’m just saying you have to share. You want a taste?” asked Momus, sliding off Helen’s jeans and patting the crease of her panties. “You weren’t always such a stick-in-the-mud. How about a little pussy juice? It’s fresh, too. Come on, when was the last time you fucked underneath the stars? Don’t you want to fuck me?”
A pregnant pause passed between them. Momus splayed out his newfound legs in invitation. Without a word spoken, Philip gently crawled over-top the body. He held her hair in his fingers and held it up to his nostrils. What a noxious stench. Like corpse flower.
Time stood still for a moment. He cradled her body, touching a spot behind her ear and listening to the wind whistle through the canopy.
He waited for Momus to move, and at the first quiver plunged his right hand through Helen’s stomach, spraying them both with a shower of blood and finger-ruptured organs. Helen’s body slumped against his shoulder. He took out his hand. Between bloodied thumb and forefinger was a white worm the width of a hair. A pounding in his temples alerted him that Kelley had been watching.
“Don’t worry,” Philip whispered to her motionless body. “No matter where death takes you, I will come for you. The end is not the end. This time, there will be no mistake.”
“And as for you,” he added, directing his attention to the throbbing in his head. “You think you can shield your thoughts from me? If you want the worm so badly, you can have him. He is no threat to me.”
Helen’s body slid off Philip’s shoulder, her blood soaked up by dry leaves and cracked soil. Philip held the worm over his outstretched tongue before letting it fall and wriggle down his throat. He paused for a moment before leaving to stare at the body. In a different time, he would have felt the need to dignify it with burial. But things were different now. He knew too much. That thing that lay before him was just a mask. Made of dust, it was meant to be discarded and returned to the earth. The blue flame, that was another story. Wherever it had fled, Heaven, Hell, Cave, Constellation, he would find it and bring her back. She would live. She would thrive. And with the mistake of his past undone, he would allow himself to be free. For the first time in millennia, he felt electricity course through his fingers. The rekindling of an old fire. And so he left Helen’s body as it was, arms disjointed like a marionette.
It would be several hours before sunrise that a stout man in a feathered hat passed through the clearing, holding in his hands a mason jar filled with a blue light and a sewing kit.
“God lord,” he grumbled. “What a fucking mess.”