Read last week’s installment here. See all installments here.
Chapter 142
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1987
The Reckoning
Gabriel spends the day in the basement. With no new crystals to summon the dead or tempt the living, he feels empty. He does not, cannot, feel grief. It’s nothing so human, but it’s closer to grief than anything he has ever felt, akin to loss, cousin to sorrow, a thwarting of need and desire.
He stares at his orchids. The virginal Dendrobium Sinense is blossoming pure white. Only a smear of yellow and a dab of red, dark as blood, marks its open throat. Into the air, it wafts the scent of a dying honeybee calling for rescue.
Hornets, who prey upon honeybees, smell their cry for help. They pounce on the Dendrobium, hoping for a feast. The orchid sticks its pollen to the wasp. The orchid is fulfilled, the hornet bereft.
Humans, of course, cannot discern this perfume of death and deception in the air. But Gabriel can. For the first time, he considers the fate of a honeybee that summons aid and receives death. He does not leave his apartment until nightfall.
Chapter 143
San Francisco — 1987
Night
Fog shatters the glow from streetlamps into fragments of electric stars. River waits outside Gabriel’s apartment. He’s waited all night. He’s waited all day. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he sees the silent white baby in the field of his childhood.
He’s been trying not to think of Pam, trying not to hope, but refusing to mourn. He’s no longer considering the divide between them. He’s only conscious that he loves her, no matter what she is or what he must become. He’s sure she cannot be dead. She cannot be gone forever. It’s just not possible. He won’t allow it. It’s not an option.
Gabriel opens the door to the night. He’s dressed for dancing. He’s groomed for death. He’s dazzling as a cold sun, untouchable and distant as a god.
Blood courses through River, fueling his anger and his pain. He’s strong with a sorrow made of loss and memory, an agony as old as mortality and as sure as death. But Gabriel needs no blood to fuel him. Gabriel is more, and less, than human.
River runs at Gabriel, beyond feeling, beyond thought, loneliness and heartbreak giving him speed.
Though ten feet away, Gabriel springs into the air like a feral cat, fast as light, sure as murder. He lands on River, for the first time fully his mother’s son. Her instincts have come to his rescue. His canines extend sharp as hatred.
He bends River’s head back, easily as a baby’s. River thrashes, his fury outpacing his fear, but Gabriel doesn’t even need to subdue him. He opens his mouth and bends toward River’s neck.
Overhead, a tiny black speck circles. From its beak falls a black hair, hard and brilliant as a diamond. It is the hair stolen from Gabriel’s collar on the steps of Mike’s Pawn shop. It rockets toward Earth, thickening as it gains momentum.
It pierces Gabriel’s chest, skewering his heart. Gabriel sways for a moment before falling backward onto the damp, cold pavement, his body still and white. A black mist escapes his lips, dissolving into the night like regret.
Slowly, like winter thawing to spring, his eyes warm and soften, bottomless indigo melting to earth brown. What little blood he has pulses briefly through his veins. For a single, brief moment, he seems completely human.
His lips move. “I’m sorry, Cousin,” he whispers. “Dream in color and think of me.”
Then he is still, lips slightly parted. Looking into his beautiful silent face, River feels numb, too dazed to even wonder why Gabriel called him Cousin.
Night fingers caress River’s hair. He hears a voice whisper…
“I didn’t choose my fate. People pity the lamb and fear the wolf. But both are necessary, both part of the cycle. Predator and prey… all of us… all of you.”
Huck swoops down, circling low over Gabriel’s dimming face. Gently as tucking a child into bed, Huck slips a silver coin, banded with gold, into Gabriel’s mouth. As the last light fades, Huck’s wing tips brush Gabriel’s eyes, tenderly closing them.
The streetlights glint off damp telephone wires, illuminating receding lines into eternity.
Chapter 144
River
Northern California — 1988
Love without Compromise
River is empty and alone. He can taste Pamela’s cold, spearmint breath; he can hear her voice in every wind. He doesn’t want to think of her, but it’s too late. He can no more forget her than remember an unknown stranger.
He packs a few clothes and his best mixing bowls and leaves the city, Huck on his shoulder. He will miss the fog and the light on the Bay. He’ll miss Jo-Jo, Thanatos, and even the purpose and mystery that Gabriel had provided. But he hungers for the solace of the Redwoods’ towering shadows. He needs to hear waves break endlessly on wild rocky shores.
***
If someday you chance upon a town where everyone is content, a town where children are as sweet as sugar, where neighbor loves neighbor and old men dream of flying, go visit the bakery. And if the cook has a pet crow, feed him well.
Epilogue
“Let us forgive each other—only then will we live in peace” – Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Two Gabriels stand hand-in-hand on the bank of a dark river. One is pale as hope, eyes an inhuman indigo. He’s so light his feet do not even cast a shadow on the rocks. The other is human as desire, irises an earthy brown. Cold, round stones roll beneath their feet. They hear the grating of pebbles drawn back and flung against the shore. They hear the roar of endless night. Then, out in the darkness, a small light grows, bobbing like a firefly. A lantern floats above the river. A boatman, eyes like hollow fires, sculls toward him, skillfully guiding his craft with a long pole.
The boat reaches the shore. Its silent wake sends out ripples, continuous as expanding galaxies. They break around Gabriel’s feet like broken stars. Wordlessly, the ferryman stretches out a skeletal hand. Gabriel can see white bones under an inky glove of black, transparent flesh. Gabriel, the human Gabriel, removes the coin from his lips and noiselessly puts the coin into the boney hand. He steps into the boat. It rocks violently, sending flashes of light rounding up the walls of the cavern.
The ferryman beckons to the other Gabriel, mutely pointing to the coin around Gabriel’s neck. Gabriel removes it and, extending it to the ferryman, glides onto the boat. Its wild, unsettled motion quiets. It rests, still and balanced on the waters as the ferryman poles into shadow.
From the rocky shore, Ryo watches and smiles. He cannot follow yet. He has no coin for passage. But there is no rush; the dead have nothing but time. Time, and memories.
The End
Postscript
Although this is obviously a work of fiction, the biology is true. Alexander S. Williams, Dr. Merritt, Teresa and Edward Hall, Frank Daroux, General Greene, and the Moores were all real people. (And Teresa Hall really did consider Napoleon devastatingly sexy.)
The Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook and its metamorphosis from drug rehabilitation center to prison is true. The town of Greene, the Greene Page Seed Company, Mr. Leon Aram Najarian, and the ribbon mill did and do exist.
Conditions in the Steel Mills were taken from actual reports. The history of the construction of the Greene Library is accurate, though I cannot verify that spirits walk the halls at night.
The tales of ghosts, spirits, and frogs in limestone on Monte Diablo are not my invention, nor is Arthur Mijares, who in 2005 really petitioned to change the name of Mount Diablo to Mount Reagan.
The History of the Lenni Lenape, Ohlone, and Miwok is also true.
Many thanks to Terrie Winson for her illuminating, heart-tearing history of the Lenni Lenape, and her generosity in sharing her words.
And many thanks and love to my dear friend and playwright, Elizabeth Wong, who helped guide me through the intricacies of Chinese names and places.
E. E. King
Watch the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
Edited by Mitchelle Lumumba and Sophie Gorjance.
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.