38

How did they descend, those explorers?
Charlie was looking down into the depths of the impenetrable blackness yawning before them.  The borehole into the underworld.
Chantelle shrugged.
 I guess they had ropes.  I don’t know.  I cant see them anymore.
She approached the edge and peered down inside.  The echo of Bethy’s laughter still floated around them.  It wafted over their spirit selves and it felt dirty.  An abomination.  Charlie shuddered beside her.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
Chantelle smiled at Charlie.
We can just fly down.  We wont get hurt.
But it wasn’t the fall that Chantelle feared, she realized.  It was not a fear of the height, it was a fear of what awaited them at the bottom.  There was something that she could feel.  The ghost of immense power, and it lingered.  The wavelengths of all that the world had experienced seemed to bend around it.  It was not of this world.  Chantelle asked Charlie:
Do you feel it?
He nodded grimly beside her.
It feels awful.
It was true.  It felt terrible.  Awful did not begin to describe the sick, putrid feeling which rose from the well and touched their not-bodies.  It was a needy, grasping touch and it was cold and dead.  It left slow fading stains on them.
Chantelle nodded to herself resolutely.  They could linger no longer.
It was time.
She glanced back to Charlie taking in his terrified face, the aura of terror radiating from him.  She tried to smile but could not.  Chantelle nodded.
And jumped.
She could not be sure if Charlie had followed her.  She was falling through darkness.  She could not feel the rush of the wind – the knowledge that her physical body was not experiencing this fall confused her mind, for she could feel her stomach rise.  The jolt of the falling-dream, only she did not wake up.  She continued to fall – faster and faster.
And then there was light streaming past her.  A dull, green glow.  Phosphorous moss – or something like it – scattered along the walls of the well.  It streaked by her as she fell into the darkness and when she looked below, she could see a dim pinpoint of light.  Light at the end.  And she tried to distinguish Charlie falling above her, but she could see nothing.  A starless midnight loomed above her, as if her eyes were closed.  As if they had been plucked out.
Below her, Chantelle tried to focus on the light drawing ever closer, growing brighter and brighter.  A star.  A sun.  It grew and grew until it was all around her.  Surrounding her.  Enveloping her.  Chantelle, falling through white light.

Grass.  Though dull in color.  As if it were covered in a layer of frost, and the light was all wrong.  It seemed to touch everything, but have no direct source.  A smoky light.
Chantelle was lying in grass.  In what appeared to be a field of grass and it was dim and washed out – like very early morning.
“Hey!”  Bethy was running across the field to her.  She wore a thin white dress and was barefoot, her hair undone and flying free about her shoulders.  As she approached, the light seemed to expand.  It became more real, though it was still wrong.  Still off.
Chantelle pushed herself to her knees and felt her head.
Felt her head.
She could feel her body.  She could touch her arms and her legs.  She ran her hands over her arms.  Her real arms.  Chantelle was physically there.
But how can this be happening?
“No, silly.  Don’t think-talk here.  I brought you here, kinda.”  Bethy smiled, falling to the grass beside Chantelle and rolling onto her back, looking up into her eyes – her real eyes – with her large child-eyes and she smiled.
Chantelle scooped Bethy into her arms and kissed her forehead.  Kissed her cheek and took her hands, clasped together, and kissed each of them too.
“I’m so glad you’re okay!”  Chantelle whispered into Bethy’s ear, rocking her, holding her tighter.
Bethy smiled back and nuzzled her head into the crook of Chantelle’s arm and she was warm and real and Chantelle closed her eyes.
At length Bethy squirmed out of Chantelle’s arms and stood up, pulling Chantelle’s hands up towards her – urging her to stand.
“Come on!”  Bethy beamed, “I want to show you something.”
And Chantelle stood and was walking with Bethy, naked, through the field which should not have been there – underground, in the frozen North.
“Honey, where are we?”  Chantelle asked, as she followed Bethy through the field.  Bethy turned her head back to face Chantelle, still walking forward and laughed.  She said:
“We’re going to my garden.”
 Her garden.  Of course.
Chantelle closed her eyes and allowed herself to be guided by the child.  The little girl who was not her little girl.  The little girl who loved her as if she were.
The grass beneath her feet felt good.  It felt warm and alive and soft.  She had no concern for rocks or sticks or anything painful.  She let herself be led.
“But where’s Charlie?  He was with me, right?”  Chantelle wondered, dully.  She was not sure if Charlie had been there.  She was not entirely certain that there were any other people in existence.
But there are.  You know there are.  There’s Eddie and Adam and
“Don’t worry about it.  Just come on!”  Bethy laughed and of course that was right.  Chantelle felt foolish for even thinking about it all.  For even considering anything else.  They were going to see Bethy’s garden.
“Through here.”  Bethy giggled.  They had stopped.  Chantelle opened her eyes.  Before them was a portion of a fence – just a portion constructed of unpainted wood – and an arch of dull roses, almost white in color with the softest of pink glowing within them. So delicate and translucent that veins were visible, darker fractures within the giant petals.  They were full and huge, the open roses.  The size of grapefruits.  So vibrant with life that they seemed to drip with moisture.  Their life blood.
Bethy broke her grasp on Chantelle’s hands and hurried through the arch.  Despite the fact that the fence was incomplete and the arch of roses was large, she could not be sure what lay on the other side.  The land beyond the arch was dim to her eyes – as if shrouded in a fog.
“Bethy?”  She called, but was met only with the echoed, childlike giggles of the girl somewhere beyond the gate, in the fog.  Something felt wrong, suddenly, to Chantelle.  She realized that she was apprehensive about continuing on through the arch.  There was an air of the sacred here.  She was about to embark upon sacred ground.
“Bethy?”  She called again, but now the giggles sounded further off.  More distant.
A sense of loneliness began to seep and spread around her.  Chantelle swallowed and shivered.  She realized, then, that the world was growing very cold.  An arctic air was infiltrating the false summer.  Truly, the grass beneath her feet began to whither.  It blanched and wilted and grew rough and dry.  With a slight breeze of arctic wind, the grass scattered, disintegrating into dust.
The world had become a desert.
The giggles were fading.
Chantelle took a tentative step forward.  There was a feeling like a piece of ice lodged in her stomach.  Like being stabbed with an icicle.  The cold feeling of dread.
But this was Bethy’s garden.
Swallowing, Chantelle regarded the arch of roses.  They had begun to droop.  The petals were open far too wide, having lost the will to live.  To close.  They began to fall like a dull pink rain.
Chantelle entered the rain.

“This is sacred ground.”  Chantelle breathed, looking around.
Bethy stood in the center of the small space with her hands folded behind her back, standing on her tip toes and grinning like a child who has unexpectedly cleaned their bedroom and has been awaiting the surprised approval of a parent.
It was a patch of earth no more than ten feet square.  Darkness enclosed it and Chantelle was certain that it was not a darkness which concealed – rather, it was darkness which signified an ending.
Scattered throughout the space were human and animal figures suspended in the air by what appeared to be roots.
As her vision grew accustom to this place, Chantelle realized that she recognized several of the figures.  They were lying in the air, held up by their roots, naked.  Eddie was there, and Adam.  Charlie hovered, suspended on a stalk of roots which seemed to sprout from his skin – or rather, his skin seemed to reach out from his body – amoebic fingers – and shoot down and into the rich, moist soil on which she stood.
She saw herself there too, suspended in midair, her roots full of life and thrust into the soil so firmly.
There were roots, too, which appeared to have once held figures but these were withered and lay in dead piles on the soil.  Over these dead piles a fungus had begun to sprout.  It was like coral, white and delicate, bristling like crystal and it held within it an inner light.
A golden retriever suddenly wandered slowly into the garden and came to rest at Bethy’s feet, circling three times – as dogs do – before curling beside her, facing Chantelle.
“Chantelle, this is my garden!”  Bethy whispered.  “You have one too.  That’s what she says anyway.”  Bethy shrugged.
“Who told you that?”  Chantelle asked, beginning to wander the garden, touching Eddie’s shoulder and smiling.  He seemed so at peace.
Bethy looked slightly confused, as if she knew the name being asked of her but could not recall it.
“I was somewhere else.  Somewhere scary.”  Bethy began, uncertainly.  “I did something wrong.  That’s what they said.”
“Who?”  Chantelle asked, turning to Bethy.  “Who told you that you did something wrong, honey?”
Bethy stooped and began to pet the dog.  The animal’s tail began thumping against the soil, happily, and soon the dog was licking her face contentedly.  Chantelle smiled.
“They were weird.”  Bethy shrugged.  “I was scared of them.  They were one person, I think.  There were a bunch of them, though.”
Chantelle watched the child, warily.  Glancing around, however, she realized that they were safe here.  This was a safe place.
“I mean, kind of like how you’re here – and your also back there – only, they were all in one place at the same time.”  Bethy said.  She laughed suddenly.  “I don’t know.”
Bi-location, I think they called it.  Chantelle thought, remembering – lamely – some tv show on occult something or other that she had watched once, with Terrel.  A person being in two places at the same time.
“Baby, was it the thing in the ice?  The thing that keeps calling us?”  Chantelle asked slowly.  Bethy looked up at her, her lower lip quivering.  Terror in her eyes.
She nodded.
“But then this little guy came,”  Bethy smiled down to the dog, “and I followed him into the tunnel and then to the door and then…”  Bethy shrugged, “Then here.  To my garden.”
Chantelle stooped and began to run her fingers through the warm, smooth fur of the dogs neck.  The dog began to pant happily, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, his large brown eyes regarding Chantelle with startling wisdom.
“Have you ever seen this dog before?”  Chantelle asked Bethy, continuing to scratch beneath the dog’s chin.
Bethy smiled down at them.
“Sure!  I dream about him all the time.”  Bethy laughed.  “They said we all have an animal.  I guess you’ve got one too.”
Chantelle stood and began to wander the garden once again.  She paused beside one of the piles of withered roots cautiously touching the strange fungus with her fingers.  As she expected, it was rough but delicate, just like coral.
“Honey, what are these?”  Chantelle called back.
“Those are ones I lost.”  Bethy answered, sadly.  Her sorrow resonated, dimly in the garden.  This was not a place for sorrow, but rather, a place of healing.
The golden retriever approached Chantelle slowly and nuzzled her hand away from the coral-fungus with his wet nose.  He looked up at her, and to her shock she could hear him in her mind.  He said:
 In this place she plants the ones she loves.  She nurtures them with her thoughts and can give them power and protection.  From this place of safety and healing, she can think on the ones she loves, and help them.  You all can.
    The retriever glanced down at the coral-fungus and then back up at Chantelle, still panting and wise eyed.  He continued, in her mind:
Sometimes you lose the ones you planted, despite your nurturing.  In this place, you can either allow the broken roots left behind to fester and rot, or you can continue to nurture the place in your garden that they once held and heal it.  Bethy is healing these places – as you can see.
Chantelle stood.  She wondered, suddenly, what her own garden would look like.  All the festering piles of withered roots that she had only just allowed to begin to heal.  How much damage had been done already to the soil of her garden?
But even as she thought this she saw a figure begin to droop and sag.  Several roots broke off from the figure and crumpled to the soil.  Chantelle recognized the figure only a heartbeat before realizing what this sudden decay must mean.
Carl’s figure fell to the soil of Bethy’s garden in a pile of roots and Bethy began to sob.
“I did it wrong.  This is my fault.”  Bethy sobbed.  The retriever whimpered and ran off into the darkness and as Bethy ran off, rubbing the tears from her eyes, and followed after him – or tried to – deeper and deeper into the darkness, Chantelle closed her eyes and allowed herself to dissolve.

37

Carl was limping forward, the trees around him seemed to reach out, bend over him with menace and they were dead and skeletal.  Zombie fingers splayed and grasping and he swallowed checking again that the safety was off on the gun he was using as a weapon, the butt of the crutch-gun digging painfully into his bad shoulder.  Tears had frozen on his face and they hurt, cracking from his cheek bones as he wrinkled his nose against the chill, sniffing back the flow of snot brought on by the cold.
He had no idea where he was going.  He had a vague notion – a hope really – that the camp lay in the uphill direction in which he was heading but the knowledge that they had taken him to a place void of a trail sent washes of doubt through him.  He cursed himself once again for not thinking to check for footprints in the snow before he had plunged into the forest – too hastily overjoyed that his commandeering had actually worked.  And now he was wandering and he knew that he had no time to wander.
He stopped, again, and listened.  He strained his ears against the silence.  Was that the sound of voices he could hear, far over there – beyond that rise?  Beyond that fallen tree.  No.  It was a bird, or the wind.  The creaking of dead branches.  The shifting of ice and snow.
Or was it voices?
And so he would head in that direction only to find that it was not a voice at all, rather, it was a small stream cutting a dark path in the snow – exposing the mud and the rocks underneath it all.  Or sometimes it was nothing at all, just more expansive emptiness.  Just more trees.
Carl stopped, breathing heavily.  Frozen.  The reality that he could die out here dawned on him, or rather, forced itself to the surface of his mind, reminding him that this knowledge was ever present.
Try again.
And so he closed his eyes and looked hard at the backs of his eyelids.  He willed his mind to open, to hear the things happening in the other reality – the reality of wavelengths and emotions.  Stains on the present.  But he could see nothing.  His inner ears – the intangible ones – remained deaf.
 Try again.
And somewhere he thought he heard something.  He willed Eddie into being and did he hear his friend?  Was it just his imagination?
…re you?
Carl allowed himself to weep again.
This is fucking hopeless.  There’s no way to tell if this is my own mind or if this is some kind of communication!
    Try again.
And he sat down in the snow, his breath hot against his face and then freezing in moisture and he wished he had his snow cap but he didn’t.  They had taken it, or he had lost it.  He could not feel his ears, his toes.  His gloves were absent now.  His fingers were numb and red.
Don’t think about that.  Don’t think about body parts freezing and dying.  Don’t think about…
    …okay?
That wasn’t in my mind.  I know that wasn’t.
    …Dude?
Carl stood, the tears blurring his vision and he wiped his raw nose with the back of his sleeve and took off again, limping in what he hoped was the perceived direction that his mind may or may not have given him a glimpse of.
But there was no way to know how deep into the forest they had taken him.  There was no way to tell and it all looked the same.  Just trees and snow and slashes of sky and mountains beyond.
He saw Jones before Jones saw him.
This was the only piece of luck allowed to him.  Perhaps he had used up the luck that he had back there, in the clearing with Brian and the soldiers.  What ever the case he saw Jones before Jones saw him and he raised his rifle, sniffling, and took aim.  The soldier saw the movement and started.
“Fuck!  Where the fuck did you…?”  Jones began, spitting and taking aim with his own rifle.
In the clearing, in a ring with their feet touching, lay Chantelle, Charlie, Bethy, the Old Woman of the Mountain and two people Carl had never seen before.
The two strangers were badly decomposed.  Even as Carl watched, the skin clinging to their skulls flaked away and their cheek bones caved into the dusty interior of their skulls.
There was blood running from Chantelle’s ears and nose.  It had frozen in places in black clumps and more was oozing out, red on the air.  Glistening.
Bethy was smiling.
“What are you doing?  What the fuck are you doing?”  Carl stammered, and he snapped his eyes back to Jones, grim faced and deadly.
“Put down the gun, Carl.  You don’t know what you’re doing.”  Jones sighed, as if reprimanding a child.  He looked at Carl evenly.  His voice icy with the calm of a soldiers training.  Knowing he had the upper hand despite being taken by surprise.
“But they’re dead!”  Carl gasped.  “Those two are dead.”
Jones said nothing, his finger twitched on the trigger and Carl realized that this man would kill him.  Was very willing to kill him.
“She has to make a connection with it.”  Jones said with the patience of a father explaining to a child that the family pet is far too old and sick, must be put down.  “She has to or we can never move passed all this.  We can never have the world back.”
Carl did not understand him.
“We’re mistakes, Carl.  Humans.  We aren’t capable of being on our own.  We thought we were doing it all by ourselves – all our governments and our wars and our running of the world – but it was all controlled for us.  They pulled all the strings, always – the First Ones.”
It were as if Jones were speaking another language.  As if Carl had walked into the classroom too late.  At the end of the lesson.  And now there was a test.
“What are you talking about?”
“Now that they’re gone, the ones who kept it all up and running, we need that kid to wake it up.  To bring it back to life.  To guide us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“The God in the Ice!”  Jones shouted, his voice bellowing.  It echoed around them, glancing off of the trees and sweeping away, off towards the distant mountains.  “We must have it back until we are ready to be like the First Ones.  Otherwise we’ll be as good as animals.”
“It’s not a god!”  Carl shouted, anger welling within him.  “It’s just a…  a…”  but the words dried within him.  An ancient riverbed.
“It is if we let it be.”  Jones muttered, much quieter.  As if he were speaking to himself.
“She’s just a kid.”  Carl breathed, uselessly.  Jones regarded him down the barrel of the rifle, coldly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But she has a choice, too.”  Carl said, looking up suddenly.  “She has the same choice we all have.”
“Choice.”
“Yeah,”  Carl actually laughed, an odd euphoria rising in him despite his trembling hands, his racing heart, “You cant possibly expect her to just fall in love with that thing.  Love doesn’t work like that.”
At this Jones broke into a bitter grin, shaking his head and chuckling darkly.
“And what’s love, Carl?”  Jones sneered, “I heard the things you were saying when you were all fucked up, when you were crazy and dying.  Who’s Samantha?  Do you think you love that girl lying there?”  He gestured with his free hand to the prone form of Chantelle, in the circle.
“I…”
“Did you fall in love again so quickly?  It’s only been a couple months, Carl.”  Jones laughed, mockingly.  He said:  “Bethy – all of us – have been hearing the call of that thing for our entire lives.  Maybe even before that.  Isn’t that time enough to fall in love?”  Jones took a step forward, his aim perfect with the rifle.  “We can make ourselves believe whatever we want.  That belief can give anything more power than we can perceive.  We can create worlds, Carl.  Are you even aware of that?”
Carl swallowed thickly.  His nose was running again but he did not want to wipe it away.  It was freezing on his beard.  He did not want to appear weak.  Jones was not wiping a running nose or trembling there in the cold.
“If you know all this,”  Carl began, uncertainly, his voice cracking and sending waves of weakness and embarrassment crackling through him, and all the while his fear was fighting to cripple him, “Why didn’t you go?”
Jones broke eye contact.
There.  Finally a sign of weakness.
“I cant,”  Jones began, uncomfortably.  “I cant do it.  I cant do the mind thing.  Some of us are even less developed than other humans.  Some of us are lesser humans.”
He’s terrified of a world in which human’s are their own masters.  He’s terrified because he has less to offer.  We aren’t all capable of doing anything, despite what we learn in grade school.  We cant always follow our dreams and succeed on hope.  Some of us just cant.  He is terrified of a world in which he may have to really prove himself on his own human merit.
Who is qualified to lead a world like that?
And Carl began to doubt.
Could the human race really survive like that?  It would be anarchy.  Was there a human capable of truly leading the species.  
    We really would be like packs of animals.  
    But isn’t that what we are?  
But the alternative, Carl realized, was equally terrible.  Numbing the mind to the lie that all of our accomplishments are our own.  Technology and one nations superiority over another.  Religions and politics.
And so, was it really a bad thing?  Human’s just being another species on the food chain, not a chosen race to occupy a world – like a game – being guided by some master species.
“Maybe it would be better.”  Carl admitted, but Jones took it as an aggressive attack.  As a rebuttal rather than an admission.
“How fucking selfish of you.”  Jones spat.  “All you care about is losing the bitch you’re fucking.  Better?  Better to lose everything?  Could you run with the pack, Carl?  Where would you rank on the food chain in a world like that?”
Carl raced through his mind for a response to this but nothing could come.  Rather, too much came to put into words so quickly.  And so he stood dumbly with his rifle shaking in his hands as much from fear as from the cold.  A weak human.
Jones shook his head again, spitting into the snow.
“Put down the fucking gun.  You’re not even a man, Carl.  Don’t you realize that you’re nothing.  That none of us are anything.”
Carl’s hands trembled.  Jones was right, he admitted to himself.  Without the false opportunities he had been allowed in life ruled by the First Ones, he could no longer numb his mind with jobs and money and distractions. He would have to be a man – a human man – only failure would not mean being unable to land a good job, failure would mean becoming food for anyone or anything more powerful than himself.
Had the First Ones foreseen their own end?  They had rendered so much of mankind incapable of surviving in the world.  A world without technology of art.  A world of survival.  Had they ensured that human’s would fall without them.
    But is that what it would be?
Perhaps there was someone, somewhere, capable of uniting everything?  Making things better.  Someone who could truly lead, bring unity.  Not just for humans.  A world run on truth.
Jones shook his head again.
“You little fuck.  There’s no talking sense, is there?”  He took another step forward, the rifle becoming all that Carl could focus on.  Jones said:  “It doesn’t matter, though, because she is going to bring it back to life – and a scared little shit like you wont stand in the way of human progression.”
And Jones pulled the trigger.

36

Chantelle was scrambling to her feet, she was grabbing the walls of the temple for support and she was rushing forward.  She was frantic.  She was stumbling.  A scrambling behind her was Charlie but she did not look back to see.
The doorway seemed impossibly far ahead.  Just a pinpoint of light growing brighter as she threw herself forward.
Bethy.
The images carved into the walls rushed by mocking her as she went.  A smear of birds and plants and people and insects and it was like running through the sepulcher of time and she was unable to formulate a clear thought to send to Charlie, only stay with me stay with me stay with me – or some emotion like that.
They were flying forward and the doorway was white light – a rectangle of it – and it was growing larger and closer and upon them.
Charlie’s hand.  Charlie grabbing her arm, wrapping his arms around her waist to stop her.  His mind wrapping around hers. Bringing them both to the floor of the temple.
They were through the doorway.  They were in an enormous chamber and Chantelle was skidding to a halt.  She was pulling Charlie to the ground beside her, ensuring that he stopped too.  She gasped.
The space into which they had run – through the door – was immeasurable. The expanse was limitless, like a void were it not for the strange hardness of the material which made up the floor beneath them.
And there they were.
The creatures.
In numbers greater than any army, they crouched.  Rows and rows and rows of them for as far as the eye could see, their tentacles writhing in wavering columns as if they were reaching for something far above them, or giving praise. Their slick hides bubbled and oozed.  They varied in size, some mountainously huge, others like buildings, others like cars or dogs.  There were even some like ants, Chantelle realized – and even smaller – beneath her feet, she could imagine them crunching and popping as her weight killed them – had she been there in physical form.  As it were, they crouched motionless, seemingly inside her feet – or where she perceived her feet to be.
She thought:
 Oh shit.
The creatures all faced them, or rather, the door through which they had just come.  But the creatures were still as statues, the rhythmic shimmer of their oily hides expanding and retracting, illustrating their slow breathing. The slow waver of their tentacles was the nervous calm of underwater plant life in a gentle current.
There was a profound stillness.  A seeping sense of calm.
Charlie’s voice:
They don’t know we’re here.
And Chantelle smiled back at him, pulling him up.  She shrugged and said:
 We’re not.
But as they spoke these things in their minds the creatures nearest them stiffened and shifted, but it was clear they could not locate the source of their concern.
 I think they can feel us.
Charlie’s words rang true within her, and Chantelle crept cautiously forward.  Charlie said:
 Do you think they can hurt us, even now?
Chantelle shook her head – no – putting a finger to her lips, warning silence.
She moved forward, into the army.
The creatures remained motionless.  Every now and then one of the larger creatures would – without warning – spear a smaller one and devour it, but besides this feeding, they appeared to be waiting.
 What if they’re an army?
But even as Chantelle sent this thought to Charlie there was a tremor, it ran through their minds rather than through the temple, and so the creatures had no knowledge of it.  In the tremor was an emotion – something like confirmation, something like anger.  There was scorn in it and sorrow.
But over all, it was a confirmation.
Look.  It seemed to say.  See my army.  See my children.  My ghost children.
And then a new sound.  Laughter.  A child’s laughter.
Bethy’s laughter full of childish glee and delight.  Full of the love-laugh of a contented child.
Chantelle’s stomach turned.
She pushed her mind with all her might, honing it into a point – a mind spear, and she threw it:
 Baby, no!
And she was rushing forward.  She was running through the creatures.  There were no more walls.  She was the air.
And Charlie behind her, straining to move so quickly.  Chantelle realized, vaguely, that she was no longer actually running, rather, she was flying.  The ground was something intangible – and what was more – the lower portion of the mental projection of her body within her mind had become a mist.  It trailed behind her as she flew through the temple’s enormous midsection.
There.  Before her she could make out what appeared to be large, circular well which disappeared into a vast darkness.  Even in unreality Chantelle could feel the otherworldly chill which seeped and rose from the depths of the well and furthermore, she shivered with the knowledge that it was into those depths that she must plunge.
She came to a stop at the brim, the circle of it lined with large blocks of pearly material.  The mist of her body swirled together, coagulating and reforming.  She was whole again.
It’s molted husk.  Chantelle realized, dimly.  Though now it hardly mattered.  But that was what the temple was constructed of.  She knew it, now, somehow.
(…they collected the molting as they traveled, following it’s death slime to the end of the world.  With the molting they constructed a temple.  Bored, they could do nothing.  And so, standing upon and within a monument built of death – they could not bring life.  It had lost the tangibility of importance for them.  Their minds, and thus their hearts, were elsewhere.)
Charlie arrived at her side.
 How did you do that?
But Chantelle was not listening to him.  She was staring into the darkness before her.  She was allowing herself to be washed in the frozen miasma which seeped from within the depths.  She was preparing for battle.
Charlie swallowed – or something like it – and asked:
Where does that go?
And Chantelle opened her mind a little wider (a bolt of pain deep in her brain – her actual brain, far far away in the rocky mountains lying upon ice and pine) and there was the old woman.  So small now, so pale.  Broken.  She shuddered as Chantelle’s mind touched hers.
 How did you…?
No.  Tell me.  See through me.  What am I seeing?
The merging of their minds sent a fissure into Chantelle’s physical brain.  A crack.  Something separated within her brain matter and, so small, something new budded there like a grey and formless flower, sprouting – so very small – she did not know how or what it was, but she could feel it, and the old woman was Chantelle now and Chantelle was the old woman.
We will feel it now.
Charlie looked up at her, startled, hearing in his mind the merged voices.  The not voice.  A dual voice.
 This place is cursed. This place cannot be cleansed.
…and more.  Chantelle could see time, or rather, could see that there was no time.  It was all still here, all of the wavelengths, overlapping and laying on top of one another, like a thick, crazy web.
One sparked her interest.  She moved her mind ever so slightly and the waves – ever present – washed over her, lulling her gently into them.  She could see:
Explorers long ago.
A ship which had sailed off course trying to find a way through the ice.  Some adventurers.  They spoke in a language which she did not understand but they had discovered this place, but had no knowledge of it.
It was a field of ice then.  A gigantic continent of ice but something had shifted – some strangeness which, by coincidence, had opened a cave in the ice wall large enough for a ship to sail into.
But then, back then, the other’s were here still.  The ones from before.  The builders of the temple.  The minds which controlled it all – all of the world – until the ghost children ate them, recently.  The first fuel for them, when they were born.  The First Ones.
Chantelle could see them.  Tall figures, vaguely human.  They were perfect.  They had been the First Ones.  The ones whose earth it was.  They had covered the world with their civilization, one gone now except for hints and mysteries.  Leaving behind remnants of their wonder.  Discoveries on the ocean floor.  Legends.  Lost cities.
The adventurers marveled as they explored the depths.  Icy tunnels littered with technologies they could not understand.  Things which would decompose with the passage of what passed for time.  The aging of the cells which made it all up.  And after the decay there would be nothing left to show for it.  Nothing to be found to tell their tale, so perfect were they in their hiding.  The explorers delved deeper and deeper, consumed by the lust for discovery and knowledge, their torch light flickering over an underground world they did not understand.
Charlie:  And they found the well?
 Yes.  They found the well and despite their fear they entered.
    What did they find?
    They found the shrine.  The shrine and the unsolved question.
    Which was?
    Is it better to be our own guiding star, or to have the star guide us.
Chantelle wavered.  She felt the flower in her brain wither and the old woman was ripped out of her.
 Holy shit.
She regarded Charlie and tried to smile but she was exhausted.  Charlie put a hand on her shoulder, his being seeping into her ever so gradually, strengthening her.  She could feel her cells healing, her brain trying to reconnect itself.  She had only a moment to marvel at this.
Bethy laughed.
The echo of it wafted up to them, almost visible on the frigid air, fragmenting and floating.
What is she seeing down there?  What is happening to her?
Charlie was kneeling at the well’s edge, peering into the darkness.  He looked back at Chantelle and shrugged.  It was clear.  They had no way of knowing.  They could only go on, like the explorers before them, down into the depths.

35

“I didn’t think you’d ever wake up!”  Brian was saying and Carl was scrubbing his eyes and pushing himself upright across the frozen ground.
“Brian?”  he heard himself manage, groggily.
What the fuck did they give me?
    Brian?  
The last time he had actually seen the kid raced through his mind – the underpass, the River Giants.  He had been so weak, so groggy.  They were carrying him, frantic, and he thought that Chantelle was dead.  And Bethy.  He saw Anne with Christa in her arms, several soldiers leading her away.  He saw Brian, too, following them.  The missionary had been weeping and he was wounded – a slash across the chest.  But he was upright and running and Carl would not keep them in focus.
They had not been in any of the camps.  No one knew where they were.  It had been assumed that Brian and Anne and Christa had been separated from them.
It had all become so confusing.
“Brian?”  Carl repeated, his tongue feeling thick and slow.
“Yeah.”  Brian looked down at his shoes sheepishly.  He was dressed now like all of them.  Mismatched winter clothes, bundled.
“Where did you go?”  Carl asked, but what he really wanted to know is where they were.  Where was McKenna?  Why had they sedated him?  How much time had passed?
“I went with Anne.  We followed some soldiers who said McKenna and Jones were crazy and we left – in a jeep.”  Brian was smiling.
“Where’s Anne?”  Carl wondered -  Have Chantelle and Charlie and Bethy come back?  Are Eddie and Adam okay?  What the fuck is going on?
Brian’s face darkened and he looked down.
“We made it to some place in New York, then there was no more fuel.  Or anyway, the jeep wouldn’t work no matter what fuel we put in it.” he continued quickly, not looking at Carl.  Looking passed him.  “So we were walking, but there were creatures everywhere.”  Brian was shaking now.
“Where’s Anne?”  Carl repeated, more quietly, urgently, almost expecting her to come out now, reveal herself.  They were in the forest and three soldier stood nearby with rifles, ready.
 My God I want a cigarette.
And as if an answer to a prayer Carl could feel them in his pocket and he busied himself retrieving them.  Brian was saying nothing.  Carl was lighting a cigarette and inhaling and waiting and Brian was looking at his shoes, at the trees around them at the soldiers and he was crying.
“We were so hungry.”  he said, finally, shrugging desperately.  Such a small voice.  As if he were trying to hide his words from the air.  As if this would explain everything.
“You were…” Carl tried, and then it dawned on him.
“I didn’t kill her!”  Brian screamed, in sudden violent fury, and one of the soldiers nearby gave a strange, low chuckle.  Brian’s hands were clenched into fists and he was beating the frozen ground in front of him.  His knuckles were bloody and then Carl took note – Brian was not the same.
The young man’s face was lined with scars as if he had been mauled by an animal.  But the red lines of the puckered scars were too human – a fingers width apart.  He had been clawing his own face.
His eyes were like smoldering coals.  A light had gone out, was extinguishing.
Brian had killed himself.  This was not Brian.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”  Carl breathed, the smoke carried his words out into the air, hiding the fact that they were forbidden.
“I didn’t mean to.  We were so fucking hungry.”  Brian groaned, he was on his knees in the snow, as if pleading with Carl.
“Are you telling me you fucking ate them?”  Carl gasped.  “And the baby?  Christa?”
Brian said nothing.  Brian shook.
“And the baby?”  Carl was trying to scream, but his throat would not permit it.  His voice came out cracked and fragmented.  A broken thing and he supposed this was just as well, what he was asking was broken.
Brian’s hands flew to his own face, his knuckles raw, cracked and red.  He was tearing and ripping and soon his face glistened with new fissures, new rivers of blood.  He let out a sob – such a wounded little terror – and made a frantic, scrambling break, away from Carl wheeling towards the forest but three rifles cocked at once, echoing on the still air and he froze, trembling.
 Despite the fact that you’re dead you are afraid to die.  Carl wondered in disbelief.
But he pitied the dead young man before him.  Brian’s husk.
“Brian, why did they bring you here?”
Brian was rolling on the ground screaming.  He was punching himself in the face.  He was slamming his head into the frozen ground leaving pink splotches of blood in the snow – painting out his pain.
“Brian?”
He crawled towards Carl now, his face running with new wounds – hands outstretched imploringly – he said:
“Because I was there, with that kid.  The one Adam and Chantelle saved. Because we can all hear the call in our own way, but she was different – they said so.”
He tried to smile, his lips splitting raw and red, staining his teeth.  They broke open – Brian’s sneering, dead lips – across his teeth.
“That’s what they told me anyway.”
And then the wave hit them.
It rolled across the land breaking against the rocky mountains like an invisible tsunami – it curled and crested and then washed over them all – pushed on by the force of more energy behind it.  A wave of remorse and pleading and anger and despair all the way from the far north.  All the way from the ice and the water.
It was strong.  Stronger than any of the others – the wave.   They were filled with it – the soldiers and Brian. Their remorse, their guilt, it ground their hearts to dust – This is what Carl perceived, anyway.
Somehow he had been spared.
It were as if he had been standing behind a large rock when the wave hit and was so spared the impact.  He could almost see the barrier, the thing which had kept him safe from it.  He was filled with warmth and strength.
But what protected me?
The soldiers fell to the ground, weeping.  Brian had curled into a shaking ball in the snow, sobbing.
Three rifles fell to the ice and Carl almost laughed as he made his way to the nearest and picked it up.  Laughed as he picked up the other two and then the wave was gone.  The tide was out and four tear streaked faces regarded him in terror, the loss and helplessness still mercilessly stabbing their hearts.
Carl stood holding the rifles in his arm and pointing the other at the soldiers and at Brian.
“Move together, all of you.”  he said, trying to remain calm – trying not to convey to them the truth that he had no idea how to even take the safety off of the rifles.
Do military weapons even have safeties?
The soldier moved towards Brian, eyeing him cautiously.
 Don’t think about the fact that these men are trained to take down people who do what you are doing.  Don’t think about the fact that you can see the thing shaking in your hand – because you are shaking.  Because you are fucking terrified.  Don’t think about the fact that you always fail – that you will likely fail – that you always fail.  Don’t think about impotence, or frustration, or the fact that you don’t have your fucking crutch – that you cant run away and that you’ll need more than a little bit of luck – luck that you never had much of anyway – to get out of this.
“All of you, turn around – face that way.”  Carl shouted, motioning for them all to turn their backs on him.  He gestured vaguely with the weapon to the trees beyond, to the slash of landscape, the mountains around them.  The sky streaked with wisps and fragments of clouds.  Motioning with the rifle.  He felt suddenly foolish.  What was he supposed to do with them now?
For a terrible moment he was certain that they would not obey.  That they would call his bluff and take him down knowing that he could never really bring himself to shoot them.
Or could I?
    Lives depend on this – I think.
    Chantelle.  Charlie.  Bethy.
    Eddie and Adam.
    My own.
But then the soldiers and Brian were turning, turning away from him.  They had their back’s to him.
“Now start walking.”  Carl shouted, his own relief and disbelief evident to his ears.  “Do it!”
And to his shock, they did.
Carl watched them go, moving through the trees and he was vaguely aware that they were still feeling the sadness too powerfully to actually do anything anyway.  And so he thrust one of the rifles into the snow and began to use it as a crutch.  He began to make his way back through the trees but made it only a short way before realizing that he would have to discard one of the rifles – it was too awkward with three.
But I cant just leave a loaded gun here for anyone to find.  When they get back they’re going to alert everyone.  I cant go back to the camp.
Carl stood staring at the weapon in his hands for a moment trying to discover the secret to unloading it.
Stop thinking of it with the exclamation point of it being a stolen military weapon!  Contraband!  
(“Come on Carl, up here.”  his father all dressed in orange and had eight year old Carl looked down he would have discovered that he, too, were all dressed in bright, glowing orange in the still darkness just before dawn.  His father moved the flashlight beam to a ladder of planks nailed into a tree several yards before them.  He followed the beam up the length of the tree to where it came to rest on a platform high above.  “That’s my tree stand.”  he admitted proudly and Carl was excited to climb up to the tree house but held the rifle in his trembling child’s hands with vague terror.  He did not want to kill a deer but he did not want to show this fear to his father, his weakness.  And they were about to climb and his father had taught him everything.  He had taught him…)
…how to disarm a rifle.
Smiling bitterly to himself, Carl released the cartridges from within the gun watching them flip into the snow in small arcs.  They disappeared into the icy whiteness.
And he then threw the gun down, dropped to his knees, and buried it, too, in the snow and the pine needles and the fallen branches.

34

Tom is not coming back.
Bethy, in all of their minds and Chantelle wanted to scream.  She restrained the urge to slap the child and through the intense regret which came from even feeling the urge to do this, Chantelle saw the Old Woman close her eyes to fight back tears.
Bethy looked into Chantelle’s face and smiled.
 I have to go to it.  No one will be able to do anything.  I have to.  It wants me.
It was not the look of a child.  It was an expression of deep knowledge, of the pain of years building this knowledge, honing it, and making it pure and brilliant and true.  Bethy’s eyes were deep wells of this knowledge and Chantelle had to look away from the truth behind them.  Bethy was right.
The child stood.
Chantelle spoke in their minds with a resolve she did not know that she had.  She said:
But we’re going with her.
The Old Woman remained seated with her eyes closed, and she nodded – helpless.  She had no idea how this was to work.  The memory of what her powers were to be used for had never awoken within her, Chantelle realized.  The Old Woman of the Mountain had so hoped that coming here – for this purpose – would be like a key in a lock and that the knowledge would come.  That an answer to her life long question of “why me?” would be answered.  Finally there would be a reason that she had always felt so alone in her ability – an ability which had forever alienated her, made her nearly inhuman.
(To everyone, Chantelle.  To men and family and friends.  Everyone comes to realize, slowly, and they don’t like it.  There is no hiding the fact that you can see everyone naked in every way.  When it finally becomes realized – they run.  They ran.  And then I was alone.  Always.  And so I came to the mountain, alone.  And waited.)
She shook her ancient, gray head, wrinkled but tough as steel.  Old and strong like diamonds.  She said to them all, bitterly:
And isn’t that so typical of prayer?
The Old Woman laughed, then, with the same bitterness – but to herself – and opened her eyes. In them, the unfairness for life that she now felt became visible and seeped out of them, it wafted to the air around them like a sour, milky balloon and then began to collapse around her.  It was flaking on the air and falling like snow to the ground.
 Okay.  You go with her.
Chantelle nodded with resolve and added, trying to sound certain:
 And Charlie too.
Charlie looked up suddenly at Chantelle, shocked, but Chantelle regarded him coldly hoping that he would not cave.  Hoping that he would feel her need for strength, and for friendship.
And she wished desperately that Carl were here with them.
Chantelle continued, overriding Charlie’s expanding aura of fear and doubt and sorrow.  She said:
 I don’t know anything about prayer.
She admitted this with a hint of grief fighting off the flood of memories which threatened to break her down at this moment of urgency.  Terrel and Mamma and the need for money.  The death of her childish hope for happiness (but you found that in the strangest place – you found that when the world ended).  The loss of she and Terrel’s child.
The face of Death was leering not at her, though she could see him clearly like the pictures in Mamma’s religious books.  The skull face and the tattered black robes and the poised scythe.  He was there in her mind and he was leering, but not at her.  Now he grinned lipless – all teeth and darkness at Bethy.  Her not-child.  Leering straight into her heart.  Chantelle said:
   I do know that there had to have been a reason we all met.
Charlie nodded.  He said:
 Yeah, I know a little bit about odd coincidence.
It was true.  Chantelle could not wrap her mind around it but she was certain that something had been at work.  It was like a call – but far quieter, and far more powerful.  The truth of it was, they had control over it.  They could have separated later.  It was in their power to ignore that quiet call, if they wanted to.  At any time.  In truth they had hardly known one another – but they had felt a power encircling them.  Friendship or love or something that married friendship and love and it was here now.  Here and out there, back in the Rocky Mountains with their physical hearts and physical minds.  All the way from Pittsburgh.
They had decided – they themselves – to remain together and there was power in that – the decision to be bonded by their friendship, by their love.  There was power in decision – it carved a course for them and this is where it had lead, or rather, where they had chosen to go.
Here.  To this moment.
Charlie went on:
I guess I mean that I don’t think there’s such a thing as coincidence, really.
He admitted this with a smile and stood too.
I wish Carl and Adam and Eddie were here.
They all stood, the three of them, and regarded the entrance to the temple beyond the small form of Bethy.
But three at once?  You said that was a bad idea.
Charlie radiated fear.  The old woman, though, shook her head looking at the ground beneath her.
I don’t know anything.
Her admission was trembling on the air around them.  It filled them all with doubt and uncertainty but Bethy was already walking forward.

The gate of the temple – a yawning mouth of blue and black and secrets.  As Chantelle followed Bethy through it, into the gloom, she turned to look tentatively at Charlie.  She said:
Thank you so much for coming, you didn’t have to.
He smiled at her, sheepishly, and shook his head.
I wanted to.  I was surprised when you called me out like that.
He laughed, then continued.
But then, I wasn’t very surprised.  It made sense.
He shrugged.
It did make sense, Chantelle realized – though she could hardly explain it.
Around them the gloom began to glow.  Chantelle realized that true darkness was impossible now, because she was not seeing this with physical eyes.  The knowledge that she was not present, in body, did little to comfort her, however.  She was certain that any harm that came to her here would likely be more impacting than harm done to her physical body – and this knowledge filled her with dread.
Don’t think about it.
Charlie shrugged and Chantelle smiled, embarrassed – she had not meant to project her thoughts.
Bethy, before them, moved through the corridor purposefully, her small child legs and bare feet moving across the glistening slabs which formed the floor seemed to glow with her inner light.  That light was bright, it glistened with reminiscence of sun on leaves – afternoon sun on a summer day.  A young child’s summer day, home in a quiet house.  Afternoon light through a window.  An innocent sense of safety.  A lack of knowledge for adult fears.  Chantelle wanted to scoop her into her arms and sit on the ground rocking with her, stroking her hair.  She conjured a fantasy – momentarily – of making dinner in her apartment.  The front door opens with an excited crash and Bethy run’s in wearing school clothes with an oversized pink backpack and she is all smiles.  The cat scampers out from beneath the chair and purrs affectionately and Bethy is laughing, stooping, and hoisting the cat into her arms.  She is flinging her backpack on the chair and plopping down on the Murphy bed kicking off her school shoes.  She says:  What’s for dinner Mom?
Bethy glanced back at Chantelle and in her eyes was nothing of innocence.  No childish neediness.  In her eyes Chantelle felt the fantasy become thin and brittle, like an old photograph, and then flutter away.  It had no weight to it.  It was a time that could never be again.  A future no longer possible, for either of them.
Chantelle looked at the ground, at her own bare feet moving along the corridor and then nodded resolutely.  She was here – now – this was where she must focus.  She glanced around her, taking the defensive stance.  She must know her surroundings, the setting of her present reality.
There were images in relief carved into the walls, Chantelle noted.  She was unable to comprehend the scenes depicted, though.  She had expected them to be depictions of the God in the Ice and the beings who had once worshiped her – given her life.  But these seemed to be of plants and animals.  Almost decorative rather than descriptive.  They appeared to tell no story, they lacked a definable moral.
A shudder ran through the temple, a wave.  Chantelle felt the familiar sense of longing, only now it was a hand gripping her heart.  It held it fast and she felt guilt rise above her head like a tide.  How could she be so ungrateful?  She deserved to drown for her ungratefulness.
But how can we show our love?
Charlie was looking at the ground, he was shaking his head.
Let’s just try to talk to it.
To Chantelle, suddenly, Charlie appeared hideous.  A truly terrible person.  So full of selfishness.  How could he not feel the weight of his error?  How could he not open his heart?
Bethy nodded.
 Yes.  Let’s try now.
And her words rocked the foundation of the spell.  They seemed to blast it – undercut it – and fling it away.  No.  Charlie was Charlie.  He was there to help them.  Chantelle shuddered.  The realization that their hearts could be so easily manipulated sent tremors of fears rocking through her.  She had not even realized she was being forced into seeing Charlie so negatively until Bethy had dispelled it.  She managed, in her mind:
How do we do it?
Bethy shrugged.
 I don’t know.
Chantelle looked around helplessly for some sign.  There was no indication of what they were to do in the temples decorative sculptures in relief.  Nothing in the softly glowing corridor or in the air around them.  No signs in color or thought or waves of some other emotion.  Perhaps we are acting alone.  Chantelle thought.  Charley met her eye and she ignored the pang of embarrassment in the realization that she may as well have spoken this aloud.  No thought was solely their own any longer.
But she continued.
Maybe we have no guiding force.  No greater sense of good.  Maybe the good really is in loving this thing?
Charley swallowed – or rather – performed the equivalent emotion to depict his uncertainty which visually could be perceived as a nervous swallow.  He said:
Does that feel right to you?
    Right?
    Yeah, does that feel correct.  Right.  When you think about it, do you think you even could love that thing.  We all know that we might not be able to.  It needs her.  
He gestured to Bethy.
Bethy, what would you say to it?
Chantelle regarded the child.  Bethy said:
I don’t know.
And all they could do was nod.  They did not know.
Bethy smiled:
But we have to try.  You know that.
The corridor seemed to extend before them – but wait.  There, far ahead of them, a darker pinpoint in the gloom – that could very possibly be a door.  Chantelle strained her eyes.
There.
She pointed forward.
Charlie nodded and wordlessly they began, as a group, to move forward once again.  The sculpted walls around them continued to portray animal life and plant life.  Lions and rabbits, palm trees and rose bushes.  Strange exotic plants that Chantelle had never seen and animals that she was certain had never existed – some frightening.  Finally there were people, naked men and women weaving, hunting, creating.
What does it all mean?
Charlie shook his head uncertainly.  He had no idea, and ever closer the door before them loomed, for a door it was.
But that’s not possible.
Chantelle was shaking her head again and again but it was there, right before her eyes.  The door to her apartment.
But before she could make a move to stop her, Bethy rushed forward and touched the knob – upon the impact of her fingers the door dissolved.  The light beyond it was like the light of day and Bethy disappeared into it.  At that exact moment a further wave rushed out at them, through the doorway and Chantelle and Charlie were blown backward, like leaves, far down the corridor as Bethy disappeared from their sight – went beyond their grasp.
There was a contented sighing.

33

Carl stood blinking in the dim light of the survivors tent until his eyes fully adjusted to the gloom.  Someone had left an aluminum cooking pot of coffee near the fire and he poured himself a cup ignoring the woman stirring some boiling rice on the other side of the glow.
McKenna is in the camp.
That Adam could have been mistaken was truly a possibility.  They were all, as Eddie had pointed out, seeing things that they could not be sure of recently.
Yet it clung to Carl’s thoughts.  What difference would it make if Jones and McKenna were in the camp?  
 Unless, of course, they knew more than they were letting on.  
    Unless, of course, they were putting Chantelle and Charlie and Bethy and all of them into danger.
Carl sipped the coffee uneasily and grimaced.  Eddie was right.  The coffee was shitty.
What happened to the Maxwell House?
And before he knew what he was doing Carl was back on his feet and limping on the crutch towards the door – he was pushing the flap aside and was back out in the cold.  Eddie and Adam were laughing about something near the woodpile and Carl smiled grimly to himself, glad that they were at least in a good mood now.
He rounded the side of the Survivors Tent and made his way passed the latrines to the Military Tent and paused outside of the door flap listening.  It had never been a rule, per se, that Survivors could not enter the Military Tent.  It was just something they never did.  There was an air of the forbidden about the place.  An air of secrecy but Carl brushed that aside taking a deep breath and pushed the flap open and entered the darkness.
Several soldiers looked up as he entered, surprised to see a Survivor in their domain but no one made a move towards him or said anything.  They just looked.
Carl moved inward towards the partitioned section where he had met the Old Woman of the Mountain and past it.  There was a curtained section near the back and a card table set up where several soldiers were smoking cigarettes and discussing papers strewn on the table before them.  Steaming cups of coffee made designs on the frigid air before their faces and as Carl approached them they stopped speaking and regarded him uncertainly.  Carl hesitated, then, feeling as if he had breached some sort of protocol and was about to be reprimanded for it but the soldiers made no move towards him.
“I’m looking for a soldier.”  he explained, as he approached the table.  The soldiers shifted uneasily.
“Which one?”  one of them – a big man who had once sported a crew cut which was now growing out.  Someone – another soldier – laughed.
“He said his name was McKenna.”  Carl swallowed thickly realizing he was shaking.  “He saved my friends and I and I’d like to thank him.”
The soldiers exchanged glances and one of them was looking at him very hard.  Carl caught it, in his mind, but it was too late.  It was an echo of a whisper.
 …me?
Carl shook his head and spread his hands out – an offering gesture – and tried on a shaky smile looking at the soldier.  Carl pointed to his head and said:
“I cant do it.  Sorry.  Not very well.”
And then that feeling of failure, so familiar, and so quick to return.
The soldiers exchanged a look and then regarded one another silently and Carl was aware that they were discussing him.  Discussing him in their minds, with each other and it made him uneasy, as if he had entered a group of people speaking a foreign language and he was certain that they were talking about him, but had no idea what they were saying.
Finally one of the soldiers stood.
“Just have a seat, I’ll be back in a moment.” he explained, motioning to his chair.  Carl sank gratefully into the vacant seat resting his crutch on the table and the soldiers were all looking at him, studying.
“What happened to your leg, son?”  one of them asked, gruffly, eyeing one of the other soldiers with something like a shared joke between them.  The other soldier nodded, a cruel laugh behind his eyes.  He’d seen them all before, around the camp.  They’d seen him limping around on his crutch for weeks now.
“My girlfriend broke it.”  Carl explained, and smiled.  The soldiers shifted uneasily and Carl felt an odd sense of pleasure in their sudden discomfort.  They were unsure whether or not he was joking.  He liked that he wasn’t.
“Women.”  one of the other soldiers said – a young guy, probably in his early twenties.  Younger than Carl.
The other soldiers laughed and nodded and a female soldier who was passing by with an arm full of rifles stopped in her tracks and freed a hand to flick the young soldier off.
“Fuck you, Ginnison.”  she spat.
The soldiers laughed and she was laughing too and then the soldier who had vacated his seat for Carl returned.
“Okay, sir.  Come with me.”  he smiled and the pit of Carl’s stomach turned to ice.
What the fuck are they going to do to me?  Why did I do this?  This is such a dumb idea.  Fucking Adam.  He isn’t even sure.  What…?
Carl stood and began to follow the soldier through the curtains in the back.  The room beyond was cramped with tables littered with papers and a computer glowed in the back – only one – powered, presumably, by some sort of generator which Carl could hear humming somewhere, unseen.  He had only a moment to wonder how they had kept this power source a secret before he saw him – McKenna – standing near a card table surrounded by men locked in quiet discussion.  He had expected more of a search for the man.  A series of questions and then an interrogations before being led to him – but no, there he stood and when Carl approached the table he looked over at him, exhausted, and nodded.
“How’s the leg?”  he asked.
“Better.”  Carl nodded, uncertain, gesturing to the crutch.  McKenna’s hair was long now.  Shoulder length and a scruff of beard shadowed his face.  He was holding a gun.
“Long time no see.”  McKenna acknowledged.  “How’s Eddie doing?”  he smiled coldly.  “Glad you guys all made it here together.”
He nodded to a man at the table and the man rose and walked to a plastic bin in the corner, opened it and began to rummage inside.
“Listen,”  Carl began, his feeling of caution mounting.  “Listen, I’m not really sure what’s going on but we need to talk about this.  I need to know.”  the man was still rummaging, searching, and McKenna turned back to Carl and smiled, his eyes ringed with dark circles and he looked much older.  Old and tired.
“You want to know what’s going on?”  McKenna smiled.  One of the other men at the table chuckled darkly but continued to pour over papers which appeared to be lines of numbers.
Carl stood dumbly in the dim light, the glow of the computer washing blue over them all, casting faces in frigid half glows – azure phantom masks.  Carl felt an odd sense of embarrassment.
“Well, yeah.”  he stammered.  “Yeah, I’m really worried about my friends.  About Bethy.  I really think this needs to be talked out.  What is the plan?  How much did you know before.”
The man at the bin continued to rummage.  He was pulling things out now, cardboard product boxes – all small and rectangular.  Little vials of labeled something or other.
“We thought we knew a lot.”  McKenna sighed.  The vision of his guilty face in the underpass came to mind, floating in the air but it wavered.  That time was such a blur to Carl.
McKenna continued:  “We were very wrong about many things.”  he shook his head and glanced at the man kneeling before the plastic bin.  Impatient.
Carl was thinking of warning signs.  Of red flags and cautionary glances.
“We are going to save the world and start over.”
“How?”  Carl wondered, aloud.  “How do you make that thing really die.”  and the others at the table all paused at once and regarded him.  One of them stood and approached him cautiously.  He was an Asian man, gray haired and balding and he looked hard at Carl.
An intrusion – an echo caught too late in his head:
 …me?
“No, listen – everyone needs to understand – I cant do that very well.  I tried.  It’s really hard for me.”
The man sighed and sat down again and muttered something to a man near him and the man nodded and began searching through a manila folder which had been partially buried in sheets of print outs.
“You’re trying too hard.  It’s easy now – for all of us.” McKenna sighed.  “But it doesn’t really matter.  Not yet anyway.” he went on tapping the side of the table with his gun.  “And you’re right.  We need to know if we need to make that thing die.”
“So what is it?”  Carl went on.  The man at the bin seemed to have found what he was looking for.  His back was to Carl and he was doing something there, in the darkness of the bin, before him, something Carl could not see.
“I don’t know.  We don’t have any idea.  It’s been here a very, very long time though.”
“What made it start calling – or whatever – now?”  Carl asked.
No one answered.
“Please,” Carl pleaded.  The man at the bin stood and when he turned and Carl saw the syringe in his hand he took a step backwards but before he backed into the soldiers behind him he already knew that they were there, blocking the exit.  “Please stop whatever is happening.  There has to be another way.  Why Bethy?  It would be too easy for her to love it.  She’s just a child.  She wants to love it so badly.  She wants her mother.  She wants that love.”
McKenna looked at him very sadly.  So very broken.
“That’s why we sent your girlfriend.”
The man with the syringe took a step towards him and Carl realized, then, that he would not be able to get away from this.  He could not fight them.  He could not run – not with his leg.
“Chantelle?”
“To neutralize the love.  The kid is our bait.  It wants her.”
“But you don’t even know what the fuck it is!  Maybe you should just let her love it!”  But even as he said it he knew that he was wrong.  There was a feeling – a feeling of mortal sin in what he had said.  Of irreversible wrong.  It was very clear that no one should love this thing.  To love this thing would be an ending.  It would empower it, revitalize it,  and it would enslave them in their love for it.
The man with the syringe approached him and the last thing Carl saw before he felt the spark of pain from the needle was McKenna’s face – and a look of extreme disappointment there.

32

For a long moment nothing happened.  The sun overhead was impossibly bright and it glinted from the sides of whatever made up the temple walls.  Chantelle noted, absently, that they appeared to be formed of a solid sheet – perhaps chiseled from a large block of whatever it was which made it all up – crystals or ice or maybe something not found anywhere else on earth.
Randy had been gone for a considerable amount of time.
Should we go in after her?
Tom was speaking.
No.
The Old Woman looked warily at the entrance of the temple – a gaping mouth of a gate.
No, I don’t think more than one of us should go in a time.
    She’s not coming out again.  
They all turned to Bethy, shocked and appalled at the bluntness of her words, but also oddly enthralled by her voice in their minds.  It coaxed them and soothed them and there was a brightness to it.  A brilliance which shone more dazzling than the sun pounding down above them.
Chantelle swallowed, forcing herself to see Bethy as a child again.  Forcing herself to feel older and wiser and to feel a sense of protectiveness.  To be a mother.
 Honey, don’t say that.
Chantelle managed this, after a pause.  But she had managed to mean it both in words and in the emotion behind the words and Bethy shrugged and looked away from them, back towards the world off in the distance, beyond the islands of ice and the sparkling, gigantic sea.
Who will go next.
The Old Woman eyed them all, one by one and her gaze made Chantelle uncomfortable.
But you just said we should only go in one at a time.
Chantelle tried to take Bethy’s hand as she said this but the child would not respond,  she moved her hand  away from Chantelle and folded it on top of her other hand, in front of her and resting on her own small legs – now bitter perhaps, for being restrained from going in earlier.  She shrugged away from Chantelle and nearer to the Old Woman and Chantelle felt a pang of jealousy, a feeling of dejection and regret.
 The child has just explained.  Randy failed.
The Old Woman shrugged and Chantelle could both see and feel the flare of anger in Tom.  He turned on the Old Woman of the Mountain with a snarl on the face of his mind.
 Why don’t you go in if you know so much?
    No!
Charlie had shouted this, looking up suddenly as if breaking out of a trance.
 No.  We need her to know how to get back.  We cant get back.
This was true, Chantelle realized miserably.  She had no idea how to pull them all back to the Rocky Mountains.  Back to Carl and Eddie and Adam and the others.  Back to reality.  None of them knew how to do this.  Without the Old Woman of the Mountain they were stranded here – out of their minds and their bodies, forever.  Forever to sit by the dead hulk.
And Chantelle wondered suddenly if their physical bodies were to die would they still remain here.  For all eternity, unable to die.  Unwilling slaves to a dead thing which trapped them in a longed for love which they all wanted to return but feared.
There was a wave.  An invisible tide which surged over them suddenly like a great sigh and their hearts broke.  Chantelle realized that she had stood and had taken a step towards the gate – towards the immeasurably huge husk of the creatures body.  The dead God.
The Old Woman took her hand and lead her back to the circle, tears in her own eyes and she could not speak – even in Chantelle’s mind.  Only the aura of her sorrow could be both seen and felt wafting off of her in tattered strands, like ancient silk turning to dust in a sudden breeze.  Chantelle fought off the urge to shove her away and make a break for the gate.  She wanted to offer everything she had to this dying thing which she wanted so badly to love.
But she could not love it.
Bethy was smiling towards it and Chantelle was suddenly overwhelmed with horror.
 Don’t!
Bethy looked at her startled, and then sat down again embarrassed.
Sorry.  I just…  I reminds me of…
And Chantelle then did something she could not explain.  She welled all of her love into her chest, out of her body like a glowing orb and it wavered in her hands too bright to look at and she blew it – like a kiss – to Bethy.  It sank into the child and turned something, like a key, within the child and there was an unlocking.  A weakening of something, or a softening.
But Bethy began to cry, confused and afraid – a spell fully breaking – and when she buried her head between Chantelle’s naked breasts tears sprang into her own eyes and their love mingled suddenly – manifest visually, all at once, as a representation of energy – like a ripple – it pooled around them gently.
There was a moan in their minds and Charlie, Tom and the Old Woman all began to weep without restraint but both Chantelle and Bethy could only feel their love for one another – like a mother and a daughter – and it was like a warm cocoon.  Like a womb.
They felt safe.
For the moment.
 What do I have to do?  How can I make this stop?
Tom was asking this.  Tom was standing and he was looking with an impossible combination of love and hatred and sorrow at the gateway.
Do I save it or kill it?
Even in their minds his voice was hoarse and strained and the Old Woman wiped her eyes regarding him, her face broken in pain.
Just try to talk to it.
Charlie.  Charlie speaking with urgency in all of their minds.  Charlie speaking with desperation and it made sense.  This is what they had to do but Chantelle was also fully aware – as they all were – that just speaking with this thing was likely impossible.  The call was too great.  The tide was too strong.
Tom was standing, though.  There was no holding him back.  From him, Chantelle could feel a need to get this job done.  A need to go in and succeed.  To accomplish this mission.  He took a step towards the gate and stopped.  He turned back and looked directly at the Old Woman.
If this doesn’t work, you take them back and tell Jones we need a new plan.
The Old Woman said nothing.  She regarded him and from her Chantelle could feel nothing.  She could see nothing.
   Promise me you wont send that kid in.  Not yet.
The Old Woman sat as motionless as the temple around them.  Like an ancient statue.
Promise me.
But without waiting for a reply – perhaps knowing he would not receive one – Tom crossed the bizarre crystalline courtyard and disappeared without a pause into the purple darkness of the temple.