The Spaces in Between (26 page)

The tip of the gunslinger’s hat flipped up to reveal his face. On the cover of Cameron’s book his hat obscured his face, but the face staring at him was also there. The blue bombardier eyes he was expecting glared at him through lenses. The face was on the back of the book though it looked far older and haggard – the face of a man that was hit by a truck and lived.

“Karma will always find you,” Stephen King said, “When you feel that nothing can knock you down – that you are invincible is when it comes. But Karma, you see, it bides its time. When I was nineteen I thought I was unstoppable, and nothing really came along to prove me wrong in over twenty years, but it did.”

“It’s not your job to stop me!” Cameron yelled. “This is not how the
Sephirots
work. If I’m in
Geburah
then I’ve passed the path’s test! You are supposed to collect a fee in order to let me pass!”

“I am only required to take the fee,” Stephen Gunslinger replied. “But I don’t have to tell you what it is. Would spoil the ending, wouldn’t it?” Cameron held the broken sword hilt before him still. “I wouldn’t try anything like that or you’ll be born into your next life with a birthmark above your temple.” His hand fell to the sandalwood grip of the revolver. Cameron knew that King was faster. Faster than Ryoma had ever been in life or death, and he wasn’t sure that he had even inherited all of Ryoma’s speed at the draw.

“Well, then I will sit here and wait you out till Armageddon,” Cameron said and tossed the shattered hilt aside. Then he fell on his bottom. Cameron grunted, he didn’t expect the ground to be so hard. But why wouldn’t it? Everything about
Geburah
is hard.

“Aren’t you going back for the gun?” King inquired then gestured at the shattered remains of Cameron’s revolver. “I know you could fix it. Maybe have a proper shootout.”

“Nah,” Cameron replied. “I know you have me beat in that department, and you might have me beat in the patience department. Somehow I don’t think
Geburah
has time to halt while I do nothing. There is nothing passive about
Geburah
, is there?” The usual smug expression on Cameron’s face had returned. “So no. You keep it.”

The gunslinger sighed and his left hand dropped so fast that Cameron couldn’t see where it was going. He flinched, but he knew that was going to do him no good. The card slid across the floor to him. Cameron leaned forward and brought the tip of his finger down on the card. It was labeled Lust. He could feel it vibrate under his touch. The card expanded under Cameron. The floor was now painted with the image of a nude woman taming a lion with the head of many men.

“So what you wanted was my gun?” Cameron said. “Figures.” Then the trap door opened under him.

22

Cameron fell through the sky and landed on something not exactly cushioned but pliable. If he was in a physical body it might have broken or just sprained his ankle, but he certainly wouldn’t have gone splat against it. He quickly looked above his head. The illustration on the Lust card looked down from the sky then vanished. In its place was a cloud in the shape of the Hebrew letter
Teth
.

He looked down at the ground and found it an iridescent jade with flecks of purple and gold. It was also scaly and slippery. The path he was walking was the body of a giant snake or dragon that hung between
Geburah
and the next
Sephirot
,
Chesed
, the realm of mercy. After all
Teth
meant snake. He pulled himself to his feet and walked across the snake dangling over what appeared as a reflection of the sky above.

He continued, but could not tell for how long he did so. Time got pretty weird in the Astral, but Cameron was now high above the Astral. He was in the Higher Realms and so close to Heaven that he thought he could almost touch it. He wondered if he could fly up to it and forego the rest of this, but knew that wasn’t going to happen. Whether or not it was possible was not a question at all, but Cameron noticed that there were restrictions on him as he walked the Tree. It was almost like he had the Anchor
Logos
branded to him again.

As he walked the path thinned at first subtly then dramatically to where now Cameron had to shimmy and sidestep with his toes dangling over the slippery path. He wasn’t sure whether he was approaching the head or the tail – probably the head. Then the path twisted and sure enough he was correct. The red eyes of the snake met Cameron’s and its tongue flicked him across the face. He nearly fell over the edge from the impact.

He was, however, mistaken that the snake was attached to something. Instead it was floating in midair like a scaly zeppelin. The snake opened its great mouth, but did not strike. At least not in a conventional sense, Cameron’s greatest fear emerged from the maw of the snake, but you wouldn’t have thought that from his reaction.

“Kris!” Cameron exclaimed with tears in his eyes and open arms at the figure in front of him. She did not return the sentiment, and merely glowered at him from her vantage point on the tongue of the great snake. “It’s me, Cameron, your brother.”

“I know damn well who you are and what you are!” the red drapes of her hair pulled aside to reveal the face twisted in rage underneath. “You are my murderer, not my brother!” She advanced. Cameron tried to take a full step back, but his foot slid out from under him and he landed on his backside.

“We were both at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cameron pleaded. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to kill anyone. Especially not you. I was stupid and I made a huge mistake.”

“Bullshit!’ she screamed. “You are kidding yourself, Cam!” The sound of her nickname for him bit him like a whip. “You know that our desires and wishes influence the Astral, and that influences events. Your favorite form of magic if I recall.”

“I didn’t want that!”

“Since when did humans ever really understand what they want? It may not always come out the way we expected it, but our wishes come true in the end! On some level you wanted me dead!” She approached him. Cameron averted his eyes, because he was frightened that she would be the mangled corpse that rolled over the hood of his Chevy.

Could she be an illusion created by his mind? He didn’t have his memories so rule that one out. Memories were mortal. They didn’t exist this high on the Tree. She could very well actually be there. But she was dead.

Where the hell do you think you’re headed?
Then she wouldn’t be this low on the Tree. “You won’t make it to the top. You don’t deserve to,” she snarled. “I’ll fight you tooth and nail if I have to.”

“It’s not your place to do that,” Cameron said in a very faint voice and slipped into a more defensive tone. “What were you doing there anyway…?” She didn’t reply. Cameron’s eye moved up from the serpentine ground. “What were you doing there?” She averted her hazel eyes from his green. “You were supposed to be at school! What were you doing there!”

Cameron pulled himself to his feet and repeated his question. Kristina Styles took a step back into the serpent’s mouth. “Just meeting this guy…” She glanced back at him. Her eyes turned to hazel slits. “It doesn’t matter! Are you saying it was my fault! I wasn’t the one behind the wheel of a car with a whole fucking pint of vodka running through my blood!”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” The calm tone of his voice was far more alarming than when he was on the offensive. “I’m just trying to make a point. It wasn’t your entire fault, but a bit of it was. Now a lot of it was mine, but not all of it. Some of it was just circumstance.”

“Saying it was all just fate is a cop out even for you,” she said.

“No, life is a deck of cards with more than two jokers in it. It’s pointless to really get that bent out of shape about it. You wouldn’t get mad at actors for the characters they play. Or at least any sane person wouldn’t do that. We play a role in life, but when you get this high up the Tree we aren’t those same people anymore. Life’s a stage, so the bard says.”

Cameron approached with a wide grin on his face. “This high the ego is, well, just a skin that the soul sheds.” He stepped into the mouth of the serpent. Kristina backed away down the throat of the snake. Then the snake’s mouth enclosed around him.

23

Water swept Cameron’s feet from under him and rode the water down the beast’s gullet. He landed in a great pool presumably in the snake’s stomach. He looked up and was amazed to see a plum shaded sky hanging overhead instead of the pitch black he encountered down the snake’s throat. He had emerged from a cave four feet above the pool where golden water cascaded. Cameron couldn’t help but think the term golden showers.

A dark skinned man offered Cameron his hand. Cameron took the hand and the man pulled him above the water where he was standing. Cameron wiped the blood from his hand on the leg of his pants in a scarlet streak. The man standing before Cameron on top of the golden waters was a spitting image of the man he left at the bottom of the tree. Just somehow humbler.

“I was told I couldn’t get your help on the Tree by who I suppose is a spiritual cousin of yours,” Cameron said. “Because I don’t believe in you.”

“I believe in you,” the man replied. “But all the help in Creation I could give you wouldn’t matter if you can’t even forgive yourself. Do you forgive yourself, Cameron? For the part you played in her death.”

“Can I still regret it?”

“Not regretting and learning from our mistakes,” the man said, “Is just as bad as never moving forward afterwards. Do you forgive yourself?”

“I don’t suppose I could make it this far without it.”

“You couldn’t say it any truer.” The man reached forward. “There’s something behind your ear.” The man plucked a card from behind Cameron’s ear. Cameron rolled his eye in semi-amusement, but that smug expression melted away when he looked at the card.

“There’s nothing on this.” Cameron turned the card over. The back was the ouroborus coiling around dual yin-yangs, but the front was solid black. “This isn’t one of the Tree’s paths.”

“I’m sorry, but the road is out for the living,” the man said while thoughtfully stroking his beard. “You can try to find your way through the woods if you’d like.” The blank tarot card fell from Cameron’s limp fingers. “You dropped this.” The man reached over and picked up the blank tarot card. The reaction was pulling the plug from the pool.

The man was unaffected by the great whirlpool that formed at the point the card was removed, but Cameron was certainly drawn in. At the bottom of the pool Cameron felt crushed. Within minutes he was so deep that he could no longer make out any of the lights. He tried to fight against the current, but the pressure of the black water was so great that he could barely move his arms much less paddle.

Seven red eyes pierced through the black and through Cameron. Each pair of eyes was stacked one upon another, and while he couldn’t spot the mate of the bottom pair he knew that familiar green eye was also staring at him.

Cameron was looking upon the face of Nylarhothep. And Nylarhothep spoke.

24

The voice of Nylarhothep did not resonate or reverberate as much as it vibrated. It vibrated with such force that it threatened to vibrate Cameron apart, and it probably could have if Nylarhothep felt so inclined. It was a voice that Cameron had heard before and with the borrowed power from the Old One had spoken once.

Nylarhothep spoke no language that man could comprehend. The ancient Hebrews believed that hearing the voice of God directly would destroy the listener. Nylarhothep was not God, but came from the same place so he would only have to settle on insanity. Cameron could not fully grasp a word that Nylarhothep spoke, but he understood. Like a dog being told to rollover he understood.

Cameron could see no more of Nylarhothep. He had seen Nylarhothep before, and he preferred it this way. It was three years ago when Cameron saw the true Man in Black. The Dark Man. One of the Old Ones – the race of monsters that pulled themselves from the
Aur
fleeing the light of God when He arrived and spun the first Universe between his fingers.

Nylarhothep the Dark Wanderer was different from the other Old Ones. He could enter Creation, and he could walk amongst mortals sowing discord. His home away from home here in Creation was here in
Daath
the Abyss. All paths on the Tree passed through
Daath
, but where a
Sephirot
should reside Nothing stood.
Daath
was the great crevice that divided mortals from God that cracked when mortals ate of the Apple. Nylarhothep led the other Old Ones to here in order to meddle in the affairs of mortals.

Yog-Sothoth was an Old One and one of the gates to the Abyss. Three years ago Cameron had used his powers to find his copy of the
Necronomicon,
and through Yog-Sothoth gained an audience with the Dark Man. Cameron took the encounter far too lightly at first.

He sent the spirit chain through Nylarhothep’s abdomen. “You are going to be the first mate of my ship the
Soulforge
,” Cameron told him. “I wouldn’t try to escape that. Being a figment of Mr. Lovecraft’s imagination powered by the collective unconscious of pop culture makes you powerful, but very susceptible to this binding.” Nylarhothep only smiled and nodded politely upon his recliner of human skulls in his impeccable three-piece black suit.

He still smiled when he got up and the chain snapped. The spirit chain was formed of Cameron’s inner divinity and will made solid. And it snapped. If that wasn’t shocking enough the Dark Man spoke. Like he did now, but he had no intention of allowing Cameron to leave. Cameron panicked. He couldn’t believe that the Old Ones were real. He drew his flintlock.

The Dark Man had laughed and this sound was far worse than his speaking voice. If the voice of the Dark Man couldn’t destroy him the laughter could. Still his nerve didn’t slip. As if Ryoma was riding him he pulled the trigger and a fireball shot through Nyarlahothep. The Dark Man didn’t see it coming, and he couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. A sudden urge came over Cameron, and he pulled a knife from his overcoat. He would trade eyes with the Dark Man.