Babylon Terminal Read online

  I did. They weren’t assigned to me, but word was they’d gotten away.

  “Like all the rest, they was gonna find the Promised Land,” Bobby said, “prove us all wrong. But even if they get away from somebody like you, they ain’t never coming back, so who knows?”

  “Maybe they found the ocean,” I suggested. “Maybe they made it.”

  “Maybe they didn’t. Just because one of your kind didn’t get them don’t mean they made it.”

  “I don’t give a shit about them. I have to get to Julia.” I wanted to sit down but everything was filthy and covered with trash. “She won’t make it alone, Bobby.”

  “Could say the same thing about any of us, even you, brother-man.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about. Did you give her a weapon?”

  “I’m all about peace, my brother.”

  “Answer me.”

  “I didn’t have no weapons to spare. Gave her what I have to give. Whole lotta love. Then I sent her on her way, dig?”

  “You better not be lying to me.”

  “Why would I do that? Chill.” Bobby leaned forward, razor blade earring swinging. “It’ll be light in a few hours. You can hit the road come nightfall.”

  I wanted nothing more than to leave, but I didn’t. I just stood there. Like always.

  “Relax, we in-a-gadda-da-vida, baby. While they sleep, we live. While they live, we sleep.”

  Reba scurried into the kitchen. Seconds later the front door closed with a loud slam. When she returned, she moved from one candle to the next, blowing them out until they’d all been extinguished.

  “Now we all blind,” Bobby said softly.

  I’d turned right on the road instead of left. Now I wondered if it really made that much difference. I closed my eyes in the dark but the Devil was still beside me, his rancid breath slowly exhaling along the back of my neck, his claws pulling me closer…down…into a deeper darkness all his own. Dance with me, he whispered, his tongue black and forked, slithering across my face like a snake.

  And round and round we went.

  5

  I dreamed of the light, all encompassing and washing over me like water bubbling free from a deep spring. It covered me, strangely enchanting as it was frightening, and with warm and deliberate command, slowly choked the life from me. I died in its arms, and for the first time truly understood the immensity of its power, as from somewhere beyond those blinding rays, or perhaps from within them, came the most beautiful chant-like singing I had ever heard. If there was such a place as Heaven, surely that was what it sounded like there. Like forgiveness. Like unimaginable love. It moved me to tears and allowed for something I’d rarely felt before. Hope. Strange, how little space there was between the myth of light, and the veracity of shadows.

  And then Julia, screaming, not from darkness but the same blinding light, writhing and flailing about, eyes wild and hair flying. Blood poured from slashed flesh, her veins open and spilling crimson into the terrifyingly beautiful light.

  Sudden thunder growled, as if from a violent machine buried deep inside my head, bringing with it bullets of acid disguised as rain, and the familiar accoutrements of night.

  When quiet darkness returned, Julia was gone. Again.

  But I was not. Still in the city, I had ventured to a quiet and mostly forgotten neighborhood I often escaped to when things got heavy. The area bore all the signs of having once been a central and vibrant location, though not in a very long time. Maybe it had been once, maybe it hadn’t. Didn’t care, really, I just knew it as a desolate sanctuary. No one ever came here, I never saw anyone come or go except for an occasional homeless person passing through. People came to the outskirts of the neighborhood but generally steered clear. They were afraid of this building, this giant structure of cement and tile, with its large wide stone steps leading up to the massive pillars on either side of the big series of doors. Chiseled into the stone above them in huge letters were the words PUBLIC LIBRARY.

  I climbed the steps, the tails of my coat blowing about. A chilly wind snaked through the city, but the rain had slowed to a mist. When I reached the doors, I pulled one open, looked back out at the street below, then slipped inside.

  Candles, dozens and dozens lit and left along the hallways, provided the only light. It flickered and bent and distorted along the walls and ceilings, mysterious as the wonders and secrets this monument to knowledge protected.

  There was a silence here unlike any other, and a familiar musty odor filled the air. A thick blanket of dust and cobwebs covered everything, the floors, the walls, even the beautiful arched ceilings. The artwork overhead was chipped and faded but still breathtaking and unlike anything else anywhere in the city. Doorways on either side of me led to room after room of ancient and slowly decaying books. I continued on, the heels of my boots clacking against the tile floor, echoing across the large open spaces.

  As I moved deeper into the building, the soft scratchy sounds of classical music trickled down the hallway like a whisper, echoing all around me and drawing me closer. I felt a slight smile crease my lips.

  Gideon. Good old Gideon.

  I found her in one of the main reading areas on the second floor, in the balcony overlooking rows and rows of desks and chairs and cases of books, most in various stages of disrepair but several remained intact. On many tables, small glass lamps were positioned at the corners, but I wasn’t sure if any still worked. I studied them for a moment or two through the candlelight, and tried to imagine what it must’ve looked like when all those green glass hooded lamps were all alight at once.

  “It was actually quite beautiful.”

  Gideon always could read my mind, but I’d never been sure if it was due to some magical gift or if I was just that easy.

  “Gideon,” I said.

  She appeared from the shadows behind me, smiling fondly in the way only Gideon could. She was older—probably somewhere in her seventies—but no one knew for sure. Her silver hair was still long, but pulled back and up into a bun that rested at the rear of her head, held in place with a large platinum clip in the shape of a butterfly. Her garb never changed, an ankle-length skirt and peasant blouse, with unremarkable though sensible tan shoes.

  “Shakespeare?” I asked, indicating the dusty and battered tome in her hand.

  “You know all too well how intimate Old William and I have become over the years. But with intimacy comes pathos. I’m afraid he’s up to his deviltry once again.”

  “It’s good to see you, Gideon.”

  “It’s been quite a while. Hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes, I…I forget.” She moved closer. “You look troubled.” Her tired hazel eyes searched mine. “But then, you always do, child.”

  I motioned again to the book in her hand. “Macbeth?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “To die,” I quoted. “To sleep…”

  “Perchance to dream…”

  “Ay, there’s the rub. For in this sleep of death…”

  “What dreams may come.”

  My memories of sitting here with her for hours, listening to her read to me from countless books and plays and magazines, returned to me like an old gift I’d cherished but forgotten about until that very moment. Everything and anything I knew about such things I’d learned from her. I knew they were real and yet they seemed distant, like all memories, dreams barely remembered.

  “And if there was one thing that fascinated old William,” Gideon said, “it was, without question, sleep. Death’s counterfeit.”

  “Now that’s Macbeth.”

  “Good,” she said, reaching out and tenderly placing a hand against my cheek.

  I wasn’t sure any of it mattered anymore, but I was glad I’d pleased her. I touched her wrist, held it a while and let her cradle my face. No one had touched me like that in a long time, with such platonic tenderness and what was probably love.

  “I’ve missed you, Gideon.”

  “
And I you,” she said softly.

  “I think about you sometimes, locked away with all these books.”

  She dropped her hand but her smile remained. “Do you?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Julia’s gone missing,” I told her.

  Gideon wandered back into the shadows, and to the small record player on a table concealed within them. She lifted the needle and the music died. That silence unlike any other returned. “Did something happen to her?” she asked.

  “She’s running.”

  Gideon emerged from the shadows, the book clutched to her chest. “And you?”

  “I’m going after her.”

  “Are you running too?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going after her. I’m leaving the city. Tonight.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”

  “What else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Is it?”

  There was no fooling Gideon, she was too smart for me, always had been.

  “Is the ocean real?” I asked. “Does it really exist?”

  “You remember your Shakespeare. Do you remember your Hugo?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stayed quiet. Candlelight danced, flickering across our faces, painting the shadows.

  “Our life dreams the Utopia, Hugo wrote. Our death achieves the ideal.”

  “But all these books and letters and words and stories, they belong to the others.”

  “They belong to all of us. We’re one, inescapably intertwined.”

  “It’s all a lie then, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Nothing is a lie, child. Not the ocean, not you, not Julia, not me, not this horrible city we’re all forced to endure. It’s a matter of perspective and context, do you understand?”

  I slowly shook my head no.

  Gideon put her book down on the table and took my hands in hers. They were cold; her skin thin and delicate, like aged paper. “It’s Old William back again,” she told me. “Remember your King Lear, the madness, the godforsaken souls. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “When we are born,” she quoted in a loud whisper, “we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

  I held her hands, careful not to grip them too tight, and though I’d begun to tremble, answered her with a quote of my own. “Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

  “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,” she said. “They kill us for sport.”

  “And worse I may be yet…”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

  “I’m trapped,” I said.

  “We’re all trapped, child.”

  Gideon led me deeper into the shadows, beyond the table and old record player and into a back room where we’d often had coffee or tea while pouring over endless stacks of books for hours. Two candles burned in sconces on the wall, giving off just enough light for us to see our way into the room. I imagined this beautiful old woman all alone in her fortress of ideas, shuffling from floor to floor, from room to room, her skirts dancing as she lit candle after candle in the darkness.

  The room looked the same, a threadbare couch and chair, stacks of books piled high on the floor and scattered all about, and a coffeepot resting on a low table beneath a row of cabinets built into the wall.

  She busied herself with the cabinets, leaving me in the center of the small room with my memories, visions and trembling hands. “It’s cold,” she said. “We could both do with something nice and warm, yes?”

  “Yes.” My entire body ached, the joints stiff and sore in the damp, chilly weather. “A nice strong cup of black coffee sounds good.”

  “Might keep the wolves at the door, if only for a time,” she said.

  I am the wolf, I thought, but didn’t have the heart to say it.

  “So you’ve come here hoping for answers, is that it?”

  “And to say goodbye,” I added.

  “I likely don’t have the answers you’re looking for.” Gideon continued preparing the coffee but looked back over her shoulder at me. “And I hate goodbyes.”

  “You’re the wisest person I know. The wisest person I’ve ever known.”

  “Child,” she said, “no one knows for sure what’s out there.”

  I stood there like a big stupid ox, in my dirty wrinkled trench coat. “What do your books say?” I finally managed. “What do they tell you?”

  Gideon returned to her duties. “That anything is possible.”

  “The ocean…”

  “We’ve read about it in books, seen it in films and paintings, yes?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “We know it exists for the others.”

  “Darkness is light here, things are different.”

  “Darkness is a cage, child. Light is that cage door swung open wide.”

  “But the light isn’t our way.”

  “Not if we remain forever in darkness, eyes clenched shut.”

  “Why don’t you run then?”

  “I’m too old to run.”

  “Why didn’t you run when you were younger?”

  She offered no reply.

  I thought for a moment. “Have you always been old, Gideon?”

  “Long as you’ve known me.”

  “Before that, were you young?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was I ever a child?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If the ocean does exist out there, what lies beyond it?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters.”

  Gideon turned, two cups and saucers in hand, and handed one to me. “Careful not to spill, it’s very hot.”

  “Thank you.” I took a sip. It felt good going down.

  “Sit,” she said, motioning to the couch. I did, and she joined me there. “There’s a moment we all encounter at one point or another, a moment of abject hopelessness and primal, raw desperation. Sometimes it occurs just before death—I’m sure you’ve seen it in others—sometimes not, but we all experience it. When that moment arrives, when everything is stripped away and all dignity is gone, it’s then that we decide if it’s worth it to scratch and claw, or if we’re better off letting ourselves drown in despair.”

  Something scratched faintly behind the floorboards. Rats, mostly likely.

  “You already know what will happen if you go after her, if you run too.” She sipped her coffee. “The only question left to answer is if this life is worth living without her. If you lose Julia, truly lose her, is there enough left to make your existence worth the nightmare it’s written on? Would you rather lose it all with her by your side, or go on without her? You already know the answer. It’s not me you need to ask, but yourself.”

  Gideon was right. She always was. Sometimes I just needed to hear her say it.

  By candlelight, in haunted silence, we drank our coffee surrounded by the countless ghosts trapped within all those worn and faded pages. The trembling passed, and for the first time in a very long while, I felt quiet myself.

  I knew it wouldn’t last, but then what does?

  Somewhere on that grand stage of fools, I imagined Old William grinning from ear to ear, up to his old deviltry yet again, just like Gideon said.

  I let my mind go blank and tried not to think about anything, not all the violence and blood, not all the darkness and madness, not even Julia or what was waiting for me outside these walls.

  Gideon selected a book from one of the nearby stacks, opened it and quietly began to read aloud, just like all the times before, and for a brief moment, there was only the two of us, Gideon and me, and all the wonderful memories I had of her—of us—and always would.

  A boy and his mother…in an abandoned old tomb of forgotten lies…

  6

  Maybe I’d spent a whole day asleep, safe within the confines o
f that candlelit room, or maybe the whole thing had been a trick, a cruel prank born of the chemicals provided by Bobby Blade. Either way, I realized I’d come awake in my car. Night had fallen again—or it was simply later, I couldn’t be sure which—and I was alone on a dark and empty highway. My body was stiff and sore, and a slight headache pulsed behind my eyes in time with the beat of my heart. I opened the door and stumbled out into the breakdown lane where I’d evidently parked. The fierce rain was lost to my daydreams, but the sickness remained, and as I rounded the rear of my car, I lurched forward, doubled-over and vomited onto the pavement.

  After several waves of dry heaves, I fell back against the trunk and tried to catch my breath. Head back, I stared through moist eyes at the dark awning of starless sky above me and convinced myself I was all right. Like always, it would pass.

  When it finally had, I grabbed my cigarettes, shook one free of the pack and lit it. The smoke seemed harsher than normal, but it helped mask the sour taste in my mouth the vomit had left in its wake. I smoked the cigarette greedily, until there was nothing left but filter, then flicked it into the dead grass on the side of the road and lit another.

  I’d had enough of the sky, so I turned my attention to the long stretch of empty road before me. Julia was out there.

  Somewhere…

  In the distance behind me, the vague outline of the cityscape separated from the darkness, Just another shadow-dream in the land of sleep. It made me think of Deb, alone in that high-rise, wandering around in her business suit and heels, clinging so desperately to addictions she could never escape; an exiled queen with useless memories frantically searching empty corridors for a crown long lost, as forgotten as the kingdom she was so sure it once represented.

  It’s all gone to hell, hasn’t it?

  I took a final angry drag on my cigarette, dropped it to the pavement and crushed it beneath the toe of my boot. As smoke trailed from my nostrils and spiraled off into the night, I slipped back behind the wheel and pulled out onto the highway.