The Last Answer, Part 5
Karl’s face wore every word that tumbled out of my mouth in one form or another. As long as I’d known him, I’d often found him expressionless, as though he always kept something for himself. But as I spoke, his expression flickered with life; subtly, his nostrils flared to the tune of my story. The fact that my words impacted him, however slight, made me uneasy.
I was telling him this because I believed him to be impervious. I needed him to be impervious.
I was disassociating again.
But it was all I had at my disposal to continue speaking. What was I avoiding in this tale? The myriad of unanswered questions? That any answers I happened upon were inevitably revealed to be no more than masks hiding even more questions? Or was it that I had finally discovered an escape from the monotony of my life, only to find myself wishing I hadn’t? At this point, even courage seemed to me like a cop-out.
I gradually became aware of my voice like a car pulling up outside.
I was at the part in my story when I first saw the portal, when I was still ignorant of its power.
The familiar, torturous apprehension gripped my stomach, acid to my thoughts.
Karl sat motionless, watching, thoughts I couldn’t read coursing through him like the blood in his veins. I avoided his gaze, opting instead to look through the doorway toward the window over the sink in the kitchen. For reasons unknown to me, it was half obscured by old newspapers. Again, I was reminded how little I knew about the man before me.
I suddenly couldn’t continue. The power to speak was draining from me, my body and mind succumbing to primordial exhaustion.
“Go on, son,” Karl said in a gentle tone with nothing but his lips.
Clinging to his words like a guiding hand in the darkness, I continued. “Midge was looking down at the tear in the knee of her jeans. There were some little rocks in the cut. I could see she was in pain, but for some reason, I didn’t feel bad for her. I told her it was fine and kept crawling down the hill.”
“Toward the stones?”
“Yeah.” Again, my guts seized, and the room became unmoored.
“What happened next?” he asked in an obligatory tone, like a hand turning a page.
“I kept moving toward them. She called after me, but I didn’t look back. There was something different about them. All the other rocks in the area made sense. Each was where it was because it had broken off something larger and rolled downhill. But those two looked…”
“Placed.” The way he said the word drew my eyes to his.
Again, I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. I wanted to ask him, but the thought that he already knew something about the portal was worse than the pain of my ignorance.
“So you get closer to them…” he said, searchingly.
He must’ve seen that I was stuck again.
Sweat beaded on my neck, trickled under my shirt, and down my spine. As the sun grew higher outside, the musk of his living room began to cloud my senses.
“So then…” I began, “So then I…”
My memory had eluded me like the mice I chased in the barn.
Grasping for anything to say, I asked, “Can I…can I get some more water?”
Only then did I notice the cup between my hands was still full. I gulped the liquid down, trying not to grimace at its vaguely sulphuric flavor. I stood.
Karl mirrored my action, said, “I can get it,” and extended a weathered hand.
“Ok,” I obliged, refusing to meet his eyes and retook my seat.
He watched me for a moment. “You know, Eli, you don’t have to tell me this now if you’re not ready. There’s no rush.”
“No,” I said, forcing the syllable out like an unwanted guest. “I have to get this out. I can’t sleep.”
Karl nodded and left the room, allowing me to capture an escaping tear in private.
He returned moments later, the cup filled to the brim with more terrible water.
“Ok — so you get to the stones, and then what?”
“I stepped in between them, expecting to find bats, or a snake, or something.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“No,” I said, surprising even myself. “I just wanted to find out what about them had given me this feeling. Then, all of a sudden, I was floating in the darkness. I looked down, and….he was looking back at me.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. He was a reflection of me, standing upside down on the soles of my feet. When I walked, he walked. When I knelt, he knelt. But when I smiled down at him, he didn’t smile back. He was pointing at something ahead. I looked, but I couldn’t make out anything in the darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and started screaming at him, but my voice had become a hoarse squeak. He just kept shaking his head and pointing.
Finally, I looked up to find the most beautiful woman I had ever seen a long way off, walking toward me. She was made out of pure gold. It hurt my eyes to look at her, but she was completely naked, so it was also hard to look away.”
I laughed nervously, but Karl’s expression had drawn more solemn than I’d ever seen. I cleared my throat and continued.
“She also had a reflection; hers was of a much older woman. I figured maybe it was her mother. Then I realized I was still on my knees. I looked down, but he wasn’t there anymore. I suddenly felt unsupported, like I was falling. I was terrified the vertigo alone might kill me.
I looked up, and she was holding out her hand. I grabbed it and held onto her for dear life. But as soon as I touched her, her skin changed from pure gold to natural human skin. She began to age as if each second were a year until her skin stretched sagged and became blotched like some terrible monster. Before I even had the chance to cry out, she turned to ash in my hand and blew away into the darkness.”
Karl had moved to the living room window during my speech and appeared to look out of it despite the patchwork of twenty-year-old newspapers.
The anxiety of the silence drew out the last of my words.
“I came to, covered in dirt. The sun seemed angry as hell. My ears were ringing, and I realized Midge had been shaking me. She must’ve dragged me out of there into the sunlight. She let go of me when I opened my eyes and took a few steps backward, like she was scared of me. I found my fists full of rocks and sand. A couple of my fingernails were broken and bleeding. That was the first time I became ill with the memory of her, the golden woman. I haven’t been able to think about anything else since.”
With the remainder of my tale divulged, the cloud of my shame became momentarily transparent. I stared at the side of Karl’s head, fighting the urge to beg him to make sense of it all for me.
“I can’t stop thinking about that place, Karl. I don’t know what to do.”
“You miss her, don’t you?” he said calmly.
“Yes,” I said, even as I grappled with the question's absurdity.
