Chapter Forty-Seven

Temptation Away from True Path

I made it home without further entanglement but discovered the theft almost immediately. Upon my desk sat the Kesemanetow with the sexless individual bearing crossed staffs. The mark of both the setting sun as well as the fractured sunset were visible to me. The card was wintry to the touch. It reminded me of a stainless steel knife run under cold water. Isabel had given this card to me, but I didn’t stop to ponder her hidden message. The absence of the other two cards was of far greater concern.

The Binders had taken from me the Kesemanetow featuring the fire walker and the lighthouse. Taken...

Sunset was many hours away, but they had stolen from me the one card which offered me immediate access to Gill’s Rock Light. To Isaac’s world. I needed to meet him there tonight. I couldn’t just climb on the Harley and drive north. He was in a parallel world. A dream world. Isaac was alone and without help. I was his only chance.

I glanced at the one tarot left to me by the demons. Crossed Staffs. Why, Izzy?

For a second I thought back to what Salome told me. Written upon the Fire Walker’s soul were all the names of the Center but also of the Nizad. I could walk the True Path but also the Broken. Why did you not tell me yourself? Or had she? Was I chosen by Isabel because I was a killer whose soul was already damned?

I could have spent the rest of the day searching for answers that wouldn’t arrive. The truth was I felt a hard-driven need to reach Isaac. I knew what demons hunted him, and I would not abandon him. Besides, I felt charged with newfound power. Those arrogant, soul-binding, shape shifting, foul-smelling assholes had no idea how dangerous I had become. I wanted to destroy them. I would do to them as I had done unto their Pillar of Tyranny.

I stared more deeply into the card. The blindfolded figure sat motionless while a tranquil sea sparkled beneath the light of both a quarter-moon and setting sun. Each of his staffs—the figure was definitely a man—was crossed over the heart, one pointing toward the sun, the other toward the moon.

The painted sea became whiter under the gaze of the alabaster scythe. A seagull crossed a purple sky the color of dusk. Its mournful cry came from within the card. The scent of low tide filled the air. The tarot was coming to life in my palm.

The crossed staffs framed the tail of a fish. Lines shifted. The fractured sunset became visible. The man’s scarlet robe rustled in the breeze. The card showed two patterns, but my blood lust made the path of fire easy to ignore. The mark of the Broken Path became vibrant until it was all I could see. The man in the card put down his staffs and took off his blindfold. His eyes were green, like mine. He looked at me and then began to walk along the sea toward a path to his right. The road led to a run-down tavern. I knew that place...He stopped and turned toward me. I began to reach for his outstretched hand but stopped shy of entering his world. The man was trying to lure me into the card. Are my stolen cards to be found there? I smelled a trap and set the card down.

I had a better idea. The tavern was ten minutes from my house in this world. I cleaned the wounds around my neck and dabbed them with Neosporin. I found a black leather eye patch amongst neglected Halloween costumes in my basement. A toddler-size Spiderman mask sat on top of the pile. I almost lost focus but tossed the cheap plastic mask aside and carried on with the task at hand.

I put on my black oilskin riding cloak, and as I kicked the Harley into gear, my sense of excitement grew. The Binder who stabbed me in the eye was deliciously close. My eye socket throbbed with dark delight. He or she or it was at the border right now. I felt its presence from within the card.

The Harley sped noisily along the southbound lane of an isolated road. The forest to my left grew thin as I approached the northern edge of downtown Green Bay. My depth perception was terrible, but I was on a mission and made do with one good eye. Clumps of aster shone purple in the dying light of the weakening day. I let the V-Twin idle as I paused at the stop sign in front of the nature sanctuary.

I looked northward as a thick gray fog rolled in. Waves of gloom swept over the abandoned Ferris wheel and empty parking lot of the Bay Beach amusement park. I pulled the sleeves of my oilskin down to fend off the chill of autumn. I kicked the Harley into gear.

The fog stole the last of the sun’s embers as an unnatural dusk fell upon the land like a falcon descending on prey. The eastern shore of the bay was no longer visible as I reached the dull and lifeless stretch of Webster Avenue.

Behind me and to the east, the bells of Holy Cross tolled the hour. I supposed white candles of hope sent out dancing flames through leaded panes of stained glass. I was several miles now from the magenta shadows that fell across the church grounds. I knew the shadows well, however, and had learned long ago that shades of red are forever the color of goodbye.

The rundown bar belonged tucked away in a dark, forgotten corner in some violent city. Green Bay had no dark corners, however, and The Border, aptly named for its geographic position between city center and the town’s forested northern perimeter, sat along the desolate industrial section of Webster Ave.

I looked over at the squat saltbox of a building and felt no shock at seeing the parking lot already half full. The sky began to rain, pelting the dirty roofs of pickups and sport utility vehicles. I sat my black helmet upon the studded touring seat of the Harley and wondered again about the worlds that exist beyond this one.

I have walked the line of fire. I stroked the ebony leather patch that now covered my right eye. I feared I’d never get used to the irretrievable loss. My anger grew.

As I walked into the smoky bar, the rain dripped from my oilskin onto the worn floor. The rattle of the Harley’s V-Twin still reverberated in my head, competing with the rhythmic drone of the Bad Covers as they pounded their way through another Chicago blues standard. The raucous crowd at The Border shook their aging heads in unison to the beat, mistaking their connection to the pounding four-four rhythm as a more meaningful connection to each other.

Soulless music, I have observed, played with a heavy enough bass, lures people into a false sense of community. Few would be able to explain the feeling of emptiness when the last drumbeat fell dead upon the oak floor. I scanned the room, darkly smiling when I located my prey.

She sat cross-legged in the back of The Border, her head bobbing passionlessly to the drone of the Bad Covers. She was not fool enough to feel a connection where none existed. Perhaps her air of casual distance had a more sinister explanation. The young woman tucked a wisp of blonde hair behind her ear. She ran her hand along the thigh of the gentleman sitting to her left. His longing for her seemed desperate. The blonde woman pulled his hand toward her, meeting no resistance. She placed it upon the v-shaped neckline of her black leather vest and offered her breast to him. In the dimly lit corner the woman’s skin appeared sallow, almost gray. I was unable to make out the color of her almond-shaped eyes.

The fragile woman jerked her attention suddenly to me as if sensing my presence preternaturally. I looked away, feigning indifference. I wondered if she could make out my tattoo in the dim haziness. To the untrained eye it looked like a mildly stylized version of a fish. She let her eyes rest upon the sable marking briefly and then turned back to her companion. He continued to feed upon her with ravenous eyes, consuming her red-lipped indifference. As the band played, the woman continued to measure me with a wary eye.

I took the empty table to their left and ignored the lascivious couple as I pretended to listen to the last song of the set. The final notes fell upon the stained floor with a dead thud. The crowd roared with applause.

“You got a problem?” the grisly bearded companion asked, not bothering to take his hand away from the woman’s breast. Her disquiet was palpable beneath black leather. I placed my hand upon my chest as if to ask “Who, me?” but did so with a sad smile.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the man asked with obvious tension in his voice. The blonde woman clutched his hand harder into her tit as if to energize him with empty sexuality.

“One cannot leave one road for another,” I said, while staring at the stage, “without losing something along the way.” I paused briefly before continuing. “How much are you willing to lose?”

Dark eyes burned with hatred, transforming the woman’s frail features into a haggard look of arrogance and age. A solid black fractured sunset stood out on her companion’s lower neck, emphasized by his blue and bulging neck veins. His chest rose and fell with exaggerated rage. He moved as if ready to bound from his chair, but the woman stayed him with a squeeze of the thigh.

“What is it that you want?” she asked with practiced indifference. Still, she cast a nervous glance at my neck to confirm her earlier sighting. I wondered if she could now see the forgery in the marking.

“One of us is a dark shadow falling,” I said to the man, “a shattered soul bound toward separation and lightless places. The other of us will leave here today with your pretty little blonde friend.”

The grisly man gaped. His shallow breaths became a toxic mixture of rage and fear. I walked to their table and poked at the man’s neck tattoo before he had a chance to stand. The unexpected maneuver caused him to choke. He grabbed his throat as if to stop the invisible wound from bleeding as he continued to take in air with jagged, labored breaths.

The blonde woman hissed at me venomously and moved as if to strike, but she was too late. I had already grabbed her by the throat. I used my right arm as a leash tethered to her delicate neck. I dragged the woman out of the bar and into the cold rain. No one came to her aid even as she gasped for air through fragile gray lips. The crowd watched as she disappeared into the cigarette haze, her cyanotic skin blending with The Border’s tobacco air until she became a smoky apparition. She was lost completely when the heavy door slammed.

I unapologetically held the frail gray women at arm’s length as I drove the back of her head into the oak door.

“You seem surprised that you cannot penetrate my mind,” I said. My demeanor was calm and slightly detached, passionless, even as I continued the stranglehold upon her delicate throat.

“I am a Fire Walker,” I stated rather blandly, “and I know what you are.” The woman struggled vainly, wriggling ferociously and hissing like an angry serpent. When she realized the futility of her actions she held eerily still, meeting me stare for stare. This time she no longer hid her true identity from view. The parking lot remained empty save for us, and therefore no one else witnessed the woman’s transformation into a raven-feathered, gray-cloaked, skeletal thing.

The Binder lifted the edge of its lips of peeling gray parchment until the smile became a sneer. It hissed violently but remained still in my grip.

“You have become something different, Fire Walker,” it rasped with a high-pitched and ghostly sound. The voice no longer terrified me.

I tightened my grip on the Miskenupik’s throat, moving my thumb dead center over the tattoo. The creature eyed the mark over my neck and hissed at the confirmation of forgery.

“Perhaps yours is more real than you think,” it said.

“I want what you have taken from me,” I said.

“Your Kesemanetow are gone. Little Isaac is all alone now.”

I began to drive my thumb more deeply into the mark of the Broken Path, but the creature hissed and then shifted its shape. The frail women in front of me was painfully familiar. She had heavy-lidded, heroine eyes and an insincere smile.

“It’s all right, Pauly,” she said with my mother’s voice. “We can go now, just the two of us. We’ll go someplace where Jack can’t find us.” She looked up at me pleadingly. How many times had I heard her make that very promise?

I looked into the woman’s dark eyes. My mother’s eyes. I was no longer that frail boy. I held vast amounts of power within my soul.

“You can’t hurt me anymore.” I released the scorching red fire unto her neck, but it was the heat of a fractured sun. She screamed miserably before collapsing into a heap of charred ash.

* * * *

The woman’s former companion was finally able to fill his hungry lungs with air. He lunged toward the bar’s front entrance and pushed his way out into the rainy night. He scanned the parking lot frantically for a sign of his abducted date but found no sign of life. The somber rain pounded cold steel and asphalt, filling the night with a cacophony of angry sounds.

A mysterious lump of wet ash lay in the parking lot between two black pickup trucks. The ashes dissolved into the dark and muddy water of myriad puddles. The high-pitched moan of a V-Twin engine called from somewhere off in the distance. The man lifted his face to the heavens and let loose an unbearable cry of anguish and loss. The rain scorched the raw and invisible wound he bore over his throat.