I knew what he meant right away. Maybe in the same strange way I’d pictured the rolltop just as it had been in Abrams’ house. We were connected somehow, tied together by whatever had happened to him or whatever he wanted me to find. Maybe I could save him somehow? Or maybe he was trying to save me. Either way, the path was clear. I needed to get what was in that desk, and I needed to trust that he was right on the timing of it all.
My conviction waivered as I crossed the moonlit road back to the shadows of Abrams’ monolithic home. It was the middle of the night, and her car was still there, so I had to assume she was inside. Was I really going to break into this woman’s house in the middle of the night, even if only for a few minutes to peek inside the desk? What if she was awake and caught me? What if she had a gun?
I tried to push the thought away. I’d be quiet, and if I heard or saw any sign of her being up, I’d just ease out before she saw me. And failing that…well, I could always act like I’d come over to…ugh, see if she wanted to have that coffee. I paused on the top step. Was this really worth all the potential hassle? And did I really want to risk entangling myself more with this odd woman?
Just then a new thought pushed its way into my mind. An intruder. I could tell her that I’d come in because I saw an intruder prowling around outside. And then…then before I could call her or the police, they’d entered the house. Fearing for her safety, I’d just run over to try and get her out before she got hurt.
That sounded better, but how would I explain how I got in? No, this was all too much. I could feel the drive to go on pushing me forward, but I resisted it. As interesting as all this was, I really didn’t want to go to jail over something that was none of my business. And while I liked the excuse of trying to protect her, the only way it would work was if I could get in without breaking anything.
I felt a nervous rumble at the thought. Not at the thought of breaking in, but at the realization that I’d been considering it a likely option on the way across the road. There was always the chance I could find an unlocked door or window, but Abrams didn’t strike me as absent-minded or careless. And yet I hadn’t hesitated in coming over anyway, all because some words scratched on a page told me so. If that even was what it meant…
I stood on the porch in a silver penumbra of moonlight, shadow draping my back like an unknown passenger and my heart thudding in my ears. What was I doing? I needed to go.
I tried to retreat, but something held me back. I’d come that far, hadn’t I? And this might be my only chance. Shouldn’t I at least try the door?
It was a stupid thought, and I felt fear and anger welling up inside my chest as I gingerly reached out to test the front door’s ornate latch. My stomach plummeted as it went down at the lightest touch, the door swinging silently open before I could pull my hand away.
I cursed myself as I stepped inside, but much of my fear was gone now. I was like a sleepwalker, moving steadily through the dark to the living room and the locked desk in its far corner. The key found its home easily in the black, and it turned smoothly when I twisted it to the right. Pulse thrumming, I slid the top of the desk upward with a soft ratcheting that still caused me to freeze as I glanced around momentarily.
Nothing. No sign of anyone being alerted or even awake. Shielding the light with my hand, I used my phone’s screen to softly illuminate the desk’s interior. I was worried I’d be looking through a rat’s nest of papers or personal effects, but it was nothing like that. The walnut paneling was clean and bare except for a single notebook resting at the desk’s center. I felt a moment of disorienting confusion at the sight of it—it looked just like the book I’d left back in my bedroom. It wasn’t until I lifted the cover that I saw the front page was filled with lines of blue ink instead of just a handful of grey words.
Closing the book, I debated what to do. I could stay here and look at it, but I risked being exposed or not getting a good look at the book. If I took it, it may very well be missed, but I could always try to sneak it back in, and even if I couldn’t, Abrams could never prove I was the one that took it. Clenching my teeth, I slid the book off the desk and eased the rolltop down. There was a moment where I began turning away before I realized with a start I hadn’t locked it back yet. Muttering at my stupidity, I reset the lock and crept back to the front door.
The house was still quiet, and there were no lights on anywhere. I was going to make it out after…
A moan echoed from upstairs. I stopped dead at the sound, sure that it was the preamble to screams or gunfire or Abrams calling the police. But no, the moaning continued, low and throaty, and as I listened from the well of shadows below, I came to understand that I wasn’t hearing sounds of fear or distress at all. Suppressing a shudder, I opened the door and slipped out into the night.
My sister Alvena was always a big fan of journals. Personally, I always thought they were a waste of time. Notes? Certainly. Formulas? Computations? Without question. But these were the tools of reason and logic. The planks and sails that carried the modern thinking man into new discoveries. Journals were for memories at best and feelings and emotions at worst—all of them inconstant things that usually served more as a means of servitude than an aid to elevation.
I don’t know that I disagree with that sentiment even now, yet here I am. My name is Albert Mulhaven, and this is my journal.
I have two degrees in physics, have published dozens of papers, and among those who are honest, I’d be regarded as an expert in many areas, but most especially those dealing with time. I’ve argued the merits and flaws of different theories of when for the past two decades: the past hypothesis, block universe theory, causal set theory, etc, etc. ad infinitum. They were interesting, and at times I pinned my hopes for true insight upon building from these ideas of others. Using these structures of great scientific scholarship as the foundations upon which to build my temple.
And yet…every time I began my labor in earnest, down one path or another, I found the materials to be woefully flimsy and brittle. Each was largely presupposition and guesswork crudely shaped to fit a particular model or more established theory. And those models and theories were, in turn, more of the same. I began to feel the fruitlessness of my efforts—of all our efforts. We were like children out camping, guessing the sources of the night-time sounds that surrounded us—giving them names and weaving stories around them so to better assure ourselves we had a measure of understanding, protection, control.
Or perhaps worse, we were like the lowest of the prehistoric men, staring up at the sun and declaring it God.
These realizations, these doubts, left me shaken. I left off my work for months, and during that time I took to going on long walks that carried me far from home. It was during one of those I found my way into a pawn shop, and among those shelves, I found an antique book dealing with the nature of time.
It was all in French, but I bought it anyway—something about it intrigued me and it only took me a few weeks to be able to read it well enough. In my arrogant youth, I’d have dismissed it as a work of philosophy at best or the superstitious ravings of a primitive madman at worst. But I was no longer that man, and the words of Alexander Trudeau renewed me—water to a man dying in a wasteland of self-doubt.
His understanding of space-time was remarkably modern for a man who lived hundreds of years ago. He used different terms for some things, and of course my translations were imperfect, but elements of a dozen modern theories lived in his work, all woven together by a brand of mystic insight that pierced me within the first few pages. This wasn’t a man who was guessing at the shape of truth in the dark. This was a man who had seen truth and was now setting it on display for those with sense enough to seek it out. The book was unparallelled genius—every principle and idea was explained clearly and well-established before he moved on to the next. I was breathless by the end, and when I finished early one morning after two days with no sleep…I began again from the beginning.
After I knew it by heart, I began a new series of thought experiments and exercises. I was done with theories and hypothesis. If I was going to touch the truth as Alexander had, I had to reach out with my own hand.
I can’t begin to do Alexander’s truth justice here—I lack the space and the language and…frankly, the mind. But I can summarize the most salient point of it as follows:
Time is a lie. What we perceive as time are an infinite series of moments—think of photographs or micrometer-thin slices of a neverending column of matter and energy. These slices are connected to each other in a multitude of ways and can be travelled by just as many, but we as sentient creatures already have one of the best and most efficient modes of travel built into our very natures.
Our consciousness, our true selves, travel through these moments with little effort—picture to picture, slice to slice, second by second. That motion, that inertia, gives the illusion of progress. Of progression. Of Time. It’s no different than animating a cartoon flipbook by fanning the pages.
We’re fooled by that motion into thinking it has more significance than it does. Into thinking that time is real and that it defines us, defines everything. We have these bodies, these meat vessels that age and wither, and we assume it is just the hand of time wasting us as it does everything. Never understanding that it isn’t the time that matters. It’s the meat.
Our consciousness pushes us through these points of infinity, but it comes with a cost. We unknowingly slowly consume our physical bodies to maintain that inertia, and when the debt can no longer be paid, the body is left behind. For Trudeau, this was a matter of little consequence. This work was clearly part of a larger body of thought he had—one that was embarrassingly religious if I’m honest, despite my deep respect for the man. His talk of other Realms and Nightlands...I suppose in those earlier times, even a genius such as he couldn’t help but be infected by some degree of superstition.
But the meat. The glorious meat. That was real enough. And while he didn’t explicitly say it, the implication was there. If one could find a way to break the cycle—to free one’s consciousness from barreling “forward” in this idiotic chronological pursuit—you could escape the lie of time and its consequences. It just required an open mind and enough energy to break the cycle and maintain one’s sense of self without the rigid structure that sequential casuality afforded lesser beings.
The first time I ate a person, I felt those shackles slip away.
It was terrifying at first. I felt as though I was being torn apart in a storm as I slipped into the dark between moments. But I had prepared myself in mind and body. I was now a contradiction that could exist outside the borders of the so-called “natural world”. I was matter and not. Energy and not. But always, if such a word has meaning, I was will and I was power.
So I steadied myself. I learned the nature of living without the weight of time’s lie on my neck. I found ways to travel to a multitude of moments, though initially my own mind provided limitations. I could only travel to places and times I was familiar with, you see. At first, that was enough. And when it wasn’t, I sought more power to pierce this new threshold.
I came back to my life to feed, but I soon realized my methods were unrefined and inefficient. So much energy was wasted in going back and forth into the timestream with a belly full of blood and meat and pain.
Again, I turned back to my muse, Alexander. To his references to connecting with higher, more ascended beings and being used by them. I’d dismissed it as fancy at the time, but perhaps too quickly. Wasn’t I a higher being now, after all?
My first few tries were failures. It’s a delicate thing you see. Interweaving a thread of your own consciousness in with another’s so completely that you can gain succor from them without having lips or teeth of your own. Mrs. Abrams was my first success. When she ate, I ate. And when she didn’t…well, I still ate a little from time to time.
It’s a much better system, but still imperfect. And Mrs. Abrams has reached the end of her usefulness, I’m afraid. I’ve plied her with fear and pleasure, gently milked her for all the life she has to give, all the meat she could consume in my name. But the process has been hard on her, and I can feel her beginning to slip away.
That’s why I had her place the ad. Accept you as a tenant. Hide the books and the key. Give me enough hooks in your brain that I could burrow my way in. Make my thoughts, your thoughts. My hungers, your hungers. Prepare you to take her place.
Even now, you think this is crazy. You’re confused and afraid. Considering whether or not you should even be reading any longer, or if your time is better spent running away. I could assure you there is no where or when to run to, but what would be the point? It’s easier to just do this.
Look up.
I looked up from the page, letting out a startled scream at the naked figure before me. It was Mrs. Abrams, her skin grey and sagging like corpseflesh as she looked down at me with dull eyes. If she’d seemed old before, now she was ancient—a few white-hairs nested on the top of her speckled skull, and when she smiled, I could see black gums foaming around yellow mounds of time-worn bone.
“Forgive me…I…I know I look a mess.” She croaked out the words with a brittle laugh. “That bagboy we ate…he was filling, but…my Albert is so terribly hungry of late.” Her rheumy eyes rolled in her head as she gave a small shiver. “Not that I mind. He’s always so gooooood to me.” A black line of drool crept from the corner of her mouth as she stepped toward me.
I shuffled back on my bed as I stared at her in horror. “Bagboy? That who ate?”
Abrams snickered nastily. “You know well enough. You smacked your mouth on it, didn’t you?” She sniffed as she ran a long-nailed hand down her side. “Could have had dessert, but that’s your loss.” Wiping at her mouth, she stared at the ceiling. “Still, your first is always the best. I remember eating my Hugo. He was dellllicious.”
I took her momentary distraction as my chance to get away. Sliding off the bed, I hit nightstand as my feet made it to the floor. The other notebook, the one I’d found under the bed, fell off the table and landed open next to me. I couldn’t help but look down at it for a moment. I’d been so fucking stupid. These people were crazy, and I was getting out of here, and why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I run?
Looking up in terrified frustration, I saw that Abrams was laying down on the floor, her eyes on some distant point as she began to thrash and groan. Again I tried to move my feet, but it was no use. I was trapped in this nightmare, and why? What…
“What do you want me to do?”
The question wasn’t to Abrams, but to the book, or at least to the thing behind it. I didn’t really expect an answer, but as soon as I looked down at the page, I saw two new words forming below the last.
to eat.
I sucked in a breath as I glanced back at Abrams. I wanted to feel revulsion, but I didn’t. All I felt was an intense, burning heat radiating out from my core. No, not heat. Hunger.
I looked back down at the book, as though to ask another question or try and talk myself out of it. I saw now that my own words, the questions I’d asked, were all gone. All that was left were the grey words of the thing that lived outside of time but in it. Always ahead of me, but always following one step behind.
Hello meat.
It’s time to eat.
Stifling a laugh, I wiped spittle from my chin as I turned back to the feast laid out before me.
---
Credits
Comments