Chapter #7The Hidden Importance of Sleep by: Nostrum   You return home, exhausted and confused. Though your heart will always bask in the Caribbean heat, you’ve lived most of your live in New Jersey, first with your parents, then, after graduating from the police academy, in this cozy little Jersey City apartment. You hang your keys over a black cabinet that holds a flat-screen TV, a few detective novels, and the framed photographs of the people most dear to you.
"Yiya?" a voice calls from the back of the apartment.
"Yes, it's me!" you call back. But you don't move or turn. Instead, as you often do after returning from a job, you stand before that cabinet, contemplating those photographs. These are the people you are doing it all for.
So there's your father, Domingo, grinning proudly by your side on your graduation day. Your sister, Vanessa, who (you are glad) took your advice and is currently attending a community college even while still working as a waitress. Your deceased mother, Maribella, possessed of a haunting beauty that you’re timidly proud to have inherited.
And the newest additions to that trio: Jeff and Marty Harrison—your boyfriend and his brother.
Marty's photo shows him at his high school graduation, his impish eyes twinkling in a handsome face. He looks proud and happy in his cap and gown, as he should be, for though he failed to achieve the distinction of Salutatorian, it was only because he was distracted by multiple commitments: playing offensive tackle for the football team; earning a state prize as part of a Chemistry team; and, naturally, chasing and being chased by girls. His brains, athleticism, and talent with a rifle could take him anywhere, but he chose to return to his home town (against his brother's objections) to get an Engineering degree at Keyserling College.
Jeff also looks happy in his photo, though with him appearances can be deceptive. His dirty blonde hair, thick and impossible to brush save by beating it into submission, is pulled back into a ponytail, and he sports a well-kept goatee and a painter’s brush mustache that took him years to get right. The key to his face, though, might be his rimless, moon-round glasses. They are almost invisible in the photograph, save for reflected glints off the lenses, but they completely change his appearance, giving him the look of a highly intellectual—even philosophical—artist, when he is an engineer of literally occult talents. He lives in a nearby flat, which he pays for with his job as a stay-at-home software technician, but he spends most of his time at your place rather than his, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Like today. He comes padding out of the bedroom as you're putting your holstered gun into the cupboard. He gives you a quick peck on the lips before continuing on into the kitchen. "How was Puerto Rico?"
"A disaster," you groan, and fall onto the sofa. "Can’t believe I was gonna fall into a trap!"
Jeff comes back out of the kitchen. "A trap?"
"There was no basilisk. Someone knows I’m looking for them, and made up a story to lure me there." You hesitate, then decide against mentioning Ricardo and his role in the cock-up, contenting yourself with a self-reproach. "I should’ve investigated it myself first."
"Well, what matters is that you’re safe." He caresses the back of your neck.
You catch him by the hand and elbow, and with all your strength yank him halfway across the back of the sofa, to stare him straight in the face.
"And then Rick showed up," you tell him, and his eyes widen. "He told me he found the Summa. He told me that he told you that he found the Summa, and that you told him to come find me!"
Jeff's jaw falls open. "I didn't!" he protests. "Charles told him—!" He shuts his eyes, and a shudder passes through him.
"Relax!" You stroke his arm. "Nothing's changed. Just tell me what happened."
His tremble passes, and his eyes, when they open, are again clear and calm. "I got a call from Charles, had to make a quick trip to Olympia."
"You didn't tell me."
"You were still visiting Dr. Gus. I made a judgement call. I know how important his work is to you." That is Dr. Gustavo Jaúregui de la Mata, general director of the Instituto Bioético Dra. Maribella Aristizábal. He is another Stellae, and your closest ally in your hunt for the basilisk and a cure for its victims. "Well, Rick showed up while I was there. I would have called you myself, to pass on the news, but Charles told Rick that he needed to come find you."
That would be Charles Brennan, the chief of the Stellae Errantes. That he should have given Rick such a command takes your breath away, and now you feel a tremble. You struck a bargain with him after the disaster in Brazil, but now it sounds like he is cancelling it, as you knew one day he would.
Unless it was a misjudgment on his part. Ordinarily that would be an unthinkable suspicion: Charles Brennan, adept of Glundandra, the king of the planets, and of Arbol, the philosopher, make a mistake in judgement? But he has grown old, and there have been other signs in recent days that his prodigies are failing.
"What exactly did Charles tell Rick?"
"I don't know. They talked in private. But when Rick left, he told me he was going to look for you, give you the news. What now?" he asks after a pregnant silence.
You need time to think. "I’m gonna take a bath, bebe." You stand and peel off your blouse.
"Oh," says Jeff as you stride off toward your bedroom.
His next question crushes you: "Does that mean I’m going to sleep?"
--
You twist the shower knob, and a spray of cold water hits your hair and body. You rub your slender fingers over yourself. Though you lack a supermodel's figure, you don’t need or want one. Your hips and breasts, though large, don't impede your athleticism, and though you don’t have a slim waist, you appreciate the strength you can draw from it. You close your eyes as you rinse, pondering upon the difficult decision now in your hands.
Afterward you pat yourself dry and move to your room, hanging the towel close to the self-standing mirror. You give your nude figure a good look-over, but rather than a sly smile, there’s stone-like seriousness on your face. "Jeff," you call. "I need to see and hear what happened for myself."
He comes into the bedroom and instantly begins disrobing, dropping his t-shirt, shorts and underwear to the floor, and setting his glasses on the bedside table. He pulls the hair-tie from his pony tail, and lays on the bed, face toward the ceiling. You hesitate, then sit on the bed beside him.
"This won't take long," you promise.
"It never does," he says. "I mean, I never notice."
You grasp his forehead, spreading your hand like a claw, and chant an occult phrase three times while pulling. Your hand comes free, clutching a glowing mask. Beneath, where your boyfriend lay, is now a thing like a life-size statue, an extraordinarily lifelike sculpture of a woman.
She looks exactly like you.
You kiss her stony lips, the way Jeff kissed yours. "I'm sorry, Yiya," you murmur. "You will know and understand all one day, I pray."
You turn the mask over in your hand. A name float above the inner surface: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT.
It's a name you haven't used in a long time.
You lay the mask aside, then touch your right shoulder with your left hand, muttering another arcane phrase; your skin darkens at spots, turning black as ink, revealing an ever-expanding tattoo that covers almost a quarter of your arm. It’s a very strange tattoo, akin to a broken wheel with strange inscriptions on its inner and outer rim. You rub your fingers on one of its tips, and they crackle with static. You trace a small figure with your fingertips, and the entire tattoo brims with light. You touch your face and you mutter the same words three times, then return your hand to your shoulder. Your body ripples and changes shape, the voluptuous feminine figure changing into that of a lanky young man with stiff, dirty blond hair. You wince as you feel something yanked from your head, and that lovely Caribbean warmth rushes from your heart, to be replaced by an Arctic vacuum.
You hesitate, then return to the bathroom to peel the contact lenses from your eyes and drop them into a lens case. They wouldn't interfere with the next step, but you prefer to go naked into it. You flinch when you return to the bedroom. The bed, the walls, the ceiling, the furniture and the scattered clothing: beneath the surface they all seethe with something like a fierce static. Sigils is what they are, the living sigils of the natural world, and if you focus very hard you can just begin to make out them out individually. It is one of your prodigies, developed (somewhat to your chagrin) after long study. But their writhing and vibrating profusion hurts your eyes—it would be as if a physicist could see the soup of "strings" that are the basis of the physical world—so you use contact lenses and glasses to block them out. They are of course worst around the thing that lies on the bed. It almost blinds you to look at it.
You lay down beside it and pick up the mask. Soon, you’ll know everything your substitute knows, and remember what he experienced as though it was you who did it.
You lower the mask onto your face.
But the memories, when they come, plunge far deeper, and take strange byways.
[* To explore Mireya's memories: "A Heartfelt Request" 
* To explore your own memories: "The Associates" ]  You have the following choice:  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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