"Hide and Seek" (Part 5 of ?)

Part 4 to this story posted previously (here)

“Carrie, you’re fourteen. This can’t go on for the rest of your life. You have to stand up to her eventually.” Mark said, just loud enough to carry through the bathroom door but not loud enough to carry downstairs to the kitchen. Carrie was in there, retching her guts out, the effects of Lauren’s latest set of “vitamins” for the teenaged girl. Mark hadn’t heard any sound for a few minutes, though, so he suspected that she’d already expelled everything she had in her system, hence his willingness to try to start a conversation.

“Of course it will last forever.” Came Carrie’s weak reply. “She’s going to try to keep her claws in me all my life.”“That’s my point!” 

Mark, encouraged by the reply, pressed on. “If you make a show of not taking the vitamins, she’ll have to stop.” Mark, eighteen, was starting his senior year of high school and in the process of looking for colleges, which made him keenly aware that he wouldn’t always be around to take Caroline’s side.

“Mark...” Carrie almost audibly shook her head from behind the door. “She’ll get me declared mentally unstable. You know she will.” Caroline coughed loudly, and Mark winced at the sound.

Mark considered this for a moment, remembering the few times in the last few years he’d tried to broach the topic of treatment of Carrie with his mother. He had to admit that his little sister was probably right - Lauren had lashed out verbally and physically at Mark for even taking Carrie’s side on many occasions. Of course, Mark’s growth spurt had ensured that he really wasn’t afraid of her anymore - Lauren, four inches shorter, thirty-two years older, and fifteen pounds lighter, couldn’t really hurt him even if she tried. “You might be right. But you shouldn’t take the pills.”

“You’re probably right.” Carrie agreed grudgingly. “Koffer doesn’t even look at me before he prescribes, how would he know?” Carrie was referring to the fourth doctor in as many years that she had regular appointments with - or rather, that their mother had appointments with to discuss everything she disliked about Caroline and how best to go about correcting these deficiencies. Halwicz, the first, had at one point suggested to Lauren that she explore non-pharmaceutical options, apparently, and the next two hadn’t seen anything in Caroline’s behavior that had suggested a need for medication. As far as Mark could tell indirectly, the current one, a self-described child behavioral specialist, was a quack, and Caroline had far less charitable words to say about the man.

“Exactly.” Mark encouraged. “I mean, you might have to fake it for Mom, but that’s better than the alternative, right?”

“Not much better.” Carrie sounded dejected. “Mark, some days I think I should just leave.”

Mark started at this. His sister, running away? Things were bad sometimes, but he hadn’t thought they were unworkable at any point. After all, Carrie could easily outsmart Lauren even drugged halfway into a coma. Mark knew he wasn’t the mental star of the family, but even he had long since begun to feel like his mother was more to be pitied and outmaneuvered than directly opposed. “Carrie, that seems a little... extreme, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” Carrie coughed again, and Mark was pretty sure that one was more chunky than the previous one. “Roz offered to give me a place to stay, if I can get there.”

Mark knew that Carrie’s ever-present imaginary companion could hardly shelter her. As far as Mark could tell, “Roz” existed only in Carrie’s head, a sort of semi-autonomous piece of her psyche that gave her advice and acted as a sort of peanut gallery to Carrie’s life. As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew this - and yes, it was bizarre, but Mark didn’t think it was bizarre enough to justify his mother’s actions. Caroline, after all, was a good student, was well-behaved, and didn’t bother anyone - a little bit of insanity now and then was well within her rights, in the older Farner’s mind. In addition, she had gotten good in recent years at keeping that insanity between herself and her brother. People still thought she was a little off, but she didn’t scare her classmates or teachers anymore.
 
“I’m not sure how you’d take her up on that, though.” Mark said, playing along reflexively. He’d grown up around Carrie, after all - playing along with the “Roz” game was second nature to him He didn’t doubt for a moment that there was a voice in Carrie’s head that she called “Roz”, but he didn’t really think, as he had years before, that this entity was an autonomous individual.

“Me neither.” Caroline grumbled. “Even I can’t go that far, but - ” Caroline broke off suddenly, as if interrupted.

“You okay, Carrie?” Mark inquired after a moment.

“Yeah. Roz just reminded me of something.” Came the reply. “What’s in those pills, truth serum? You very nearly got me talking beyond the Line.”

The Line again. Carrie’s word for the boundary between things she could tell Mark and things she couldn’t, for some undisclosed reason. Part of Mark wanted very much to know what secrets his sister kept, but they were hers and not his to ask for. “Want me to go away?” Mark asked hesitantly.

 There was a low, murmured sound from Carrie, which Mark didn’t quite make out, but before he could ask her to repeat that, the door opened, and a pale, disheveled Carrie poked her head out. If it weren’t for the fact that she still looked like death, Mark knew, Caroline would be a rather attractive girl - and she was at the age where boys were beginning to notice. That, combined with the fact that Mark would be leaving for college in less than a year, only strengthened his resolve to keep Carrie off anything that might cloud her judgement. Bitterly, he mentally fumed that Lauren would give her own daughter Roofies every day before school if she thought that would make Caroline move a little closer to the impossible daughter ideal.

“No, I don’t want you to go away.” Carrie replied to Mark’s earlier question, except Mark took it to have a second meaning. With a wince, Mark offered Carrie his arm, which she weakly accepted, and guided her down the hall toward her bedroom.

“You’re right.” She said again, as he opened the room door for her. “No more of those pills. Worst ones yet.” Carrie released Mark and leaned on the doorframe.

 “I’ll go get you some water.” Mark changed the subject. “Why don’t you lie down.”

Carrie nodded, and ducked into her room, so Mark went downstairs to the kitchen. He was dismayed, though, when he got there and his mother was sitting in front of the sink, fiddling with some new kitchen implement ordered from the 800 number in a loud commercial. She looked up as Mark entered, and rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Hungry again, Mark?” She shook her head. “Kitchen’s closed. You’re on your own.”

Mark shook his head. “Just want a glass of water.” He decided not to mention it was for Caroline - that would probably lead to a screed about how Mark “always took his sister’s side over the side of the woman who birthed him” or something like that.

Lauren seemed to buy it, returning her attention to the device in her hands, so Mark grabbed a glass and a few ice cubes, then went to fill it from the tap.

“Tap water, Mark?” Lauren shook her head, and gestured to the chrome machine next to the sink. “How many times do I have to tell you about all the things in that that are bad for you? Get it out of the filter.”

Mark grudgingly obeyed, letting the machine fill the glass at a slow trickle, while Lauren rambled on about the health benefits of pH balance and microclustering and a pile of other stuff that Mark knew from basic high school chemistry was pseudoscience at best and a hoax at worst. He was pretty sure that Lauren didn’t even notice when he retreated, water in hand, and headed back upstairs - she was still talking along that line of thought.

Carrie, curled up on her bed, looked half-asleep when Mark peeked her door open, but she waved him in and sat up enough to accept the water. One sip of it, though, and she made a face. “This is from that machine, isn’t it?” She asked.

“Yeah.” Mark shrugged. “How can you tell? I can never taste a difference.”

“Always tastes... sharp. I dunno.” Carrie, despite her protest, drained the glass. “It’s annoying is all.” She muttered as she set it down, returning to her previous curled-up state. “Thanks though.”

Mark turned to leave, but Carrie reached out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “Mark, close the door.” She asked, and her older brother could not but do as was requested.

As soon as Mark had closed the door, he felt a sort of chill, of the kind he associated with Carrie at her most unnerving. It was that feeling that he, years before, had associated with “Roz”, when he was still childlike enough to believe that that alleged entity was more than just one symptom of Carrie’s endearing (to Mark, anyway) disregard for notions of sanity. “What is it?” Mark prompted quietly as soon as the door was shut.

“I know I’ve made your life trouble, since Dad died.” Carrie sighed. “You’re always looking out for me, even when that gets you in trouble with Mom.”

“Carrie, all the crap Mom’s put me through on your account is her fault, not yours.” Mark interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Let me finish.” Carrie’s tired, nauseated expression melted away into one of fierce frustration for a moment, and Mark nearly stepped back in surprise. Carrie was hard to rile, most of the time. “I think there’s a time coming where you won’t be able to do that anymore.”

Mark had already been thinking about the fact that he was college-bound in less than a year, so took that to be what she meant. Before he could respond, though, Carrie continued. “But Mark, I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?” Mark queried, expecting that she was going to elicit a promise to visit, or to call regularly, or something, all of which Mark knew he’d be doing after he left for college anyway.

“Don’t you ever start thinking I’m just your crazy sister.” Carrie said, which matched nothing that Mark was expecting. “Promise me that you won’t start dismissing what I say and do as crazy just because you don’t understand it.”

Mark nodded, frowning. “I haven’t yet, and I won’t, I promise. Though I can’t promise I’ll understand. I don’t think I ever have.”

Carrie gave a single-breath chuckle. “That may change, Mark. Roz and I both think you could see the world my way, if you took the time to learn how.”

Mark shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t have my own Roz yet.” He intended this to be sort of light-hearted, but it was clear his sister didn’t take it that way.

“Roz told me this a long time ago - she’s not like others. You don’t want your own.” Carrie replied, seemingly reflexively, then jumped a little as if poked with a needle and looked away. “Apparently I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” She admitted, sitting up a little and leaning against the headboard. “That’s a subject beyond the Line, sorry Mark.”

Mark frowned a little, not immediately replying. He was genuinely unsure how to make sense of any of that. Part of him wanted to abuse the mind-numbing effects of the drug that had made Carrie feel so ill, but the rest of him hated the thought of taking advantage. Yes, he could learn something about what was beyond her Line, what was inside her skull that had never gotten out, but Mark knew that that would violate her trust. “Should I go then? That’s the second time since you took the pills that you’ve said too much.”

Carrie shrugged. “I think I just need to sleep it off.”

Mark turned to leave, but as his sister laid back down in the bed she spoke once more.. “Remember, Mark. You promised.” She said seriously.

Mark turned back, and acknowledged with a nod and a thin smile, then left Carrie to sleep off the effects of the new medication.

---

The translations had slowly become routine, and Mark soon lost count of the number of times he had pushed the limit of the strange, springy translation boundary. His first run of the evening resulted in only fifteen translations, but in the first ten he’d beaten his prior record with a chain of twenty that turned his face red and sweaty with effort. It was a strange feeling, the exertion - not a muscle in his body was being strained, but he regularly had to forcibly relax his tense shoulders and arms - they seemed to sympathetically want to share the strain of the higher-order translations, as if doing so would take the effort off of his brain.

Soon twenty was surpassed, then thirty, and after what seemed like a herculean effort to break thirty-seven Mark broke off to get a drink, not remembering to snap himself back first. The apartment outside the mirror looked slightly dim and grayish, almost grainy. He attributed this at first to poor lighting - the hundred-watt incandescent bulb over the bar, the only light on outside the bathroom, seemed to be faint, like it was only putting out twenty watts’ worth of light.

He knew something was off, though, when the refrigerator didn’t open with his first tug. Trying again, with both hands, he managed to open it, but the force required was closer to that he would expect to move the refrigerator than to open it. It wasn’t that the door was stuck - every inch he pulled the handle back was as hard as the previous, like the hinges had been filled with thick tar or the door had been replaced with a slab of solid lead. The light inside also seemed wan, distant, and pale.

Carefully, Mark tried to lift a can of soda from inside the door. it seemed to weigh as much as a whole twenty-four pack case, if not more, and he had to navigate it out of its shelf with both hands. Setting the soda on the counter, he thought better of trying to pull the tab to open it. He knew immediately what was causing the strangeness, and, without bothering to return to the mirror, started another translation. Rather than pushing the boundaries with intent to break through, he pushed only until he felt resistance and then stopped.

The unmistakable settling sensation came back, far stronger this time than it had before, and Mark shook off a light feeling of vertigo that came with it. Almost immediately the light in the overhead bulb brightened back to its full hundred-watt yellow-white cheeriness. Experimentally, Mark picked up the can of soda - it was back to normal weight.

Mark drank the soda slowly, considering the implications. The world faded out when one accomplished enough steps in Carrie’s process - did that mean that he, too, would appear to fade out? Carrie had always been good at hiding herself - was this her secret? Could she simply step away from things, fading into almost nothing?

His eyes fell on the book, and Mark remembered that it was supposed to have a title. He hadn’t been paying attention to it moments before, but he wondered if thirty-seven was enough to see the writing that was mentioned inside.

Finishing his drink, Mark picked up Carrie’s instruction manual and carried it into the bathroom, and started another set. At twenty, he looked over to the book - nothing. At thirty, nothing. At thirty-five, the cover was grainy and hazy, but then everything besides his reflection looked a little grainy and dull. After the thirty-eighth, Mark thought he saw something, a discoloration on the book’s cover. Heartened, he pushed against the resistance to the next translation, and broke thirty-nine. The smudgy discoloration resolved itself into letters that swam into unreadability when he looked directly at them, but the dullness of the rest of his world made it clear to Mark that he was close. Turning back to the mirror, he pushed against the fortieth, expecting it to be the last keeping him from reading the title of Carrie’s book, wondering how many of the questions he’d always had about his little sister he’d have answered if he broke past.

But the resisting force, like a metaphysical trampoline, stymied his efforts again, and Mark did not just settle back - as if the enthusiasm for moving beyond forty was countered by enthusiasm for sending him back, Mark felt not settling but wrenching. His stomach turned, and he was immediately grateful that he had been practicing in the bathroom, as his dinner, now thoroughly mixed with the can of soda from moments prior, made a break for the exit.

Deciding after his insides had stopped heaving that that was perhaps enough translation for one night, Mark cleaned himself off and got into bed. Until now he hadn’t considered that the translations were anything but harmless, but between the dulling of his senses and the snap-back being able to make him sick (even though Mark was historically resistant to motion sickness of the usual types) Mark could no longer assume that the trick Carrie’s little book had taught him was harmless. How many translations before an incautious snap-back caused Mark permanent damage, or killed him? A hundred? Sixty?

As he lay thinking in the darkness, the cold feeling darted down his spine, and he had another, far more disturbing thought - if the translations were not harmless, what about the repetitive cold feeling, that Carrie seemed to imply was the result of contact with an invisible, intangible being, as Mark remembered from her childhood games? Supposing that entity did indeed exist, being associated somehow with the translation trick, he had to assume that it too could harm him. And if the cold feeling could be trusted, that meant it was close, perhaps seated at his bedside, or crouched over him, waiting for its unlucky victim to fall asleep...

No, Mark forcibly discarded that childish line of thought. Supposing the existence of such an entity (Mark still wasn’t sure he could believe it, even after Carrie’s first several instructions), it had had the run of his apartment for two days and had not yet caused him harm. Carrie’s invisible companion had always been a source of observations and aid, at least to Carrie herself - Mark couldn’t recall any times he saw Carrie berate or disagree with her “imaginary” companion.

Still, the possibility bothered him, and eventually, with a groan, Mark rolled out of bed and opened the bedroom door, feeling stupid for even considering what he was about to do. “Look.” He said quietly into the darkness. “I know you’re in here, when you get close I get a feeling. Always have. I’m not going to get any sleep unless you leave me alone... I’d appreciate it if you weren’t in here, okay?”

Mark’s words were met by silence. Even the light hissing sound of the traffic on the road didn’t penetrate this far into the building. He realized all the things he might have done wrong. what if the entity was more a pet than a person, trained by his sister? What if it didn’t understand English?

As Mark’s mind tried to compile a full list of all the reasons he was an idiot, it was interrupted by another cold feeling. This one was different - it was stronger, localized, not trickling in from all his extremities and then wriggling up his spine but centered on one side of his face. Had he not been paying attention it might have been dismissed as a draft at first, but it lasted a full two seconds, growing, before vanishing suddenly.

Shaking his head and not fully understanding what had just happened, Mark shut the door and walked around the room, unsuccessfully searching for the cold feeling. Reasonably certain that it had left him alone for the time being, Mark got back into bed, no less confused but slightly less fearful. It had listened to him, whatever it was, which suggested to him that it wasn’t dangerous.

At least, he decided, not for now, and not to him.

"Hallowed Ground"

There aren’t too many of us left who remember that war. Cemeteries filled with dead men from across an ocean litter the ancestral land of my people, and most of the youth don’t know enough to remember what they’re for, or why those cemeteries have been allowed to stand so long with infidels’ crosses over the graves, carved of white limestone and marble. Those kids see the symbology of Christ as just that, a symbol of the enemy to be demolished.

The Colonel kept order, at least. He didn’t really like those cemeteries either, though he’d had the education to know their significance, he preserved their sanctity out of either fear of the great powers that had erected those gravestones or out of archaic respect for the fallen dead of so many years past. It doesn’t matter anymore, of course. I was already well into my life when he was born, I was already old when “Colonel” became synonymous with “King”, and I have outlived him in the end. Those who would replace the Colonel are not like him - they are barely above kids themselves. I should have known things would come to the point where they could not bear the sight of those stone crosses any longer.

It was only a few weeks after word was spread of the Colonel’s death when it finally happened. I made my way slowly to the cemetery just outside of town, just as I had for more years than most men were lucky to live. Each time, it seemed, my steps were a little shakier. My dear wife used to come with me, but she’s been gone four years now, and our children have long since left this poor little town to make their lives in the big city not far from here, on the coast. There’s no-one to help me make the trip, but I have to make it. It’s not something most people understand, and since my dear wife went to meet God, I have walked the third of a mile up to the cemetery alone.

I saw that the gate was smashed in when I rounded the last bend, and though it left me gasping for breath I hurried the last few hundred paces, and nearly died of horror when I looked in on the ruins inside the walls. The graves were desecrated, and despite my age I wanted for that moment to take up a blade or a rifle and kill every one of the culprits. Stone crosses lay smashed, and tire tracks showed the culprit - a small truck, like those so famously used by the men who killed the Colonel, had been rammed into some of the stones, and used to pull others down. Some showed signs of being smashed with hammers, others bore the marks of pickaxes. Many sported the bright splotches I knew were caused by gunfire. Only one cross-shaped marker stood defiant, un-toppled.

It was near the front, just to the left of the gate, and the nameplate, despite looking to have absorbed a full clip from an assault rifle, still legibly read “JAMES H. WOLTON”. The stone cross was scored with dozens of impact marks, including long horizontal ones that bore a distinct resemblance to the front profile of a truck bumper. But despite all that, the marker still stood, battered but defiant, where all of its compatriots had fallen. I staggered to it, and knelt down amidst the shattered pieces of rock, my knees resting only feet above the bones of the greatest man I have ever had the honor to meet.

Private Jim Wolton was an American. I know we all hate the Americans now and shout “death to America” at all the right times to please those who know better, but there was a time when some of us and some of them shared a battlefield, not as enemies, but as allies.

“Jim, I am sorry.” I whispered, in the same broken English he’d taught me all those years ago. “They’ve broken all your crosses. They don’t remember. They didn’t - ”

“They didn’t know what they did.” Jim seemed to say. Many times, when I came to his grave, I could almost see him sitting there, in dusty, worn tan fatigues and with a steel bowl helmet, leaning on the grave marker. I remembered his voice - it twanged oddly, even in English, and more so when he had spoken Arabic. “You let them forget, Zudi.”

I swallowed against a lump in my old throat. “No, Jim. I told the stories. You must believe me. I told three generations of young children what we did here. What we lost, and what we gained in the end.”

My mind’s eye view of my old comrade in arms chuckled drily. “But they did not hear, Zudi. You didn’t make the hear.” The vision tilted its head up to the noontime sun, which reflected off his sunburned, smooth cheeks. It seemed not that he was pronouncing a judgement, only stating the facts, facts that no longer could harm him any more.

A tear rolled from my eye and lost itself in my tangled gray beard. “I’m sorry, Jim. Forgive me.”

The vision did not reply at first, but I sensed that Jim would have forgiven me. He was never the sort to hold a grudge - in the months we’d fought together, I’d never seen him angry outside of combat, and then he was always more scared than angry. We all were, I suppose.

“What will they do?” I eventually asked the gravestone, and the vision of Jim sitting against it, meaning the Americans. “Will they come here to seek revenge for this?”

Jim shook his head sadly in my mind, and closed his eyes. “Like the youth here, they have forgotten, my friend. They have let the words at the gate become a lie. Do you remember them, Zudi?”

I nodded shakily. “I do, Jim.” How could I forget? The men who had erected the crosses and the wall had carved the words twice - once in English, then again translated to Arabic.

“We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground: the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.” My vision of Jim quoted, in a tone almost like the one I’d heard him use reading from the bible the chaplain often lent him. “Zudi, did they ever tell you where those words came from?”

I nodded. They had, sort of. “A place called... Gettysburg. The bloodiest battle in American history.” I didn’t know where Gettysburg was or when a battle had been fought there, the men who’d carved those words into the plaque by the gate hadn’t said.

“It’s too bad, Zudi. About the gravestones. Without them, how will people remember what we did?”

“I’m sorry, Jim.” I repeated. “I think... Perhaps the world has already forgotten. There aren’t many of us left who were there. I am the last I know of, and when I go to meet God, there will be no more. It will be like our war never happened.”

He looked at me, and offered a thin smile. “Zudi, people may forget. But God remembers.” He stood, and beckoned me to stand as well. Despite knowing that he was not there, that Jim was just an image in my mind, I complied creakily, my old joints protesting. “We cannot be harmed in humanity’s forgetting. Those who would be harmed are the forgetters.” He gestured out over the ruined stones, and I looked in that direction. At first, all I saw was wind eddies stirring what few hardy plants had grown up around the graves and survived the destruction, but as I looked, I saw a ghostly phantom of a man standing before the stump of each stone. Each phantom had an equally pallid rifle slung over his back, the same kind of rifle that we’d used to shoot at the soldiers in charcoal back in nineteen fourty-two, and in the right hand of each, hilt clasped to his breast and point down, was a sword, not curved in the local fashion but three and a half feet of rigidly straight steel with a wide crosspiece. I could not help but gasp at the sight of the ghostly platoon, armed for war but with faces at peace. Though I knew the men interred in the cemetery to be Americans, Australians, British, and French in life, in the ghosts I could find no trace of nationality - I suppose death washed such distinctions away.

“Zudi, you must not lose heart.” Jim insisted. “There is still much to be done.”

I nodded. “Are the armies of heaven preparing for the last war?” I asked, gesturing shakily to the other spirits.

“Zudi, the last war will come when it comes. We are ready, be it tomorrow or twenty more centuries away.” Jim smiled. “There may be many wars and rumors of war before judgement comes. We fought evil in our time, my friend, but evil was not limited to our time. It is almost as eternal as God himself.”

I nodded. “I know evil, Jim. I see it here.” I gestured to the devastated cemetery.

“This was not done by evil people, only by people led astray by evil.” He gestured to the smashed-in gate behind me. “Soon they will be back, you know. They will be back to destroy what’s left, and to scour the words from beside the gate.”

I nodded. “What would you have me do, Jim? I have grown too old to fight.”

He smiled cherubically, an expression that didn’t seem to conflict with his being dressed for war. “You have a weapon more powerful than any sword, any rifle, any bomb, Zudi. You have the story of our war, its lessons.” My vision of Jim seemed to fade, and with him all the other spirits. “The hosts of heaven watch, Zudi. make them proud.”

I sank back to my knees, and waited. The sun wheeled overhead, the day grew hot, and then it grew cool. The shadows of the ruined stones grew long. All this seemed to happen in moments, though I knew that hours were passing I did not feel them slip by. I prayed that my vision of Jim was right, that what I had was enough to save the last gravestone in the graveyard of heroes.

Dusk was already setting in when I heard the crunch of tires on the path, the slamming of rusty pickup truck doors, and the tromp of feet. I stood creakily and turned to face the half-dozen young men entering the place, all armed with construction equipment and guns of various sizes. One had a shovel, and I wondered if he aimed to dig up the bones of the dead.

“Elder Zudi!” The leader exclaimed, surprised to see me. “What are you doing in this place?”

I smiled, gesturing back at the stone marked with my friend’s name. ”Visiting an old friend from an old war.”

The leader scoffed. “An infidel’s grave.” The others nodded. I was only slightly offended at how little respect they seemed to have for me, but I decided not to bring it up.

“Perhaps.” I shrugged stiffly. “Or perhaps he was more. Perhaps all these men were servants of God in their own way. Would you like to hear their story?”

I was surprised to find out that Jim was right. They laid down their demolition equipment and listened to my story, the story of all of us who fought and those of us who died all those decades ago to defeat evil in our time.