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Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind — Entry 32

I woke standing waist-deep in water.

Cold was the first thing I understood.

Not where I was. Not how I’d gotten there. Not why the sky looked as though someone had driven a black nail through the sun.

Cold.

The water had worked through my clothes and settled against my skin with the intimacy of something that had been waiting. My feet were buried ankle-deep in mud. Every time I shifted my weight, the bottom tightened around my boots as if reconsidering whether it intended to let me leave.

I stood still.

Sometimes ignorance deserves a moment before you start fucking with it.

The lake stretched farther than I could see, flat except for rings spreading outward from my body. Mist crawled across its surface. Beyond it, pieces of buildings rose from the shoreline—columns, broken roofs, staircases climbing toward entrances that no longer existed. They looked ancient, although I couldn’t have told you why.

Perhaps ruin has its own calendar.

Above them hung the eclipse.

A perfect black circle surrounded by white fire.

I stared at it longer than I should have.

Then something bumped my hip.

I nearly screamed.

A face floated beside me.

I stumbled backward, lost one boot to the mud, caught myself, and watched the face roll lazily in the water.

Stone.

A mask.

Human-sized. Heavy-looking. Eyes closed. Lips slightly parted.

Another drifted behind it.

Then I noticed there were dozens.

Maybe hundreds.

Faces floated everywhere.

Some stared upward. Others sank nose-first beneath the surface before rolling back. A woman’s face drifted past with one cheek broken away. An old man’s mask had no mouth. Something resembling a child’s theatrical mask—

No.

Not a child.

Just small.

I stopped looking at the faces and started looking for land.

That was when I saw the crowns.

They floated too, which made no sense.

Bronze, silver, blackened metal. Some elaborate enough to belong in museums, others little more than twisted bands. One passed close enough that I could see tiny stones set into its rim.

I reached for it.

The instant my fingers touched metal, I remembered ordering a man hanged.

I let go.

The crown splashed away.

My stomach clenched.

For one impossible second I had been standing on a balcony.

Below me, a courtyard packed with people.

Rain.

Red banners hanging from stone walls.

A man kneeling with his hands bound.

I remembered his name.

Tomas.

I remembered signing the order.

I remembered not watching when the rope tightened.

Then I was back in the lake.

“No.”

My voice traveled across the water.

Nothing answered.

I knew no Tomas.

I had never ordered anyone killed.

I had never stood on a balcony above a courtyard.

At least I didn’t think I had.

That’s the problem with memory.

We treat it like evidence because the alternative is admitting most of our lives are stored in something with the structural integrity of wet paper.

Another object bumped my arm.

A mask.

I pushed it away.

It rolled over.

Something had been carved inside.

Letters.

I caught the edge before it drifted past.

MICHAEL.

The name tightened something in my chest.

My mother called me Michael when she was angry.

Everyone else called me Mike.

I dropped it.

Another mask floated within reach.

I turned it over.

SERGEANT.

The next:

DAD.

I stared at that one for a long time.

I don’t have children.

At least—

No.

I don’t have children.

I threw the mask.

It struck the water and disappeared.

A few seconds later it surfaced farther away, staring at the eclipse.

I began walking.

Every step required negotiation with the mud.

The ruins seemed close, but distance behaved strangely there. I walked toward a temple with six surviving columns until my legs trembled, yet it never appeared any nearer.

The masks followed.

Not all of them.

Just enough.

Michael.

Sergeant.

Dad.

A cracked one marked HUSBAND.

Another said LIAR.

That one I left facedown.

The crowns kept their distance.

I was grateful.

Overhead, birds circled.

Ravens, I thought.

Too many to count.

Their wings overlapped until portions of the sky seemed to move.

One descended low over the water.

Its reflection passed beneath it.

Except the reflection wasn’t a bird.

I stopped.

The raven crossed above me.

Below, something human walked across the underside of the lake.

A man.

Then another.

Then dozens.

Their reflections moved beneath the surface as casually as pedestrians crossing a plaza, some alone, some together, all upside down from where I stood.

I looked toward the ruins.

Their reflections were intact.

The broken temple became whole beneath the water.

Columns restored.

Roof unbroken.

Lights burning inside.

My breath caught.

I knew that place.

Not recognized.

Knew.

I had walked those steps carrying flowers.

White ones.

Someone had been waiting inside.

I couldn’t remember her face.

But I remembered loving her.

The memory hurt enough to make me bend forward.

My hand touched the water.

Stars scattered beneath my fingers.

I jerked back.

The sky above was filled with stars despite the eclipse.

The lake held the same constellations.

For several seconds I couldn’t tell where the sky ended.

Then I noticed what was missing.

Me.

The temple reflected.

The birds reflected as people.

The eclipse burned beneath the water like a second black sun.

The masks had pale doubles below them.

I had nothing.

I waved my hand.

No hand moved beneath mine.

I leaned closer.

Only stars.

Then something moved far below.

A shape approached through the darkness.

A man.

He rose until he stood beneath my feet.

Upside down.

Or I was.

Water separated us.

He wore my face.

Same nose.

Same scar along the chin.

Same thinning hair.

But his clothes were dry.

Behind him stretched another shoreline.

The temples there were whole.

People moved between them.

He stared at me.

I stared back.

Then he raised his right hand.

I raised mine.

His expression changed.

So did mine.

We both lowered our hands.

He raised his left.

I didn’t.

His eyes widened.

I raised mine.

He didn’t.

Neither of us moved after that.

A crown bumped my ribs.

I ignored it.

The man beneath the water looked toward something behind me.

His face changed.

Fear.

I turned.

Nothing.

Mist.

Masks.

Ruins.

When I looked down again, he was pounding against the underside of the surface.

His mouth moved.

No sound reached me.

“What?”

He struck the water harder.

The lake didn’t ripple.

I crouched until my face hovered inches above his.

“What are you saying?”

Again.

Two words.

I watched his mouth carefully.

Don’t move.

Something touched my shoulder.

I froze.

Not because he had warned me.

Because I remembered this.

The lake.

The hand.

The man beneath the water.

I remembered standing exactly here.

Except I had been below.

I remembered looking upward at a terrified man surrounded by ruins.

I remembered trying to warn him.

I remembered failing.

The hand tightened.

Warm fingers.

Human.

Behind me, someone breathed.

The man beneath the lake stopped pounding.

His face became strangely calm.

Almost relieved.

Then he stepped backward.

“No.”

He continued away.

“Wait.”

The hand on my shoulder turned me around.

There was nobody there.

Only a mask floating upright.

My face.

Not similar.

Mine.

Its eyes were open.

I grabbed it.

Inside was a single word.

REFLECTION.

The lake moved.

For the first time since I woke, waves spread across its surface.

The ruins distorted.

The eclipse fractured.

Stars stretched into white scars.

Below me, the other man began walking toward the intact temple.

“Hey!”

He didn’t turn.

“Which one of us is real?”

That stopped him.

Slowly, he looked back.

Even through the water, I saw him smile.

Not mockingly.

Sadly.

Then he pointed upward.

At me.

For one stupid, beautiful second, relief flooded through my body.

Me.

I was real.

I laughed.

The sound came out broken.

Then I noticed his finger wasn’t pointing at me.

It pointed beyond me.

At the sky.

I looked up.

The eclipse had begun to move.

Not the moon.

The entire sky.

Stars slid sideways. Darkness rippled. The ravens scattered as though frightened by something behind the heavens.

A thin line appeared across the firmament.

Perfectly straight.

From one horizon to the other.

Light leaked through it.

Not sunlight.

Something white and depthless.

The sky was opening along a seam.

Below me, the other man ran.

I tried to follow.

My feet wouldn’t move.

The mud had tightened around my ankles.

The masks gathered.

Michael.

Sergeant.

Dad.

Husband.

Liar.

Stranger.

Names I knew.

Names I didn’t.

Crowns floated among them.

Lives I remembered.

Lives I couldn’t possibly have lived.

Above, the seam widened.

Below, the intact city disappeared into darkness as the other man reached the temple steps.

He looked back once.

I raised my hand.

This time he raised his.

Perfectly.

I don’t know which of us did it first.

The white opening in the sky grew wider.

The lake began draining upward.

Masks lifted from the surface.

Crowns followed.

Water rose around me in silver threads, climbing toward the wound overhead.

And somewhere beneath my feet, in a world that might have been reflection or memory or the only real place left, the other man entered the temple and closed the door.

I was still standing there when the water reached my knees.

Still standing when it reached my ankles.

Still standing when the lake was gone.

The masks were gone.

The crowns were gone.

The ruins were gone.

There was only black mud beneath my boots and stars above and below me.

Two skies.

No horizon.

No reflection.

And somewhere in the darkness, from a direction I could no longer call beneath me, someone knocked three times.

I have not answered.