The Scrivener's Tale #1

SEVEN

As their lips touched, Gabe felt as though he had become entirely disconnected from the world. Most of his senses simply shut down. He could hear the whoosh of his own blood pulsing in his head, nothing else. All the subliminal noises of his apartment — the drone of the fridge, the whirr of his computer, the beep from his coffee machine cycling through its stand-by phases — disappeared. Even the more persistent sounds of the building’s lift, voices from the street, the horns and general groan of traffic … all of it had been silenced.
Neither could he see his apartment anymore, or anything familiar. What had, at first, been a blank Void began to stir and change: the grey nothingness seemed to swirl and move as though reshaping itself, but even before it had fully formed, he knew what the dreamscape was showing him. He tried to pull back but he was trapped. Angelina’s lips held him, and he was sure if his ability to smell or taste were available to him, he would be surrounded by the fragrance of violets on her breath. The scene continued to sharpen. He wanted to scream but could not.
He mentally shook his head. Did not want this. Did not want to face the memory of the wreckage of his car because that would mean confronting the wreckage of his wife and son trapped inside. Dying, if not already dead.
‘Release me!’ he was sure he pleaded.
But just as the smell of petrol fumes and the tang of spilled blood assaulted him and he felt a cry of anguish racing to his throat, the scene changed. In a heartbeat, he was in the calm of his cathedral — or so he thought. It felt right, the atmosphere was right, but he saw in the shadow a man.
It looked as though it could be him but the figure had his head thrown back in agony.
The link was cut and Gabe snapped back to reality to find himself staring into the smoky eyes of Angelina. Her legs were still wrapped around his hips. She was smiling guiltily, knowingly.
‘What did you see?’ she asked, unable to mask the smug tone.
‘You … you promised the cathedral.’
‘I decided to let you choose and demonstrate just how connected we truly are. You seem upset, Gabe,’ she said softly, sounding offended now as she gently touched his cheek. ‘Are you frightened by the vision?’
‘Did you see it too?’
She nodded. ‘I don’t understand it though — it’s obviously something very personal to you. I smelled petrol. I assume the image was of the motorway accident that killed your family …’ He didn’t want her to say another word about it, and perhaps she sensed this. ‘Who is the man in the second vision?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s your dream.’
‘That may be. But I still have no idea.’
‘It’s obviously very powerful if it can override not only your nightmare of the accident, but more importantly, what I intended to show you,’ she remarked.
He frowned at her. ‘What are you?’
‘I am what I am. I have skills.’
‘Skills,’ he repeated evenly, gently disengaging her arms from his neck. She obliged by releasing her legs and sitting back on the bed. ‘Explain them,’ he said, deliberately getting up and walking away from her.
‘I can’t.’ Angelina shrugged, wrapping her arms around her knees, looking like a child again, and uncaring of her nakedness. ‘But it’s a reason why Reynard keeps me under such close guard.’
Gabe picked up the quill at the mention of Reynard. He stroked the soft swan feather and once again wondered at its significance. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said to her but also to himself about the strange gift.
‘No,’ she said in a slightly bored, dismissive tone, ‘but that’s because you’re not really listening to me.’ Her expression flared into something simmeringly close to anger, and she got up to pace near him. ‘I am not of this world, Gabe. You should trust that now. How else can I take you into your world of dreams and nightmares? I can take you to the cathedral in your mind palace. But you need to believe me when I tell you that it’s not just a dream or a fiction. It is not of your own mind. It is real. And it’s calling to you.’
‘And all I have to do is kill you,’ he said, flatly, his tone now dripping with disdain. ‘Are you aware how your request sounds to any sane person?’
‘You see? You don’t respect anything I say.’
‘Angelina —’
‘Well, Reynard can have me then. That’s his plan. He will kill me and he will travel to Pearlis.’
‘Then why did he involve me?’
‘He needed your skills to unlock what he believes is my mute mind and make it possible. He’s a fool if he thinks he can outwit me. He’s using you, Gabe, not just to provide “access” to me but making sure he can trust my magic. If you now tell him what you’ve seen, he’ll know it’s Pearlis. But he doesn’t want you to be the one to travel. He wants to go. He will be the one who has your cathedral. And the raven spy will have you!’ she snapped viciously, as she turned away from him.
It was too convoluted and so little was making sense. He grabbed her, the quill still in his hand. He didn’t want to lose her even though all of this was wrong; everything about Angelina and his relationship with her was wrong and yet he didn’t want it to end — not like this.
‘Wait! I need to understand, to know about you.’
Before he could say another word, she was holding him again, kissing him again; hard this time and angrily. But the sensation of his lips being bitten and bruised disappeared as he was thrust into the frantically busy market square surrounding … no, it was impossible. Impossible! Yet Gabe stared in hungry wonder at the huge doors and the fa?ade of the cathedral he knew so well.
He felt the instant calm of close proximity to it. It was real. He realised he was walking up to it, desperate to lay his fingers on the stonework but his hand passed through its soft grey shimmering walls. Drifting through the open doors, he found his familiar place. The safe place. He had sat in here so many times in his mind. But it had never been real. Now he could actually feel the worn timber of the pew he sat on, hear the click of the flagstones beneath him, feel the cool of the grey stone around him. It wasn’t imagined. He was actually here! Gabe looked around in awe, but just as his thoughts turned to the famed mythical creatures, he was yanked rudely back to his apartment as Angelina’s lips withdrew from his.
‘Do you believe me now?’
In spite of himself, he nodded, lost for words, staring at her as though she were an alien.
‘I can take you there. I can put you physically into the cathedral you yearn for.’
He shook his head like a child trying to blot out a nagging parent. ‘I built that place. Its architecture is mine! My specifications … simply to please me.’
‘No, Gabe! If it was just a product of your imagination, how can I know it so intimately? You have never discussed it with anyone, have you … least of all me?’
‘It is private,’ he murmured.
‘Exactly!’
‘I don’t know,’ he bleated, confused, frustrated.
‘How can I know exactly the scene of your car pile-up if I was not able to tap into your mind?’
He shook his head. He could feel a migraine coming on and dropped the swan quill onto the bed. He rubbed at his temples.
‘Touch me,’ she demanded, pulling one of his hands to her and placing it on her chest. He could feel her breastbone and her heart thumping. ‘Do I feel real?’
‘You are real,’ he answered.
‘You’re a sane, smart man, Gabe. You know I’m real so I can’t be in your imagination. Even if you think I’m delusional, you know you’re not. How can I show you what I just have and not be telling you the truth? I have no reason to lie to you.’
‘Let me be clear about this … I will not be killing anyone or anything, Angelina,’ he said, flicking her hands away.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ he snapped, coming back to himself, regaining his equilibrium. This wasn’t the way to speak to a patient, but then neither was being naked alongside her. He’d broken every sacred rule of being a clinical psychologist.
Gabe hadn’t realised he’d aired this thought aloud.
‘Gabe, I seduced you. You didn’t ask me to do anything that I wasn’t already planning to do with you,’ she said in a soft tone, snuggling close. Angelina had a knack for wrapping herself around him in such a way that he felt owned by her.
It may have been a hollow reassurance but he was grateful to hear it all the same. Its effect was momentary, though, for he could feel a sinister and familiar sense returning, bringing with it all those old feelings of despair that he’d kept at bay for so long.
‘What’s wrong?’ she shook him.
‘It’s happening again. I’d escaped the accident, rebuilt my life, walked away from it all,’ he said, drawing back from her. He ran a hand through his hair again and stood in his apartment, naked and trembling — but not from the cold.
‘Gabe, I can make it all go away.’
He flicked his gaze to her, filled with mistrust and a new sense of loathing as she offered herself to him. He wished Angelina had never come into his life, but even now, he felt desire stirring. She was impossible to resist … for him, anyway. ‘All I have to do is kill you, right?’ he said scathingly.
‘It is my way back.’
‘Your way out, more like,’ he sneered.
‘Your raven has returned,’ she taunted him, pointing out the window.
True enough, the bird was there, black as night, staring at him as it perched on his tiny balcony’s railing. It fleetingly occurred to him to wonder precisely how she knew the family of Corvidae. Most people would have called it a crow.
‘What does it want?’
‘He’s your enemy. He’s keeping you under observation.’
‘My enemy,’ he said, with a cold smirk. ‘Now I must fear even the birds. Why is he my enemy, Angelina?’
‘He’s following you. It’s his role. He is the observer … the messenger.’
‘You’re amazing. Do you just make things up as you go along?’
‘You don’t believe me,’ she said, disappointed.
‘I know you believe it, and I know how powerful that can be. I’m sorry that I can’t see what you do. I live in Paris, you live in a world of your own making.’
‘Is that so?’
He shrugged. ‘We should never have had sex. It’s my fault —’
It was Angelina’s turn to laugh and it sounded bitter. ‘I’m not talking about sex, you fool.’ She crawled forward on the bed. ‘I’m talking about knowledge. Things that can’t be explained, like showing you your own dreams.’ Gabe began to shake his head and he could see it infuriated her. ‘All right, what if I told you that in three seconds the phone will start to ring, there will be a banging on the door and you’d —’
She didn’t finish. His mobile began to vibrate loudly on the kitchen counter and a heartbeat later there was a loud rapping at the door.
Gabe blinked. ‘How could …?’ he said, staring at the door and then back at her.
‘Both are Reynard,’ she said calmly. ‘He knows you’re in here. He will now tell you that he knows I’m here too.’
‘I know you have Angelina with you, Gabriel!’ Reynard obliged.
Gabe stared open-mouthed, astonished.
‘He’ll bang again,’ she said. ‘Twice.’ Reynard did just that. ‘I shall have to call in the police,’ she mimicked in his manner.
‘I shall have to call in the police,’ Reynard repeated precisely and then simultaneously with Angelina mimicking the gesture, he rapped loudly on the door. ‘Open up!’ she said silently, but in perfect sinister synchronicity with Reynard. It was as though his deep voice had become hers. Angelina put her hand to her mouth and mimicked a cough in tandem with Reynard. She smiled mirthlessly at Gabe.
‘She is trying to escape! Don’t help her, Gabriel,’ Reynard urged, while Gabe watched her mouth forming each word also. It was chilling. How was she doing this?
‘How am I doing it?’ she asked, as though she could now hear his thoughts as well as Reynard’s. ‘I have skills that defy your understanding,’ Angelina said, moving toward him as though floating on air. ‘But not his,’ she sneered, pointing at the door. ‘Oh, definitely not. Reynard knows what I’m capable of. He was sent to keep me close, keep me from my mission.’
Reynard’s banging and the constant vibration and beeping of the phone’s message system began to fade and only Angelina’s voice was clear.
‘I was sent to guide you to a place called Morgravia. The bird is your enemy. Reynard was sent to stop you making the journey — he is also our enemy. But you and I must look out for one another. I am your protector, Gabe. I can take you to the cathedral, where I know you feel safe. And because I’m not real in the way you accept, you can’t kill me. It will be like a dreamscape. My death will not be real.’
She was playing with words. No longer making sense. Hitting all the right buttons to confuse him … his mind was becoming fuzzy. He could still hear Reynard, the phone, now the bird cawing at him. He could see it, flapping outside and leaping at the window. He could hear the thump of its body connecting with the panes of glass, the scratch and tap of beak and claws, as it desperately tried to keep his attention. He was being plunged back into the fear and the loathing, the old terror that haunted him after losing his family. And now here was Angelina handing him a knife. Where did that come from?
He tried to speak, but it was as though his mouth was suddenly filled with sawdust. His voice had slowed down and sounded deep and robotic, as though a machine was filtering his words. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making it easy, Gabe.’ Her voice tinkled like crystals moving against each other. ‘Come, travel with me. I will take you to the cathedral. To safety. To peace.’ She leapt at him like a cat, fast and lithe; he heard her groan, wrapping her legs around him. He stumbled and they fell awkwardly onto the bed.
He could feel her flesh against his. It was cool and smooth, like marble, and then her lips were on his, her tongue searching, her body moving against him. Reynard, the phone and even the sounds of the raven disappeared. He was back in the Void, waiting for its movement — was he holding his breath? — then the swirling began, and what had been nothing but a grey mist a moment ago began to sharpen into the contours and colours of the scene he most craved.
He was far more exquisitely aware of Angelina this time. He could feel her touch, her skin, her warmth, whereas before, when she’d allowed him to glimpse this place, he’d been aware of nothing. Now all of his senses were his again. It was as though the scene was deepening into reality, while at the same time he could feel Angelina becoming slack against him and a wetness against his belly. For a moment there, he thought his desire to see his cathedral had twisted into something erotic — and who could blame him, with a naked woman wrapped around him?
Without warning, hard on the heels of the sensation of wetness, he felt himself toppling, falling, spinning without control. There was no pain, no flailing about; he didn’t know which way was up, but in his mind’s eye he was travelling closer to the cathedral. He heard Angelina’s voice in his mind.
Let go, Gabe, she whispered. Let go of Paris … of the world.
And he did, but as he did so his hand felt something familiar. The quill. It was all he had to anchor him and he wrapped his fingers around it, feeling its softness and its solidity. It helped him to focus on one final notion: that to let go fully would be dangerous. It was something in his subconscious, perhaps something from his training as a psychologist. Clutching the quill, in the midst of his confusion and dislocation, Gabe felt a part of him hold back as he began to fall into whatever new dreamscape Angelina was forming for him.
It was the kernel of strength and self-possession and even self-awareness that had brought him through his darkest hours; it was the part of him that urged him to breathe, forced him to wake up and accept the day and to find a way through each new one until the pain of his failure and loss of his family began to diminish into the background of his life. He knew from his counselling work that many people didn’t have this special private place in the core of their being to draw upon, to rely upon. It couldn’t be taught. Couldn’t be bought. Couldn’t be acquired. It simply had to be discovered within. He believed everyone possessed this special ‘force’ and he had encouraged his patients to find it, hunt it down. Many had succeeded, with his help.
He was sure his elders didn’t think he possessed any deep strength; they’d viewed him as a coward for running away from confronting the reality of his life, offering wisdom that, in his grief, he couldn’t stomach hearing.
The accident was a random event. It’s not your fault. Except it was.
You can’t be in control all the time. You can. He shouldn’t have looked away from the road.
You aren’t the enemy. He felt like the enemy.
You can’t save everyone. You’re a psychologist. Not a god.
Or his personal favourite. You have to move on.
He knew they meant well; knew these soothing words worked for some people, but to him they were sickening placations.
And so now as he travelled toward his haven, wondering whether he was dead or alive, he held back the one last part of him that he exercised total control over and no-one else could touch … not even Angelina, with her erotic, irresistible manner. He closed himself around the kernel of his most private self — his soul, as he liked to think of it. He rolled it up tightly, every bit of himself that was truly him — character traits, personality, ideas, memories — and wrapped them in a separate sphere that was no longer connected to his body but hovering invisible within it, and he clung to this sphere … this new embodiment of himself. It was his only link with the reality he knew. The cathedral was a dream. He couldn’t be convinced otherwise but, oh, how he wanted it to be real … to live it, touch it, smell its scented candles, taste on the back of his palate the fragrance of herbs crushed underfoot.
The scape before him was shaping into brilliant colour; he could hear muffled sounds beginning to sharpen, a faint aroma begin to reach him. This had not happened before. The cathedral began to soar before him in all its imposing, soft grey beauty, every aspect of it coming into sharper focus.
He hadn’t been aware of himself as flesh since Angelina kissed him but now he was aware of her body more than his own. And she was pulling away from him in a slow, gentle slump. Her once beautiful dark, smoky greyish eyes gave him a listless gaze in return and he could see the life leaching from them. Her grip around his waist was loosening but all the while the wetness that he recalled feeling, was increasing. It was not his desire … it wasn’t even hers.
It was blood.
He could see its red brightness, gleaming and glistening. He’d been stabbed! Angelina’s blade. She’d stabbed him and his hands were covered in his life’s blood. As he thought this, he became acutely aware of Angelina’s naked body becoming entirely limp as it fell away from him. There was a soft smile playing about her generous lips that had been kissing him so deeply just moments earlier.
And he realised with deeper shock that it was Angelina who was dead. And the knife was in her belly … it was her bright blood, her life taken.
He had killed her, just as she’d asked.
He looked around, desperate for help, the name of Reynard springing to his lips, but he was no longer in his apartment and he was no longer near his cathedral. He was nowhere at all that he recognised.
Reynard burst through the door of Gabe’s apartment with an anxious-looking concierge following hot on his heels and making loud protests. The small man fell instantly silent when they saw what was lying on the bed.
The ghastly scene and the iron smell of freshly spilled blood combined to make the concierge gag and he rushed for Gabe’s kitchen sink, retching helplessly before raising his head, his complexion ashen and expression filled with horror.
‘This is monstrous,’ he wailed. ‘I’m an old man, I shouldn’t have to —’
‘Go downstairs and call the police now!’ Reynard ordered him.
The man obeyed blindly, staggering out of the apartment.
Reynard approached the body of Angelina, her belly ripped open like a macabre smile. Blue-grey ropy intestines spilled in a glistening, gelatinous mess from the gash of the fleshy grin. Her eyes were open, distant, as though looking a long way past the horizon, but they were seeing nothing. He knew that. This was simply the corpse that some poor bastard would have to clean up and he could imagine all the forensics and pathology tests that would now follow. Few questions would be answered. And he would be here for none of it.
Next to her lay the blood-spattered weapon that had inflicted the damage. He nodded, turned away and walked to the French windows. As he moved, his attention was caught and held by the slender box with its navy satin that he’d given Gabe on his birthday. It was open and empty. The quill was removed; he cast a searing gaze around the apartment, but it was nowhere to be seen. Reynard sighed with a relief that felt more like deep sorrow and returned to what he’d set out to do. He pulled the two windows toward him, opening them, and stepped out onto the balcony.
‘It is done,’ he said to the now silent waiting raven.
It watched him, head cocked to one side as Reynard clambered with difficulty up onto the balcony railings and teetered. Reynard gave a last look at the bird that had been his co-conspirator and nodded with a sad smile. ‘Our part is over. I have achieved what I must. I cannot be taken alive by the police. You know what to do.’
The bird leapt at its companion and shoved at his head hard with its feet. It didn’t take any more than that to send Monsieur Reynard toppling from the penthouse floor of the apartment building, muttering a strange incantation as he fell to his death.
The raven blinked at the lifeless shape crumpled below, sad for Reynard, who had been brave to the last, before it leapt into the air, flapping its strong wings and lifting itself high above Gabe’s apartment to fly with purpose toward Notre Dame Cathedral.
It ascended higher still above the sweeping gothic architecture until it was a dark speck in an overcast sky. Only the keenest of sights would have seen the raven bank slightly and pause for a heartbeat before it began a fast descent, shaping itself into an arrow as though shot from a master bowman. Its target was clear, its aim was perfect. Moments later the bird impaled itself soundlessly on the sharp piece of wood it had previously marked out for this very task.
The raven’s last thought, cast toward another world, in the hope that his king would hear him, was a plea to remember the being that was Ravan as a brave member of his flock. And as the bird closed its eyes, its immortal spirit transcended the broken, pierced body of the host and fled.