Rendezvous with Hymera (13 page)

Clara’s eyes dampened and her heart contracted thinking of this god with human body who had sacrificed
his existence and his blood to save a world that was already lost in evil and cruelty.

Colin interrupted her reverie by taking her hand.

“Look, the door is still open,” he said. “Probably the evening service is long over. Let’s go inside,” he continued pushing gently the wooden gate leading into the yard.

Inside, a soft light emanated by the chandeliers hanging from the dome ceiling fell on the impassive
features of saints that decorated the walls.

In front of the altar, a man dressed like a priest but with the figure and posture of a warrior, was
extinguishing, one by one, the candles placed in silver candlesticks. The smell of wax, mixed with that of old wood, chrism and a vague hint of basil created an evocative atmosphere and a feeling of peace, and the two young people had the impression they were in a truly sacred place, unblemished by the exterior world.

The priest turned around and headed towards them with an easy but determined step. He was tall,
robust and at the same time, graceful, with short hair, grizzled here and there, and eyes of a very unusual shade, a grey-blue with metallic, almost sharp reflexes.

For a heartbeat, Clara felt they’ve known each other forever and that this man, whose age seemed
impossible to determine, was looking straight into the essence of her being.

Wordless, she handed him Eva’s bracelet.

Keeping silent and watching her without blinking, the priest took the bracelet and for a moment his calloused fingers touched hers. Clara felt an incredible energy influx and a shudder like an electric current crossed through her from head to toe. In that fraction of a second, she had the feeling that all her thoughts, experiences and life were somehow reflected in the eyes of the man standing in front of her, who represented a power beyond her capacity of understanding and perception.

“Where did you find this?” the priest asked with a deep voice, marked with the strangely melodious
inflexions of an accent neither of them recognized.

“In ... Eva’s apartment,” said Clara cautiously, not knowing yet what role played this man in
Eva’s mysterious life and disappearance.

The priest studied the bracelet meditatively and once again lifted to her that penetrating gaze, littered
with notes of enigmatic irony, then looked at Clara’s companion.

Colin had remained so far a quiet spectator. The skeptic amusement in his attitude was gone,
replaced by a sharp attention with which his analytical mind tried to absorb all the strange things in this dizzying carousel of the unknown.

The only certainty he had was that the man facing them wasn’t an ordinary person and he was
frustrated and intrigued by the depth of this ascertainment.

“What do you know about Eva Aris?” Colin asked. “Do you know what happened to her?”

The priest answered him with a question:

“Who are you and why are you here?”

After a few moments of inner debate, Clara related him the events that had taken place at the cottages and the chain of actions that had brought them there. She concluded by saying:

“We found in her
apartment several books about yoga and I tend to believe she was a practitioner, probably pretty advanced. Do you know something about it?”

“There was a time when Eva considered me her
guru
,” the man answered. “I initiated her in yoga and gave her this,” he indicated the bracelet in his hand.

Colin was surprised by the fact that a priest was a yoga practitioner, but he stayed silent without
interrupting. The priest continued:

“My personal definition is that yoga represents an ambivalent or bipolar way to the absolute. I say
bipolar
because, depending on the purpose and manner in which it is practiced, it could destroy or it could guide one to unimaginable dimensions. The word
absolute
is relative, it can mean both Heaven and Hell, talking in terms of Christianity. However, Eva searched for an escape in yoga.”

“Escape from what?” the young woman asked.

“Since she was a teenager, she started having... bizarre episodes, states of catalepsy, lasting from a few hours to several days.”

The two listeners kept an interrogative silence.

“Medical science catalogs catalepsy as a very rare disease, about which, frankly speaking, the doctors don’t know much,” he said with the trace of a smile. “My personal theory is that people predisposed to such states actually have some special abilities which they don’t know how to control. I shared this theory with Eva and suggested a few yoga exercises, and she was very excited with this idea. Unfortunately, she was a... indecisive, undisciplined person, with a weak and not well-defined personality. When I realized that, I told her she needed to limit herself to simple exercises, nothing more. But she refused to listen, she thought she had miraculous powers. You see, she had misinterpreted my advice and that idea got stuck in her mind.

She overstepped the mandatory stages any yoga practitioner is compelled to follow and tried
meditation exercises and other procedures, which are strictly reserved only for the very advanced practitioners, with a particular mental structure. She wanted to achieve too much, too quickly, something that wasn’t for her and that finally destroyed her,” he added with a strange regret in his voice.

Stunned, Clara asked, almost whispering, “Do .... do you mean Eva is dead?”

The priest absently turned the bracelet between strong fingers.

“
Death
is another relative word... I believe the spirit, like plants, is bound in a permanent cycle of transformations. It ends an existence through death and starts another, in a different plane. It’s possible Eva is somehow trapped between two planes of existence. She cannot end her present existence, but neither can she pass into the next one.”

“Like the people lost in the Philadelphia Experiment, never to be seen again…” Colin remarked.

The couple remained silent for a time, deeply shaken by the man’s words and their significance. After a while, Clara asked:

“But why me? I mean... why did she try to contact me, precisely?”

The grey gaze fixed on her was hypnotic.

“Because you are very responsive. Telepathically. A yoga practitioner recognizes another,”
he clarified.

“But I only do a minimum of exercises with the purpose of maintaining my health and
psychological balance.”

“Yes, but you have a huge potential, don’t you feel it?” he told her. “Don’t you wonder why you
sometimes know what other people think, what they intend to say even before they say it? Why certain persons can transmit to you feelings or powerful emotions and vice versa? You could reach a very high level if you’d want to.”

“But I don’t,” she replied. “Maybe it’s a simple, narrow-minded philosophy, but I don’t have
aspirations above my own person. Namely, I’m satisfied with being physically and mentally healthy, calm and happy, as much as possible. I don’t have what it takes to become a
force of nature
and I don’t want to. I cannot understand why and how live fakirs or great masters, who devote their existence to gain powers generally known as 'supernatural'. I’m a simple woman and that’s how I want to stay. The reason we’re here is that we want to know if there’s something to be done for Eva. If it isn’t too late.”

The priest watched her for a silent moment w
ith a humor sparkle in his eyes then said:

“You’re not
at all narrow-minded, nor simple. The philosophy you follow is the wisest. Too bad Eva didn’t understand that. Although you might find it hard to believe,” he continued moving his gaze to Colin, “I myself am a quite simple man, but I have developed and disciplined some of the capacities with which God endows us all. I can’t make miracles happen, but I’ll try to help Eva. If our spirits are strong enough, I’ll help her pass
beyond
, free herself from the mistakes that keep her prisoner.”

The man handed Clara the bracelet.

“Keep it and go. I’ll find you when I’m ready.”

Without further explanations, he turned around and vanished behind the altar.

Thoughtfully, Colin and Clara got out into the dark street, each wondering if the entire experience hadn’t been just the fruit of their imagination. Silently, with the surreal feeling persisting and dozens of uncertainties gravitating in their minds without taking shape or voice, they covered the road to the cottages.

***

Clara was dreaming of a sort of temple, so high that the dome – decorated with abstract shapes and supported by dozens of enormous columns – seemed to dance through the clouds. Statues and sculptures of deities from unknown mythologies were staring impassively into space, frozen into eternity, with uncaring faces of marble.

She advanced with ant steps, insignificant in all that grandeur, trying to reach what her mind
considered
the exit
, a particularly bright sector, but which seemed to distance itself with every touch of her bare feet on the cold marble floor. Somewhere in a corner of her subconscious vaguely sprang a thought that the sound of her footsteps resembled the liquid, tireless echo of stalactites.

Suddenly, from the gigantic arch located at a dizzying height that defied imagination, huge pieces of
marble began to detach and fall with a deafening noise and seismic vibration.

Instinctively, Clara began running to the exit, followed by the apocalyptic collapse of the dome. The
dally of the white dress she wore was fluttering madly behind her, slowing her down, dust of marble and destruction was choking her. Black dots were aligning in front of her eyes and...

She awoke gasping, with a barely suppressed scream in her chest, where her heart was beating fast. Beside
her, Colin was soundly asleep, breathing regularly. Clara took a few deep breaths, exhaling slowly and completely until the frequency of her pulse normalized and her conscious gradually transposed her into reality, blurring the effects of that terrifying dream.

She ran her fingers through her hair, gently massaging her scalp, with her forehead resting on her
knees.

Did such dreams create the monsters from Goya’s sleep of reason?
she wondered, remembering the bizarre marble faces, while she got out of bed, careful not to wake her lover. Then she descended the stairs in darkness, wincing at every creek made by the old wood.

Downstairs everything was motionless. Tony and Morris were probably spending the night outside.
The air had a unique perfume, a harmonious amalgam of smells – the old waxed wood, the unmistakable whiff of ink and paper from the books on the shelves, the sweet aroma of the roses from a vase. All these were subtly taking shape on a background of night and silence, interrupted only by the wall clock that munched time with his monotonous ticking.

Clara thought of a possible title for an abstract painting she was sure Colin’s hands and
imagination could masterfully create:
Fantastic Journey in the Silent Night
.

She walked cautiously to the sink, the touch of her bare feet on the chilly floor constituting an
unpleasant reminder of the strange dream that had awakened her. She rinsed her face with cold water and drank a bit from the nest of her cupped palms. Then she straightened, gazing - absently at first – through the window, hands resting on each side of the sink.

The image she saw beyond the fragile shield of glass seemed detached from a science fiction movie,
or so this thought bloomed in her mind. In another compartment of her subconscious, apparently from nowhere, appeared an idea as clear as an inscription on a plaque:
There is no science fiction, just memories from previous lives
.

Outside, in the dense and almost oppressive darkness, a bizarre vibration seemed to have silenced all
the creatures of the night. In this framework, a male figure dressed in white created a nearly artistic contrast.

Clara recognized intuitively the well-defined profile of the priest, who stood still with his feet under
him, and his hands on his knees, palms up.

However, the most striking element of this picture was not the man, but the semi-transparent and
fluorescent-like figure of a woman, located in front of the priest, in a strange mirror-position, with her palms above his, and her face exuding peace and serenity.

This image
, thought Clara,
this entity has once been a woman named Eva
.

Even while she was thinking this, the woman’s image began to distort, to dissipate. That bright figure
faded gradually, almost imperceptive, until the only traces of light were gravitating above the priest’s palms. Then, slowly, the last rays of light dispersed, letting darkness fall everywhere.