Authors: Nicholas Grabowsky
Tags: #Fantasy, #Horror, #Paranormal, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Suspense, #General
He continued, and in doing so, he proceeded to explain what I did not know and what I already knew, my past, present, future, my situation with him and my destiny in the tasks which I have even then performed by my very presence there and the tasks that I was to perform still, for his sake, for the sake of my wife, myself, and for the sake of time untold.
***
He explained to me a few things. Only a few. Everything else I needed desperately to know would be explained to me soon, over the course of time and over the hours I would spend in the endeavor I was about to undertake, with his help, for his benefit and for the benefit of all involved. He was about to explain to me that I was about to do this for him and willingly, I might add, though the way he imposed this upon me came about so naturally that likewise naturally I could not refuse him. To refuse him was inevitably to refuse what I had come there for, or rather what he summoned me there for. I had come there for many reasons, but he, I found, had summoned me there for a matter of utmost importance, a matter I was as of yet very much unaware.
I was about to become aware.
And this was how the Watcher made me thus.
This was what he explained:
“Although you may not have said very much, you must have thought a great deal, ‘cause I’ve gotten a Goliath of a headache from your thoughts, Mister UFO Busybody, Mister Detective or Private Investigator or whatever you call yourself. For starters, don’t get the idea that I’ve achieved this mental capability from something as mundane or universal as evolution. I am not a being as simple as having been evolved from humanity’s future, am not an example of what you guys are gonna look like a thousand years from now, am not a volunteer space cadet on a rescue mission to preserve the species,
any
species, except maybe to preserve my own interests for the time being. Any preconceived notions you have learned or heard or yearned for can be put to rest right now, before we begin, before you fuck things up with limited vision and observation. You terrestrial people, for crissake...always looking for something beyond yourselves for the answers to everything. The answers are right where you are. Right where you’ve always been. And they’ve always been there
with
you.
“For instance, this reading of minds....you can do it, too. It’s not something the human mind will
evolve
into. It’s a matter of tapping your strengths. It’s a matter of
needing
to tap into your strengths to do so. It’s also a matter of fucking things up if you don’t know how to control it. People will learn all about that, in time. Don’t try too hard to harness it. Remember, everything is meant to be.
“Oh... you haven’t learned that yet, have you? Don’t worry, I’ll teach you all about things
meant to be
. That’s pretty much the core of why I’ve sent for you.
“You see, there is something I need you to do for me. That is where this business of typewriters comes in, that is the purpose of that typewriter at the desk behind you. Funny things, typewriters. Typewriters, computers, word processors, the pen. Not just mightier than the sword, I should say. They’re mightier than diddlydamn Doomsday. Words and the conveying of words, thoughts which are essentially preconceived words,
communication
, all are the building blocks of the universe. AND GOD
SAID.....
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE
WORD
, and so forth.
“You following me?
“Oh, and sorry for calling you Uncle. My sarcasm is vented through my circumstance. All that shall be explained in the task which I am about to ask of you, what you are about to write for me on that typewriter behind you. It’s a magic typewriter; I say
magic
only in the context of showmanship, in being the master magician you have foreseen me to be. I made use of that very typewriter to project that letter you received from me into the one on your wife’s desk, the one you woke up to.
“And you, my friend, are about to write a story for me, which will be projected from that typewriter to another one back in time, back six months ago, because we need to reset the course of
things meant to be
. If you don’t do this, we’re all fucked. You, your wife, a few other people you may be familiar with throughout all that UFO research of yours, and, not to mention me. I am risking my goddamn neck for this. Other Watchers, guys like me, that look like I do, serve a certain important purpose once they become the way I became. That purpose isn’t to meet with UFO researchers in remote motels to dictate international bestselling novels. I can get in deep shit for this, if this doesn’t work out the way we want.
“We have very little time. We must work fast. I have a story to tell, a story you may find yourself partially familiar with, a story you never knew had been going on amidst your kind, right under your noses. Right smack dab under my own, I might add, in my last life as one of you.
“In this story, you’ll find the answers you seek, as long as you do what I say, type what I say, and you’ll find yourself unlocking an entire
ecosystem
of doors, let alone a
boulevard
.
“And when we are finished, we shall experience the results, hopefully the fruits, of our combined efforts. Let us kick ass together, my friend.
“Are you ready....?
“Do you understand...?”
5.
No True Beginnings
True beginnings are but simple reflections of what had always been, mirrored images of similar beginnings enacted time and again in ceaseless encore. Every beginning owes its existence to another beginning before it, ultimately reaching deeper into eternity past. Locate a mirror, if you will, and see for yourself.
Where does your reflection begin? Does it begin with the mirror before you, or with yourself within the mirror?
If you were to pause, curiously and attentively, before the mirror of your own beginnings, you just might catch the sight of your infinite self. Either that, or of something watching you from out of the corner of your eye.
I became aware of my own perspiration as I readied before the electric typewriter in anticipation of the Watcher’s first words. My fingers poised and hovering less than a centimeter above the keys, I curled them tightly into clenched fists several times to keep them from trembling.
Previous to this, my Master Magician revealed to me what seemed to be many things, perhaps not in their entirety, but in any case just about as much as I needed to understand at the time. He assured me everything else, all the major importances, would be revealed in time.
As long as I did as he requested.
And they
were
requests, not orders.
They were only, in the end, orders put in force by
myself
, requests that I required myself to obey to the fullest and with the most complete of faiths, because they adhered to my interests and to the interests of those around me which I held dear. This had been no kidnapping, not of my wife nor myself, no frivolous runaround the likes of which swelled within the deep, back edges of my sanity as I had feared. This had been a desperate plea for help, from a Watcher to a human, a human who had made himself involved long ago, a human who had been involved unawares (at least to a knowledge of
this
extent) and maybe the
only
human who could side with and cooperate with a being such as Mister Watcher (who, by coincidence, claims to have been human
many
times around...).
One of the insights he had given me within that motel untold led to an offspring of A.J. Erlandson. A.J. was the famous B-movie director who’d been a friend and employer of both my parents, and his son had been an object of mystery and scrutiny to varying degrees in my career.
What I was about to undertake was to write about what the Watcher had revealed to me and the entirety of what he was about to reveal to me still, which, according to our plan, should set the course of events that have already occurred but couldn’t have occurred unless I typed what the Watcher had yet to dictate.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand just yet.
The Watcher remained silent at first and for what seemed to be quite some time.
Then he spoke, his first uttered command before I was to actually start.
“Let’s begin with the son of A.J. Erlandson....”
I began to type, to work the Watcher’s magic.
To learn the whole story of how I ended up here.
To continue the story.
To find out where I’m going
from
here.
And you...you’ve followed me
this
far....
Follow me still, and keep close.
I’ve a story further I’d like to tell you....
“
You shall find out how salt is the
taste of another man’s bread,
and how hard is the way up
and down another man’s stairs.”
-
Dante
6.
Swapping the Story Again
—
August 26, 1994
—
The obscure configuration of a slender shadow stood still
behind the bathroom mirror’s misty residue.
A slight hesitation, a blurred agitation...a sudden, dark sweep....
And then there were eyes.
Smeared from the beads of moisture, yet visible and apparent.
The surrounding dimness provided a welcomed surreal backdrop rather than the otherwise sobering brightness of the vanity light, the nightlight’s orange lucidity reflecting first from pools in lampblack pupils and then from the mirror image itself.
From the image of the eyes.
Staring.
Andrew Erlandson took the towel and gave the mirror a second stroke, then a third.
He continued to stare at himself. At his face. At his stalwart chin and thickset eyebrows. At his pale nudity. At his dark brown hair cut modestly behind the ears giving him a juvenile semblance even more evident in baby’s-butt-smooth flawless skin and a face of innocent charm.
At his twenty-eight-year-old eyes.
Andrew held an ardent fascination for the mysteries behind those eyes.
Some of those mysteries, he believed, could be revealed at the right moments, at the quickest flicker or slightest dilation, if only he could ever just manage to
notice
those revelations some day.
Mysteries inhabiting the
darkness
beyond those eyes.
And the darkness itself was indeed another fascination as well. There was something oddly mutual about human eyes and darkness, something curiously ironic.
Andrew wondered what it was.
Quite often, he wondered.
But his thoughts scattered with a knocking at the bathroom door, and in the abruptness he answered; timidly, although thoroughly annoyed.
“What is it?”
A voice, Ralston Cooper’s half-drunken slur, echoed from behind the door. “I got the manuscript myself, Andy-man. Found it. On your desk, in your bedroom. You knew it was there, didn’t you? I got a gig at
The Crow Job
, man. You almost screwed it up, makin’ me wait for you to get outta the goddamn shower.”
Ralston’s voice trailed, faded. He was headed for the living room, possibly for the front door.
Impatient bastard
, Andrew thought, but did not answer. Andrew threw the towel onto the toilet seat and lazily reached for the mound of clothes piled upon the hamper to his side.