The Borderlands
It all fell apart in west Texas, just like his mother always warned him it would.
The man in the gabardine suit seated at the bar, stirring his coffee with a silver spoon.
Ethan watched himself watch Hunter as Hunter said, “I need a piss.” Hunter headed for the restroom. Ethan watched himself standing at the cash register at the end of the bar, uncertain whether to seat himself. He felt Jack Allen’s presence at his elbow.
But then something new happened.
Jack Allen said, “Good job last night. You and the girl accomplished more than I ever did.”
Ethan turned his head. Jack Allen was smiling at him, but unlike the first time Ethan came to this cafe, he didn’t feel himself trapped in the man’s thrall. Ethan could look away, could look at the clock behind the bar. It was still 2:02.
“Don’t worry, I can’t hurt you,” Jack Allen said. “We can’t change anything about these early hours. Until the silver light strikes at four, you’re just living in the past. But we can make a little time for ourselves, I think. Now that you’re a little more like me.”
So, Ethan thought, and recalled the sensation of silver turning to water on his tongue. This is the power of The Chief’s mirror.
“Why should I talk to you?” Ethan said.
“Because you’ve changed, Mister Cross. You seem… tougher. Clearer. Like you’ve finally decided to grow up.”
Ethan said nothing.
“And you’re curious. You want to know why this is happening. Why I do the things I do. Why I am the way that I am.” Jack Allen sipped his coffee. “Tell me—do you think I was surprised when Miss Hewitt blew off my head with your shotgun?”
Ethan thought of the way this man’s spectral form had clung to his shoulder last night shortly before the mountain exploded.
The way he’d seen a glimpse of Jack Allen standing in the parking lot of the motel, two nights ago, when the power had stuttered.
The way Ryan Phan had sworn he’d seen Jack Allen’s face superimposed over Stan Holiday last night, when the big man had killed Fernanda and tried to kill Ryan himself.
Ethan said, “No. You’re always there, aren’t you? Like a ghost or something.”
“Or something, yes. I exist in a state even I still struggle to understand. Here and not. Alive and dead. At midnight, my body is given corporeal form and I can undertake my work. Until then, however, I can only bear witness.”
“But if you’re some kind of all-seeing spirit, how come you never found where Penelope was hiding until last night?”
A frown crossed Jack Allen’s face. He looked at the clock, seeming almost embarrassed. “She was… well concealed.”
“It’s like she knew you were coming. Her, or that little girl who was with her.”
“What little girl?”
Ethan grinned. “So you can’t see everything.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jack Allen’s smile returned, though it didn’t light up his eyes.
“Penelope has eluded me for an eternity, but now I know where to find her, thanks to you and Miss Hewitt. I knew I was right to let Kyla kill me. To let you people think you were safe. You found what I never could, and now I can complete my work.”
Outside, the world was frozen in the middle of a breeze. Scrub grass was bent back in surprise. A veil of dirt hung over the hood of a glossy black Buick Roadmaster.
Jack Allen was right: Ethan did have questions. “And what is your work?”
“Let me ask you a question first. Do you understand what you saw last night? That silver energy bursting from the mountain?”
“The end of the world.”
“I’m sure that’s what Tabitha told you. She’s a weak-minded woman, almost worse than her brother and her father and their loathsome Chief.
All of them lacked imagination, just like their ancestors before them.
What you witnessed last night at four o’clock was the fulmination of a power beyond our comprehension.
You saw the awakening of Te’lo’hi. You saw a god in truth. ”
It sleeps.
It wakes.
Jack Allen said, “Te’lo’hi radiates enough power to fuel the ceremony in which we are all ensnared.
Hundreds of years ago, the old tribe of the mountain, the twins’ ancestors, used the god’s power to seal it away on this, the night of its full awakening.
The tribe was terrified of what the god might do.
They couldn’t fathom the potential of its power. ”
Ethan remembered the brilliance, the terror, of that silver light. “Maybe they had the right idea.”
Jack Allen grinned. “Oh, come on, son. Don’t have second thoughts now. Last night you were so eager to break the ceremony. To be free.”
Ethan said nothing.
“Let me tell you a story. One cold night in 1955—almost fifty years ago to the day, come to think of it—a group of strangers checked into the Brake Inn Motel. They never checked back out. As the night grew colder, they listened in horror as the mountain moaned. They saw the Guardians circling at the edge of the light, the creatures that ensured none could leave the ceremony once it began. The guests watched in horror as the silver light burst from the mountain. They watched the end of the world.”
A look of genuine unease passed over Jack Allen: the memory still haunted him.
“And then it started all over again, not that we realized that at first. We lived through the same nightmare, night after night after night. It worked, until it didn’t.
There was one glaring problem with the plan the twins’ father and the old Chief had devised.
The souls ensnared by the ceremony must want to be there.
It’s the reason the first ceremony, the one undertaken by the old tribe, lasted for hundreds of years before our ceremony was required: the Natives had agreed to be trapped.
But in ’55, we were ignorant, unwilling, unwitting participants.
And over time, the ceremony started to collapse because of it. ”
Ethan said, “You realized what was happening. Just like we have.”
“Precisely. I began to realize it, along with Miss Hewitt’s grandfather, but there were problems. You’ve probably figured it out by now, but a death is required for this to work.
For Te’lo’hi’s power to be harnessed. In your time, that death belongs to Sarah Powers.
In ours, it was The Chief, the elder Chief, who had his throat slit by the twins’ father, there in the bathtub of room five.
For some reason, the ceremony has to be performed afresh every night, but me and Miss Hewitt’s grandfather could never regain our memories in time to stop The Chief’s death from taking place.
We learned the purpose of the eggs, but we had no idea what to make of the mirror we found in the old house.
We found ourselves trapped once more, only now with the knowledge that we were trapped.
The elder Mister Hewitt found a way to maintain his dignity.
I was…” Jack Allen’s smile: those teeth grinding together like stones.
“I was less fortunate. I’m sorry to say, but I went rather off my head. ”
Ethan looked at the clock. 2:02.
He said, “You killed them, didn’t you?”
“Am I truly that predictable?” Jack Allen acted shocked.
“Why yes, I’m afraid I did. I killed them all, one by one: the newlyweds, the backpackers, the twins, their father, the lady lovebirds.
I killed them all. And wouldn’t you know it, when everyone but me was dead, I heard a noise coming from the old house.
Past the locked door, down in the basement, I discovered the stone door standing open.
The seal had broken. The city in the mountain—it awaited me. ”
Ethan thought of the hot white stone wall in the basement of the house, the pale grooves broken by the shape of a tall rectangle. Kyla had been right: the city did wait on the other side.
Jack Allen said, “Te’lo’hi, the god of the mountain, rests in the city’s heart. I saw it, Mister Cross. I was granted audience with a being beyond space, beyond time. I beheld its grandeur. I took a sip of its power. I tried to take more, and see what it did.”
Jack Allen held up his scarred finger, the one that ended at the second joint.
“I only had a few moments with Te’lo’hi.
Because when four o’clock arrived, to my surprise, things started over again, although now I took the shaded form you saw last night.
I discovered that I’d broken one ceremony, only to be dragged into another.
Because time had been passing outside the ceremony, of course, and somehow Sarah Powers realized that a new one was required, or that the existing one needed repair. It’s probably why…”
Jack Allen trailed off, seemingly lost in a new thought.
Ethan shook his head. “So you’re trying to kill us all again so that you have ‘audience once more.’ Are you insane? A creature that powerful—do you want to lose your whole hand this time?”
“No. I understand it better now. What Tabitha and the others never grasped is that Te’lo’hi is a young god.
It is… pliable. Frightened, even. It’s why it makes those horrible noises—those bellowing moans—as it begins to awaken.
The god is powerful and it is afraid. Nothing is easier to control than a frightened child, believe you me. ”
Ethan stared at Jack Allen.
“You see where this is going, Mister Cross. You’ve known all along.
I will become a god in truth. When I am granted audience with Te’lo’hi, I know what to do this time.
I will drink deep of The Lake That Travels.
I will ascend. I will use the power of my godhood to remake this world in my image.
I will bend time to suit my whims. I will be king over death and consequence.
I will have my family back, Mister Cross.
I will have the life that was taken from me, and I will have my revenge on those who stole it.
” Fury leaked through the cracks in Jack Allen’s smile.
“Mine will be a world of precision and elegance. Mine will be a world free from doubt.”
“How in the hell is that supposed to work?”