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Coven at World's End
Six
Beth drove slowly through the gloomy hollow that exited to a brighter
but harsher version of the world, one of an infinite number in the quantum
rainbow of the universe, the world of ordinary human beings some six
billion strong.
Sarah claimed awareness of a fork in the road,
although not in the physical sense of the word. Beth had personally never
sensed its presence, although she could bypass the so-called gateway
entirely if she maintained conscious awareness of the destination of her
choice on the way through. Bypassing the gateway leaving World's End was an
amusing prospect. A short distance beyond the invisible gateway, the
road simply ended.
Dr. Vladimir Corellian's nursing home located on the outskirts of Oak
Grove sprawled across a neat lawn with four wings extending out from a
glass-domed solarium. A query at the main desk earned her a finger
pointed down one of the wings and a room number.
She avoided looking through open doors as she proceeded down the north
hall, and tried as well to block the startled surprise her passage ignited
in the resident of each room. The atmosphere of the facility was awash in
consciousness diminished by age. With no future to look forward to, its
occupants were preoccupied with memories of the past. Any passing
stranger, for at least a brief moment, bore a resemblance to a daughter or
a long dead mother. Fear of death and dying fogged the clarity of their
thoughts. Few could sense the veil of death and anticipate the adventure yet to
come. The ordinary world contained few souls advanced enough to sense the
nature of their existence beyond the limited perception of time and space
provided by the biological senses. Other minds in her vicinity emptied by
neurological degeneration simply twitched with the chemical whims of vague
emotion and were of less burden to her.
She found Dr. Corellian sitting in a wheelchair in his room with a
blanket neatly folded across his lap. He looked out a sunny window, but
the mind behind the eyes saw nothing. Beth felt a stab of distress seeing
his wasted face and blank expression. For an instant, she thought her
visit wasted.
Her shoe brushing the hard floor caught his attention. Unexpectedly,
awareness flared to life. He looked up briskly, and Beth was pleasantly
surprised to find herself in the company of a reasonably intact human
being. He smiled, eager for company and delighted by a visitor.
A trembling hand came up. A finger pointed with mock accusation.
"Lisa, is that you?" He wagged his finger when she opened her mouth to
correct his misperception. "No, you can't be Lisa." He chuckled.
"Elizabeth, the daughter. Only Lisa's daughter could be so beautiful."
"You remember me," she said in surprise.
He frowned. "Have we met?"
They had met once or twice years ago, although she doubted if her
presence among a small group of the Coven had registered on the man. "Do I look that much like my mother?" she said, wondering
how much he remembered of the past.
"You do. I remember everything of your mother. She
told me marvelous fantasies of a place called World's End."
"I'm here to hear about those stories, Dr. Corellian."
His smile faded. Inside, stubborn reluctance mounted. Too many had
scoffed at his stories to risk more hurt. And somewhere deep, she could
feel her mother's admonishment to silence at work in his psyche.
"My mother is dead," Beth said. "What harm can it do?"
He looked down and shook his head sadly. "No harm. No harm at all."
He looked back up with a furrowed brow. "You want to hear of World's
End? Is that why you are here?"
Beth gave him a tolerant smile. "Doctor, I live in World's End. I
would like to hear what my mother had to say about the destruction of the
Coven."
Dr. Corellian's lower jaw fell lax. "You live in World's End? But I
thought World's End a fantasy."
"We've tried to tell you it wasn't. You would never listen
to us."
"How could I believe you? I asked to pay a visit. Your
friends, the ones who called themselves the Coven, refused."
Beth sighed. "You were closed to the possibility World's End
existed. Denial makes a visit impossible, Doctor. My mother's
story was of a nightmare. You felt safer suppressing any temptation
to be impartial."
He sighed. "That is so."
"You would never speak of my mother's illness. I am here to ask once
last again. It is very important that I know as much as I can of
what happened, more so than you can imagine."
His thoughts dwelled on those distant memories. Beth could feel them
stirring. Fear came to his eyes.
"There were several deaths," he said. "I suspected an unknown
bacterial or viral infection with psychopathogical consequences, to tell
you the truth. By the time I asked for outside help, it was too late.
The dying and the killing had ended. We had no disease control centers to
turn to for help at the time. I studied your mother in hopes of
uncovering the physical basis for her dementia in an indirect manner."
"Did you find anything?"
The old man shook his head gravely. "Given the state of medicine at
the time, I would never have been able to isolate or identify the
antibodies of an infectious agent, so I concentrated instead on
identifying the nature of the neurological damage that may have occurred.
I had many questions for your mother. I asked them as a doctor, and by
the time I assured myself that she was not insane, I knew her as a
friend."
"Anything she may have told you about an attack upon World's End would
be of use to me."
He shook his head absently. "I confess I became utterly entranced by
your mother's fantasies. Some of her stories were wondrous, and others
starkly terrible. Surely, something had traumatized her. I could not
determine exactly what. It caused her to withdraw into herself more and
more, as if she were retreating into a place of refuge. The intensity of her fear never seemed to diminish. I wish there
had been something I could have done for her."
"I wish you had confided in us sooner," Beth said.
He gave her a furtive look. "I promised your mother not to speak of
the matter until after her death. She said the information would
harm the purpose the Coven serves, which neither would she explain. Of what use is any of it to anyone
now?"
"It may be happening again," Beth said bluntly. "Without
understanding what happened thirty years ago, I can't say for sure."
"Vladimir, then. Call me Vladimir. It's true, perhaps, that I should
let you be the judge of such matters."
"Vladimir. Why the change of heart now?"
Vladimir glanced at her with a haunted look. "A spur of the moment
decision, young woman. The fools here say I'm dying, and you, too, try to
make me believe that World's End is not a fantasy. So be it. Show me
World's End and I will tell you everything.
"Blackmail?" she said with a smile, trying to make light of his ploy.
Vladimir failed to be amused. "I no longer disbelieve it
exists. I hope with quiet desperation that it does, that there's
more to the world than I have known. Your mother said this was the
case. I would not be so afraid of death if I could see World's End
for myself. Is it as beautiful as your mother said
it is?"
"Every bit as beautiful."
"Take me to World's End and I will tell you what your mother told me of
the nature of the deaths that occurred."
Beth sighed in exasperation, then turned and left the room. Vladimir
radiated desperation, fearing that she was abandoning him. World's End
had become an obsession with him down through the years. He thought about
little else.
But he refused to call her back. The little knowledge of Lisa's
fantasies he possessed was all he had to work with in his bid for freedom.
Beth stopped a nurse at the central desk. "Will it be possible for Dr.
Corellian to leave for a short period of time to visit friends. I can
have him back by evening."
The nurse eyed her suspiciously. "Are you family?"
"I'm just a friend."
The nurse shook her head irritably. "I'm afraid that won't be possible
considering the Doctor's age and medical condition." She rattled off the
appropriate regulations in clipped tones.
Beth returned to Vladimir's room to consider her next course of
action. Oblivious to her presence, Vladimir stared off into space, lost
in the past. She used her moment of autonomy to close her eyes and clear
her mind. She relaxed with a sigh and concentrated upon the visual image
of an electric blue mantra, one of a selection of many that she had
memorized in detail.
Fifteen miles
away, or perhaps a universe away, Rebecca Sagget paused at her
computer. Using a sequence of mental images and emotional tags to
each, Beth conveyed her need to
remove Dr. Vladimir Corellian from the nursing home unseen and take him to
World's End for questioning. Rebecca closed the file she was working on,
rose to her feet, and turned to leave the house.
Beth exited the light trance and found Dr. Corellian staring at her.
"You are going to take me from this place after all," he said in
amazement.
Beth pulled a wooden chair around. It would take Rebecca a half hour
to make the short journey. "What did my mother tell you of World's End,
Doctor?"
Vladimir folded his hand in his lap and beamed at her. "Lisa told me
of world untouched by human hands. She spoke of a village or a town near a river
with veins of gold showing in the rock and precious jewels scattered in
its bed. I asked her when the gold would be mined and the jewels
collected. She told me that material wealth was of no value in World's
End and that nobody wanted to diminish the beauty of their environment by
removing it. I cannot imagine human beings behaving so selflessly. If
only it could be."
Tears formed in his rheumy eyes. "I've seen the face of madness in my
time. Your mother did not fit the pattern."
"She was catatonic for the last decade of her life," Beth reminded
him.
The old man gazed at her anxiously. "And you say it may be
happening again?"
"I don't think so," Beth said firmly, for his benefit as well
as her own. "We have a problem. We have no reason to believe
it will be so serious as my mother's experience."
Vladimir tried to push himself to his feet. "Please help me up. I
want out of here."
The gaunt frame trembled mightily but had not the strength to lift
itself off the seat of the wheelchair. Beth calmed him with a hand on his
arm. She turned his wheelchair about. "I noticed a pleasant solarium up
the hall. Shall we visit?"
"Yes, please."
Vladimir slouched in his seat with his hands clasped on the plaid
colored blanket. Beth wheeled him down the quiet corridor. By the time
they reached the glass-roofed solarium, he had dozed off. Light dreams
flitting through his dimmed awareness. Beth looked up at the afternoon
sun, distracted in that peaceful moment by an age-old mystery.
The sun of World's End was almost, but not exactly the same sun of the
ordinary world. The sun of World's End was slightly larger and slightly
cooler, more of an orange than a fellow hue. Neither were the constellations in the night sky of the two
worlds completely in agreement, an indication that the universe of World's
End was not quite the same universe inhabited by the ordinary world.
Nobody understood how the stable gateways joined the two worlds together
so seamlessly, or what the subtle variations signified.
Rebecca pulled into the circular drive of the nursing home in her blue
Mercedes sedan ten minutes later. The flamboyant strawberry blonde with
her hourglass figure should have caught and held the attention of any
number of male nurse's aids as she crossed the parking lot and entered the
building. Instead, she failed to attract any attention
at all. Beth's own awareness of Rebecca's presence lapsed entirely unless
she kept her gaze fixed steadily upon the approaching woman.
Rebecca's own gaze was trancelike. Unblinkingly, she habitually stared
straight ahead and made no effort to focus her eyes on any particular
object or person in her field of vision. Diagnosed as autistic in
childhood, the woman did not live or function in the same kind of
conscious reality as most people. Beth did not understand how an apparent
handicap gave her so many of her personal powers, but the gift come in handy when the need to
move unseen in the ordinary world was paramount.
Rebecca entered the solarium and extended her protection to include
Beth and Dr. Corellian. When awareness of their presence in the minds of
passersby faded away, Rebecca turned briskly around and took the lead back
outside. Beth swung Dr. Corellian about in his wheelchair and hurried
after her.
Outside in the warm sunshine, Vladimir snapped awake and looked about
wildly. Beth steered him to her Subaru sedan and opened the back door. With a
smile of unrestrained joy on his face, the old man gathered the strength
to stand and help himself into the rear passenger's seat. Beth drew the seat
belt across his frail body and latched it in place. The old man's hands
flitted about like bothersome moths, trying to hurry her progress.
Rebecca turned away to her own car and drove away without a word. Beth
sent a warm feeling of appreciation out to her. Pywacket, who was curled
on Rebecca's still warm chair before her computer in World's End, raised
its head and gave a friendly cry of greeting, then settled back down and
purred with quiet dignity.
Vladimir, like every other inhabitant of Oak Grove would have aged and
died within walking distance of World's End without ever suspecting its
presence so close at hand. The doctor was alert on the drive through the
sunny countryside outside the small down. "Watch the countryside," Beth
advised as they passed through the hollow and swept up the other side.
They emerged into golden sunlight, and Vladimir caught the discrepancy
in the lighting without hesitation. He cried out in surprise, saw the
tall poplars lining the horizon and cried out again. Beth was impressed
by both his visual and mental acuity. Outsiders seldom noticed the subtle
variations of World's End aside from a vague awareness of something
amiss. The human mind refused to acknowledge a drastic and potentially
traumatic alteration of one's ordinary surroundings. The contractors who
came and went during the construction of World's End had questioned
nothing but the strange conditions of their employment. The Council had
ordered all construction supplies delivered prior to the pounding of a
single nail, or pouring of a single cubic yard of concrete. Members of
World's End had accompanied each of the otherwise impossible deliveries.
Only then had the contractors arrived, living in tents until the
completion of their contracts before leaving World's End with their
payment and diminished memories of the rural community in which they had
toiled. Vladimir, though, had replayed Lisa's description of World's End
so often in his mind's eye that he had recognized the changes in an
instant.
Rather than stop at the house as she had intended, Beth drove instead
through town and continued down the dirt lane tunneling through the
massive oaks. She turned off the narrower lane where Sarah and Leonard
had been accosted by the fairies. Instead of the dark cove of trees that
Sarah had described, the more familiar path leading down into golden
sunlight presented itself. Water sparkled in the late afternoon glow from
below.
"The river!" Dr. Corellian cried. "It truly exists!"
The Subaru's four-wheel drive allowed Beth to negotiate the river bank
and park along the shore. She switched off the motor. Vladimir raised a
trembling hand and pointed, struck silent by shock and disbelief. Across
the shallow width of rushing water, an eroded cliff of rock stood warmed
by the setting sun. The vein of solid gold well known to the residents of
World's End gleamed its rich metallic color in the sunlight.
Beth left the car and circled around to open Vladimir's door. She
helped him out and eased him down the slope of the embankment to stand at
the edge of the water. Assured that he could hold his own balance
for a time, she kicked off her shoes and waded barefoot into the clear water
in search of an interesting stone. There were semiprecious gems available
if she searched thoroughly enough, but the simple silicon crystal would be
enough to validate her mother's story of the river and its isolation from
the ordinary world of mankind.
Dr. Vladimir Corellian accepted the gift reverently with cupped hands.
"How can this be?" he cooed in childlike wonder.
But then his eyes unfocused. He frowned, and his mood darkened. "But
if this is true..."
If paradise existed, then so did Lisa's nightmare. "We need to know
what frightened my mother," Beth said. "Please tell me everything."
Vladimir looked up at her in shock. "Demons. She spoke of demons."
Beth helped him back to the car and waited for his upset to calm. "Can you be more specific?" she
said.
Vladimir stared off through the windshield of the car. "If there are
two worlds rather than one, then there must be many rather than just
two." He looked back up at her. "And one I have been told is a dark and
very terrible place."
"A world of demons?"
Vladimir grimaced. "A world of parasites. Predators. Your mother
said they prey upon human souls."
"My mother may have used that word," Beth said. "We avoid terms that
associate with old schools of thought."
Beth did not have the time to explain fully. She doubted if the doctor
would have the patience for an explanation. The undifferentiated
consciousness of the psychic void was the background of the universe.
Structured consciousness gave rise to perception of the so-called
objective physical
universe in which creatures of
flesh and blood preyed upon one another in their blind need for
sustenance. Behind that facade, creatures existed who preyed upon
the mind in the same manner, creating their reality by stealing from the
efforts of others?
The scenario of such predators loose in the world was horrible,
but Lisa had not been driven insane by
simple fear. "What did she say happened to her?" Beth
asked.
"Your mother said she had been touched by a demon."
"She herself was attacked?"
"Attacked and wounded," Vladimir said. "She claimed that a part of her
psyche had been stolen from her, and that it had left a wound that would
not heal in this lifetime."
"Then it was this invasion that caused the deaths in Oak Grove and
surrounding communities?"
"No. The infection caused madness. The madness caused the
murder of innocents."
"My mother used the word infection?"
"Infection and infestation." Vladimir spoke in a whisper of
awe. "Lisa told me of a great battle."
"Did my mother say that she participated in this battle?"
"She said the Coven played a role. She seemed very pleased and not at all concerned by her own injuries
nor the deaths that had occurred. She said it could have been so much
worse. She said the world itself could have been destroyed, my
world, the world she described as innocent and protected."
Vladimir's strength was failing rapidly. Beth selected one final
question from among a thousand pressing for an answer. "Did my mother
tell you in what manner this attack took place?"
Vladimir gave a reluctant nod. "The demons took the form of dark
temptations. They took the form of shadows."
"Shadows in Jungian terms?"
"The dark side of the human psyche," Vladimir said. "Dark
fears and dark hungers, fed to the mind like memes. This was the
nature of the virus she described."
"Toward what end?"
"Lisa said that the parasites destroyed a mind from within by
causing the weak to betray themselves, succumbing to manipulations of those
dark fears and dark hungers. Parts of the psyche weakened by dissociation could then be
scavenged by the parasites like wreckage from a broken machine."
"Why weren't the children affected? I remember very little of
what happened except that we were left alone."
"Innocence, I would imagine," Vladimir said. "A nice word for
ignorance. You had nothing the demons could turn against you at that
age. I remember that Lisa said the young would be unaffected and
that they would need help if it happened to them when a new Coven was
formed."
"Nobody survived to warn us." Beth closed
her eyes. It was a memory of a time that would haunt her forever,
but she shook it all off. The story was more than she could accept at face value. She had no way
to validate it here and now, and no reason to entertain idle nightmares
without sufficient reason.
"It's not true, is it?" Vladimir asked, seeing the upset in
her expressed and transfixed by sudden terror. "Such an
invasion could destroy the world."
"If it happened as my mother told it to you, it's enough that the Coven
triumphed over this evil."
Vladimir nodded eagerly. He gazed at her steadily for a time. "Is it
true that all the residents of World's End are women?"
"There are no men here except for those who visit."
"Lisa said I would forget all that I have seen if I leave. Is that
true?"
"We have no control over the loss of memory," Beth said.
Vladimir stared at the vein of gold. "I would remain here, if I
could, if I would not be a burden."
"You would not be a burden."
"Because you sense that I am dying."
Beth sighed. "Yes. You are dying and
it would not inconvenience World's End to allow you to live out what
remains of your life here."
He looked about the evening landscape nervously. "I
would not wish to be a burden," he said softly.
"Your death will be a burden to no one," Beth said.
"Death is not what you imagine it to be."
Vladimir smiled weakly, exhausted by his own excitement.
Beth drove back to World's End. She parked in front of the home
of Cora Seek, World's End's only resident nurse. Awareness of the
doctor's visit had already circulated through the collective consciousness
of World's End. Cora hurried down the sidewalk of her house, beaming
her pleasure at the honor of caring for a distinguished guest.
Beth helped Cora walk the old man to the house and make him comfortable
inside. Cora followed her back out to the car. "You don't
think it's true do you, that it might ever happen again?"
"Let's hope not. How long does he have?"
Cora sighed. "Not long. The transition has already begun. The
excitement has drained resources he cannot replenish."
"I was not certain bringing the doctor here was the right thing to do."
Beth stared off down the street, lost in a thousand thoughts vying for her
attention.
"It is clear to all that he will die fulfilled," Cora said. "We
needed the information he provided."
Beth thought out the complications his death would cause in the
ordinary world.
"I'll have the Council assign someone to cover up his absence at the
nursing home," Cora said. "He's going to want to be buried here.
We can honor that request."
Beth nodded her appreciation. "I'll be calling a meeting of the Council as soon as
I've finished with this. We'll need to know in detail what the doctor may
remember about the destruction of the Coven. Encourage him to talk as
much as he is willing."
A somber atmosphere had descended upon the town since Vladimir
Corellian's arrival. "Its not possible, is it?" Cora balked at asking
or even thinking out the question in more detail.
"All we have is a boy bit on the butt by Sarah's fairies and
Rebecca's uncertainty." Beth forced a
reassuring smile. "Be brave."
"We've always hoped for the best, haven't we?" Cora said. "And
suspected the worse?"
Deep down, Beth sensed that this was the truth of the matter. "You're
probably right."
Cora turned away battling to contain the worse of her fears. Beth
returned home with time to spare before Sarah's return from school. She
spend a quiet moment visualizing and projecting a mantra to signal a
meeting of the Council at dusk. She had no choice but to heed Rebecca's
advice and warn World's End of her findings in a detail psychic rapport
could not convey.
She sensed a few dozen positive responses within World's End.
Reception was more a matter of emotional rapport than distance. Others better able
to facilitate communications would relay the call within World's End and
then in Oak Grove. Psychic communication was possible through the
gateway itself, but only with special talents like Rebecca, and maybe
Sarah. When the meeting concluded, minutes of the meeting would
be transmitted from Oak Grove to those too far away in the ordinary world
to have attended in person.
Beth sat at the kitchen table sipping tea and thinking dark thoughts.
Danger had always shadowed her life. Her years of peaceful existence
within World's End had always carried with it awareness of the unknown
with which they lived. They all put up with the mysterious
artificiality of their lives with pragmatic stoicism, conducting
their day to day affairs as if oblivious to the dark forests looming on
all sides and the unseen forces molding their lives in ways they could not
hope to understand.
And now this, a glimmer of terrible purpose to their lives once again.
The ordinary world was protected from psychic invasion in some unknown
manner. Theirs was not. Did that mean that they served no
other purpose in World's End than as a buffer against invasion from other
worlds?
"Please don't let it be true," she murmured to the stillness of the
golden afternoon. "Don't let it happen again."
