Justin Peacock         Word Count:6988

Void Diamond

by J.B. Peacock

Charlie hung up the phone and scrubbed his bearded face with his palm. He looked down at the his palms side by side. These hands, etched and calloused from two decades of metal work, were going soft as the months went by. He took the last swig from his P.B.R. and tossed it on the pile he had going in the corner of his dining room with a metallic clatter. Lately, especially after the divorce, he had begun to think that the only thing he knew how to do right was drink. He looked at the bills next to the phone. Months overdue. Final notices and glaring reminders of all of his inadequacies. He got up from the dining room table and went to the fridge to grab another Blue Ribbon, but was stopped by the picture of his wife and daughter for a few moments. His eyes began to burn and he tried to suck it up, shove back the tears. The can called to him, silent promises of  golden forgetfulness lay within. It lied to him this time, as it seemed to do more frequently these days. Charlie just could not shake the sadness. The tears threatened to dissolve his resistance, so he lashed out; sweeping the accusatory bills and the treacherous phone into the wall. He slumped in his chair, the emotional outburst reminded him of everything he had lost in the past six months. He wept to match the rain, which dumped in torrents on the little house he would soon lose.

Charlie had worked as a welder out of high school, but after getting married had gotten re-educated. Until the move north, he had been working as a machinist in Texas. His wife, Jessica, had family in Washington state (where she was born and raised) and she had always complained about the heat in Texas. She desperately wanted to be closer to home and her parents. Charlie had never been happy at any job and so had been through a lot of them. Every time he complained about work, Jess would tell him that it was time for a fresh start. He had thought about it a long time, sending out resumes over the web on days when his boss had particularly pissed him off. Nothing much came from it. Then one day a company called Evergreen Bio., a research and development firm out on the Miskatonic Peninsula, called with an offer that was too good to pass up.

Charlie was ecstatic when he heard the news, it seemed his ticket to the promised land, so he leaped. They all packed up and moved out to Aberdeen, where he would be able to commute to the island, but still be able to afford the rent while Jess found a job. The fact that he was a long time Nirvana fan just made his wife roll her eyes.  She was only twenty minutes away from her folks' place, which made it easy to look in on them as their health declined. Charlie had always been an outdoors enthusiast and the opportunity to explore the temperate rain forest was incredible. It was no trouble for the family to adjust to their new life. That is, until Charlie lost his job.

It was no fault of Charlie's, but their lives were capsized after three short months and waves of drear marooned them together in that house. Charlie and Jess tried to keep the difficulties between them from Alex, having their arguments behind closed doors. However, there was no mistaking the feeling of the place as Charlie's unemployment slowly dwindled and Jessica had to pick up more hours. Charlie had sunk into a depression and his beer kept him company. October was the grayest and most hopeless month he had ever experienced. Jess threatened to leave him to himself after he proved absolutely inconsolable. Every time she tried to bring him out of it, he would become increasingly hostile and defensive. She threatened to leave in the middle of October. Charlie panicked, he scrambled to find work and managed to land a production job in Chehalis. The commute was long and Charlie had taken a five dollar per hour pay cut. He arrived at home after work, ate, downed a sixer and hit the hay. Again, he hated it.

Charlie was bitter about the situation, he had really like the Evergreen job. He thought about how shitty things were every morning during his forty-five minute (or more) commute. Every night on his way home, too. He couldn't keep himself from thinking about it, so he started grabbing a six pack after work to have a few on the ride home. By the time he felt the buzz, he was already near home anyway, so he figured it couldn't hurt anything. When Jessica found out that he was drinking and driving home from work, she tore him a new one.

Charlie came in the door after a mercifully short day at work to find Jessica doing laundry, in an unusually cheery mood. It was Friday, the fifteenth. In other words payday. He was in his usual two -week peak that a paycheck brings, about as high-spirited as he got anymore. Seeing her happy brought a smile to his face and he stepped in close to her, slipping his hands around her hips as she folded a blanket. He thought it was the happiest moment they had shared since he lost his job. His hand started to creep softly up and she turned to kiss him. She got close and then she stopped with her lips hovering above his.

She pulled back and her eyes were on fire, the blanket fell in a forgotten pile as she pushed him away. He knew she had smelled the beer and cursed himself. “Drunk? Drunk driving!” She ran out to his truck and retrieved the two remaining members of the squad that had helped him annihilate the boredom of the commute. “Do you know what time it is? Three thirty-five. Guess who's on the road. In her school bus. Coming home. What the fuck do you think you're doing? Its not just our little girl you are putting in harm's way, but isn't that enough?” She shook her head and went to pack their bags. “I am taking Alex to my parent's. You get a grip on your drinking or we are done. I can't see you right now, take a walk!” Charlie did. He wandered the town, trying to figure a way to put them back together. A drink would really do him some good right now, he was sure of it.

He wandered to the nearest place he could get one, a dive bar that was part clubhouse for the local chapter of the Wanton Souls. He knew  one of the members, a barrel-chested hard case with a Z.Z. Top beard named Jim. They were amiable, some of the Wanton Souls had issues with Charlie, but Jim always cooled things down. Charlie didn't exactly know if it was fate, but he and Jim were gonna be good friends, he was certain.

After a couple drinks, Jim bought him a couple more. Before Charlie knew it, three hours had gone by and he arrived home to find his wife and child had left in his absence. He went back to the bar where Jim helped him drown his sorrows into blackness. What a friend.  Charlie spent the next two days sitting and waiting for some sign from his wife that she had cooled down. He thought to call her, but got a little tipsy and decided to wait until he sobered up. He would get sober and want another drink. The cycle continued and all the while, he sank deeper into himself.

Jim rolled by on the third day and tried to liven Charlie up. It was no use, Charlie just blubbered away in self-pity. Jim tried what was every trick in the book to him, but was really just sympathy, which led to berating Charlie, then threats to kick his ass if he didn't suck it up. Finally, Jim told his friend that there was only one thing that would possibly console him. He grabbed a little party favor from his saddle bag and Charlie rode a couple rails to temporary bliss.

The crank was good, Charlie thought. It was his first go 'round and he was hooked. He and Jim made a regular thing out of it and Charlie lost himself in it. They drank and cranked and Jim brought some folks around to liven Charlie up. He almost forgot his troubles. Sometimes, when he was on top of the world, he thought he had grown out of his family anyway. Something whispered to him and the crank helped him to see things more clearly. Jim told him about his plans to get a network going, start an enterprise that Charlie could have a piece of. Charlie hemmed and hawed, but the money seemed good. Especially since his new friends had cost him his livelihood. He had taken some time off of work, but it was getting to be too long and he had to choose between his new life and his work.

One evening, Jim dropped in with the look of a man in trouble. He asked Charlie if he could stay with him, crash on the couch and lay low for a while. Seems he had had some trouble with his hook up and the dude had tried to raw deal him. So things had gone down and now Jim was in trouble. Charlie said he couldn't, that he had to get ready and clean up for the girls to come home, but Jim insisted it would only be a couple days. Charlie told him that he could stay in the basement. As they were heading to set up the basement, Charlie's boss called. He asked if Charlie would be coming in the next day and Charlie offered up an excuse about helping a friend, but that he could be in by Friday. His boss told him not to bother, that his position would be filled by then. So the men took a toot and realized a step on their destiny.

They tweaked and tidied, as is the domestic user's tradition. The basement was full of boxes, but with a little rearrangement they could make it work. The task took infinitely longer due to their state. One would move a box, then the other would move it to a new spot. Then there would be an argument, followed by more crank. Then the process repeated itself. In one heated exchange, Jim threw a lamp at the wall. He had expected it to shatter emphatically, driving the genius of his argument home to his stupid and belligerent cohort, but was shocked to see the lamp break a hole in a thin plywood sheet. It was painted to match the wall and painstakingly flushed within a crevice so that there was no seam, only the appearance of a continuous wall surface. Having found a secret treasure was their delight and they spent a long time arguing about the nature of the conspiracy which led to the opening's existence. Was it aliens or the government watching them? Perhaps a rival club had found their crash pad and was spying. Maybe it was a former opium den, or a purple smurf cave? Their madness was fueled thoroughly and Jim left in a fright, but quickly returned with his gun. He was going in. He held a gun on the opening while Charlie removed the board. He was yelling at Jim to drop the piece, but Jim was deaf to his pleas, focused wholly on the imminent danger that was actually nowhere to be found. Rational thinking and white drugs are not to be found together.

Within the cavity, there seemed to be nothing at all. It was dark and in the heat of his tension, Jim was sure he saw something move. He fired three times at the shadow monsters, which existed only in his sleep-deprived brain. Charlie was scared and amped up, Jim lowered the muzzle of the revolver and turned to see his friends fist where his head should have been. The fist landed squarely between Jim's eyes and he hit the deck, finally resting from the garbage in his system. Charlie got a flashlight and took a bump. Then he investigated the hole.

2

The hole was big enough for Charlie to walk into if he hunched over, about ten feet deep and six feet wide. He was amazed he had never noticed it before. Hovering in the air in the exact center of the space was a black diamond. The diamond was a spot of absence, about four inches on a side. No matter what angle he looked at it from, the thing looked like a shape drawn on paper. It had no dimension to it, it just was there. A black diamond that seemed to suck in the light of his flashlight, casting its shadow on the wall behind it. Charlie grabbed a baseball bat from a box of his things that had never been unpacked and approached the thing cautiously. He twitched and jittered as his nervous reach brought the bat and the diamond together. The bat got near it, then the tip disappeared, sucked into the void like the light. When he pulled it back, the tip of the bat was missing, cleanly removed as if by a laser. He poked the bat at it and let go, expecting the bat to drop to the floor. Instead, it vanished into the diamond entirely, a noodle slurped into the maw of nothingness. He began to hear things, subtle things. He closed his eyes and was instantly asleep. He dreamed and in his dreams were the solutions to his problems.

Two days later, Jim and Charlie awoke ravenous and promptly downed a couple P.B.R.'s and stormed the local diner (after Charlie's solemn apology for breaking Jim's now purple and swollen nose). Over breakfast, Charlie told Jim about the diamond and his plan. Jim heard the news with incredulity and was dismissive until Charlie showed him what he meant. Well fed and back in the basement, Charlie told Jim to pick up the lamp. Jim did so and at Charlie's instruction he thrust the lamp at the diamond. It seemed suspended in midair, but it made sounds like crushing plates as the back of the thing disintegrated. Then it was gone.

“No shit Charlie, I thought you were yanking my chain!”

“Pretty weird, huh? But way cool! Ya know man, I wasn't really sure I saw what I did, I'm glad you are here to see this.”

“Can you get stuff back from it? Seems like its all gone. I wonder where it goes, what's on the other side.”

“We could ask it.”

“What kinda half-baked bullshit is that, 'talk to it...', you are outta your fuckin' mind!”

“Seriously, I heard it last night.”

“No. You heard the same whacked out stuff everyone else does when they're gakked.”

Charlie pulled out his fishbowl and showed Jim what he meant. They  just sat, free basing and listening to the voice in the dark. An image of a corner in hell, brought into the world. They stayed like that for quite some time.

One week, after they discovered the diamond, Charlie's wife finally called him. It didn't take long for her to identify the changes in him, his voice was so different and his mind was all over the place. She knew something was really wrong, worse than the drinking. He made her think of her nephew, who had stumbled into the methamphetamine. As soon as she thought it, she knew it was the truth and that she couldn't see him anymore. She told him that someone would be serving him divorce papers soon, if he called he would never see either of them again and there would be a restraining order. Charlie got off the phone and kicked everyone out. He sat in the dark for a long time, he drank until he threw up and then drank some more. He passed out and would have died alone that night, but the void had tasted his mind. It savored his confusion and misery and would not let such a tasty morsel go. It awoke him with compulsion and he could not fight the urge to get high. So he did. He spent a long time with his misery and the void, talking and talking. He went into a deep depression. Jim came and went, using his house as sort of a staging area for his enterprises. Charlie was a ghost in his own house for quite some time. During this fugue period, he signed his divorce papers and allowed his court dates to go by without attendance. He did not answer the phone anymore. He just smoked and drank and talked, confiding in that bright darkness, it made him feel good. It seemed like it was taking those burdens away. It was eating him alive, each bite a step closer to true bliss.

He went to check his mail the next day and realized it had been quite some time. He discovered a pile of bills and junk mail, but nothing of any good news. Now that he had some time to himself, after god knows how long partying, he tried to get a grip on his finances. It turned out he had none. All of the bills were overdue and most said final notice. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and a calculator. He computed and thought on into the night. Then he discussed it with the void. It was comforting, kind of like a diary. Just throw your thoughts into oblivion. It even comforted him, but not without his ice. That was the only thing that made it talk back to him.

He spent the next few days alone until Jim came around again. He was on the lam again for something related to his lab and needed a place to ditch the heat. Same old story. Jim went into the basement and crashed, leaving Charlie alone with his bills. He grabbed another beer and looked at the stack. He looked at the pile of empties in the corner with disgust, then finished the one in his hand and threw it on with the rest. He swore at himself and wished he were dead. That did not please his friend.

That night, Charlie dreamed of success. His family was back and he was dressed to the nines at a fancy party. The mayor was congratulating him for solving the local area's environmental issues. “...the power plant, the hospital, hell you even broke the monopoly and now we can get a regular pick up for our garbage at a decent rate. You have truly done this town a service.” The mayor took his hand and as he replied in thanks, Jess rubbed his arm and looked at him with a smile. Their eyes met and he saw the love there, just like in the picture. Charlie's sleeping face ran with tears as he wept with the longing for those old feelings. His dream faded with the change in his mood. Now he saw a boy with a shaved head. He seemed to be from some kind of Asian ethnicity or something, he was never good at that stuff. The boy's eyes glowed with silver flames. They came from around his head like a mane. He was awesome to behold and terrifying. He was goodness, the clearest example of it he had ever seen. It was undeniable in the sight of him, almost oppressive. He remembered a time when he would have been inspired with hope at the sight of such a champion for well-being. It concerned him that the aversion he felt might be a bad omen. It scared him, big time. In an instant, the intense young man was gone as well. The rest degraded and he came out of his dream cycle. In the morning, he gathered up the empty cans and decided to throw them into the void. He tossed the sacks in the hole and they disappeared. Then he remembered his dream and he felt the sweet glow of hope once again. It had been too long. He woke up Jim and they tweaked and made fliers. They were going into the waste management industry.

3

They offered twenty-four hour pickup, low rates and disposal of all waste. No questions asked. They grabbed the trash, put it in Charlie's pickup and brought it home to the void. The only condition was that the garbage be able to fit in the cubby hole of the void diamond. For the most part, things went smoothly. They started with residential stuff; standard garbage and lawn clippings, etc. The guys managed to build quite a reputation and soon had a regular route in addition to their special pick-ups. Charlie was able to pay the bills again, it had been a while since he had felt this good. Sometimes he got too high for too long and missed his routes, but there was only the one other option and it was still less inconvenient to have Charlie come pick up the trash than to pay the usual guys.

Both men had more dreams during that time. In them, the void appeared as a black mask. It was a demon face; like one of those Japanese samurai masks, solid ebony with silver accents. It was rich with detail and seemed alive, ready to terrify and to take that terror into itself. It was void within void and whispered its need to them. They began gathering roadkill for the county and that is when the void realized what it had been lacking.

Charlie had come into the house around six from cleaning up an opossum carcass on the highway. The thing reeked through the double garbage bag and he was kicking himself for not picking up one of those Styrofoam coolers from a gas station. Next time.... He kicked open the basement door while holding his parcel as far away as he could. Jim woke up and watched Charlie do his thing. The bags went in to the alcove and Charlie stripped off the leather gloves he had been wearing. Then, he and Jim got high. Hours later, they heard a strange shuffling coming from the niche that housed the void. They stared silently at it and shortly, the dessicated and swollen rot that was formerly an opossum slowly dragged itself from the cavity .

It wandered around the couch they were seated on and sat on the floor directly in front of the stunned men. Charlie pinched himself, he wasn't dreaming. The critter looked from one man to the other. They, in turn, looked at each other. “Hey man, this is some primo shit you scored,” Charlie had directed this comment at Jim. There was silence between them as the thing began to breathe heavily. There was a split down its side from the impact that had originally killed the poor thing and now effluence leaked out onto the floor. Its breathe was wet and raspy. It gurgled out a groan and was silent for a moment. “More”, the opossum had opened its mouth wide to expose its jagged and shattered teeth before speaking.

“What?” Charlie had to hear it again, just to be sure it was all happening.

“MMMMOOOORRRRRREEE, MORE!”

“More what?”

“Mmmmmmm, Life! More... life! More!”

The opossum went back to the void diamond. Jim and Charlie sat in silence, but they could not hold out forever and spent the next couple hours trying to decide what to do with it. Charlie was finally alright with his money again. He was beginning to like his new life and he owed it all to the diamond. He and Jim decided they would appease their benefactor. That night, half a dozen cats around town mysteriously disappeared. Still, the boys knew it would not be enough, but where to get the void what it wants? The answer came from the hospital and the abortion clinic. Biological waste. Charlie and Jim started collecting the medical stuff a couple times a week after paying some folks to look the other way. The chief of medicine was particularly impressed with the cost-cutting potential of having the guys collect as opposed to the service they went through before. He was all to happy to look the other way. The most surprising thing to Charlie was the absolute lack of questions. No one seemed to care where the garbage went, just that it was gone. It left Charlie laughing all the way to the bank. Until the day that the old garbage service sent a representative to confront him.

Charlie was out in the yard, tidying up some back-stock meant for the diamond, when a man approached him. The visitor was a beefy dude with long, yellow hair coming from every possible place on his head. He folded his arms over his chest and shot a look at Charlie that could be felt through the polarized wraparounds he wore. His voice was a harsh and menacing bark.

“Hey, you the guy that's been stealing my boss's jobs!”

The statement was fully accusatory, the stranger was too pissed to put up any of his originally intended pretenses. There was no question in his mind that the man he was addressing was the one he was looking for. He had been watching Charlie and Jim's activities for over a month, had recorded hours of video tape of them picking up waste from the clinic and the hospital. He had even documented their disposal of the waste barrels from the reactor up the gorge. They had taken a semi trailer's load of nuclear offal a palette at a time and hauled it into the basement. He had learned everything except for where the shit went. It was maddening. Finally, he had been able to resist no longer and chose to confront Charlie directly. His mind was all fire as he had approached, but when it came time to say something to Charlie, to bring the issue to face, he had found himself unable to affect any subtle demeanor.

“I know what you've been doing, I was hired to keep tabs on you and your buddy. You, my friend, are in some deep shit. Now, where does the garbage go? Whatcha got in that basement?”

Charlie's rough, viking antagonist was opening the gate to make sure Charlie would have no chance to make a run for it. Charlie wasn't a small guy, but the other guy was way bigger and Charlie had been spun out for a long time know. His habit was dwindling his body to death. “Where's your buddy?”, the investigator asked as he walked up to Charlie. He put a meaty finger on Charlie's chest. “No fuckin' funny business, take me down there!” He had stopped yelling, accenting his menacing instruction with a jab in Charlie's sternum. He turned Charlie around by the shoulders and shoved him in the direction of the house.

They approached the cellar door. Charlie's mind raced as he tried to figure out  something to resolve this situation. If blondie left here, Charlie and Jim would be screwed. He would blow everything for them. The question was not about what to do with the investigator, it was more how to communicate to Jim that they had trouble, so Jim could get the drop on this asshole. He had practically volunteered himself for the void. Charlie pounded on the cellar door.

“Jim and I weren't expecting anyone today, dunno what he's got goin' on. We don't need to see...”, Charlie was cut off by a sharp blow to the back of his head. Apparently the guy didn't concern himself with the timeliness of his visits. It was his show, wherever he went. He beat the door in with his steel-toed shit-kickers and proceeded into the dark.

Jim and Charlie had never been shy about going where they wanted, privacy be damned. At points, this facet of their relationship had caused friction that ultimately led to a bloody nose or black-eye. Their lack of personal consideration turned out to be rather fortuitous on this occasion. The knock on the door was the only signal Jim needed to realize that there was trouble. When he heard Charlie talking to someone, he had hit the lights and prepared for trouble. The door broke in, casting a shaft of light into the putrid den below Charlie's house. The outline of the black alcove was visible, as was the couch. Blond the terrible stomped down the stairs and yelled for Jim. For a split second he thought he heard a “woosh” as if something were being swung through the air, and he was right. Jim had hid beneath the stairs and answered the barbarian's call with a crack to his nut. Jim hit the lights and Charlie came down the stairs. He looked at his nude friend, the bloody tire iron hanging loosely in his right hand. “Don't matter if I do knock, I still have to see your damn pecker!” Charlie looked down at the dumb sunuvabitch and kicked him until he heard a satisfying crunch. Then he looked at Jim again.

“Get his legs.”

Jim put on some clothes and they cleaned up the mess. Charlie asked if Jim thought that anyone would be out to look for the guy. Jim said he didn't know, but that the gig they had going was too good to fuck up by worrying about it now. “Water under the bridge, brother. I think its time to get you a hog and a jacket, though. Its blood in, all the way. You are now a Wanton Soul, my man.” So they did, Charlie got his leathers and his patch that night. He showed off his new (to him, but used to everyone else) Victory motorcycle at the bar that night. They took the party back to the house.

4

It was an all-night rager, one for the books. Over the course of the night, Charlie took out his frustrations on most everything that reminded him of his life with Jess. He smashed the furniture and burned all the various other pieces of evidence that pointed to his previous life. That was the Old Charlie. Now he was New Charlie, a man with a higher purpose. He was a giver of life, something he had always known deep down, but Jess had never understood. It never occurred to him that his current incarnation was in fact the same old Charlie. Such a thought would have practically forced a catharsis. Denial and substances had numbed his sense of self as they had kept him distant from his pain. Simply quitting drinking and crank would not have gotten him a job and, in his mind, they had led him to a way to support himself. He still held out hope that the money would bring his family back. If he had asked Jess (and if she had been able to vocalize her feelings) she would have told him that the problem was less about the money and more about how he saw his life. His identity as a man was wrapped up in his work. He did not feel like a complete person unless he could support his wife and child by the sweat of his brow. It was the defeat that he felt from this intangible struggle within that had been so great and constant that eventually Charlie gave up. That much, Jess knew. She would have told him if he had been able to listen to her address this subject without becoming sullen and defensive. What she could not have said, no matter if he was willing to listen or not, was a thought even more deeply unsettling to her. For within this difficulty between them was the true issue and she was afflicted with it as well.

Neither Jess or Charlie were inclined to theological or metaphysical consideration. They had never had a conversation about the soul or psyche. The questions about self-determination and the understanding of fear were sure conversation killers, the heralds of awkward silence and superstitious aversion. Who has the kind of time or that sort of masochistic inclination which is required to resolve the issues in hearts? Is that not the domain of the divine? So the road to self-determination would remain barred, cloaked in the shadows behind the neon distractions that line the freeway of American Life. It goes by so fast, you never realize it's an oval track. Neither Charlie or Jess could know how to see the people within, the source of the expression. It is not that what we do defines who we are, but that what we do is a result of who we are. Had Charlie been able to see himself as a complete being; without his wife, child, house, job or car being his reasons to exist, he might not have felt the need to be someone new. He was taught to behave like this, conditioned by the world to need these things. But, it is still his mistake if it doesn't work out. He is responsible for being himself. Not even the thing within the void could have engineered such a trap as Charlie had acquired and carried with him through his life, but it had seen his trap for what it was and used it.

 5

Charlie had ended up in the basement. He was alone, having been banished from the rest of the club. The man had become a wrecking ball after burning his old photo albums. Containing him proved to be an issue until a heavy blow from a baseball bat knocked the wind out of him. Two brothers grabbed him while another covered them with his revolver. Together they tossed Charlie down the stairs, but he was right back up and raging. The man with the gun had to crack him between the eyes to keep him away while the door was shut and locked.

Thus, Charlie's ears were ringing terribly as he awakened at the foot of the stairs to a wet dragging sound from nearby. There was no way to identify the source of the noise in the dark. His heart pounded and he scrambled upright, facing the noise with a predatory suspicion. Warily, he stuck a foot out to test for a reaction. Something tugged at the toe of his boot and slipped away with an almost silent thud. He heard a muffled whisper that his brain insisted were words and he knew it was the void. He bent closer and he felt hot breath on his ear. It whispered in a harsh rasp.

“You have done great things, but we require more. There are many. We could do so much.”

Something that felt like spittle misted Charlie's ear, but he kept his head there. If he leaned away, it would deny him the secrets of the mind. Turning away from the voice would be turning away from the vast banquet of gratification that lay just around the corner. He listened as a fanatic will listen to his idol, wholly devoted.

“We will recreate, must revive.” The rasp became congestion and the voice was interrupted by the speaker's swallowing.

“What do you want me to do?” Charlie was becoming impatient.

“Wanton Souls. You must lead. The time has come to raise up our endeavors. A glorious transformation is occurring. The Old Ones are coming and my people will aid them. They will bring enlightenment and balance. You must help my people and we will gather together those who keep the Old Ways and want for the glory of this world under the rule of the Old Ones. There is a crack in the world, a low spot in the fabric of this place. A brother sits behind, collecting the dead as they cross through the void. It has learned to create, speak the language of this world. Yet it is incomplete. You and I will help it. We must go.”

Charlie considered the words and had reservations. Lead? He was beginning to freak. World domination? He had just gotten way too high. His head injury didn't help. He rationalized the experience away as being a hell of a trip. However, the creature insisted on it own reality.

“I feel that you are losing confidence.” The voice was inside his head now and Charlie stood up. The diamond called to him and he went to it. It had always been a nothing in space that was in the shape of a diamond. There was no substance or color, light did not pass through it. Yet as he looked at it now, it shimmered and flashed like a strobe.

“A gift.” Stated the disembodied voice.

The flash grew and became a shield-like shape, sort of a broad U-shape with a solid center about the size of a human head. A mask emerged from it. It was very Japanese in style, crafted of what seemed to be ebony of a dull finish. The thing was accented with matte-finished metal that must have been steel or chrome. It had curving goat horns that thrust out from the forehead like thick winds of over-twisted rope. Spiked teeth jutted from its grin at strange angles. The thing clattered to the floor and the diamond was gone. Charlie picked it up and turned around, facing the thing whose breath had misted his ear. He put on the mask and suddenly he could see. The room began to increase in brightness, building steadily in white illumination. He caught a glimpse of the speaker as the lights cranked up to blinding and what he saw would have surely panicked him if he had not been at the same time being overcome in his senses by the effect of the mask.

It was a squat stack of strange flesh. The bottom of the thing was tentacled, the fleshy and barrel-like torso long and populated with wings that jutted almost haphazardly from five odd places around its columnar body. The top of the thing had fungal polyps swelling from it and numerous eyes. Two of the tentacles gripped the head of the man who had been sent by the garbage company, one held it and the other worked the throat to manipulate its vocal chords. A tube-like appendage had been inserted into the larynx of the decapitated head, presumably to blow air through the anatomy to produce the words he had heard. He was then overtaken by blinding white light, which faded until he saw a vast and glowing garden.

6

Charlie looked around the garden in awe. It was glorious, a ring of paradise that was screened in by dense trees and underbrush. He could not see through the verdant growth, it was so dense with life that it seemed every bit of space was occupied by some strange and beautiful blossom. Sprays of red and orange, dangling bright green and purple things. Blooms of wild shape and exotic color surrounded him and intoxicated him with their perfume. He brushed the plants aside and discovered that the garden was in fact the peak of a massive ziggurat. The stone was green and black, some sort of jade-like rock, but of granite texture and marbled with gold streaks. The shape of the building dazzled his mind and seemed to distort as he watched it, the angles were all wrong and his eyes watered as he tried to make sense of it. Beyond the stone monstrosity he could see far over barren and blasted plains. Massive cracks in the earth spewed fire and char. Winged creatures with mouths like lamprey eels wheeled over the wastelands, dropping to suck the life from mutated fauna that managed to scrape by out there. They were very close to the sea, a black and churning horror that made Charlie feel like weeping. He turned away from it and looked around once more. Then he began to feel a pulling sensation and in fact his vision began to stretch. Then, the world seemed to tear and he was blanketed in cold darkness. A vision came to him in the darkness. A beaked mouth, surrounded by whipping tentacles, sucked at a thin warp in the fabric of reality. All around this warp was dense forest. Charlie knew it was a vision of the place the diamond had mentioned.

A man walked by the diamond, dressed in crude animal skin clothing. He touched it, as though he could not see it, but sensed it somehow. The man disappeared and time seemed to fly suddenly. Charlie witnessed the history of that place in very rapid lapses, eventually a house was constructed over that weak place. The fast sequence returned to normal and Charlie was left with the vision of a house in its current dilapidated and abandoned state.

Then he was drawn up into the air, looking down on the house from a bird's eye. As he rose, Charlie marked the freeway and observed that the house was maybe a half-hour north out in the peninsula. The view rapidly sped along, returning his consciousness to his house. Through the air, he followed the highways back to the house and fell with a rush through the roof and the floor inside, all the way into his body once more. The mask fell away in Charlie's hands and he slumped to the ground with exhaustion. Charlie slept for a good long time.

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