Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Uncle Allen

Originally published by Windrift Books

The air was crisp and clear, a little off kilter for a late August day in the bottoms of rural Southern Illinois. The soybeans were almost waist-high and the corn still clung to all the green it could, but the advancement of fall was evident by the drying of the plants. A few fields still held the vestiges of farm life from the early part of the twentieth century—crumbling silos, dilapidated barns, and hog houses virtually undone by the ravages of time and nature.

The slight chill made Rachel wish she’d brought more than just a few long-sleeved shirts to Grandma Naomi’s house. Actually, the twenty-seven-year-old wished she wasn’t heading to her grandmother’s homestead at all—the past few years hadn’t been kind to Grandma Naomi. A fractured collarbone, a urinary tract infection, dementia, and all sorts of issues in between…lately it seemed as though if it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

Rachel absentmindedly turned on the radio. Not a lot of choices on her dial. There were perhaps ten to twelve stations that were at least mildly free of static, but nine of them played country, and the rest were hit or miss depending on the weather. Luckily, Rachel always made sure her phone was stocked with some decent music for trips like this—her own personal jukebox.

Just as she synced her car’s sound system to her phone, her phone chirped. She fumbled with the volume on the dash for a moment before answering.

“Hello?”

“Rachel?”

Rachel recognized the voice immediately. “Hello, Uncle Allen. Yes, this is Rachel. I’m on my way, if that’s what you’re checking.” Her tone contained a touch of sarcasm.

“Of course I wasn’t checking,” Uncle Allen responded. “I was just calling to see how my favorite niece was doing.”

“Allen?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m your only niece,” Rachel said, a grin creeping onto her face.

“That doesn’t make it less true,” Allen chided. “But since you brought it up, what time do you expect to be here tonight? I’ll see about having dinner on the table when you do.”

Rachel glanced down at the clock on her now-silent radio and mentally plotted out the remainder of her trip. “Oh, I’d say about seven o’clock? Maybe later if I get caught in a traffic jam.”

Uncle Allen guffawed. If there was anything more unlikely in Southern Illinois than a traffic jam, it was a skyscraper, or perhaps Godzilla. “Okay. Sounds good. I’ll tell your grandma. She’s really looking forward to seeing you.”

Rachel felt a pit in her stomach. “She’ll see me, but will she remember me? Will she even know I’m there?”

Allen went quiet, and Rachel realized she should have been more sensitive. She knew that Uncle Allen felt personally responsible for his mother’s health—after all, he was the one who lived close by, and he was in charge of her care. Yet most days Allen was needed in the field, so he’d had to rely on a cobbled-together series of nurses, family members, and friends to come by and watch over her while he worked.

This week, it was Rachel’s turn to help. And in addition to keeping an eye on her grandmother, Rachel had also promised to purge the clutter in Grandma Naomi’s attic. It seemed that Grandma had never forgotten Rachel’s long-ago promise to clear out the mess—even though there was no guarantee that Grandma would even remember Rachel’s name when she pulled in the driveway.

Rachel was almost sure her call had dropped when Allen finally spoke again. “You know she loves you. She can’t help it, and whether or not she remembers, it’ll be good for you to be here.”

Rachel nodded, even though Allen couldn’t see her. “I guess you’re right. I better get off the phone and focus on the road then. I’ll see you in a couple hours. Love you, Uncle Allen.”

“Love you, Rach.”

The trip took a bit longer than she’d estimated, but at last Rachel pulled onto the road leading to what had been her favorite place to visit as a little girl. It had been several years since Rachel’s last visit here; after college, she had moved up to Indianapolis, a land full of metal and noise. Now, just turning onto the gravel road gave her goose bumps, reminding her of all the memories she’d shared with her cousins at the farm.

Her sports car kicking up dust behind her, Rachel maneuvered down the gravel road and then up the long driveway belonging to Grandma Naomi. Surrounded on three sides by a thick grove of trees, her grandmother’s house was typical of early twentieth-century farmhouses in the Midwest: four bedrooms on the top floor, a large living room and dining room attached to the kitchen on the main floor, and a basement that followed the same basic floor plan of the house. The only difference in the basement’s layout was that it lacked the additional bathroom that Naomi and Grandpa Henry had added to the main floor back in the late 1950’s, when they were first lucky enough to get running water. Rachel’s mom still talked about using the outhouse in the winter when she was a child.

From the outside, the house looked almost like a big cardboard box with the flaps slightly open to form the roof. A hailstorm had devastated the area the year before, and the aging shingles showed the evidence of it. Uncle Allen had promised to take on the repairs, but farming took him away from the task nearly every chance he had. Still, the roof was in decent shape, and everyone knew Allen would fix it immediately if it ever leaked anywhere in the house. Uncle Allen was busy, but he took care of his family. In fact, he was the kind of guy who was everyone’s favorite, whether he was your favorite uncle, brother, friend, or farmer. He just had a certain magnetic personality that kept people entertained.

As Rachel parked, she saw her grandmother out in front of the house, watering her small flower garden. Rachel wouldn’t say Grandma was a hoarder, but the years she spent living in the Great Depression had taught her never to be wasteful. That was particularly true with clothes: if there was any use to be gotten out of an old item, she would squirrel it away for a rainy day. Her clothing, therefore, was a mix of styles gathered from across decades. Today her top bore a definite resemblance to the homemaker blouses Rachel had seen in a few reruns of Leave it to Beaver, while her slacks were 1970’s polyester through and through.

“Hello, Rachel!” Grandma Naomi called out as Rachel stepped out of the car. “We’ve been waiting for you to get here.”

Whew. At least she remembers my name.

“We?” Rachel asked, hoisting her suitcase out of the back seat.

“Oh, yes. Me and your Uncle Allen, of course.”

“Of course.”

“We had more visitors, too, but they left just a minute or two before you got here,” Grandma Naomi said. “Funny-looking. Kinda glad they didn’t decide to stay.”

That stopped Rachel. She knew she’d been all alone on the gravel road coming into the farm. And while the road continued on past the driveway, it was rarely used, and Rachel hadn’t seen any dust kicked up. Well, she had been distracted listening to the music on her phone. Perhaps she’d simply missed them.

“Really? What were they here for?”

“Hmm…now that you ask me, I can’t quite remember. I’m sure they were here for your Uncle Allen, though. They always are,” Naomi said, putting her watering can down next to a row of marigolds. She bent down—an amazing feat considering her advanced age—to pluck off a few dead flower heads.

Rachel was still concerned about these visitors to the farm. “Who were they, Grandma? You say they’ve been here before?”

“Oh, yes,” her grandmother replied. “Those men have been coming here for a long time. I wish they would just go away, but they won’t leave me and Henry alone. They just feel…off. Like they’re here, but not here at the same time. Strange clothing. And their accents…I’m not even sure they’re from this country. Could be spies. You know: the Soviets.”

And there it was. Her grandma was combining fact, fiction, and history. She may have recognized and greeted her granddaughter by the correct name, but she was also somewhere in her own past, and apparently reliving some political thriller at the same time.

Just then Uncle Allen popped his head out of the side door of the garage, saving Rachel from an uncomfortable situation. “Supper is ready. Glad to see you, Rachel.”

After allowing herself another sideways glance at her grandmother, Rachel grabbed the handle of her suitcase and headed toward the garage. As she passed by Uncle Allen, she made eye contact with him for a brief moment. And in that split second, she saw something…strange. Allen had always been so jovial and vibrant. Even in the face of his mother’s illnesses and maladies, he’d always kept up appearances. He’d always put on a brave face.

But this time…his eyes told a different story.

Uncle Allen was afraid.

After a late meal and then getting Grandma Naomi settled into her chair to watch The Tonight Show (the “Johnny Carson show,” Naomi insisted), Rachel and Uncle Allen reconnected over a small makeshift brush fire near the driveway. The bright colors of Grandma Naomi’s flowers were subdued and dim under the curtain of darkness, and the night sky was like oil covering the landscape.

A few stories from her uncle brought laughs from Rachel, but eventually the stories wore out and the laughter did as well. Rachel sat in silence for a few moments, gazing up at the stars, light years away.

“I miss her,” she said.

Silence followed from the other side of the fire. Finally, after a few moments, Uncle Allen replied.

“Yeah. I know, kid. I miss her, too. Growing up, it seemed at times like she was the only one who really got me,” he said. “Like Mom and Dad loved me, but kept their distance a little. Your mom was the best sister I could’ve asked for. Your other aunts were just too old by the time I came around.”

Rachel felt a slight chill in the air, but being with Uncle Allen was warming her soul. She nodded toward the starry expanse. “You think she’s looking down on us? That there’s someone out there that cares what happens down here?”

Allen cocked his head and took in the Milky Way and the countless stars that shone down. “Up there? I don’t know. I do know I’ll never forget her. In that way, maybe your mother will keep on living, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

With nothing else to be said, Rachel stood, walked around the fire, sat down next to Uncle Allen, and put her head on his shoulder, both of them remembering her mother.

The next morning, Rachel woke to light streaming in the windows of her mother’s childhood room. The house had been built long before mini-blinds had been invented, and the bedrooms had been vacated before window shades would become the norm in homes across the country. The sun illuminated the entire room, chasing away any darkness still lingering.

Unable to sleep any longer, Rachel slid out of bed and dragged herself down the stairs, only to find Grandma Naomi already up and baking. The scent of sugar and cinnamon filled the small kitchen. Rachel pulled a chair out from the table and sat, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Good morning, Melissa!” Naomi said, turning around. Her face showed a brief moment of confusion. Rachel waited a moment before responding, to see if Grandma would realize her mistake. She didn’t.

“Good morning, Grandma. I’m Rachel. Melissa is my mom, but she couldn’t be here today,” Rachel said, a small tear beginning a slow slide down her cheek. One of the worst parts in coming to her grandmother’s house was reliving the painful memories of Mom. It’d been three years, but Rachel wondered nearly every day what would have happened if her mom had only gotten that mammogram earlier. What if she had gotten to the doctor even just a few months earlier? Would she still be here?

But her mother was gone, and now Rachel felt compelled to help take care of Grandma Naomi, to take her mom’s spot in the family rotation.

“Of course you are. I said Rachel, didn’t I?” Naomi didn’t wait for an answer, probably because she already knew her mistake. “What do you say we get up in that attic after the rolls come out of the oven? I haven’t been up there in probably ten years.”

Just then the timer went off, and Rachel hopped up, grabbed an oven mitt, and took the steaming sweet rolls from the oven. As she set them on the counter to cool, she glanced out the window above the kitchen sink to see if Uncle Allen’s truck was there. Gone. Rachel was alone with her grandmother. Well, no time like the present to clear out years of dust and memories from a hundred-year-old house.

“Yeah, Grandma. Sounds good. First though, let’s eat.”

The attic was foreboding on many levels, and the neglect was tangible. Spider webs and dust covered everything. Boxes were stacked to the joists along the walls, and dated Christmas decorations were scattered haphazardly around.

As Rachel began to inspect the boxes, she noticed many were damp. The leaky roof had affected Grandma’s attic after all. Books that had been boxed up, perhaps in the hopes of storing them on a bookshelf again at some point, were now ruined, their pages warped and wilted by the constant moisture coming in from above.

“Grandma, these books are no good,” Rachel called out across the large attic space. She’d situated the elderly matriarch in a folding chair as soon as they’d come up to the attic.

“What do you mean, dear? Those books were perfectly fine when I boxed them up last week.”

Not again.

Rachel grabbed a book and made her way back to her grandmother, maneuvering carefully around a stack of cardboard cutouts that appeared to be from Naomi’s days as a Sunday School teacher at the local Methodist Church.

“Grandma, look at this book,” Rachel said, handing her a paperback copy of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.

“Oh, yes, this was your grandfather’s favorite. All the suspense and the beings from another world. Too much for my taste,” Naomi said. “But it’s all wet. What did you do to it?”

Rachel sighed. Perhaps she would have to take on this task without Grandma’s consent. It wasn’t like she was going to remember what Rachel did or didn’t do anyway. She took the book back.

“The attic is too moist for books,” Rachel said. “They’re all this way, Grandma.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t need to keep damaged books. You just take care of them, Rachel. I’ll stay here and look through these boxes.” In front of Naomi’s folding chair were a couple of small boxes.

“What’s in there?”

“Oh, just a few of the kids’ favorite toys. As they outgrew them, I’d put them away up here. I always meant to give them back to them, but they’ve all gone now. Gone or moved away,” Naomi said.

“Not all of them, Grandma,” Rachel reminded her. “Uncle Allen still lives down the road. Remember? He comes by every day to check up on you.”

Naomi’s eyes clouded for a nanosecond and then cleared. “Oh, yes. You’re right, honey.”

Peering into the box on Naomi’s lap, Rachel saw many familiar shapes: a toy gun, a teddy bear, a baby doll. Each had special meaning for her mother, her uncle, or one of her aunts. She wondered which items belonged to her own mother when she was growing up in this very house—what special toy her mom had loved and cherished until it was a forgotten object, a mere memory of carefree days.

Then something caught her eye. Reaching down, Rachel plucked a key from the box. It didn’t appear old—in fact, it still shined as if it were brand-new. Impossible—Grandma Naomi herself had said she hadn’t been in the attic in years. But Grandma isn’t exactly a reliable witness. Rachel had to admit that although Grandma Naomi believed herself to be truthful, her mind could jump not only between decades but between fact and fiction.

“What’s this?”

“That’s Allen’s toy key. I remember he held on to that key until he turned seven years old. Each and every day, you’d walk into a room and find him holding and playing with that thing. Never really knew where it came from—one day he was just holding it. I suppose today I might’ve gotten turned into the Department of Child and Family Services for letting him play with keys,” Naomi said, with a smirk on her face.

“Maybe,” Rachel said, twirling the key before her eyes. The small key wasn’t aluminum or silver or any metal she recognized; it had an iridescent sheen to it, appearing slightly different from every angle. She’d never seen anything like it.

Grandma Naomi made a motion to put the box down, so Rachel volunteered to find a place for it, and to organize its contents and find homes for the various toys. She absentmindedly stuck the key in her pocket as she moved the box over to the other side of the attic.

“You girls up here?” Uncle Allen called up from the base of the stairs.

“Come on up,” Naomi answered.

“Nah. I don’t need to see any of that old stuff. Don’t want to get stuck doing your job anyway. Just wanted to swing by and check on you two.”

“We’re doing okay,” Rachel answered. She toyed with the key in her pocket, but for some reason resisted the urge to show it to Allen.

“All right, then. I gotta get back to it. I’ll come by later for dinner,” Allen said, his voice trailing off as he headed back down the stairs and out of the house.

“I do hope that boy is careful. I’d hate for him to run into our visitors from yesterday. They said they’d be back, you know,” Grandma Naomi said. Rachel peered over the boxes to find Grandma going through a basket full of Good Housekeeping magazines from the mid-eighties.

Rachel worked by herself for the next few minutes before peeking back to check on her grandmother’s progress. Grandma’s head was down, a magazine drooping on her lap. Asleep. At least, Rachel hoped she was asleep. She crept over and double-checked that Grandma was still breathing, then headed back to her work—pitching junk and saving memories.

Another box of books: trash.

A box of greeting cards: mostly trash. Rachel salvaged a few she knew Grandma Naomi would want and tossed the rest into the wastebasket.

Digging out a box labeled “Dates,” Rachel found a complete set of wall calendars from the 1970’s. She just shook her head and moved on to a box she’d found virtually hidden, stuffed in the back corner. This box wasn’t cardboard like the others, but was instead a wooden crate made up of small slats. Hardly watertight, so Rachel was tempted to chuck the entire mess before she even perused it, but something caught her eye.

Inside the box was a stack of small lined pieces of notebook paper that appeared to have been ripped out of a journal or diary. The top page was labeled Oct. 19, 1959.

Rachel probably wouldn’t have given it another thought except for one thing: it was the day Uncle Allen was born.

Bending down and folding herself into a seated position, Rachel carefully extracted the loose sheets of paper, noting that some had been damaged by the moisture. The pages were brittle where they weren’t damp. Peeling them apart, Rachel set them down on the wooden floorboards.

The pages ran to the end of the year—definitely pages from a diary—but unfortunately, they were all blank except for the first one. And even that page was a mess of seemingly random words interrupted by water stains. Rachel took her cell phone out of her pocket, and selected the flashlight app. Immediately, the attic lit up, casting shadows all around. Rachel pointed the light at the page below.

Rachel was confused. It definitely wasn’t Grandma Naomi’s handwriting; it had a more masculine tilt to it, and Rachel had seen her grandmother’s handwriting dozens of times on birthday and Christmas cards over the years. It must be her grandfather’s journal.

She looked at the rest of the pages, confirming they were all blank. And apart from the occasional smudge, they were. There was only that one page that had been used. Given the date and the baby’s measurements, it was clearly about her uncle’s birth. But what was this about threats?

Should she go to Uncle Allen and ask him? Would Grandma Naomi remember the events of fifty years ago?

Rachel rifled through the rest of the box but found no other papers or important documents. So she snuck down the attic stairs and put the diary pages in the dresser drawer in her bedroom. She’d think about it more later, perhaps that night as she went to bed.

As Rachel re-entered the attic, Grandma Naomi was waking back up.

“Oh, hello,” Naomi said, looking around her, confused by her surroundings. “Are you here to take me to the hospital?”

“No, Grandma,” Rachel said. “Let’s head back downstairs. I imagine you could use a trip to the powder room.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right,” Naomi said. “I feel like I’ve been up here for hours, but that’s impossible. I was just watching M*A*S*H with Henry. Speaking of…I wonder where Henry is.”

Rachel didn’t want to fight that battle right now, so she just went along with it. “I think he may have gone out with Allen to work in the fields.”

“Oh, yes. What a good boy, that Allen. Always staying home to help take care of me. I do hope we get him back one of these days.”

After a nap, Grandma Naomi was in a better state of mind. A late-afternoon rain shower forced Allen to call it a day early, and so the three relatives found themselves eating pork chops around the table just before the prime time TV schedule got going.

“How was your day?” Naomi asked Allen.

“Fine. Had a little trouble with the sprayer out in the field past Wither’s Corner, but I got it sorted out,” Allen said between bites.

Rachel sat at the table, finding herself staring at her food because she couldn’t bring herself to look Uncle Allen in the eye. Finally, she worked up the courage to ask an apparently innocuous question.

“Uncle Allen, what was life like when you were young? I mean…I don’t have my mom to ask about her childhood anymore, so I guess you’re the next best thing.”

Her mind was stuck on the pages of the diary she’d found from earlier in the afternoon. What was so special about Uncle Allen’s birth? Why did Grandpa Henry—or whoever—write about it and then tear those pages out of his diary? Where was the rest of the diary, from before that day? She’d scoured the attic the rest of the afternoon after helping Grandma Naomi into bed, but to no avail.

“Life? Like here on the farm?” Allen asked. “Boy, I don’t know. Pretty standard, I imagine. Dad always had work for us to do. Your mom always tried to get out of working outside, though. She was usually working with Mom here in the kitchen.”

“Oh, yes,” Grandma Naomi piped up. “Your mother was the best cook to ever work in this kitchen. I’d like to say I taught her everything she knew, but that just wouldn’t be true. She came up with some wonderful recipes I’d never dreamt of.”

It was great to hear her grandma talk about her mother—and better still to hear her talk in a coherent manner—but Rachel’s mind was racing about her Uncle Allen. She tried to shift the focus back to him.

“What did you do for births back when you had children, Grandma?” Rachel asked. “You don’t hear much about women having babies at home these days, but you had all of your kids at home, right?”

“I did. Even my last, my boy Allen right here,” she said, reaching over to pat Allen on the arm. “It wasn’t easy, but there’s nothing like it. I couldn’t imagine going to a strange hospital room when you have everything you know and love at your own home. Wouldn’t you rather have a baby in a familiar place than some cold, sterile room?”

Rachel knew exactly where she would like to have kids one day, and it wasn’t at home, but she wasn’t about to tell Grandma Naomi that. She simply nodded, shoving a forkful of pork into her mouth.

“Did you have any problems then?”

“Me? No, can’t say I did. All my kids were healthy,” Naomi said, but then furrowed her brow. “Well, there were a few problems with Allen. But I was so exhausted after I had him that by the time I felt better, he was completely better as well.”

“Really?” Allen said, stopping his meal mid-bite. “I never knew that. What was wrong?”

“Oh, wow. It’s hard for me to remember. Henry was always better with those things. We were actually going to name you Henry, Jr., but we changed our minds after you came along. What was wrong? Something about your lungs. Doctors didn’t share as much back then. They did have to show me you were breathing when you were first born,” Naomi said. “I thought you were dead at first. A stillbirth.”

While Naomi worked on cutting her pork chop, Rachel and Allen looked at each other. Neither one had heard any of this before.

“Mom, you never told me any of that before,” Uncle Allen said.

“Family’s got to have some secrets,” Grandma Naomi said curtly, signaling to both her son and granddaughter that she was done with this particular line of questioning.

The rest of the meal was spent talking about the weather forecast and how the crops were doing. But by the time Grandma Naomi was serving up a slice of rhubarb pie for dessert, any hint of her earlier clarity and lucidity had vanished.

“Rachel, my dear, you were careful today in the attic, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was, Grandma. You saw what I threw out and what I didn’t,” Rachel answered. She worried for a moment Naomi knew about the diary pages she had squirreled away in her mom’s childhood bedroom. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You? Oh, no, you were fine. I was just concerned about the men up in the attic with us today. You know who they are—they look like us, but they aren’t us.”

…And Grandma Naomi is gone again.

“Uh, Grandma? I don’t remember seeing any men in the attic today.”

“Of course you don’t. They’re clever. They wouldn’t want you to see them. They’re very good at hiding, after all. They’re best, though, when they hide in plain sight.”

“Mom,” Allen said, “You’re scaring Rachel. There weren’t any men in the attic. I stopped by, too. I would have seen them if they were really there.”

Rachel took a bite of her pie, but suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore. Between the diary pages, the mysterious key, and her grandma’s crazy talk, it was a bit much for her. “Maybe you’re thinking of a different day, Grandma,” Rachel offered. “I don’t remember seeing them, but I guess that doesn’t mean they weren’t here. I did step out from the attic for a few moments.”

“Yes, dear, that must be it,” Naomi said, again closing the door on the topic.

Somehow, though, Rachel suspected the conversation was far from over.

Sleep was elusive. Just as the lack of blinds on her mother’s window allowed sunlight to stream in unfettered in the morning, it also allowed in the bold moonlight at night. And if it wasn’t a full moon, it was close. As Rachel lay in bed, she thought that she should appreciate this chance to really view the night sky; back home in Indianapolis, the light pollution virtually hid the stars from view. But right now, she really just wanted to sleep.

After several minutes of wrestling with the brightness, Rachel finally went to the closet and found a quilt to drape over the window. But as soon as the quilt went over the window’s opening, Rachel realized that not all the light in the room had been due to the moon. On the corner of the dresser, where Rachel had emptied her pockets from earlier in the day, the key from the attic was shining like a beacon in the darkness.

“What the…?” Rachel asked the empty room around her. But there were no answers here. All she had was the strange key and the diary pages.

Acting on a sudden impulse, Rachel opened the dresser and withdrew the aged papers. She didn’t know why she thought there might be something new, but she shuffled through the pages again, examining them in the light cast by the key. And when she lined up the pages on her bed, her hunch was proven correct: what had appeared to be mere smudges on the blank pages came together to spell out a phrase. Perhaps it had been harder to see before because the pages weren’t fully dried; or perhaps the pages only showed their secret in the eerie glow of the key. Either way, the hidden message created a new mystery:

“I’ll bury it in the second hole.”

The second hole? What did that mean? Rachel sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to figure it out, but her mind couldn’t put the puzzle together. Even if she had all the pieces, which she was sure she didn’t, Rachel acknowledged to herself that there might not even be much to the mystery before her.

And was this really something Rachel should be digging into? Didn’t Grandma Naomi say every family had their secrets? Was this a secret that should stay hidden?

Before she knew what she was doing, Rachel had changed back into her T-shirt and jeans from earlier in the day and was slipping on a pair of tennis shoes. The diary pages went into her back pocket, along with her cell phone, but she kept the key in her hand to light her way.

The house was dark and Rachel was afraid the light from the key would wake her grandmother, but when she passed her grandmother’s bedroom on the first floor, the door was closed. She kept her hand over the key to dampen the light. For whatever reason, Rachel felt herself being led out of the house and into the back yard.

When she turned left out of the garage door, she found herself face to face with Uncle Allen.

“What—what are you doing out here?” Rachel asked.

“I might ask you the same thing young lady,” Allen said. “But since you asked, I ran out of gas on my way home. I knew there was a spare can in the barn here, so I was heading over that way when I saw a light coming from your mom’s—I mean, your bedroom.”

“So? Girl can read a book if she wants, right?”

“Is that what you’re doing out here? Reading?”

Rachel put her head down. “No.”

“All right. Let’s hear it. I saw how you were looking at me at supper. Rather, how you were avoiding me. What’s up? Did you find something in the attic? My fifth-grade report card? Worse yet, my fifth-grade school picture?” Allen chuckled.

Rachel opened her hand to reveal the key. “I found this.”

“Whoa.”

“Grandma said it was yours. She said you played with it all the time when you were a kid.”

Rachel saw the look in Allen’s eyes go from confusion to recognition. “Yeah. I mean, it’s been almost fifty years, but I do remember this. I didn’t play with toy guns and action figures when I was a kid. I played with this key. But it’s one of those memories that comes and goes—in fact, for a long time, I thought I might have imagined this. I don’t remember it ever glowing, though.”

“Well, that wasn’t all. I also found some diary pages written by Grandpa,” Rachel said, pulling the pages out of her pocket. She handed them over and used the key to help Allen read the pages for himself.

“Okay, but this doesn’t tell me why you’re outside at midnight,” Allen said.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. She was beginning to wonder about that herself. “Maybe I let my mind get carried away with everything, but with the key and the diary pages, along with everything Grandma Naomi is saying…”

“Rachel. You know she’s lost it, right?”

“Well…”

“No, Rachel. She’s been my mother longer than she’s been your grandmother. I’ve seen her descent, and it’s a sad thing to see, but she isn’t anything like she was when I was a little boy,” Allen said, scratching his beard. “And the things she says…You know, you get a moment like what we had at supper tonight where she remembers who we are and remembers what really happened in her life. But then something happens. I wish I knew what it was, but she changes. Her memories become fiction. It isn’t even that she goes back to her youth—her mind just goes someplace else and the words that come out of her mouth…” He shrugged. “You just can’t trust anything she says.”

“Even what she said about you being stillborn?”

“Even that. I’ve never heard that before. Don’t you think I would have heard that some time in the last fifty-three years?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But these diary pages are interesting. My dad always refused to talk to me about when I was born. Maybe there are some answers in the rest of his diary. If it even exists,” he said, thumbing through the pages again.

“Do you have any idea what the secret message means?” Rachel prompted, showing Allen the message hidden in the smudges.

Allen considered. “Hmm…in the second hole.”

“Yeah, I don’t have any idea what it means, either,” Rachel confessed, her shoulders slumping.

Allen looked up with a wry grin. “I didn’t say I don’t know what it means. I actually think I may know exactly what it means.”

Rachel stopped. “You do?”

“Yeah. At least, I hope it means what I think it means. If it doesn’t, it could be pretty unpleasant.”

“What do you mean?”

Allen looked around, then turned toward the woods behind the house. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”

As they plunged into the wooded area, Rachel was extremely grateful for the glowing key. The strange object illuminated the entire area under the canopy, showing Rachel and her uncle where they could place their steps in the blackness of night. Even with a nearly full moon, navigating in the woods would have been tricky without some sort of flashlight.

“Where are we going?” Rachel asked. For some reason she felt compelled to keep her voice at a whisper.

“The only place I know of with two holes,” Uncle Allen called back, apparently not concerned about making noise.

Rachel kept her mouth shut as she followed Allen the rest of the way. The two of them had to dodge low-hanging tree limbs and weave in and out of thick brush and undergrowth. Eventually they stood before a small wooden building, its boards rotting. It had been built for a purpose, and when it had outlived its usefulness, it was forgotten.

“The outhouse.”

Rachel was dumbfounded. “Seriously?”

Allen chuckled as he lifted a few boards that had fallen across the long-forgotten door. “I guess you don’t remember much about your Grandpa Henry, but he always had a bit of a sense of humor. And I imagine he never expected anyone would come looking for anything in the ol’ outhouse, so this may have been the best place to put something he wanted to keep hidden.”

Rachel caught a glimpse of Allen’s face under the moonlight. He was grinning, as if he hadn’t had this much fun in years.

“Okay. I guess. But what about this ‘second hole’?”

“I guess you never used the outhouse, did you?” Allen asked, not waiting for an answer. “Dad built this well before I was even a glimmer in his eye. And for whatever reason, he built it with two toilets. We used to call an outhouse like this a ‘two-holer.’”

“Clever.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I know. But the thing is, while there were two holes, Dad never got around to cutting the second hole. If the message means something, maybe it’s that he hid something here.”

By now, he had cleared the door of rotten lumber and debris, and the two of them stumbled into the outhouse. Sure enough, they were staring at a room with a wide bench across the long end. There was a hole on the right side of the bench, and more than enough room for a second hole on the left.

Allen went straight toward the void on the left. “We always used the one over on the right, so this,” he said, prying up a loose board, “should hold whatever we’re looking for.”

With a crack, the old board came loose. Rachel held the glowing key next to the hole and peered inside.

Underneath the bench was a marble slab—a headstone. Rachel gasped.

Carved into the stone were a name and a date.

Henry, Jr.

Oct. 19, 1959

Rachel turned to look at her uncle. It was difficult to tell in the eerie glow from the key, but he seemed to have lost some of his color.

“What…?”

“I don’t know, Rachel. Mom said they were originally going to name me Henry, Jr. Did they have this made, thinking I was dead?” Allen asked.

A few moments passed silently between them. Then Allen reached down, grabbed the edges of the marble slab, and lifted it aside. Rachel gasped, but Allen wasn’t listening.

“Time for some answers. If Mom can’t tell me, I’m going to find out for myself.”

Underneath the marble was a metal box. Gingerly, Allen reached in and pulled it out. It was big enough to be a makeshift casket for a baby.

“This is awful heavy to have only a dead infant inside,” Allen said. “I’m not sure, but I think this box is made of lead. Should we open it?”

Rachel briefly thought of every horror movie she’d ever watched, of how she would scream at the protagonists to not open such a box, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know what was inside. She needed to unravel the half-century-old mystery.

“Yes.”

Allen must have felt the same way, as he immediately placed the box on the ground and crouched down to examine it. A simple latch on the front popped open with a little pressure, and Allen flipped up the lid.

Instantly, the contents of the box illuminated the entire woods, just as the key had lit up Rachel’s room back at the house. But this was no subtle glow—it was a ferocity of brilliance that made the night seem like day. Both Allen and Rachel put their arms up to shield their eyes from the intense light.

Once her brain was able to cope with the brightness, Rachel realized her hand was vibrating. Or more accurately, the key in her hand was vibrating. She squinted and examined the key closer.

“Uncle Allen, the key…”

“Yeah, I was just wondering the same thing,” he said.

Allen shut his eyes tightly and began exploring the object in the box with his hands. Though the glare was blinding, Rachel chanced a quick glance down, and saw that the object was a case of some kind, and seemed to be made of the same material as the key. It was like a large tube, almost like a small keg of the kind Rachel had seen at parties when she was in college. Allen’s fingers were probing a small hole.

“Hand me the key,” he said.

With one arm still covering her eyes, Rachel put the key in Uncle Allen’s hand. And then she chanced another peek into the brightness. She needed to see Allen open the container.

Allen inserted the key into the hole and turned. The tube opened. Immediately the light began to wane, and their eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness once again.

The outside of the tube had rotated back, revealing a few items inside. But the thing that Rachel noticed first wasn’t what was there, but what wasn’t. There were no bones.

Allen moved aside some official-looking papers and uncovered what looked something like a modern-day iPad. “Holy cow,” he whispered. He picked up the tablet as Rachel leaned over to see what he held.

“Stop!”

Rachel and her uncle swiveled around to find Grandma Naomi staring them down, an old Rayovac flashlight in her hands, her cotton nightgown fluttering in the evening breeze. Her usually perfect perm was unkempt, and she had a wild look in her eyes.

“Grandma?” “Mom?” Rachel and Allen both exclaimed simultaneously.

“You two have no idea what you’re doing. You need to stop. Put it all back and forget you ever found it,” Naomi said, approaching them slowly and determinedly.

Rachel looked over at Allen. Was this a new side of her grandmother? Had she known about this all along?

Allen was apparently having none of it. “I’m not going to do that, Mom. All this—Dad’s diary, this creepy headstone—it’s about me. Me! I have a right to know what it’s all about,” he said defiantly. “And if you can’t tell me, I’m going to dig until I can’t dig any more.”

“Son, listen to me. I know I’m not always myself. The moments when I’m in the present are becoming fewer and fewer, but I do know this: some secrets are best left buried. Leave it be.”

Rachel knew they could never do that, not now. Too much of the past had been exposed for them to simply tuck it away and pretend they never saw it. Allen deserved to know the truth about himself. Everyone deserved that much.

“For the last time, you tell me, or I’ll read the diary myself,” Allen said.

Even in the semidarkness, Rachel could see the rage and frustration boiling up within her uncle. She looked back at her grandmother and felt something new toward this old woman. Respect? Anger? Fear? The grandmother she had always known, who had always been a source of strength and comfort, was not who she appeared to be. And apparently never had been.

The look on Grandma Naomi’s face would have sent Rachel running for cover when she was little. Now, though, Grandma was frail, no match for her son, who faced her in a silent standoff. In an instant, her hard visage crumbled and her shoulders slumped.

“Fine. I never thought I would be alive for this, but I suppose you deserve the truth.”

“And what’s that?” Allen asked, his voice still sharp. “Did I have a twin? Did he die?”

Laughing strangely, Naomi shook her head. “Nothing as simple as that, I’m afraid.” She sat down on a log and took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “You see, in 1959, this farm was visited by aliens,” she said.

Rachel and Allen exchanged a look, unsure what to think.

“Aliens. You mean illegal immigrants?” Rachel asked. These days migrant workers came north to work on farms throughout the Midwest. She hoped that was all that Naomi had meant. Although she was sure it wasn’t.

“No, Rachel. I mean aliens. Extra-terrestrials. From another planet,” Naomi said, sighing. In spite of her resistance to telling the truth, doing so was clearly lifting a burden from her. “The first day they came was the day Allen was born. I gave birth at home, and he wasn’t well. They came to our door, offering help.”

“Help? Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?” Allen asked.

“We did, actually. Your father was at his wit’s end trying to figure out what to do. We ended up taking the farm truck to the hospital, but you’ve got to realize this was the 1950’s. Technology wasn’t what it is today. The doctor took one look at the baby and told us to go home, hold our son, and wait for him to die.”

“How horrible,” Rachel whispered. She looked back to Allen and found him held rapt by his mother’s tale. Grandma Naomi, on the other hand, was fighting tears, reliving one of the worst days of her life.

“So we came home and there were…people here. I’d call them men, but they weren’t. It was almost like something out of a half-remembered dream; they appeared human, but there was just something…off. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”

“And you let them help me. That’s the big secret? I was cured by aliens?” Allen asked quietly.

“No. Your father wouldn’t let them help.”

“Then how…?”

“Henry would have let you die, out of stubbornness, but I snuck out of the house and they met me out here in the woods. I gave you to them. And they cured you—in a way,” Naomi said, her eyes shut to the world around her. “Then they took you away.”

Rachel was speechless. Was Grandma losing it again?

“I’m not crazy,” she said, as if reading Rachel’s mind. “All those things I say…they’re real. Or they were real. Just let me finish my story, and then you can decide.”

“Fine, I was taken to space by aliens. How did I come back then?” Allen asked, his voice more than a little shaky.

“Oh, Allen, that never happened. The deal was that if we let them cure you, they could keep you. We were devastated. Henry went out and bought a headstone the very next day. That was your name,” she said, motioning to the headstone. “Henry Junior.”

Allen stared down at the headstone, speechless.

Grandma Naomi wiped her hair back, taming the wild locks to a small degree. “But the visitors returned that afternoon. We refused to see them, but they kept coming back until we finally came out of the house.”

“Okay…and what about the part where I lived here for the past fifty-five years?” Allen asked.

“That’s exactly what they were there for. Their leader—his name was Refl—had claimed to need you, or at least to need someone from our family. Something about our DNA. Back then, neither one of us had heard of DNA, but the aliens were convinced there was something special about our family. They said they wanted to give us something in return, but of course there was nothing they could give me to make up for losing Henry Junior,” Grandma Naomi said. “My grief was too much and I just walked away. I couldn’t bear to hear any intergalactic sales pitch for my son. The son I would never see again.

“Your father, on the other hand, was intrigued. He talked to Refl, and told him how I felt. A few days went by without our visitors, and then at last they stopped by with an olive branch.” Grandma Naomi looked up into Uncle Allen’s eyes. “You.”

“Me?”

“Yes. They took some of Henry Junior’s DNA and made a copy. You’re a clone, Allen.”

“Wha…seriously?”

“Would your mother lie to you? Wait—don’t answer that,” Grandma Naomi said. She sat a little taller on the old log, her words giving her life. “I don’t know all the reasons why they didn’t just take Henry Junior and leave, but they didn’t. They gave us you. You might be a clone, but you’re identical to Henry Junior in every way, and I’ve loved you every day of your life. You are my son, Allen, and always have been. We sent Henry Junior off with aliens, and they left us with you. You, and that capsule.”

The entire time Naomi talked, Rachel had forgotten about the capsule. She looked back to discover the capsule was still faintly glowing. She’d been clutching her T-shirt with a death-grip, and Allen still held the iPad-like device.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head.

“It is pretty incredible,” Rachel said. “You…a clone, and your brother, or whatever you want to call him…”

“No,” Allen said, cutting her off. “It isn’t just incredible. It’s impossible. You tell me that ridiculous story and expect me to believe it? If it was true, why didn’t you tell me before? I think maybe you need help, Mom. I’ve been willing to help you stay at the farm, but this is the last straw. I don’t know where all this stuff came from, and I don’t care.” Allen’s voice seethed with anger.

“Allen, you don’t understand. We couldn’t tell you. Do you really think you could have gone to school and not told anyone where you came from? That you were a clone of someone living on another planet?” Tears streaked down Naomi’s cheeks.

“It doesn’t matter. Come on Mom, let’s go,” Allen said, stomping over to his mother. “It’s past your bedtime.”

“No.”

Allen stopped in his tracks. He had taken his mother by the elbow, but she refused to stand up.

“You think this was easy on me?” she said. “You think I wanted to keep this secret from everyone, let alone you, for all these years? You think it was a cakewalk taking in a copy of my dying newborn son and raising him as though nothing had happened?”

“Grandma, no one said any of that,” Rachel offered.

“Don’t patronize me. I’m not a child. I know I’m not always with it, but I am completely alert right now. More than I have been in years. Maybe it was one last gift the visitors left for me: a chance to set the record straight,” Naomi said, throwing her shoulders back. “So here it is: Allen, I love you. I didn’t give birth to you, but I’ve loved you as if I did. Even though I saw a nearly dead infant each time I picked you up when you were little, I still loved you.”

She slapped the log, sending up a spray of dirt and debris. Her cheeks were moist with the emotion she’d pent up for decades, but her voice was surprisingly strong. “And yes, I loved Henry Junior as well. Every night when I go to bed, I look out my window, hoping and praying that one day he’ll come back to me. One day he’ll know I loved him, too.”

Rachel sat down beside her grandmother and wept. She felt how Naomi must’ve felt back then, giving up a child, never to see him again, only to get him back, but not quite the same. As tears obscured her vision, Rachel saw the tablet come to life in Allen’s hand. Allen hadn’t done anything to turn it on—the hand holding the tablet still hung loosely at his side—but for whatever reason, the screen had lit up.

“Uncle Allen? Grandma?” Rachel pointed at the device. Both Rachel’s uncle and grandmother turned their heads, first toward her and then toward the screen. Allen held it up so that they could all see it clearly.

A man came into focus. Behind him was a reddish sky with strange, alien buildings. He wore a tight-fitting uniform of some kind, and his face was remarkably similar to Uncle Allen’s, if perhaps a bit smoother and less worn by the Midwestern summers. For whatever reason, the image brought memories of her mother back to Rachel’s thoughts. She might not have her mother anymore, but perhaps somewhere out there, her family was alive and well.

Before anyone could say anything, the man spoke.

“Mom?”

The Control

Originally published by Windrift Books

There exists for everyone a moment.

It’s so small, you can almost miss it, but it’s important. Vitally important. In that moment, all can be lost, or all can be saved. It is that moment that stands between victory and anarchy.

In music, you hear it when the song swells, building bit by bit until eventually the music reaches a cliff. All the instruments drop out. The vocalist may act as a bridge of sorts across the chasm of silence, but the moment is solely dependent on the other musicians. The impetus is on the piano, percussion, and the collection of other instruments to count, to keep a steady but silent beat internally, only to resume playing at precisely the right time.

Should the band hit the mark, the song sends shivers up your spine. It brings the crowd to their feet, and gives the piece an air of authority it didn’t have before.

If the musicians miss the landing, there may be no salvation. Their chance is gone, now just part of a disjointed past. Whatever the song sounded like before that infinitesimal break, it now has the sound of ruin. For the audience, the failure of a solitary moment within the song only accelerates their desire for the end. It cannot come soon enough.

But in that moment, neither has happened. The musicians have not yet succeeded or failed. Both options await them, depending on their internal clocks. The overwhelming joy of everyone rejoining at the perfect moment is balanced with the abject fear of failure.

It was there, in that moment, where I lived. Always waiting. Always letting my fate be determined by others. Always hovering between a rousing triumph and a crushing catastrophe. I was that moment. But my moment was never under my control. I was always under his control. Throughout the moments of my life, though, I became the man I am, and I am not ashamed of it.

Those were the moments I truly remembered. Over time I learned that names and dates are utterly forgettable. I can’t tell you the name of the man who decided whether or not I deserved to board one of the few lifeboats on the night of April 14, 1912. I don’t remember what day of the week it was when I was chosen to be one of the first to experience the guillotine during the peak of the French Revolution. I have no idea what clothes I was wearing when I was part of the crowd that decided the fate of Jesus of Nazareth.

What I can tell you is how I felt. For a brief moment, I thought I was the master of life and death. I was not. As was so often the case over the past few millennia, the result turned out to be death, but over and over I was brought back due to a gift. A curse. An experiment.

Whatever you want to call it, immortality has followed me.

My name is Bek. I have been alive for nearly five thousand years.

I live for those moments, but I have come to realize that the truly special moments happen too infrequently. My sense of mortality has grown too thin and I have found I don’t have the same thrill about my life anymore.

My only wish is to finally die. To experience an end. When I was younger—in my first life—I would have craved a life like this. A life apart from all the rest, where death held no reign over me, and I could live like there was no tomorrow.

Instead, I simply move from one experience to another. I cannot die as everyone else does.

My master will not permit it. Instead, I am forced to live. Again and again, my life is forfeit to satisfy his curiosity. For a long time, I thought the irregularity of my existence was a blessing. Instead, I have come to understand that it is a curse. Over and over I have tried to end my life, only to be brought back again and again. Different place, different body, but it’s still me.

Human technology has not done this. It was a gift of the gods. At least that’s what the pharaoh told me at the time. He offered any of his servants to the gods to appease them, and I was selected.

Gods.

Just another name for aliens.

Of course, I didn’t understand this for a very long time. In fact, I was thousands of years old by the time I recognized my “creator” for what he was.

He said his name was Osiris. Is that his real name? Five thousand years ago I would have sworn to you it was. Just like dates, the name really doesn’t matter. He was a god, and then he wasn’t. All I know is that to him, I’m just part of a grand experiment.

It was a warm day (but weren’t they all in ancient Egypt?) when I was called into the pharaoh’s palace to meet with the vizier.

“Bek!” called a palace guard.

I walked over to him quickly. That was when I used to care about what happened to me.

“Yes? What can I do to please the king today?”

“You can start by wiping that grin off your face. You are requested at the palace. The vizier needs you.”

I quickly found myself at the palace with about twenty other men, all about my size, waiting to be seen. I knew better than to talk to any of them. I had been called to see the vizier, not them. When we were all finally called before the vizier, we were instructed to line up. The vizier inspected each of us, dismissing a handful as he went. In the back of the room, I glimpsed a cloaked figure, but again, I knew to not say anything.

Eventually there were about ten men left in the room.

The cloaked figure stepped forward to address us.

“I have selected each of you from afar. I have chosen each of you to show the power of the gods.” He paused. “You may wonder who I am.”

Slowly and purposefully, he slid back his hood, revealing a glowing presence. It shone so brightly, each of us had to look away. But before I did, I caught a brief glimpse of dark green skin on the most glorious face I’d ever witnessed in my short life. I knew who he was before he even had a chance to tell us.

“Osiris,” I gasped under my breath.

Apparently it wasn’t quiet enough, because the god approached me. Suddenly I was afraid. Osiris was known for much, including his role in the afterlife.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I am Osiris. Who are you that you are so wise?”

“I…I am Bek.”

“Bek.”

“Yes,” I said as boldly as I dared. I was speaking to a god, but I wanted him to grant me his favor. My answer was short, but it offered him what he wanted.

Osiris laughed. It was loud, filling the entire chamber with echoes upon echoes of deep roars and howls that somehow came from the being in front of me. The men on either side of me shook with fear. For whatever reason, I was unafraid. The laughter somehow reached inside of me and touched something. I felt…peace. While the other men were a hair away from cowering, I stood tall, proud that Osiris had chosen to address me. I had pleased him, somehow, and who was I to question a god?

Suddenly, I was alone in the room with Osiris. Gone were the vizier and the other men I had shared the chamber with. In fact, the room was different somehow. Like it was the same room, just in a different location. It took me centuries, but I eventually learned it was Osiris’ ship, occupying space above the earth and designed to look just like a royal chamber room in ancient Egypt. That day, however, I was awestruck by everything surrounding me.

“Bek, I have chosen you to be favored among all men. As the god of resurrection, I wish for all men to witness my miraculous rebirth in the body of a man,” Osiris said. He put his hood back over his head, so the light receded, but kept his face visible. He locked eyes with me and at that moment, I felt greater than any man who had ever lived. “Your life will be a beacon throughout the ages, endless and steady. You are blessed among men, for you are no longer a mortal man, but are immortal, a step closer to the gods themselves.”

I don’t remember weeping, but I wouldn’t have been surprised had I spontaneously burst into tears. A favor from the gods was truly magnificent. That I would be chosen was the pinnacle of my life.

Little did I know that my life up until that point was miniscule compared to what was to come.

What happened next was so minor, I didn’t give it much thought for years, but I came to understand that what Osiris did to me was what gave me eternal life. As I stood there, looking into his eyes, I felt a sharp but brief pain in my neck. I don’t even remember his hand moving there, but Osiris had a gauntlet of sorts, made of gold and shining jewels. Knowing what I know now, I came to understand that it concealed some sort of handheld syringe.

He left his hand there for a moment, then pulled it away and took a step back, as if he was admiring his creation.

“Bek, you are now perfect. Man will no longer have dominion over you. I will guide you through the ages of earth still to come. You will be my constant as the tides of humanity rise and fall. I will see you again soon.”

Before I could even open my mouth, the world disappeared around me, and I found myself standing in my home. The bed was next to me, and I lay down, desperate to sleep. And sleep I did. It was the first time I’d slept as an immortal man.

In my life, I’ve experienced many things. The birth of my first son. The birth of my one hundredth son. The rise of Rome. The fall of Rome. The creation of sliced bread and the advent of television. I’ve been privileged enough to shake hands with Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Winston Churchill. I fought at the Battle of Hastings, the Battle of the Alamo, and the Battle of the Bulge. I have lived more than any man before and surely more than any man after me.

As I said, I have died many times, but each time I reawaken in another body. Every time, a perfect body given to me by Osiris.

That first body, though…that one was mine. Given to me by parents whose names I have long since forgotten. The only memory I have of when I was a small boy is of playing along the Nile River. Every year the river would flood, bringing life to the once dormant riverbed. One day I was playing among the reeds along the riverbank with a few of my friends when my mother called to me.

“Bek, make sure when the sun is just over the big pyramid that you head home for dinner. Do you understand?”

I nodded, desperate to resume my playtime with my friends.

“Are you sure you understand?”

“Yes, Mother. I understand,” I said, my eyes on a ball that my friends had brought with them to the river that day. “Can I go play now?”

She smiled, the love from mother to son clear in that one small gesture. “Yes, my son. Go play. Enjoy the day, but come when I asked, all right?”

“Okay!” I shouted back, barely registering the words she’d spoken. Years later I would regret not heeding those words the first time. Instead, I went to play, not ever looking back at the pyramids off in the distance. The sun began to set over the Great Pyramid and I kept running and kicking the ball with my friends. Before I knew it, my mother was out calling to me again.

“Bek, it’s time to come to dinner.”

“Coming, Mother!” I shouted back, but I continued to play among the papyrus. I ran and laughed, my friends and me enjoying the last rays of sun on a bright spring day in Egypt. At the time I thought it was a precious thing, the sun on my back and the wind in my face. Before I realized it, much time had passed and when I turned to run towards my friends, I found my mother standing before me.

“Bek.”

I hung my head. I knew I had disappointed her.

She walked towards me and took my head in her hands. I heard my friends scatter and for a few moments, only my mother and I were alive. The world could have faded away; I wouldn’t have noticed. She was my entire world and I had let her down. She crouched down to look me in the eye. I couldn’t avoid the tears welling up as she spoke to me. Never will I forget her words.

“Bek, my dear son. Life is a wonderful thing. I love to see you enjoying the time you have and friends that you can play with each day,” she said, capturing my attention with her soft eyes. I can still remember that look to this day, along with the slight brush of her hand across my cheek as she wiped my tears. “If you ever remember anything, please remember this: your word is your bond. It makes you who you are. When you grow up to be a man, a promise kept or unkept shows everyone the type of person you really are. For good or bad, for better or for worse, if you promise something to someone, you must follow through on that promise. The words you say will not matter, unless you back them up with your actions.”

As a small boy, I didn’t comprehend what she had said to me that day as twilight came to the Nile River. The words went into my mind and stayed there, but I didn’t think about them until much later. It was one of the few things I could remember about my mother. Her words that day formed the basis for the man I would be…again…and again…and again…and again.

I awoke with a start, my head pounding like a fist hammering on the door.

Except it was literally a fist hammering on my door.

“Bek! You get your sorry behind out of bed and to the work site! The foreman says all hands are needed today, and that means you,” growled the voice on the other side. It was a friend at the time, another whose name has escaped the confines of my mental storage over the years.

I dragged myself off the stiff bed and prepared for the day. A few times, my head felt like it was about to explode, but that was no excuse. The foreman would have me whipped if I didn’t show. Better to suffer a headache than deal with pain on my backside as well.

Within the hour I was hauling bricks for the new monument—me, and hundreds of my closest friends. We’d all heard stories about how the Great Pyramid had been constructed, and the pharaoh wanted this one to be as close to that one in quality as he could get. A few hours in and I had already soaked through the few articles of clothing I had worn to the work site.

As I was getting another stone ready to transport, I caught a shape out of the corner of my eye. My breath caught for an instant when I saw Osiris talking to the foreman. Perhaps he was here to take me with him. Perhaps he would stop the work for the day. Perhaps…

The foreman stepped up and called out to all the men working that day. “Okay, you grunts. Orders from the top—everyone must double their block totals until further notice.”

This was one of those moments. I didn’t realize it, but I was about to be tested with forces beyond my control.

Osiris wasn’t there to save me. He was there to kill me. Well…my body.

We doubled production. Food, water, and breaks were not doubled. I am proud to admit I lasted longer than many on my work gang, but within a week, most of us had collapsed along the route to the new monument. The heat, combined with lack of vital resources such as water, doomed us from the start. Egypt wasn’t the most forgiving of places.

It was about midday of the sixth day after the production order. I thought I could make it. I thought my body was stronger. I thought it was just a test.

It was, but I was wrong about my body. I collapsed from severe dehydration and malnutrition. I wasn’t dead when I fell, but an hour in the sun, unattended to by a doctor, ensured a painful end.

Except…it wasn’t.

The moment…that one brief instant between this life, and the next…happened on Osiris’ ship. I stopped breathing on Earth, under the naked sun, before the Old Kingdom of Egypt even came to be. But I didn’t die. Not really.

My body stopped working, but my consciousness was immediately transferred to another one. It was a strange feeling, but not unpleasant. In fact, there was a bit of euphoria as I moved from one body to another.

How did I know I had gained a new body? I didn’t at first, but when I opened my eyes I found myself lying on the floor of Osiris’ chamber. I looked down and found myself naked. I reached down and touched my arms and my legs. My skin and muscles bounced back with the elasticity that hydration and health provided. My body was different, but my mind was the same. It was clouded, though. It cleared instantly when a voice rang out in the room.

“Welcome back, my son!”

I looked up, momentarily concerned about my lack of dress, but then realized I was in front of a god, and if he wasn’t concerned, I should not be, either. I was too stunned to speak, though.

Osiris gestured to my right and I saw a small pile of neatly folded clothes. I understood he wanted me to put them on, and he addressed me as I did so.

“How was it? The process of dying, and being resurrected—how was it?” Osiris asked.

So that was what had happened. It made sense. Osiris was the god of resurrection, but I hadn’t put it all together quite yet.

I finished dressing while I gathered my thoughts. I spoke my mind, unaware at the time that I didn’t have to be honest with Osiris.

“It was glorious, my lord. In one moment, I found my body too weak to continue. The effects of the sun had been wearing on me and the overseers were not providing us enough water. Thankfully, you have chosen to resurrect my spirit into a new body, much like your wife resurrected you,” I said. “I do regret I failed you in your appointed task for the pharaoh. But I am grateful you chose to give me another chance.”

Osiris smiled, his white teeth a stark contrast to his greenish skin. He was happy, and that made me happy.

“No, my son. You have not failed me. No matter what you do, you will never fail me,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Bek. I had the foremen push you and your friends to test the limits of what you were capable of. I knew that no matter what happened, you and I would meet again here, safe from the ravages of death. That is the gift I gave you. You possess a life eternal, now,” Osiris said.

“Eternal life, my lord?”

“Yes,” Osiris said, and waved a hand. To his left, a dais rose out of the ground. On it was a bronze medallion. It had a very Egyptian look to it, but was mysterious in other ways. It was attached to a flexible leather lanyard. “Take this. I will always be able to find you, but this will give you added protection. As long as you wear it, I will be there. You will surely live again, as long as you carry this with you.”

I reached for it, making sure not to actually touch Osiris. It was one thing to accept a gift; it was another altogether to dare to make physical contact with a god.

“Thank you. This gift…it is more than I could ask for,” I said.

Osiris held up his hand. “Do not thank me, Bek. Your death and resurrection today were easy. Painless. Maybe even pleasurable. I think you will have to die again and again, and I cannot say each death will be as seamless as the one you just experienced. Are you prepared for that? Will you live an eternal life for me? Are you willing to accept the consequences of that choice?”

Who would turn down everlasting life? I didn’t that day. I wouldn’t for a long time, but he was right. Death stopped being easy. Thousands of years later, I wish with everything I am that I had refused his offer.

“I will serve you in whatever way I can,” I said.

Osiris touched a bracelet on his wrist, and he vanished. My eyes saw a smiling god in one moment, and a rocky terrain the next. I swiveled around, trying to find the familiar sights of the monuments to the pharaohs in the distance. No monuments. Just mountains. A cool breeze blew through my clothes. I shivered, and saw for the first time something I could never have imagined, something I did not know the name of until later.

Snow.

I barely lasted five days. I didn’t know it then, but Osiris had dropped my newly regenerated body right in the middle of the modern-day Canadian territory of Nunavut. Even now, several thousand years later, only a handful of people live there. The Inuit, though, never found me during that short stretch. I managed to find a cave, but the clothes Osiris had given me were the same small loincloth and tunic I had worn in Egypt—not quite the proper attire for the near-Arctic.

That was probably exactly what Osiris had in mind.

“Back so soon?” Osiris asked after I had died and returned to his care.

Nowadays, I might have had a few choice words for the guy. Back then, he was still very much a god in my eyes. I was silent, praying he would look favorably upon me in my next life.

Osiris offered a wry smile as he advanced towards me in his vast chamber. Once again, I was lying in the middle of the large room, naked as the day I was brought into the world. I sat up and immediately found the pile of clothes nearby. I dressed and secretly wished for more. Even with a new body, I still felt a chill from the past few days.

“It might surprise you to know that less than a half-day’s journey to the north of your cave, there was a dead carnivore. Alive, it would have been five times your mass. Had you found it, skinned it, and appropriated the meat and bone from the creature, you would have had an outer covering, a source of food, and tools. You could’ve lived in that environment for decades.”

I was astonished. “How was I to know that?”

“There was no way for you to have known, Bek. But I didn’t put you down there to sit in a cave and hope for salvation.”

I considered that for a moment. “I am guaranteed to live again, correct?” Osiris nodded. “So, I am tasked with living as much as I can. Sitting and waiting for the end is not in your master plan.”

“That is correct, Bek,” Osiris answered. He opened his hand. In his palm was the bronze medallion he’d given me before. “I saved this for you. It will be in your clothing for you to put on again each time in the future, but I knew you would want to talk to me after your experience.”

“Yes, Osiris, I do. Why was I sent there? I had never before seen…”

“Snow,” he completed for me. The way Osiris said it gave it an air of magnitude. I had heard the word before—Egyptians did have a name for it, we just rarely used it. With Osiris, however, it seemed like a divine word that I would be grateful to even utter again.

“Snow,” I repeated, letting the word linger on my tongue for just a moment. “If you would consider letting me, a mere mortal know, why was I sent there?”

Osiris laughed. “I will tell you, because now you are not a mere mortal any longer. You have eternal life! That life will take you many places in your world, not just Egypt. I wanted you to get a taste of the extreme climate conditions of the planet immediately. If I had just told you of the place you visited, would you have chosen to go? Would you have believed me?”

I was honest. “I would have gone. For you, I would go anywhere, my god Osiris. But, no, I would not have believed you. Never in my wildest imaginations would I have dreamed such a place existed.”

“Good. Thank you, Bek, for your honesty. I dare say, you may not always trust me so readily, but I am glad for your loyalty at the present. As for why you are to go there and many other places in this world—I am a god, yes, but I am a curious god,” Osiris said. “I must confess that you play a critical role in my curiosity. I long to test humankind and you will be at the center of those tests.”

“I will do what you ask of me, Osiris,” I said, parroting what I’d said earlier.

“Will you? Let’s see what you think after a few more trips back to your world. Are you ready?”

I nodded, and Osiris touched his bracelet. He shimmered out of view, and I found myself in a vast desert.

I sighed in relief. I was back in Egypt. The dry heat of the cracked earth radiated up towards my face and I closed my eyes, welcoming my return to the desert I had grown up in. A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead and I smiled.

A noise startled me. I opened my eyes and slowly turned in a circle. A creature stood about ten paces away. I wondered briefly if it was a meat eater, but it didn’t look fierce or even hungry. It was about my height, narrow at the top, and larger at the bottom, with large, padded feet and a long tail. Before I could say anything, the creature turned and hopped away, bounding towards the sun one leap at a time.

This was not Egypt.

In spite of its many challenges, I lasted a couple of years in Australia. I was alone for a long time, but I knew how to survive in the desert. True, I was very dependent on the steady Nile River, but that just meant I knew how important a fresh water source was. It took me two days, but I knew that finding vegetation would take me closer to water. I had to trust that Osiris had put me within walking distance of what would keep me alive, just like he’d done in Nunavut without my knowledge.

Life was tough, but I learned a lot. Eventually I explored further, and that’s where death found me. The original inhabitants of Australia—the aborigines—were surprised to see me. I’m guessing they figured I was inherently evil since I didn’t get a chance to explain myself before a spear pierced my heart.

I died. I moved to another body and was placed back on Earth without seeing my god this time. I lived again, this time in a rainforest. The mosquitos were as large as my hands and the animals loved to pelt me with their excrement. I learned to live and then died in the tropics.

The next time, death came to visit in the form of disease. My decline was long and drawn out, and I was thankful when death finally came. Again, I had no downtime in Osiris’ chamber. I was placed inside a village at the foot of a mountain. I looked up and saw that the mountain’s peak was smoking. The ground shook beneath my feet and the mountain began to make noise.

I noticed the village was vacant. Osiris had known the mountain was unstable. He’d known the village was already abandoned, and he had chosen to put me in harm’s way anyway. I convinced myself this was a test. He knew what he was doing. He was a god, after all.

I quickly scouted the village, hoping there was something I could use. Something I could do. Osiris had provided for my survival the other two times. This time, though, I found myself choking on the hot ash raining down from above. It seared my face and burned my throat. I could not escape. I was not going to survive.

I didn’t want to disappoint Osiris. I remembered when I had just holed up in the cave during my Arctic life. Osiris hadn’t been content with that, so I determinedly tried to live. I could barely breathe, but I crawled as far as I could to leave the town. It was no use. Just past the village limits, I was struck by a chunk of volcanic rock, instantly breaking my femur. The pain was intense, but I knew I would be resurrected again. Living with a broken leg in a volcanic wasteland was no life when I knew the next would surely be better. I folded myself up and grasped my necklace, praying to Osiris for the end to come as soon as possible.

The end did come, but it was not quick.

When I finally did succumb to the effects of the volcano, the moment from death to life was not as pleasant as I remembered it being. The sounds of the volcano exploding above me were gone, replaced by the emptiness of Osiris’ chamber. Unlike the first few times, though, the moment was jarring. I found myself questioning whether I was really going to be resurrected this time, but after a few moments, I felt the cold stone against my naked back. I was back in my body again.

I kept my eyes closed as I completed the process back. Footsteps approached and I knew he was there. Waiting.

“Welcome back, Bek.”

I cautiously opened my eyes and found him standing in front of me. He was still garbed as he had been the first day I saw him. His skin was still green. It was as if he had not aged, but I felt like it had been centuries since I had seen him last. My body, though, was still as young and as taut as the day I had stood in the pharaoh’s chamber. Identical, in fact, in every way.

“Greetings, Osiris.” I stood and gathered the clothes from the ground. I carefully and slowly put them on, wary of what was next for me.

“How has your life been?”

“You mean lives, my lord.”

He seemed to be staring at something over my shoulder, and hesitated. “Oh, yes, lives. How have they been?”

I recounted the time I had spent in the land of the jumping mammals, then the weeks in the rain forest, and finally the hours in the shadow of a volcano. Three lives. Three moments.

Osiris listened and then questioned my actions in the final life. “Did you think you would be able to evade the effects of the volcano?”

“I knew you were a kind god and would do whatever you could to offer a way to safety. Just as you said, in the snow there was a carcass I could have harvested, and when I arrived in the desert, I found a river for fresh water. I knew you would have left me a gift to survive. I am sorry I was unable to locate it before I perished.”

Osiris laughed. “But there was no escape. In this case, there was no way out. I placed you there as a lesson: sometimes there is nothing that can be done. But I saw your valiant attempts to stave off your fate, and for that you are commended.”

I was confused. Did he want me to fight for every last breath, or did he want me to accept my fate?

He saw the confusion on my face. “My dear Bek, what is it?”

“Osiris. I’m sorry, my lord, but what is my purpose? What is it I am supposed to achieve? Why have I been gifted eternal life if I am supposed to strive for every breath in one life and accept defeat in another?” I asked.

“Oh, Bek. I thought you would have figured it out. I am conducting experiments. I cannot control everything, but I can control you. Your body, your blood, your physical fitness. In all experiments, there are multiple variables, but the one performing the experiment needs one thing. A constant. They need a control.”

I don’t know what I would have said, but I wasn’t given the chance. With a swift action, Osiris pushed a button on his bracelet, sending me to a new land, one lush with green grasses and tall trees. A few birds chirped in the distance and the sun was warm, but not overly so.

I didn’t care, though. I was numb.

My life meant nothing to Osiris. I was just a body. He could use me over and over through whatever means he chose. I was nothing special to him.

Instead of living my life as he wanted me to, I made a decision that day. I would live like I wanted. Maybe there wasn’t much of a difference in what I would have done, but it was different in my mind. It was different in my motivation. I stopped living for Osiris and started living for myself.

It was probably a few centuries before I saw him again. I lived more than a half-dozen lives in that span, but he kept resurrecting me and depositing me in a new place without a rest stop in his chamber. Each time, I was dressed like an ancient Egyptian and I had the bronze medallion. The places I went were different in climate, culture, and people, but one thing was always the same. Me.

I encountered Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu (who wasn’t as hairy as the stories say). I met Hannibal. I saw Athens before Sparta overthrew it in the Great Peloponnesian War. The terra cotta warriors were new the first time I saw them.

Decades sped by as my lives continued to come and go.

When I saw Osiris again, I knew the Egyptian gods of old to be unreal. I had seen the “power” of a vast number of other gods, and had decided for myself that my master was a false one. He held dominion over my life, but he was no god.

“Your name is not really Osiris, is it?” I asked on a rare trip back to his chamber.

“I was wondering when you would ask me that,” he replied. In that moment, the garments he had worn in my presence for years vanished, replaced by a utilitarian article of clothing. “I can be rid of those now.”

“What should I call you?” I asked.

“The only name I’ve had on your world has been Osiris, so that is as good a name as any. It would make me happy to hear you continue to use it.”

And so, like any adolescent, I stopped doing what he liked. I found ways to make him unhappy. I ran towards death like a moth towards flame. I went through body after body until I finally realized I was probably living my lives just as he wanted me to. He was testing my body’s capabilities and I was simply providing him with more and more opportunities to test me.

For centuries, I managed to live full lives. I even settled down and met a few women.

But it wasn’t enough. There was one thing I lacked.

I wanted to die.

It wasn’t that my life wasn’t fulfilling. I certainly found various ways to entertain myself throughout the years, but after a certain point, it was all the same. One man’s dictator is another man’s king is another man’s president. They’re all the same. And that’s what my life was like as well.

Dying from smallpox wasn’t too different from wasting away due to scurvy, or kicking the bucket after meningitis, or even a good bout of pneumonia. When you’ve had them all, the ending is unchanged. One death was the same as the next.

And Osiris’ words came back to me again and again. The first time I had died, he had said, “I cannot say each death will be as seamless as the one you just experienced.” He was right. Each time I passed away, it was as if someone had jabbed another dagger into my ribs and sucked my organs out through a straw. My brain was jelly for longer and longer each time as I recuperated. I finally decided that the more years that passed between one death and the next meant a little bit more suffering for Bek.

By the time I reached the Middle Ages, the pain was almost unbearable. So I began to think about how I could actually die.

I was obsessed. I spent at least one of my lives simply contemplating death at a Buddhist temple until old age snuck up and took me in my sleep. That was a good life. I wish I could do that one again.

I came to one conclusion: Osiris had to die. For me to die, he had to die.

How do you kill a god? First, you acknowledge that he isn’t a god.

In one of my few trips back in the Middle Ages, I confronted him. “You are not a god.”

He regarded me with thin eyes. “No.”

I knew I couldn’t fulfill my next statement yet, but I made it anyway. “One day I will kill you. For all the times you have killed me, you will pay.”

He laughed and turned a dial on a dais. “Good luck with that. Have a nice death, Bek.”

He’d sent me to the summit of a mountain. I suspect it was Mt. Everest or K2. Either way, I lasted a few hours.

While he held the power of my resurrection, he also seemed unaware of how many lives I was living. He wasn’t attuned to each of my lives, and he’d even mentioned “my world,” leading me to believe he was some sort of alien who had come to our planet to conduct his own particular brand of experiments—with me at the fore.

So, he wasn’t a god. I was still stuck with the problem of killing him. I had a lot of time to think about it, and I finally came to the conclusion that I was a clone. Each body after my first, born thousands of years ago in Egypt, was simply a clone. It explained the identical form and age as that first body. It allowed Osiris to prepare many duplicate sets of clothes as well. I didn’t know if he had hundreds of clones sitting in storage, or if he simply printed up a new one each time I died, but either way, I was a clone.

That eliminated several different methods of taking Osiris out. After all, I was given a new body and new clothes each time. I was a constant. His control. That meant each body would be the same each time. No variations.

But just as I was Osiris’ control, he had inadvertently given me one as well. Sometime in the 1400s, I had scratched the necklace with a 17-carat diamond I’d found in a South African mine. I had never tried to do anything to it before and was scared that perhaps Osiris would be angry.

That was during my rebellious stage, though, and I didn’t care. After death came a few weeks later when a shaft of that diamond mine collapsed on me, I reappeared in Renaissance Italy. I looked at the necklace and saw that the medallion was unchanged. There was a long scratch on the back, almost scoring the bronze piece from top to bottom. I smiled. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had found my control. Just as I stayed the same in each life and location for Osiris, the medal Osiris had sent with me was the same each time as well.

For hundreds of years I didn’t dare act on my knowledge of the necklace. I learned metallurgy and other crafts. I created my own works with many types of metal, and curated collections based on the design of Osiris’ medallion. When the technology finally advanced, I ran the medallion through an X-ray and tested it. I found the homing device Osiris had planted in it. His technology was far beyond my own, so duplication was probably out of the question for a while, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Eventually, I settled on adding to the medallion, and making the extra mass not just bronze. Something a bit more…explosive.

Even then, I needed a way to control it. I needed to be awake and conscious during the moment of transfer. I had to get Osiris to talk to me. He hadn’t given me an audience since the waning days of the Roman Empire, so I wasn’t hopeful, but I knew I needed the medallion to be ready whenever the moment struck.

I had spent the past few decades killing myself over and over. Any way you can imagine to kill yourself was probably on my radar at some point during those years. Every time, I’d just reappear on Earth, ready to live and die again.

Each time I got ready to die, I gripped the medallion, hoping that the next time I did so, Osiris would be standing near me in his chamber. Each time, though, I simply opened my eyes on Earth; no supposed Egyptian gods were staring me in the face.

Nothing changed until I went back. It was fitting, I thought…I went back to Egypt. I found the Nile River and marveled at how civilization had grown up and encompassed all the land surrounding the river. I didn’t know if my plan would work, but I submerged myself in a bend in the river, upstream from Cairo. There was no one else around. Just me. And the medallion. I put it in my mouth and forced myself to swallow river water at the same time.

I felt the water burning my lungs—this wasn’t the first time I’d drowned—and knew the end would be near. I clamped my teeth down on Osiris’ medallion and sank to the bottom of the river. The end would be welcome. I hoped I wouldn’t be back. This was my end—at the place where it all began. My eyes shut for what I hoped was the final time and I let the water take me.

Each time before, the moment from one life to the next was seamless. The soundtrack of life kept playing for me, but I hoped to stop the conductor once and for all.

The rushing water of the Nile was gone. I was dry and naked on the floor of Osiris’ chamber. I felt disappointment ripple through me. I had failed.

I kept my eyes closed, waiting for Osiris to appear. The silence was interminable. I’d lived thousands of years, though, so what was a few more minutes? Any minute, the being I’d once met in the pharaoh’s palace would stroll in and doom me to another cursed life on Earth. Any moment…

But he never came. Minutes had ticked by in my head before I dared open my eyes to find the chamber empty. No clothes lay next to me. There was just me and the chamber. For the first time in hundreds of years, I was completely surprised.

In the moments between lives, I had never left this room. There were doors, but I had never before had the opportunity to discover what lay beyond them.

Now was the time. Now was my moment. Would it end in disaster or victory?

Slowly, purposefully, I sat up and inspected my surroundings, a place I’d been to dozens of times, but only now had free rein to explore. While there were doors, most were false. Placed there to resemble the pharaoh’s palace in Egypt, a place now in ruins on Earth.

But one door did open. One door did lead beyond the confines of the chamber.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I’d seen everything, but the room I entered was vast. The far wall was barely visible and each empty spot was filled with…me. Hundreds of some sort of cryogenic tubes were lined up end to end, and from inside all of them, the same face stared back. Me.

But the endless amount of Bek clones wasn’t what grabbed my attention. In the middle of the room was a workstation with a table in the middle. A body lay on the table, a bloated, sopping wet version of myself. I recognized the clothing. It was me. The last body I’d had, which I’d drowned in the Nile.

But my head was gone, destroyed in a small explosion.

It had worked after all.

Osiris lay next to the table, his own torso a mangled mess. What I assumed was blood covered the area, but it was a dark green, similar to his skin color. In one hand was the medallion, a little worse for wear after the explosion.

I’d done it. I’d killed him. The tiny explosives I’d implanted into my teeth and jaw had worked.

I was finally free to die.

But…

With hundreds of copies of myself to spare and no master ruling my life…did I even want to die anymore?

Life is composed of pivotal moments. I’d experienced many of them over the centuries—but none of them had been as significant as this one. With Osiris gone, the success or failure of this moment was up to me. I could fail. I could have monumental success. Either way, it was all up to me.

Entirely up to me.