The commotion

D: Night-movements

I read:

“12:30: encountered a man in orange coveralls traversing the outer hallways near the records room. Subject stopped after repeated attempts to gain his attention.”

“12:45: Upon the last attempt, the subject ran straightaway for the conditioning room of the Seville Garden.”

“12:50: gave chase, but upon reaching the Seville Garden, lost the trail, and gave up pursuit.”

“2:30: Fire extinguished in the western wings, in walkway between Seville gardens and the command centre. Minor damage to door to the restricted passages, and security uncompromised.”

I wondered not a long while on these events, and what they were set to mean, and if they had any bearing on the resurgences of the hidden basements, in the moments between awaking, and the knock that soon pounded the knocker of my door.

I was between wonderings, as if the wondering was a part of the expectancy of the recent times. There were the omens and oracles of the self-styled gurus and the poor possessed souls of the outskirts, who longed for knowledge of the hidden, to which I was only too privy to, to bother worrying if they knew. But no secret goes without being found out before long, as soon I was to find.

They came to my door. I knew, without their speaking, what was the call so early at my apartments. Given the nature of the circumstances, before they spoke aught, I sat down on my cushion and stroked the scruff of my dog’s neck.

The old mongrel Duke lowered at my hand, slumping to the floor. There was the issue of the night before to consider, and an immediate impulse to leave my post. Drastic, cruel contender called news, called in that moment beyond my assumption for deep, forced breathing.

The executors came in. Spared innocuous excuses, I was given the full report. Untimely, like dancing fingers over hills mid-morning time, as late as had come, news unwonted of peace rescued my fear. I knew I was being called to no ordinary meeting with His Most Crossed Otherness.

“The time has come, vice-regent. He has called, and we are here to execute his will.” Rushed in suddenly with force, these men called executers out of awe came quickly, pulling me out of my senses. There came the possibilities, shreds of implications, doubts, affairs long forgotten, brought to the surface by those words spoken, tainted with premonitions.

Duke slouched and laid his head on the floor. More sudden than my ears pricked, crepuscular rays shone through my windowpane, as if stolen: lighting my face. The reason for the visit was sheer gravity. They asked at no great lengths of my attachments. It was known by some that he favored me more than they all, for I would someday dispose of him, as promised.

Nevertheless, I had sworn duties outside of his oaths that were known by some, these executers they called, in that I was bound by the oaths sworn, though secret and spoken out of affinity. I rose. “God.” Walking now beside me, Fields and Evensor by name, the two executers led me out, of my own free will, into the hall, from my corner of the house in the west wing, to the isolation of the further domiciles downstairs.

They led me into the room. I had been in this room a thousand times before, and then as I lived, I was compelled by habit to dismiss the two officers. But they would not go. I had expected this day would come, details and remittances accounted for, every cent, for fourteen or fifteen years, came to this. “Go ahead,” Fields said. The two had come at such an inopportune time, or rather, the affair as a whole, with the transference of funds from hand to hand, terminating with me. As his accountant, vice-regent and friend, I alone should have expected the tides to turn as such.

I sat down next to the bookshelf at my desk, took out the ledger and pen, and made as if to write. “Push the button.” I looked: of course I knew what to do—as I had a thousand times, a thousand times without them there, but I held my patience for as long as I could. “We have our orders.” The three of us had our duties to him, and though I was his vice-regent, I ranked below the executers, at least in his personal affairs. We were the only ones who ever heard his voice, yet none of us, in all his fifteen years as King, had ever seen his face.

As I pushed the button, the speaker in the wall let out some slight feedback, as always. I always felt it was a kind of confession, these meetings, sitting next to the grate like this, converting numbers in my ledger, a kind of spiritual inventory. I wondered if Fields and Evensor felt the same way in their offices. Then, His voice came through.

“William?” His voice was tremulous, imbuing a child-like, almost happy tone with the secret telepathy we four shared. “William?” Again, the speaker crackled now, a slight nuance we had come to expect from his end in our meetings. “William, it is time.” I stared at the wall until time no longer had any meaning to me. He called to me through his luxurious prison through that grate in the wall, and suddenly I was torn with utter compassion for him, then great joy that he would finally be free. But, free to die alone, no matter who fought, who followed, who spent tears.

“It is time for me to leave. That is why I have allowed Marc and Charles here to witness this. They know you are not responsible. I have been watching.” I always knew what he could do, but surely he could not be everywhere, and still I died to my self to know the utter isolation, the pure resignation that he felt.

With a start, I withheld the little courage I had left to face him as he came. It was a device he used many times throughout my meetings; a manner of use that would test my resolve without leaving me utterly disarmed. I speak, of course, about my due sense of guilt arising from such close an affinity with him. I justified countless times to myself my actions in this way, reminding myself of that sense of separation I knew and felt. If it had been truly an affect of his frailty I cannot say. But something held me back. Something, a notion left clouded behind me as the jamb slid aside and he poured forth in his primal entrance, standing in a grey light.