13.

Immediately the scene changed, like a curtain falling away. I found myself walking, and saw my feet, which I realized were bare, treading through deep fine white sand. The strange man was still with me.

"We'll take the boat," he said, pointing, and I saw a river ahead in the haze. As we came closer I couldn't help noticing that the small piercing sun above was not reflected in its surface. In fact, nothing was. The man led me to a strange-looking, unpainted boat standing in the dark reeds beside the river's bank. Four paddles, two on each side, extended from the sides of the boat at a shallow angle to rest on the sand.

"Grod's a very interesting character," said The Book as he crawled into the boat. I followed and sat across from him, between two of the paddles.

"Yep," said The Book. There was a slight shudder as the oars pushed us out onto the water and began rowing on their own. "He used to come by all the time back when we were in Heaven, before I ended up on this wretched planet. Not that I don't like it here, it sure beats Heaven." He thought for a moment, gazing off into the distance ahead. I followed his gaze and nearly fell out of my seat when I saw the shore directly ahead. I actually did fall out of my seat when we hit shore. As I got back to my seat I detected the boat swaying gently from side to side as if not sure which way to fall. We had apparently gone straight across the narrow river and now the oars were walking on the sand toward the distant horizon.

The Book, unfazed, picked up where he left off. "I mean, you can't act a fool around God, he doesn't put up with that shit. Well, I guess he did for Grod, but... hey, Grod didn't tell you what got him kicked out, did he? I mean, God's little brother practically couldn't do wrong in His eyes."

"Well," I wasn't sure exactly how to put it, but I tried my best anyway. "He caused global warming, I guess."

"No," The Book stated simply. "He's done much worse than that. Have you ever heard of the dinosaurs?"

"Yeah, I've heard of them," I said. The swaying was starting to get to me, and it was getting hard to concentrate on the scenery; it looked like the ground the boat was walking over now was on fire, but it may have been just the heat playing tricks on my eyes.

"Okay, so one day, a long time ago, back when the dinosaurs were around, you know, Grod gets an idea. He's been hanging out on Earth, since it's still a pretty nice place. That--" he stood up suddenly and pointed to the horizon. Straining my eyes, I could barely make out a hazy white dot through the waves of flame and heat. "That is Alkotharpos, the famous garden city of the mortal gods." I nodded, realizing an explanation wouldn't do me much good anyway. "So anyway," the man sat down again, "Grod is hanging out on Earth, and he thinks, man, this place is too hot. So he hooks up with his friend, an angel, Crog-Hampton."

"Crog-Hampton?" I asked. I'd let a lot of things pass, but an angel named Crog-Hampton?

"Crog-Hampton," the man continued. Suddenly, instead of the boat tipping back it teetered for a few seconds on two of the paddles and fell over, expelling us both onto fluffy white snow that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The snow wasn't cold at all, though. In fact, it was a little warm. I looked at the boat which was now upside down. Two of the paddles were still rowing, futilely, but the other two were leaning on one another.

The Book grunted in mild frustration. "Damn thing always gets jammed. Oh well, it's not far from here. We'll make it on foot." He stood up and brushed the snow off his clothes and started walking. I followed.

"Anyway, so Grod and Crog-Hampton are on Earth. They had stolen this book of magic spells from one of God's libraries and they were looking over it, you know. Grod has come up with this idea that he's going to expand the planet's orbit, to take it farther away from the sun and make it colder. Of course, this is God's planet, but Grod doesn't really care about stuff like that. Eventually he finds a spell that allows him to move very large objects. He and Crog-Hampton wait until Sunday, when God is out of town, and they put their plan into action."

"God is out of town on Sundays?" I asked.

"Huh," The Book look puzzled for a moment, and then it occured to him that I had never been to Heaven. "Ah, well, you see, God doesn't do business on Sunday. In fact, even Heaven is closed on Sunday. But that's why he has everyone worship and pray on Sunday, he doesn't have to answer them. What an asshole, huh?"

"But..."

"So anyway, Grod takes this magic book all the way up the tallest mountain on the supercontinent, and gets out his list of spells and starts pushing the Earth away from the sun. Now, Crog-Hampton was supposed to be keeping an eye on all the space junk floating around the earth, asteroids and stuff like that during the move, but apparently he had been smoking it up with another pal of his and Grod's, Jeff, I think you know him, on the dark side of the moon since Thursday and he'd forgotten what day it was."

Jeff's name seemed to bring part of the story back to the real world I knew and tie it down. And somehow, it still made perfect sense. I began to wonder what really was going on. We had been walking through misty, invisible ground for quite some time without a major change in scenery, and I was starting to get anxious imagining what would befall us next.

The Book continued his story. "So at the same time, there's partying going on up in Heaven, mostly made up of sophisticated people. You know, some of the more important angels and dukes of Heaven. Even a few dignitaries from Hell were there. God's been working on these dinosaurs for quite some time, you see, and he thinks they're ready to become sentient."

What was moments ago just a slight mist was now becoming a dense fog. I could now just barely make out The Book in front of me, and I was concentrating very hard to make sure I didn't lose him.

"So God's going to send this magic rock, Alstradon. It was supposed to fly by Earth and inspire the dinosaurs to start thinking, right? But guess what happens." He was silent for a few seconds and I realized that he actually wanted me to guess.

"Uh... did Grod bounce the rock off the moon and send it into the sun or something?"

"Close. Because he changed the position of the Earth so suddenly, and changed it so that it was in the middle of Alstradon's orbit, the rock crashed into Earth and killed all the dinousaurs. You probably know the rest."

"Fuck, man," I said, not really sure how to feel about the story. We walked on without words through the ever-rising clouds for a few paces, then my foot crashed into some kind of rock lying invisible on the ground, and I fell down. As I plunged into the fog, everything went white.

I got up and the fog lifted like a stage curtain. We were in a very familiar place--a place I had visited just recently--only this time my family wasn't here, it wasn't raining, and where there had once been a coffin suspended above a hole in the ground there were patches of fledgling grass in front of a gravestone reading Howard Charles Crawford and then below that, the epitaph he had demanded. He had bragged to me about it for years but I never thought that my dad would allow it to happen. Being the brilliant man that he was, however, Grandpa Chuck had written it in his will. And if there's anything my family valued more than their pride, it was money. I knelt down, wiping away the moss that was somehow already covering the stone, obscuring the text. The epitaph was long, and it took me some time to read it.

And when, with gladness in his face, he placed his hand upon my own, to comfort me, he drew me in among the hidden things. Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so that, as soon as I set out, I wept. Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements, accents of anger, words of suffering, and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—all went to make tumult that will whirl forever through that turbid, timeless air, like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

I knew the quote, of course - it was from the Divine Comedy, as Dante steps through the gates of Hell. I had never understood, and still didn't understand, why Grandpa Chuck had chosen those particular lines for his epitaph, but it had made me respect him even more, in a way.

"Your gramps was a smart guy, you know?" The Book said offhand. I didn't respond. As I continued to stare at the text, the moss grew back over the stone, hiding the words again from the corrosive air. "Well anyway, there's your Grandpa."

I hadn't really expected to see my grandfather alive or anything, but to be taken to his grave and told that's him was probably furthest from my mind. I was utterly speechless.

"All right, kiddo," said The Book, "I guess that's all I have to show you."

I was quite bewildered, and apparently it showed.

"Everyone's always disappointed the first time," he said. "At least I didn't burn off your flesh." The Book thought for a moment, "Why don't you take this as a parting gift?"

"Take what," I asked. But before I could do anything the entire scene faded back into white, then through light grays, then dark grays, and then to a blackness that I knew as the insides of my eyelids.

PREVIOUS | NEXT