THE LOOMING

THE LOOMING

INT. OLIVER’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

OLIVER: Thank you for meeting me at my place, Angela. Please, sit. Do you like my new artwork? Christ Tempted in the Wilderness, a piece done by John Martin. No– don’t even guess how much it costed, I don't want to know myself! Honestly, I would’ve just done this over the phone but I was worried that you’d think I was high or– or in some daze. No, no look at me. I’m normal, see? Crystal-clear-headed.

OLIVER: No, listen– I don’t care about class today. The professor posts his lectures online, I’ll just get them from there.

OLIVER: Then why did I–? Because I know you, Angela! I know that you’re the only friend I have– genuinely! who won’t think I’m making this up. You know that I'm not crazy!

OLIVER: No– don’t be frightened. Just listen. And if you think I’m making this up you can just leave. Leave and never speak to me again. But if you have any respect for me as a colleague– as a friend, you will listen and consider what I have to say!

OLIVER: Alright, I’ll get on with it. I was perusing that little library in Churchill Hall. You know the one, that alcove on the first floor that smells like musty paper and shoe polish that Mariam says gives her some religious insight whenever she passes it. Well anyway, I was searching for the book that David mentioned during our last study session. He said he found this tome, of sorts, and copied all his notes from it for the midterm. Remember that? He described it as this thick leather-bound tome, and whenever he flipped to a random page he said that it was never consistent.

OLIVER: No– consistent as in– just let me finish! Remember what he said? This book supposedly had the answer to every question in the midterm. Not like a textbook, mind you, every question and answer written in the exact order that the midterm had it. I heard that and I had to find what the hell he was talking about. So I visited Churchill Hall and my God I found it. Tucked between Ezra Pound’s Cantos and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel was this bloated, leather-bound book wrapped in straps to contain the pages damn-near spilling from its contents. It smelled like embers smothered in whiskey and, believe me, each page was so thin you could see the ink bleeding through both sides of a single sheet. I took it to the table– that one made of walnut with that old work lamp that constantly flickers– and I sat at the old walnut table and I'm telling you, the straps nearly burst and lashed me when I untied them! And hell, flipping to the first page I realized this book wasn’t even labeled! No title, no author, no publisher, certainly no publishing date and I was left shocked and confused. Well, I flipped to a random page and by some minor miracle, I guess, I flipped directly to the one that David was talking about.

1590, the year that the Roanoke Colony vanished. And there it was. I'm telling you– all of it was on that page. Laid out, question and answer precisely how David described it and I kept flipping page after page, scanning through schisms, statistics, stories, sigils, runes, rhymes, riddles– page 17-18-19-21-23-2500 and as the flickering lamp let me continue my studies I found no end to the supplements and the footnotes and the REFER TO INDEX and I tried flipping to the back of the book– believe me, I did– but just as my fingers glided to the book’s tail, pinched the final page, and lifted the papers I found that, maybe in-between myself blinking– or the flicker of the lamp, probably!– at least a thousand more pages appeared behind it. The book’s size never grew; it was as if some invisible velvety hand had torn pages from the front of the book and jammed them into the back.

OLIVER: What– what do you mean? No, listen– Don't you trust me? Has anything over the years of studying together convinced you that I am not perfectly healthy and sane? Angela, I'm not screwing with you, here. This is an invitation.

OLIVER: To– to what? Well, I’d like to tell you, in fact I’d love to but I need you to promise me something. Promise me that this stays between us. I don't know what the hell David was thinking picking this up and not keeping it for himself because what I found next needs to stay with us. Promise me you won’t tell another living soul.

OLIVER: I need you to promise.

OLIVER: I have learned forgotten things from this book. At that table, I began to realize that time wasn't against me. I slowed my pace and studied every page in exhaustive detail. My mind was unraveling at the thoughts of this infinite text in front of me. I read. And read. And read.

All my life I have had difficulty in reading. For most texts, I would read a few pages and somewhere between paragraphs my mind would continue its reading but cease to process the words in front of me. I would daydream or think of more pressing issues and suddenly I found myself, minutes later, knowing only vague echoes of what I had read. It was as if my body had been possessed to read while my mind had left to wander.

This book was different. It demanded my mind, demanded that I focus! I read about anonymous poets, of burnt-1940s-poems, of forgotten meters, of ancient math equations, of imaginary numbers, of imaginary worlds, of writing sigils, of alchemical runes, of alchemist’s gold, of turning lead to gold, of the Philosopher’s stone, of how to mix tea and brew poison, of the funniest joke known to Man, and I began to see patterns in the text. They stretched like leylines; invisible only to a select few, and I had been chosen to see them. Patterns that had me slowly scanning each page, riding the leyline, seeing where it would take me.

When I'm reading this book, I see the solution to everything. You don't realize how mindless this world is until you've read the book. All of a sudden, after diatribes and dialectics and discoveries, everything begins to add up to something. The answer to the question: "What is it?" I wish I could just tell you the answer, Angela. But I can't. How does the human mind relay information? Language is the shadow from the bullseye lantern; the mind forms words that the hand writes on the page that the eye reads so that the mind interprets. Four levels of translation are undergone. So much to consider, to parse, to inherit. So much left in the dark.

What really convinced me of this book's portent was when I reached page 3600. There, the speaker described in detail the library I was sitting in. It wrote about the smell; paper and polish, and it described it with such beautiful prose that I wish I could emulate. It elegantly described the walnut table, the placement of each book, even the exact place that I found this tome– tucked between Ariel and Cantos. But more than this! it included, like some anecdote, a Greek phrase at the very end. I know what it means but I don't know how to phrase it. Still, even this came with a footnote: BEHIND THE BOOKSHELF. So, I check behind the bookshelf and, my God, there it was: John Martin’s Christ Tempted in the Wilderness. But that’s not all. I’d like to show you something.

OLIVER: See this pocketbook? Ignore the chewed corners, it’s a tick. Open it, look!

This is my diary from elementary school to early high school. Some of the days have dates, some don’t. See this handwriting? It’s barely legible– even I can't make it out. That pocketbook has 362 pages of writing. 362 pages. Pages 4603 to 4965, typed, in the tome. I remembered my love for my first crush through this thing. It's been waiting for me. It knows things that I haven't told another soul. What else could I have done but take the book with me? Bring it home– here! And read further.

OLIVER: Where? Well, that was the tough part. Where do you put a book like this? I couldn’t let my roommate find out, no– he wouldn't understand. The weak try to govern the dreams of the curious. No, I realized that the smartest place to hide this book was somewhere he would never search. Every second that the book was closed, in my hands, was like agony. Just one more page. Just one more page. Even now, I can almost taste the whiskey. I ended up tearing open the wall to hide it. Who, in their right mind, would look inside the walls? No one! And certainly no one would lay a finger on an artwork just like the one that you're sitting beside!

Angela, if you can, help me take down the painting.

OLIVER: Thank you! Now, if you can, reach your hand into that little cubby– and don’t flinch if you feel something crawling, it means that you’ve almost grabbed the book!

OLIVER: Yeah, yeah, I'm already acquainted with the spider webs. Some of those webs aren’t made by the spiders, I think. Did you know there is another classification of spiders beyond the Arachnida? The book mentions the class Arasynia, and the Centipede-Women that dwell in the blind spots of the Dreamers, of which there are only a blessed few. And, Angela, I see that we dream. Still! I couldn’t just hide the book too far close up– no one can stumble upon this thing! It'll be the best kept secret in the country. Come on, now– stick your elbow in if you haven’t found it yet!

OLIVER: You have it, don't you? Yes! Ignore the rotting fruit smell– I was having difficulty masking the book's aroma. Ah, look at it, Angela! Careful– careful! Don't damage a single page! No– I want you to hold it, don’t hand it over to me. Now, open it. See what page you fall on.

OLIVER: What page is that? Nine thousand? You’ve gone even farther in the book than I have. Have you read this tome before? Well, anyway. What does it say?

Ὁ κύβος ἀνερρίφθω

Angela gazes at the book’s contents. She sees a painting; a petrified oak has grown atop a jagged cliff. The stone looks as if it was once the ocean’s tongue, now solidified in a wonderous, curled wave of the earth’s crust. The oak, some cyst that has melded with the world, hangs gnarled. It is difficult to tell where it begins and the stone ends. Its branches swing down; giving the tree’s indulgences to the earth. Behind the oak looks to be a landless horizon. There is no sea; only sky. Angela thinks that some invisible god has broken off this landscape from some greater continent and raised it a thousand feet in the air to be surrounded by nothing but sky.

In the painting, a man and woman stand beneath the oak. A branch shrouds the man from the light of an absent sun and casts a sharp shadow across the man’s face. He looks to be goading the woman with words. The woman looks away from him. Her expression is difficult to read. A saintly disdain, perhaps. A tinge of pity.

ANGELA squints.

THE END