DIRECTLY CONTINUED FROM THE END OF "SONS OF THE FATHERS"

 

Chapter 1: Painful Reflections

 

 

"Photo session?" Maximus repeated, just as Sid had hoped he would.

"Yes,  my son and I have an appointment with Steve and his camera."

Himself, Terry, and Bud hurried down the Wharf.  "Oh, God!" Himself moaned when he caught sight of the grouping of six some distance ahead of them.  

"Hurry!" was all Terry said as he began to sprint.
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The three of them skidded to a halt near the parental grouping on the apron.  "Maximus?" Himself said, his voice rising a bit at the end of the General's name.  "Is everything all right?"

"Nothing to bother yourself about," Sid spoke up.  "Merely a family photo session."

"Family?  Which family?" Himself asked, looking from trio to trio.

"My family," Sid smiled. "My wife, my son....me."

Bud kept his eyes on the General's face, noting the slight curl of lip at Sid's reply. "Then you'd best be about your business, eh?" he said brusquely in an obvious verbal attempt to step on the fuse of the bomb that lay invisibly on the Wharf.  

Sid dipped his head slightly.  "True," he said, putting his arm about Bunny's waist and escorting her toward the lobby doors of the hotel. "Come, my dear.  Livi is ready for his close-up."  

Maximus watched them go, his jaw muscles working, his back stiff. Himself, trying to change the mood, suggested they meet in an hour for a nice lunch at Otto's. The General didn't answer.  He just stood there, staring at the door Sid had gone through.  

Cort opened his eyes slowly.  Was it a dream? Had he somehow gotten back inside the Blue Mountain Tunnel with the bats?  His own heart beats were so loud in his ears he could hear little else.  "Breathe slowly," he said to himself in an effort to quiet them so he might hear what was around him.  Gradually he was able to calm down, to use his whole body to listen as he had done when waiting for that final click before the clock struck.  He became aware of the tension in his right hand and that it was poised just above where the handle of his gun would be...were he wearing his holster.  He flexed his fingers, managing to loosen them a bit, but as soon as his attention turned elsewhere, his hand, by habit, returned to its previous position.  

A low laugh rippled up through the darkness.  "Gunslinger!" it said, laughing more. "Killer!"

Cort crouched, turning.  "Herod?"  His voice seemed to bounce off the walls, reverberating endlessly against his eardrums.   He tried to think. What was the last thing he'd been doing? He'd been with Sue then left her a moment to...to...WHAT??  He'd been going somewhere. He knew he'd been going... somewhere.  How had he gotten here? Where...was... here?  "Herod?" he tried again.  

Slowly, the space around him began to grow grey with dim light.  He squinted, trying to make out something...anything.   Someone was standing not far in front of him.  He was almost sure of it.  "Who's there?" he demanded.  

"Murderer!" accused the voice, laughing again.  

The grey grew lighter and lighter, becoming almost too bright.  "Show yourself!" he cried.

"Glad to oblige," chuckled the form, coming into focus.  

"Herod! It IS you!" Cort gasped.  Hadn't Ellen killed him?  He narrowed his eyes. "You can't be here.  You're dead!"

Herod was so amused by this he almost bent double with his laughter. Finally able to stand straight, but with his lips still twitching, he said, "Come closer, Cort."

"No!" Cort hissed, taking a step back.

"But you must.  It's why you've come."

Cort's mind raced.  "Why I've...come?" he repeated, beads of sweat beginning to form on his brow.

"Yes," Herod said.  "It's why you are here."

"Why?" Cort cried.  "WHY am I here?"

"You found the way.  Before any of the others...you found the way."

"Way? What way?"

"To him.  To save him.  To save all of you."

"I don't know where I AM!" Cort shouted.  "How can I save anybody if I don't even know where I AM?"

"Ah, but it is not where you are but who you are that matters here."

"Who...I am?" he repeated, his voice cracking a bit.

"Yes.  Who ARE you?"  With the asking of the question, it was made evident that the walls, the floor, even the ceiling of the area surrounding Cort were made entirely of mirrors.  

He stared straight ahead, his hand going to his mouth.  The figure in front of him did the same motion.  "Herod?" he asked again, aware that Herod's mouth moved exactly with his.  Slowly, hesitantly, his right hand reached out, his fingertips touching those doing a corresponding movement in the mirror.  Thick ripples flowed out from the point of contact as though Cort had dipped his hand in mercury rather than touching glass.  He stepped quickly back, almost falling in his haste, and despite the reflection maintaining a certain similarity of movement, it also now had some vague overlay of independence.  

Herod laughed again.  "Good lookin' fellow, eh?" he chortled.  

The color had drained from Cort's face.  "What are you doing in there?" he cried.

"Why, my dear Cort, I am being your reflection."

"NO!" Cort shouted.  "I am not you!"

"I beg to differ," Herod said.  "Observe."  He looked up at the ceiling mirror and Cort's eyes followed his gaze, horrified to see the kindly priest from Nogales who had taken them in, tended to their many wounds after the bank robbery had left them nearly dying in the alley.

"Oh, God," Cort moaned.  "Not this...not...him."  In slow motion he watched as the bullet left the barrel of his gun, knowing it carried with it the death sentence of this priest who had been only good to him. "NOOOO!" he screamed, the sound of the shot roaring into his being like a cannonball.  

He fell heavily to his knees, squeezing his eyes tightly closed.  "That will do you no good," Herod said, amused.  "You cannot hide from who you really are."

Cort opened his eyes, looking at the mirrored flooring.  He looked like himself again only his white collar lay slightly curled by his right knee. Barely had he begun to reach his hand out to pick it up, when one after another, white collars fell from the mirror above his head, sifting down all around him, piling up so that he could no longer see his reflection in the floor.  He turned his gaze then to the mirror in front of him.  Herod, standing up to his kneecaps in white collars, grinned back at him.  "You cannot hide from who you really are," he repeated.

"How did this happen?" Susan asked.  "Wasn't he supposed to meet us for lunch at Otto's?"

"Yes," Ando chimed in.  "What do you mean he was 'taken'?  Isn't that Joimus' job to be taken?"

"And she does it so well," Hando remarked.

"And...often," Zack added.

But Terry was in no mood for levity.  Phyllis had come to him mere moments before with  an envelope.  It had the single word, "Characters",  written on it.  Someone had slid it  under the door of the Northern Apartments.  Discovering it, Phyllis immediately handed it to Terry, who was standing most unbluntedly by the dining room table.  Carefully opening it with a butter knife, he read: "I have him and without him, none of the rest of you even exist.  Find him or perish."

"Find him or perish?" Ando repeated, looking anguishedly into Hando's seagreen eyes.  "You can't...perish.  Can you?"

Terry reluctantly nodded.  "Without Himself, Hando as you know him will cease to exist."

"Completely?" Ando wailed.

"Possibly completely," Terry explained.  "Or else he might look like Hugh Jackman or Eric Bana."

As Ando stopped to consider this, Hando's eyes narrowed.  "Don't even think it!" he growled.

She grinned.  "No worries, luvvy.  Only Himself can stair descend quite so, um, gloriously."

"And don't you forget it!" he grumbled.

"FORGET IT?" Sue the Vile laughed vilely.  "The woman never thinks of anything else!"

It was then Sue asked, alas a bit too late in the plotline, "Has anyone seen Cort?"

No one had.  Possibly because there was no plotline.  

"Drat!" said Sue, who had just spent some hours laboriously, meticulously redusting the young Sheriff with the swingy hair.  

"Mayhap he has gone to look for Himself?" Ando offered.

"He didn't even know Himself was gone.  How could he be looking for him?" Sue groused. "Unless he, all unplanned and unforeseen, stumbled through some strangely misplaced door somewhere."

Odd it was how correct the Vile One could be from time to time.  Cort had, indeed, come across a doorway he'd never seen before.  "How'd this get here?" he'd wondered, resting the fingertips of his right hand on its smooth surface.  As he did so, he felt inexplicably compelled to open the portal.  He found himself...strangely foreboding words...at the top of a tightly spiraling black metal stairway, leading down into blackness.  Why he'd set his boots on the top step was a thing he'd later ask himself, were there any self of him left to ask, of course, or even a Himself left to ask.  Halfway down he forgot where'd he'd been going in the first place or why he was where he was, wherever that might be...or worse, not be.  

Now...he knelt in the pile of white collars, looking at his reflection in the mirrored wall.  "No," he whispered.  "No."  

Herod in the mirror ran a white collar through his teeth then flipped it into the air. "There was a time you could hardly tell us apart," he said, repeating a line spoken to Ellen.   Then in the mirror Cort could see himself backing out the doorway of a bank, a large sack in his left hand, fire spitting out the barrel of the gun in his right. Somewhere just inside the door, a man screamed.  There was the sound of a heavy thud on wooden planking.  

Cort leaned forward, burying his face in the mounded collars around him.  Herod laughed again.  "Thought you could hide who you are with a white collar, didn't you, Killer?"  

Suddenly all the white collars disappeared, leaving Cort kneeling on the bare mirror, his face mere inches from it.  Herod's face looked up at him, a large, satisfied smirk plastered across his features.  "Go away!" Cort moaned.

"I can't go away, Killer," Herod chortled.  "I'm you."

Horribly overcome by those words, Cort failed to notice the large, draped figure walking up behind him.  The figure stopped beside the young Sheriff, smiling down at his shaking form.  Slowly, silently, he held out his left hand, turning it so that a fine red powder fell out of a ring on his forefinger, sifting down.  Cort became aware of the presence, started to twist his body away, but it was too late.  His legs had already turned to granite.  Appalled, he tried to grab at them, but the transformation continued rapidly and soon he lay there upon the mirror, completely solidified.  

The figure looked to his left.  "Did you see how easy that was?" he asked someone behind the two-way mirror wall.  

Himself, bound to a large wooden chair, jerked violently from side to side. "Muftphtppp!" he shouted through his gag.  

The figure laughed, a much more evilly satisfied laugh than Herod would ever be able to manage. He tilted Cort into an upright position, dragging him to the wall where he pushed a particular spot, opening an unseen passage.  "Number One," he announced, coming into the enormous, cavern-like room where Himself sat on a small, raised area at one end.  None too gently, he swung the statue around, heaving it atop a platform with the name "CORT" carved into its base.  

Himself strained and tugged on his bonds to no avail.  His eyes traveled around the room.  There were 23 more platforms.  Each with the name of one of his characters.  

As though hearing the unable-to-be-spoken questions in Himself's desperate eyes, the figure made a sweeping gesture with his hand.  "My gallery," he said.  Coming closer to Himself, his features still hidden in the shadowy depths of his hood, he laughed.  "Soon my 'collection' will be complete.  I will possess the entire...set. Every one.  And you...," he rested a bony hand on Himself's forearm, "then I shall attend to you."  

"I'm beginning to get worried about Cort," Sue said.  

"Oh, he's fine," Ando replied.  "I mean...what could happen to him here on Woolloomooloo anyway?"

"You're probably right," Sue murmured.  "But...still."

Hando was standing right behind Ando, licking her right earlobe as was his habit. "You really worried?" he asked.

Sue nodded.  "Look, Babes," he said to his woman.  "I'll just step out in the hall and look around a sec.  See if he's got himself lost on the way to the loo or some such."

"Be careful," she said.

"I'm always...careful," he leered back at her as he strode away.  

Once in the hallway, he looked both ways, seeing no sign of the missing Cort.  He decided to check the lobby, so headed that direction.  Rounding a corner (very similar to the definitely squarish Circular Quay in semantics) he discovered a strange doorway he'd never noticed before.  "What the f___?" he said.  "Where did THIS come from?"
 

He reached the fingertips of his right hand out toward its smooth surface.