Lethe's Cipher : Part 1

The movies think we’re all afraid of the mentally ill because someday they might chop us up in the middle of the night, but what we’re really afraid of is the open door. The open door is what the Boston PD found when they came across Ted sleeping in a blue Jaguar XJ 220. It was parked under the Tobin bridge and the key was still in the lock. The car belonged to a recently missing woman named Norma Stern. Ted, who carried no identification and refused to provide his last name, was dressed in a hooded Harvard sweatshirt and cargo pants. His many pockets were full of neatly folded papers and the papers were covered in Bible passages.

He looked like nothing more than a homeless man who’d stumbled across an unlocked luxury car. He didn’t look like a kidnapper or murderer - but hell, when you find a guy sleeping in a car belonging to a very rich and very absent woman, you haul his ass in. Besides, what else did Ted have planned that day? He didn’t struggle when the cops shoved him in the cruiser. He didn’t say much either, aside from his assurances that he hadn’t urinated in the car, so you had to give him credit for that.

Everyone’s got that door. Who are you, the real you? It isn’t what you call your mind, which is more like a house full of memories and plans and fears that the real you walks around in, looking at and thinking about each thing one at a time. You keep the precious and private treasures upstairs with your clothes and your favorite books on the nightstand. Maybe there's a shoebox of photos under the bed. Then there’s the parlor downstairs that you’ve assembled for entertaining company and showing them only what you want them to see.

By now you probably think you know where to find the door we’re so afraid of. It’s the one leading to the basement, isn’t it? You’d be wrong. The basement is just another familiar room, a repository of half forgotten memories and remnants of what you used to be. Stuff you want to toss but can’t quite part with. There’s nothing crazy about that. No, the basement is so full of junk you might not notice the door behind it all, so ancient it predates the house itself.

Upon opening it, you find only darkness and a stiff breeze that carries odd smells and voices whispering in languages that have been dead since before the invention of writing. Should you be unable to close the door, you may awake to find all your basement stuff is gone, leaving only skid marks trailing off into the unrelenting darkness.

Each passing day, more and more disappears. Your public places on the ground level are first to go. Maybe it’s okay, maybe you shouldn't spend so much time curating your image anyway. You take refuge in your private place, where no one goes. You cannot face the world, but at least you have what is most important to you.

Of course even that is no asylum. The room shakes and the open door starts pulling at the last of what remains in your possession. It leaves behind only you, the real you, the thing that senses and thinks and experiences each and every interminable moment until your death. It leaves you naked and alone in a void without your mind to shelter you.

A lot of homeless people are mentally ill. Crazy folks, if we really must call them that, are more often the victims of crimes than the perpetrators. Yet we can’t help fearing them or at least fearing what they have become. They opened the door, but they didn’t choose to. In the end, the door chose them. Is there any reason to think that it will never choose any of us? Poor Ted was one of the few people who had, at last, lost everything to that insatiable hole.

He sat in an interrogation room that was big enough only for him, Detective Bill Lyons, his partner Sergeant Huss, and the table between them. A silent AC unit was mounted in the wall above Ted’s head. A camera peered at them from the corner above Lyons.

“Can you turn that off?” said Ted, waving a hand at the AC unit.

“It’s not on.” said Lyons.

“Well the noise is driving me stark nuts.”

“I’m sorry about that, but the AC’s broken.” Lyons offered a friendly smile. This wasn’t the first time he’d met someone like Ted. “You said you don’t know when you came across the car, but it was nighttime. Why were you in that neighborhood? Were you looking for a place under the Tobin?”

“Better ask why the Jag was there. It’s our block. I think it was there because it’s the bottle. But no, dude, we don’t usually sleep under the bridge. My buddy Leo scouted this other place, but last night I was lucky – till you found me. I guess that was part of the plan too.”

Lyons exchanged a look with Huss.

“And what about Leo?” said Lyons.

“He let me have the car. Leo’s like that. Can you turn off the damn AC?”

“It’s broken. Sorry. Do you know Norma Stern?”

Ted nodded. Lyons had to ask the question, but he wasn't expecting an affirmative response.

“You know who Norma Stern is, or you know her personally?”

“You’ve got to find Brian. That’s why she’s gone. If you find Brian, you find her.”

“Who’s Brian, Ted?”

“I don’t know. Geez, wouldn’t I say so if I did? I don’t remember what I ate last night – if I ate. I don’t know anything about Brian – except that if you find him you’ll find her.”

“Norma Stern?”

“Whatever.” Ted stood up and both cops warned him to sit. He grasped the AC unit’s plug and pulled it out. Then he sat. “You got some kind of listening device in there? I told you; turn it off. Hey, if you two guys want to know about Brian, then you’ve got to understand the bears in the castle. That’s the message. You know, from the dude you’re looking for.”

“I’m sorry, Ted.” said Lyons. “But sometimes I have trouble understanding things. If you don’t know who this Brian is, then how do you know he’s got anything to do with Norma Stern?”

“Okay, I see, I see. You don’t know. At first I thought you were just playing dumb, but I can tell you’re a good guy. And you seem young to me so maybe these bosses of yours didn’t let you in on it. Now you’ve got something they’ve been keeping from you. The deal is, there are these people who use me to send messages. They put things in my head using this computer stuff and I don’t know what it’s about, any of it. All I remember is the name Brian and I remember the bears in the castle. And that’s all I know, because I’m just the message and that Jag was the bottle – I’ve been trying to figure out why it was there and it was there because they wanted me to get in it. Because it’s the goddamn bottle, you guys.”

“And you’re the message.”

“Now you understand.”

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Thank you for reading part 1! Part 2 is on the way. In the meantime, if you like my work then you might want to check out my other ongoing project, “Feeble As Frail.” For those of you who have already been following the other story, don’t worry there is more of that coming too! Here’s what there is so far in “Feeble As Frail”.

part 1 .
part 2.
part 3.
part 4.
part 5.

Don’t forget to resteem and comment on what you liked and didn’t!