26. Out of Time and Space
Drowning is not the worst way to die.
There are others more fearsome, many more painful. One is by fire. The skin catches alight...crackles and chars and the very nerves sear until pain itself vanishes. One could be eaten by a lion or perhaps a shark...death comes as teeth tearing, and as the blood flees lightness comes. Or one could die of old age in a home, slowly losing one's mind, separated from loved ones utterly and perfectly alone...dissipating into nothingness. One thing I see now is that life has constants and variables.
One of those constants is death.
Yet as I drift over my dying body and Elizabeth fades into the possibility space, things that have not been clear to me begin to crystallize. Despite my demise, I remain. Despite the unnatural visions I understand everything, for I am like Elizabeth.
I see how by my decisions this path has unfolded, and despite Elizabeth's evolved nature how she has set herself a cunning trap...a hell from which she will never escape. In the infinitude that now stretches before me I see the lighthouses...her doorways...how she chose to represent choices. They are the fabric of time and space itself, those choices, designed for us, seen by us as we fancy to see them. It is a great mystery...and no mystery at all.
A pinprick of light appears in the firmament like a new star. It is a beautiful light...a compelling light. It is a living light. As my mind becomes absorbed in it, I begin to feel movement, increasing until I am at breakneck speed. The sensation of a vortex wraps around me, a tunnel, and I know that I have left my world behind. As my speed increases, I begin see depth in this light which lay at the end of the tunnel. Blinding, transcendent light. By now my speed is immense, yet when I think about it, I realize I am no longer moving. Perhaps I never was. I am in the presence of the light, and always have been. The light has form and purpose.
The light is love.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" It asks without speaking, and in its presence, I feel form, perhaps that of a man, perhaps not. Human words are incapable of describing such a thing. In a dust covered jewelry case I find my answer.
#
Gently I remove her thimbled appendage from mine, my bandage loosed to reveal knife split initials. For a moment I look at her deformity. My arms, still crusted about their wounds, ache. "It's the only way I can undo what I've done to you." I hear myself saying again. The feeling is uncanny...I've been here before.
Elizabeth and I are standing together at the landing below the lighthouse. It takes me a moment to process that I've died. Or, perhaps, I have not died but have seen all the possibles of me that will, or must. Perhaps, like Elizabeth, I have for a moment been the sum of all of those DeWitts I'd seen walking the oceans. All I know is that I am here and my journey is not over.
"Elizabeth...before I...do this, I need to show you something." I see in her eyes uncertainty...even fear. She knows what lies beyond that door, and it is why out of all of her possibilities she cannot bring herself to follow.
She loves me.
Not for some perfect DeWitt in a distant possible where all the right choices were made, but me...one who screwed up. One who lost her but risked his life trying to somehow find her again. Her brow is knit in turmoil. Subtly things shift about us, though still we stand at the doors of this strange cliff borne tower. As far as the eye can see they reach along intermingled coastlines, yet everything now is different. And everything is the same. Around us the seas crash and spray. I taste salt in the air.
Uncertainty plays upon her face. "I...see the doors, Booker, all of them, and what's behind the doors." Raising her hand, the woman's fingertips trace the solidity of the brass knocker. "But I can't see beyond this one."
"I'll have to show you." I offer my hand. Reluctantly her palm rises to mine, speckled with flecks of blood. I feel her thimble in my grasp...see the weary blue of her eyes. So different than the girl I met only days ago. I open the doors.
They swing open to a simple room beyond, lit by evening window light and the honking colors of the Bowery. My memory is strong here. Perhaps it isn't omniscience, but I've discovered godhood not all it's cracked up to be. At its center beside an unmade bed my wooden table is as I left it, dingy, strewn with losing bets and no future. Twenty years of despair paint this apartment's walls. This is no apparition...this is home.
"Booker, why...why?" I step through, beckoning her with my outstretched hand to follow. Within her now lay all possibilities, the possibility of every Elizabeth that could ever be. I don't want them.
I want only one.
In the telling moment I brace myself, feel the static and loss of reason that comes with the breaching of a tear. She cries aloud and, as she falls, I catch her in my arms. Settling to the floorboards, I cradle her and draw her close. I feel wetness upon my cheek.
With my bandage I dab the tears at the corner of her eye, look back over my shoulder to see no door. No tear. Only gray wall...only me and my Elizabeth. Beneath my knees the floorboards creak, and as I cradle her head, she comes to...blue eyes peering from beneath wet lashes.
"Booker?" She asks. Gone is the strange look, the distant knowing. For the first time in two decades, I begin to sob and thank God. Her hand comes to life and finds mine.
"I've got you. It's over." I whisper, brushing her hair back.
"What do you mean, 'it's over?' What's happ...? I can't...can't see the doors!" Placing her other behind herself, she props herself to a dizzied swoon. I hear the noises of the street again. Automobiles. She's frightened...how could she not be? "Booker, what's happened? I can't see the doors!" The smell of must and age and mildew in the chamber is heavy.
I look into her eyes. "We're home."
"Home?" She says, holding her brow. "But...but what about Comstock?!"
"You don't need to worry about him."
"But...but..." She winces, as if struggling to remember. "We...have to stop him from..."
"Stop him from what, Elizabeth? You of all people should know what infinite means. Comstock exists. He'll always exist, and so will Columbia. Somewhere. You talked of constants and variables but didn't understand. Kill Comstock at birth in a million million worlds...there are a million million more where you couldn't."
"I...don't understand."
I shake my head, wiping my face, unwilling to explain how I know this to be true. Would she think me insane? Could it be any dafter than what we'd already been through? "Constants and variables..." I say, remembering the light. "They're all variables, Elizabeth, only constant to us because the choices that give rise to them aren't accessible." I look to her. "But they're still choices...for someone, some...thing...somewhere. In some worlds, the Titanic did crash into the North Atlantic, but we'll never hear about it."
She looks upon dress and hands before turning back to me. "Comstock..."
"Me." I whisper. "You wanted him erased, removed from all existence, but really only from your existence."
"But, Booker..." She says, only now beginning to understand. "We have...to stop..."
"He's gone, Elizabeth. At least for us." With a strain I rise to my feet, heft her in my arms and make for the chair. Forearm draped behind my neck, her eyes remain with mine, brown hair framing confusion. The wood of the seat creaks as I set her down, and as I turn away the memory of corpses in the snow returns...the cold, biting wind of the Dakota plains cutting through me as surely as it did twenty years ago. "And frankly, we can't do anything more. What's done is done. We've no choice but to learn and move on. And that doesn't mean destroying the most precious gift we been given in a futile attempt at righting the scales."
"Gift?"
"Our lives. Our existence. Our experience together. For better or worse, what we do here on this Earth is precious. It's unique. Surely by now you know Zachary Hale Comstock isn't the only evil? Look at Europe. Are you...all right?"
"I feel...smaller. I can't see the doors." She whispers again, holding herself. She seems so cold, as though she feels the ghosts of the Lakota, too.
"No one should, Elizabeth..." I walk to the dresser. Before me Annabelle's jewelry box sits atop my steamer trunk. Leaning inward, I blow the dust from her old case and take it in hand, opening a drawer to remove a small black box. My eyes linger upon it before turning to face her. "Not if you want to remain sane. Or human. We could never succeed in what you were trying to do. But I realized that...just before it was too late, maybe I might be able to save us." I hand her the object, a rectangle inlaid with the gold initials "A.D."
"What...what is this?" She opens it and jolts, case and contents falling with a clatter to the floor. I kneel to the dusty boards...place the mummified, bony nub back into its sarcophagus.
"It's all...all I had left of you."
Eyes wide, her fingertips rise to touch the case anew. "Porridge."
"And peas." I close it with a kiss. "Back together where she belongs. The universe is appeased."
"That's a pun, isn't it?" She manages with a faint, sad smile, still looking at the tiny box. It fades when she looks back toward the wall. "No more tears."
"No. No more tears."
After a moment she turns to me, examining my face with wide blue eyes...raises her hand to caress my cheek. "Are…you real?" Our eyes close and I pull her to me. Hesitantly our lips meet. The back of my hand cradles her neck, feeling again her hair over my fingertips. I know she is mine, but I cannot help myself, for she is also this woman I love.
Anna DeWitt. Elizabeth Comstock.
The same.
I feel her relent. When finally we part, my name is on her breath against my neck. I wipe the sheen from her cheek. "And no more tears..." She opens her eyes and I realize how terribly she resembles her mother. I kiss her thimble, and for the first time in what seems like eternity she smiles.
"At least we'll have Paris?"
"Yeah..." I answer and hug her again, trying to convince myself that what I've done is for the best. "We'll have Paris."
How wrong I am.
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The End
of
Ghosts of Garryowen