The GoldenCity

He opened his eyes, scrambled to his feet, and saw that he was standing in a long, narrow room with a shattered window at one end. Out on the street, a gas flare blossomed like a bright orange flower from a crack in the pavement. He was in a store that had once sold refrigerators, washing machines and stoves. These appliances weren’t the modern devices with stainless steel facades that were displayed in New York or London; instead, the washing machines had wringers fixed over an open tub, and the refrigerators were white metal boxes with cooling coils mounted on the top. The old-fashioned technology made each appliance look like a squat little idol-once worshipped, now abandoned in the ruins.

Gabriel turned again and found a shifting patch of darkness on the wall behind an overturned stove. Although this shadow could only be seen by a Traveler, it was a passageway that could be used by Maya, a route back to a specific access point-the hidden chapel at St. Catherine’s monastery. He pushed some of the abandoned machines across the room to mark the way out and walked over to the broken window. The appliance store was on a boulevard lined with other looted shops. A half-burned sofa and a pile of concrete rubble were on the sidewalk in front of him. The trees that had once shaded the area were now blackened trunks and leafless branches that reached toward the light of the flare.

Once again, he wondered if his father had explored this dark city. Gabriel’s Pathfinder, Sophia Briggs, had said that only a few Travelers crossed over to the different realms. Many thought that the power to leave their bodies was a hallucination. Others were so terrified by the four barriers that they refused to go any farther.

During Gabriel’s previous visit to the First Realm, the Commissioner of Patrols had mentioned the “visitors” who came from outside the island. Perhaps one of these people had been Matthew Corrigan. When Gabriel thought about his father, he recalled moments when Matthew was driving the pickup truck or working in the garden. Nothing was frightening or dangerous on their farm, but sometimes an expression of great sadness would appear on his father’s face. Perhaps he had been thinking about the anger and hate that imprisoned the inhabitants of this dark world.

Gabriel slipped out the entrance and headed down the street, moving with an alert and cautious rhythm-like an animal that knew it was being hunted. The last place he had seen Maya was at the abandoned school that was used as a headquarters for the patrols. Although it was dangerous to return there, he decided that it would be the center point of an invisible circle. He would start searching at the edges of the city and then spiral inward to the streets around the school.

Hell was a permanent reality, trapped in an endless cycle of destruction, creation, and destruction again. Perhaps everyone in the city was dead except for a few wolves and cockroaches. When the last survivor perished, the city would somehow return to that first morning when the sky was blue and hope was possible. The pain of Hell was all the more powerful because of what had been lost.

He had no idea if Maya was alive, but it didn’t look like the cycle of destruction was over. Light oozed through the thick cloud layer that covered the sky. The air smelled like burning tires and bits of ash covered the street. Everywhere he looked, he could see words and numbers scrawled on the walls and sidewalks. X Cross the Sky. Green 55. Here is the place. Remember. Some of these words delineated certain territories or fiefdoms that existed in the past-like the gang signs in his world. But most of the graffiti was put up by people who believed they would be reborn in a new cycle. Before they died, they left clues and coded directions to hiding places and caches of weapons.

He paused at the corner of a building and peered down a side street. It was dangerous to be here. Eventually, he would be seen by the wolves. He considered different strategies and then decided to leave messages to Maya all over the city. After searching through a burnt-out grocery store, he returned to the street with two pieces of charcoal. Feeling like a teenager in a deserted subway station, he scrawled a Harlequin lute on a brick wall with the words: WHERE U?