House of Cabal Volume One: Eden (6 page)

“Pinsleep!”

I darted through the open field toward her.
“I told you not to leave my hiding place. You talked to Uriel. He
killed your whole expedition.” I hoped to give her pause for
disobeying me.

She laughed and tossed her luxurious hair.
She wore a living necklace of dragon flies and a crown of emerald
horn beetles. Besides that, she was naked.

“We couldn’t stay in your hollow forever. We
thought you were never coming back.”

Life in paradise had sculpted her legs, and
she stretched the taut muscles like a dancer, pointing her
foot.

Her husband swam in the water some distance
away, his legs kicking.

“Did any other angels see you?”

“Look at my husband! His spine has
healed!”

“Of course it has. You’re in paradise. What
did you expect?”

“You told us the angels would cast us out.
But the garden is our home. We have always been here.”

“And yet I’m more interested in your life on
Earth. I have questions.”

A leopard batted at Dana’s head, and the horn
beetles flew away.

She laughed.

The leopard batted at her again, this time
hard enough to knock her over.

“Hey!” She pounced back, and they wrestled in
the grass among the legs of a passing tower of giraffes.

“You were protected in my hollow,” I told
her. She rolled the leopard onto its back and pinned its front paws
to the ground. “The other angels have seen you!”

“You don’t have to worry. They’re leaving our
story for you to tell. They look forward to hearing your opera
about us.”

“You don’t have a story. You can never
leave.”

The leopard licked her face.

She rolled off, giggling. “Adam and Eve
escaped. I’ve seen their afterimages along the shore. I’ve seen
them hiding in the trees.”

I crossed all my arms. “You two are no Adam
and Eve.”

“You’re so grumpy.” She brushed herself off.
“Why would we leave this place? You told us yourself: this paradise
was made for me and Thomas.”

“God created it for two flawless
proto-humans, not two spoiled American brats. Look at all these
mammals. You have turned this place into a cliché. Who knows what
damage you’re doing? You were manipulated to come here by a secret
organization. You’re part of a vast conspiracy.”

She rolled her eyes.

I continued, undeterred. “This place may seem
like a dream come true, but eventually you’ll understand that
paradise is a prison. All it takes is time, and time is all you
have here.”

“I’ve never been happier, and I’ve been here
for as long as I can remember. Pinsleep, you told me when I arrived
that everything would be okay. It’s more than okay. Look around. I
was so frightened, and now I can’t even remember why.”

“You were frightened of the insects. You were
frightened of me!”

“It’s like my whole being is expanding. I am
the insects. I am the mountains. You say that everyone in our
expedition died. I laughed, because…”

A far mountain range parted down the middle
as a grove of deciduous trees continued their migration south.

“None of that matters anymore,” she said,
still in awe of this place. “Life on Earth… It was a dream, and not
a very convincing one.”

“I came back to ask you a question. Then I’ll
let you be.”

“Is this about your opera?”

“What have the other angels been telling
you?”

“Don’t be so defensive. They care about you.
They just want you to be happy.”

“I don’t need their concern.”

“You’ve found your muse!”

Dana was my muse, but I didn’t want it to go
to her head. She already acted like she owned Eden’s Garden. “Calm
down. I’m still exploring the timeline. I thought I might have
found something, these two men in California, but I ran into a bit
of a snag. Do you know anything about the House of Cabal?”

She shook her head and continued to watch the
mountains shift. The river reversed direction.

“They were preparing for some event in 2000,
but I lost the trail. I looked at your destiny thread on Earth and
didn’t see any immediate connections. The House of Cabal put money
aside for you and your husband in a Swiss bank account, and in
2003, the money was transferred into your expedition fund.”

“That was a lifetime ago.”

“Anything. A name.”

She shooed away a pack of pygmy pachyderms
that were congregating on the riverbank and tested the water with
her hand. “It’s getting colder. This place is always changing. Did
I do this? You once said you changed the course of the river with
Adam and Eve. I always wondered if you were being serious.”

Her husband swam toward the shore with a pod
of dolphins and river cats.

“Dana, everything here is connected. Your
whims and emotions are part of that web. You still think this place
is like Earth. It’s not.”

She stood up and wiped her wet hand on her
hip. “Everett Grimes. He might know something.”

I stopped her before she explained. “That
should be enough. His destiny thread? I can already tell it’s
something special. I need to go back into the timestream.”

“You’re leaving? You haven’t even met my
husband yet. He wanted to thank you.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll be here in the garden
when I come back. You both will. You’re never leaving.”

“The other angels, they said you have a human
form. Can I see it? They say you’re beautiful.”

“Maybe one day. After I compose my
opera.”

She had already grown into the queen I knew
she would become. I wanted to stay. She reminded me of Eve now more
than ever.

But while she was growing more familiar, the
garden was growing more alien. The place that had helped me
reconstruct my memory of Eve and Adam and our time together was
disappearing. The garden was adapting itself to its new
caretakers.

After living in the garden for an eternity, I
no longer belonged.

I had heard a million love operas, as love of
all kinds was a very popular theme, and I had incorporated romantic
love into my memories of Eve. Seeing a new woman in the garden had
stirred up those feeling. Dana would live forever with her husband
in a perfect paradise of their own creation. My ridiculous feelings
for her would never be reciprocated, and I didn’t really want them
to be. With my new sense of purpose, I didn’t need some fantasy
past life with Eve, and I didn’t need to relive the experience with
Dana.

It was best I never returned. I had a job to
do. I would bear witness to the House of Cabal and compose my
masterpiece. Everett Grimes would lead the way.

Chapter 4

I

On May 19th, 2000, twenty-seven-year-old
Everett Grimes drove a convertible through Monterey County,
California, down Highway 1. Against his steering wheel, he held a
scrap of butcher paper. On it was written a rain-bled return
address, and postage stamps depicted the same orange groves that
now rhythmically flowed by like silent train cars. What awaited him
at his destination, at the address on the paper, was still a
mystery.

On his left, the evenly spaced groves
bordered mountainous national forest. The road ahead gently curved,
hugging the landscape. The Pacific Ocean shimmered on his right,
under a mostly azure sky, and then a towering bluff of sandstone
and wind-gnarled trees blocked the spectacular views.

His destination was before the next town: San
Luis Obispo. He had to be close.

He scratched the back of his ginger crew cut.
His tailored dress jacket, sunglasses, and handsome face made him
look like a Hollywood heartthrob. His recent self-makeover felt
overtly sexual; he wasn’t used to fitted clothes, and it made him
more nervous than confident. He tapped at the steering wheel.

A mailbox whizzed past, flashing a string of
numbers that took him a moment to process. The next address could
be it.

In the distance was something red on the
ground. He took his foot off the gas. A red brick road led off to
the right through another orange grove. Instead of neatly spaced
rows, the grove’s crowded trees grew in chaos and fought for light,
the leaves as dark as avocado skin, blocking any sight of the
ocean.

The road had no address, just a weathered
“Private Property” notification. This had to be it.

He signaled, though no one was behind him,
and eased down the steep grade and under the canopy. The vermilion
brick playfully wove among the trees. Behind him, the highway
disappeared. It was like entering a new, darker world. He didn’t
know orange trees could grow this dense and tall. Overripe oranges
littered the ground, and the pungent aroma overwhelmed him.

He felt his stomach would revolt from the
coffee or from driving curvy roads or from his nerves or from the
sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit. Despite his nausea, the rot
somehow made him hungry, and the hunger in turn made him even more
queasy.

An orange fell into his back seat. He wasn’t
ready for answers—anything could be at his destination—and it gave
him a good excuse to park off to the side of the road.

He turned off the engine, leaving the buzz of
insects to fill the silence. The stagnant air felt heavy despite
the shade.

He unbuckled, reached back, and grabbed the
softball-sized fruit. The skin of the orange was warm against his
cheek and felt like human skin when he rolled it against his lips.
The sensual nature of the experience made him oddly horny. He
breathed in the citrus smell and salivated. It reminded him of Dana
Parr, of their kiss a week before.

As he peeled the orange, a shaft of sunlight
pierced the canopy and highlighted the zest that sprayed forth from
the skin. He gaped at the momentary beauty, more present in the
here and now than he could remember feeling. He had slept through
his entire life. The musculature of his arms and chest and back
tightened, like during a workout, and he became a physical thing
instead of just a troubled consciousness rattling inside a skull.
The peel came off in one piece. He tossed it out of the car into
the orchard. He shoved his thumbs into the orange and broke it down
the middle.

To his shock, a mass of rice-sized,
opalescent bugs swarmed out of the hollow fruit onto his hands,
while others spilled out onto his jeans and car seat.

He sprung out of the car and flung the orange
into the trees. The tiny insects were already on him and spreading.
He frantically tried to brush them off.

They circled around his arms and onto his
back and up the nape of his neck and into his hair. He wanted to
scream but feared if he unsealed his lips they would crawl into his
mouth.

II

The overripe fruit smelled even more pungent
fifteen years later, on August 31
^st
, 2015. The trees
refused to die despite neglect, and now an unnatural layer of rot,
decay, and cancerous regrowth disfigured the orchard. This didn’t
stop the nesting bugs inside from multiplying into profusion.

The engine of the SUV that drove among the
gnarled trunks hid the insect buzz. Here was Chuck Pointer, with
unruly, receding hair and squinty eyes that made him look stoned, a
man widely considered the world’s most notorious living biographer,
driving to interview Everett Grimes for his next book. Chuck
resembled his Jewish father, Aaron Pointer, more than his
Scandinavian mother. On his father, the sleepy look read as
sadness. On Chuck, as he drove (and in his life in general), it
came across as unflappability, a useful quality for putting his
subjects at ease.

He’d inherited more than his father’s looks:
Aaron’s life was one of struggle and perseverance. Chuck honored
that legacy by putting his career first and working relentlessly to
maintain economic prosperity.

After a few minutes winding through the
orchard, oranges smashing under his tires, he came out onto a
grassy flat. He continued down the narrow red-brick road until he
reached the beach and slowed to a stop.

From there, the road took a sharp turn north
into a roadblock, before it continued on and rounded its way up a
cliffside. He wasn’t going that way. Never mind the roadblock.
Those cliffs were where the House of Cabal had perched before
falling into the ocean, killing all who’d resided within.

Chuck’s research revealed that on May
19
^th
, 2000, Everett Grimes had been a guest when a quake
or an explosion caused the whole estate to plummet into the ocean.
Beyond that, most of the details were contradictory. In contrast to
his S.O.P., Chuck was coming into this interview relatively blind.
He didn’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. Focusing on his
primary source first could cut down on the kind of unnecessary
tangents that often bogged down his process. This time he would
fill in the gaps with research only as needed.

His objective was to solve the mysteries as
efficiently as possible. His current mantra was work smarter, not
harder. To accomplish this goal, he would have to understand
Everett Grimes first and foremost. Facts didn’t sell biographies;
confessions did. Today he would pierce through the front Grimes
wanted others to see. Long-coveted secrets would be revealed. The
forthcoming bestseller was all but inevitable.

It all seemed like common, human hubris to
me, but I couldn’t confirm my suspicions. Chuck’s destiny thread
led me here, but disturbingly, didn’t allow me to jump forward.
Traveling into his past was still possible, and so I did just that
for more context.

His father Aaron had the surname Poneviaser
until he’d changed it to Pointer in the early 1950s to benefit a
potential career in Hollywood. Unlike his son, he never found
success. Not that he didn’t try his damnedest, first to become an
actor and then to become a producer. Eventually, given enough
punishment, even the most resilient fighter throws in the towel.
Shortly after turning fifty, Aaron resigned himself to a managerial
position at a paper mill.