The Everborn (35 page)

30.

In The Watcher’s Own Words

-
January 2nd, 1995
-

It was a night of a thousand hours
, you would’ve written at this point had you continued to write and had you written it. I’ll give you that. Just to get
me
started.

I expect to provide you with an update when you awaken, re-energized and good to go eight or nine hours from now and this is a record of that update. I write this not only for the sake of the manuscript, which you and I both labor towards completion, but for the sake of your fragile sanity as well.

One wonders what torrid pains afflict you so, knowing how any man of your caliber would possibly feel...I mean, having awoken within your home to my original typewritten letter, which summoned you to this Motel Untold and to this room you and I share now, to meet with a Watcher, to meet with
me
.

To encounter nothing you would normally never come to expect in a lifetime.

In that initial letter of mine you awoke to in your upstairs office, I laid my cards on the table when I told you, you awoke from death. And I promised you two things: an explanation, and a mission. No one knows where you are, not even you, except you know you’re in an unknown vicinity in the Twilight Zone of Carbon Canyon. And no one knows you’re still alive, sans yourself and I. No mortal human, at any rate.

Sounds like what happened to Jim Morrison.

You were exceptionally overwhelmed by me and still are, which is to be expected and I’m deeply flattered. But at the onset of the conclusion of my explanation of the events leading to your death, you clearly panicked. And you can be so atrociously panicky.

It was my responsibility to put you at ease enough to complete the written account of that bit concerning your death in the church attic, clear through to your resurrection as Salvatia’s Max-thing. Believe me, I myself was obliged to look back face-first into a few events that disconcerted
me.

When we ultimately arrived at the present point, the point which we’re at now, I found myself deeply moved into an equal responsibility to see to your human needs. Firstly, you truly needed to
eat
. I had lured you all this way, driven by my instruction to
keep going until you get hungry.
I can see why you lost your appetite, but I didn’t at all give you a chance to eat anything before the encounter with Bari in the lobby of the diner rendered you unconscious, only for you to reawaken here in my presence.

After we worked out the finalities of the last chapter we together wrote, I directed you towards the port-a-fridge in our room’s rear vestibule below the clothes rack. I had waiting there for you, a ham and Swiss cheese on rye, and an apple.

What put you to sleep could’ve been the apple and how
Snow White
it would’ve been. But it was the appropriately stashed Choc-o-diles that did you in. I knew you’d open the crisper to discover and devour them, the snack slave that you are. How poetic that I should’ve left for you tainted M&Ms, come to think of it.

Secondly, you desperately required sleep and how could you under the circumstances? This brings me to the point, why I had to slip you a little lullaby juice for beddie-bye.

You needed it, and I needed it too, because I felt it was my turn to take over for awhile, aside from your taking an eight-some-hour breather, a breather enough for
your
next turn.

I suspect I owe you an apology…hell, you
died
, then awoke, then passed out, then awoke to me, then I made you pass out all over again.

Sorry Maxy.

But I have things to tell on my own now.

***

A night of a thousand hours
.

Every Watcher when he first starts off
being
a Watcher is granted a thousand hours to manipulate time. I didn’t know this until I became a Watcher, and when I became one...well, I experienced a new awareness of things. It’s a lot like when one becomes a Watchmaid for the very first time and is suddenly bestowed with a vast knowledge of the universe and her own fateful role within it, but on a far grander scale than even
that
.

You, dear Maxy, have found yourself immersed into nearly an equally fateful role, but unlike Watchers or Watchmaids your awareness is totally up to what I make you remember or what I tell you. You’re only human, you understand. So far, I’ve made you remember the events leading to your death and just a dim reflection of what took place afterwards.

You knew at the start that I would reveal a great deal more than simply an explanation about what happened to
you
. You are a mere spring in the grandfather clock, my UFO detective. You’ve never come to realize, not even yet, the degree and depth of what you are actually dealing with here, with this story, with me, with yourself, and just as importantly, with the other characters involved.

In our painstaking endeavor to write this, we are manipulating the sequence of events that we’re writing
about
.

It’s quite an ironic paradox, isn’t it?

What we’re writing now affects everything that we’re writing about
.

For the ultimate benefit of
all
.

In the process, we’re revealing my kind and the secrets you so sought to disclose to the world.

Or to whomever pays attention, to whoever believes.

We have a thousand hours to do it, but I have no wish to use up my allotted time on
this...
I have countless other fish to fry...so I’ve halted time in this room enough for us to finish this manuscript by morning, forty-eight hours worth of time. We could use up more time if we need to, but that should be a reasonable perimeter for its completion and submission back through time so Andrew Erlandson can type the entire thing unconsciously and submit it unawares to Ralston, don’tcha think?

But my writing got
your
ass here and it’s going to do a hell of a lot more than
that
.

It already has.

And who could ever have guessed?

Now that I’ve put you to temporary rest, time’s about due that I indulge myself personally in a much more significant
broader
portion of the story, the portion that has less to do with you and more to do with the
big picture
.

Only I can tell this broader portion and it’s better off I’m doing it solo.

Certain facts need to be mentioned concerning our understanding of preceding events, of Everborn and Watchmaids and of one particular Magdalene whose intentions we strive against even in our writing this manuscript.

To confound this Magdalene is our ultimate goal. It is the prize we seek. It is our most urgent mission, our reason for being here and doing what we’re striving to do.

All other factors are both necessary and incidental; in the overall scheme of things, it was all meant to be, if not only to stop short the Magdalene’s efforts to bitterly warp it all.

Don’t worry, Maxy. In time, you too will understand.

Follow
me
now and stay close.

I’ve something further
I’d
like to show you....

PART THREE:

THE MAGDALENE SALVATIA

31.

When the Sacred Ones Fell From the Sky

The
Magdalene
have earned the reputation of being a wretched sort, evil and pitiful and deserving no sympathy from any conscious being dwelling on the face of the earth.

Needless to say, this is my opinion.

But I will show you why.

And perhaps, just perhaps, if you pay close attention, I will reveal the unheard intimate whispers of our names, of the order of beings that we are, and of how we individually came to be
who we are now
.

It began when the Sacred Ones fell from the sky.

There weren’t any Magdalene back then, they didn’t exist nor could the coin be termed for them as
Magdalene
until centuries later and the world had not yet seen its first Watchmaid. Humankind was at its infancy.

And as for Watchers, well....

The two hundred Sacred Ones fell from the sky and landed upon the legendary Mount Hermon with a purpose. The most crucial part of this purpose was to incorporate themselves into Man’s genetic gene pool, to leave behind hybrid offspring by picking Man’s choicest women who in turn produced for them numerous immortal sons. These sons inherited the better qualities of both their angelic fathers and their human mothers, and likewise also did they inherit the Sacred Ones’ names. The ancient Chaldeans of Babylonia called them ‘ir and in later days when there became such a thing as the English language ‘ir was translated into
Watcher
, because the Sacred Ones watched over Mankind. And then so did their sons.

The
Book of Enoch
, a book which the Holy Bible clearly alludes to but was banned from the Scriptures for silly scholarly reasons names the names of the most prominent of the Watchers. For instance, there was Gadreel, who instructed man in the ways of weaponry. Another taught astrology, another botany, another Watcher taught magic, another arts and crafts; together the Watchers made certain that Man knew all the ins and outs of building civilizations for himself. Another Watcher was Penemue, who taught man how to write with ink and paper.

But this order of Watchers wanted sons of their own, and when their wives conceived, a remarkable process occurred.

The Sacred Ones vanished, only to become the product of folklore within the many races of Man which they directly and indirectly influenced. Some say that when the Sacred Ones fell from the sky, they were the fallen angels of old, fallen from Heaven, followers of whom some refer to as Azazel, of whom others call Lucifer.

There’s no doubt that regardless of origin and intention, the Watchers indeed shaped the consciousness of Man and the fruits of their power remain with Man throughout his history.

One of these days, Mankind will know it.

Soon, but not yet.

When the wives of the Watchers brought forth to them Sons of their own, the Watchers themselves experienced a rapid extinction with every son that was born. With each pregnancy, the individual Watchers underwent a gross deterioration in their physical structures, giving them the appearance of wizened fetal beings with pale grey skin and attenuated limbs and eyes of bulbous black. One by one in this manner, the Watchers disappeared, up to the very last of them.

And all their sons were born.

That was when the Everborn came to be.

Each of the Everborn were the original Watchers, having fathered themselves into their next generation among Man, and their wives and the wives after them would give birth to them over and over again with each new wife and well into each new lifetime. The Watchers would remain embedded within the human race unawares, to be born and reborn likewise and to exist among human society in secret, a secret kept even from themselves lest they blow their own cover and reveal themselves in a cataclysmic defeat of their own incorporated purpose for doing so.

And it must always be this way until the original Sacred Ones, the ones that came down to Earth and inserted them among Mankind, return to take part in the apocalyptic last days.