Carter Phillips

“How many lives I’ve lived is something I do not know. But I’ve lived every type of life there is in this world, and I finally find myself getting weary. Two thousand years it’s been since my wanderings began, and were the truth ever to be revealed, there could be no doubt that I have shaped the destiny of mankind.”

The old man is insistent, I thought to myself. The man seated before me was hale for his sixty-something years, broad of shoulder with a gray-flecked beard and short-cropped walnut-colored hair. His large brown eyes were piercing, not in a malevolent way, but in a way that could see right through you and into your soul, almost like he knew you better than yourself. This was accentuated by his beakish nose, not large, but thin and prominent, which gave the man an air of a bird of prey hunting for its next meal. It was now hour five of the interview, but the man’s patience seemed to have no end. Aside from lifting his bulk out the chair every so often to get more Earl Grey, he seemed quite content in recounting the tales of the past two millennia.

I had been referred to Carter Phillips by my History professor. I was working diligently on my doctoral thesis regarding the fallacy that Christian morality was the backbone of modern civilization. Dr Andrews had insisted that I have a visit with Mr Phillips, certain that I would have an eye-opening experience. As I looked at the man before me, I continued to question the veracity of Dr Andrews referral; for it was hard to take seriously even the juxtaposition of my interviewee. Sipping on tea as he spoke, I just couldn’t wrap my head around seeing a man that dressed like a biker speak so eloquently of the past, especially in the first person and swearing he lived it. Yet, in the last five hours, I’ve heard the man speak fluently in ten separate languages. At first I thought he was faking it, I couldn’t understand him anyway; but he seemed to speak with such nuance in those languages that I could actually tell that he knew what he was saying. It’s no proof of his age, though, I thought.

In the immediate silence, I quickly ran through the stories Carter had told me.

As a Christian scholar, Lactantius, he taught the young Constantine. Carter had said that the noble child was intelligent and caring, but that he wasn’t formidable enough for the times, and the Roman Empire was failing miserably. Constantine had the chance to alter human destiny. “Perhaps,” he mused, “it was destiny that myself and the boy could have been twins. For I took him into a secret room and ended his life and made it mine. Scio te ipsum. Know thyself.” Being Constantine had afforded Carter the chance to bring Christianity to the forefront of the world.

Carter then wandered off into a story about the sack of Rome, and how he had been the leader of the Goths. He spoke of it nonchalantly, until intimating how the Western Roman Empire had to fall. There was a vehemence in his voice about being a “barbarian”, but there were certain sacrifices, he said, that had to be made. “Jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai, ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin,” his Gothic flowing out of him like water from a spring. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

He excused himself for a bathroom break, but the solitary tear that rolled down his cheek belied his purpose. As difficult as it was to believe that these were Carter’s past lives, it was painfully obvious that ending the empire into which he was born was akin to losing a loved one. He returned after a few minutes with another cup of Earl Grey and an unfiltered Camel hanging from his lips.

Carter sat down in his leather recliner, I was surprised not to see clouds of dust rise from it as he did so. It looked very much old and decrepit, a leftover from the early Seventies I guessed. But then he leaned over the right arm of the recliner and opened a dilapidated footlocker. What I saw before my eyes made my jaw drop.

It was a crown of gold and gems, and I had seen nothing in my life so gaudy and ugly. There were eight tombstone-shaped gold plates, the two holding the crest were noticeably larger, with a cross jutting up from the front. And as Carter placed the crown upon his head, I knew instantly… Charlemagne! Carter regaled me with the tale of his blackmail of Pepin the Short, and how he infiltrated the family to become a “son” to the Frankish King. This man was the greatest king of Middle Age Europe?! Reading my expression, Carter chuckled and said, “Yes, I am the ‘Father of Europe’.” Removing the crown from his head, I heard him utter, “Kwemē rīkkja þīna, swā in himinē jahw ana erþu.” Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Things accelerated after that, as Carter took me through the next seven centuries and ended this chapter in Transylvania. And remembering the pictures I had seen of Vlad the Impaler, my stomach began to churn. He spoke somberly of his reign as the Carpathian king, and he avoided the goriest parts of the history. Anger was his main motivation, he said, a main character trait in the stories and films of Dracula. He pleaded to me about the centuries he had spent solidifying Christian Europe, and he was not about to let it fall to the Moors. He couldn’t… And so, he became a very angry patriot of God, and killed and maimed and tortured. In a pained voice, I heard him say, “şi ne iartă nouă păcatele noastre precum şi noi iertăm păcatoşilor noştri.” And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Following the story of his years as Vlad, Carter stared off into the distance, no doubt reliving memories of his past lives. That odd chuckle returned after a few moments, and he looked at me with a sense of mirth. “The 18th century was a time of release for me,” he said. “I took upon myself a visage of Western European aristocracy, and, at one time, called myself the Count of Saint Germain. Now, having been a wanderer for many centuries of my life, I chose that time to expose my knowledge, and I was quite open about my immortality. Of course, the snobs of Europe brushed such ‘nonsense’ aside, but my views of the world, and humanity, had me engaged with the highest levels of society. Despite my madness, I was thoroughly enjoyed, and I immersed myself in the drunken debauchery of the age.”

With a purposeful sigh, Carter pushed himself up from the leather recliner, and I returned to the present moment. “You see, I finally started to realize that the world followed me, though at its own pace. Following my days as the Count, I chose to withdraw from the world. I was tired… And I began to watch as the world slowly pulled back from Christ.”

“But why push it away? Look at the things you’ve accomplished!” I tried to sound sincere, but Carter just looked at me with disdain. He knew that I did not believe his claims.

“Come with me, son,” he beckoned. Down a small corridor he led me, and through a dusty door that had been open but a couple of inches. There, on the windowsill, stood a small pear tree in a well-worn clay pot. There was something about that tree that frightened me, and I stopped several paces short of it. Three pears, fully grown, dangled from it.

“This is my curse, and my blessing,” Carter’s voice suddenly hoarse. “Every day I must eat one of these pears, or I shall suffer living torture that would instantly kill any other human. But, for each pear I eat, so there is another day added to the unending dread that has become my life.” He reached over to a side table and picked up a shiny, gold-filigreed dagger. “Come forward, boy, I must show you this.”

I hesitantly made my way to him, the butterflies in my stomach quickly turning to maggots. He lifted the dagger to the trunk of the small tree and sliced. A dark crimson liquid flowed from the wound. I nearly passed out, maintaining my balance only by the quick moving hand of Carter.

“It is the blood of Christ himself that flows in that pear tree. He is the reason that I live lives over and over again. I age, I die, and I am resurrected to my former age after three days. Then, each day, I must eat of the fruit of Christ’s tree.”

“But how?” I asked, the incredulity in my voice completely absent.

“Come sit…” and he led me to a nearby chair. “You see, I was once a Roman Legionary, a proud servant of my emperor. Then I did something I never should have done.” Carter’s eyes found the floor and shut tightly, “I struck a man who was condemned to death and told him that he should move quicker towards that death. He replied to me quite simply, ‘And you shall await my return.’ When I arrived home that evening, I found this tree at my door. I thought nothing of it until I had failed to eat of it the next day. It is a pain that is beyond forgetting, it is a pain that never leaves your soul.”

I could see the rage beginning to build within him, two millennia worth of pain, all brimming to the surface. “He condemned me to this fate! I chose to uplift His religion because I knew that EVERY empire had to fall! And the sooner His fell, the faster Judgement Day would arrive and release me of this bondage! And so, I hyped up the world for His satisfaction, and now I have dumped it by the wayside! His flocks are being culled, and the turning of the backs has begun! He shall return and release me!”

His arms were in the air above him, and his angry expression was aimed at the heavens. The boom of his voice was like that of a god, and his anger was almost tangible. He then placed his eerie gaze on me.

“I am Cartophilus, dear boy. I struck God’s son, and now I await His return so that I might finally die. The world is approaching its judgement, I feel it now like never before.” A small, greedy smile stole across his bearded face. “I think it’s time you took your leave, son.”

I stood quickly, knees still weak, and made for the door. “Here boy!” I turned, and he threw me a pear. “To good health!” He laughed heartily, and through the window, above him and the pear tree, stood the blood red moon. I ran…