The Eidolon

Harlow was a place that I’d never visited, and for good reason. It was smack-dab in the middle of Sandhairn County: a no-man’s land, a region that would only show up on the map if you were charting Klan activity. No Black person in their right mind would drive there, and certainly not alone.

But, as you’ll probably gather from what I’m about to tell you, I was not in my right mind that day.

You know what’s weird? Looking back on it, I didn’t even have directions to the house. I’d forgotten to ask my friend where to go once I got to Harlow. Mind you, this was in the late '80s, so if you got lost, you couldn’t just punch the address into a phone. You actually needed to know where you were going, and where you were coming from. I didn’t know either of those things once I crossed the county line…I didn’t even know what the house looked like.

Yet somehow, I found my way there.

Somehow, I found him.

I parked at the edge of a great forest, near a steep ravine that was bordered by bony trees. Perched on the precipice was a cabin with a lopsided chimney, shingles grayed with age and slats bowing with decay. There was no door, and inside looked black as night. Once I turned off my car and stepped outside, there was no sound…no rustling of leaves or blowing wind, not even a bird chirping. I cradled my belly as I walked, feeling Aileen’s feet thrumming against my insides. It wasn’t quite kicking; it was more like a soft tapping. She was peaceful that day.

My sneakers crunched in the dirt, but as I got closer to the cabin, the ground got softer, and the air grew thick with humidity, so much so that by the time I was near the entrance breathing took conscious effort. The doorway was just as dark as it had been from where I parked my car, some thirty feet away. Just before I stepped crossed the threshold, I felt a final urge to stop, a tiny voice telling me to turn back…but I ignored it. You can’t just "turn back" from the kind of things I’ve been through. Not the things that brought me to this doorstep, not the places I’d been before that. No, you just keep moving, whether or not you want to, because moving is better than staying still, than sitting with the pain.

My eyes adjusted suddenly, and the room made itself known. There was a faint glow, of dying grass green and sickly yellow that streamed across my view like oily water. I could see the floor opened below me to an amphitheater of sorts, a gradual stepping down into a circle perhaps five feet deep, where he sat waiting…he must’ve known I was coming. But before all that, the first thing I noticed was the masks. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them on the walls, each one a different face, all of them a dull white color, and all making the same dull expression, lips pursed and faces emotionless. But these masks couldn’t have been for wearing…they had no eye holes. Instead, two hollowed-out scoops, as if these were casts of people who’d had their eyes plucked out. And even from a distance, I could tell these weren’t made of plaster. It was like leather…or maybe skin.

Were they real?

I stepped down into the circle, feeling his presence grow around me like moss. The air was almost impossible to breathe now, and faint wisps of sound spiraled around my ears, like whispers in the night that I couldn’t decode with my ears but could with my heart. A ringing sound grew as I made my way into the circle, the white circle that was drawn in what looked like chalk. Once I got there, I kneeled down maybe a few feet in front of him.

I honestly don’t remember anything about his appearance other than his head. He had long, greasy hair that draped over his shoulders, and his face was covered by a mask, a different kind than the ones on the wall. It was a worn yellow, with points at the top like a crown, and below those points, a band of nude female bodies was carved around the head, all sitting upright and side by side, all with their knees apart. Their legs were wrapped in lines that tugged at their flesh, warping them into the next part of the mask—where the eyes should have been…instead, a series of grooving and markings so intricate it might’ve been an alien engine, or the intestines of a monster made of metal. The grooves were dark, deliberate, yet impossible to untangle in the mind’s eye. The bottom of the crown was skeletal; the nose bone shapes were human in nature, but with the top half of a jaw that was like a sheep or cow. And while I faintly remember his body appearing human, his aura was much older...like how you’d describe an ‘old soul,’ except he felt beyond aging—beyond age, beyond time itself.

He felt horrifying.

“Are you—” I started to ask, but my voice was so loud in the space it actually startled me. It echoed like I was in a giant cavern, and even though I knew I was just in a cabin the room felt impossibly large, and like it was still growing. I tried again. “Are you the doctor?”

It was quiet for a long while. I studied the terrible mask on his head, that disturbing dichotomy of humanity and animality, the overt sexual overtones…the grooves that felt deeper than the darkest ocean trench, the motes of dust and death in the air. The silence was probably only a few minutes, but it felt like hours that oozed through the cracks of reality, seeping through the cosmic woodwork like slime from the bayou of the universe.

Then finally, he spoke. Right before he did, I felt a wall of sound rushing towards me, like an approaching freight train…it grew in volume until it became deafening in my ears, and just when I thought I might scream from the pain, it all stopped, and his words echoed in my ears like signal broadcast into my brain.

“I am the eyes upon every universe.

“I am emotion manifest, knowledge incarnate.

“I am the everlasting, the ostent opulence, the only eternity for humanity.”

His voice was a thousand voices, a congregation speaking its prayer in unison, a doomsday cult summoning its final deity. Both my hands went to my womb…just below, I felt my scar itching, a sensation I hadn’t felt in months.

“Are you…are you a god?”

That wall of sound appeared again, barreling into my eardrum…and just like before, it vanished once he spoke.

“The one you call God, it has abandoned you. Left you to rot as prisoners to your ignorance—ignorance of the vast expanses beyond your reach. But I know the way. I can show you the path.

“If you so desire.”

This felt far beyond what I’d hoped for…to be honest, I’ve never been more scared in my life. My heart and Aileen both were thumping their full weight against my body. My lips were trembling, and my teeth were chattering like it was winter. But it was hot down there, and so muggy. Dizziness swept over me, and at that moment I’d realized that I almost forgot why I even came there in the first place. What I said next was less of an explanation to him, and more of a reminder to myself.

“I’m here…for my child. I was told you can help me protect her.”

He didn’t speak for a long time. It occurred to me in the silence that he hadn’t so much as moved a hair on his head, and just when I had that thought, he titled his head, almost like he read my mind. I couldn’t hold back my gasp.

“You have come here because your grief led you here. Because grief is my domain. You seek release from this pain, from this heartbreak. I can give that release to you, for all eternity.”

I felt my scar again—the place where they cut me open to take out Jade, the physical reminder of a trauma that would never heal—and my heart caught fire. He was right. I was in pain, and I had been for years, ever since I lost my baby girl. And I did want to be free—so badly, I wanted to be free. I needed to be, if I was going to raise Aileen. And I needed all my strength to make sure she would be brought into this world as safely & smoothly as possible…I couldn’t lose another one, no. That would kill me. And I truly believed his words…I could sense the cosmic power radiating from him, feel the earth tremble as he spoke. But even then, I had my doubts.

“How is this possible? What will you do to me?”

“I will do nothing to you. I will show you the Door, but you must cross its threshold of your own accord."

Between us, the light in the room began to gather. Those motes of ash and earth danced around the space in the amphitheater, and something began to appear—a collection of luminescence, a shape whose form I cannot describe in words. I felt a cross between vertigo, the comfort of a heavy blanket, and a painful strain of nostalgia.

“It is time for the Assent. Do you wish to see the way?”

You might be thinking I’m crazy, sitting in this room, about to make what looks like a deal with the devil. You might be judging me as foolish, or weak or short-sighted…and honestly, a few years back, I probably would have agreed. But if you’re saying that, then you’ve never felt grief—raw, bitter, powerful grief—and you’ve never seen what that grief does when it goes ignored, unchecked, when it’s left to fester. And if that’s the case, how could you ever understand what brought me here?

Jade lived for 26 hours, 17 minutes, and 9 seconds—from her time of birth to time of death. When I lost her, I never felt more alone—not just because my child was gone, but because of how my loved ones treated me after it happened. Everyone avoided me; no one would come to visit, or call, or even send me a card. It was like they were scared to be around me, so scared of my grief and of the idea of death themselves that simply being around me was too risky. They treated me like I was contagious—like I would spread my grief to them…even my husband did this to a degree. He didn’t know what to do any more than I did, but his reaction was to shut it all out—to not talk about it at all—whereas I needed to talk about it. I needed to keep my baby’s memory alive, to keep her alive. I didn’t want to forget her.

I guess that’s part of why we’re not married now—why I had to get a sperm donor for Aileen to be conceived. He never wanted to have another kid, but I didn’t know any other way to fill this mangled hole in my gut, a hole that poisoned my life, that made my friends & family look away from me and the women in my life whisper about me for years to come.

So you see, what was I supposed to do? My feelings had nowhere to go. I had no support, no way to deal with this terrible death that left me cut open, both figuratively and literally. This pain ate me alive from the inside out…at the very least, I couldn’t let it get to my kid. I can’t let anything get to her. And now, more than ever, I know the truth. I saw His face…I saw what lies ahead for us. The Eidolon is coming, and nothing can stop His ascension. It’s only a matter of time before everyone must make the same choice I did…He has seen every timeline, every possibility, and He has found the one He needs—this one.

Now, it is simply a waiting game.

Back in the room, that luminescent shape faded away, and it became so dark in the room that I could no longer see the masks on the wall above us. I couldn’t even see the stairs I walked down to enter the circle. There was only the doctor and His crown.

I asked Him, “If I do this…you can assure me that I will never lose Aileen?”

“As long as the stars burn in the sky, you two shall never separate,” He answered. “Your bond will extend beyond flesh, beyond time. And in death that bond shall be transformed, strengthened beyond mortal resolve.”

The allusion to death sparked a curiosity in my mind. I asked, “What about heaven and hell? Will they still exist? Will we be together, even there?”

“It is but the same plane of existence. Hell to some, heaven to others.

“Do you wish to see the way?” He repeated. “Understand, there is no return.”

I looked down at my gravid belly, where Aileen lay resting, growing, taking her first steps towards becoming the girl I hoped to love and nourish, toward growing into the woman I hoped to meet. Below her, I felt a tugging at my scar, at the place where they cut me open and pulled out Jade; it was as if an invisible string was tugging at me from that scar, tugging me towards the Eidolon, towards His horrible and splendid diadem…towards my future. This is why the next time my eyes met His crown, the doubt I felt when I first set foot inside His domain was gone, never to return.

“Show me.”