#94

Amos returned to the Plano Mortos. (Which he didn't realize wasn't accurate Spanish, or even accurate Esperanto.) He immediately walked up the hill towards the skull-faced dude, whom he had called up until this point, variously, Lord Death Man, Skull-Face, Kathulos, or (his favorite) Doctor Anton Phibes. He only did this because when he was alive, and thus capable of writing, he had had an unnatural obsession with skull-faced figures and always wanted to tell a story in which one of his characters—likely based on his brother—met a figure not unlike those preexisting fictional skull-faces whom he was in essence ripping off.

“Kurq'wes!” he shouted.

“Who dares invoke the name of Kurq'wes?” Kurq'wes replied, playing up his role designed for this particular individual to the utmost. Amos burst out laughing.

“It's me, you Scottish fool. One of the new kids. I have a message from you from one Kai Cripps...”

Kurq'wes stared at the young man with all the fury a skull could conjure. “Ah? And at what stage is he in his timeline? Is he a fallen dark wizard as I once was, the deformed Son of Mystery, turned and absorbed by the Second Enemy? Or has he returned from death to pursue nobler aspects?”

“Look, man, I don't know, but listen. He needs you to use your magic as a psychopomp or whatever to fuel a portal that my bro and some friends of his need?”

“Referring perhaps, then, to the portal in the ruins of your home-Earth?” Kurq'wes replied. “I can do such a thing but in this aspect I shall require a fee.”

“Yeah, sure. Work it out with that Doctor dude, I figure. I just need to help my bro.”

“I understand, Slimechap.”

“Hey! You remembered the nickname! Thanks, dude...”

“Let us return briefly to the remnants of Earth-Beta-2. From there I shall contact Kai Cripps and inform him that I will aid him. As my charge, and bartering piece, I must take you with.”

“So I get to be alive again?” Amos grinned. “That sounds...”

There was a flash, and suddenly Susie, Mark, and Jacob were joined by Amos and the skull-faced wizard.

Instantly, Mark and Susie started screaming at the sight of the latter figure. Jacob flinched away from it, and Amos flinched away from the screams. Kurq'wes turned to look at the terrified pair, and just before he flashed away he wiped the memory of his existence from the assembled four.

“...incroyable!” Amos finished.

He looked over at Jacob. “Bro!”

Jacob smiled back, though he naturally felt inclined to mock the Slimechap's ape-like and pretentious smile. It was like nothing had changed. “Holy shit!” And they did hug, though that was something that they were traditionally not fond of doing in the days in which Amos was still alive.

Once the hug broke, Amos turned and looked at the other two. “Who're your friends?” he asked.

It was at this point that awkwardness kicked back in again, as the other two realized that the person standing next to them was a dead man. Mark felt apprehensive around a figure of such an attribute, but he couldn't remember why. He briefly considered the idea that he had some sort of induced phobia of vampires or something, but that all sounded ridiculous. Despite this anxiety, he was the first to step forward.

“I'm Mark.”

“OH HI MARK.” This was said in an obnoxiously thick fake European accent.

“Wait. Was...was that a reference to The Room?”

There is a brief glimmer of understanding between the two men. “Yes,” Amos replied excitedly.

“I love that movie!” Mark replied. “I love it for...for...”

“...for irony purposes?!”

Mark nodded happily, and the two men began screaming. Then they wandered off to the side, to start discussing such films. It made Jacob glad to see his bro enjoying his second life; but the smile he had suddenly became bittersweet. He was beginning to sense the nature of the deal Kurq'wes was striking; and he knew that it probably wasn't right for the dead to walk like this. But while the nature of the shaft around him enhanced his ability to see through the fictions of his world, his senses were also deadened, and so the dreaminess that afflicted Mina earlier was coming back to him. He couldn't think straight. Humans were likely not meant to come down here. Or maybe he was just catching up with some genuine shock, given the circumstances he was currently in.

Overall it felt weird to be standing in the ruins of one's home planet, and it was also weird to see one's dead relative standing right there. There was a sort of hypnotic anti-peace going on at the present, like everything was poorly cut and looped together, and given a weird black and white effect that made Jacob as a viewer feel sick. By this point, Amos and Mark had started talking about ancient German expressionist films, which may have been altering the nature of the shaft. But Amos won't be here much longer, Jacob thought, as if that was the natural thing to think.

Susie was sitting out, having never really watched too many movies growing up. Instead, she considered talking to Jacob about books some more, but she couldn't find words either. Like she could sense the same things he could.

They both just found kinship in wanting to escape the shaft, so things could back to not making sense in an actually decent way again.

Jacob just sensed that this was all pointless. And he was right, because the presence of Kurq'wes was naturally terrifying beyond merely having a skull-head, as objectively speaking he had actually mutated into an eldritch abomination. It's just that only Doctor Kai could sense this (having had great experience with such abominations), and Doctor Kai is off-camera at present. Those are just the facts, and the simplest of them was that Jacob was right in this all being pointless, because Kurq'wes no longer had rational human thoughts processes, and despite that status, was running this part of the story.

Eventually he reappeared and said nothing; Mark and Susie did not notice him, but Jacob and Amos did. The deal was struck, and the portal restored itself to life via magic. Then the mutated sorcerer turned to look at Amos. “It is time to fulfill your destiny.”

The shadows of the Portal Chamber flickered as time slowed down. Amos dimly recalled this rising of shadows as being similar to a threshold effect in a video editing program before he began to float away from it all. He was being dragged out of this universe, out into the murky fuel-colored maelstrom of The Unscene. He went peacefully, and upon his request saw that his brother didn't notice or feel anything. It was his last care before he was pulled away, disintegrated, and reconstructed inside of a new body. He became the Amos Berkley of Earth-Gamma.

Years later, he nearly died, serving the whims of a wizard he would never meet, fulfilling a purpose that he never guessed at. The shockingly literal price of one human soul had been paid.