A Hooded Figure
Is that you, Dante?
12
A Hooded Figure
And so Eden was erased, nothing more than black air in the Nowhere Place … until yesterday.
Yesterday the ball of light returned, and with it a hooded figure.
“You mean like a monk?” asked Tom.
“No, a man … in a jacket. A leather jacket, but tailored … trim … like a blazer. He must have been wearing a hooded sweatshirt under the jacket because the winds blew the hood over his head. He was all in black. I didn’t waste time looking. Not this time.”
No, this time Eden was ready. As soon as the ball of light passed, its little glowing hand in the hand of the hooded man, who seemed (though the silence was total) to be happily chatting with the unseen child, Eden hurled herself at the whirling vapors. But she didn’t quite make her mark, missing the still center. Thrown back onto the rocky cave floor, she stood again, facing the gale winds, and tried to estimate her aim.
And then a miracle happened.
“A miracle,” Tom echoed. He straightened his glasses. The tale was becoming— he smiled wryly to himself— curiouser and curiouser.
“Someone … I couldn’t see whom … came hurling in behind me, knocking me right through the center, and I fell into … onto … wherever it was you found me.”
“At the back of the Palatine Theater.”
“I glimpsed him, the one who shoved me, a tall silhouette, I think of a young man. He fell through too. I was struggling to breathe. I guess I blacked out.”
“But you were soaked when I found you, Eden. Why was your coat ruined? Why were your clothes dripping wet?”
“That’s right! My clothes…they were dry in the Nowhere Place. But here it all picked up again. As if … as if I just that moment came out of the Bay. As if nothing in the Nowhere Place really happened. Did I dream it? Dream away years and years of my life there? But … the child in the light — that was real! The old man rising from the ground — that was real! And the girl, the girl with all the flaming hair in the white bathing suit who fell off the cliff … she … was as real as I am. It did happen! Just maybe it didn’t happen … here. Maybe, it happened … elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?”
“In a place where … where things are suspended. Like in a dream … but— but not a dream.” She looked at him with tormented eyes. “Am I mad? Have they finally driven me—”
“They?”
Her hand went to her neck. “They, them … him! I don’t know anymore. I don’t remember much of the before.” Her voice became husky. “Only that something was supposed to happen … that didn’t happen. This happened instead.”
“Someone was supposed to rescue you in the waters of the Bay, Eden, weren’t they?”
“Were they?”
“Yes,” said Tom, who knew very well how this scene was supposed to play out in Fog. He joined her now on the couch and took her hand, consolingly. “Tomorrow, you’re going to come to class with me. We’re going to go backstage.”
“No, Tom, please.”
“We’ll get some light back there. You’ll see there is no cave, no underground passage, no black velvet — nothing but painted backdrops and funny old antique props.”
“Don’t put me back there!”
“I’m not going to put you anywhere! You’re going to stay with me as long as you need. As long as you want. There’s nothing to fear anymore.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re with me. I’ll protect you.”
Hesitantly, she nodded.
“You’ve had a dream, Eden. I think you’ve been dreaming for a while. But you’re awake now. You’re here, with me, in this safe place. You’re awake. And you can stay awake. Can you face that? Can you let go of this bad dream?”
She managed a worried smile.
“Tomorrow, behind the screen of the Palatine Theater, we’ll blow away the cobwebs.”
The light streaming in from the picture window was molding her features at that moment so tenderly.
At least, Tom thought it was the light from the window.
Preview: Backstage in the Theater of the Imagination.
The Palatine Theater will take a holiday break.
Movieland returns on the first Wednesday of the new year, January the 4th, when we take an even sharper turn into the supernatural.
