Guardian of the Veil A Three Dimensional Tale

CHAPTER ONE Veils Unveiled I remain convinced that there are levels of worlds within worlds, seams and crosscurrents in which the old, worn rules shift slightly; that there are levels above us and below us, in which connections are made more easily, and that each of us occasionally passes through such seams. -- Rich Bass, "A Winter's Tale" Only those whose hearts have been broken can remember anything before the age of four. This is what he remembers. From his bedroom, he awakened to a noise in the kitchen, a long, high-pitched screech with a barbed hook on the end. It snagged him and tore at him and reeled him in. Something was wrong, he realized. Something was wrong again. He ran out of his room and down the dark hallway. The floor fel middle-of-the-night cold. He reached the end of the hall and looked to his left. The bare bulb in the kitchen hurt his eyes. He felt something horrible was coming. He heard labored breathing, hard and trembling, so he started to cry. Then he turned to face the light and heard hisfather shouting at his mother. The words fell on him; they landed like flat stones pounding...pounding down upon his shoulders. Under this weight, he staggered toward the kitchen but stopped. He did not enter it. An invisible boundary kept him out. A curtain that separated stage from audience, an impenetrable veil. He does not remember his father's words. But he can still hear them. They cracked open the sky of his mind. In the thunderous shouting, the boy fell to his knees. He reached out a hand to stop the storm. And when he did, he touched the veil; he felt its uncrossableness. That's when it happened. His hulking father stretched his broad hands around a stack of china plates on the table. He clasped the dishes and lifted them high above his head. The boy glanced at his mother. Her face screamed silently with the hard certainty of suffering. Her arms rose, hands up, fingers splayed out, trembling. Then his father heaved the plates down onto the floor, at the feet of his mother. That crashing sound, that breaking and snapping, like a shattering of thin, brittle bones -- this is how he remembers the sound. Then the shards and chips flew everywhere, slicing, exploding into terrible shrapnel. One piece stuck into the wall beside his mother. One caught the frayed hem of her robe. And one piece entered the boy's soul. That's what he says now -- that it sliced right in and cut him up. It left no mark on the outside. But his father wasn't finished. He picked up the boy's mother like a sack and carried her to the front door. The boy reached out for her as she went by. His father opened the door, and the boy felt the freezing winter air rush over his hands and face. It held the coolness of death. His mother looked so helpless in his father's hands...as fragile as those china plates, beautifully breakable, her porcelain skin shining in the night. His father paused for a second, as if he needed that moment to blow out the last flicker of conscience. Then he took two steps and threw the boy's mother into the snow on the front lawn. She screamed faintly. The father turned back into the house. He slammed the door and looked down at the boy as if the boy were the cause of his pain. As if he had broken the dishes. As if he were the reason that his mother lay bruised in the snow. The father said nothing. His face raged with disdain, but his mouth did not form any words. He stomped with his boots down the bare-floored hall and slammed his bedroom door. The boy dropped his head and cried. He cried on and on. He pounded his chest. And with each fist to his heart, he felt for the flying chip of glass that had entered him. He wanted to pull it out, but the shard cut deeper and deeper still.... Lizbeth Neferti realized she was panting. She wiped the tears that came inSpencer, Gregory is the author of 'Guardian of the Veil A Three Dimensional Tale', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416543411 and ISBN 1416543414.