Skip to content

The Demon’s Cantos

Part 14


Tilda pointed down at the glowing book with a certain degree of reverence. “So what you see as a sign of evil, I would argue is a sign of providence. Unless,” she added with a smile, “you really think that book is only 800 years old. Or that it’s even a book at all.”

Byron peered down at the Cantos and then back at Tilda over the half empty pitcher. “If it isn’t a book, what is it?”

Tilda frowned and took another long, contemplative sip of lemonade, with all the severity of spirit with which one might sip a harsh and unforgiving whiskey. “I’ve asked that question myself three times and each time I received a different answer. The first time was Mary, who said the Cantos was less a physical object than a limited projection of the Creator’s will into physical reality. The second time I asked a Cantor -” Tilda hesitated for a moment, as if she was unsure how much she wanted to divulge, “- like you, but. . . different. They agreed the Cantos was a sliver of the Creator’s power, but manifested directly from within the individual Cantor.” Tilda made a delicate gesture toward her heart, the short, square fingers of her right hand joined together at a point below her left breast, “They believed there was no ‘Cantos’ at all, at least not in any concrete sense: only the Cantor, their personal connection with the Creator, and the Cantor’s intuitive efforts at understanding that connection.”

Byron considered for a moment. “And the third time?”

“The third time,” Tilda’s eyes darted down toward her lap, “I’d rather not talk about.” Eager to change the subject, Tilda scratched at her head and smiled disarmingly. “Whatever the Cantos is, you need to learn how to use it. That’s what we’re going to be doing here.”

Byron licked his lips anxiously and looked out toward the beach, the azure waters, the white sand, and that bizarre floating door. “And where, exactly, is here,” he finished asking, just as Faustus’s hairy legs and multitude of eyes appeared right beside him on the porch. Byron couldn’t help but let out another little yelp at the sight of the terrifying creature.

“Faustus, come here.” Tilda gently waved the spider toward her. Reluctantly the mass of hairy segments, carapaced legs, and reflective eyeballs tapped its way across the wood of the patio and hefted itself up into Tilda’s lap. Head between her legs, Faustus sat there like a well trained dog as Tilda began to pet him affectionately right above his line of eyes.

Byron caught a whiff of the spider’s odd odor – a mixture of ground pepper, applewood smoke, and dusty books. As Byron stared wide-eyed at Faustus he couldn’t shake the feeling that one of the spider’s shiny eyes was fixed right back onto him. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you chose a giant spider?”

Tilda looked back at Byron in momentary confusion before realizing what he meant. “I didn’t chose Faustus – I can’t teleport things, remember? Gravity, emotions, a little bit of fire, that’s all I’ve got up my sleeve.”

“Then,” Byron gestured an upturned palm at Faustus, who took the opportunity to reach out with one of his taloned legs in a kind of handshake. Byron recoiled instinctively, but then felt bad when the spider deflated a little with a sad huff, “how did you ―?”

“A gift,” Tilda said, looking down at Faustus with great affection, “although you know I hate to refer to you that way Faustus,” she added, patting him on his furry face, right beneath his left mandible, “your no one’s property.” Byron cringed and Tilda continued, turning back to him, “but he was a very precious gift, from a good friend.”

“The other Cantor?” Byron guessed.

Tilda nodded. “After Mary died I was all alone in the house, waiting. They felt badly I think, about everything, and so they brought me Faustus.” Tilda cupped Faustus’s awful spider face in two hands and looked down warmly into his eyes. Byron couldn’t help but imagine the spider’s view – a kaleidescope of images, all Tilda’s face. After a shared moment, Tilda shot Byron a skeptical look. “Anyway, you’re one to talk. Why did you chose a giant octopus?”

Byron had wondered as much himself. “Bad luck,” he said, although in truth he no longer felt that way. Thinking about Korbius made the blue stain on Byron’s stomach itch. He scratched around his belly button haphazardly. “Speaking of my giant octopus, where did you say he was again?”

Tilda finished her glass of lemonade in a single large gulp, gently awoke Faustus who had briefly fallen asleep in her lap, and then stood up. She was quite short, only a couple of inches taller than Nan had been as an old lady. Tilda slipped her wide soled feet into two waiting purple rubber slippers. “Let me show you” she said, and set off down the steps of the patio, toward the beach, Faustus close behind.

Byron left his lemonade behind and set out after them. When his bare feet hit the white sand he relished the encompassing warmth all over his soles. He could not help but wriggle his toes happily as he walked.

Tilda and Faustus made a beeline for the door. When they arrived at it, Tilda leaned against the disembodied frame and turned back toward Byron with a knowing smile.

As Byron got closer to the door it became both more and less real at the same time. On the one hand, it was definitely there – a purple door set in a thin brown frame, all made of wood, with the word “outhouse” written in jolly green letters, and a small well polished bronze doorknob.

On the other hand, it was definitely, impossibly, there– totally disconnected from anything whatsoever. Even the bottom of the frame did not entirely make contact with the sand, rather the whole door floated slightly in mid air, though it did not move when touched and seemed perfectly capable of supporting Tilda’s weight.

Byron began to inspect it and walked around the back of the door. After a moment he stopped, walked back in front of it, walked back behind it and rubbed at his eyes like a dying man encountering a mirage in the desert.

Looking at the “back” of the door seemed to get rid of the door altogether, allowing an unbroken view back toward the house, through the place the door ought to have been. Byron tested the effect, tiptoeing back and forth around the frame until he found the exact angle at which the door disappeared. After a full minute of this, he turned to Tilda, who was chuckling to herself in a satisfied way.

“What’s am I looking at?” Byron asked, a little frustrated to be dumbfounded yet again.

Tilda, still leaning against the door frame – which also disappeared entirely from behind and made Tilda look like a phenomenally talented mime – rapped on the door with her knuckles. “This is the entrance.”

“To?”

“The Island,” Tilda said simply.

Byron wore a skeptical look. “The entrance,” he repeated slowly, “to the island?”

Tilda bobbed her head slightly, side to side, “well, technically the exit, from our perspective.”

“Ah,” Byron lifted his chin and pursed his lips, nodding with false assurance, “of course. And so, Korbius is ―” Byron let his voice trail off, waving his hands in front of him expectantlyand leaning in with a dubious eye.

“Right outside.” Tilda said flatly. “That’s where I left him at least. He was right behind me.”

Byron could feel yet another headache inching in on his new found peace of mind. The absurdity of the situation struck him suddenly, and he pointed a finger at Tilda. “Wait, you said I was asleep for 36 hours,” Byron exclaimed, with all the gusto of a great detective unraveling the final bits of a sordid mystery, “so which is it? Right behind you or 36 hours?”

Tilda shot Byron a smirk. “Both.” Standing up straight, Tilda leaned in, grabbed the door knob, and twisted until it clicked. The door opened outward, toward her, and Byron hesitated just a moment before stepping in front of the opening. When he finally did, he froze, astounded.

Beyond the open door, framed in a perfect rectangle against the bright blue warmth of the majestic ocean, like an otherworldly still-life, was the stormy darkness of Tilda’s backyard. Each droplet of rain, each blade of grass, each leaf falling and swirling through the wind, appeared as if frozen in place. Standing on a mass of tentacles, his single eye open and glistening in the rain, stood Korbius, also completely still, one of his eight arms stretched out in front of him, mere millimeters from breaking the plane of the doorway.

Byron leaned forward and gaped at the outrageous sight, a sense of gravity beginning to spread across his chest.

Tilda snuck around from behind the edge of the opened door and peeked her head out from behind it, right behind Byron’s right ear. When she spoke it was clear she, too, was still quite amazed. “The power of the Cantos is the power of the Creator Byron,” she all but whispered as Byron gaped in open-mouthed wonder, “making water, teleporting an octopus, changing gravity, that’s all just the tip of the iceberg. A trained Cantor has no limits beyond her imagination.”

Byron tried to speak, but only a soft exhalation of amazement escaped Byron’s lips. He took a breath and tried again. “A Cantor made this.” It was not a question.

Tilda nodded, “Yes.”

“All of this,” Byron continued, suddenly certain, “the door, the island.”

Tilda looked at the blue water, the white sand, the densely packed forest filled with plant life, “Yes,” she said again, with reverence.

Byron took a deep breath and swallowed the astonishment lumping in his throat. He paused before asking the question which was now paramount in his mind, as though the act of asking it were a bright line he dare not pass, as though asking the question predetermined Tilda’s answer. Perhaps, he imagined, if he didn’t ask, he could somehow leave all this, reveal it all as a hoax, a charade, and return home, to his Nan and school, to his uncomplicated teenage life.

“Can I ―” he began, “ ― do, this?”

Tilda placed a calming hand on Byron’s shoulder. He did not think she was actively changing his emotions, though he did feel calmer for her contact. Safer. “In time, Byron, this and so much more.”

Byron felt a warm rush of blood race into his head. It was an unfamiliar feeling – the cousin of anxiety, an emotion Byron was far more accustomed to – and it was making its first appearance on the palette of his mind since all this insanity began: A thrill of unabashed excitement.

A tiny, incipient smile began to form on Byron’s lips. “Wow,” he whispered.

Astounded, overcome, Byron reached out a hand to touch the ephemeral barrier between worlds – a transparent, shimmer of undulating power that stretched between the simple wood door frame.

Tilda saw it too late. She tried to get her right hand around the door to stop him, but didn’t make it in time. “No! Don’t tou―”

But Byron didn’t hear the end of her sentence. The tip of his pointer finger brushed up against the very edge of the shimmer, moved past it by a micrometer, and he disappeared in a blinding flash of light.



If You Enjoyed This Story – Or Any Of The Hundreds Of Other Legends From The Multiverse – And Want To Give A Dollar To The Madman Behind The Curtain Who Writes Them All:

Subscribe to the RSS feed or leave a comment anywhere on the r/LFTM subreddit with “!subscribeme” or “subscribeme!”, and you’ll receive a notification whenever a new story or continuation is posted.


READ MORE FLASH FICTION

ACTIONAPOCALYPTICDARKESTABLISHED
UNIVERSE
FANTASY
FUNNY
MAYBE
HORRORMISCWTF IS
THIS?
SAD
SCIENCE
FICTION
SCIENCE
FANTASY
 TWIST
ENDING
RANDOM

READ LONGER STORIES

THE DEMON’S CANTOSINCIDENTAL SUPERHERO
BENEATHTHE HUMANITY SAGA
THE TRAVELERI, LYCANTHROPE

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *