Page 32 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

REVENANTS

It is the question of ghosts.

—JACQUES DERRIDA

My Zoom with Guillaume had left me unsettled, so I tried to distract myself with some light reading.

I curled up on the couch with a book, and soon the light through my French doors began to fade.

When the time came, I walked down to the beach and found the boat tied up at the dock, just as Aspen had said it would be.

Standing there and staring out over that strange blue water, I shivered just a little, but this time it was with a sense of excitement and infinite possibilities.

I felt like I truly was on the verge of uncovering something important whether they wanted me to or not.

Sometimes we disclose more by actively trying to hide the truth than if we’d just left things well enough alone, and that, I hoped, would be to my benefit.

I untied the boat, climbed in, and started rowing.

As it glided over the water, I tried to see if I could make out any hint of the metal grate, but the water was too dark to see.

At seven-fifteen, I knocked on the door to the office, and was mildly amused to find them all there. Finn opened the door and the others waved from where they were spread out around the room. Each was sipping from a red party cup.

Finn handed me one. “Drink up,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“What is it?” I asked, staring into the pungent liquid.

“Aspen made it. That’s all you need to know.”

Despite my reticence, I had to admit there was something vaguely magical about the atmosphere in the room.

I set the drink down and sat facing them. “Okay, I came all the way out here. What gives? Is this about the relic?”

“Good God,” said Aspen. “What is it with you and this relic of yours?”

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “I have to find it.”

“You’re right,” she said with a hint of an eye roll. “We don’t understand.”

I felt like I was on the verge of losing my mind.

I needed them to understand why I needed it so badly, and yet in quiet moments, I had to ask myself the question: Why exactly did I need it so badly?

It was true that I wanted to make my mark on the world.

I was so close to accomplishing things I’d once only dreamed of, but there was somehow more to it than that.

Could it really all go back to Charles? Was everything I did somehow a one-sided competition with him, a silent conversation held just inside my mind?

“Forget about the relic for a second,” Aspen continued. “You wanted to know what this place really is and what we really do, right?”

“I do,” I said, absently running my hand along the edge of the blue rug at the center of the room.

“First, we need you to clear your mind and open it completely. Can you do that, Robin?”

“I can try.”

“Okay, please, drink,” she said, motioning to the cup.

“What is it?”

“Medicine,” said Finn quickly.

“But what’s in it?”

“Trade secret, I’m afraid,” said Aspen with a wink.

“Yeah, well, I’m not drinking anything unless I know what’s in it.”

“That’s a shame because we’re not talking unless you drink.”

I inhaled and grimaced. “It smells awful.”

“Things that are good for you usually smell bad,” said Aspen.

“Drink up,” said Finn with a smile. “I promise it won’t hurt you.”

I wasn’t sure what to believe, but I didn’t think Aspen would try to outright poison me, so I decided to trust her. I assumed there might be something slightly hallucinogenic in it, but I’d taken mushrooms before. If they decided to dose me or do something stupid like that, I’d just ride it out.

I took a sip, a single sip, and soon the room began to change.

The air seemed to sparkle and my heart began to buzz like it was filled with hungry honeybees.

Whatever this reaction was, it was too soon for a hallucinogen to start working, so I assumed my response was due to some kind of placebo effect.

My head spinning, I focused on the blue of the rug, on the tiny tendrils, the softness, the sturdiness. I worried the edge with my fingers, but then I hit something hard underneath.

“What is this?”

“It’s a rug,” Lexi said with a laugh.

“No,” I said, feeling around. “There’s something under here. Is this a trapdoor?” I started to peel back the corner and saw that I was correct. Dorian put a hand on my forearm to stay me.

“Leave it. It’s a remnant from another time—our predecessors’ time. They built tunnels that ran all underneath the grounds here, but the tunnels flooded back in 1890. Now there’s nothing down there but swamp water and cholera.”

I let the corner of the rug flip back into place.

“Okay,” I said. “So tell me, then. What’s the big secret?”

Aspen leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, which seemed crazy, since we were in the middle of nowhere.

“This place,” she said, “these mountains, they’re unquiet.

Some places are like that. I’m sure you’ve heard of haunted houses, right?

Well, these mountains are like that. We’re not alone out here.

Do you understand what I’m trying to say? ”

I started laughing. “That the woods are haunted?”

“Not just the woods, and not precisely haunted. Unquiet. Occupied.”

Unquiet—the exact same word that had occurred to me when I was in the woods.

“Occupied?” I asked.

“Yes. Occupied long before mankind ever walked this earth. Robin, do you know what alchemy is?”

I sat there speechless. Of all the things I’d been expecting her to say, this was not on the list.

“Of course I know what alchemy is,” I said, but my voice was shaking.

I stared at them blankly, a sudden understanding washing over me.

The book that had so enchanted me in the scriptorium, it had contained an illustration of a woman in robes I’d mistakenly identified as the Oracle of Delphi, but it wasn’t the oracle, was it?

It was a famous image—Mary the Prophetess, the mother of alchemy.

Of course! How could I have missed it? She was one of the first scientists in history, pioneering alchemy, which later became chemistry.

The bain-marie we’d all used in high school chemistry was even named after her.

“Alchemy takes many forms,” said Aspen.

“Right. Metal into gold. All that nonsense.” I was starting to get confused, unable to find the words I wanted.

“It’s not nonsense,” she said. “Tonight we’re going to make you believe. Drink up.”

I took another sip, trying not to look as repulsed as I felt. “What am I drinking?”

“A form of alchemy.”

“So you’re telling me you’re, what, alchemists? Alchemists trying to make gold out of metal in the mountains of Colorado? Like the pseudoscience gold rush?”

She narrowed her eyes, a professor who suffers no fools. “Did you know that the great alchemists set out to prove the existence of God?”

“Good luck there.”

“Oh, but we’ve already done it,” she said with a smug little smile.

There was an eerie thickness to the atmosphere all of a sudden.

“You’ve proven the existence of God?” I laughed. “How?”

“By proving His opposite.”

For a split second, I thought I felt something moving underneath the ground, something enormous and powerful like a freight train. But I couldn’t have. I must have imagined it.

“This is making me feel strange,” I said, looking into my cup. “Is it acid?”

“Just herbs,” said Aspen.

“No, there is something else in here. Something pharmaceutical.”

“Do you know the etymology of pharmaceutical?” Aspen asked suddenly.

“Of course,” I said, trying to get the words out, but my tongue felt thick. “From pharmakon.”

“Meaning poison … or spell.” She held my gaze a moment too long and then dropped it.

Things were spinning now. I could barely make sense of the world around me, and yet rising up inside me was a certainty that I didn’t need any of this. Suddenly I stood up.

“This is bullshit,” I said, and I could feel myself slurring, hear the words coming out all wrong. “I’m the boss of myself, and I’m … I’m the boss of you people, too.”

I started for the door.

“Lexi, go after her,” I heard Aspen say.

I lurched toward the door, opened it, and stepped …

… directly into my uncle’s apartment in New York.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, in utter shock. I knew it wasn’t really happening, that I was just tripping, but I could have sworn that I was in Paloma’s room. I could even smell her perfume.

I walked through the door and out into the hall, but when I turned a corner, I saw someone sitting at my work desk, papers spread out all over.

“No,” I whispered, starting down the hall toward her, but suddenly she turned, and I froze in place.

It was me. Pale and terrified, the other me stared down the hall directly at me.

“Hello?” she said, her voice shaking. “Who’s there?”

“No,” I whispered. “This isn’t real.”

Shaking, I walked toward my reflection. She sat at the desk holding a pen.

Her hand shook, but she put her pen to the paper and hurriedly drew four symbols.

They were all images from the tiles I’d found—the disintegrating rectangle, the crescent moon, the stylized S, and a square divided into four parts.

I leaned over her shoulder, my breath moving the hairs on the back of her neck so that they stood on end.

Suddenly the other me stood up, knocking over her glass, orange juice spilling everywhere.

“What the hell?” I jumped back and sprinted back to Paloma’s bedroom, and instinctively I flung open the door to her closet. When I stepped through to the other side, I was …

Outside in the woods … the night was warm, and the sky glittered with stars.

It felt oddly romantic, like something beautiful could happen at any second.

I kept moving, and soon I was out of that darkness, only to emerge onto the path of a thousand fireflies.

No, not fireflies—lanterns. I was on the lantern-lined path that led through the switch grass, the soft glow lighting up the night like the entrance to a mystical realm.