A Vision of Fire

“I’m not entirely sure, but I’m going to try doing what people do at séances: turn on the light, break the spell. I can self-hypnotize but to go back and interact with them I need power, Ben, and trauma seems to be a key. Right now, the most traumatic event taking place near me is the struggle over Kashmir.” The locus of frustration and pain touching all the ends of the earth.

“Cai… I hear you, but this is crazy talk.”

“I prefer to call it a big leap of faith.” She smiled a little. “Two agnostics walk into a bar…”

He couldn’t even manage a nervous laugh. He stared at her a long moment, saw the resolve in her eyes. And punched button 38 on the elevator bank.

When they reached the floor Ben showed the guard his ID, introduced Caitlin as a special consultant from Geneva—she showed her WHO credentials—and they were escorted down the hall and admitted to an empty conference room. The guard returned to his post at the end of the long corridor.

Caitlin stopped Ben from turning on the lights of the room. She could already feel the buzzing of energy in the air. She felt high emotion in her lungs, her belly, the small of her back. She removed her coat and scarf, began to walk through the room, moving with a flow she couldn’t see, only feel. Ben followed protectively, but at a distance.

Ambient light from the city glowed through a wall of exterior windows at the far end of the room. Caitlin bumped into the first of a couple dozen wide, golden leather chairs. There was only room for one person to comfortably walk around the table at a time, and nowhere to shove the chairs other than into their stations at the table. She considered standing on the table so there would be room to move if she needed it, but diffuser panels were slung low beneath the lights. She was sure her head would come too close to them for comfort. Navigating to the end of the table, she found she had about four feet of space to the windows. It would have to be enough.

“What can I do to help?” Ben asked softly.

She shook her head slightly, gazed outside. “How strong are those windows?”

“Very. The recent renovations replaced all five thousand windows with the latest blast-proof panes. In a hurricane, this is one of the safest places you could be.”

“What about a volcano?” she asked.

He didn’t know if she was kidding. He didn’t answer.

The city seemed small compared to the immensity of the time and distance she was beginning to feel. Caitlin was scared. She stopped moving and placed a hand on a conference room chair to steady herself.

Immediately she saw a vision of a human body on fire. The vision was slightly unclear, juddering back and forth as if seen with a handheld camera. She realized that was exactly what was happening. This was the video of the woman who had self-immolated over her dead son, the few seconds of footage Caitlin had seen on her tablet. She heard voices shouting across the table, all around her, and then the people shouting…

… were there, in the courtyard, just beyond her fingertips. Suddenly she was one of many. Many voices, some chanting the cazh, some crying, some screaming. A few were just beginning to express the wonder of transcendence. Their bodies moved like reeds in a pond in their white and yellow robes. Then, as though the air and energy left them in a rush, their bodies dropped to the paving stones of the courtyard, across the huge crescents carved into the flat, black rocks.

Above their heads a pulsing force drew Caitlin’s attention. She could not see it but she could feel it, and the presence grew as the bodies fell to the ground.

• • •

Ben watched every tendril of Caitlin’s hair lift in a breeze he didn’t feel. She opened her mouth and exhaled, but it was not the sigh of a single soul. It was the combined sound of multitudes.

Ben stepped back, reached for the tin of tea he had placed on the table. He stopped himself.

Not yet. But he was ready.

Now Caitlin was breathing heavily. Her arms were moving. Ben heard words, identified a few, combined them with the gestures to understand the superlatives. It was too late to set up his camera but he took out his cell phone and began recording.

“The fire!” she said. “So much death. The end is here!”

• • •

All around her, Caitlin could see the destruction of a civilization, and she was part of it, part of this place—Galderkhaan. She knew its name now, only as it was dying. Standing here by the temple, the Hall of the Priests, she could see the volcano to the east, blowing the center of the earth into the sky.