Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

Bracing himself, he took a deep breath, then put his palm against those edges and closed his eyes.

But nothing happened.

He stopped. Centered himself. Tried again.

Concentrate, Batty. Concentrate.

He wasn’t getting anything.

Desperate, he grabbed the Saint Christopher medal and hung it around his neck.

He turned back to the manuscript. And then he felt it. Heat radiating up his arm and into his brain. The medal had been the key. And instead of the usual dark tunnel, he was assaulted by an explosion of light, like fireworks inside his head. Then the light seemed to consume him, to suck him in-

– and he was gone.

When he opened his eyes he was standing. But as he realized this, he wasn’t quite sure where. All he saw was a wash of colors, vibrant blues and greens and yellows so bright that they hurt to look at.

He squinted against them, willing them to come into focus, shielding his eyes with a cupped hand as they slowly adjusted to the light. And then he saw before him a place more beautiful than any he could ever have imagined.

Rolling hills. Blue, cloudless sky. Fields of yellow flowers so far and so wide they seemed to go on forever. And trees. Trees bearing flawless fruit-reminding him, oddly enough, of the bowl of plastic apples and pears on his mother’s dining table.

This world vibrated against him, seeping into his skin, releasing some kind of drug into his system, a drug that produced a pleasure so intense that he wondered if he could remain standing.

“This is the world as it could have been,” a voice behind him said. Male. British. Refined.

Batty turned and saw a shimmering, ghostlike image walking toward him, moving with a graceful fluidity. And as the image came into focus, he saw that the man wore his hair long, in a style from another time, his suit and collar from another century.

His eyes clouded over by cataracts.

The man-who Batty now knew was the poet-turned to the tree beside him and plucked a bright red pomegranate. “But because of the frailty of mankind,” he continued, “our world will soon be this.”

He bit into the fruit and the moment he did, the tree beside him caught fire and began to melt. Batty turned and saw that all the trees were on fire, their fruit withering. Then the sky darkened, the flowers beneath it wilting and dying as the hills grew barren. And soon everything around him was the color of slate, as a dark, cold wind kicked up and blew through him, rattling his soul.

Within seconds he was caught in the center of a black tornado, a cacophony of sounds rising in his mind as the wind whirled around him growing tighter and denser with each revolution. Batty opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out, as the tornado gathered speed, the growing darkness threatening to swallow him whole…

Then abruptly it was gone.

He stood on a hilltop overlooking a small, crumbling villa, the poet beside him. Below, a young man exited the front door, moved quickly across the courtyard and mounted a horse.

“When he first told me about the Devil’s Bible,” the poet said, “I thought poor Galileo has lost his senses. A dark, pernicious toxicant seemed to have spread throughout that place, making it impossible for me to breathe.”

The young man rode his horse to the front gates, signaling for the guard to open it.

“The astronomer had wanted to use me as his eyes, now that his own were gone. He had thought I would understand, but I saw him only as a feeble old man whose wild imagination had taken possession of him.”

A flash of light assaulted Batty’s eyes, and when it cleared, they were standing in a study lined with bookshelves, the young man-slightly older now-sitting at a writing desk, hard at work with pen and paper.

“Shortly after his death, I made only mention of that meeting, unable to tell the world that one of our most cherished minds had grown feeble in his last years.”

Again the light assaulted Batty, then they were standing in a room lit by candlelight, several men-including the poet-sitting around a table, deep in conversation.

“But imagine my surprise, when shortly after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, I got word that the Swedish army had plundered the treasures of Rudolf the Second, and had brought back with them the very book the astronomer had spoken of-the Codex Gigas. The Devil’s Bible.”

Now Batty had a bird’s-eye view of a grand parlor surrounded by books, and at its center a large glass case containing an enormous tome. It lay open at a page that featured an elaborate, multicolored portrait of a demon with horns, and the poet stood with another man, staring at it in awe.

“Within a year, I found myself in Stockholm, where the book was on display at the Swedish Royal Library. The curator not only confirmed the tale of its creation, but that seven pages were indeed missing, just as the astronomer had told me.”

Light flashed and they were once again standing over the field of yellow flowers, the poet’s blank gaze fixed on Batty.

“I soon became obsessed with finding those pages, wanting to know what secret they held. The astronomer’s estate had no knowledge of them, so I prepared to travel to Rome, to the private archive where he claimed to have viewed them. But before I left, I received correspondence that the collection they were part of had been sold to an antiquities dealer in London. They had been close to me all along.”

The poet paused, reflecting for a moment, then said, “The antiquities dealer had since died, and the collections he had most recently obtained were languishing in a vault beneath his shop in London while his children quarreled over his estate.”

The light once again flashed and now Batty found himself in a small cluttered vault, the room lit only by flickering lamplight. The poet sat a table, carefully removing several enormous sheets of parchment from an equally large portfolio. His hands were shaking, and Batty strained to see what was on those pages, but they wouldn’t come into focus.

“I cannot explain to you what I felt at the moment I saw them. Joy, elation-yes-but also a power, a power so overwhelming that they seemed to draw me in, to wrap themselves around me in a loving embrace, and I knew I was in the power of God. These were His pages that He had once hidden in that enormous book forged by the Devil.”

But now the poet began rubbing his eyes, moving the lamp closer. “The astronomer had warned me that only those whose motives are pure can read the pages without fear of the curse, but I had foolishly ignored him, believing his blindness to have been caused by the constant use of his telescope. I was wrong, however, and within minutes my vision began to blur.”

Batty saw the poet on the street now, the portfolio tucked under his arm as he stumbled toward a horse and carriage.

“But I had seen enough to know that what was on those pages was an ancient prophecy, the key to a miraculous duality of power, a power so rich that should it fall into the wrong hands, all of humankind could be in danger. That the gates of the bottomless pit-of the Abaddon itself-would be opened, spewing forth all the horrors of Pandemonium and beyond.”

Suddenly Batty was looking down at a view of a city ravaged by war, cracks opening up in the earth between the buildings, spraying molten lava into the air.

Now the poet was back in his study, surrounded by flickering candles; his eyes clouded over, his hands extended, palms outward, as his lips moved in silent prayer.

“But what frightened me most of all was my sudden desire to invoke that power myself, under the grace of God, even though I knew that such an invocation would be impossible without its source. The sacred traveler. So I began searching for that source, and soon found myself consumed by the black arts, in hopes that I might hear the song of a wandering soul.