The Immortality Plot

The Immortality Plot - chapter 7

A hunter’s moon hung over the ocean as Delaney’s cab pulled up outside the beach house in Monterrey. He paid the driver and waited till he had departed before turning towards the house. At the side of the building the remains of the office extension were silhouetted starkly against the moonlight. Parts of the walls had been left standing, charred but essentially sound. The sloping roof had gone but there were some struts and beams still in place, looming like eerie toothpicks. He had stored everything from the wreckage that looked as if it might be significant in his old pick up truck and parked it a mile up the road in a free public parking lot.

It was too dark to see clearly as Delaney shuffled his way around the remains of the rubble but the ground was black with soot. The side wall of the house adjoining the office was blackened in parts but the door that led from Maria’s den to the main living room was intact.

Emptiness rushed towards him as he stood there looking out over the ocean. It suddenly hit home with a vengeance. He was alone again. Maria would never come back. This was the biggest test of his life. He had convinced himself that human beings somehow transmogrified into some kind of spiritual life or form, for want of a better description, on the basis that their essence or energy could not be destroyed but could be re-formed into some kind of existence we are largely unable to contact.

So Maria was not dead.

She had passed into another dimension where her identity as Maria Montalban was eradicated and whatever nugget or kernel of wisdom her life had bequeathed her was part of her electrical energy wavelength and was carried with it.

In some way she could perhaps be recycled, reborn or reshaped. More than this he could not fathom. Or maybe this was all just psychobabble.

He would cope. He knew that. But the house towered over him like a shroud. Maria’s presence was everywhere. He needed a drink. He went to the front door, unlocked it and stepped inside. He remembered that the answering machine had been a casualty of the fire so there would be no way he could listen to any messages. He was grateful for that. The house was exactly as he had left it except for the usual pile of junk mail. He gathered it up from the mat and dumped it on a side table. He switched on some lights, poured himself a stiff Southern Comfort and went outside on the terracing where he sipped his drink looking at the beach and at the twinkling lights of Monterey harbor. With the help of a couple of more shots, he allowed him himself the luxury and the pain of weeping.

Delaney was up at dawn next morning. He ran two miles along the beach and back, ending with a plunge into the ocean. Then he dried himself off, changed into his workout suit and went through a series of Chi Kung and Nei Kung exercises followed by a hard session combining Tai Chi, karate kicks and punches, some kickboxing and power routines using his old, solid punch bag around the side of the house.

He knew why he was working out so hard and pushing his body to extremes. He had a mountain of pain to release and this was the only way he knew how.

When he finished, he showered, changed and then sat with a straight back on his wooden deck facing the ocean and began to silence his mind, allowing his mantra to take over, until his body temperature decreased and his heart rate slowed. He was drifting into a second stage of meditation when a sound alerted him. He remained with his eyes closed and listened.

There was someone at the side of the house.

No, there were two.

Delaney could hear the muted creak of their shoes and the crunch of their weight on the charred ground. Someone cleared his throat not far from him.

In a smooth movement, Delaney rose to his feet and turned to face the intruders, balancing perfectly on the balls of his feet, his body completely relaxed but ready to explode in an instant.