I returned the first-aid kit to the shadowy area behind the bar and gave my knee a few experimental flexes now that I'd re-wrapped the bandage. The pain was manageable, and was becoming even more so now that I'd had a chance to toss a couple of scotches back.
Time to turn that 'couple' into 'a few'....
After limping my way around to the front of the candlelit bar, I hopped up on top of it, then slid both my glass and my bottle of Glenmorangie a bit closer to where I was sitting. Nate would have had a fit if he'd seen me actually sitting on his well-polished countertop like that, but he wasn't around. He'd probably left town already, high-tailing it to Budapest so we could hook up later. Fantastic... one more complication to deal with.
I had problems galore, and they were starting to pile up uncomfortably. There was The Hand, for one, which would have been more than enough of a problem all on its own. Compounding that problem was GQ, who obviously had no qualms about using other people to try and set me up for something unfortunate. He wasn't the brightest hitter from what I'd gathered, but it seemed he'd been smart enough to call up Shoe and drop hints as to my general whereabouts. He might do the same with The Hand, if the opportunity presented itself.
And now Shoe was dead, which meant there was now the possibility that Diavolo would begin to lose patience, and put more pressure on me to hurry the job along. And even if I did manage to pull the job off in a timely fashion, there was the very real possibility of a double-cross at the end of it.
Agent Moss, the presence of those two feds, my injured leg, the very small window of opportunity I had to get out of town... all of these problems were important and worthy of consideration.
However, none of those problems were causing me to question everything I knew about the way the world worked.
Sighing tiredly, I pulled the cork and poured myself another scotch. Taking a lengthy sip, I once again tried to trick my brain into considering the actions of a few hours ago and explaining them in a way that made sense. I was currently zero for three.
A few images flashed through my forebrain as I attempted to picture what I'd seen. Stevie, holding a knife, crouched atop of Shoe's lifeless body. Stevie, just standing there with his back to me, a hole in the base of his skull. Stevie, angrily walking towards me moments before that, half of his face exploding outward from Alaric's bullet, a wound he'd practically ignored.
No, actually... he hadn't ignored the gunshot at all. It had made him angrier. Annoyed, even... as though a bullet through the occipital lobe and out the face was an inconvenient distraction.
And during that whole encounter he hadn't outwardly displayed a single shred of fear or concern. Not once.
I'd seen it happen. I'd been there, watching it go down. This wasn't being described to me, or something from a photo, or some near-infrared pictures, or anything else that I could dismiss. With my own two eyes, I'd seen a guy shrug off a kill-shot.
And then there was the freakishly violent way Stevie had dispatched Alaric right afterward... the way he tossed himself from the top of a three story building and onto asphalt, only to stand himself back up and pull everything that was busted up back into place, like he was cracking his neck. Like it was nothing.
But it was that final glimpse I caught of him that bothered me the most. Silhouetted by yellow-orange light, his curled fists held slightly away from his sides, head bowed slightly, radiating diabolical menace and just standing there staring at me from the middle of the road... with half of his leg on fire.
Every bit of it was something I'd witnessed myself. And the only thing that even remotely made any sort of sense was-
Revenant, a small voice in the back of my head whispered. The restless dead.
Yeah. For real. I had absolutely nothing else that could explain it better than that.
Holy shit.
It was a dozen things at once, this feeling of dawning realization I'd been attempting to cope with this past hour. There were emotions ranging from anger all the way to abject terror, and I couldn't reconcile any of it. There was no 'out' for my mind... no scrap of information or comforting thought I could simply hold on to while waiting out the storm. Everything just swirled around in my head, failing to land anywhere; impossible thoughts banging into other impossible thoughts and sending me and all of my other thoughts spinning in some improbable new direction. And all the while, that part of me deep down inside that never got shaky or concerned... it was busy letting me know that it was damn scared.
Somewhere in the middle of this mind-bending epiphany, that cool, unflappable part of me had been humbled.
I was an apex predator, and I knew it. A very dangerous man, living in a not-quite-as-dangerous world, knowing details about how things worked and what went on behind the scenes. It was a privilege I shared with a handful of others, all fellow predators like myself. Until recently, I'd been the proverbial one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, better able to protect myself and my interests than anyone I knew, and I'd reveled in that fact.
Now, I felt like a surprisingly small fish in a very large pond.
Right now, this very minute, there was something out there in my city that was scarier than I was. Much scarier. And that was merely the one I knew about, the one I had actually seen firsthand, with my own eyes. How many other impossible, terrifying things were out there? How many didn't I know about? What was I-
With a slight creak, the front entrance to my bar was pushed open slowly....
At two-o-clock in the morning?
My nerves were so tightly bundled and edgy that when I heard the door opening I literally jumped back an inch or two on the counter. Rather than instantly assessing all options, it took me at least a full second to determine the closest weapon and how to get to it, by which time I could see who it was coming through the door.
I relaxed. A bit, anyway.
The nearby candle fluttered gently, causing the shadows to jump and leap.
Atticus was now wearing an old, beaten up sheepskin coat in addition to his usual faded jeans and cowboy boots. He was holding a dark brown file tightly against his chest with one of his arms, and was glancing fervently around the room, looking a bit unsettled, creeping in slowly. When his eyes finally found me propped up on the bar, he stopped walking. Then he squinted at me.
There were a few seconds of silence. The candle flame calmed down a little bit.
"Unlocked," was all he said.
Hmm. I must have forgotten to lock the front when I'd come in. This wouldn't do at all. I needed to start watching myself.
I gave Atticus a nod, taking another sip of my drink.
"You've had a rough night," he said, managing to sound relaxed and matter-of-fact despite the slight waver in his voice.
I snorted.
"You throw some bones around to arrive at that conclusion, old man?"
"No." He gestured at my leg. "Your pant leg has been cut open rather expertly, and there's a bandage around your knee."
"Oh. Right. Yeah, I've had a rough night." I took another lengthy sip of my drink.
"Your 'friend' did that?" he asked, looking a tad curious. "The one you were asking about?"
I shook my head no. "That was me, mostly. But that's not really it. I... guess you could say I saw some things tonight."
Atticus nodded sagely.
"Well, given the subject of our previous parlance, I would have to be a bit brain damaged not to pick up on the nature of these 'things'. You saw something difficult to believe, yes?"
"It was impossible," I said.
The old man grunted, turning to look at the various bottles kept behind the bar. He raised an eyebrow at me and tilted his head, which I responded to with a 'help yourself' sort of gesture.
"Impossible is a funny thing," he said as he wandered up to and around the bar. He fetched a glass for himself, inspected it, and then began pouring himself a triple. "The word 'impossible' means less and less the more possibilities you're able to see, and its definition is always fluid. Nowadays, people even use it to describe things that we know are possible, but that we don't wish to be. It was 'impossible' to escape from Alcatraz, according to the people who ran it. It was 'impossible' for the Titanic to sink, according to the people who built it. A convict paddles an inflatable raft to shore, an ocean liner sinks, and the meaning of the word changes yet again. How many times have you heard someone say the words 'but that's impossible' in your own lifetime, hmm?"
"But... what I saw couldn't have happened. It just... it doesn't happen."
"And thus you saw something you believed was impossible, and it shook your belief structure to its foundation, right down to some of the core tenets you've built your entire life around." He took a long, slow drink of bourbon, followed it up with an ahhh noise, which eventually turned into a sad sigh. "You've got a choice to make."
"What choice is that?"
"Smart as you are, it's probably not a choice you were ever thinking you'd have to make. See... your current problem is, in actual fact, quite simple."
I nearly burst out laughing at that, what with the numerous problems that were stacking themselves against me, but I managed to control myself.
"Simple? How so?"
"Your thoughts are spinning wildly, going round 'n round your head," he said, pointing to his own. "You're thinking things that make distressingly little sense, wondering how to fit this bit with that bit, and all manner of unproductive synaptic activity. Your problem is simple; you've been calling the wrong thing 'impossible' this whole time."
I furrowed my brow. "Uh-"
"Think about what you thought you knew for a moment... the way you held all your memories before you saw what you saw. How you perceived life, the universe, and your place in it. That's what is now impossible, not this thing you saw. It's just a thing, after all – it can't know what sort of fiction you've constructed in your head to help you cope. It can't know that its existence violates those threads of comprehension you've decided to call 'the truth', can it?"
"No, but-"
"See, almost everyone capable of possessing a worldview chooses to narrow their focus, because everything's easier that way, and by doing so they find they can actually focus enough to get a few things done from time to time. Then they draw up one single map for themselves, jotting down details regarding everywhere they've ever been, and they declare it to be the only inhabitable space, refusing to look anywhere else on the paper. Selective blindness, the path of least resistance, laziness, refusing to question or even acknowledge anything that happens outside of the scope of what they think they 'know', and all because they're staring so hard at these things they already believe in, hoping they never change. Thus, nothing from outside of that worldview has an opportunity to enter their wheelhouse." He tapped his temple with the index finger of his free hand. "You always have to leave room to consider other."
I couldn't tell if he was just really bad when it came to mixing his metaphors, or if his thoughts were coming to him so quickly that they were coming out slightly scrambled. Then again, I did grasp the essence of what he was trying to say, so who knows? Maybe his way was better.
"Other? You mean like... religion?"
Atticus snorted. "They're some of the worst offenders! Sure, it starts with them marveling at the mere possibility of something like spirit, and then suddenly they're slapping rules atop it, naming things, and trying to exert some form of control over it. Invariably the worst of them start working themselves into a frenzy of belief and go around killing differently-minded people just to 'prove' they're right! Useless. Same thing can be said of scientists. So closed off to possibilities, and all because they take comfort in 'believing' something tangible and solid, like a theory, or a star, or a slide under a microscope. All just so they can say they 'know' something. They use the word 'impossible' a lot, too."
He was beginning to get more animated as he spoke, and sounded smoother, more confident than in our previous meetings.
"You seem pretty together tonight," I said. "Started your drinking a little early?"
"I'm... medicated," he said, drawing the word out slowly, and sounding a bit like a late-night radio personality. "Knew I'd be bringing you something this morning, and could pretty much tell I'd run into you. I just wanted to be ready for your fifteen minutes worth of questions."
"It-" I blinked. "Hey... not quite. Our deal was that I come back to your bookstore and ask questions."
Atticus shrugged, then turned to appraise me. "It was a long shot. You're actually quite an interesting fellow, but I suppose you already knew that. Quite observant, good memory... which likely means that you're going to find this choice of yours substantially more difficult than others might."
"You keep mentioning this 'choice'. What choice?"
He considering me in silence before speaking.
"Data is data, and all we can do is collate it. How well you can collate data is the critical factor, and it's not something that is ever taught. When presented with a piece of data that doesn't fit anywhere in their filing system, most people opt to do the easy thing and throw it out... forget they ever came across it, dismiss it. It's a much more difficult thing to take all that data you had, move it out of the neat and orderly piles you'd constructed, and then come up with a brand new filing system entirely, one capable of categorizing and integrating something that would normally be considered 'impossible'."
"But what if it is impossible?" I asked
"Then it wouldn't be data. You wouldn’t have seen it."
"People don't come back to life."
"That's true... right up until the point that they do. And who's to say this person of yours has ever died? Really, what do you know about them, or what's happened to them? Not what you think you know, or what you've heard or read, either. What do you know?"
"I know I saw a man walk away from a bullet to the brain."
"Not true at all. The only thing you can know for certain is that's what you think you saw. See, you have to step back a little bit, go up a level, separate observation from inference and come up with a single statement that can't be disproven or refuted. Something you can 'know', beyond a shadow of a doubt. Am I here, in this bar, talking to you right now? Almost a certainty... but you can't really know, can you? I could be someone else entirely, wearing a disguise. I could be a figment of your imagination... a hallucination. Neither is likely, of course, but they're both possible. The moment you think you know I'm here, you attempt to make the other two impossible by default, and they're not! And that's your problem... you're filing things all wrong." He paused, looking thoughtful. "State something immutable. A fundamental truth that can't possibly be argued against. Pick one."
"I don't know... one plus one equals two?"
"A breathtakingly perfect example. Outstanding." The old man clapped his hands and then rubbed them together, like he was warming up for something. "In physics, one plus one will never equal 'two'. It will always equal one-point-nine-nine-nine-nine etcetera, or two-point-zero-zero-zero etcetera with some small remainder. No two objects are ever completely alike, and attributing the same value of 'one' to each is merely our way of glossing over the staggering number of differences so we don't get bogged down by minutia. We sand the rough edges. We approximate. This is what allows us to perform basic addition, use integers, which are themselves a construct we've invented and forced ourselves to look through." He gestured over to a section of the bar, by the napkins. "There are five salt shakers over there, according to some. But what exactly is a 'salt shaker' aside from a commonly agreed-upon concept? The levels of salt appear different for each – how can this not influence its ability to be a 'salt shaker', hmm? So, is it less of salt shaker simply because it has fewer salt crystals in it? Is it more of a salt shaker because it has a greater number of holes drilled into its top, or because it's larger? Closer to you, or further away... higher altitude, or less potential energy? Broken? Each difference between them changes their value slightly, rendering the whole concept of 'two' meaningless. Is that even salt in those things, or have I just made another assumption? The point of it all is, you can't know."
I rubbed my temples.
"Why is it that whenever I listen to you talk for any length of time, my head starts to hurt?"
"Because I'm forcing you to think in ways you aren't used to," said Atticus.
He'd left out the word 'dumbass' at the end, but I could feel it there anyway.
"So... what you're suggesting is," I said haltingly, "that I've got too many filters between me and the thing I'm looking at, because I find these filters useful, and they're not in this circumstance. I need a different filter."
"Close. What you need to do is remove all your filters every now and then, so you can see things in only the most basic and fundamental ways. See things for what they really are, and recognize them as such. Then, as you bring your filters back into place, you keep that basic, fundamental view of the thing tucked away safely," he said, looking at me and gesturing to his forehead, "behind your eyes." Without looking away, he pointed to the street window behind him. "That... in all likelihood, is a car."
I peered around to see what he was pointing at, and saw nothing but empty street.
"Uh, I don't-"
A bright blue sub-compact drove by the front window.
"We can't know it's a car, but practical experience tells us that since it behaves like one, that's what we should believe. That may be correct, and in all likelihood is true, but we shouldn't believe it! Believe instead that your operational assumption should be that it is a car, and then proceed from there, all the while recognizing that at any moment your assumption could be proven incorrect, and the 'car' could turn out to be something entirely different."
I gave the room a long, slow blink and heaved a sigh.
"Trust in nothing, you mean. So, what... I just stop believing in anything?"
His expression softened a bit.
"Look, people can't cope with this sort of thinking unless they've come nose-to-nose with something that's clearly impossible, like you've done. If you hadn't seen what you did, you'd have no reason to re-evaluate the world and your place in it, would you? Now that you have seen what you've seen, well, welcome to the club."
"And what if I don't want to join this club?" I asked, trying not to sound bitter.
"Why, then you'll probably sit there and continue to use the word 'impossible' the way you currently understand it. Soon you'll probably be able to convince yourself that your mind was just playing tricks on you, which will allow you to cling to the lifetime of truths and other notions you've become so desperately attached to. That'd be a pity though. I find self-deception annoying as hell."
Yeah, him and me both.
I was beginning to realize that what he was talking about made some measure of sense – the parts of the conversation that I was able to understand and process, at any rate. I knew I wouldn't be able to 'un-see' what had happened tonight, nor could I dismiss the whole experience as a fever dream, or something like my mind playing tricks on me. I'd been there, seen everything, and that was that.
My life had changed forever a few short hours ago, for good or for ill. I could accept that and move forward, or I could continue spinning around in circles trying to change what it was I'd seen.
That last one just didn't seem as productive.
"Well," said Atticus, downing his last fifth of bourbon with a wince and a follow-up grimace, "I should probably be heading back. Just wanted to bring this for you." He slid the dark brown folder he'd been holding across the bar and towards me with two careful fingers. "Whichever way you decide to go in your thinking, you'll probably find its contents useful."
"Thanks," I said, doing likewise with my own fingers, sliding it closer towards me. "You're a pretty interesting guy yourself. You know, for a rambling old drunk."
Atticus snorted a laugh at that, then reached for a nearby water jug and poured his glass half-full of water. Once that was done, he carefully picked up the candle that was sitting on the bar, dripping a couple of drops of candle wax into the cup. Reaching into the liquid with two fingers, he pulled the wax out a few seconds later and held it close to his face, inspecting it. As he was doing all this I just sat there, watching him.
Appearing to arrive at some conclusion, he gently placed both the half-empty glass and the small bit of wax onto the countertop. Then, turning on his heel, he headed for the door.
"Get some rest," he called over his shoulder at me once he'd reached the door. "Looks like tomorrow's going to be a busy, busy day."
And with that, the old man walked out of my bar and into the dark street beyond.