Battling Metaphysicians

Reggie was in a hidden room, the tower room, then he suddenly wasn't.

“I swear it’s the truth; he gave us the assignment in the tutorial last week, while you were at the doctors” said Delia, a bit too enthusiastically, “Fitz wants a two-page essay at the end of the today”, she couldn’t quite suppress a smug smile when she saw Reggie’s alarm. She flipped open her ring-binder to a neatly typed document and read the prompt out loud,” Why is the world, as a whole, as it is actually, and not otherwise?” and she managed to sound arrogant, condescending, and ironic, all at the same time. She was so mercurial at times, always toying with him!

“Let me see!”. Reggie Barnes reached across the table to grab her binder, but she pulled it out of reach. “Oh, come on, just a peek, or at least can I photocopy the lecture notes?”, he pleaded.

“You need to take this stuff seriously otherwise Fitz will fail you. He doesn’t care about the rugby team” said Delia, “and besides, Leibniz and Spinoza, they’re so much fun!”. She scrawled the essay title on Reggie’s notepad, unclipped her impossibly neat hand-written lecture notes and handed them to him, “you’re welcome!”, she said, gathering up her belongings.

“Thanks, that’s big of you”. The thick-rimmed square spectacles couldn’t hide her pert fresh face; in her bright orange knit sweater she looked like a vaguely familiar character from a seventies cartoon, 

“What are you doing tonight?”, Reggie said, giving her his best smile, and easing back in the wooden chair.

“Not having sex with you is one thing that will be happening tonight?” she said cheerily. She reminded him of Vera in Scooby Doo, only with a sultry streak and acid wit.

“I can imagine an alternative reality”, he said, laughing, which made his head throb.

“Not if you read Spinoza”, she said, “or is it Leibniz? Hmm, I wonder”, she teased, holding a finger to her lips, barely containing a devilish smile, and stared out the window as if she was trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. 

“You are impossible!”, he called to her as she gave him the hand and walked toward the aisle, “I’ll see you later, around 8.00pm?”. 

She turned and blew Reggie a kiss, “probably” she said, pivoted, and disappeared out of his sight.

+++

Reggie returned from the philosophy section with Spinoza’s “Ethics” in hand, and for a moment he felt like he was at a crossroads in his life, in one direction lay a world of constant thrill and adventure, and in the other… Spinoza and Leibniz. He slumped into a partially hidden wingback chair in a corner of the library and resigned himself to his fate.

The effects of the concussion lingered, the pain seemed to reverberate from the back of his skull, from the occipital bone, up and over the parietal dome, to lodge at what he supposed was the coronal suture, that fissure that ran to either side of the cranium. The doctors advised him to “take things easy for a while”, and “rest your eyes, when you can”.  Instructions that Reggie found difficult to follow. “You may have swing moods, and mild hallucinations”, said the Neurologist, Doctor…Doctor… Reggie couldn’t remember the Doctor’s name.  He sat back in the leather chair and opened the book, hoping Spinoza might scaffold his mind.

Within minutes, the text blurred, Reggie’s eyes glazed over, and he fell into a light sleep in which he was not doing a thousand things, including not having sex with Delia, and the enormity of this concept woke him with a start. Spinoza’s “Ethics” lay in front of him, opened at the first page, accusatorial. It was nearly lunch, the passage of time measured by the tolling of the Cathedral bells, and he still hadn’t got past the first paragraph.  He took a deep breath, sat up straight, looked at his watch, and with a renewed sense of urgency started reading again, and he made good progress for a line or two until the text seemed to sink like a string of beads beneath an opaque surface, and he with it.

A door slammed. Reggie woke from his second (or was it third) nap. The tall, stork-like figure of Casper Throckmorton appeared from the shadows of an alcove at the far end of the library. His beaked nose and small beady eyes conveyed the impression of a bird of prey, and his strange affinity for Victorian frock coats, wing collars, and waistcoats, gave him the black and white precise appearance of the secretary bird, a peculiarly frightening and exotic raptor. 

Reggie slid down at the desk at the far end of the library, partially concealed by bookshelves and pillars. Throckmorton had the ability to skewer undergraduates.

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Doctor Fitzpatrick billowed into the library, books in hand, bent to the ground, as if bent to the task of understanding the entirety of the universe, he moved with characteristic urgency, an ancient tome in one hand. When he got to the casement next to the alcove, he placed the papers and the leather-bound book down, withdrew his reading glasses, a pocketbook and pen from inside his jacket, and started tapping on the pocketbook. His great beard seemed to burst from his lower face, as if compensating for the entire absence of hair upon his scalp. His thick coke-bottle spectacles flashed as he moved, reflecting the light.

“Let’s not idle!”, said Fitz to Casper, who nodded in agreement, hands clasped behind his back, the exaggeration of attentiveness, “do you have everything? asked Professor Fitzpatrik, who brought the opened pocket book to within three inches of his thick spectacles, and proceeded to read each word with undisguised effort, “The Strasbourg Codex facsimile?”, Casper affirmed with a “yes” sounded like a hiss, “the Gesenius Lexicon?”, another hiss and Casper bowed slightly, “and the girl, the girl”, asked Fitz urgently, “where is the girl?”. 

Casper looked worried, scared even, “they’re bringing the girl from the dormitory”, he reassured Fitz, but he didn’t look very confident, “any moment now”.  He removed a fob watch from a pocket in his crimson waistcoat, and nervously examined it, “the brothers have her”. 

In the distance the cathedral bell started to toll for the hour. Reggie glanced at his phone, two o’clock. It was a cloudy November sky, bruised-looking clouds out the window, it felt later owing to the general gloom.

Suddenly there was a commotion. Two brown-hooded Franciscans from the Cathedral priory rushed into view, one to either side of a body that was being dragged along the main aisle of the library. A woman, her head hanging down, her black hair limp, but as they moved Reggie was able to make out the delicate features of a beautiful girl, of east Asian provenance, apparently drugged, unconscious or – possibly – dead.  Doctor Fitz stepped back, Casper solicitous to an extreme, rushed into the shadowy alcove, opened a dark green door and waived the monks and their captive into a stairwell “Go straight up the stairs to the tower room”, he said, and as the Monks stepped across the threshold, the girl groaned, struggled just slightly. As she turned her head, Reggie recognized her.

“God forgive us!”, Fitz crossed himself, and looked to the heavens, made a private prayer, then followed them through the dark green door hidden deep in the recess shadows of the alcove, “be careful”. The green door closed with a heavy thunk, and the sound of the small group ascending the wooden stairwell was muffled and then silence. The alcove was dark and green door was closed.

+++

Reggie looked around to see if anyone else was in the library, on this floor of the library, but it was deserted. 

“What the fuck!”, he muttered to himself, and he shifted in the chair so that he could reach his phone. 

“What’s up?” said Delia.

“You’re not going to believe this”, said Reggie breathing heavily, his hands were trembling, “I just saw Fitz and that post-grad creep Throckmorton in the library. They killed someone! A girl”. He stood up and cautiously made his way toward the alcove.

“Reggie… what are you talking about?”, said Delia, alarmed.

“They fucking killed a girl. I think it was Seyonne Chung. They dragged her through the library, and took her into a secret passage, Reggie began to gush, “I’ve got to do something…”, beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. Delia laughed nervously, implored him to calm down, but he ignored her entreaty, “I’ve got to do something, rescue her, call the police. Something”.

“Reggie, stop!”, she almost shouted at him, “you’re not making any sense, and it’s not very funny”. Delia sounded annoyed, even angry.

“Delia, I’m telling you the truth. Throckmorton… he and Fitz, they’ve kidnapped Seyonne Chung”. Holding the phone in one hand to his ear, Reggie entered into the shadows of the alcove, tiptoed up to the dark green door.  It looked very old, a stranded artefact of a prior renovation, perhaps hundreds of years previously. It looked abandoned.

“For god’s sake, listen to yourself! Throck and Fitz, two stick insects, carried a dead girl through the library? How is that even something that can be imagined?”.

“Not them, the monks. Franciscan brothers from the Cathedral”, he realized it sounded ridiculous as soon as he said it. 

Reggie gave the door a gentle nudge, but it would not move. He jostled the dented and brass doorknob, it moved freely but uselessly: the door seemed bolted on the inside. He stepped back out of the alcove. On the nearby casement, there lay the book that Fitz carried into the library. He’d left it behind.

 “Delia, I’m serious. Something weird and horrible just happened. If you don’t hear back from me within the next hour or so, call the police, and send them to the library. Tell them to look for the dark green door, they should go up to the tower room”.

“No. Not playing”, she said, flatly.

Reggie was shocked. “What do you mean, no?”.

“Reggie, it’s not funny, it’s a twisted prank.  Seyonne Chung is playing volleyball at the rec center, Throck is watching porn somewhere, Fitz is doing logic problems on a chalk board, the monks are down the pub, and the tower room is in your head”, she sounded like she was out of breath, “Oh, and the green door? The green door is blue”. Reggie was confounded. “No. None of it!”, Delia said, emphatically, “See you later.  Bring a bottle when you come”, she hung up.

Reggie looked at the door. It was still green. He grabbed the papers and the book. It was old, leather-bound, the pages rough-cut, “A Treasury of Things Stolen, Forgotten and Lost” was the cover title, in an antiquated serif font, gold embossed. He opened the ancient book where a postcard of the Norman cathedral had been inserted, was greeted by a musty smell, dust from down the centuries and an etching. 

The etching, of intense fine-lined detail, was disturbing in the extreme. It depicted a room, sparely furnished, a white wall with a small window to one side; a window without glass panes overlooking an imaginary and panoramic landscape populated with fantastical mountains and improbable trees, rendered in a style common to the 15^th and 16^th centuries. In the foreground, lying upon a marble altar in the center of the room a naked woman is bound, hands and feet by cords, as if readied for sacrifice, and at the foot of the altar, a bearded and be-robed priest stands as if engaged in the ancient occult but of a bearing that is modern and lewd in intent. The priest is holding a small rectilinear object rendered by the artist with astonishing precision and he is pointing the oblong object at the girl’s bound form as if taking a photo. The priest is holding an iPhone.   Reggie examines the inscription: “Joen Van Aachen, NIederlandish 1450-1516, The Metaphysicke of Zipporah”

The blow to the back of Reggie’s head rendered him senseless.

+++

If felt like his skull would explode, but with every fresh pulse of blood in his head, the pain dwindled. Reggie opened his eyes. He was in a tunnel, but as his dilate pupils adjusted, there came into focus a ring of concerned heads, silhouetted against the bright white sky, rugby players gathered around him as he lay on the cold damp grass.  Someone, kneeling at his side, leaned over and almost obscured the light.

“Welcome back Reggie!”, the person said, “we were worried for a moment”, and they lifted him into a sitting position, “focus on my finger, here”. Reggie followed a blurry index finger from side to side, “can you move your fingers?”. One of the men, a burly prop forward with enormous forearms, reached down, gave Reggie a slap on the back, “sorry about that mate, it was totally my fault”. Reggie waived it off, though the “it” of what had actually happened, was a mystery. 

“I thought I was in a room… in a tower”, Reggie mumbled, and blanked out cold.

+++

It felt like someone had driven a metal spike through the top of his head.   When he opened his eyes, he was in a room, an austere and unadorned room, with a hand-hewn rough-made vernacularity to it that seemed to belong to a bygone age, the exact replica of the room in the etching, and it was cold, damp.

Seyonne Chung was lying on the marble slab, her hands and feet tethered by torn leather cords, and she was writing around in agony or ecstasy, it was unclear which, at least to Reggie in a twilight of consciousness. She moaned incoherently, and pulled at the bondage, her back arched and bowed. Through the open window to her right, Reggie could see a fantastic pastoral landscape, cypress trees in a clump, not a road, not one house, not a telephone pole in sight.

Doctor Fitz, dressed in a robe, his head covered like a priest from the old testament, was standing at the foot of the altar, to Reggie’s left. Fitz was taking photos of the girl with an iPhone, “No art form can match porn for the initial thrill and subsequent boredom, don’t you think, Barnes?”, he said.

“Change one thing, and you change everything, “said Throckmorton stepping into the scene from the right-hand side, “you must think you are a god, you ignorant little prick”, he said, snarling at Reggie.

“I don’t understand”, Reggie didn’t even know what question to ask.

“So many alternative worlds, but it isn't this one that God chose”, said Doctor Fitz.

++++

Reggie woke in the chair by the window, it was dark outside. He looked at his phone. It was nearly 9.00pm; the library was deserted.

“I’m so sorry”, he said to Delia, “I thought I’d be finished in time, but I’m still working on the essay”. Reggie looked despondently at the book open on his lap, he felt like he was caught in an eternal wrestle of wills with Spinoza, while Leibniz waited in the wings, ready to tag-team in.

“Well Fitz will be pleased that you are taking the assignment so seriously”, she said, “and anyway, I’ve got company”.

Reggie sat up straight, alert. Was she teasing him again?

“Seyonne’s here, came round after volleyball; we’re watching a movie, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, it’s hilarious.”

Reggie felt another piercing headache coming on, “I’ll call tomorrow, I’ve got to finish this work. Bye”.

Reggie went back to the wingback chair and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep in which he wasn't in a hidden room, the tower room, then he suddenly was.