Chapter 1

Wednesday, January 5th, 2022
Denver, Colorado

My name is Carl Abbot. I work at a law firm in Denver and I am one of a small team of I.T. people who maintain the computer network and assorted electronic devices that the firm needs to function every day. Not the most glamorous of jobs perhaps, but it pays the bills. Barely. Not that the job doesn’t pay well, it does, it’s just that I have a lot of bills. I’ve been divorced twice. My first marriage was just a bad idea that anybody could have seen coming. We were both too young and it lasted less than a year. Fortunately, I got out of that one without any real hurt besides some bad feelings and a dent in my self-esteem.

Two years ago, however, I found out my wife of 15 years had gotten bored and decided to spread her favors out to friends and acquaintances. Hell, you might have had a good time with her for all I know. It had been going on for a while and I was clueless. Apparently, she didn’t like hearing how low my opinion of her was after that came to light, and she had me served with divorce papers before a week was out. The firm I work for didn’t handle divorces, so I went with a reference one of the partners gave to me. I suppose I can’t complain too much about them, I know they worked hard for me, but the outcome still sucks.

How is it right that I did absolutely nothing wrong, but I still have to pay alimony? For freaking ever too, unless someone else gets stupid enough to marry her. The cheating trollop gets paid for sitting on her ass in a condo I paid for with half of the equity in our home and my ongoing mandatory donations to her bank account. I had to sell the house and split the “Profits” with her while I have to live in a crappy apartment because it’s all I can afford for now. We had just finished paying off both cars, but of course, she gets to keep “hers” which happens to be the nicer of the two. Don’t even get me started on what she did with our credit cards and what that does to my credit rating. There is absolutely nothing fair about it. Bah, it eats me up every time I think about it. Men, don’t get married. It just doesn’t make sense in today’s world anymore, if it ever did.

The best thing about the divorce is that there were no kids involved. I’d like to tell you there was some forethought involved in that happy outcome, but nope, that’s not the case. I can chalk that one up to a skiing accident in my mid-20s. There may have been some alcohol involved ... Okay, there was a lot of alcohol involved. Depending on who you listen to, there might also have been a clown, a Jewish rabbi, and a pair of exotic dancers involved too. All I remember is waking up in the hospital, so I have to go by the questionable accuracy of my old friends for the story.

Apparently, it boils down to me saying something like “Hold my beer,” and then I proceeded to show off how stupid I can be. I went off the path just a bit and then over the side of a ridge. I’m sure I looked fantastic as I fell about 30 feet before landing straddling a tree branch and getting stuck there while still being 20 further feet above the ground. I got to see some photos of the rescue squad pulling me out of the tree. Anyway, I’ve been shooting blanks for a long time.

So it’s a Wednesday night and I’m sitting in a comfortable chair in my living room, polishing off a frozen pizza, when the phone rang. I’m a little surprised as I don’t get a lot of calls normally, hell I speak to more telemarketers than anyone else on the phone.

“Hello?”

“Carl? It’s Uncle James. How have you been, boy?”

I’m 53 years old and he still calls me “boy,” some things will never change. I had to smile.

“Wow, it’s great to hear from you. I’m doing alright, all things considered. How are you?”

“Good, good. Hey, I’m in the area and I like to stop by and speak with you. Are you still in that apartment off Colfax?”

“Yeah, Florence Square Apartments, I’m in apartment #235, but are you sure you want to meet here? It’s a pretty sketchy place, Uncle James. I’d be happy to meet you someplace else.”

“No. It will be fine. I’ll see you in a little while, Carl. Bye.”

I looked around at the state of the place and didn’t find anything that needed cleaning. I double-checked that I had some beer he might enjoy in the refrigerator, and waited for him to show up. About 30 minutes later there was a knock on my door and I let Uncle James in and gave him a hug.

He looked good, wearing a light blue polo shirt and khaki pants, a mahogany cane in his left hand, and not looking a day over 90 years old. He had seemed ancient to me for as far back as I could remember, but his mind has always been sharp as a tack. Not much got by Uncle James, and he never had any qualms with “telling it like it is.”

After hugging me back we both got settled in front of the TV with a cold one in our hands.

“Carl, do you remember that conversation we had on Christmas a year back?”

“You mean the one where you strongly suggested that I put the effort into ‘getting my affairs in order,’ because it would ease my soul some to have the extra structure in place and it’s never a bad idea anyway?”

“That would be the one. Did you take me as seriously about it as I asked you to? Did you manage to move it from ‘a good idea’ into reality?”

I chuckled and said, “In fact I did. I suppose I could go at any time without regrets.”

I heard a smile in his voice as he said, “Good,” and took a drink.

Suddenly I couldn’t move. I was frozen, still looking at the green beer bottle in my left hand. I couldn’t move anything at all. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel my heart beating. It was like time was frozen, but I soon realized it wasn’t as I watched a drop of moisture drip over the red star on the Heineken label. I couldn’t even blink as it happened.

James put down his beer, reached over, turned my head slightly by pulling my chin so I looked his way, and he started to speak.

“Carl, I’m tired...” and he proceeded to blow my mind.

James Glass is my Great Uncle, or at least that is how I always thought of him. As he told me this story, while I sat there frozen, I learned that he is a bit further removed as a relation than I had been led to believe. He has been around peripherally all of my life. I would see him at the occasional family gathering, and he would send a nice Christmas card to me most years. I always got the impression that he thought well of me, though we never spent any great amount of time together. Usually, we would just enjoy pleasant conversations a couple of times a year.

After about a minute or so James noticed that I was not doing too well and he apologized. After that, while I still couldn’t move anything besides my eyes and eyelids, at least I was breathing and blinking again. James returned to his story.

It turns out that James inherited some pretty unusual powers from a distant relative when he was in his late 60s. This was back in 1845, you see, Uncle James is a little older than he looks. He is indeed related, but it was more like a dozen generations ago. Back then, James had an “uncle” of his own, who passed the gifts on to him. His uncle was named Andre Barrière, who himself was a distant descendant of Ambroise Paré who was the original owner of these powers. Unless you have a degree in French history I doubt you have heard of him, but Ambroise was a famous French surgeon in the 1500s who served in that role for many Kings of France throughout much of that century.

The story as it was passed down to me is that Ambroise was fascinated by the macabre and all forms of monsters. He spent decades investigating that pursuit in every way he could. As a man in the position he held, there was almost no limit to the resources he could bend to that task. Somewhere late in his life, all of the research paid off and he did some sort of favor or service to an entity that he described as a demon. To my knowledge, he never told anyone the nature of the meeting during his lifetime and in fact, the only reference to it that James ever found was this tale that has survived by word of mouth through the “gifted” people in this story. The demon bestowed him with the ability to do many amazing things, and these powers have been selectively passed down through Ambroise’s bloodline since then.

Andre was living in Paris and was in his early 60s back in the late 1690s when Ambroise himself passed the abilities on to him. This must have come as a bit of a shock to Andre since Ambrose supposedly died around a hundred years before at the age of 80. Andre had spent much of his life in the man’s shadow, as he owed much of his medical career to the reflected glory of his ancestor. That meant he was well aware of Ambroise’s name and was more than skeptical at first. He couldn’t deny the powers he received, however, and Andre lived a long and interesting life of his own, supposedly. However, James didn’t go into detail about it, so for now we’ll have to take him at his word I suppose.

Andre eventually migrated to the U.S. in the early 1800s and had settled in New York, finding the appeal of the relatively young American country irresistible for a time. Along the way, he invested a lot of time and money into creating an accurate genealogy of Ambroise’s progeny. He also created a foundation to continue that task after he was gone. It is called the Pantaleon Foundation and it continues to track related births and deaths in secret while maintaining a public-facing image of supporting medical research to this day.

Apparently, time weighs heavily upon the persons who get and/or benefit from these powers. Eventually, they become tired of starting over again as time progresses, and they choose to pass on their gift/curse to someone else before their bodies eventually reach the end. The new recipient of the gifts so far all seem to be a descendant of Ambroise’s bloodline, male, and apparently over the age of 50. All attempts to pass the gift on to others have failed, presumably due to insufficient strength of the bloodline or some level of immaturity, or perhaps a lack of enough life experience.

James focused back on me and said, “Now, I’ve been at this for a long time, and as I said, I’m tired. Tired of living. I don’t want to be here anymore and I’m ready to move on. Before I go, I want to pass my powers on to you. Why choose you? Well, because you have always been a sarcastic little son of a bitch with a good sense of humor, and I’ve always liked you best among the available options I have near here. Frankly, I also have no desire to travel and vet the other candidates back in Europe. There are plenty of candidates on this side of the pond to choose from and, as I said, I’ve always been fond of you.”

“So, how does this work? What are these powers I speak of exactly? Well, besides the situation you find yourself in, I’m about to show you most of it. The rest you will be able to figure out on your own. I did, and so did the ones before me. The first part of this is sadly going to be a bit uncomfortable for you. Well, let’s not beat around the bush here ... it’s going to hurt more than any pain you have ever felt before. Sorry about that. There is simply no way to avoid it. You see for this to work, I need to help you basically split your mind in two. Maybe it’s not the mind, maybe it’s the soul. Yea, think along the lines of ripping your soul in half. Mostly. There has to be some connection remaining, but whatever you choose to call it, you will essentially have two of you living inside your head. If it works.”

“Yes, I said if. Sorry sonny, but there are no guarantees here, and you aren’t being given a choice. I know, I know, it’s not fair. But you’ve learned that about life already haven’t you? Besides, I don’t know if I would trust this ability to anyone willing to go through ripping their soul in half to get it. So I’m not asking, but I do promise that I will do my best to get you through this. I don’t want to try this again with someone else.”

“Now, before we start I have to go get something from outside. Try not to panic, not that you have any say in the matter at this point. Just try to calm your mind, I’ll be right back.”

James searched in my pockets for my keys and shut the front door behind him as he left. A few minutes later he returned with a large man I had seen around the block many times before. I had heard him called Terry, and I knew he sold drugs in the area. Normally he was a very scary-looking individual, but not so much at the moment. It seemed odd to me that he was just blindly following Uncle James into the room with a bored look on his face.

“Carl, this is Terence. Terence, I want you to answer me honestly and completely. Do you understand?”

Terence answered, “Yes”

“Terence, have you ever killed anyone?”

“Yes, six people. One with a knife, three with guns, two with just my hands.”

“Did you count people who have died due to you selling drugs to them?”

“Naw, if you include drug-related deaths like overdoses, I guess the total is over a dozen, but I can’t be sure because I never tried to count them before. I’m not sure I woulda heard. It could be a lot higher if you count them doing something fatally stupid while on drugs, like pulling a gun on a cop or attempting to swim in the middle of winter.”