We Interrupt This Broadcast

Due to a scheduled outage, Port Evenus will have a week's interruption in the broadcast. Tune in next week to catch up!

Beyond the Hall of Mirrors

    The exit left the Mirror Hall, but not to the outside. Hoell found himself in a chamber of library quiet buoyed by faint opera, too large to be a trailer, but certainly behind-the-scenes. Weak light crowded with furniture, benches, things he couldn’t make out, blossoming dancing shadows over the tent walls, scarcely illuminating, mystifying. He moved cautiously, quietly. He thought he heard deep breathing, someone sleeping, softly on the edge of bel canto. Accoutrements of show-business loomed from the darkness, ornate canes, silk toppers, chains and feathers, trunks draped in mythology. The private quarters of magic.
   The soprano scratched, needle stuck, then freed itself with a lurch. Hoell heard a voice, speaking from the darkness. Soft and scratchy as the needle, surreal. “How will it end?”
   Hoell froze. Was it imagination? He couldn’t see anyone. But it spoke again, repeating itself. “How will it end?”
   Still no one he could see, but had to be aware of him. “Excuse me?”
   “Everything has a beginning. And everything has a end. How will it end?”
   Hoell slowly moved toward the music, not sure what to expect. Whatever he had in mind, it wasn’t what he saw. On a table, just across from a wobbly phonograph, was a glass dome containing a human head, hair and beard white with an expression of doubt and apprehension. The head swiveled, eyes looked directly at him. “I sought to enjoy the folly of man’s short pleasures of earth. What is it you seek?”
   Hoell held the gaze evenly, somehow unsurprised the macabre thing spoke. “I’ve come to return something. But I don’t know who it belongs to.” He wasn’t sure why, but he told the head the truth. “Whitechapel wants me to take it to him, but he just wants to save himself. It belongs to someone else.”
   “You seek Him.” Eyes tossed lightly to the ceiling. “He who constructed this Babylon. He who holds the keys.”
   “I don’t know what I’m after,” Hoell admitted.
   “You want more than your life is now,” the head said sorrowfully. “You want to touch the promise before the world moved in around you. You want what can be found at the Crossroads. What only He can give you.”
   Hoell let the words assemble in his mind.“Then it is true. This . . . . carnival is run by The Jew?”
   The bushy eyebrows closed sadly. “It is true he has power. It is not of his own making, but he possess it nonetheless. And I am too old to envy him any longer. I had my time, and squandered it.”
   “Who are you?”
   The head sighed. “I have known many names, worn the mantle of many civilizations since he first cursed me. Cartaphilus. Matathias. Isaac Laquedem. Newton. Van Houten. Ahasver. I have none, now. It has been my curse to pay for my pride, my inhumanity, for eternity. Do not squander yours. The winds are blowing again. Where will you let them take you?”
   Hoell took in the room again. His fingers reflexively twisted the bullet in his pocket. “I don’t know. To an ending, I suppose. I’ll find out.”
   The head closed its eyes, slipping into a blissful expression, like tasting the most perfect dream one could dream. “Only your life can speak your fate. All man‘s dreams and ambitions are meaningless. All that matters is, how will it end? How’s it going to end? Be a friend, and wind the phonograph.”

The Hall

     Endless mirrors glisten and menace in the spears of moonlight finding their way in. Hoell felt his way like a blind man in a world of cold blue light, following the trail, clinging to shards of self-awareness. Static self-image dissolves, the soul split into a multitude of facets and palindromes. Consciousness leads from one self-image to the next, never settling -- distance perceived at close proximity, nearness a mirage stretching itself to the next self-image. The danger lies in trying to pinpoint identity. You lose your grip in the face of absorption, until you believe you never had one at all, grasping association of the nearest reflection, struggling to retain your idea of yourself, your idea of the awareness of reality. Your own image becomes your worst enemy, fading, melding one with another. A million unshaven Hoells, hollow eyes tugging for a piece of warmth, each one mutely insisting they are the real Hoell, each one promising life, and future, and sanctuary just beyond the curve of light. Dirty fingers reaching, clutching desperately, surrounded by the voices of others trapped here, carried eternally by the skittering mice. Believe me, accept me, I'll show you the way . . . .
   Hoell felt himself slipping, fading, sensations dripping like sand into an abyss. All point of reference had vanished completely. And then he paused, and held his right hand out palm down. In a moment it dipped gently, fluidly, a sparrow riding the wind, a wave slowly rolling toward breaking. Fingers began to flicker like spring rain, and his head filled with a progression of notes. The music was there, had always been there, just beyond hearing but guiding. The abyss pulled back, the desperate yearning Hoells faded into the backdrop. He almost laughed, and shortly left by a star-covered door.
   Mirrors can be created, broken or ignored. And when your mind is in the thrall of the music, nothing else matters.

A Lull in the Proceedings

Due to the so-called "holiday weekend" and the demands it places on those of us who row fervently across the river Styx, we regret to inform you that Port Evenus will be taking a break this Sunday from their regular scheduled broadcast. We hope you spend this time in the warm company of your loved ones, grilling tasty portions of bovine. In the meanwhile, let us encourage you to fill your PE needs on the rest of our parent site, and be sure to tune in next week!

Concerning the Circus

   The air grew thick with the threat of rain. Still in the distance, but present nonetheless. Out in the field by Drywood Creek the carnival was a dark and silent creature, abandoned and slumbering beneath a moon moving in and out from clouds. Hoell stayed in the shadows, warily treading the perimeter of packed dust and sporadic gravel. Grey rain would later turn the field into a mess of pale clay mud, and then the carnival would be gone, but for now Hoell silently walked in the long shadows of mechanical giants, evil silhouette of midway booths, silent terrors advertised by weathered cutouts.
   The carnival spun out like a wheel, a spiral, turning slowly from the center, the Midway. Hoell kept moving in clockwise, watching a shifting moon alter the landscape. Rounding the front of an old flatbed pick-up he thought he saw one shadow melt away from the rest, but rather than recede with the moon's tide glide toward a tent rippling gently in the quiet breeze. The air picked up the must of the river, sharp fuel and animal spore, and the hint of decay lurking just on the end. They were still following him.
   He ducked around the creaking pendulum of a Ferris Wheel car, skeleton shifting faintly the metal gates, getting an empty animal pen between them. He thought he had dodged sight, but slipped around a hulking truck still reeking of diesel to get some distance.
   The moon vanished, obscuring the attraction in front of him, housed in a trailer with sides like a Murphy Bed. In the darkness a shadow moved beyond the Ferris Wheel. Hoell took his chances and slipped inside.

Concerning the Street Car

A flurry of cars rocked over the trestle, showering a curtain of coquelicot sparks and sibilant murmurs. Hoell stayed toward the center of the street, watchful eye on the flickering barrel fires. A bearded man coughed into gloved hands but ignored him. The one-eared dog at his feet looked at Hoell briefly, then lost interest. In a moment Hoell was mounting the saturnine stone steps up the embankment toward the parallel of Second Street, elevated train lumbering noisily past. In a brief flash of its light Hoell thought he saw something else beneath the trestle, an impression more than an image, a figure cut from the darkness of the night. The dog uttered a low growl. The man coughed again, almost apologetically. Hoell kept walking.

Concerning the Houngan

   The Houngan was tall, razor thin, skin the color of creamy coffee. Dirty braids drifted rhythmically across his face. His face was devoid of eyebrows, but marked with the ambiguous blue of ancient, faded tattoos. He was draped in the chair like dry cleaning, like an aquarium skeleton collapsed against his treasure chest. Timelessness, the musty air of centuries, hung about him, mingling with strange herbal and sweat notes.
   Hoell suddenly remembered the cigar, fished it from his jacket and held it out. Languidly the Houngan took it, lit it with an unseen flame and pulled a smoke. He exhaled with eyes to the heavens, a connoisseur waiting for the last moment to dispense an opinion. At last he spoke. "The winds are changing, Jazz Man. They are blowing from the south. From the past."
   Hoell nodded solemnly.
   "But they will not stay. They are here only to move out again. He seeks what is his, what holds him to this earth he created for himself."
   The cigar, which with Savannah smelled like a wet newspaper, filled the air with a sweet musty smell, a faint hint of anisette there and gone.
   "Whitechapel wants it too," Hoell put in. "He wants to give it himself."
   "Whitechapel thinks he can change the winds of his own fate. He thinks he can walk the same path as He." The Houngan flipped a tuft of ash to the floor. "He is wrong," he said matter-of-fact. "The time for bargaining has passed. Only the just shall survive."
   Hoell's hands found an unheard Jelly Roll Morton in the air, tapped it out like Morse Code. "What would you have me do?"
   The Houngan looked at him with scrutinizing black eyes. He reached into his jacket and pulled forth a card, flipped it around with a flourish and revealed the face to Hoell. A crude icon of a chess rook, the card obviously upside down. "You must go to Him. Bring what He desires. Out of the chaos of the storm the moon will shine."
   Hoell looked down at the object in his hand, trying to make up his mind. He sighed, and moved his shoulders back resolutely. "I don't know that I've a choice," he said, and slid the tin box into his coat. He tipped his hat to the Houngan and left the room.