The Man in the Long Black Coat

Part One

There is a church on the Borderlands, before the Edge, before the rustling black where the City ends and the Unknown begins. Unless you have a very good reason (and there are few Very Good Reasons), it is advised that you do not visit this church. Only the very foolish - and less often, the very brave – have even considered making the pilgrimage.

The Man in the Long Black Coat walks towards the church. His coat is dusty. Smoke coils, serpentine, from the cigarette in his mouth. His feet are bare. He leaves bloody tracks in the rocks and dirt; he steps on the small bones of birds and things that have never been birds as we know it, as he walks the path to the church.

The chirping of crickets. Rustling in the trees. Yellow eyes, steady, still, watching him.

He sees none of this. Only the church.

It is a small building, simple and grey, made of stone. Two windows in the front, more along the sides. The front door is wooden, painted red, and decorated with a symbol the Man knows all too well: a triangle with an upside-down cross inside it. The symbol appears to have been burnt into the wood. The faint smell of smoke and charcoal.

The Man in the Long Black Coat does not pause at the door, nor does he knock. He turns the heavy handle and walks inside. Bloody footprints on the steps, on the threshold, and now along the aisle he walks.

A line of pews on either side of him, dark wood and a rough stone floor. Narrow windows lining each wall, so dusty no light shines in; no matter. At the end of the aisle, a pulpit, raised slightly on a block of crumbling stone, and a simple wooden lectern. Again, the symbol, this time carved into the lectern (one imagines a primitive knife in a shaky, determined hand), this time red, as if the wood itself bled as it was cut.

There are other things carved into the dais, stranger things, things with yellow eyes and black fur, bristling backs and claws curving out of misshapen paws.

The Man expected all this.

At the pulpit now, he grips the lectern and shakes it, hard.

Where are you?

He doesn’t speak; his thoughts are the sound of birds rising and taking flight. The rustle of dry feathers against the air.

Show yourself. I know you’re here.

Yellow eyes, looking through the narrow windows.

You did this to me.

A low growl. Something that might be laughter. Something that is most definitely a warning.

Part Two

There is a park in the North end of the City, called, with smirking irony by its creators, Edenwood. Here the trees are tall. Here the trees are, in fact, fantastic. Purple, pink, blue; heart and diamond-shaped flowers, and succulent fuchsia fruit that bursts at the slightest touch. The wind tastes like cherry blossoms, and the flowers sing lullabies.

Alice, in her desperate attempts to escape Mr Dodgson, could not have imagined a sweeter place.

You would do well to avoid this place.

Only the very foolish - and less often, the very brave – have made the pilgrimage.

There is a pool in the middle of Edenwood, where the mer-people live. The Man in the Long Black Coat approaches the pool, picking his way across the soft grass. The footprints he leaves behind soon turn to red glass, and twinkle in the sun. A hundred ruby slippers in his wake.

The Man’s head hums as he approaches the pool. There could be a hive of bees in his head, the backs of his eyes sting so.

At the edge of the pool, a ladder leads down into the algae-depths.

Nice touch.

The man smiles, and the bees drip their honey down the back of his throat.

The skin of the water is thick, oily – marvelous rainbows swirling. Every shade of green you can imagine, and a few you can’t. Nothing breaks the surface, but the man thinks he sees something down there - a fin, maybe, a tentacle or two?

I must speak to you.

His mouth does not move, but the bees press against his lips, blindly searching for a way out.

I know you can fix this. I know you can take this away.

A bee finds its way out his left ear, nibbling at his cochlea as it leaves.

This won’t work. You cannot scare me. I’ve seen enough. I know too much.

The bees laugh, in the chittering ways of bees. They sting the backs of his eyes, and his eyes drip yellow tears. They escape out his nose, now, and their tiny feet leave tiny cuts and he bleeds tiny drops of stinging nectar.

The water is still. Not even the incessant whirl of bees disturbs it.

You cannot scare me. I know too much.

Part Three

Eventually, you will find yourself in the very heart of the City, at a building that reaches to the sky, and, quite possibly, much further. The name of the building does not concern us, although it can be found easily in other documents, if one cares to look. The beating, swelling, bloody heart of the City.

The Man has travelled long and hard to get here. He has left a thousand bloody footprints and cigarettes butts in his wake. His coat is dusty, still. The hungry, cat-sized ravens that line the Borderlands considered following him, for a time, but thought better of it. Best to let him be, they said, in the secret language of ravens.

You’re fucking right you better let me be, the man had replied.

The ravens bristled, and ducked their shiny black heads.

It takes a lot to startle a raven.

Now the Man has arrived where we are, at the building in the heart of the City. He takes a last deep drag, and grinds his cigarette out with the heel of his bloody foot. The revolving doors open for him; they spin him into the lobby. He enters the elevator, and presses a series of buttons that we will not record here.

He leaves the elevator, and steps onto a floor lined in black and white tiles. Though, if he looks closely, the tiles change color and shape quite magnificently. Yes, it’s a trick - but a lovely one nonetheless. There doesn’t seem to be any blood left for his feet to shed. The tiles remain clean and colorful, and he walks to the door that he knows to be the right one, although the hallway is lined with doors.

He is a foolish man, and a brave one at that.

He opens the dor, and is greeted by a small girl, blond and pony-tailed, wearing a blue and white gingham dress. She smiles up at him with gap-toothed anticipation.

‘He’s here!’ she shouts back into the room, and opens the door for him. ‘We’ve been waiting for you!’ she explains. ‘We’ve been waiting a long time for you.’

‘Hush, child’, a warm voice says from inside. ‘Let him in first. Let him speak.’

The Man walks into the room.

Three chairs arranged around a red-brick fireplace, the fire lit and casting shadows on the walls. Strange shadow-play; shifting figures like dogs crouching, pouncing, loping. A porcelain cat on the mantel, its tail flicking stiffly left to right, a picture of a family in an ornate gold frame, their faces dissolving and re-forming, melting and hardening. A clock; instead of numbers, tiny figures twisted into twelve obscene positions.

The first chair is empty. The Man assumes that it belongs to the little girl, now wearing a ringmaster’s suit, waving a small baton, and tugging at the sleeve of his coat.

‘You look sad. Got the tombstone blues, do you?’ she asks, giggling.

The Man is not distracted.

A woman sits in the second chair. Her brown hair is streaked with silver, and her hands are liver-spotted, but her eyes are bright. She holds a rotting, green-skinned baby in her arms and is stroking its bald head. Pieces of skin come off where she touches it, and she pats them back into place. She smiles at him, warmly.

The girl is tugging at his sleeve, still. ‘Look what I can do!’ she says, and when he looks down her hair has turned into hundreds of thin green snakes, snapping their tongues at him and waving sinuously.

‘Pay her no mind’, the woman in the third chair says, turning her head towards him. She is almost a twin to the baby in the second woman’s arms, only someone has taken a knife to her eyes, and in their place are only criss-crossed scars, a once-pink puckering gone grey with age.

Take this away from me.

‘You know we can’t do that, my dear’ the second woman says sweetly. Her thumb sinks into the baby’s eye.

‘That’s not how it works at all!’ the little girl says. ‘You went to a bad place and now you’re a bad man!’ she sing-songs. She has turned into a small ocelot, now; she jumps onto the Man’s shoulders and nips at his ears with her sharp little teeth.

I can’t do it. I can’t. The things I’ve seen. The things I know.

‘It’s nothing really, dear. It’s nothing that will destroy you, not if you don’t let it,’ says the third woman. Shadows from the fire scuttle across her skin.

You can’t take it away.

‘No, we can’t.’ And now the three voices are melting into one, first second and third, young not-young and old, maid mother and crone, one single voice swirling around the room and into his head. ‘This is your story, lovely one. You have to keep telling it. And now you have to go. You don’t belong here.’

I have to go.

Part Four

We all hate the Truth. We are bad at it. We do it all wrong.

The dogs know the Truth of God; the mer-people know the Truth of Love; the Ladies know the Truth of Stories. The Man in the Long Black Coat knows all this, and more.

Too much, but not enough.

‘Preacher was a talkin', there's a sermon he gave, He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved, You cannot depend on it to be your guide When it's you who must keep it satisfied.’

from ‘The Man in the Long Black Coat’, Bob Dylan