Momentary Lily

Episodes 10-11

It was just past sunset when the car finally arrived at the end of Carl Barret's long driveway. His home was nestled in the trees of an anonymous corner of the woods a couple hours south of Atlanta, and he had chosen it for - among other reasons - its proximity to the darkness requisite for stargazing. Apart from the car's twin headlights blinking in and out from between the trees, the only thing illuminating the world outside was the glow of the stars and the full, bright moon. It was quiet enough that, in between the chirping of the crickets, one could hear the snap of every twig beneath the car's tires.

Carl had been expecting these visitors for a few days, now. He had, in fact, known of their arrival even before his old friend called to ask for help with a young girl's strange and desperate affliction. The dreams told him much, and he could see things flitting about in the shadows that ushered portents of the days to come. That was another reason Carl had chosen this particular place to call his home, all those years ago: The closeness to the thinnest edges of the waking world, where it was easy to catch glimpses of the things that lived…elsewhere. It was not often he expected visitors, and it was even less often that he welcomed them. For the past few days, though, all Carl could do was wait with baited breath for the arrival of the professor from Boston and the poor child he brought with him.

Carl was sitting at his drafting table in the house's attic workshop when the car first peeked its headlights out from the thick of the woods. He had been drawing sketches of the

[kappou!!!!]things he had been seeing in his visions for the last week. He was an artist neither by trade nor by nature, but one of the first lessons Carl had learned back in the earliest days of his work was that it was often easier to conjure up the memories of his time in the dreaming world with pictures instead of words, so he practiced the craft well enough to give crude charcoal life to the shapes and sensations that lingered with him in his waking life. This time, like every other time he had attempted to make sense of this haunting, he had drawn the girls. Ten little silhouettes of various shapes and sizes, with the only splash of color being the gleaming yellows and blues of their eyes. And the golden hair, of course. That belonged to the girl he believed was called “Lily.”

There were more of them in the picture than ever before. Carl regarded the car that was now pulling up to the front of the house. He took a sip of the moonshine he kept in a jar by his desk. He tried to ignore how much his hands were trembling.

“Not too much longer, now…” he whispered.

* * *

“Thank you so much, Carl,” Raúl Torres said. He had just pulled off his jacket to hang on the rack in Carl's parlor, and was helping the young girl out of her own winter coat. “I'm sorry for our timing. We got…delayed, on the way down from Boston.” The professor attempted a casual chuckle, but Carl could see the exhaustion carved into both of his visitors' faces. He wasn't surprised, mind you, by either their tardiness or the shock that his old friend was so plainly attempting to hide.

“Think nothing of it,” Carl said, shaking Raúl's hand and beckoning both of his guests to take a seat on the old sofa across from his favorite reading chair. “To tell you the truth, I expected that you'd have a hard time making your way to me. I reckon that there are certain parties involved in this endeavor who don't fancy the notion of our little visit here, tonight. Have the dreams been getting worse?”

If Raúl's uncomfortable silence was anything to go by, Carl knew that the nightmares weren't even the half of what had gone wrong on this trip. Raúl had always been a skeptic. Carl pitied the man for having to confront his own naivety with such rattling force. Though, it isn't as if Carl hadn't tried to show Raúl the truth of things before…

He turned to greet the girl, at last. “Hello,” he said, “I'm Carl Barret. You must be Thomas Downing's daughter, then?” If Raúl had been badly shaken by whatever they had experienced on the road from Boston, then Sarah Downing was positively hollowed out. The girl's cheeks had sunken from lack of sleep and nourishment, and the bags under her eyes were as dark as bruises. She regarded Carl with caution, which he didn't blame her for. He imagined that Raúl had chosen to remain slight on the details.

“You knew my father, too?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, yes. He and I worked together on a number of investigations back when in his haunt-hunting days, and he was an invaluable aid to some of my research on the Dreaming. I'd like to think I was a good help to him, too…”

“Professor Torres says you helped him with his book,” Sarah said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a tome that Carl knew quite well. Despite the circumstances, he couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of it.

“Oh yes, Media Maleficarum! I remember when Raúl first came to me asking for my insight…he didn't believe in any of it, of course, and he made sure to remind me of that often. It made for a terrific metaphor though, didn't it, Raúl?” Carl emphasized the word “metaphor” in a way that was probably cruel, given what his friend must have gone through as of late, but Carl felt like he was owed a bit of friendly, academic spite. It wasn't often in his line of work that he got to gloat about being proven right.

“It looks like I'm the one eating crow after all, Carl,” Raul said, grimly. “Just don't tease the girl, please. She needs your help. And so do I, it turns out.”

“Right,” Carl said, “you're right. I'm sorry. You've traveled long enough, and I did tell you I would help, if I could.” Carl gently leaned across the coffee table and took Sarah's hand. It was ice cold, and covered in sweat. She flinched, but she didn't pull away, and she made a great effort to meet Carl's eyes. Brave girl, he thought.

“You know about the dreams,” Sarah said. “Does that mean you've seen…that you've seen it?”

“The show, you mean?” Carl laughed again. “Sweetheart, I don't even have a phone that isn't still tethered to a cord. The last television program I watched in earnest was the finale of Frasier. The old computer I have still runs on dial-up, if kids from your generation even know what that is.”

“So, how could you possibly—”

“Dreams can tell you an awful lot,” Carl replied, “If you learn how to listen, and to see. I've never seen this show in the sense that you would understand it, but I know it all too well, at this point. The girls with the hair who cook all of those strange meals, yes? And the Wild Hunt that they fight?” Those last words—“the Wild Hunt”—drained what little color was left in Sarah's cheeks. She pulled her hand away from his, as if she only just then realized that she was reaching into a hot flame, and began fidgeting with the braids in her hair. Raúl patted the girl's back with an easy tenderness that made it seem like it was his own child he was trying. Carl gave them a moment before he continued. “What have the dreams been trying to tell you?” he asked.

Sarah understood what he was asking, though she struggled to find the right words. “It doesn't make any sense,” she said. “Sometimes, I just see them, laughing and bleeding and reaching out their filthy hands towards me from the dark. Other times, though, it's like…it's like I'm watching the show again, except it's stuff that's never happened in any of the other episodes. Crazy stuff. There's…a giant room filled with pods, like in The Matrix or something. And there are more of the girls. The same girls, like, I don't know, clones, or doppelgangers. And then that awful one, Lily, with the bright blond hair, she's flickering in and out like a hologram, and she's going on and on about this insane, stupid plot involving swapping the girls out with evil doubles, and a conspiracy within a conspiracy, and the whole time the girls are just blathering on and making those idiotic, wacky faces, as if their entire worlds aren't being completely shattered.

“The weirdest thing is that I think they do know how completely fucked up and bizarre the whole thing has become, in these dreams. The girl with the massive…er, chest, she even does that thing where she's puking and crying at the same time, but everything is still so cutesy and casual just a second later! And the music! Mr. Barret, the music...”

“The insipid elevator music from hell?” Carl's voice fell to match Sarah's shaken whisper, then.

“Yes! That's it, exactly. The dream feels like hours upon hours of twists and banter and pointless exposition, and the whole time, the music will. Not. Stop. I can hear those twinkling piano keys everywhere, now. I can hear that awful, synthesized dance beat…”

“Can you hear it right now?” Carl asked. Sarah nodded. Her eyes glistened with tears. So did Raúl's. “And you?” Carl said to him. “You've started to see and hear these visions as well?” Reluctantly, Raúl nodded.

“It started just after Sarah came to me,” the professor said, “And it got worse with every passing day. By the time we stopped in Richmond…”

“But why?” Sarah shouted. She slammed her fists down on the table, sending the copy of Media Maleficarum clattering to the floor. “It's only supposed to hurt the people who watch it. That's why Cleo…and my dad…why the hell is it coming after you two!?”

“Unfortunately, my dear,” Carl said, “It's not as simple as watching the show or not watching it. Not anymore. Your father would have been able to tell you that.” Sarah broke into a sob, and Raúl stood up, his face flushing red with frustration.

“Carl,” he said, “When I called you, you told me that you ‘might have something’ about what is going on with this…Momentary Lily crap. Right now, it sounds like you know a hell of a lot more than 'something.' Tell us, now. What the hell is happening to us?”

Carl leaned back in his chair and sighed. Then, he said, “I think this calls for a fresh pot of tea.”

* * *

Carl took his chamomile with milk and a single teaspoon of honey, and Sarah did the same. Raúl took his cup straight, which Carl had predicted, though the professor was not above munching on two whole squares of last weekend's lemon cake that Carl brought out with the kettle. Neither was Sarah, though Carl couldn't blame them for indulging in something sweet, given the circumstances. They ate and drank in silence for a few minutes, which Raúl and Sarah seemed to relish, but eventually Carl had to interrupt their reprieve. The two of them didn't know it, but there wasn't much time left to spare. Carl did his best not to show his growing anxiety, but he thought Raúl might have noticed his frequent glances up to the old Felix clock hanging on the parlor wall.

“Now, this is going to be a lot to take in,” Carl warned Sarah. “I can't promise it will all make sense, at least not in the way you'd normally use that word, but there are certain things you will simply have to take in stride if you're going to do anything about this…problem of yours. Do you understand?” Sarah nodded, her eyes gleaming with intense focus even as she finished the last lingering bite of her cake. Carl turned to Raúl and asked the same of him.

“Last night,” Raúl said, “I saw a trio of insane-looking anime characters walking around in the flesh. They were dancing on the roof of the old church across from our motel. One of them was cooking dead crows over a fire and shoving their mangled up bodies into a hotpot. At this point, I don't care what's causing all of this. I just want it to end.”

“...okay, then.” Carl took a long sip of his tea. He watched as his two guests did the same. “As I said, I can't promise that I can tell you anything that will make any more sense of what you are experiencing. I can only tell you what I know. For the last thirty years of my life, I have dedicated my studies to uncovering the secrets of the collective unconscious that ties us all to each other, and to the places that exist outside of what most folks call the ‘real world’. When I was younger, I used to think that things like spirits, demons, poltergeists, angels, and the like were all different kinds of entities that came to our world from someplace else, somewhere beyond us. Now, though, I realize that all of those things — the creatures, the visions, the mythic figures, the monsters — they aren't separate, distinct entities, nor do they arrive here from different planes than our own. At least, not exactly. They are all the same thing, and they all come from the same place. They are that place, in a way.”

Carl paused here to let Raúl and Sarah take in his words. Sarah remained silent and thoughtful, while Raúl spoke first. Carl knew exactly what Raúl was going to say before he said it.

“I don't understand,” Raúl said. “These things are also the…“place” they come from?”

“Yes,” Carl answered, with as much patience as he could muster. “I know that it's…look, Raúl, do you remember when I helped you outline for your book? Back then, you were looking for the symbols and rites that you could mine for your analysis, and you were especially interested in the rituals that I said could open a kind of “door” into the other world that keeps the creatures of the night that have been depicted in those movies you love so much for decades?”

“Sure I do, Carl. Like it was yesterday.” Raúl's furrowed brow and puzzled frown made it clear that he really meant that it may as well have been centuries since then, but Carl simply nodded and continued.

“Well, it turns out that the old “opening a door to another place” analogy is actually a lot more apt than we ever realized, just in a way that is so much bigger than any of us could have imagined.” Carl got up from his chair and walked across the parlor to the entryway of his house, while Raúl and Sarah turned to watch, as puzzled as ever. To demonstrate, Carl unlatched the chain of his front door, turned the bolt, and opened the door to let in the cool evening air. He stood there, with the door ajar, long enough to make his point, and then he closed it again.

“Yes,” Raúl said, bemused. “That is a door, too…”

“But a door to what?” Carl asked.

“To your home?” Sarah said. Carl snapped his fingers and trotted back to his chair with a triumphant smile.

“To my home, yes!” he said. “We're always talk about ‘doorways’ and ‘gateways’ and ‘portals’ to these other places as if they're just tears in a fabric that divides every boundary of existence. But a door, by definition, requires a frame. And that frame, by extension, requires a foundation, and definition. A house has a front door, yes, but it also has floors, and walls, and a ceiling. Beyond that, inside of the house, you'll find cupboards and cabinets and chairs and beds. Windows and bedframes and boxes full of old junk and treasured memories. Drawers stuffed with family silverware or faded copies of beloved books. Your favorite stuffed animals, and the old clothes that don't fit anymore. Pictures of friends, and tools for mending what's broken, and— ”

“Yes, okay, Carl, we get it,” Raúl interrupted. “A house is filled with a lot of stuff. What does any of this have to do with these…things that Sarah and I can't stop seeing?”

“It has everything to do with them, Raúl, if you'd only listen a while and open up your mind. Because, as your young friend pointed out just a moment ago, this isn't just a house. This is a home. My home. It is different from every other home that has ever existed or will ever exist. Every creaking floorboard, every stuck drawer, every old longbox of letters and unpublished manuscripts…they are mine, and mine alone. And so, when we talk about opening doorways, we aren't just talking about opening up the place that houses these entities, Raúl. We're talking about entering into their home. And that is an entirely different matter.

“Are you trying to tell us that these monsters care about semantics?”

Carl smiled at this, but it was a sad, almost mournful smile. This poor man and his even unluckier friend were so close to understanding the truth of it all now. “Raúl, I'm telling you that these entities are semantics.”

Raúl slammed his empty teacup hard enough that Carl was surprised it didn't crack. “Okay,” he said, throwing up his hands and standing to leave. “I get it. You've just gone crazy. Sarah, I'm so sorry for bringing you all this way to just to listen to some old man ramble about semiotics. This was a complete waste of time. Come on, we'll find some other—”

Sarah grabbed his hand but did not move. Instead, she looked up at him with eyes pleading to stay. “I want to hear this,” she said, barely above a whisper. Raúl grunted in protest, but he eventually acquiesced and sat down once more. Sarah turned back to Carl. “Go on,” she said. “You were saying about this…this home that they come from?”

“Think of it like any person would think of their home. When you say the word, it isn't just the house and its walls that is conjured up in the mind. A home is the earth that a house is built upon. A home may not have any walls at all. A home is all of the memories you've made in that place, all of the plans you have for its future. A home is the bed you go to sleep in at night. It is the love you share in that bed with your husband or your wife. It is the sound that the birds outside make when they migrate back to your woods in the spring. A home is a collection of things both real and unreal that can exist in a dozen places across a single lifetime, even as it exists in no single space at all.

“These entities. The monsters, the ghosts, the spirits. Whatever you want to call them. However they might seem to the person that encounters them. They are all just different pieces of the same collective “home” that exists in the shadowy corners of mankind's collective unconscious. They are the key, the door, the frame, and the shapes beyond the doorway, all at the same time. I call it the Dreaming.” As he spoke, Carl could see the embers of understanding beginning to flicker in Sarah Downing's eyes.

“It's not a very clever name, but it's the only one that fits,” Carl admitted. “They come from us, you see. The collective unconscious. A realm of thought and fear and silhouettes from ancient, ancient times. They come from us, but they are no longer of us. Do you understand?” Sarah finished her own last gulp of tea and contemplated the last drops of water in the cup as she swirled them about.

“So…we make these things, with our minds…stories…daydreams…nightmares…whatever it might be?” she said. “They all get tossed into the muck of our minds—our collective unconscious, like you guys call it—and then they come back out. Except they come back changed.”

“That's the shape of it, yes. More or less.” Carl removed his glasses and rubbed the fog from the lenses. His hands were shaking again, just a little bit. He silently prayed that he would have the strength to do what he had to do next. “As you can imagine, it is literally inifinite in its complexity, the Dreaming, because it is no more and no less than the sum total of every shape and story ever crafted by a human mind given…given weight. Given purpose. Given intent. Sometimes they come as simple ghosts. Sometimes they appear as metal machines from beyond the stars. Sometimes they are twisted reflections of ancient predators that are blessed with sharper, stranger fangs for a sharper and stranger time. And sometimes…”

“And sometimes they're anime girls from a really, really shitty Japanese cartoon.” Sarah chuckled now, herself. It was the bitter, pitiful sound of someone realizing how cosmically and unfathomably ridiculous the true horrors of the world had become.

“What you're describing sounds like mass delusion,” Raúl said.

“Oh no,” Carl said, “The Dreaming is very real. It is tangible, in its own way, even if it isn't always quite so solid as you or I might be on a good night. The creatures that spill out from it are real, too. Though, you both have figured that out by now.” The pair's silence spoke volumes.

“So, the dreams I've been having,” Sarah said. “They're not just my dreams are they?”

“No, Sarah, I reckon not. I'm fairly certain these ‘episodes’ that you've been seeing at night are the actual episodes of the show. Your mind drunk them out of the same dark ether well from which all of our other most terrible fables are born from.”

“So, the absurd clone developments, and the info-dumping hologram-alien-thing? All of that awful, incessant music?”

“That must be what happens in Momentary Lily, somewhere along the coming weeks.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sarah said. Slumping down into her chair. “I hate this show so fucking much.”

“I've seen much of it myself, by now, and I have to agree with you, Ms. Downing.”

“Okay, wait a minute,” Raúl said, leaping up to his feet again. “That's the thing I still don't get. All of this started with the show, and the DVDs, and all of that. There's a website to watch it on, and everything, made by real people. Delusional, spiteful, and recklessly tasteless people, apparently, but people. I've been a fan of anime for my entire life, Carl, and I can tell you that a lot of anime sucks. Crappy cartoons are a dime a dozen, no matter what country you're from. Hell, I did my research, and this ‘GoHands’ studio seems to make nothing but terrible, borderline unwatchable cartoons. How did this show, in particular, become something so…so goddamned evil?”

“Just ask her father!” Carl said, motioning to Sarah, who was still sulking in the pits of the old sofa cushions. “You must remember Thomas' research on memetic hauntings. I remember you raving about how brilliant the idea was back in your graduate school days.”

“'Like a tulpa on steroids,'” Raúl muttered. “Isn't that how he described it? A force of will that can be summoned and spread like a virus with a single word…or even a dream…” As he said this, he blinked several times and began to sway where he stood. He was finally starting to get dizzy.

“Yes,” Carl said, standing up himself and placing a steadying hand on Raúl's shoulder. “It may have began as a mere television show, this Momentary Lily. But it was also never just a show. This studio, GoHands, seems to be a veritable Rat King of the anime world. I'm a layman, myself, but I also looked into their past work, and the shocking thing is that their unbearable ‘house style’ of animation is the only truly original item in their repertoire. Everything else—every insipid line of dialogue, every nonsensical plot development, every vapid character—is merely a copy of a copy of a copy. Momentary Lily was borne of the impulse to make an incoherent, profit-driven simulacrum of those copies. Imagine a thousand xeroxed pages of a thousand different middle-school level science-fiction comic books, and then imagine throwing them into a blender, and then soaking the scraps in a slurry of plain oatmeal and cheap energy drinks. The crusty, wretched orb of putrescence that remains?That is the embryo from which Momentary Lily was hatched. It is every hollow capitalistic instinct given flesh. It is the anime death drive wreathed in rotting flesh. It is the ever-shambling archetype of an entire industry's sins. The thing wearing the skin of Momentary Lily latched 0n to our worst instincts for self-flagellation and broke free from the Dreaming the moment one of those fools at GoHands put their pens to paper. And I am not sure it can be stopped.”

“Carl…what are you…why do you sound…” Raúl was now obviously aware of what Carl had done to them. He looked over to Sarah, who was now completely unconscious on the sofa, then down to the empty cups of tea, and then back to Carl. His eyes, bloodshot and wet, were wide with shock and anger. “You son of a bitch! Why would you…” Raúl stumbled again and nearly crashed into Carl's table, but Carl caught him just in time to roll him onto the couch alongside Sarah. His tremors were back in full force, but Carl would not indulge in another drink of liquor this time. He needed to have a clear head to finish what he started.

“I'm so sorry, my old friend,” he said, his voice trembling nearly as much as his hands were. “I wish I had all the time in the world to explain this to you, but the clock ran out on us several weeks ago, when that damned cartoon first aired. I tried to stop it myself, you know. Back when I, too, thought it was just a show. One of my contacts in Japan reached out and tipped me off, you see…he told me that he worked for a Studio called GoHands, and that he could no longer stand for what they were doing. He found out about my research, about the Dreaming, and wanted to know if there was some way to stop these mad fools from ripping open the last seal on the horseman's scroll…I haven't heard from Hatanaka-san in days, though. I don't even think it matters anymore. The show is just a piece of it! It's the Dreaming itself! The whole thing! Our nightmares were dreaming of us too, don't you see? They dreamt of us for a thousand years, and they finally woke up and decided that they wanted to join us here in the sun.”

Carl knew they couldn't hear him. He'd put enough tranquilizer in their cups to knock them out for a long time. Still, he desperately hoped that some of his words might get through to them. There was no use prattling on, though. Carl wiped his hands on his tea cloth and went through the door just beyond his entrance and into his garage. He came back out a moment later with the tools he needed: His work gloves, his shovel, and two full containers of gasoline.

“I'm sorry,” he said again, to the two sleeping figures. “God help you, and God forgive me. There's still work yet to do, before this is finished.”

Rating:

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Momentary Lily is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.