“I can’t remember how I met your father. Isn’t that curious?”

We had arrived in a bare white room, even more empty and desolate than the room with the Dan-Howard machine. The floors shone bright white light from the cold glow of the lights in the hallway, but the room itself was curiously without any overhead lights. This meant that the room was split almost in two by a light side and a dark side. I stood in the doorway, the cold light resting on my shoulders, while the Man from Nagai faced me from deep inside the shadows of the room.

I had never been here before, and truth be told I hadn’t even known a place like this existed in Ertragen. This room was as foreign to me as going to Spain or . . .

“Istanbul?” 

I shot up, startled. The Man grinned.

“Of course, your father knew I could do that too. It really doesn’t take much effort if you have the tools, though it seems like magic to normal people. I hope none of this is too shocking to you, Mr. Benton?”

I nodded. It wasn’t so much that I was surprised, just that I was surprised that the Man had finally shown me.

“Do you intend to kill me, Mr. Benton?”

“No.”

The man stifled a laugh, odd considering his usual demeanor. “You are a poor liar, Mr. Benton. However, hear me out. Perhaps I will gain a little extra life with your charity . . . or your fear.”

I hesitated and then asked the question that had been on my mind since the beginning of everything. Before the cell, before Lily’s Replacement, before the trip to Ellis. All the way back to the first time I stepped foot in this horrifying building where the world turns upside down and nothing ever seems to have a true answer.

“What does any of this have to do with my father.”

“Bear.”

I was staring at him. At the dancing glow of light bouncing off his black pupils. At the way his lips curved ever so slightly into a smile. The look of a man who had won, though I was not a worthy enough opponent to realize how yet.

“Bear?”

“Bear. That’s what ‘Ertragen’ means. It’s German for ‘bear,’ ‘endure, ‘stand,’ ‘weather.’ Whatever you wish to call it. Your father thought it up. He once looked at me and told me that the world today is just one we have to weather to make sure tomorrow doesn’t occur. I think he had a point.”

“But what does that have to do with--”

“Your father was a brilliant man. A brilliant scientist, a brilliant father, and a brilliant friend.”

“But what does that have to--”

“Zip it”

With that, I felt a sharp pain hit my gut. Blades poked through my skin and my organs and struck the bones of my spine. I stepped back a pace and fell onto my knees, as though in prayer of the shadowed man in front of me. He stepped forward and a halo of light illuminated his face as I stared up at him.

“You would do wise not to interrupt me when I’m talking, Mr. Benton.”

I was still gasping for air, but I managed a small nod.

“Good. Now, where was I . . . ?”

The Man from Nagai stared up at the ceiling, as though searching for an answer from the white shapes cast in shadow, before starting again.

“Ah, yes . . . right. Your father, he had a vision for the future. Where we might endure and weather and hold ourselves together and keep something like Ellis from ever happening again. He had this image of a world where we could overcome all of our chiefest obstacles and bring humanity into a true golden age. To pull us out of the absolute depths, to throw a rope down and use it to climb to new heights. Out of the dark ages, where hopes and dreams were confined by unnecessary things like mortality.”

The Man from Nagai stopped then and looked down at me again. It was almost as though I could hear a gong sound or a pin drop. As though the suspense of the next words were turning the very air my lungs were screaming for into butter. The Man knew this and relished in it.

“But he was wrong, wasn’t he, Mr. Benton?”

And I knew that too. My father’s genius far exceeded his successes. I tried to ignore that fact-- it was an easy way to justify Ertragen’s more difficult practices-- but I knew that there was something wrong with Father’s genius, even back in those days at the pink house in the Catskills. The Man was right, but I wished he wasn’t.

“Your father-- my friend-- had made a critical error. And it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t predict the future, after all! But because of that, everything changed. Didn’t it, Mr. Benton?”

I looked at him, and he gestured for me to respond. I nodded, hesitantly.

“And what was your father’s greatest error, hmm, Mr. Benton?”

I struggled to pull the air into my lungs, but I knew that if I didn’t respond the Man would tear me apart again. And that wasn’t a fate I would wish on anyone.

“H-he a-a-a-assumed a-anyone c-c-could be a Ghost?”

The Man giggled, a sound that sent a shiver running up and down my spine.

“That’s right, very good . . . Mr. Benton. He thought that anyone could become a Ghost. He thought that, with enough ingenuity and work from those fools Dan and Howard, that he could somehow stop humans from dying. Now, I warned him! Oh yes, I warned him. Over and over again. I told your father that it couldn’t be done. But he wouldn’t listen.”

The Man knelt at eye level to me and stared deep into my eyes, searching for my soul.

“And then, he failed. Like I told him he would. Ghosts cannot be created, only born. Ghosts like Sonia, haunting the halls of a gate. Keeping quiet watch, not to be disturbed. Ghosts like your grandmother, though perhaps she was more devil than Ghost.”

The Man sighed. It was almost genuine.

“But your father, he tried again. And again. And again. Over and over and over and over again--”

The Man lost his composure, and I could see that exterior crack and the monster living just beneath the surface as he got up and slammed his hand against the wall, breathing heavily. After a few moments, though, he turned to face me again and smiled that plague-ridden smile. The smile of goblins and gremlins. The smile of a true beast.

“But then, when all hope seemed lost, he turned to you . . . didn’t he? He thought maybe, just maybe, if anyone was going to be the perfect candidate for immortality it should be his brat of a son. So he took you in here, and he brought you down to that machine. Do you remember that? I doubt it, considering how long that thing has attached itself to you. But even if you do, I’m going to tell you what really happened.”

The Man got so close to my ear that I could feel his hot, sticky breath bristle up against the hairs in my eardrum.

“It worked. It really worked.”

The Man burst out laughing and fell backward. All of his shell was gone. What sat in front of me was the demon that lurked beneath the surface. The true Man from Nagai.

And what he was saying was nonsense. There was no way I was a Ghost. I was corporeal, I was--

“Real? Oh, yes, Mr. Benton. You are very real indeed. See, the machine killed you and spat you out as a Ghost. But your father . . . James . . . he hated his new son. He would look at you sometimes and just burst into tears. He would see that he had succeeded but also had failed. He brought you back, but he killed your soul. You were nothing to him. So, he demanded that Dan and Howard reverse you.

“And somehow, those two apes were able to. They found some sort of . . . failsafe, we’ll call it. They gave you back your mortality, but in exchange your father lost his--

“You killed your father, Mr. Benton. And even now we are suffering the consequences for it.”

The Man stood up again and walked into the shadows. The pain in my gut started to dissipate, and, with a beckon from him, I got up and limped towards the other side of the room. Darkness enveloped me, and I felt the Man’s presence to my right.

“The truth is, Mr. Benton, your death and rebirth brought some . . . unforeseen consequences. Perhaps you knew about them, perhaps not. But they are very, very real. And I’m afraid that thing you call a wife might just be our closest ally and our greatest threat.”

I saw a green light in front of us, small at first before expanding.

“Your father didn’t listen to me when I told him not to pursue his dream. I want you to listen to me very carefully now, Mr. Benton . . . it’s time to Tether Lily.”

And suddenly I had all the answers I had been searching for.