LIGHT ECHO

Richard S. Levine

Vernor Au-Yong, a small scholarly gentleman with square-rimmed glasses and mussed black hair, felt especially tiny and insignificant in contrast to the night sky.  Ten very large and bright stars, each surrounded and highlighted by circular swirls of yellow and gray hues, overpowered the sky and the crescent moonlight. 

He pulled a postcard from his pocket and held it out to bask in the streetlights.  The tiny picture of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” seemed to compel him to save the universe.  He wondered if, like Vincent, he was going insane.

Vernor and his brother Arthur stood in front of the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, France.  Statues of saints decorated both sides of the famous building’s west portal.  It was late at night, and no one else was around.  Just the thought of climbing up the sides of the Church made Vernor feel dizzy and queasy.  Heights always reminded him of his fall from a balcony.  He looked up and stared at one halo in the sky in particular. 

Vernor said, “Star V838 was the first explosion visible to the naked eye.  The energy bounced off gases to form the halo you see around the star.  Now there are ten stars like that.”

“We came all the way here from San Francisco to see stars with halos?  The night sky has been like that for the last twenty years.  You told me you’d show me something important.”  Arthur backed away as if he wanted to leave.

“Remember, I paid for this trip.  I told you I might need your help while we’re here.  It’s not the sky; it’s this place.  Vincent knew we had to be here.”

“You’ve shown me that picture of his painting enough times, but I don’t know how I let you talk me into this”

“I need you to help me save the world.  Vincent wasn’t just a lunatic who cut off part of his ear.  He couldn’t handle his psychic abilities.  That’s really why he killed himself.”

“Let me see that painting again.”

Vernor looked up at the night sky and to the left of the church.  There appeared to be one very bright star with no halo.  Arthur grabbed the picture from his hand and immediately started counting aloud, pointing at each yellow-haloed star in the painting. 

Arthur stopped counting and said, “Eleven.  There are eleven halos in this painting, but there are only ten in the sky.  His prescience was a bit off, don’t you think?”

Vernor smiled, taking a few steps to his side.  He grabbed Arthur’s hand and pointed it upwards.  “Do you see it?  Do you see what’s happening around that bright star?”

“My God, there is a dim halo around it now.  Vincent got it right!  But, how did you know?”

“My former colleague was researching light echo.  After coming across several references to how “Starry Night” stars looked like light echo, she became obsessed with learning about Van Gogh.  When she died of a heart attack, she left her notes to me.”

Arthur swung his head left and right.  “Still, how could she have predicted the exact moment of the eleventh star?”

“She didn’t.  Vincent did in a long-lost journal that she discovered.” 

“So what do we do now?”

Vernor smiled.  “Well, it’s more like what do you do now.  You’re an excellent climber, you know.” 

“You want me to climb something?”

“Yes.  Well, we both know why that is.”  Vernor thought back to the day when they were both kids standing on a balcony of the Tower of Pisa.  He just had to test gravity like Galileo did. 

Vernor continued.  “Van Gogh was thinking about this church when he painted the image of a chapel.  It seems to protect the town from a strange dark image.  I think there was a reason why he chose this place.”

“What does the dark thing represent?”

“Nobody knows.  But I think what drove Vincent insane was his vision of the end of the universe.  He writes about a mouth of darkness that will blot out everything.  Arthur, how many saints do you see depicted?”

Arthur counted them aloud.  “There are ten.”

“And Christ, who sits in the middle of the tympanum, higher than them all, makes eleven.  Above him are his twelve apostles.  I need you to climb to the middle of the tympanum.”

Arthur giggled.  “What’s a tympanum?”

“The arch, climb up there quick.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.  But you better tell me what to do when I get there.”

Vernor watched Arthur grab hold of one of the columns alongside a statue on the left and pull himself up.  He got his feet up on a ledge and moved towards the middle of the portal, above the huge doors.  He stood at the tympanum, directly in front of the figure of Christ.

Arthur said loudly, “What now?”

“We wait.”

“What?  How long do I have to stand up here like this?”

Vernor walked closer to the portal.  “Something should happen soon.”

“Soon, that’s all you have is soon?  I’m coming down.  I’ll go back up when something happens.”  Arthur took a couple of steps to his left.

Vernor envisioned a sky where all the stars exploded at once.  By then there would be no one left to see the impossibly bright sky.  “No, don’t!  By the time you get back up there, it may be too late.  Vincent’s notes predicted we’d see something now.”

“What the heck am I waiting for?”

“I don’t know exactly.”  Vernor paused and looked towards the twelve apostles.  “Vincent, I think.”

“What did you say?”

“Vincent.  I think Vincent is coming.”

“Are you nuts?  I’m coming down.”

Arthur took a few more steps to his left.  He was already reaching for another column and clearly determined to step down.

Vernor saw a hand emerge from the middle of the apostles.  He tried to yell, but fear constricted his throat.  He pointed to the top of the tympanum.

Arthur looked up, took a step backwards, and almost fell off the ledge.

Vernor walked closer to the pillars and swallowed.  He said in a stern, loud voice, “Arthur, you’ve got to grab the hand.  It’s Vincent.”

Arthur shook his head.  “Are you crazy?  I don’t know where that hand is going.”

Vernor knew how stubborn Arthur could be, but Vincent’s notes stated that the window into the other universes had a limited time.  Someone had to grab that hand. 

It was like that day at the Tower of Pisa when he and Arthur had snuck up to the gated off balcony.   In an attempt to determine which would drop faster, a shoe or a dime, Vernor began to fall over the rail.  Arthur pulled him back just in time.

Vernor glanced at the postcard in his hand and then grabbed the closest column.  He started to shimmy up the column, but he slid back down.  He tried two more times with the same results.

Finally, he was startled when he saw a hand reach down in front of his face.

Arthur said, “Grab my hand.”

Vernor closed his eyes and grabbed.  Arthur pulled him up to the next ledge.  For a moment, Vernor’s whole body shuddered.  He could not look down.  He froze.

Arthur said, “You’re crazy, but I know you think you have to do this.  Come on.” 

Vernor couldn’t even look ahead, but he felt Arthur’s hand tug him.  He found he could take a couple of steps, but then his legs started to feel like the stone walls of the portal.  Pain shot from his feet up to his head.

Arthur still pulled him.  Vernor nudged forward, and then he felt his feet slip off the ledge.  Arthur pulled him back up.  He had his eyes closed tight as he continued one slow step at a time towards Vincent’s hand.

Finally, Arthur said, “Open your eyes, we’re there.”

Vernor stood still like one of the saintly statues.  His body felt rigid, his mind blank with fear.  Vincent’s hand was within reach above him, but his fear of falling prevented him from leaping to grab it. 

Suddenly, Vernor felt a jolt of electricity.  He opened his eyes and looked up to see Vincent’s hand glowing.  Small bolts of electricity darted out of the same area where the hand emerged.

Arthur must have been surprised too, because he pulled hard on Vernor’s hand.  Vernor guessed that Arthur was falling backwards.  There wasn’t any time to think about it.  Instinctively, he grabbed Arthur’s hand and pulled him back up.

“I guess we’re even now,” Arthur said as he hugged his brother. 

For a moment, time seemed to stop.  Vernor didn’t care about anything else except to know that he had saved Arthur.

But then Arthur yelled, “Look at the hand!  It’s leaving.”

Vernor saw the hand moving upwards.  The universe would end soon – the darkness would overtake the Earth – if he didn’t try.  He pulled away from Arthur and jumped up to grab Vincent’s hand.  Then, as his own hand was pulled upwards into the wall at the top of the arch, he screamed as loud as he could.

Arthur, who had grabbed Vernor’s foot, said, “What now?  If I pull too hard, we’ll both fall off this ledge.”

Vernor replied, “No, don’t pull.  My hand doesn’t hurt.”  I must be holding onto Vincent Van Gogh’s hand, he thought to himself, but there are other hands.

“Oh, yeah, you think?  Now your hand is stuck in rock.  How can that be good?”

Suddenly, the shadows changed along the walls of the portal.  They kept changing, as if the night and the lights were dancing on the walls.  Then the movement stopped.  The night seemed darker, the lights brighter. 

Vernor looked up, and the eleven stars and their halos were gone.  Then, he pulled his hand out of the wall.

As he fell, Arthur was there to grab him and pull him to safety at the base of the tympanum.

Arthur looked up at the sky and said, “This is all nuts.  I mean, what happened?  Was that really Vincent’s hand?”

Vernor’s knees were shaking.  He thought he had just saved the universe, but all he could think of saying was, “Arthur, please get me down!”