GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

who was talking to him now, telling him what to do. Perhaps Anjo was behind all of the otherness Ettrich had been experiencing recently; even Leni Salomon’s message to him from Death. Glass soup.

Vincent entered the woods and the temperature immediately dropped to a coolness that felt like fall. Air that only a moment before had smelled of dry earth and high summer was now damp, thick, and fecund.

Hands on hips, he did what he always did on entering a forest—craned his head back and looked straight up. He loved watching sunlight flicker through the leaves of the trees. Whatever he was meant to do could wait a minute while he watched the play of light and dappling of colors high overhead.

He began walking. He had no idea where he was going or what he was supposed to do here but walking felt right. Although he didn’t know it then, while Vincent moved deeper and deeper into the forest, Leni Salomon’s funeral ended. Her two best friends walked back to the car where Broximon waited for Isabelle.

Ettrich walked for about an hour before stopping to look around. There was still no sign or indication of why he had been told to come in here, but he was all right with that. There had to be a reason, he was convinced, and eventually it would reveal itself to him. A distant bird sang and the sun, flirting down through the trees, lit the ground here and there.

He had passed only one other person as he walked deeper into the forest—an old man who smiled warmly and tipped his Tyrolean hat at Ettrich.

He had no idea where he was. Mounted on individual trees throughout the forest were markers from the Austrian Hiking Club that said things like FROM THIS POINT, IT IS A THREE-HOUR WALK TO THE ALMHUTTE. But that did Vincent no good because he had no idea where the Almhutte was or any of the other posted destinations in relation to Weidling or Vienna. From Ettrich’s perspective the signs might just as well have said THREE HOURS TO ZANZIBAR.

A few times frantic thoughts stampeded through his mind like What the fuck am I doing here? But he pushed them all away by constantly reminding himself he had heard the voice.

KYSELAK was written on a tree several feet in front of him. Ettrich’s mind was so full of the surroundings that it took time to register what he was seeing. When it did, what first crossed his mind was What kind of fool would go to the trouble of carving his name on a tree this deep in the woods? Who was ever going to see it? That’s what the conscious part of his mind thought. The unconscious part, which was awakened by the glass soup sign, declared without hesitation: I know that name. Where do I know it from?

He walked over to the tree and stopping in front of it, tried to fish up where he had seen this strange name before. KYSELAK. Carved in crude block letters, almost childlike in their earnest simplicity, the name had to have been done long ago because the letters were very faded and the bark had grown up around them. A few more years and the letters would be absorbed back into the texture of the tree. This man-made scar would have healed and become nearly invisible.

Kyselak. The autographist. The signature on the wall in Vienna that Isabelle had been so eager to show him the first night they met. The eccentric who wrote his name on everything and got into trouble with the emperor as a result. Ettrich had inadvertently found an original Kyselak!

He turned his head from side to side, thrilled and grinning, wanting to share this with someone. But there were only the trees, the sunlight and shadows, and they were all indifferent. How happy Isabelle would have been to make this marvelous discovery with him. Vincent missed her terribly then.

To compensate for being alone, he reached forward and slid his left hand over the tree, then the signature. He ran his fingers over and around, then down into the carving. Like a blind man reading braille, Ettrich felt the seven letters of the other man’s name on his skin. A line from a television commercial he had watched as a boy came to him: “Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages.” He let his fingers walk across Kyselak’s autograph. They said to it How do you do?

To amuse himself and fill the silence that surrounded him, Vincent said out loud, “How do you do?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Joseph Kyselak answered. He was sitting on the same rock Ettrich had used moments ago while resting. Kyselak wore the style of clothes and long fanciful sideburns that men favored in early nineteenth-century Vienna.

“We were worried that you wouldn’t find us, Vincent.”

“Were you the one back there who told me to walk into these woods?”

Kyselak smiled. “No. They’ve been giving you instructions for ages but you’ve never heard them. Today was the first time. Congratulations.”

“It was probably because of Leni. Seeing her message.” Ettrich pointed toward the cemetery.

“Everything has been a message to you since you were brought back to life, Vincent. The food you ate, the color of the clouds, my autograph on that tree… The list is very long.”

“I didn’t know.”

“That’s all right, because now you do.” Kyselak’s voice was jovial and unconcerned.

Ettrich lifted his chin toward the name on the tree. “Did I find this just now or did it find me? I mean, did someone steer me here or did I find it on my own?”

Kyselak crossed his legs. “Totally on your own. That’s what they wanted to find out—whether you are really awake now. It’s clear by this that you are.”

Vincent’s nose itched. He took his hand off the tree to scratch it. The moment he did, Kyselak disappeared. Like that he was gone. Ettrich’s reaction on seeing this was no different from Flora’s