Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  CHAPTER 66: FALL

  ROBBY CLOSED THE REPORT and set it on the table next to him. The moment his hands were free, Gordie put his head in Robby’s lap, wanting to be scratched. Robby smiled and looked out over the water.

  In the next chair, Romie sat forward to pull her flannel shirt over her shoulders.

  “Starting to get that nip in the air. You know what that means,” Romie said.

  “What?” Robby asked.

  Romie gave him a smile and a wink.

  Brad came through the screen door and closed it behind himself. He took the seat next to Romie.

  “What does it mean?” Robby asked.

  “It means there’s frost on the pumpkin,” Romie said.

  “She’s being crude,” Brad said.

  “It’s not crude. It’s perfectly natural,” Romie said. “Harvest is done. Everything is stocked away for the winter. We know we have enough supplies. A fall pregnancy is perfect for a summer baby. It’s the natural cycle.”

  “That’s for people younger than you and me,” Brad said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you and me,” Romie said. “I was talking to him.”

  Robby blushed.

  “He’s too young to worry about such stuff,” Brad said.

  Lisa backed through the screen door and pushed it shut with her foot. “I wish one of you would fix this thing.” Her hands were full. She set the pie down on the round table to the left of Robby. When he reached pinching fingers towards the crust, she slapped his hand away.

  “That’s for later,” she said. “I want it to look perfect.”

  “Then why didn’t you leave it inside?” Romie asked.

  “Because last time, someone let in the d-o-g and he jumped up on the counter and licked it, if you remember,” Lisa said.

  “He won’t do that again,” Robby said. He cupped Gordie’s face with his hands. “We had a serious conversation about it.”

  “Huh,” Lisa said. She took a chair. The four of them looked out over the water as the sun set behind the house. The ripples were capped with gold and then rose as the sky changed color in the west.

  “When’s the meeting?” Brad asked.

  “Another hour,” Romie said. “Nothing on the agenda. I suppose it’s going to be just another ice cream social like last week.”

  “And pie,” Lisa said.

  “With Lisa’s special no-lick pie,” Romie said with a laugh.

  “I heard one announcement over the network,” Brad said. “I was going to tell you guys earlier, but Romie ruined it with her frost on the pumpkin.”

  “It’s natural,” Romie said.

  “What’s the announcement?” Robby asked.

  “Maybe we should just wait for the meeting,” Brad said.

  “Tell us!” Lisa said.

  Brad turned up his hands. Romie leaned over and smacked his arm. He rubbed the skin and frowned at her.

  “I’ll tell you, but not because of the violence. I heard that Prince and Daisy are going to be parents,” Brad said.

  Lisa clapped her hands. Gordie snapped to attention.

  “Dr. Matthew works his magic again,” Lisa said.

  Brad nodded.

  “I don’t know Daisy,” Romie said. “Is she that big dopey dog that’s always drooling on people?”

  “That’s the one,” Brad said.

  “Those puppies will be huge,” Lisa said. “It won’t be long until it will be Gordie’s turn.”

  Robby exhaled.

  “We better shut up. We’re making the boy nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous,” Robby said.

  “If anything, it’s easier for him,” Brad said. “Back when we were young, there was no imperative that people should have kids. If anything, it was frowned upon with a lot of people I knew. It was seen as a vanity project.”

  “You and I must have run in very different circles,” Romie said.

  The group fell silent. Robby pet Gordie’s head and remembered something his mother had said.

  “You were the first thing that your dad really worked for,” his mother had said.

  It had taken him days to get her to elaborate on that statement.

  “When we got married, I was set against having a kid. Your father wanted three. It’s not that I didn’t want to be a mother—I love being a mother—but I had your grandmother’s words ringing in my ears. Once I started scrubbing undies, she warned me that boys out there used insemination as bondage. I told your dad that we would get knocked up if and only if he had the money, the house, and the plan. Until then, I was eating my daily candy.”

  Their house had been the easy part, apparently. Sam’s father—Robby’s paternal grandfather—had died and left the house to his only child. The money had come when Sam got the job on the ferry.

  “What did you mean by a plan?” Robby had asked his mother.

  “Not a plan, Robby, the plan. I told Sam to come up with the plan. You can’t just dive into something because you want it. You have to understand the plan. I wasn’t going to jump aboard just because I wanted to know what it felt like to have a baby inside of me. Instinct only takes you so far. At some point, your brain has to take over.”

  Robby smiled as he remembered the rest of the conversation. He had thanked his mother for deciding to have him—that had been the end. His mother had hated to be thanked for things she had done for herself. It had been a dependable way to make her storm off.

  Romie cleared her throat.

  “You suppose we should get moving?”

  “I’m going to meet you guys there,” Robby said. “I have an errand to run first.”

  Lisa put her hand on his. “You’re not running off again, are you?”

  “No,” Robby said. He hoped he wasn’t.

  CHAPTER 67: CARRIE

  CARRIE STARED AT THE painting of the sunflower until the yellow burned into her eyes. The frame wasn’t big enough. It didn’t completely cover the mark on the wall from where the old family photo had been. She had replaced the photo but not scrubbed the wall enough to remove its memory.

  She sighed and looked down at the cantaloupe. The melon was perfectly ripe. According to Freddy, it was the best one the garden had ever produced. Carrie believed it. She picked it up to smell it for the thousandth time. The melon had been a gift—she still got a dozen gifts each week from her community. She couldn’t bring herself to cut into it.

  …Let it rot…

  Carrie frowned. The voice wasn’t real anymore. Now when she heard it, she knew that it was her own imagination. The real voice was gone.

  “Not gone,” she whispered. “Murdered.”

  …By your own hand…

  Carrie exhaled. Sometimes—not this evening, apparently—she was able to almost feel normal.

  The knock startled her. It sounded like it came from a tiny hand—maybe a small child’s hand.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Before she turned, Carrie heard the dog’s feet on the floor. She knew only one person around who let his dog lead the way.

  “Hi, Robby,” she said.

  When she turned, he smiled at her.

  “Sorry to drop by unannounced,” he said.

  Carrie laughed. “Is that a thing? How would you even announce yourself? Please, sit down. Why aren’t you at the meeting?”

  “I figured you would be here and I wanted to talk to you,” Robby said.

  Gordie had already made himself at home. He was under the dining room table and his nose was working overtime.

  Carrie’s only answer was another smile. She had stopped going to meetings a few weeks before. When there was nothing particular on the agenda, they were optional. Most people went anyway. Carrie didn’t like the conversations that inevitably broke out.

  “It was something my mom used to say,” Robby said.

  “Huh?

  “She used to always say, ‘Sorry to drop by unannounced,’ even if we were just going over to Haddie Norton’s to pick up Jim. I don’
t think she was sorry because she would just do the same thing the next time. It was just a greeting, I guess.”

  Gordie returned from his foraging mission. He reached his nose up onto the table and sniffed in the direction of the cantaloupe. Carrie scratched his head and he withdrew. He flopped down to the floor with a grunt.

  “It’s a way to give back power that you’ve taken,” Carrie said.

  Robby raised his eyebrows.

  “Your mom was acknowledging that she was barging in and then giving back the power by apologizing. She was recognizing the dominion of her friend.”

  “Oh,” Robby said.

  “The world had too much of that,” Carrie said. “In my opinion. No offense to your mom, of course. She was just being polite.”

  Robby nodded.

  Carrie waited to see if he would ask his question. He required prompting.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He reached down like he was going to pet the dog and then pulled his hand back. Gordie was already asleep. Robby let him stay that way. “I wanted to ask you about him. I wanted to know what kind of influence he had on you—especially as everything began to happen.”

  She looked down at the cantaloupe. There was no need for Robby to clarify. This wasn’t the first time someone had come for more information about The Origin. At first, nobody had wanted to even think about what had happened. Then, people had come seeking answers. Those were the conversations that Carrie tried to avoid. It was the reason why she stayed at home instead of going to the weekly meetings.

  “I wrote it all down,” she said.

  Robby nodded. “I read your accounts. I read all the reports that you put over in the library. Thank you, by the way. In retrospect, those scouting missions you called for were very interesting.”

  Carrie flashed him a polite smile.

  “Then I guess you know what I know.”

  “Your report doesn’t talk about him,” Robby said. “Aside from mentioning his birth.”

  It finally dawned on Carrie who he was talking about.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  She stood up.

  It was time. She fetched a big knife, the plastic cutting board, a spoon, and a bowl.

  She returned to the small table where Robby was still sitting.

  “What makes you think my baby influenced me?” she asked him. She put the cantaloupe on the cutting board and put the knife against its skin.

  “You were the only one who was pregnant,” Robby said. “Other women thought that they were, but they were influenced by the delusions that The Origin put in their head. You were actually carrying a child in this reality. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “That whole thing was impossible. I was maybe a few months along and then I gave birth to a full-term baby. It was impossible.”

  Robby nodded in agreement. “There were lots of impossible things going on. As we all learned, what’s impossible here is very real to different versions of ourselves. For a moment, you were in several versions of reality at the same time. I think that for the rest of us, we only saw one idealized alternate reality. You were merged with many.”

  “That could be it,” Carrie said. She pushed the knife down into the cantaloupe. The melon sucked at the blade as she tried to slice it in half. “So that’s it? You assume that I wasn’t lying when I said I was pregnant and therefore the baby influenced me?”

  “No—not just that. In your report, you talked about a voice that told you things.”

  “Lots of people heard voices.”

  “We heard echoes of what The Origin told us,” Robby said. “When he needed to direct us, he would somehow find a way to have already told us.”

  She laughed a little as she scooped seeds from the melon.

  “I know,” Robby said. “Every day, it gets harder and harder to believe that it really happened.”

  Carrie cut a wedge from the cantaloupe. She handed it to Robby.

  “And you’re convinced that the voice I heard wasn’t The Origin.”

  “You probably also heard him, but yeah, I think you heard the voice of your unborn child as well.”

  Carrie took a bite of her own wedge. The melon was perfect. It dissolved into sweet sugar in her mouth. She licked juice that ran down her finger.

  “It wasn’t the baby,” she said. “It was me.”

  Robby sat back in his chair.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “How can you be sure?”

  She smiled. “There’s a part that I left out of my report.”

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  They escaped in buses from the parking lot. Carrie sat in the front seat and looked straight ahead over the driver’s shoulder. She knew where they were going. Everyone had wanted to go to the same place: the farmhouse.

  Most of them had been betrayed there—some of them more than once—but the farmhouse represented safety.

  Carrie glanced to the person on her right. It was the bold girl from they city. She had one hand on the boy next to her and another on the dog at their feet. Her eyes were dedicated to the window. The girl watched for anything amiss out there in the night.

  Carrie saw the reflection of the headlights on metal and realized that they were passing the Tesla that she had abandoned. She wondered if the ghost was still drowning out there in the lake. While she considered that ghost, the miles passed. Only the sound of the brakes snapped Carrie from her daydream. People stood and waited for her to lead the way.

  Carrie was granted a bedroom in the big house that night. Someone sat in a chair in the hall, just outside her door. They were waiting to make sure that she didn’t do something stupid—something she couldn’t take back.

  As she rested her head on the soft pillow, Carrie had no intention of harming herself. At least not until she heard the voice again.

  …I can’t believe you did it…

  Carrie sat up straight in her bed. She would have whispered back to the voice, but she knew that the sound would bring the guard in to check on her.

  Instead, she thought her answer.

  I did the only thing that I could.

  She tried to imagine the little baby that she had held for those precious moments. The baby’s face was already growing foggy in her memory. The image wasn’t just being forgotten. It was being erased.

  …Remember the beach?…

  Carrie settled back down to the pillow and closed her eyes so she could picture it better. The day had been blindingly bright. The sun filled her up and radiated out of her as much as it soaked in. There hadn’t been a mote around the blanket. That fantasy had been somehow constructed by Charlie. Carrie had sat there on the blanket, with her sweaty arm pressed against Jannie, and they had floated together in bliss in the summer day.

  Jannie had gotten up to go to the bath house. Carrie had stayed put.

  When the shadow fell over her closed eyes, Carrie had known it was either Jannie or John. Of course she had been wrong.

  Carrie had blocked the sun with her hand and sat up squinting on that summer day. She looked at herself, dressed only in an identical yellow two-piece, the same one that she was still wearing.

  “I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you how it ends,” the other Carrie had said.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to remember me. We’re going to remember us, but only when we need to. That’s the trick we have to pull. It’s the only way.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked her other self.

  She saw herself push her hair back and settle down to her knees in the sand before she sat back on her heels. It was strange to watch from that perspective—seeing herself move without controlling it.

  “We’re all pieces of the same person, if you think about it,” the other Carrie had said. “It’s like a million voices all singing the same song perfectly—we blend into one in the end.”

  Carrie had listened closely, like in school when she didn’t
understand the teacher. She had wanted to remember it all in hopes that she could figure it out later.

  “There’s a big event coming,” the other Carrie had said. “I don’t want to tell you too much about it because it will just paralyze you with fear. Trust me, there’s nothing good that would come from worrying about it. It’s the aftermath that you need to be ready for. That’s the part that you can change. We have a lot to cover.”

  Carrie had looked towards the bath house, wondering when Jannie would get back or what she would think.

  “She’s not coming back. This place belongs to us,” the other Carrie had said. She had looked down at her hands. Carrie recognized the look—she had felt it on her own face. This other Carrie had bad news to deliver. “There’s a man I know. Actually, all of us know him except you. You’re the one who was least-affected by him, but you’ll still encounter him. When you fall for him, my voice is going to come back to you. I’ll help you memorize what to think.”

  “How do you know?” Carrie had asked.

  Other Carrie had smiled at her.

  “It’s like dropping a rock into a pond. The ripples flow every direction, not just forward. I know because we all know. It has already happened to me.”

  “Did you… survive?”

  “Everyone dies in the end,” the other Carrie had said with a sad smile. “There can’t be a beginning without an end.”

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Carrie finished her story and Robby was silent. On the floor, Gordie snored.

  “You saved yourself,” Robby said.

  Carrie nodded.

  “That seems…”

  “Impossible,” she finished for him. “I know. It’s like someone tugging on their own shirt to lift themselves up. But, like I told myself, big events have ripples in all directions. We were invaded by a strange inter-dimensional creature, right? That thing poked a hole in space and time and Charlie was caught in that vortex. I suppose that I picked up some of that churn as well because his life was intertwined with mine in so many versions of reality. When I’m drifting off to sleep at night, I can still clearly remember the life that he and I had together, although it’s getting a little dimmer with each passing day.”