Yet he had this gentle way of assuring me I would be pleased with the results. And despite all the questions I had for which he had no concrete answers, Landis absolutely pinpointed many of my specific thoughts and feelings. Like how I’ve always had a nagging feeling I was meant to be something greater than I had become, and that maybe my inability to recall my childhood was part of my limitations. And finally, that I was more receptive than ever to recognize when I was at an important crossroads of my life. I felt like I was visiting a fortune-teller who, despite my skepticism, was telling me enough general truths to start making me a believer.
I asked how the program worked.
He told me it was simple: read the book every day, take the pills as prescribed.
I asked how often I needed to check back in with him.
He said it worked the other way around. He would reach out to me. The only formal check-in would be upwards of a year from then, when he would return to ask a very specific question.
What question?
He said I’d have to wait.
I asked what the hell kind of clinical trial worked this way?
He said a life-changing one.
I left his office that day with the book, the vial of pills, and no fucking idea what I was going to do.
I did look through The Responsibility of Death again that afternoon, and its hold on me was almost immediate. If I had been taken in by the image on the simple flyer, I was mesmerized by the book. It was the beginning of what Landis referred to as my transformation, when I first started having the sense of the universe contracting smaller around me, making me more certain of my place within it.
Self-actualization.
I didn’t tell anyone about my visit to Landis, not even Abby. I can’t explain that decision other than saying I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with, and until I figured it out, I wanted to control the situation alone.
Apparently, I have control issues.
In the hotel bar, I finish my drink and slide the book from my messenger bag. I carry it around in the bag, which is with me most of the time. I wish I could rationalize my need to keep it near, as if it were some kind of talisman, shielding me from an unknown evil. For all I know, it’s just the opposite, a source of harm, leaking radiation into my bones.
The book was the first thing to create a rift in my mind. I can’t tell you if it had something to do with the hypnotic nature of the illustrations or the story itself, but it wouldn’t be a gross exaggeration to say I have become somewhat obsessed with death. I now routinely scour the obituaries, reading of lives recently snuffed, and I’ve developed an uncanny ability to feel these people somehow, as if I lived a bit of their lives with them, and perhaps a little of their deaths.
A haunting, beautiful thing.
A part of me wishes I had never looked at the book, but, honestly, that part is pretty small.
“Jake.”
I’m snapped away from my thoughts by the voice. It belongs to a woman, and it comes from behind my shoulder.
I’m thinking—hoping—the woman is Clara.
It can’t be possible. Then again, I feel like I’m becoming fluent in the impossible.
I turn.
It’s not Clara.
Eighteen
The Book of Clara
10/11/2018
Last night, I booked myself into the Hotel Jerome in Aspen. The front-desk clerk seemed surprised I’d shown up at night without a reservation. He asked me how many nights I wanted to stay. Two nights, I told him. Perhaps I would change my mind, stay longer. He assured me that wouldn’t be a problem, it being the off-season.
A light October morning rain spits outside my bedroom window. The Rocky Mountains, cloaked in gray, bruised and dull, the sun well away. Seems not the most favorable time of year to visit the Maroon Bells, but suicide isn’t seasonal. Death cares little for blue skies and flowers in fierce bloom.
I have both the book and the pills with me. I don’t really have a need for either anymore, but they go where I do, which is to the end.
I didn’t start taking the pills immediately. Despite Landis telling me he was a doctor, the clinical trial was undeniably strange and Landis himself a bit unnerving. He knew more about my feelings than any stranger should, and that made me want to both trust him and run away screaming.
I did read the book, however, and it made me feel something. An understanding I couldn’t explain, as if I was starting to finally see how I fit in the world. The book made me feel more…me, even if that new me became a shut-in a mere two months later. There I was, an orphan who couldn’t remember her past, and suddenly I started thinking life maybe made a little sense. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to understand more. I wanted to feel more.
That’s when I realized what the pills were for. Landis knew it all along, knew how the book would make me feel. Knew it would make me crave more of what I was feeling.
Maybe I was weak. Or perhaps I was enlightened.
I finally began taking the pills because I believed. Funny thing, that’s how religions get started. Pure belief. A hope for something more. As a lifelong agnostic, I had finally found god.
The program was my deity.
The program has led me here, to the Maroon Bells. No, the program didn’t drive me to depression-induced suicide. It made me realize death is where I belong, my rightful place. Death has a perfectly sized Clara-shaped hole, waiting to be plugged.
As for the book, I read it yet again, sitting on the thick blanket of my hotel-room bed. This time, I stared even more deeply at the little boy in the woods. I’ve always wondered who that boy is supposed to be. He’s not me. I’m the old man, the grandfather being coaxed into death by the talking creatures. That’s never been clearer than now. But the boy?
Maybe Jake is the boy.
I don’t know what to make of Jake. It’s undeniable we somehow know each other. We both have a forgotten past. We both are orphans.
I would be mostly convinced he was an illusion were it not for the business card I have.
Jake Buchannan, Writer.
Either someone or the universe put us on that plane together. In either case, I think Jake represents some kind of test. Will I continue with my plan, or will I seek the answers he does?
I am unwavering. I will do what I’ve come here to accomplish.
I think of decades, my decades, specifically. My early thirties have been marked by loneliness, isolation, and, let’s face it, probably some form of mental illness. I know my brain isn’t right, at least not in a conventional sense. I try to look for clues on how I became what I eventually did. Those years weren’t lonely, but neither were they full of happiness. I just…was.
Years of doing the same thing. Working as a teacher in the same school, teaching faces that never seemed to change. Same kids. Same subject. Same ticking minutes on the same wall clock, the second hand sweeping lives away.
I never married and dated rarely. I’m neither straight nor gay nor something else with a tidy definition attached. I’m an undefinable, a person with little need for human connection, despite an aching love of humanity. I’m capable of becoming obsessively attached to a character in a novel, for instance. Even feel real grief at the book’s conclusion because that character is gone from my life. But I’ve met very few real-life individuals into whom I’d want to invest as much time as I would in reading a book.
I figured this out in my twenties, and by my thirties, I was quite content with the person I was. Not that my ambition was limited, but rather my definition of ambition was narrower than convention dictated. I was simple. I was existent, neither remarkable nor forgettable.
I’m back.
I stopped writing for a bit, because I had a moment. The same moment I’ve been having for the past few weeks. The first time it happened, it collapsed me. Now, I’ve built up a tolerance, b
ut it still keeps me from functioning for a brief period.
I think it’s some kind of breakthrough. A memory. A precious, rare, haunting memory.
This memory, when it came to me three weeks ago, hit me hard and fast, as if I were strolling on seemingly abandoned tracks when a freight train obliterated me from behind.
What a powerful thing, to remember something of such disturbing significance when I was so used to only forgetting! A repressed memory, I believe they call it. Whatever its name, when it first happened, it left me on my apartment floor, first with a ravaging headache, and then just an emotional heap, crying for hours, unable to do anything but loop the same scene in my head. When I finally came out of the cycle, I had more sense of purpose than ever.
Though I just recently recalled it, the memory is a singular one from my childhood. I don’t know how old I was. Young, I think. At first, there was darkness. Memories rarely start without an image, but when this one first washed over me, it began with blackness. I saw nothing, but there was sound. There was screaming. A little child, uncontrollably shrieking.
I turned my head and saw glowing, orange numbers, floating waist-high.
1-2-3-4.
Just those four numbers. Like some kind of symbol. Maybe a puzzle. I focused on the numbers, adjusting my eyes. Then another form took shape, because the numbers were casting light. There was something beneath them. A surface, smooth and flat. My brain struggled to make sense of anything. Finally, even with the horrible din of the screaming child, something clicked. It was a clock. The numbers were part of a clock, and the clock was on a table. The numbers weren’t a puzzle. They were telling the time.
12:34.
It was just after midnight, and I was in a room with a screaming child.
Then, there was light. Blinding, crushing light, assaulting me. My eyes took a moment to adjust, and finally, I saw him. The little boy on the floor, squatting on his feet, his arms wrapped around his knees. Little ball, in pajamas. Head raised to the ceiling. Howling.
I turned my head…forced my vision away from him. I can’t help you, I thought. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.
What I saw next plunged me into sheer horror.
I was at the foot of a large bed, and now I realized the boy was just off to the side by a bedroom wall. Next to the bed was a small table, on which stood the clock with its digital orange numbers. The light came from above. Somebody must have flipped on the switch, allowing me to see what was in the bed.
Blood.
Splattered on white sheets and blankets. Spray on the wall. Pools of red. Small rivers.
Two people. They were dead, flesh opened. Crumpled on the mattress, half-covered by blankets, ripped pillow stuffing mixed with their blood.
A man and a woman. Maybe. It was hard to tell.
Something bubbled blood. A wound on one of them, the heart ticking off its final beats. But neither of them moved. There was no saving them, even if I knew how.
I stared, paralyzed, wanting to turn my attention to anything else, even back to the desperate child. My head wouldn’t turn. But I did finally move. I took a step back, away from the bed.
Then, in my peripheral vision, I saw the others. They were like me.
Children.
The sight of them only lasted a moment. There were three or four other children, and collectively we all looked down upon the dead.
I reached out and grabbed a hand next to me, tethering myself.
“It’s okay,” the boy holding my hand says. His voice is shaking, and he’s choking up. “It’s going to be okay.”
There, the memory ended. But the little boy on the floor kept screaming in my mind.
Nineteen
Jake
“Jake Buchannan.”
The way the woman says my name isn’t posed as a question, the way an old friend might say it bumping into you on the street. It’s a statement, the way a cop would say it when appearing at your doorstep.
The stranger doesn’t ask permission before sliding in next to me at the Four Seasons bar. The corkscrew coils of her Afro brush the tops of her shoulders. Smooth, dark face. Lips drawn into a tight expression that falls short of a smile. Midtwenties, though I’m shit at guessing those kinds of things. What’s most noticeable are her eyes. Though they dart from side to side, scanning the room, I connect enough to see sadness in her. A kind of longing, like the kid sitting alone at the cafeteria lunch table. I see all of this in seconds and wouldn’t have noticed it at all a year ago. Finally, her gaze settles on me.
“Yes?” I say.
“I’m buying you a drink.”
“I have a drink.”
“I think you’ll be needing another one.”
“Why’s that?”
She crosses her legs and signals to the waiter before turning her attention on me.
“Well,” she says, “first off, I know how you like your whiskey.”
“And how do you know that?”
Another scan of the room. “When a person is determined to find out as much as they can about someone else, it’s a fairly easy task. Especially when that curious person is experienced, well equipped, and willing to break a few laws.”
We hold our silence for a moment, as if daring the other to speak first. The waiter comes over, and she orders another Dewar’s for me and a glass of pinot noir for herself. When the waiter leaves, she reaches across and lifts The Responsibility of Death from the table.
“This is a rare book,” she says. “Very rare.”
“You work with Landis? Are you part of the clinical trial?”
“I used to work for him. By talking to you, I’m effectively terminating my employment.” This time when she scans the room, she actually turns her head.
I lean back. “Can you just tell me what the hell is happening here? And why do you keep looking around?”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” she says. “They might be watching us.”
“Who’s ‘they’? Landis?”
“Or other contractors of his I don’t know about. Listen, Jake…” She’s nervous; I can see it. The way her jaw twitches. Her fingers, constantly moving, as if trying to disperse the energy pent up inside her body. “I debated with myself a long time about whether to talk to you. Now that I’m doing it, there’s no turning back. But it’s a risk, for both of us.”
“What do you…”
The drinks arrive. I don’t finish my question.
She gulps her wine, and her lips leave a faint rouge impression on the glass. A part of me thinks I should take that glass with me, have it tested, and somehow find out who she is.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” she says. “Landis hired me to find you, which I now regret. He is not your friend. I no longer work for him. I don’t know if I can help you, but I’m going to try.” She nods down to the book. “You’ve read that, what, more than a hundred times?”
I nod, knowing she’s way low on her estimate.
She leans toward me just an inch more, holds my gaze tight with hers.
“When you first looked through it, you were confused. Why would some strange doctor give you a children’s book? You looked through it quickly, didn’t quite get it, then dismissed it.”
That’s not exactly right. I felt something the very first time I read it. But I say nothing.
“But later, maybe after a few hours, you looked though it again. More carefully. Actually read all the words, looked at every picture. You became a little more intrigued.” She flips to the first picture, one I’ve seen so many times I could nearly draw it from memory had I the talent of the illustrator. “That night, you probably thought about it a little more, maybe even had a dream about it. In the morning, you had a third read, and something started to draw you in. Maybe the words. Maybe the direction of the simple story. Or maybe it was—”
“The pictures,” I say, hardly aware I’m speaking.
“Exactly.”
“That’s the key to whatever…” I don’t want to say power. “Whatever makes the book so intriguing. The illustrations. The way every pen stroke is just a tiny mark, yet thousands of them all build to make an image. It’s like…it’s like building a sandcastle out of dry sand. It seems impossible.”
“Not illustrations, Jake. Algorithms.” She leans back, flips another page. “I assume you’ve Googled the book. You’ve searched the title. Didn’t find anything, did you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “The book doesn’t exist.”
She holds it up. “And yet it does.”
“How many copies are there?”
“Not many. But this one here? It’s the only version like it. Of all the existing copies of the Responsibility of Death, each is different. No two stories are the same. All the drawings are unique to each edition.”
I look down at the book in her hands, trying to picture other versions, other illustrations. My version is so ingrained in my mind that it’s hard to imagine a wholly different edition.
“Have you been taking the pills?” she asks.
I don’t want to admit it, but she reads my face and nods.
“The pills magnify the effects of the book,” she says. “Stop reading the book, Jake. Ditch the pills. It’s probably too late; the damage is done. But just get rid of everything.”
“I wasn’t going to take them,” I say. “But my daughter, she was hurt in an accident…”
“Yes, the accident.” Her face shows true concern, but I have no idea how much of an actress this woman is. “How’s Em doing?”
“Christ, how much do you know about my family?” I ask.
“Enough to know you moved out recently.”
“Whatever you’re doing,” I say, “it needs to stop. Leave me and my family alone.”
“Take it easy, Jake. I will leave, if that’s what you want. I’m no longer monitoring your family anyway. I’m here to help you. I’m not even sure I can, but I do know I’m the only one trying to right now.”
Dead Girl in 2A (ARC) Page 7