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Jimmy stopped.
What was he doing?
He was outside in his shorts, for God’s sake! In the winter! No shoes, at some ungodly hour, and all while Erica—blissfully unaware—was asleep inside!
Had he locked the door?
Brought keys? A flashlight?
A pump-action shotgun?
The deer had gone off into the brush, he could see their shadowy heads bobbing about in the silvery moonlight. But as afraid—perhaps apprehensive was a better word—as he was, he didn’t want to lose them.
Jimmy padded on bare feet along concrete sidewalk. It was cold. And it was utterly quiet—not even a tinkling wind chime nor howling coyotes.
Jimmy hit the dirt and gravel pathway that wound its way through the field. No snow here. The texture of the path was curious. All the times he’d walked it he was in sneakers or boots and had never given it much thought. But there were all kinds of pebbles and twigs and dirt underfoot. Frozen firm.
Jimmy looked ahead and saw that the deer were not far in advance of him. They seemed to be taking their time.
But, really, what in hell was he doing out here?
One of the deer up ahead stopped and turned. Looked directly to him.
Not that he could really see them, but in his mind’s eye he saw them... felt them... deep, dark, deer eyes. Unblinking. Grabbing his soul like a firm shake to the shoulders.
Jimmy picked up his pace. He was just about there....
* * *
He stood in the middle of a field. The field where he used to walk Mac. The long ago gone-to-seed Buffalo grass was now all desiccated and stiff.
He was surrounded by deer... shadowy deer. They milled around him, again with the nibbling, the nudging. Looking to him.
Something was different.
Jimmy made a half-hearted attempt at leaving the circle of wildlife, even though he really didn’t want to (but a strange, distant, ever so far-away part of him did...). The deer gently nudged back. Nipped at his hands. Something just wasn’t right. Different.
Different, different, different....
His Mom... he had to get to his mother....
But that had been a lifetime ago. That was not now, not here. It had been a dream.
Jimmy’s pulse quickened; his throat constricted. His legs weakened.
There were coyote and bear out here!
Mountain lion!
Was one out there, now, this very minute, pacing the treeline? Deer meat be damned, it wanted something less gamey?
Erica!
And what of her?
She was alone in bed, in a house unlocked and open to all the unspeakable horrors of the night!
Had he just walked all the way here in his bare feet?
Restless, Jimmy couldn’t keep his legs from wanting to sprint, to run, run fast, run far....
He looked to the deer. They’d all stopped nudging him. All looked to him.
Him.
With their huge, dark eyes. Eyes that were so very large. Penetrating.
It suddenly dawned on him what was different.
A shadow surrounded them.
He looked up.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1
This is all fake.
What’s all fake?
This.
* * *
Focus... it was hard... hard... to focus.
Where was he?
Woods. He was out in the woods?
Didn’t make sense. He was just in... he was
* * *
Fourteen years old. Free. Free from adult life, adult worry, from work. Free to do as he pleased. To walk the woods up back if he
* * *
Loved winter. Snow. Loved all seasons, but the winter... the low light, snow, creaking and splitting of trees. Being deep in the woods... loved that. Winters always turned him inward. Inward...
* * *
Lake Clear, New York
25 December 1974
Snowshoeing.
Making tracks through virgin snow. Just the sound of the woods, his breath, and the muffled crunching of his snowshoes in snow. Weaving in and out of the trees. Thinking about girls and books and movies. How beautiful it was out here, in the deep woods of their back forty. Today, he was thinking about girls from school. Girls like Hannah or Linda.
Hannah.
Man, they were babes.
He stopped. Before him lay unmarked snow and trees. He watched his breath curl up before him; noticed his breath only came out of one nostril. Jimmy pursed his lips together and angled his breath upward, blowing more vapor up before him.
Turning around, he looked to the lonely path he’d created, stretched out behind him.
No one else.
Just him, his tracks, his breath. The calming, deadening silence of The Moment. There was... how to describe it?... a furriness of soul....
He popped his gloved hands together in a mock punch. It was cold, his face cold, but he liked that. Liked it because he was clad in his winter gear, the plaid wool winter pants, heavy down jacket and gloves, L.L. Bean boots, and wool hat.
Continued on.
* * *
It was late. The sun low and orange through darkening skeletal trees against a blanketed and somber landscape. Howling gusts of frigid wind. He didn’t want to go back. Wished this moment would last forever. Alone and on his own. Snowshoeing. The woods, the sunset. The dark steel-gray of the clouds and a dying winter’s day.
He smiled.
Crunching in the snow he turned (more like waddled) around.
His tracks.
Still there.
Still his.
Following him.
God, Hannah was cute. Her long brown hair. Her smile.
He wished she’d just walk on out of the woods right now...
He shifted uncomfortably, adjusting his pants.
Hannah.
Had to get home.
Warmth. Family. TV. Home... warmly lit up from the inside, smoke coming out of its two chimneys from both the oil furnace and Franklin Stove Dad no doubt already had going for the evening. Mom making dinner, wondering where the heck he was. Carl, Penny, and Ritchie all lying on the floor before the TV, waiting for him to get home so they could eat.
Home.
Family.
Man, Hannah... Hannah, Hannah, Hannah!
He loved her name.
Loved saying it, thinking it. Just the two of them. Out here in the woods....
He again adjusted his snowpants.
* * *
It was harder—but not impossible—to continue his way through the darkening woods, but he finally came upon Devil’s Den. Only a couple more minutes and he’d be home.
Jimmy listened to the now ghostly whisper of wind through the trees, to the woods’ cracking and splitting; his open-mouthed and labored breath.
Snow fell thicker now; the temperature had definitely dropped. What late afternoon winter light there had been was
Different. Something was different.
Though he felt cold creeping through his garments and even into his snowpants, another chill ran through him.
He looked to his feet (wiggled his toes). Behind him.
It was darker. Felt much later than it should be—
“Hi, Jimmy.”
Jimmy spun around.
Hannah stood behind a copse of snow-covered branches, in a cute-looking snow suit. Surrounded by deer.
Even Jimmy’s thoughts were awestruck.
Hannah came forward, her entourage spilling out around her like liquid meat.
“This was what you wanted, was it not?”
He’d never noticed before just how deep and dark her large, beautiful eyes were. How compassionate and probing. Her voice melted away any chill that had seeped into his bones.
“H-hi, Hannah.”
“What do you wanna do?” she asked.
The deer milled around the both of them. Jimmy didn’t feel right.
“I-I don�
��t know.”
“I have an idea,” she-who-appeared-to-be-Hannah said, smiling....
2
100-Mile Low Earth Orbit
4 November 2021
0912 Hours Zulu
Cherko floated through the airlocks, inhaling that burnt-metal smell of space, and into the farthest-most section of the MOL. It seemed to take far less time than it usually took, and caused him to unexpectedly ram a shoulder into a bulkhead and clip a nearby control panel. That’ll bruise. He rubbed it.
What’d he just been doing?
He felt he’d forgotten something. Systems tests: yes, he’d been performing system tests. Preventive maintenance diagnostics had previously indicated intermittent faults in an SDS module. Cherko pushed off the bulkhead and floated up before the panel. He flipped a couple test switches. Sure enough, it was tripping. Top-of-the-line equipment, stuff you’d think would work better than it had been the past couple of days (and what was a “day”—time—anyway? On-orbit station, solar, or sidereal—psychological?). Had there been a solar flare he’d missed? An aggressive bout of cosmic ray bit hits?
Of course not, they get warnings.
Cherko glanced out a viewport.
He missed the seasons. Missed rain and snow. Trees. Feeling the sun through the trees. Rustling leaves in a breeze.
Heck, breathing unfettered air.
Walking. He really missed walking.
Floating around was fun, but brought on bone loss and he plain missed contact with firmament. Dirt. Gravity.
He missed animals. Cats and dogs. De—
What the hell was he forgetting?
Shutting off power to the panel, Cherko opened it up and slid out the faulty component. He’d isolated the error to an ARU board, LRU 3A45-97. And now, as he pulled the board and examined it, he found a particular contact was not closing its circuit.
“Rudy, this is Cherko, over?” Cherko called into his headset.
No response.
“Rudy?”
Silence.
“Wayne, this is Cherko, over?”
Still no response.
Cherko tapped the board. Dang it, he didn’t want to have to travel all the way back across the MOL to retrieve a stinkin part. Where the heck were these guys? Had the short affected all station comm?
Pulling out a red flag from his pocket, he attached it to the still-open panel. Then he took the pulled component with him and began his return-drift to the far side of the MOL. But, just before he left, he paused and took in a moment of reflection. Looked out across the module.
Lights glowed and blinked. Idiot lights. Equipment working (well, most of it did...), humming along in their oh-so-important-life-and-mission-sustaining tasks.
He was in a frigging hollow tube, not unlike those long snow tunnels he and his friends had made as kids, back in New York. Bored and hollowed out long snow banks. Fortified with water to turn them into ice-lined caves....
It felt so empty.
Unreal.
Cherko pushed away from the console and
* * *
drifted through the center module.
Empty.
No Wayne, no Rudy.
Cherko continued on through and
* * *
entered the command module.
“Wayne, Rudy,” he said, without looking up, “our comm circuits are definitely blown—”
Cherko let go of the unit, and pushed past the now-drifting component. Anchoring himself at a makeshift handhold, he scanned the module.
Empty. Not a frigging soul.
He looked the way he’d come and started to head back in that direction—and came to a stop.
He’d just come that way, damn it, drifted through several empty modules and there’d been no one.
He again surveyed the compartment. The command module. Really took it in.
Something was off.
He shook his head, closed and opened his eyes.
Had he made it all up?
(Fake, this is all fake...)
Gave into a daydream-like daze and unconsciously drifted past them in the other module?
And he seemed to remember the station as being much longer—maybe... maybe it was simply his growing familiarity with...
Contact.
What contact?
No contact?
Contact... confirmed.
Cherko grunted. A headache, that damned continued sinus ache. He reached out to a battery compartment. Glanced out a viewport.
Something... was... off, dammit. Earth...
Where was it... where was Earth?
Cherko pushed off the handhold and shot across to the port.
Something blocked their view!
Contact confirmed.
Confirmed!
Cherko stared out the opening. Stared out not to Earth, the glare of the blinding Sun, nor the very depths of interplanetary space itself...
No, what he now stared out into was something that hurt to consider.
Something obstructed his view.
Something was outside.
3
Colorado Springs, CO
8 November 2010
1616 Hours Mountain Time
“So... what do you think it all means, Jimmy?” Alda asked. “The deer... Hannah?”
Cherko sat in the chair, eyes wide. The chair, the office, all strangely unfamiliar, odd. Like he was in a dream.
“Something isn’t right....”
“How do you mean?”
“Everything feels... two dimensional. Can’t explain it.”
“Two dimensional?”
“All storefront, no store. A flat dream. A movie set.”
Alda chuckled. “Well, there are some trains of thought that say all of life is a dream, Jimmy. Do I seem real?”
Cherko looked to Alda; looked him over; Alda, who held his gaze. Alda, who flensed away his skin, his muscle, his bone with a look. Alda who laid bare his most inner-most self like the entrails of a gutted fish.
“No. No, you don’t—what are you writing?”
Jimmy’s legs grew restless and began running in place.
“What are you nervous about?”
“I feel like... I’m in two places at once. Or not. Displaced. Like I’m not really here. Not supposed to be here...”
“Where do you feel you should be?”
“Feel tingly. Don’t know.”
Alda nodded, again scribbling.
“I don’t remember Hannah—I mean, I remember her—just not there... like that. With the deer... at that rock. My home.”
“It’s not uncommon to mix memories. What does she symbolize to you? The deer—what do they represent to you?”
Cherko looked back to Alda.
“They remind me of...”
* * *
“Rudy?”
Cherko stared at a white-tailed deer that now stood in the middle of their orbiting command module. A deer... in all its proud, muscled glory and full-rack-of-antler regalia. The deer stared back at Cherko with its huge, baleful eyes. Twitched its ears. Worked its jaw. It didn’t float, it stood there.
Cherko didn’t know whether he blinked or not, but Rudy now floated before him. No deer.
Confirmed!
“What the hell...”
Cherko looked back to the viewport, but gone was the obstruction that had been outside.
Cherko kneaded his forehead.
“You all right?” Rudy asked, leaning in.
“I, uh...”
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Cherko looked up to him; tried to move... couldn’t. Felt as if part of his mind wanted to go one way, while another ran off in an entirely different direction. He felt anchored to an amorphous blob in Time....
“Must’ve whacked my head when I hit that bulkhead.”
Cherko looked behind him, back to the viewport. Earth curved softly away beneath it.
“What’d you see?” Rudy asked, eyes folding around him like
a black hole. “What does it represent to you?”
* * *
Cherko shot to his feet.
“Okay, okay, something’s very goddammed wrong here. Really, really frigging wrong...”
Cherko held a hand to his head as he stumbled across Alda’s office. It was hard to move. His feet felt anchored, leaden.
“Perhaps you should sit back down, Jimmy.”
“I’m not here, am I? Not really. I’m somewhere else. And what’s with your eyes?”
Alda’s eyes were deep and dark and hungry.
“We are where we are. Have a seat, Jimmy. Please.”
“I don’t want to sit. I’m always sitting. Need to move. Need to—”
Cherko stumbled about the office. Knocked books, folders, and papers off tables and stands. Knocked over knick-knacks and one of those calming mini-water-fall things.
“I’m sorry... s-s-sorry—”
Cherko held out his hands before him in an attempt to keep his balance and ward off additional injury, but ended up tumbling over a heavy floor lamp.
Cherko looked to Alda in confusion.
Fear.
Alda was no longer writing things down.
“What did you do to me?”
“I did nothing.”
“You did! You did something! Something’s not right!”
“You came to me. Do you not remember?”
“Did I?”
“Have a—”
* * *
“I don’t want to sit down.”
Rudy stared at Cherko.
“I have to move... what’s happening?”
“What do you think happened?”
“I... I was—no, pulling a board... talk—”
Cherko looked to the LRU that drifted before him.
“... next thing... next thing I saw... something...”
“What’d you see?”
“Confirmed. Something’s... confirmed...”
“Yes.”
“What’s confirmed’?”
“What do you want confirmed?”
“This. I want this confirmed.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“I didn’t want this!”
“What did you want?”
“I wanted... wanted... is this place smaller? Did we lose a module?”