by Jeff Long
Nearby a river thundered. A whirlpool seethed with frightening suction. Spume slashed in curtains. It was a merciless scene.
Rebecca tried to understand where she was and what had happened. At the same time she already did understand. Events and faces and voices jumbled together. Some of it made sense, much of it was a strange blur. She had come looking for her missing daughter and found these others, too. Her army was gone, though the circumstances were foggy. She remembered the corners of horrible things, worst of all that image of Sam’s ruined head. She did not remember entering into this ghost world, however.
“Who are you?” she asked the nightmare.
“Mama,” Sam giggled, disbelieving Rebecca’s disbelief.
“How did you get here?” The child’s clothes were clean. A fresh grass stain showed on one hip, though there was no grass within two thousand miles. Her candy necklace from Halloween had not even been nibbled on. Yet her poor, perfect forehead was in ruins. No. This thing was not her daughter.
Sam’s smile shrank. “I got sent.”
Rebecca went cold. Sent? The memory returned of Sam—golden Sam—starved and bedraggled, on a leash, approaching the stone fortress. And of pleading with the captain not to shoot, and flying for his rifle, and that clap of thunder. There lay her downfall. “Who sent you?” she demanded.
Sam’s smile was all gone now. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Well, if you got sent, somebody sent you.”
The blue eyes brimmed with confusion. “I don’t know.”
“You’re not my Sam.”
The girl froze. “Mama…?”
“Why are you here?”
“To go home,” Sam said in the tiniest of voices.
“Home?” Jake was dead. And Sam…she had not buried Sam. Was that what this was about?
“The sun’s all yellow in my bedroom this morning,” Sam said.
“How do you know that?”
“I looked. It was morning. And my night-light was on, even in the daytime.”
“I left it on for you, Sam. I kept thinking you might come back home.”
“I did, Mama. I keep telling you.”
“Did you look in the closet?” said Rebecca. “There’s a hole in the floor. I didn’t fix the hole yet.”
“It’s fixed, Mama. Everything’s fixed now.”
“No, it’s not,” said Rebecca. “It’s all ripped open.”
“Up top, Mama. Everything will be right again. This time I get to stay up there.”
A vision welled up of their sturdy house perched above the river. Rebecca’s heart ached. She wanted so much for this to be Sam. But she had seen her daughter’s forehead. The hole was like a second mouth. It yawned at Rebecca with broken teeth. “I’m tired,” she said. Tired of the trickery. Tired of false hope. Tired of her madness.
“I know the way home,” Sam said. “That’s why I’m here, to show you. We have to leave. Before he finds out.”
“Before who finds out?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Go away,” said Rebecca. “You frighten me.”
“But I love you, Mama.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Mama?”
“You heard me. Go back to where you came from.”
Sam’s voice shrank to almost nothing. “Not there.”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut. Fight, she commanded. Fight the ancient love. Kill the ghosts. Lead me not into temptation. When she looked again, Sam was gone.
Nothing moved around her. The children lay dreaming. Or dead. Beckwith clutched his rifle. The stranger slept beside his jacket of armor. She stood and went over to him. The armor was ugly beyond reckoning to her, and stunk of death. Nevertheless she required a defense against her haunting child. Stitched into the jacket’s antiquity, she sensed a useful vigilance.
As she picked it up, the jade plates rattled like something alive. The jacket was too large and weighed a ton. But as she buckled its hooks, Rebecca felt invincible. Housed in this, she could repel all her demons and remembrances. In this stone shroud, it suddenly struck her, she could bury herself. No more pain. No more madness. The world could not touch her in here.
Time stopped. She noticed it gradually. The river’s roar had fallen silent.
Rebecca looked down from the camp’s ledge and the water had frozen to stillness. Its current lay in long, black braids, and droplets hung in the air like jewels.
The cave had turned into a crystal oasis. The whirlpool had slowed to a creamy spiral. A pale rainbow shimmered in the mist.
Until this very moment, Rebecca had viewed the abyss as a hateful, raging maw. But suddenly she found herself surrounded by this hidden beauty. It was so peaceful. So welcoming. How could she have missed seeing this other world?
The earth breathed its scents to her from downriver. What more lies down there? Rebecca stepped closer to the edge.
“Mama?”
Rebecca ignored the voice. She stayed facing the river. That dark, glassy highway of water invited her touch. All it would take was one step. The river would lead her into a land without sorrow or despair.
“Mama.” Like a mosquito in her ear. Rebecca did not answer. It made her dizzy, this crystal world. “Come away from there. I mean it.”
She looked over her shoulder and Sam was there. But this time Rebecca was armored and ready. Nothing could hurt her. She glanced back at the river. The beautiful river.
“We can’t stay here,” Sam said.
“Go home,” said Rebecca.
“Not without you I can’t.”
“It’s just so…” Rebecca couldn’t find a word for the rapture in her heart. It was glorious, the deep.
“No it’s not, Mama.”
“I’m not scared anymore,” Rebecca told her.
She was done with the storm and fury and fear. She could rest in peace.
“You have to take me home.”
Sam’s desperation startled Rebecca. She looked at her ghost child and the wreckage of that forehead, and this time the innocence was missing from her eyes. In its place she saw desolation and emptiness. In her baby’s eyes.
“Soon, baby.”
“Save me, Mama. Please.”
“I tried.”
“Try again. I’ll be better, I promise.”
Rebecca trembled. “What?”
“I won’t be bad ever again.”
“You were never bad, Sam.”
“Then where are you going? I don’t want to be alone again.”
A diamond slipped down Sam’s cheek. A teardrop. Eyes closed, the girl hugged herself and rocked back and forth. Her lips were moving, and Rebecca realized she was praying. Praying for her mother. Her untouchable mother. Another diamond took shape.
Rebecca blinked. What if she was wrong? What if this wasn’t a ghost? Choose, she thought. Kill the thing. Or love her.
“Sam?” she said.
The girl’s eyes sprang open. The joy on her face speared the armor. It pierced Rebecca’s heart.
“Are you really real?” Rebecca whispered.
Sam held out one finger. Rebecca held her breath. She reached across the void. Sam pressed her fingertip. “Ding-dong,” she said, just like in the old days.
Rebecca stared. The forehead was healing itself. The eyes were brightening. She opened her arms. “Sam.”
Sam held back. “Throw that away, Mama.”
Rebecca’s eyes fell to the green jade armor. “But we might need it.”
“Not anymore.”
Sam was right. Not anymore. No more fear. No more doubt. They were leaving the land of the dead. Her war was over. Here was the child she had come to find.
Rebecca unbuckled the coat, and it fell from her shoulders. She felt light as a bird. With a heave, she threw it from the ledge.
The armor unfolded its green jade wings as if to fly away. But the river suddenly came alive and reached up. It snat
ched the relic from the air and, with a splash, sucked it into oblivion.
Abruptly the savage world resumed. The river bellowed. The water hurtled on. Rebecca fell away from the churning beast. On her hands and knees, she scrambled back from the edge and the river’s false promises. Sam had always been the bold one. She helped Rebecca to her feet.
They hugged.
This was Sam’s heart thumping against hers. She felt Sam’s warmth, and ran her fingers through Sam’s hair, and smelled behind her ear, and it was Sam. Her flesh-and-blood Sam. How can this be?
“It just is,” Sam said.
“What?” Rebecca whispered. The child could read her mind? Or was she a figment inside her mind?
Sam patted her back. “Too many questions, Mama.”
Rebecca peered into her daughter’s eyes, hunting for the slightest contradiction of who Sam had been or ought to be. But all she saw was the innocence of her own flesh and blood. And that perfect rounded forehead was whole again.
“Can we go home now?”
“Yes, honey. But I have to ask you something.” Rebecca took a breath. “Can we get Daddy, too?”
“No, Mama, he can’t come.” Sam’s voice almost disappeared. “I’m the only one.”
“But, Sam.” How far to push this? And what was the truth of the matter? “How do you know we can’t get him?”
“I just do.”
“Are you sure? Can’t we try?”
“We have to leave.”
“Don’t you want to say good-bye?”
“No, Mama.”
“But I do.”
Sam looked at her. “If we stay, he’ll find us.”
“The monsters?”
“Worse.”
Rebecca let go of it. Some things would just have to be taken on faith. “All right, Sam. Let’s go home.” Hand in hand, they climbed back to camp.
“Wake up the sleepyheads,” Sam told her. She pointed at the man missing his hand. “Don’t leave him, whatever you do.”
“Everybody goes,” said Rebecca.
“But especially him.”
“Okay, Sam.”
“Hurry,” said Sam.
“Which way do we go?” asked Rebecca. She didn’t recognize this place. The river seemed very different from the one they had descended, and the campsite was completely foreign to her. It seemed they had never come this way.
“Not far now, Mama.”
Rebecca carefully stepped among the piles of raggedy Sleeping Beauties and Snow Whites. How long had they been lying here?
“Wake up,” she said. Shaking their shoulders and tugging at their legs, she bullied them from their deep sleep. At last a few eyes appeared. They stared at her with glazed confusion.
“We’re going home,” Rebecca announced.
“Leave me alone,” a girl murmured. Now was Rebecca’s turn to be scorned as the ghost. “Go away.”
“It’s not far now,” Rebecca told them. “We’re saved.”
Beckwith stirred. “Did they come for us?”
“Yes. One.”
“One?”
“That’s all we need.”
Beckwith struggled to sit. “Where is he?”
Rebecca pointed at the periphery where Sam sat perched on a rock. Beckwith squinted blindly. “Don’t you see her?”
“Her?”
“Sam.”
Beckwith’s head slumped. “Ah, Rebecca.”
Her hackles went up, and she almost challenged him. But the girls were all looking at her with a poor, crazy Jane look, and for a moment, Rebecca doubted her sanity again. Sam’s image wavered. Her forehead began to open. Then Rebecca recovered.
“My phantom other.” She smiled at them. “I’ve got a sixth sense for this now.” Off in the distance, Sam gave a hook ’em Longhorns sign like Jake had once taught her. She and Rebecca were a team now. Together they could pull this off. “I know the way out.”
“There is no way out,” Beckwith muttered. “The cave closed us in.”
“Trust me.”
“Don’t torment us, Rebecca.”
“Get up, Ian.” She could call him that now. She could go into their worlds. Hers was safe. “I know the way.”
“How do you know?” said Beckwith.
“I remember,” she told him.
“Remember what? We didn’t come this way.”
Rebecca stood. “Wake up,” she said to them. “You’re going home.”
There was a cookstove in a mule bag with some food. Rooting through what little remained, Rebecca settled on the hot chocolate powder for starters. While her little tribe drank that, she would get a pot of noodles boiling. Sugar and carbs, that would get them on their feet. Hope would keep them going.
“Fetch me some water,” she called to Sam, but caught herself before saying the name. The girls gave Rebecca that look again. “Anyone?” she said. “Anyone? Well, never mind, you all just get yourselves ready. I’ll get it myself.”
Carrying a clutch of water bottles and a big pot, she took a slippery path down to the water’s edge. This time the river was in a killing mood. There was no seduction to it, no sweet temptations. It bellowed at her, and snatched away two of the bottles. It tried everything in its power to drag her in, but Rebecca escaped with her containers filled, and climbed back to camp.
Beckwith was standing. Girls were grumbling and staggering around, getting their blood circulating. “I see some serious bad hair out there, ladies,” Rebecca said. “Don’t you worry, though. A hot bath and a trip to the mall and you’ll be yourselves again.”
She lit the stove.
More and more was coming back to her. Wherever they were, Sam would guide them out. There were bound to be settlements ahead. People would take them in and feed them and pass them along. The elevator pods would float them up and out of the darkness. The doors would open. The sun would paint their faces. The sun! That ancient thing.
Rebecca lit the stove. The blue flame caught with a roar, silencing the girls’ complaints. One by one, they came closer and squatted down to share the light. Faith, thought Rebecca. Our night will pass.
49
On his first attempt to leave the dream, Ike surfaced into the middle of a bloody sacrifice. A gang of big men—Polynesians, to judge by their features—were cutting off his arm. Cannibals, he guessed. Surgeons, possibly. Or something in between. Apparently they thought he was in a coma, or else they had no anesthesia to spare.
The pain astonished him. He wanted to run from it. But suffering is the child of ignorance, and so he met it head-on with a bardo prayer for that gap between living and dying. When I am chased by snow, rain, wind, and darkness, may I receive the clear, divine eye of wisdom. This worked for a few minutes.
Back and forth, the wood saw bucked on his arm bone. The men had never done anything like this before, he could tell by their sweat and anger. Then one of them noticed Ike’s eyes watching them, and he gave a startled shout. His companions dropped their knives and tools and crossed themselves. Taking another look at his arm, Ike decided this was not the best time and place for his reentry into the world, and lowered himself back into his long meditation.
His heart rate slowed. He returned to old riddles and koans.
Does one dream infinite dreams in an infinite night? Or can you really wake? And how would you know you weren’t still dreaming?
On his second attempt, Ike surfaced to find a river of fossils flowing below him. It surged past in a glittering tumble of shells, fins, and delicate ribs, very pretty. Then he heard the clickety-clack of rails and felt the sway of travel, and realized that he was on his back on a flatcar riding through a tunnel. The fossils were not beneath him but overhead, embedded in the ceiling rock. A hundred million years of bygone life muscled by. He closed his eyes to them and returned to his contemplation.
The dark side of the moon is not really dark. Half its life it spends in sunshine. What is written where our blindness cannot see?
The third time he broke t
o the surface, Ike felt a knife at his throat. The rail car was still rocking him from side to side. Either the train ride was very long, or only a few minutes had passed.
Keeping his eyes shut, he listened to the knife’s owner damning him in a foreign tongue. It was easy to read his fear and loathing. The man thought he was killing the devil.
The assassin’s intention was noble, but flawed. As Ike knew, the angel could not be killed, only contained. That was the message he needed to relay to the surface world. It was imperative that the colonies be dismantled, that every man, woman, and child depart, and the depths be sealed. Mankind had strayed into the forest of a dangerous beast. If someone inadvertently freed the beast, catastrophe would follow. The angel had to be left in isolation, deep, away from the sun.
Ike opened his eyes, meaning to explain these strange realities to the assassin. But his hoarse whisper only alarmed the man, tripping him into a frenzy of Allahs and oaths. His knife rose to plunge into Ike’s chest.
Ike had no choice but to kill his would-be killer. At the speed of pure thought, he willed his right hand to make a lethal thrust. It was a good tactic that would have beat the knife neatly…if only his right hand still existed. Unfortunately the Polynesians had removed his entire arm. In short, his counterattack was a figment of his imagination. Unchecked, the knife sped down. He watched to see how deep the blade would go.
To the surprise of both, the blade skipped sideways, with a spark, on his breastbone. Ike had suspected his body might be fossilizing to some slight degree, but this was the first hard proof. The assassin recovered. Up went his knife again, and this time he meant to go for the guts.
So be it, thought Ike. There was not one thing he could do to ward away death. All his hard-earned revelations were for naught. The world was going to have to do without his warning.
At that instant, however, a slender shape loomed behind the assassin. A hand appeared under the man’s chin, and took a firm grip. The assassin’s head whipped sideways, and the old rule bore out. Where the head goes, the body follows, in this case off the train and into the darkness.