by Steven James
“There’s only one way to make sure no one can locate you when you’re marked with those nanobot trackers, and I couldn’t have someone following my every move, now, could I?”
“Are you telling me that you . . . ?”
“Yes. As they say, ‘In the Country of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king.’”
“Wait—what?”
“It’s a line from a philosopher back in the sixteenth century, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. H. G. Wells referred to it in one of his stories.”
“I think I might know which one.”
He must have found out that Alysha told you that story.
But how?
Well, he communicated with Tane during that hypnotism session. Maybe he can tell what other people are thinking too.
“How’s your shoulder, Daniel?”
“Honestly, it’s pretty sore.”
“Give it some time.”
“I will.”
“It’s good to see your parents could make it.”
“Marly Weathers paid for them to fly down.”
“That was generous.”
“Yes,” I say. “It was.”
He uses his flashlight to point out a few thick roots bulging across the trail and we step over them.
“Do you know who Marly is?” I ask him.
“Not for certain.”
I hold up the tile that the boy handed to me. “What about Sam?”
“I’m not so sure they aren’t the same person.”
I let that sink in.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Maybe I’d suspected it earlier, at least subconsciously, but either way, it could help explain how everything fits together.
He goes on, “I have my suspicions. It would need to be someone with money, influence, and an agenda.”
“But to pull all this off? How?”
“When you have enough money, you don’t need to be good at everything. You just need to be able to afford the people who are.”
“Like you, with recruitment?”
“I suppose.”
We have to duck under a tree branch that forks out above the trail.
I still don’t know where he’s taking me.
“Malcolm, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“Yes?”
“Yesterday, Tane told me about how you fought that man in L.A. He said he’d seen the guy fight before and he was good, but that you handled him no problem.”
“Okay.”
“So how did Poehlman and Sergei capture you at the facility in Atlanta?”
“I thought it might lead me to Petra.”
“You thought—wait. So you let yourself get taken?” I process that. “But you let them torture you for the rest of the day.”
“I needed to find Petra before I could let Tane know where she was. When they first brought me in they wouldn’t tell me. So, I had to let them . . . well.”
“So, letting Tane know about her—are you one of us?”
“Everyone’s a virtuoso at something,” he says, echoing what Alysha told me the other day.
I wonder if he taught her that saying.
Or if she taught it to him.
“Are there more of us out there?”
“Probably. And as long as the right environmental cues come along, we’ll find them.”
“The honeybee factor.”
“Yes.”
I still have a lot of questions, but two top the list: Is all of this paranormal or just the interplay of nature and nurture—a simple scientific explanation we haven’t been able to decipher yet? And, of course, will the thread snap for good?
“Are we going crazy, Malcolm? Are we going to end up like Jess and Liam?”
“Even Jess and Liam didn’t end up like Jess and Liam. At least not forever. Not for sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gatlinburg Holdings. Their work in helping stop mental illness in adolescents. They’re making huge strides. The future isn’t as bleak as it used to be. I think a lot of answers lie just around the corner.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“That’ll depend a little on your parents. A little on you, on how involved you want to be. There are plenty of people who can be helped by your gift.”
Gifts.
Curses.
Blessings.
“In one of my blurs,” I say, “it seemed like someone was pulling on the other end of the sling while I was trying to get it in the attic. Is there any reason you can think of for that?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
Great.
Maybe the thread has already snapped.
Ahead of us, on the edge of Malcolm’s light, I see the outline of an old log cabin. It looks small. Maybe only one room.
Tiff mentioned something about cabins in the area.
Malcolm tips his light toward it. “That’s it. That’s where we’re going.”
“So, when my grandpa died back when I was five, it really affected me. Is that what started all this? The trauma? Is that what planted the seed for my blurs? The bats chasing me all these years?”
“There’s still a lot we don’t know. Life is mystery and not equations. When you think you’ve got something pinned down, well, then, you can be pretty sure something else is going to come along pretty quickly and unpin it.”
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
“To Grandpa.”
“Well, maybe all this was a way of telling you that that’s okay.”
He stops at the porch.
The park service has posted a warning out front not to enter the cabin, but Malcolm ignores it and presses against the door, which protests with a creak but finally opens.
I follow him inside.
The air is thick with the smell of old wood and dust.
“What is this place?”
“C’mere.” He walks to the fireplace where an old black and white photograph hangs askew on the wall. “There really was a boy who died up there in the Estoria Inn. It was back in the 1940s. You see that photo?”
A boy, maybe ten years old, is standing beside a stern-looking woman. The Estoria lies in the background.
“Look carefully.”
I do.
And I see that it’s the boy who appeared to me in Waxford’s office. The one who showed me how to reach out and get the handcuff key—which ended up being the secret to saving us all.
“Have you ever seen this photo before?” Malcolm asks.
I remember the book of haunted places in Tennessee. The photos in it.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. How did you know it was here?”
“Research,” he says somewhat cryptically.
“What happened to him?”
“It’s not completely clear, but from what I’ve been able to uncover, he was staying with his mother in room 113 when he died.”
“Died or was killed?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
“Dr. Carrigan told us it was just a folk tale.”
“Sometimes the truth turns into a folk tale. Sometimes it’s the other way around.”
“So when I saw him earlier, was he a ghost or a blur?”
“He may have been both. I’ll be in touch.” He winks with his remaining eye. “Enjoy the fireflies.”
And then he slips out the door, turns off his flashlight, and disappears into the night.
It’s dark now and I have to use my cellophane-filtered light to follow the trail.
Fireflies are all around me.
Starting to find their rhythm.
As I make my way back to my friends, I try to process things.
How does Malcolm’s story tie in with mine? How did my mind know, on the night when I was hit by the truck, that I would need to follow the bats there at the Estoria?
Maybe it’s that bigger plan Nicole talks about.
Paranormal. Supernatural. Maybe even God givin
g me a glimpse into the future.
Mystery and not equation.
We want the second, we’re handed the first.
As I get closer, I hear Mia and Kyle talking about Snookums and a coyote and the perils of freedom versus the security of chains. I don’t quite follow.
“I still can’t believe you called your turtle ‘Snookums,’” he says to her.
“Just be glad I don’t call you ‘Snookums.’”
“Believe me, I am.”
Nicole notices my light. “That you, Daniel?”
“Yeah.”
Alysha mentions that the guy in the story of the Country of the Blind faced the same choice as the coyote and Snookums and someone asks her to tell the story, but she says later might be better.
I enter the circle.
“Everything okay?” Nicole asks. “Who was that?”
Right now doesn’t feel like the right time to get into everything.
“Just a ranger showing me around.”
“Oh. Well, come here.” She pats a spot beside her on the boulder. “Sit down and watch the show.”
Sam watched the fireflies blink on and off, all together, all at once. Thousands of them communicating in some mysterious, unseen, inexplicable way.
To Sam—who also went by the name “Marly Weathers” when necessary—the fireflies seemed to represent what’d been accomplished over the last few years: the center in Tennessee, the firm in Philadelphia, the facility in Atlanta.
All in sync.
All the pieces coming together at once.
Searching for a way to turn the hallucinations into something positive.
Designing the tile patterns of the hallways of the facility under Centennial Olympic Park as a way of testing and connecting with the people who were brought there.
And, of course, stopping Dr. Waxford.
Like the Chinese farmer’s story.
Curses into blessings.
It’d been difficult to accomplish it all in such a short span of time, especially keeping things a secret from friends and family, but dedication had paid off. That, and the passion to make great things happen.
So that Jess and Liam could be helped.
And the others too.
And you.
A familiar voice called from beside the stream, “Hey, are you coming?”
“I’ll be right there,” Sam replied.
So now, things could move forward once again.
They still needed to figure out exactly what caused the hallucinations, and how better to interpret them to use them for good.
And then there was the ongoing search for more virtuosos.
A new chapter.
New beginnings.
Sam went to join the others and took a seat on the boulder next to the senator, the one who’d unwittingly provided the trust fund that had paid for everything.
“It’s good to have you back,” the senator said.
“It’s good to be back, Dad,” Sam told him.
Then Petra leaned her head against her father’s shoulder and they sat together just upstream from their new friends and watched the fireflies blink in synchronicity with each other.
On.
And off.
And on once again.
Bringing brilliant symmetry to the night.
THANKS TO
Courtney Miller, Anna Rosenwong, Eden Huhn, Alex McReynolds, Katrina Johnson, John-Phillip Abner, Justin Cockrell, Tate Luck, Annie Park, Dr. John-Paul Abner, Dr. Clay Runnels, Pam Johnson, Trinity Huhn, Liesl Huhn, Dr. Paul Kelley, Cleon and Joyce Glaze, and Dr. Todd Huhn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Emily Hand
Steven James has worked as a professional storyteller, camp program director, wilderness guide, and museum educator. Over the years he has taught storytelling and creative writing around the world. These days he enjoys being a full-time novelist.
Quick trivia: He has never owned a turtle named Snookums or a basketball named Alfie. He lives in eastern Tennessee and has seen the synchronous fireflies in the Smoky Mountains.
And yes, they are remarkable.