Orphans of Wonderland

by Greg F. Gifune

  Blinking Novak’s blood from his eyes, Joel turned back to Simpson.

  The son of a bitch was still smiling. His free hand reached down to his crotch and gleefully rubbed the erection pressing against his slacks.

  Those eyes…dark and horrific…looking down at him…inside him as a piano plays in the distance…

  “The things I’ve seen, Joel, the things I’ve shown you through skies torn open like wounds in Heaven,” Simpson said, his speech slurred from the blood trickling into his mouth. “Fires burning and alive in the ruined minds of geniuses and fools, starving children and bloated kings on thrones of pride and lust. Liars and prophets, slaughter, slavery and exterminations on scales unimaginable, blood running in the streets, butchers loose in the West, the killers of children unleashed in the East, the rise of night, the fall of light. Each and every glorious moment, every unanswered prayer, every tear, every breath. I remember them all.”

  What do you remember, Joel?

  “I remember you,” Joel said. “You, Father. I remember you.”

  “As above, so below.” Simpson began to laugh as he opened his arms in welcome. “Come, child. Fulfill your destiny. Send me through the door. Open it wide for all that needs to come through.”

  Joel shot him in the throat.

  Simpson slumped to the floor, a gurgling, bloody mass writhing about on the rug. Straddling him, Joel began to hit him with the butt of the 9mm. Again and again, until he had no strength left and there was little more to the man’s skull than a frothy mess.

  As if in a trance, Joel stumbled over to the windows.

  Drenched in blood, Trent lay on his back in the destroyed window frames, his upper body bent back and dangling out in the storm.

  Carefully, Joel pried him free of the jagged glass, pulled him inside, and together, they slid to the floor.

  “Trent,” he whispered, holding him in his arms. But he was already gone.

  Images drifted through his mind, disjointed and muddled yet comforting somehow. Trent, much younger, his Mohawk spiked and defiant, his Dead Boys T-shirt torn and a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he smiled that rebel grin of his. And it was that grin Joel thought of most. So alive and maybe even happy, with no idea what it would all lead to.

  Children…all of us…children…

  Joel began to cry, and once he started, it felt as if he’d never stop, that nothing would ever be all right again.

  Some time later, Joel let Trent go, gently laying the body down beneath the broken windows. When he stood up, he saw Simpson’s wife standing in the doorway to the office.

  She stared at him with dead eyes, her wrists freshly slashed and dripping blood. “Resut,” she said softly.

  To come awake…awakening…from a dream…

  “Magic is real,” she muttered. “Forward or backward, makes no difference.” She looked around at the carnage before her, completely unaffected, then turned and shuffled off down the hallway. “Time is a palindrome.”

  Before she’d reached the end of the hallway, she collapsed.

  Covered in blood himself, Joel grabbed Novak’s shotgun and moved back through the house, numb and as if in a dream. His mind could take no more, and yet, it somehow was managing just that. He wanted to sit in a corner and die, to close his eyes and forget all this, to make it stop. He wanted Taylor. He wanted peace. But that was not possible. Not now. Not yet.

  Outside, he moved through the snow and cold wind blowing in off the choppy Atlantic, and trudged across the yard and what was now five inches or more of accumulation. When he got to the back building, the door was open.

  The small shortwave radio station was outfitted with an array of automated broadcasting equipment. On a slowly moving reel, an artificial female voice repeated number sequences and phrases in monotone, interspersed with strange sound waves and brief clips of music.

  In the boathouse near the dock, Joel found containers of gasoline.

  Later, he stood outside the gates and watched it all burn a while, the flames oddly beautiful in an otherwise snow-covered world.

  By the time authorities arrived, Joel was gone.

  Like he’d never been there at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Music echoes through the forest. A piano sits alone amid the trees. No one plays it, none of the black or white keys move, yet there is music, beautiful music, peaceful and magical, as nearby other sounds drift from the darker parts of the forest. Screams of those dying and long dead…and those being born…

  Something hangs from a tree. Large and bulbous, a cocoon of sorts, it is slick and wet and dripping a thick mucus. Something within it writhes and fights to break free, struggling against its prison to be born into this forest of lies and darkness.

  Above, an impossibly black rainbow cuts the gray sky.

  Joel stands at the very edge of the strange woods, watching and listening and trying to understand. He is afraid but he does not run. There is no point because it is he that is trapped within that giant cocoon. The thing struggling so fiercely to free itself is as much a piece of him as the little boy watching it all unfold.

  A single feather falls from the treetops, floating and dancing on the breeze as it descends to earth. When it lands Joel recognizes it for what it is: a piece of a larger whole, a headdress perhaps, sacred and forgotten. He crouches to pick it up, but it is covered in the blood and misery of ghosts.

  It is then, as he stands and backs away from the strange feather, that he sees blood pouring from the sides of the piano onto the forest floor, covering the piles of scorched human bones scattered about at its legs.

  The piano continues to play, unabated, its beautiful music unaware or full of callous disregard for what is happening all around it.

  “Genocide,” the forest whispers. “That which was before, is now, and shall be forever and ever.”

  Joel closes his eyes, sees Lonnie dying in the street…

  Trent dead on the office carpet…

  Dorsey in his bed in a pool of vomit and blood, dead from an overdose, an empty bottle of booze lying on the floor just beyond his outstretched hand…

  Sal killed in a car accident, his body thrown and dead on the side of the road, eyes open but seeing nothing, the car wrapped around a nearby tree, mangled and twisted, smoking metal and shattered plastic…

  One by one…

  Every life, every story moves on. Forward or back, makes no difference.

  When Joel opens his eyes, the music has stopped and the piano is gone, replaced instead with a small black-and-white television. A dated commercial plays, something with a stereotypical 1950s housewife flitting about a kitchen in her heels and pearls…

  Forward or back, makes no difference.

  And then he’s pedaling his bicycle… Faster and faster, he pedals along the edge of the forest, the big black car not far behind in pursuit…

  Time is a palindrome.

  A screech of tires, a struggle, and his bike is left in the middle of the street, the rear tire still spinning as he watches from the backseat of the car…watches it all fade into the distance…watches himself fade into the distance…

  Blood…so much blood…spraying and splashing everywhere…

  The cocoon has broken; the butterflies are free, exploding from it in a cloud of wings and crimson motion…like a horrific dream turned loose…

  Before the silence, the awful silence that skulks toward him in that horrible room, the world turns blindingly white as the screams come.

  The screams of little boys and girls lost, orphans all, huddled in the shadows of Wonderland.

  He came awake in unfamiliar surroundings and immediately bolted upright in bed, thrashing about in the darkness despite the pain savaging his shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” Taylor said, grabbing and holding him close. “Baby, it’s okay.” When Joel
felt her soft, warm hands on him and remembered where he was, he felt himself begin to decompress and calm down. Slowly, he lay back into the pillows and sighed. “Sorry, I…”

  Billy had done exactly as he’d asked and taken Taylor to his cabin in the woods of northern Maine. Joel had found them there just hours before, and while Billy stood watch out in the kitchen, his shotgun at the ready, Taylor had recleaned and re-dressed his wound, then convinced him to lie down with her for a while on the bed to get some rest. She’d wanted explanations, but he had none to offer yet. Instead, he’d collapsed onto the bed in Taylor’s arms and slipped into a deep sleep for the last several hours.

  “What time is it?” he asked, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Late,” she said. “After two.”

  He reached over and stroked the side of her face. He’d stripped down to a pair of boxers, and she wore only an oversize T-shirt. The rest of their clothes lay in a pile on the floor just inside the door, yet he was burning up and drenched in sweat.

  “Why is it so hot in here?”

  “Billy has the woodstove cranking,” she explained.

  Joel looked immediately to the nightstand where he’d left his gun. “The 9mm—”

  “It’s in the drawer,” Taylor said. “I didn’t want it out in the open. You know I don’t like guns, Joel. And since when do you? You don’t even have a license to be in possession of a gun; you could get in a lot trouble.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” He rolled over, swung his legs around onto the floor and yanked open the drawer to reveal the gun. He took it out, placed it on top of the nightstand, then closed the drawer.

  “You have to tell me what’s happening,” she said, crawling closer and wrapping her arms around his back. “Please, Joel. You owe Billy an explanation too. We’re frightened and confused and sitting up here like criminals hiding in the storm, waiting for you to make some sense of what’s going on. We can’t stay here forever. No one even knows we’re here, not my family or friends or even anyone from my job—no one—but sooner or later people are going to start wondering.”

  “It’s been quiet since you’ve been here?”

  “Yes, it’s been just the two of us, and it’s been positively boring.”

  He nodded but didn’t look back at her.

  “Please, Joel, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I need time,” he said softly, watching the dark windows on the far wall and the traces of black forest beyond the clearing in which the cabin had been built.

  “Time for what?”

  “To figure out what to do next. I don’t know if this is over, Taylor. It may never be.”

  “What may never be over?” she pressed. “For God’s sake, you won’t even let us take you to a doctor and you’ve got a serious wound. Who did that to you?”

  Joel rose to his feet, pulling free of her even though he didn’t want to. He drifted around the foot of the bed to the windows on the other side of the room and looked out at the forest there.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Taylor asked from behind him.

  “Just being sure no one’s out there.”

  “Joel, we’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s out here but us.”

  Maybe she’s right, he thought. Maybe it’s over in a way, or as close as it ever can be. Maybe it ended when Simpson took his last breath and died with his secrets and magic spells. Maybe now it was about moving forward and trying to forget, surviving in a world gone mad.

  He remembered shoveling snow at the house—that seemed like a lifetime ago—and wondered if he and Taylor would ever return to their home.

  Could things ever be same?

  Life is a palindrome, a story told forward or backward, makes no difference.

  “Joel, why don’t we leave in the morning, all right?” Taylor rolled over onto her back, her hands behind her head and her legs stretched out before her. “You have to see a doctor, sweetie.”

  “My shoulder’s fine for now.”

  “I’m not talking about your shoulder. You need to see a doctor. Like before.”

  He turned and looked back at her. “You think I’m crazy.”

  Taylor wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “I can’t blame you,” he said. “Maybe I am.”

  “You just need some help,” she said quietly. “This isn’t…normal, Joel. Your behavior isn’t…it’s not…”

  He moved closer to the bed and gently stroked her hair. “I’ll explain best as I can in the morning, all right? You need to know what I’ve been through and what’s happening out there.”

  She looked at him, baffled. “Out where?”

  “Try to get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I told Billy to keep watch. It’s been hours; he’s probably exhausted. I’m going to relieve him for a while so he can get some rest too.”

  “What is he keeping watch for, Joel?”

  He kissed her forehead. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Joel—”

  “I love you.”

  Taylor sighed, stroked his arm. “I love you too.”

  Joel brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, and then started toward the nightstand to retrieve the 9mm.

  “You don’t need the gun,” she said, rolling toward it. “I’ll put it in the drawer, okay? I really don’t like all these guns around. They’re scaring the shit out of me.”

  “Taylor—”

  “How did you even get Lonnie’s gun in the first place?” she asked, opening the drawer.

  “What?”

  “How did you get it?” She reached for her eyeglasses and slid them on. “Did his daughter give it to you?”

  Something deep within him tightened, clamping down on his gut. “How do you know that’s Lonnie’s gun?”

  “Huh?”

  “How do you know that’s Lonnie’s gun, Taylor?”

  She looked back at him and made a face. “You told me it was.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, sweetie, you did.”

  “I couldn’t have, because I didn’t know it was Lonnie’s gun until just now.”

  “This is ridiculous, I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His eyes dropped to her ankle and the tattoo there. A tattoo he’d once found beautiful. A monarch butterfly in all its glory, burned into her flesh.

  Shaking, he slowly looked back at the freestanding mirror in the corner.

  A triskele had been branded into the back of his shoulder.

  I got married, moved to Maine.

  “No,” he whispered, backing away.

  Only it wasn’t that simple, was it?

  Taylor moved away from the gun and rolled over onto her back. “You need help.”

  I think there’s a good chance he was Lonnie’s handler.

  “That’s where you come in, isn’t it, Taylor?”

  What the hell is a handler?

  “This isn’t about me.” She sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “This is about you and your problems. I want to help, but if you’re going to get—”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Someone who helps control us out in the real world. They influence and guide us without our realizing their connection to all this.

  “I’m your wife. What the hell kind of question is that?”

  We all have one. They come to us at various points in our lives, often beginning in childhood, but not always.

  “Who are you really?”

  They’re particularly influential in our lives during times of trauma, fear, sadness and confusion.

  “I met you right after my mother got sick,” he said, the vision of the only woman he’d ever loved blurring through his tears.

 
; They give us just enough of a nudge to send us in whatever specific direction we’re meant to go in during those times.

  Taylor stared at him. “And?”

  Joel turned and ran from the room, pushing through the door and into the kitchen, where he’d left Billy sitting at the kitchen table hours before.

  His shotgun lay on the table alongside a mug of coffee, but Billy was gone.

  He spun toward the large glass slider. Just beyond the deck, Joel saw him in the moonlight.

  Upside down, stripped naked, gutted and crucified to a tree.

  Joel lunged for the shotgun just as the entities appeared in the darkness, hundreds of them hobbling out from between the trees in a single wave, closing on the cottage and surrounding it.

  A ring of fire suddenly burst to life, encircling the cottage, and behind him, in the bedroom doorway, Taylor began to laugh.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was something wrong.

  A sudden burst of light filled the sky overhead, and the little boy realized then that he’d opened his eyes. Lying in the field, everything was so quiet. Even the breeze blowing through the trees and across the grass, it was all so different from the bad dreams, so soft and peaceful. Yet the crippling fear remained.

  All he could remember was the big black car and the bad dreams, always the bad dreams about things he couldn’t understand, barely remembered and didn’t want to think about.

  With a deep breath, the little boy got to his feet and brushed himself off.

  He looked to the road. Nothing. No one. He was alone.

  Nearby, his bicycle lay in the grass, the back wheel spinning. He’d best get home before dark. It made him feel better to think his parents were likely worried about him, though he knew they probably didn’t even know he was gone. Still, he grabbed his bike by the handlebars, pulled it upright, then climbed on. It was easier to believe what made him feel safe and secure than it was to face those things that frightened him so.

  Besides, he thought, maybe it’s just a game. Maybe I was lying in the grass, pretending to be asleep.

  Far away, on the horizon, black storm clouds were gathering, threatening to ruin an otherwise beautiful day.