by Jesse Jordan
James slid the hard ball of earth from his pocket and gently set it atop his bedside table. He leaned down until he was only inches from it, but just as he was about to call Dink’s name, he stopped. Was this okay? Was he supposed to call Dink only for emergencies, like 911? James sat there, inclined forward, mouth slightly open, weighing the arguments, when the doorbell rang.
He knew who it was. How, he couldn’t say, but he knew. He jumped up, wanting to get to the door before Mom or Dad, before he remembered she was at a sales conference in Indianapolis and he was at Saturday golf with his boss. Still, need propelled him, and James was at the door before the bell’s echo left the room.
“You wanna come in?”
“I thought we could go for a walk,” Ezra said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
James jammed his feet in his sneakers and pulled the door closed with a thunk.
“Which way?” James said.
“Your choice.”
“Okay.” Who cares? “We’ll go this way.”
They walked east and Ezra smiled as he went, his posture steel as usual, his hands locked behind his back.
They walked that way in silence for a few blocks. Sparse midday traffic and the smell of newly cut grass surrounded them. Children went this way on bikes, that way on skateboards, and in front yards and driveways they tumbled and wrestled and threw balls and drew with chalk and played make-believe.
He’s waiting for me to speak. James realized that the times of “How did you get here?” and “What can I do for you, James?” were over. Down to serious work.
“I had this thought yesterday,” James said as they turned south. “I was watching the news, and there was this story about all these messed-up people in the nuclear fallout zone in Kashmir. They’re all like sick or old or crippled, y’know, ’cause like everyone who could leave already did. And I was looking at ’em, and so many of these people, they couldn’t do anything. They were . . . helpless, y’know? Trapped. And I realized there are only two kinds of people—the strong and the weak.”
Ezra’s head inclined, and James thought he saw an encouraging smile there.
“That’s right, isn’t it? I mean, being good or bad matters; that’s not it . . . but if you’re good and weak or bad and weak, what’s the difference?”
Ezra nodded, and his smile was all patriarchal pride. “That does seem to be the way of things, doesn’t it?”
James didn’t say anything more on it. He nodded and turned away so that Ezra wouldn’t see the bloom of satisfaction.
“I thought we’d try something new today,” Ezra said.
“What?”
“I thought we’d visit Taloon.”
James stopped midstep, turning wide eyes to Ezra. “What?”
“Taloon. Would you like to see it?”
Is this a test? “Yes?” James looked around and realized where they were. The ChocoMalt factory loomed over them like a bully, only twenty-five feet away. It’s not an accident that we came to this place. “Why are we here?”
“You led us here, James.”
Thinking back, James felt this was sort of true. He’d decided they should go east, but at every turn since, it seemed like they’d organically turned together, as if they both knew where they were going.
“You can tell it’s a special place, can’t you?”
“I feel something.”
“It’s a root,” Ezra said, making his way to the mess of bricks. “That’s how I think of it, at least. An interconnected organic highway. Our world, your world, probably others, and these roots run everywhere.” They approached a door which had long ago been boarded over and locked. The old wood looked freshly splintered, and the lock hung limp and purposeless by the hook of its catch. “I told you before that Taloon is not in another place, per se. Geographically, well, who can say? When we are here—anywhere here—we touch Taloon, just as the ground touches the tree. But the connection is strongest at the roots. And this place”—Ezra shoved the great iron door and it swung open like a coffin lid—“is one big root.”
It was somehow more barren than he’d expected but also brighter. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it’d been that night. Sunlight oozed in through the myriad cracks and shattered windows. The gray floor was covered with shavings of orange rust, and when James looked up, he saw the metal pipes and ductwork above rotting like a corpse. It’s alive like a root. James realized at once that this was what it really meant for a place to be haunted. The history of this building still lived in it. Everything that had once happened was still happening. Ghosts now, the workers rushed around, manned their conveyor belts, had lunch, and gossiped. This place was both dead and alive in its stillness.
Then a bird burst from its perch above and James jumped like a shotgun.
Ezra steadied him with a soft hand to the forearm as James tried to play it off.
“I suppose this is as good a place as any,” Ezra said.
James stood, waiting. Was he supposed to do something? Was there going to be an incantation? Should he kneel? Sit Indian-style?
Ezra held his hands out, and after a moment, James clasped them. “Your mind and your body are one, James, but it is your mind that will drive this journey. You’ll follow with me this time. The key is to see. You must truly see that there are more worlds. You must see Taloon. You must see this nothing between us and step through it.”
“What nothing?”
“Sight, belief, ignorance, fear, what have you. Truly, there is nothing between our worlds. Except for awareness. Now, I think you’ll find it easier to concentrate if you’re not distracted by visual stimuli, so if you wouldn’t mind closing your eyes.” James felt Ezra’s grip tighten, and he redoubled his as well.
“Listen to me, James. We are not standing in Stone Grove, Illinois, in the United States of America on the planet Earth. We are standing here. Right here. Everything moves; everything vibrates. It creates a song, just like a violin. When it vibrates in different ways, it creates different notes, and the same is true of the world around us. There are other worlds happening right here, right where you stand, but you can’t hear them. You don’t know how to listen to their vibrations. But I can show you.”
James knew what Ezra wanted without a word, as one would by the slight pressure from a perfect dance partner’s hand. James reached out as he had with Mr. Worthington, though this time he felt no control, no freedom. Instead of feeling like a visitor walking freely through a museum, James felt locked in a theater. He sensed that he could see this of Ezra and no more.
Very good, James. The voice boomed in megachurch surround, but Ezra’s mouth did not move. Now listen. Do you hear Taloon? Do you feel it? Follow me.
Find it.
Find it.
Yes.
James felt pressure against every single centimeter of his body and then a dissipation, as if he was lowered into water—naked and flat against the surface, so that his whole body passed through at once—only there was no residual effect, no moisture, so maybe it was actually like coming out of water. It was happening, moving over him, and then it wasn’t, and the room seemed to change. The air around him was charged: warm and kinetic, filled with the soft pulsation of movement, like those blue porch lights that burn up moths.
“And now we are on the other side of the record. Open your eyes.”
No, we’re in the factory. This isn’t real. The wide-open, alien landscape before him opened in thin, horizontal strips, like holes in worn-out jeans, and in the spaces he saw the walls of the factory, the glassless windows and the rotting ductwork.
No, James. Stay here. He felt Ezra’s hand on his, warm and slightly sweaty.
This isn’t real.
This is Taloon. It’s just as real. One is not true and the other false. You’ve traveled; you’re just in a different place. Relax. James squeezed his hand tighter. Relax and see.
James looked away from the rips through which the factory tried to intrude and focused instead on the world b
efore him, and as he did, the holes dissolved into Taloon. My god, the Moons. There were three Moons, each so large it threatened to fill the sky itself. They didn’t vary at all in size or appearance, and all at once James realized they seemed to vibrate slightly, then to sway together into one Moon, then back into three. It wasn’t that there were three of them, but rather there was one, viewed as though through the eyes of a drunk. The effect reminded James most of looking at the Moon and then crossing your eyes. He found it equally unpleasant. The mountains in the distance shimmered and stirred, rising and decreasing in size and sliding just the tiniest bit back and forth, as if looking for the exact spot. The ground wriggled beneath his feet, though James felt no movement. It looked like the land itself was made of a billion worms teeming over each other.
I’m gonna throw up. Even the quality of light seemed uncertain. A swirling gray-purple like stormy twilight shone on everything. James felt something pulling him back, as if someone had a hold of the back of his belt. He didn’t like this place. Motion sickness grabbed him, denials howled in the background of his mind, and the rents appeared again, only this time he was only too happy to focus on his own world. The tugging became irresistible and James went with it, stepping back. And as he did the fissures opened completely, Taloon vanished like a puff of smoke out an open window, and James was standing in the ChocoMalt factory in Stone Grove, Illinois, on the planet Earth.
James felt a pain in his left hand and looked down to see he still held Ezra’s hand in his own, squeezing as if it was his only tether to safety. He let go, and his knuckles screamed in relief and pain. The nausea passed, though he had to look down and make sure the ground was stationary as he heaved great big lungfuls.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
James rushed back through the door outside. He leaned against the brick and breathed and breathed, and in his mind there was a howling white noise. He closed his eyes and breathed. He opened his eyes and catalogued the road, the trees, the sky, and he breathed, and Ezra walked out of the factory smiling and said, “Very good, James. Very good.”
James wanted to ask him if it was real, but he knew that was stupid.
It was real. It was as real as anything else is.
“I . . .” James was shaken in a way he’d never known possible. “I have to go.” He felt . . . small. Insignificant. And in that sensation was a burning terror that threatened to suck the breath right out of his lungs. “I have to go,” he repeated, hustling away, heading back home.
James did not look back; he didn’t care if Ezra was following. He just wanted to be away from this place. He walked hard and fast, his head down, watching the weeds and crabgrass disappear beneath his feet, watching it give way to curb and asphalt, then a horn honking and a woman’s voice and curb and grass once again.
That other place held him. Ghosts of that spastic Moon burned through to this world. He saw the ground moving, teeming, saw the grass of Stone Grove, saw sidewalk and smelled the metal-ozone air of Taloon all at once.
“Hey!”
The single sound cut Taloon off dead. Footfalls rushing toward him.
“Hey, faggot!”
James looked up. He recognized the one in front instantly. Kevin Schroeder—Nick’s brother. Nineteen or twenty, James wasn’t sure, he was a larger, nearly identical version of Nick. And there, trailing just behind him, were the twins, John and Pat Schroeder, redheaded and monstrous. It was one of the twins who’d yelled to him, but James had no idea which.
“You James Salley?” John or Pat said as the three of them filled the sidewalk all around him. The immediacy of the ass-whupping zapped James back to the moment, back to Stone Grove. His hand went to his pocket and found nothing. For a moment he wondered where Dink could be, before the image of the lifeless homunculus lying on his bedside table played across his brain like a terrible announcement.
Kevin leaned in, and James smelled cigarettes and cologne on his clothes. “Guess what, faggot?”
But James was not allowed an opportunity to guess, as whichever twin it was that was standing to his right hooked a fist into his gut. James felt his belly lock up, and he doubled over, his knees scraping the sidewalk as he made contact. The twin on the other side looped a punch down into James’s temple, and it snapped his head toward the street, where James saw Nick.
Nick sat in the passenger seat of the Schroeders’ old Kia, one eye and the corner of his mouth dark and red-purple. He looked back at James with no expression—seemed to be neither enjoying this beating nor particularly bothered by it. Just someone else getting their medicine, his gaze seemed to say; sorry, bud, but nobody’s there for me, either.
Kevin dragged the heel of his shoe down James’s scalp, turning his head so that he no longer saw Nick, only the pitiless, gray sidewalk. A kick stabbed his ribs and another punch snaked its way past his blocking forearms, splitting his top lip against his teeth. You can control them! Make them stop! Do it!
Please!
Stop them! You can! You can!
I can’t! Please! Please stop. Please, please, please, please—
A soccer kick from one of the twins caught James on the jaw, almost exactly where he’d hit Nick, and his view of the world irised down to a pinprick, through which he saw the brothers begin to back away, and then he blinked, and though it felt as if only a second had passed, the brothers and their car were gone and a dog was barking. Close by. James craned back to see an upside-down, white Maltese screaming at him as a middle-aged woman in a purple swishy jogging suit looked on, worrying her hands.
“Are you okay?” the woman said.
James pushed himself to his feet, and the world swung and pulsed. He felt his face—some blood, definite bruising. Nothing felt damaged, though. “I’m okay.”
She shook her head, and some of her silver hair came loose. “You don’t look okay. Maybe I should call someone.”
“I’m okay.” He touched his lip and electric pain shot through him. “I’m gonna go home now.”
“I really feel like I should call someone.”
“I’m fine!” The words sounded like a growl in James’s head, and the woman stiffened as if struck. “Sorry.” The Maltese was really barking now. Shrieking, pulling against its leash as the woman stepped back. “Sorry.”
But she was gone, running the other way with her elbows out, torso on a swivel as the Maltese ran ahead of her, barking happily, done as done could be with that boy on the sidewalk.
James walked home probing the bruises at his temple and jaw. He worked his tongue over the inside of his lip—iron-tinged, swollen, and split. He saw Taloon. He saw Nick in the car. He saw the sneaker coming toward his face. Over and over. Over and over.
He realized as he opened the front door that he’d erected no narrative to explain his face, no excuse to mitigate his mother’s inescapable overreaction, and he froze, dreading the realization, her thin hands turning his face to examine it, demanding to know what happened. James wanted to cry out, “Leave me alone!” But there was no one there. He went into the kitchen and found a note on the table.
Hey, Lovie—
Back from the conference. Your dad and I went to Chili’s. Call if you want us to bring you home anything.
—Love, Mom
James’s relief crashed as soon as it peaked. He felt weight all over; something pressing down on him at a cellular level. There was a great big something there—right there—and it crushed James Salley as he stood in his kitchen looking at a note from his parents.
James grabbed a Coke and climbed the stairs. He looked into his room. The ball of dirt was exactly where he’d left it. He dropped a massive sigh of annoyance as he drifted into the bathroom.
James turned on the light and inspected his face. Not too bad, all things considered. He pressed the cold metal can to his chin and lip before opening it and swallowing a big mouthful. It burned the split in his lip something terrible, and James tried to pour the next swallow into the side of his mouth.
; Over the next hour, James sucked on a dishrag filled with ice and filled the bathroom sink with cold water to soak his face. He stared in the mirror and inspected the discoloration of blood and flesh and replayed the beating—no, not replayed, relived. He was on the sidewalk again, feeling the knuckles on muscle and bone again, feeling teeth and lip meet, feeling his own helplessness. James watched from above as the James on the sidewalk turtled up, and he screamed at him, Do something! He told him that Ezra said he should be able to do anything he wanted to these guys—and he saw Ezra and Taloon and the Schroeders everywhere around him. Looking back at him. And James knew that he was small, that he was going to be crushed. He knew that he would never be what Ezra promised.
11. The Magnificent Dorian Delaney
The alarm clock emitted its two-tone electronic grind and James swatted it, wondering why on earth he’d set the alarm and coming back with the Post-it note he’d applied two days ago: DORIAN—NPR—AROUND 10:45.
From ten o’clock on, he kept the radio tuned to National Public Radio, 91.5, afraid he’d miss it. He was wary of misunderstandings and mishearings and general mishaps.
James sat at his desk, doing something he’d found himself doing lately. He would draw a man—a young man—and then slowly, adding a few lines and hairs and folds at a time, make the man age, make him old and ugly.
Finally, at 10:47 that morning, as James slurped a mug of microwaved coffee he’d pilfered from the extinct pot in the kitchen, he heard the man with the soft, soft public radio voice say that next they would hear the singing of a very special young girl. What followed were three minutes of weather and traffic, then reports on a recently found mass grave of Tibetan monks and on two hundred dead dolphins that washed up in Malibu, followed by a request for pledges and then back to the show.
“I’m joined this morning by Dorian Delaney. So glad to have you here, Dorian.”