The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

  There’s one trailer, and I don’t know how I know but Shreve is there, inside. I know. Of all the trailers, his is the shittiest. It looks like a Conformity soldier has half hammered in the roof, and it sits crooked on blocks. Nearby a radio blares Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can hear a man coughing. Hacking. Bringing up sputum and phlegm. Spitting.

  Hear the rhythms. A thrumming beat of a heart or a bass drum, and I’m lost because it’s Shreve maybe but Bernard too.

  I approach the trailer, scared at what I might find inside. There’s a weathered black mailbox hanging beside the door with adhesive letters spelling AN ON.

  I open the door. It gives a metallic squeal.

  Inside, a television, tuned to some reality TV show, blasts noise in the close confines. I feel like the room is shrinking, like my head is brushing the ceiling. There’s fast-food wrappers and piles of empty vodka bottles and oversized ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts and the whole place stinks of fire and bacon grease and stale cigarette smoke.

  “Shreve?”

  Move into the trailer and on the one clean bit of counter I find a piece of paper. At the top it reads Child Protective Services and below that Vigor Ferrous Cannon. As I look up from the paper I find I’m not in the trailer anymore.

  Gray cement walls and a metal door with a small, wire-crosshatched window. Turn back and there’s a shabby metal bunk bed with Shreve lying on the top bunk, whispering into a vent. I can’t make out his words but his voice is desperate, raw.

  “Shreve.”

  He starts, surprised. He looks at me strangely and then swings his legs over the side of the bunk.

  “You can’t be here. Booth’s gonna be pissed,” he says. He blinks and says, “I never hurt you.”

  “I’m here anyway. But you’re not.”

  Conversation’s slipping away from me, now that it’s happening. I don’t have control over what I’m saying, or at least what I want to say comes out wrong.

  “I’m not?” Shreve’s wearing an orange jumpsuit. “It’s prison, Ember. You never really get out.”

  “Then how do you know me?” I’m still holding the piece of paper in my hand, and Shreve’s gaze goes to it and his brow furrows.

  I hand it to him. He doesn’t look like he wants it, but he takes it anyway. Looks at it. Pain crosses his features, and he crumples the paper and throws it across the room. It bounces off a wall and rolls out the open cell door.

  Before I can stop myself, I follow it. Shreve says, “No. I don’t want you to see.”

  But I keep going. I hear him jump down from the upper bunk and follow me out.

  It’s a cellblock, and Shreve’s cell is on a metal walkway lined with doors, each one standing open. In each open door, a person stands. In the nearest, a little boy, looking very much like a younger version of Shreve. A thin, almost anorexic girl with huge eyes, staring silently. A big, beefy guy in a cowboy hat and sparkly belt buckle. An old man with white curly hair and kind eyes.

  There’s that strange guy, Norman, in a doorway but his expression isn’t the glowering one I remember from the Red Team; he’s smiling now. There’s Priest, too. And Hollis.

  All staring at Shreve, who’s come to stand beside me.

  I hear a jangling, metallic step and turn to see a man coming up the stairs to the walkway. He’s wearing a neat warden’s outfit. He stops near us and looks at Shreve.

  “There’s more in C Wing and D Wing, Shreve. Waiting to see you.”

  Confusion crosses Shreve’s face, and he looks hurt. “I’m sorry, Booth. I’m sorry.”

  Booth says nothing. Shreve walks forward to join him.

  It’s like a fog, this dream. Clouds my judgment and moves along with an interior logic all its own.

  “Wait, Shreve. Who are all these people?”

  Shreve doesn’t look at me when he says, “They’re people I’ve hurt. People I’ve let down.”

  The man Shreve calls Booth says, “Danielle and Bernard are waiting, Shreve.”

  I’m cold again and the lights dim and flicker. Danielle, Bernard, and Davies stand below us in a pool of ghostly blue light, their faces upturned toward us, white, so white, with graying lips and milky eyes. Snow-covered eyes.

  A great rhythmic booming echoes through the building, boom booom boooom. The sound of a Conformity soldier hammering to get in.

  Shreve shakes, racked with sobs. Want to grab him, fold him in my arms to get him to stop, but something in this interior landscape keeps me from touching him. Maybe it’s my own reluctance to open myself to him; maybe it’s his natural defenses. We’re in the cellblock of his mind, and he calls the shots.

  Bernard, his skin so pale, raises an arm and slowly extends his finger, pointing. Like the needle of the compass, he swings around until he’s pointing behind him toward the shadows down the length of the cellblock, which now stretches into infinity.

  The shadows move, shambling forward.

  Thousands of people, moving forward out of the shadows. All staring at Shreve.

  Boom boom boom.

  The dead from the attack on the campus. The Conformity soldier’s dead.

  Damn. This kid is drowning in a sea of guilt and remorse. How he can even get up in the morning, I don’t know.

  But that’s why I’m here. I’m here to wake him up.

  Shudder and break through the invisible bonds that hold me. The invisible trolley track that has kept me, inside Shreve’s mind, from doing what I would. Takes all my effort to raise my arm and touch his shoulder.

  “You’ve got to wake up, Shreve. These people aren’t your responsibility.”

  “No. No … I don’t deserve to be free. I don’t deserve it …”

  “It’s not your fault! You don’t have to—”

  He turns, face contorted with fury. “You don’t know shit,” he says, and he raises his hand, fingers splayed.

  I’m surprised to see that, in his mind, Shreve has six fingers to a hand. But it’s all I can take in before the percussive blast sends me flying away from him, in the empty air over the floor of the cellblock, falling.

  And then I’m out and opening my eyes.

  nineteen

  –I am you and you are me and should we ever disagree one and one and one makes three–

  CASEY

  I’m thinking about what’s waiting for us when it all changes.

  Shreve twitches and moans once while Ember sits with her eyes closed. After a long while, she opens them and then digs in her pockets for another cigarette.

  I wait. She likes playing out the tension.

  Eventually she says, “That kid’s seriously fucked up.”

  “So, he’s alive in there? His mind’s awake?”

  “Sort of. Like he’s stuck in some sort of prison.”

  Negata says softly, “He was incarcerated once. With Jack.”

  Ember shrugs. “Still is, in his mind. He said you never get out.”

  “I imagine he’s right,” I say, looking at his face. With his eyes closed, his expression is soft in sleep. He almost looks at ease. Like a boy his age should. With them open, he looks feral. Always hungry. “My mom always said, ‘A hundred and eighty degrees from sick is still sick.’”

  “I don’t even know what that means.” Ember holds up her cigarette to me like I’m some trained monkey. I ignore her. She continues. “Head’s filled with people he feels he’s let down. Never seen anyone so buried in guilt. Thousands of people. The nameless from the Conformity soldier he brought down.” She pauses. “Bernard and Danielle.”

  That’s alarming. While she was out, I could have sworn I saw a shadow coalesce in the corner that looked like Danielle. And the lodge began to settle in rhythmic creaks and pops.

  “So, these ghosts, you think Shreve’s causing them?” I ask. “Like he’s dreaming them and they infect us, or something?”

  It’s obvious from Ember’s expression that she hadn’t thought of that. In her defense, she’s only been awake for a few moments.

 
“Shit, anything’s possible with Shreve. He could be broadcasting.” Her eyes narrow, and she looks at Negata. “Have you seen anything?”

  He slowly shakes his head and says, “No, but I am … difficult to affect. Shreve might have the strength to make me see things, but he would need to bring all his attention to bear upon me. And in his current condition—”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s just assume it is Shreve causing these—”

  “Ghosts?” Ember says.

  “Yeah, ghosts. And get on with our lives.”

  Negata stands, moves to the window, and pulls aside the drapes, staring out into the night. “It’s easy to discount what you might have seen because reason and the supernatural are usually mutually exclusive,” he says. “But from what I understand about your situation, you’ve all shared minds. Is this correct? Even Captain Davies?”

  Reluctantly, Ember says, “Yeeesssss,” drawing out the word.

  “And you were in mental contact at the time of the crash? Sharing your powers?”

  I nod.

  Negata bows his head. “Then I suggest that it might not be Shreve broadcasting images. You might still be in contact with them. Some part of their consciousness—their spirit—lives on in you.”

  “What? You’re saying—”

  He smiles at us sadly. It’s an expression so foreign to his features, it’s frightening when the skin tightens around his mouth, the corner of his mouth tugging down.

  “You’re not delusional or being affected by Shreve. You’re really seeing ghosts.”

  twenty

  –I am you and you are me and should we ever disagree, one and one and one make three. I’m crying, I’m crying, I’m crying, I’m crying.–

  JACK

  “Come out of there and into the light of the All-Seeing,” repeats the heavy male voice.

  I’ve got my hands up, ready to blast them if they come through the door. Tap whips out a pistol I didn’t even know he had and works the chamber, feeding a round into the pipe, just like they taught us back on campus.

  “No, I don’t think we will, man,” Tap yells. “Why don’t you come back here if you want to talk.”

  There’s a metallic clatter and then a gasoline can sloshes into the office area, rolling, slinging liquid all over the tile floor in a spreading pool. The torchlight from outside the room grows stronger.

  A thick voice, a woman’s, calls out, “You two. Come to us, and we will speak of your situation. No one can hide from the sight of the Panopticon. If you don’t, you’ll be given to the fire.”

  Tap looks at me. Can you knock down a wall or something? We can fly the hell out of here.

  I can try, I say, waving him back, away from the gasoline. Near the back of the office there’s a bank of windows.

  “Do not try to escape. You cannot avoid the all-seeing gaze. We know you now. You are marked,” the thick female voice says, and I feel a touch upon my mind, like those times when Shreve or Ember wanted to worm inside.

  Bugfuck, I send to Tap. This is very, very bad. I think I don’t let him know how scared I am, how I just want to run and run and run and find Ember, find Shreve. They could handle it, I know, they could deal with it. Both of them, they’re never scared of anything. But I’m about to piss my pants.

  Let’s go, he says once in my mind, but it seems to repeat over and over. I throw out my hands, releasing the angry pressure building inside me. The bank of windows explodes outward, away from us, in a rush of powdered brickwork and glass shards.

  I jump through the opening, giving an upward blast, and clear the remains of the wall. I hover there, turning to see Tap still standing, locked midstride toward the hole I just came through. Beyond him, a figure appears in the door. A big man, holding a torch, dressed in heavy winter wear. He waves the torch inside the office, not to ignite the gasoline on the floor but to illuminate the space. Holy shit, a real-to-God medieval torch like we were vampires or something.

  But Tap is just stuck there, a blank, vacant look on his face, nose pouring blood. Fucking bugfuck.

  I duck my head, hovering low, the force of my pulses throwing debris and knocking over chairs and desks. As quickly as I can, I’m inside the wrecked library, grabbing Tap to lift him out of there. It’s risky because the bulky man could toss the torch at any moment, but I can’t leave Tap behind. We don’t do that.

  When I’ve got Tap in my grip, my left arm hooked around his rib cage, my right hand free to direct pulses, I lift him off the floor and we’re caroming out into the night and it’s only then I see the torch-bearing man lift his other hand and there’s the dark shape of a gun in it.

  Boom.

  The sound is massive in the small space of the library. Something hits my face, burning like fire, and I slam into the broken frame of the window. I sense more than see Tap wheeling into the snow outside.

  I am blind. Something hits me, all my wind is gone, and it’s cold when my body comes to rest.

  Voices. Hands.

  Darkness.

  twenty-one

  –agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis–

  EMBER

  Jack, Jack … can you hear me? Jack?

  Nothing.

  Starting to get worried.

  Jack and Tap haven’t returned by morning. Casey wants me to go back inside Shreve and rattle him about. She’s being very bossy about the whole thing.

  After drinking the instant coffee that Negata boiled to bitterness in the wood fire, I make another run at Shreve, just to get Casey off my back. His mind has the consistency of a wall of soft, porous rock. It crumbles as I try to get through, but it’s still not letting me in.

  Awake in there now, I think. He’s doing something, and he might not be altogether at home. But I can’t tell why or what.

  Frontiersland. From what I can tell from our CPR class and the limited medical training they gave us back at the campus, Shreve looks like he’s doing much better. His pulse is strong; his breathing is deep and steady. His color is good. His eyes, when you peel back the lids, respond as they should to light—though I have to be careful not to drip any wax on his corneas.

  Negata left this morning to scout the area. The cloud cover has passed. The snow has stopped, and now it’s a brilliant white outside. The temperature inside the lodge has risen marginally, and we’ve thrown back the shades to let all the light we can inside the great hall where we’ve bunked down.

  Casey tends the fire, sweeping up ash. Collecting bowls and tins of old soup that we heated near the flames to keep from having to go to the kitchen and let in the colder air from other parts of the lodge. She fetches snow and melts it in a big bucket she’s taken from some pantry. We’ve become pioneer women, cooking by the fire, tending house. And that really pisses me off for some reason.

  Pissed off. But not pissed on. The thing, the walking city of people, there’s no sign of it. Any moment I’m gonna hear a foghorn or something and it’ll come through the firs, trees cracking.

  The waiting is the hardest part.

  One smoke left, and I’m saving it.

  When Negata returns, he looks cold and exhausted. But he’s carrying an ax.

  “I have found a supply hut a half mile down the road with a sledge. Some cross-country skis. I will eat some food and then go down the mountain as far as I may. I think I saw a chimney there, through the trees, and will see if I can find any medical supplies.” He looks at Shreve. “But I do not think now that this is an ailment of the body.”

  “Look for transportation,” Casey says.

  I snort. “Like a horse?”

  “Exactly,” she says, nodding.

  “So, is this what it was like back in the eighteen hundreds? Seems like so much effort just to stay warm and catch a ride.”

  Negata purses his lips. A very small gesture. “All of life is a struggle. Most people spend the lion’s share of their energy trying to deny the fact that we live in a hard world.”

  “Didn’t seem that way
until just a few days ago,” I say.

  He looks at me, face blank. “Truly? I would think you’d feel otherwise with your obvious … differences.”

  “I’m talking physical hardships.”

  “It amazes me that we continue to separate the physical world from the mental and spiritual,” Negata says.

  “Bugfucks and jocks, dude,” I respond.

  “Exactly. Yet Shreve and you are more than this. You are both.”

  He’s got a point. Casey’s face sours. She doesn’t like Shreve’s and my names spoken in the same sentence. It prickles me some that I’m grouped with him, but in some ways, it’s a mark of honor. Li’l Devil is feared, and I don’t mind some of that rubbing off on me. “Why don’t you just go find a horse or something?” I say.

  “Yes, and while I do that, you will need to go see if you can locate Jack and Tap,” he says. “I know it has not yet been twenty-four hours, however …”

  “They’ve been out overnight. Right,” I say.

  “Ember needs to try to communicate with Shreve again, not go running off after Jack and Tap. We decided, did we not—” Casey says with a little prim and proper adjustment of her torso, like an English schoolteacher settling into a couch for a cup of tea. “That she would remain here as the only other flyer in the group?”

  “Have you attempted to contact them telepathically?” Negata asks.

  “Of course,” Casey says sharply. “I’ve even felt for them with my arm. But I’m too far away. There are proximity issues.” Imagination fails once the distance is too great. Our minds can only ignore physical separation so much before the mental construct or spiritual tether snaps.

  Negata inclines his head slowly. “Then I think it would be best if we stick with the original plan, at least for today. If Jack and Tap haven’t returned by tomorrow …”

  A cloud passes over the face of the sun and the light in the great room dies, the room becoming darker than seems normal for morning. Shadows gather.