"What happened? Where did you find me?" Todd babbled. Charles laughed.
"Your good friend Mike came across you in the laundry room. You'd passed out and hit your head on the washing machine as you fell. Luckily, he knew to bring you here." Charles spoke proudly as he outstretched his hands, presenting the concrete room to his visitor. Only now did Todd feel the bandage around his forehead which only sent a stronger cord of pain into his skull.
"Mike is not my friend," Todd replied solemnly. Suddenly, the laundry room reverberated back into his mind and his limbs began to feel numb. A wooziness penetrated into Todd's mind as his astonishing experience came back to him. "A washing machine spoke to me." Todd blurted out emotionlessly, emphasized his sickly feeling as if he were about to faint again. Charles grinned and looked at Todd as he snickered.
"You sound like that Doleman boy," Charles said as he stooped down and sat next to Todd, "He hears things too."
"What boy?" asked Todd.
'The Doleman boy," said Charles, finally realizing Todd's unsociable personality, "his parents are Bonny and Ted? He's got a brother? He lives next to that old Miller house?" The names and family members flew right over Todd's head, but as soon as he heard the description of the "Miller house," a metaphorical light bulb glowed above his head.
"Wait, you mean that old creepy-lookin' house surrounded by overgrown bushes?" Todd impatiently asked. Charles rubbed his chin in contemplation.
"Yep . . . yep that's the one."
"Does this Doleman boy . . . the one who hears things . . . does he creep around in the bushes and wear a cap on his head?"
"No no," Charles said quickly, "you're thinking of Bobby Doleman. The kid who hears things is Billy Doleman. He's a few years younger than his brother . . . they still look quite a bit alike." Todd stood up on his feet with plenty desire to leave and seek out the only other citizen of Kinston of whom he shared something in common with.
"Thank you Mr. Johnson," Todd said as a couple of soldiers began to filter into the barracks, "and thank your medic for me too." The trivial laughter and ruckus between soldiers quickly began to overwhelm Todd's words. Charles grasped Todd's shoulder and pulled him near a stairway away the commotion.
"You're welcome," Charles said, "and by the way, Todd, I wanted to ask you if you would like to join our platoon." Todd looked around the bunk beds at the many men filtering in through the other doors.
"What platoon?" Todd asked loudly, above the solders' uproar.
"We need a defensive team to hold this town. I have reason to believe that the Japs are gonna try and take this stronghold for the next few weeks. I need as many men as I can find." Todd was ready to slap Charles across the face. An expression of utter repulsion accompanied Todd's glare while Charles continued to look through it. Todd turned around and walked right up the short stairs into another room which contained an enormous amount of supplies, ranging from packaged foods to ammunitions. Upon noticing all the equipment, Todd turned back to Charles, who had followed him up to this point.
"Where do you get all this!?" Todd shouted, indicating both the overwhelming amount of supplies and the entire military role.
"Oh, all this?" Charles asked, ignorantly identifying only Todd's reference to supplies, "these were dropped by our commanders . . . or at least I think they are our commanders. Either way, we get most of our shipments in by plane, since the Japs are holding onto the surrounding landscape." Todd was out of the room, through another room, and on the street before Charles even looked up to realize he was gone.
Todd found himself, once again, standing on Kinston's desolate sidewalks. The church stood only a few blocks down the road while down the road in the other direction the road extended out into the barren landscape. Todd scanned the horizon where the evening sun was already in the process of setting. No structures of any man-made kind stood above ground outside the city limits. No man, animal, or any other living thing could be seen in the foliage surrounding the town.
"Japs," Todd whispered to himself with a shrug before heading off in the direction of his hotel. The rays of light from the descending sun thinned more quickly than Todd would have thought. The shadows on the sidewalks were soon materializing into the growing darkness around town. Todd almost didn't notice Bobby Doleman crouching in the same bushes where he had been a few hours earlier.
"Bobby?" Todd softy asked, hoping not to spook the engaged teenager. Bobby jerked around suddenly and spotted Todd.
"What do you want?" he whispered with binoculars in his hand.
"I just wanted to ask you," Todd whispered as he knelt down, "where you got all this stuff." Todd pointed his finger at all the gear strapped onto Bobby's belt. Bobby Doleman looked down at his equipment before seeing where Todd pointed.
"This stuff?" Bobby asked, grabbing a hold of his accessories. Todd nodded as Bobby clearly grew suspicious. "Why do you want to know?" Todd, surprised at Bobby's question, felt a cloud of mistrust encircled them.
"I was just . . ." Todd stuttered without an excuse. Bobby's inquiry had no doubt flabbergasted Todd into speechlessness. Bobby, however, recognized Todd's questioning to be innocent, and therefore dropped his wariness.
"Okay, don't tell anyone, 'cause I don't know if I could get in trouble for this," Bobby began, looking over his shoulder with caution, "but I found all this stuff in a large trunk lying in the middle of the street at night." Todd, interested, lifted an eyebrow.
"A trunk?" Todd asked. Bobby nodded.
"It was an old trunk . . . big an' old . . . oh, and heavy too. I couldn't even move it. I guess it was just luck that the lid was open." Bobby leaned back with a grin, satisfied with a shameless conscience. However, his story only intrigued Todd who thirsted for more information.
"There was no one else around?" Todd asked, "no truck to drop the trunk? No one to have left it there? No one to have seen it?" Bobby shook his head with mild guilt while Todd turned his head and sighed with distress. Todd then slowly stood back up into a cool breeze before turning towards the sliver of sun still caught above the horizon down the road. Bobby Doleman remained in the bushes with a concern as he watched Todd walk away. The boy's anxiety with Todd quickly subsided, however, as he heard a creaking door slam inside the creepy house on the other side of the bushes. His eyes were back in his binoculars before the sun disappeared beneath the horizon and the streetlights flickered on one by one down the length of the street.
Todd was soon staggering down the hallway of the hotel where his room was. He inserted the key into his door and entered the dark room, throwing on the switch, and hurling the door shut. With a tiring weight on his shoulders from the day's activities, Todd ignored the teddy bear sitting on his pillow, threw some more pills down his throat, and flopped down onto his bed which creaked under his build. The silence of his room conveyed him into a peaceful unconsciousness as the teddy bear looked at him with a new curiosity. The shelf on Todd's desk was now packed with ceramic houses and miniature people of which had previously been crammed into his suitcase.
"Hello Todd . . . please don't hurt yourself again." Todd stood up onto the floor hastily, jerking his eyes open at the sound of an unfamiliar voice in his room. He was sure that the person who had just spoken was within the room, but the teddy bear, whom all this time had been mute, was the only movement in the vicinity. Todd did not recognize who had spoken, but something about the gentle, subtle tranquility of the voice seemed recognizable.
"Who said that?" Todd blurted out, gazing back and forth across the room. His eyes, however, soon fell on the teddy bear.
"It wasn't my fault . . . I told you not to be afraid." The voice was now emanated from Todd's pillow. Knowing what he was about to do, the teddy bear jumped off of the pillow just as Todd reached out and grasped the bundle of feathers in his hands.
"What do you want!?" Todd screamed at the pillow, not realizing the teddy bear was staring at him.
"No Todd," spoke the teddy bear without moving its stitched mouth, "I a
m the one speaking to you. Please do not be afraid." Todd looked from the pillow to the motionless teddy bear standing on his bed. Then he looked back at the pillow, eyes wide, before dropping the sack of feathers to the floor and pointing to the hallucination.
"You are talking to me?" Todd asked as the teddy bear nodded, "but you can't talk . . . you . . . you . . ."
". . . Am just a figment of your imagination?" the teddy bear asked, tilting its head as it listened for a reply. Todd dropped his arm but continued to stare at the teddy bear.
"But . . . that was you before in the washing machine?" Todd stuttered. The teddy bear nodded its head.
"I am not really a teddy bear Todd, as much as you are beginning to believe. In fact, I am merely using this teddy bear as a source to project perceivable frequencies, such as a voice, as did I use your 'washing machine' before. I was unaware, however, of the tragic effects it would have on your conscience," said the teddy bear as it settled in the bedspread. Todd relaxed, gathering his frenetic thoughts.
"So . . . I have never met you before?" Todd asked, "Except for in the laundry room?"
"Correct," answered the teddy bear.
"Well then how do you know my name?" Todd asked.
"There is no limit to my knowledge, or my ability to obtain knowledge from any one source. The laws and rules of the matter surrounding us do not apply to me, at the moment, and I have been watching you for some time." As both exchanged words, all that had moved of the teddy bear was its head, which frequently bobbed left and right with the swapping of statements, and its four furry limbs.
Todd gasped in subtle fascination at that which sat across from him on the bed. The teddy bear froze and silently watched as Todd lifted his eyes from the floor to the teddy bear, and then back down to the floor again in thought. The stuffed, koala bear then stood up on its two legs and looked Todd in the eyes.
"You want to know my name, don't you?" asked the teddy bear. Todd looked up and widened his eyes in astonishment.
"How did you know that?" Todd gasped, amazed that the teddy bear had just identified his exact thought.
"I can, as you would refer to it as, read your mind."
"Oh," Todd said, strangely content with the stuffed animal's shocking statement "but please don't do that." The teddy bear nodded in confirmation.
"And you can call me Jason," spoke the teddy bear as it extended its arm in generosity.
"Okay, but why Jason?" asked Todd as he grasped the bear's soft arm and shook gently.
"Because," Jason the teddy bear said, "I like that name, and I know that you can pronounce it."
"Oh," Todd mumbled, looking away from Jason who in turn looked about the room as well.
"Are those yours?" asked Jason, pointing his bear arm towards the small ceramic houses atop the desk shelf. Todd turned and studied the houses and buildings until images of the past flew through his mind like film. Jason waited obediently.
"Those were my wife's," Todd spoke, yet again seeing his wife placing each model alongside the next, "She collected a lot of them . . . I never really thought much of them in the house but I guess she saw them as comforting . . . something to look at . . . something to do." Todd watched his wife gently place each figurine and each building in perfect arrangement, taking a moment now and then to switch the order around to her liking. A mild frustration came over her face as she tried to decide where a certain house would go. The variety of structures and figurines was extensive.
"Just put it anywhere Helen," Todd said. His wife turned to him as he looked up from the business paper. "It doesn't matter," he said trying to comfort her and subdue her inexplicable frustration. She looked at him as does a busy mother to her bothersome infant. Todd, sitting quietly behind his newspaper and dressed in a flawless business suit, caught his wife's expression and immediately began to think of excuses for his reasoning.
"Like you would know anything from sitting behind that newspaper every day," Helen spoke. A sudden formation of tears gathered in her eyes while a knot tightened in her throat. Todd folded his paper with haste and stood up from his chair to walk over and take his wife in his arms.
"What happened to your wife?" Jason asked. Todd kept his back to the teddy bear as he slouched down under the weight of returning distress.
"She died," Todd spoke glumly, pacing himself, "she was shot in the stomach with a pistol. I can't find anyone who can tell me . . . no one even knew where she was . . . not even me." Todd lifted his head from his slump and saw Helen and him at the mantel where several ceramic structures stood. "We got into a fight the day she left . . . we always fought about things." Todd watched as the past Helen and him threw their arms about in a fury of tantrums before she picked up her jacket and car keys and moving towards the door. "She was always gone on the weekends visiting her friends, so I knew there was a place she would leave to. I knew she would come back though . . . I thought . . ." Helen slammed the door behind her. The past Todd, however, stood his ground and cooled off before sitting back down in his chair and opening up the newspaper again. The vision then vanished as both Todd's dropped their heads.
"You didn't cry at the funeral," the teddy bear humbly stated. Todd ignored Jason's breaking of their agreement and nodded his head instead before looking to his side at the table where several containers of tablets sat.
"I was too doped up," Todd said, "I haven't cried at all since . . ."
"Since . . ."Jason began, ". . . your fight?" Todd covered his face with his hands and pulled down on the skin, taking a huge breath afterwards. Jason continued to stare, "Is that also why you don't react to things as other people do?"
"I don't wanna talk about this anymore," Todd said as he stood to his feet, "I need to get some sleep." Todd turned around to find the teddy bear was gone. His eyes darted back and forth leisurely about the room to confirm the koala bear's absence before tidying himself up and slipping into bed.
Chapter 5
Todd abruptly awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of rampant gunfire right outside his window. He turned on the lamp next to his bed while lights flashed outside as if a box of fireworks had begun burning. A thunderous crash shook the ground as Todd flew out of bed and onto the floor for cover. An artillery shell whistled through the air before crashing to the ground with a chaotic explosion. Todd flattened himself against the carpet with his hands over his head as if his room were the next target.
The shouting of soldiers quickly grew outside and Todd soon heard the name "Johnson" being called out. Slowly and cautiously, Todd lifted his head to the sounds of war and made his way to the window before poking his nose out. Flashes of light and rumbles persisted, but there was almost no sight of movement of any kind. No people, soldiers, or explosions could be seen in the cramped alleyway outside his window. The building across from the hotel blocked much of the town, even that where the flashes of lights originated, but from the small portion of blacktop which he could see, not even undomesticated beasts braved the commotion to run through the streets.
Todd turned back into his room and dressed himself quickly before leaping out the door and down the hallway to an exit. Once on the street, things became clearer. Opposite the church, down the street, a barricade of various junk rose from the street, stretching from one building to another across the road like a dam. Todd could make out many uniformed men stationed at intervals along the city's side of the barrier. In every few moments, a man would lift his head above the barricade and fire off a few rounds into the dark foliage outside of city limits.
Ducking down, Todd slowly made his way towards the barricade where small fires illuminated the ground and soldiers kept low. Two smoking craters sunk deep into the earth in the center of the road not far behind the men. The smell of smoke and ash lay thick in the warm air as gunfire sang nonstop through the atmosphere. Todd finally came close enough to the men to find several human bodies lying motionlessly behind the frontline and covered with separate blankets.
"You're gonna h
ave to get out of here mister!" shouted one of the nearby soldiers whom Todd had not spied. The solder was young, not yet having escaped his teenage years, and covered with dirt. Todd stood awestruck and stared at the boyish warrior and the unusual yellow sticker on his helmet.
"What the hell is this!?" shouted Todd over the loud bombardment. "Who the hell are you!?" Rapid flashes of gunfire lit up the dark street and spawned a smoky mist which swept into town.
"Private Dunbar!" he shouted, "Reconnaissance!"
"I'm looking for . . . Lieutenant Johnson!" Todd shouted back over the gunfire, feeling silly to be asking to speak with a 'Lieutenant.' The young soldier nodded his head and led Todd down a path behind the frontline to the building across the street. Right behind the door, Todd found Charles Johnson and several other officers in deep argument around a table with a map.
"I told you!" shouted one of the officers at Lieutenant Johnson, "if you use those blasted flamethrowers you will burn us ALL down!"
"We have no choice!" Lieutenant Johnson retaliated, "they have gotten too close! If we don't use them now, there won't be any of us left!"
"Lieutenant Johnson," the young soldier interrupted, grabbing the men's attention, "there is someone here to see you." Lieutenant Johnson spotted Todd cowering behind the young soldier and immediately grew an intimidating smile.
"Excuse me gentlemen," Lieutenant Johnson said, already on his way out the door with Todd. The two left the building and moved into a crater just behind the frontline as the young soldier crouched in the barricade's shadow nearby.
"Todd! It's good to see you again," Lieutenant Johnson joyously announced, "what brings you here?"
"Charles," Todd said, lifting his fingers to his ears at the sound of artillery firing nearby, "what is going on? There can't really be Japanese soldiers out there." Charles showed his teeth in a wide smile and wrapped an arm around Todd's shoulders until they were both staring out at the frontlines.
Beyond Reality Page 3