Jack and Mr. Grin

by Andersen Prunty

  “I feel like we should have some kind of weapon or something,” Jack said.

  “Well, then I’m afraid it’s time to thank friend Sam again,” Sam said, plopping the huge knife Maria had used between them, right next to the cell phone. Jack figured it probably came from the cafe.

  “I didn’t even see you pick that up.”

  “Fat guy moves faster than light sometimes.”

  “Sam, if I make it through this I’m gonna buy you an ice cream cone.”

  “If we make it through this. She’s my sister. I’m with you until the end.”

  “That makes me feel very good to hear,” Jack said.

  Then, out of nowhere, Sam said, “Did she ever tell you she’s adopted?”

  Jack didn’t know how to respond to that. It probably would have had more of an effect if there were not such extenuating, much more serious things to deal with. People were adopted all the time. Especially now that it seemed like more twelve-year-olds were having kids themselves, coupled with the reality that no one wanted to take responsibility for anything anymore and people who were found to have abortions were called names like ‘murderer’. The fact she didn’t tell him did something to him. Of course, she could have just been sensitive about the subject and if, in the long run, it didn’t matter anyway, he guessed it wasn’t really important. Or, maybe...

  “Does she know?” he asked Sam.

  A look of bafflement crossed Sam’s face. “I...” he stammered. “I couldn’t really tell you. Don’t know if I’ve ever even thought about it. I know I’ve never talked to her about it and my parents didn’t introduce her as ‘Their adopted daughter, Gina, or anything. But... Well, I guess it’s entirely possible she doesn’t know. I was three when they found her so I know she was way too young...”

  “Found her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like at the mall or something?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. One day she wasn’t there. The next day there was this little baby and Mom said she was my new sister.”

  “That’s unbelievable.” Jack didn’t know what else to say. Would he ask her about being adopted if he ever saw her again? Probably not.

  “It’s just something I thought maybe you should know. Probably doesn’t make any difference but I guess it’s best not to leave anything unsaid, huh?” Jack was going to agree with him but was stopped before beginning when Sam said, “I think you can pull over any time now and we should be able to find it. ‘When Two Worlds Collide,’” Sam mused. “I never knew she called it that. That’s a cool name for it, I guess.”

  “Maybe it’s even appropriate,” Jack said, easing the car over to the side of the road. He didn’t have to bother turning off the ignition. It shuddered violently, hissed and threw up a pall of white steam before the engine stopped completely.

  He opened his door and stepped out. Sam came out through his side, presumably so he wouldn’t have to cut the duct tape away. With Sam’s size and girth, the struggle would have been comical under any other circumstances. Standing there, Jack felt like they were an unlikely pair of heroes, if heroes were what they were to become. Jack was short, nearly anemic in his build. He held his cell phone like a weapon. Sam was nearly a foot taller than Jack and easily outweighed him by a hundred pounds. He held the large knife in his right hand. The roll of duct tape encircled his left wrist like a bracelet containing special powers. What kind of special powers? Jack wondered. Adhesiveness? Sam was covered in blood that had now gone kind of crusty brown. Jack thought he looked more like an escaped mental patient.

  A meadow spread out before them, its grass yellowed.

  He didn’t feel nearly as cold as he had earlier, out trudging through the rain. It was like the weather had changed completely. The sun, although dying, peeked through the clouds. The air was much warmer and, because of the rains earlier, felt steamy. The beginnings of a thin ground fog covered the meadow.

  At the back of the meadow, merely dark shapes on the horizon for now, were the two train engines, one with a cargo car still attached.

  It hit Jack for the first time how extremely odd those trains were.

  Twenty-one

  “It’s so quiet out here,” Jack said. The road they had just pulled to the side of was a very narrow one. No yellow lines down the middle. No white lines on the sides. This was where the city saved their money. Not enough people traveled on this road to warrant the upkeep.

  “Do you think someone owns all this?” Jack asked.

  “Never really gave it much thought. I’m sure somebody somewhere owns it. I don’t think there’s any bit of property that isn’t owned these days, is there?”

  “I think you’re probably right about that.”

  “I guess we’d better get started, huh?”

  Jack patted the cell phone in his pocket to make sure it was there. “Yeah, and we’d probably better hurry. This might not be the place. We don’t want to waste all of our time here if it isn’t. And, listen, Sam...”

  “I’m listenin.”

  “Whatever happens, we have to stick together. Okay? No losing each other. No getting separated.”

  “Didn’t plan on it. I don’t really want to be alone out in the Wilds after dark. Those are some creepy ass woods.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  They set off across the meadow. It was probably around 200 yards across and maybe that deep as well. Woods were on either side of it and Jack thought it looked like the Wilds were encroaching, threatening to gobble up the meadow and maybe even, eventually, the road.

  They cut through the tall grass. It would have soaked their shoes and their jeans if they weren’t soaked already. He had now spent the greater part of the day outdoors and knew this was not the greatest type of day to do that. Although it was better now. Now being outside wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t rainy or cold. It was almost balmy. For this time of year, it was a very rare type of day.

  He kept his eyes set on the engines in the distance, watching them get larger and larger.

  “So,” Jack asked. “You said you’ve been in those trains?”

  “Oh, yeah, I think just about anybody who’s ever been a teenager in Alton has been in there. You said you’ve been there, right?”

  “Yeah. Did you ever cross through them? You know, like get to the Wilds by going through the trains?”

  “Oh, definitely. It was a, um, natural progression I guess you’d say. That’s how we discovered the motel. The Hotel Eternity!” He blurted nearly triumphantly. “That’s what that old place is called. The Hotel Eternity. It’s an awful fancy name for a place that isn’t really that fancy at all, if you ask me. It’s like when they call bars things like ‘Partners’ and ‘Champs’ or ‘Winners’... You know, like the complete opposite of what you’d find inside. I guess ‘Hotel Eternity’ is supposed to sound romantic but it’s the kind of place you’d go if you wanted to snort cocaine off a hooker’s back while you rammed her from behind. Anyway, yeah, I’ve definitely been through those trains. Why?”

  “When I was talking to Tim Fox, he said Gina was afraid to go through the train. She would get in the train on the one side, you know, this side, but then she was afraid to go out the other side of the car. She said that if she stepped off she would be in like... another world or something. I guess that’s why she thought of calling it ‘When Two Worlds Collide.’ Now, if she mentioned the name of the place to me, it’s possible I forgot but I know she never mentioned that crazy theory.”

  “You don’t think she was serious, do you?”

  “I didn’t see how she could be and I kind of asked Tim about that too and he said that she was most definitely deathly afraid of getting off on the other side. He never saw her do it. He would even do it himself just to let her know that nothing would happen.”

  “I guess our Gina could be a little crazy at times.”

  “But that’s completely irrational.”

  “Unless she knows something we don’t know.”

  That
last sentence just kind of hung there in the air, neither of them really expounding on it. Like two drunks who, after having stumbled upon some truth have to look in their beer glasses, silently, to contemplate that truth.

  “So,” Jack said after a while. “You really think it’s possible?”

  “Wouldn’t you say just about anything is possible at this point?”

  “Probably so.”

  Then, after walking a few more steps, he said, “It’s the marks.”

  “Huh?” Sam said, lost in his own reverie.

  “It’s the marks.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, inspecting his bandaged left arm. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have thought that anything was possible if it hadn’t been for the marks. Until then, I just thought I was an extremely unfortunate fellow. But the marks make me think maybe something else is going on.”

  “Like something mystical?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe,” Jack said.

  The trains grew even closer. Less than fifty yards away now. He decided to consider the oddity of the situation. He had heard of trains derailing before. Usually due to some kind of mechanical failure. But two engines plowing into each other? It seemed ludicrous. Impossible. Didn’t they have extensive safeguards against such a thing? Were tracks even two-way? He didn’t know. It seemed like there would be only one way per track but he supposed they could go both ways. He didn’t really see why not. But then what about schedules? That seemed like one of the most obvious associations with trains. Train schedules. Trains running on time. If scheduling and time were so inherent to locomotion then how could two trains just plow into each other like that?

  Unless one had simply come from nowhere.

  The thought sent a shiver down his spine. It was that kind of thinking that threatened to drag his mind off into tangents he didn’t really want it to go. But the more he thought about it, the more things seemed to be leaning toward the supernatural. Maybe even the mystical, as Sam had put it.

  The trains and the brands.

  Of course, the trains had been here for as long as anyone could remember. He would have to look up their history if he made it out of this alive. Again, there was an insane thought. Making it out of things alive. That just seemed to be so much more dramatic than what he was used to.

  The brands, however, the brands were something new.

  He still had Sam’s in his jeans pocket.

  Now nearly to the trains, he had a thought and frantically pulled the brand out of his pocket, spreading it out in his palm.

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  “The brands,” Jack began. “The marks. From the very first one, I noticed there was some kind of pattern to them and I think, if you’re right about that old hotel, I might have figured them out.”

  “Explain please,” Sam said.

  Transferring the brand to his left hand, he pointed his right index finger along first the left vertical line. Then the horizontal line in the middle. Then the right vertical line.

  “See,” he said. “That’s an ‘H’.”

  Then he ran his finger again along the left vertical line. Then the topmost horizontal line. The second one down, in the middle. The bottom one.

  “And, that. That’s an ‘E’. See how they’re thicker there?”

  A strange expression crossed Sam’s face. Maybe it was concern. Maybe it was pity.

  “You don’t think I’m right, do you?” Jack asked.

  “I want to think you’re right,” Sam said. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. I mean, we could be way off the mark here. That motel might not even be there, for all I know. It’s probably been ten years since I’ve seen it and the city likes to tear things down that could possibly harbor squatters and bums. I would be more surprised if it were still standing at all.”

  Jack thought about the mental image in his head from when Mr. Grin had called. It fit. It fit the image of an abandoned hotel perfectly. That would explain why all the furnishings were more wildly out of date than hotel furnishings normally are.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “You’re right. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”

  The trains were in front of them, reeking of oil and exhaust, even after all these years. They loomed there, larger than life.

  “All aboard,” Sam said, and slowly climbed up into the freight car.

  “Wait!” Jack shouted. A bad feeling soured his stomach.

  It was Sam’s alarm at Jack’s warning that probably got him hurt.

  He turned to face Jack and a gunshot rang out. The hand holding the rusty rail disintegrated and Sam tumbled to the ground at Jack’s feet. Jack didn’t know whether to help him or run.

  “Move away,” Jack heard from the freight car. It was a voice he recognized all too well. One he’d had to listen to rambling on at unholy lengths about subjects he had no interest in.

  Mr. Moran, Dick, stood at the lip of the freight car, a double-barrel shotgun in his hand.

  Jack stood in front of the sprawled Sam, holding his stump of a hand against his chest.

  “I only got one more shell in this and it ain’t intended for you,” Mr. Moran said.

  “Why are you doing this, Dick?” Jack asked.

  But he knew he wasn’t really talking to his neighbor. He was talking to whatever that brand had made him. In a sense, by his mere contact, what Jack had made him. Snapshots of the other people he had come in contact with that day lightning-flashed through his mind. Quick. Joey at the cafe. There had been a woman in front of him when he got there. How far did this go? Would they be branded as well? What about that woman at the gas station? Jack couldn’t remember her name but he remembered all those blue stars under her name. Those blue stars meant she was good at what she did. Would she be good at killing Jack too? Where did it end? There was that old lady on the bus. The one who had crossed herself. And what about the bus driver and the other people on the bus? What about people who had... Jesus, what about people who had maybe just seen him from the windows of their homes or the windows of their cars? What about them?

  “I’m not moving,” he told Mr. Moran.

  “You weren’t supposed to have no help. Them’s the rules.”

  “How the fuck would you know what the rules are?”

  “I know everything he knows.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Well, I think you call him Mr. Grin, don’t you?” Mr. Moran laughed a strange toothless laugh. Jack realized he had never seen him laugh before. He had seen him smile plenty of times but he had never seen him laugh and it was a sphincter-tightening thing to witness.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “See, I kinda know everything you know too.”

  “Put the gun down, Dick.”

  “Who said you could call me Dick,” Mr. Moran said.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  Twenty-two

  Jack felt the black pall of death fall around him, sure he was shot.

  The stinging in his leg took his mind off that.

  He had only taken some of the buckshot, biting into the outside of his left leg.

  Another second and he realized what happened. Horrified, he turned and looked down at Sam.

  Only it wasn’t like looking at Sam at all. Most of his head was gone, turned into a red-gray pulp. He dropped down to his knees, between Sam’s legs, his back to him, and threw up.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything. He figured it was mostly coffee, black and burning, clinging to his tongue and his lips.

  And it hit him again how very serious this whole thing was. Although he had begun to realize it was a very serious thing a long time ago, there was a gradual escalation to the seriousness of it all. A gradual escalation culminating here.

  He looked up at Mr. Moran, Dick, a cold kind of belief freezing his insides.

  Dick stood just inside the freight car. Looking at him, Jack knew Dick Moran was nowhere inside of that man. He was back a
t his house. Back where he had been branded. Part of Jack wanted to kill the man who stood before him. But he knew that would be wrong. It was not this man who had killed Sam. It was not this man who had stolen Gina away from him. It was somebody else. A greater power. Maybe just another man or maybe someone or something far more equipped than anyone Jack had ever known.

  “You shot Sam,” Jack muttered, in shock, not knowing what else to say.

  “I told ya,” Mr. Moran said. “Them’s the rules. Them’s the rules and if you don’t follow em then I have to make sure you do follow em.”

  Jack stood up, wiping the stinking puke from his chin. He had to get away from here. He had to get through the car Mr. Moran was blocking and to the hotel. He was convinced Gina would be in the hotel. She had to be. Or else it wasn’t a game at all, was it? If there wasn’t any sort of ending. If there wasn’t any clear-cut winner, then it was more like a trick than a game.

  When Jack reached the ground just in front of the car, Mr. Moran transferred the barrel of the gun to his hands and swung it out in a giant loop. Normally, if this were the actual Dick Moran, Jack wouldn’t have been frightened of that swinging stock. There wouldn’t have been any real muscle power behind it. But this was the branded Dick Moran. This was undoubtedly a Dick Moran of near superhuman strength.

  He waited until the gun completed its arc before rushing the car and grabbing Mr. Moran around his skinny old man ankles.

  He tried to drive the stock of the gun down into Jack’s head but Jack quickly yanked his ankles and sent him sprawling back into the car. Quickly, Jack heaved himself inside and pounced on Moran.

  The gun had come loose in his fall and lay in a far corner of the car, out of reach.

  He rested his ass on Mr. Moran’s scrawny chest and put his knees on his upper arms.

  Mr. Moran stared at him, an expression of fury twisting his face, and tried to lift Jack off. Jack had no doubt he could be bucked off if Mr. Moran fully caught his bearings.