Once Upon Now

by Danielle Banas

  Half-formed words fell from her—five years of thoughts and desires clashing for release from lips that had not moved in just as long.

  Her body shook, causing the gel to quiver. Light reflected from its surface, dazzling her eyes.

  “Crane?” she croaked, her first sensible utterance.

  In the bed of gel, she was naked and her arms were crossed over her bare chest. She blinked and squinted, trying to make sense of the jumble of machinery around her. Metal panels dotted with lights, displays, and buttons lined three of the room’s four walls and linked to a central panel on her left. She shoved herself to her feet and forced her legs to hold her.

  Just on the other side of the control panel, Crane lay in a similar construct to hers, only his was empty of the blue gel and no wires were affixed to him.

  Rose stumbled out of the tub, her legs buckling under her. With arms that were equally weak, she pulled herself over to Crane and grabbed his hand. No response. What had he said about the machine?

  She slapped her forehead, but the jarring brought no insight. He’d told her about most of it, in terms only other scientists would understand. All she knew was that the gel conducted energy without having to convert the form of the energy.

  “Crane,” she repeated, with more force. She shook his shoulders, and his head lolled to the side.

  Not so much as a facial twitch. She leaned into the tub, pressing her torso to him and her lips against his. He had to wake up. She wouldn’t let him sacrifice himself. The subtle rise and fall of his chest told her he wasn’t dead, but she knew all too well that a coma wasn’t really life. She had to undo it. Only he’d never said anything about reversing the project if it went awry.

  Was this what he’d intended?

  Tears trickled down Rose’s cheeks. She kissed her husband again, tasting the salt of her own tears on his lips, but no other change.

  “My life isn’t worth yours. It never was. Please, how do I undo this?”

  She sobbed until her throat was raw and the cold of the lab had numbed her bare flesh. Her legs wobbled, threatening to give at each tentative step as she walked to a table near the doorway. A sundress, covered in flowers, a pair of white sandals, a cardigan, and her makeup bag had been arranged across the surface. She dressed, not touching the bag. In fact, a flush crept up her cheeks just from seeing it there.

  Every day, Crane had done her makeup for her. She knew this not because she had felt his touch but because, on occasion, he’d talked about it—like the time her favorite lipstick color was discontinued and he’d been on the verge of crying as he told her the news.

  A series of lights over the lab door lit as she approached. When the final one went green the sealed lab door opened soundlessly to reveal a basement room, containing a few pieces of artwork from their previous home and a washer-dryer unit. In the doorway her head spun, and a heavy weariness descended. Her muscles had resisted her since her first movement from the tub, but now her mind faltered, refusing to keep command over her recalcitrant body. The few steps toward the stairs left her vision fading out in bursts.

  This was no place to collapse. Not with Crane in the other room. So she turned, gathered her strength, and stumbled back to the doorway. A burst of energy hit her at the threshold, and she paused, gripping the door frame.

  Maybe she could make it to Crane. That way if he woke, he would not be alone. But as she entered the room, her strength returned. With growing horror, she stared at the blue goo and the dangling cords. The shots he’d given her must keep her connected to the machine. Even without the bath and wires attached to her, she was still feeding off Crane.

  Realization hit. “I can’t leave this room.”

  The door slid automatically shut behind her as she stumbled into the room. Instead of going to Crane, Rose moved over to the machine. There was a large flashing display with rhythmically altering numbers. A timer. Rose closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to the side of her head.

  Had Crane said something about this? He couldn’t have intended her to remain in here forever, so it stood to reason the process wasn’t complete. Could the numbers indicate the time left until her changes finalized? Rose sighed; despite escaping the heavy fatigue she’d experienced outside the lab, she was still tired. Answers were more likely to come after a proper rest.

  She returned to Crane and knelt on the linoleum floor. With her head resting on his chest, she drifted off into a light, fitful sleep. Dreams haunted her, scattered memories—twisted and torn. Memories of working the beauty pageant circuit, the cold, judging stares, and her mother’s vocal disappointment when she lost, mixed with ones of Crane’s fingers massaging her shoulders as she curled against him to watch TV.

  A crash from upstairs startled Rose from the whirling dreams, so unlike the emptiness of her coma. She trembled and clutched at Crane’s hand. What sounded like hundreds of men marched overhead. The thudding footfalls hit, and resounded like the steps of giants.

  After shaking the remaining veil of sleep from her mind, Rose forced her exhausted muscles the few feet over to the light switch and flipped it off, leaving her in a darkness that flickered with neon flashes from the machine. A low-wattage row of lights turned on, painting a pathway through the chamber.

  She hobbled back to Crane. “Is this place hidden?”

  She struggled to remember what the lab door had looked like from the outside. She was reasonably sure the door was camouflaged on the basement side, but still her stomach clenched with nerves.

  Muffled voices filtered through the walls. Why were people in the house? Why now, after all these years? It didn’t make sense.

  In the faint light, Rose caught her reflection on the mirrored surface of the control panel. The face there ripped a gasp from her throat. She hadn’t expected the healthy, youthful face of her beauty-queen days. But the skinny wraith she saw shocked her—how could she have lost so much weight? She’d never been so dreadfully thin. Mascara dotingly applied by Crane ran in streaks over her face, and a slight lip stain was the only color on her ghostly flesh. Her cheeks were hollow and high enough to make a model proud. At thirty, when her accident put her in a coma, she’d been happily putting on weight—an extra fifteen pounds meant she could eat like everyone else, and she and Crane both got fewer insulting comments about trophy wives and beauty-and-the-beast pairings. Those fifteen pounds had more than fled while she was asleep.

  Rose bit her knuckles and looked away. The crashing upstairs continued . . . until they finally descended to her level. Noises of a rough search came from outside the lab door. Someone was banging around the washer and dryer.

  She sobbed a little. Whoever those people were, they didn’t sound friendly. If Crane had enemies, he’d never mentioned it, but she couldn’t risk it. Not with him in this condition.

  Another person pounded down the unseen stairs to the basement. Briefly, all went quiet. Rose shoved her fist further between her teeth.

  “Anything down here?” barked a crisp male voice.

  There came a reply, but the wall made it unintelligible. Rose closed her eyes, preparing for the worst.

  Then there was a hammering of footsteps up the stairs. For a little while longer they swept the house, but soon all fell silent.

  Rose wept. Alone in a tomb, she waited.

  A FEW HOURS PASSED and then footsteps sounded above again. No crashes this time, just slow, methodical taps.

  “What’s happening, Crane? What do I do?” Rose’s hands twisted in his shirt, but no matter how hard she searched, he gave no visible response.

  Someone came down, slower than the previous group. Rose stood, her legs gummy but functional. Perhaps the person was not a friend, but what other choice remained? Sit in the lab until Crane died of dehydration? No. She had to do something.

  “I can’t be alone in here. I need help,” she explained to her sleeping husband. She moved to the door, pushed the button there, and let it slide open.

  Alex

  ALEX V
ALERA DROVE into Able’s Hollow in the quiet stasis before dawn. All was calm, like the world itself slept. The timing fit the assignment, and he smiled at the dim glow on the horizon, wishing his old partner was there to be annoyed at his shenanigans.

  Wrappers from the gas station burritos sat in the passenger seat. He’d rolled down the window, but the steady howl didn’t give him the distraction of human interaction. As soon as he arrived in town, he’d send Gina an inane text—it would relieve the worry swirling inside him.

  He’d played around with calling the town Sleepy Hollow. In fact, he’d called Gina at home to tell her his next assignment was in “Sleepy Hollow.” Baby Anna had been crying in the background, and it should have cued him that Gina was in no mood. She snapped at him more now that she was a mother than when she’d been his partner.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d said.

  “Headless horsemen would be too fantastical even for me, Gina. But there are a heck of a lot of sleeping people.” He smiled as the word “heck” came naturally from his mouth. Eleven months with a child had gutted his vocabulary and set him up with a whole new set of “swell” words.

  “Sleepy Hollow was the name of the town, not the people’s condition.” Gina sighed. “Get some good food in you on the drive, you hear?”

  He had been smart enough not to ask her to define “good.” But as he pulled into Able’s Hollow in the eerie light, he wished there was something other than burritos and coffee in his stomach. His gut flip-flopped as he reached the roadblock and flashed his FBI contractor’s credentials. The queasy lurching intensified as he drove onto the empty streets.

  The first curved outline etched on the sidewalk might have been mistaken for hopscotch squares from a distance. It wasn’t. The markings didn’t denote a child’s game but the outline of a human form. More white body tracings dotted the road as he drove. They covered everything.

  He pulled up to the hospital—a small affair, lit like a lone star. Even from the edge of the parking lot, filled with abandoned cars. He saw the bodies on stretchers, spilling from the hospital’s halls.

  This assignment was going to get nasty. A lot of lives were on the line.

  Hopefully, the marines could airlift the residents out today—this town was incapable of providing life support for so many. He’d know more soon—and if he had any luck, before the CDC arrived to jam up the works. The future of more than five thousand people depended on a timely solution—something the government consistently bumbled. Sure, he was government-ish, but he trusted himself.

  A whole town didn’t just fall asleep. No outward evidence of assault or mass drug usage. Not a single case in the surrounding towns, making illness unlikely. At least, a normal illness.

  Daryl Downy met him in the parking lot. Daryl had been Alex’s contact within the FBI since Gina used her pregnancy to bow out of their working partnership.

  Daryl opened Alex’s car door. “Even for you this case is weird,” he said by way of greeting.

  “I can’t judge yet how weird. Give me what you know so far.” Alex unbuckled his seatbelt and swung his legs out, but Daryl remained in his way.

  “The citizens are stable. But many, especially the younger ones, aren’t doing well. Whatever happened seemed not to affect infants, so we’ve divided them off, but we don’t have enough staff to care for them. A few neighborhoods at the outskirts of town weren’t affected. The rest of the citizens are effectively asleep, not even as deep as a coma, and yet they’re unwakable. We’ve found the point of origin. We investigated and—”

  “If your next words include a sleeping princess and a loom, I’m bailing.” Alex grinned extra wide to compensate for the glower on Daryl’s face.

  “No ‘princess.’ What we found was an empty home. From the house, there is a two-mile radius that encompasses the affected areas. The neighborhoods left untouched are outside the radius. We had a few houses sitting on the line in which some family members were affected while others were not.”

  “The owners of the house,” Alex said, “what’s the scoop on them?”

  “Married couple. No children. The husband is a scientist employed at the local college. Hasn’t been doing any research projects for the school, though, just teaching. Years back, he did some work with lab animals, transferring the energy one group got from a meal to a second group, to make them feel satiated.”

  “And his better half?”

  Daryl checked his notes, leaning away from the car door long enough to flip through. “High school beauty queen. She married at twenty and co-owned a jewelry store. Five years ago a tree limb fell on her. Been in a coma ever since. Her husband signed her into home care. The most recent doctor’s report said her condition was deteriorating. She was alive when this”—he motioned with his arm to the town—“happened.”

  “Right-o. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me, Mr. Valera. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here. Official story is chemical spill. I’d rather just go with that and let the CDC handle the victims.”

  “So, what are the names of this husband and wife?” Alex asked, ignoring the insult.

  “Professor Crane Brier and Rose Brier.”

  Alex choked on a laugh. Seriously? His brain couldn’t settle between the sleeping beauty comparison and that of Sleepy Hollow. Crane? Briar? “Briar?”

  “B-R-I-E-R.”

  Didn’t matter.

  “Get over to the house. Check it out.” Daryl stepped back from the door and folded his arms.

  Alex shrugged. It wasn’t like he had been excited to go into the hospital and see more misery. Starting at the house was a grand idea. He moved his legs back into the car and slammed the door shut. Daryl remained just outside.

  Alex drove off to escape that look, but before pulling onto the road, he buckled his seatbelt. As he passed by the hospital, he tried to avoid looking at the triage setup in the ambulance bay. The stakes were clear. Better to focus. Emotions were always better saved for after a job.

  The vacant streets went by in a blur. Alex amused himself along the ride by stopping at the red lights. Only by the third one, his mind filled the empty crosswalk with ghost outlines of mothers with strollers and couples walking hand-in-hand. It was a relief to hit no more red lights after that.

  Alex pulled up to the split-level home. The windows and drapes were closed tight. The lawn had gone to seed, and patches of yellowed grass packed against the soil. It might as well have had “Go Away” in spray paint on its siding.

  He climbed out of the car and ambled up the overgrown path to the doorway. He glanced at the edges of the yard, half hoping he’d find a pumpkin patch. Though there was no one to tell the Sleepy Hollow joke to anyhow. Being able to might have lifted the depression that was settling in around him.

  Most of the time he worked better alone, but there were moments he missed having Gina at his side. He still remembered the day they’d assigned her, and he got his first look—pretty face, red hair pulled into an “I don’t take any shit” ponytail. The Mulder and Scully references amused him but grated on Gina; she saw them as unprofessional. The moment she got pregnant, she’d finagled a way to go back to dull office work.

  He hadn’t minded. Their baby was adorable.

  On the doorstep, he texted a quick message to his wife. No headless horsemen but there’s a Professor Crane. Opening the front door, he stepped inside. The light of her reply text illuminated a table coated with pictures, set up like a shrine. A few had been knocked over, and one had broken, scattering glass over the floor.

  A girl named Aurora too?

  So she was in a better mood, but looking at the photos, Alex didn’t want to joke. His heart wasn’t in the next text.

  No. But Crane’s last name is Brier, pronounced briar. Then as a separate text, for impact, Her name’s Rose.

  . . . Do your job.

  He tucked his phone away and flipped the lights to better see the rows of pictures. Every one of them depicted the same woman�
�presumably Rose. Wedding snapshots from a courthouse affair sat next to professional stills of the toothy beauty. Overly made up and too chipper, she stared out with vacant eyes, not surprising for a pageant head shot. He should have told Gina the beauty-queen part.

  But the more recent photos were charming, the same bright grin, less makeup but real glitter in her eyes.

  He lifted the picture with the broken glass from the floor, and a frown creased his face. Rose lay in a hospital bed—for once, not smiling. Her blond hair hung limp around her wan face, and yet she retained a haunting beauty.

  Alex set the image down with shaky hands, imagining his own wife’s face like that. Life passed so quickly and once it was gone, no one could get it back.

  And where were these two now?

  The idiot outside had said there was nothing here. There was. Crane and Rose were a recipe for mad science.

  Alex wandered through the house, glancing in each room and jotting down his observations. Sparse furnishings dotted the space and everything had a light covering of dust, but there was no mess save what Daryl and his buddies left behind. No one lived in these rooms. No TV in the house, and the computer in the den looked neat and orderly.

  One of the bedrooms had a smattering of medical equipment, but not the amount Alex would expect from a guy who kept a shrine to his wife. Something was off here. While Crane might have kept Rose in that room, Alex doubted it. The carpet to and from the room wasn’t worn and all the machines looked brand-new—not a dent or a chip in sight. After five years, there should have been wear and tear.

  Last was the basement—a worn path in the carpet led to the stairs. In the entire house, it was the only high-traffic area. Flipping on the light, Alex descended. The basement walls were dingy and a washer-dryer unit sat at the foot of the stairs—like a beacon of white in the room. From the tiny chinks in its paint Alex guessed this was the only appliance in the house that got regular use. A garbage can filled with takeout boxes was wedged between laundry baskets. The right wall was made of stone and cracks riddled the mortar. However, it was the tapestry on the left wall that captured his attention.