Zin lifted a boulder above his head. He tossed it over the distant trees.
“Peter Pan went to Neverland, but this is Foreverland, Danny Boy! We can do anything here. ANYTHING! There are no rules, no laws. Where gravity doesn’t exist if we don’t want it to. Where magic is limited only by our imagination.”
Zin opened his hand and a long-stemmed rose grew from his palm. He took a knee in front of Sandy and kissed her hand. She rolled her eyes. She pointed over her shoulder and a truck squeezed out of her finger like a cartoon, but bounced on the ground like a ton of steel.
“It’s not magic if everyone can do it,” she said.
“Magic is not defined by the number of people that can perform it, but by the manner in which it is done.”
“Okay, Socrates.” She wrapped her arm around his neck and whispered. “Can we go?”
She whispered something else. Zin smiled wide.
He twirled his arm in front of his stomach and half-bowed. “I must bid you adieu, Danny Boy. There’s only so much time and we work so hard to get here.” He began to backpedal while Sandy pulled at him. “But don’t give up hope. The first round sucks because you suffer without a payoff, but you’ll see, Danny Boy. The next one will be better, you’ll see!”
And they were off, running across the field, gleefully trotting like long lost lovers.
Danny didn’t stay awake long. He managed to keep his eyes open to see the magic Zin was talking about. What seemed so ordinary when he first opened his eyes quickly turned into Foreverland. People were shapeshifting into lions and tigers and eagles. A mastodon thundered past with a horde of spear-chucking warriors that jumped off and floated away with their arms spread out.
It was everything that made dreams. But it was so real.
A long blink and the sun was lower. The field was nearly empty. There was half a spaceship buried a hundred yards away, its back half was on fire. It looked like the Millennium Falcon. There were distant explosions and gunfire. Someone shouted orders nearby. Another person went flying past on the back of a dinosaur.
Another long blink and it was night.
The ship was gone, replaced by an empty crater. Two moons were high, one full and the other half-crescent. There were several campfires in the field. Some people were singing, others laughed loudly while chasing each other. Girls squealed. It looked a lot like summer camp. Except for the people flying past the moon.
Dawn arrived.
The Yard was empty, except for the crater and dead campfires.
The sun was rising somewhere behind him. The shadows were long and dusky and the sunlight turned the trees a weird shimmery magenta. The quiet was disturbed by an occasional frog. Danny closed his eyes again. He was going to sleep when he felt someone very close. It was a girl.
She was inches from his face. Her eyes were green and her hair red, like candy. Her nostrils flared and her eyes searched his face. There was desperation in them, the eyes wide enough to expose the whites around her irises. She leaned in and pressed her cheek to his. She smelled like a beautiful flower.
“Find him,” she said. “Tell him we found you.”
And then she was off.
Danny hadn’t even blinked. She moved so fast, it was like she hadn’t been there. Maybe he would’ve believed he imagined it if not for the lingering scent.
He went to sleep for the last time. The next time he would wake, it would be in his bed, back in his body. But he would wake with her smell upon him and her words.
Tell him we found you.
ROUND 2
One-Car Accident; One Dead, One Missing
HOBART, Oklahoma. – A blue Ford F-150 hit a tree off route 55 and caught fire. Both occupants were ejected from the vehicle. One was a female in her late teens and pronounced dead on arrival. The other occupant is a male, also in his late teens, and severely injured. Neither person had identification on their body.
The female was Caucasian, 5’ 7”, 130 pounds, long red hair and green eyes. The male is Caucasian, 5’ 10”, 180 pounds, shoulder-length black hair, and brown eyes. He was taken to Elkview Hospital but was mysteriously missing shortly after being admitted. He was last seen wearing denim jeans, work boots and a brown t-shirt.
If you have any information regarding their identification and the male’s whereabouts, please contact local police.
10
Danny stared at the popcorn texture of the ceiling. His face was fat; his lips rubbery. Every joint in his body ached.
The curtains were closed. A sliver of light etched the dusty air, falling on a plastic cup on a tray next to his bed. Danny reached for it, winced when the scabs on his elbows cracked and his entire head throbbed, front to back. The crown of his head was crusty and bruised. He leaned on one elbow and took the cup, drinking the water in three swift gulps, noticing the medical equipment on the tray, the blood pressure cuff, thermometer, and bandages.
Mr. Jones’s smell was all over the place. Danny threw the covers off and sat up, the floor cold on his bare feet. Nothing but underwear.
He didn’t want to think about Mr. Jones putting him in bed. Problem was, he couldn’t remember anything. A cloud filled his head. He dropped his face into his hands to think a moment but it was hopeless. There was a strange taste in the back of his throat and all he could think about was more water.
He took the cup to the sink. There, in the mirror staring back, was a circular bandage in the middle of his forehead. He touched it, gently.
The fog cleared.
The Haystack and the fan and the mist. The needle.
Vertigo smacked him. He held onto the sink. It got worse. He sank to his knees and crawled to the bed while the memories settled. It was strange how his mind was like water and the memories swirled like grains of sand. There was something he was supposed to remember but it was so hard. Summer camp? FBI? Damn, he couldn’t remember it now.
He had journeyed through the needle to some… dream. Foreverland.
It was torture to get there.
The taste still lingered, but it wasn’t just in his mouth. It was in his head, too. Metallic. The taste of the needle.
The price to pay for reality limited only by the imagination. Danny looked at his hands, turned them over and studied the creases in his palms. Is this Foreverland, still?
He decided it wasn’t. But it was hard to tell.
When the doorknob slowly turned, Danny threw the covers over his lap. The door cracked open. An eyeball slid into the opening and the door closed again. Before he could decide if it was Mr. Jones’s eyeball, the door flew open and banged on the wall, followed by a mob.
“Danny Boy!”
Zin was the first one in the room. The others were right behind him. Danny curled up under the covers just before they piled onto him. They were slapping his back, his legs, his butt, shouting his name and whooping loudly.
“What a player!” Zin threw open the curtains, stabbing Danny’s eyes with light. “The kid went lucid on his first round! ON HIS FIRST ROUND!”
There were high-fives and another dog pile on top of Danny. Zin mercifully pulled them off. The celebration continued in the center of the room.
“You all right, Danny Boy?” Zin asked
“A few aches.”
“Yeah, but you did it,” Zin said. “You did the impossible, you opened your eyes. No one does that.”
The room got quiet. They stood like they were posing for a group photo, waiting for Danny’s words of wisdom. He had none. They looked at him, expectantly. Everyone was there, except Parker.
“Poof.”
That was Sid’s explanation for Parker. He snapped his fingers, said, “Ole Parker is a puff of smoke, Danny Boy. He’s gone on to bigger and better, my friend. Bigger and better.”
No one explained it much beyond that, other than Parker graduated and was likely on his way back home, all healed up.
Bigger and better.
The slam dance of celebration began again. “And now you need to get
out of bed, son! You’ve been sleeping for two damn days while we’ve been back in the real world. We need you, Danny Boy. We’ve been holding your slot open in the game room and we’re about to drop in the standings. We can’t wait any longer.”
“Relax, Sid.” Zin stood between them. “The kid hasn’t eaten in two days, either.”
“Then let’s eat,” Sid said. “Get dressed, we’ll eat. We’ll game. Daylight’s burning, son.”
Danny put his hand up to pause the ceaseless slam dance. It was hurting his head.
“Give him some privacy,” Zin said. “Kid’s in his underwear.”
“He was butt naked two days ago. Underwear is a step up,” Sid countered.
“All right, well, give him a second. We’ll meet down in the cafeteria, right, Danny Boy? When you’re ready, you come down. What do you say?”
Danny nodded with his eyes closed. He listened to Zin push them out. The chaos faded down the hallway. Danny dropped his head on the pillow. He needed some silence, just enough space to let the sand settle in his head. The last grains were falling into place.
We found you.
Mr. Jones was the happiest Danny had ever seen him.
No more hunching over. He walked upright and smiled all the time. He was proud of Danny, he said so every day. Looked like he was about to cry once or twice. Even the other Investors took notice. They shook Mr. Jones’s hand and congratulated him, like he’d done something himself. Mr. Jones stood up and shook their hands back vigorously. Once, when he was walking with Danny to the cafeteria, another Investor stopped to congratulate him. The old man didn’t pay much attention to Danny when he shook Mr. Jones’s hand and said, “You got a good one there, Jonsy. Lucky you.”
“Maybe he’ll graduate in five rounds,” Mr. Jones said.
“Wouldn’t that be something.”
They parted ways and the old man didn’t look back. Danny kept thinking. Got a good one there… lucky you.
Like the pick of the litter.
Danny didn’t feel special. All he did was follow everyone else into the Haystack, put the needle on his head and wake up two days later. It wasn’t like he did anything.
Evidently, others thought different.
He got high-fives in the game room, and those that didn’t raise their hand were staring. Zin was out front, making room for them to walk to the central game dock where Sid and the others were waiting. Danny strapped on the gear and felt the pressure of half the game room gathering around to watch.
“Word gets around,” Zin said, pulling on his gloves. “Don’t disappoint.”
And he didn’t.
Danny took control of the game and Sid let him. Like before, he didn’t feel like he was doing anything special, it just happened. He thought faster and clearer. He knew where his enemy was going, like he knew their thoughts. He’d operated with the efficiency of a computer, and when he snuck into the enemy camp and put a bullet through the last one’s throat, the entire game room erupted.
He forgot they were even there.
Danny had discussed the first round with Mr. Jones, how he opened his eyes and what he saw. Mr. Jones listened, jotting down the details on a clipboard. When Danny was finished, he asked him to start from the top and go through it one more time, just in case there was something he was missing. “It’s sort of like dreams, Danny Boy,” he said. “The more you think about them, the more you remember. So one more time, my boy.”
The more he remembered. That was the strange thing. Danny had the sense he got a bunch of his memories back when he was inside the needle, but now he couldn’t remember them. Just something about summer camp and the FBI.
Danny got the feeling Mr. Jones just wanted to hear about it again. He added a few more details about people flying and the weird creatures that spawned from the ground (Oh, yeah, and the Millennium Falcon had crashed; weird, huh?).
“That’s good. Good.” When Danny stared at the floor, twisting his fingers, Mr. Jones said, “Anything else?”
“No,” Danny said. “No, that’s it.”
But there was something else. He left out the girl. That felt secret and a gut-feeling decided to keep that part to himself. He waited another week before he did what the girl asked him to do.
Danny went to the beach.
11
Danny found the narrow path somewhere near the Haystack.
It meandered without apparent direction. Clearly one less traveled.
Palm fronds hung across it like soft arms blocking the way. He was wet from the dew and eventually found a stick to push them out of the way while knocking down spider webs.
The path eventually turned sandy and ended on a wide dune. He climbed over the soft mound of sand to the hard-packed beach. The wind was strong on this side of the island. The surf drove towards the shore in ten-foot waves, crashing hard only thirty yards out and leaving foamy residue on the beach. Danny could see the jagged edges of coral just under the surface, too dangerous to surf.
A lone figure was far down to Danny’s left. He sat in the loose sand of the dunes. Danny started in that direction. His stomach tightened with nerves. And even though the sun was biting his white skin, he felt shivers the closer he got to him.
Reed didn’t look up, not even when Danny was a few feet away. He sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring at the ocean. His bare chest was red. The edges of his shoulders poked out like his skin was hanging on him like an old shirt. The tracker bulged on his neck.
Danny started to say something but the sound of the surf blotted out his hesitant words and then he just didn’t know what to say, so he swallowed the lump and looked at the water, too.
“What do you think’s out there?” Reed finally asked.
Danny squinted, shading his eyes to search the horizon but nothing disrupted the flat line. No ship or island or rock, just water.
“Home,” Danny said.
Reed didn’t tell him if he was wrong or right. He got the feeling he was wrong.
Danny continued to search the horizon. Just because he couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He came from someplace and it wasn’t the island. Out there, somewhere, were his parents and a place he called home. And when he graduated, he would see them again.
“Tell me what home looks like,” Reed said, without looking up. “Better yet, tell me about your favorite Christmas. Think about the best Christmas you ever had, when you got everything you asked for and the world was the greatest place to be. Tell me what it was like.”
Easy.
It was the time he got a skateboard half-pipe. He came down the stairs rubbing his eyes and his little brother was opening these big boxes from Santa and all Danny had was a green envelope. It was a message to look out the kitchen window. Danny pressed his hands on the cold glass. There, standing six feet tall and filling the back yard was the thing he wanted most in the world.
The half-pipe was covered in all his favorite stickers – Fallen and Zero and the fiery red head of Spitfire. His mother, wearing her pink robe with dyed blond hair hanging in her eyes, went onto the back deck with him.
But when Danny went through the back door, he stepped in three feet of snow. His mother was wearing a coat and her hair was black and short and she was smoking a cigarette. And his dad was there, too. He was fat and unshaven with a cigarette stuck in his lips. He handed Danny an air rifle and said Merry Christmas and aim for the cans he set up in the back yard. The yard was empty except for a dozen Budweisers.
Danny looked back to his mom because he had a half-pipe, not a rifle, but now she was shorter and wearing a tank top and the snow was gone and there were palm trees next to the house.
“They didn’t erase our memories, Danny Boy.” Reed still hadn’t looked up. “They filled us with random ones, layered them one on top the other until we don’t know which ones belong to us, which ones are false.”
He was right. They didn’t feel like his memories. And they were never the same parents. But Foreverland,
that was different. “In the Haystack… I remembered…”
“They put your memories inside the needle. Every time you go inside, you get more of them back but you come back to the flesh, they get mixed with an ocean of random ones that aren’t yours.”
“Why?”
“The more you go inside the needle, the more you feel like yourself. The more you like it.”
Danny tried to remember Christmas again. He knew who he was, he remembered getting what he wanted. He remembered the half-pipe covered with stickers and the sound of the skateboard clapping on the metal coping. But then he couldn’t actually remember skating.
Then he realized he didn’t know how to skate.
“She sent you,” Reed said. “She told you to come find me, didn’t she?”
There wasn’t a hole in Reed’s forehead, only a scar where it used to be. He went into the Haystack and endured the suffering without taking the needle. After Danny went to sleep, Reed stayed in that dreadful room. He’d done it before, Danny had been told. Reed was a sick puppy, he was told.
“How do you know that?” Danny asked.
Reed remained still and quiet. “You can trust her,” he finally said.
“Do you know her?”
“I did, once upon a time.” Again, quiet. A slight shrug. “Or maybe I just think I do. It’s an ocean of thoughts, Danny Boy.”
Danny wanted to ask him a hundred questions. Everyone on the island was buying everything the Investors were selling, gobbling it up like a bunch of hungry fish, and here was a kid that seemed to know something. Danny wanted to know why they were on the island and why Reed didn’t take the needle and who the girl was…
But then a cart came over the dune and began driving down the hard-packed beach, the water skimming beneath it. Reed never looked at it, just continued staring. The cart stopped in front of them. Mr. Jones rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared at Reed. It was the first time since Danny had come out of the Haystack that the old man didn’t look happy. He patted the empty seat next to him.
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