All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Linda leaned to whisper her response. “How will they find Cole’s … spirit?” she asked.

  “We have his body,” answered Aamai. “It contains the echo of his soul. They will follow that vibration.”

  “And what am I to do?” she asked.

  “Perhaps you are to stand as guardian over his body,” said Aamai.

  Following an impulse, Linda stood and started forward, stepping carefully around Utterpok and kneeling on the tarps at Cole’s side. She sat back and pulled her legs underneath her bottom. Removing both of her gloves and one of his, she took his hand. Sighing deeply, she closed her eyes.

  Utterpok’s chanting grew louder. The drumbeat quickened. Words and rhythm wove around each other like lovers, like horses pounding the prairie, like voices in a choir. The chanting sounded less like human language than the calls of seagulls and the rumbling groans of whales. The outside world faded from Linda’s consideration. The present moment filled her heart. The old shaman was trying to build a bridge between flesh and spirit. The rocky ledge had become a cathedral.

  Linda watched with eyes shut. At first she saw only the fire flickering on her eyelids, but after a time it was as if the drumbeat and the chanting were taking shape before her, as if words were becoming visible, as if she could reach out and touch the notes of the drum. She began to see the circle of human souls sitting around her, their hearts glowing, their faces rapt. And then suddenly she was surrounded by animals. Linda gasped with wonder and delight, squeezing Cole’s hand and opening her eyes for fear of his safety. All looked as it had before: Utterpok and his drum and a circle of humans with eyes closed. Taking a deep breath she closed her eyes again.

  And there they were, swirling about the circle at the edges of her vision, beings formed of firelight and song: reindeer and eagle; caribou, seal, moose, and rabbit; white wolf, mountain sheep, and fishes and birds of many varieties. A snowshoe hare hopped to Cole’s side and sat near his head. A pair of caribou stood right by Linda’s shoulder. Linda laughed out loud. She could feel their hot breath tickling her face. When she opened her eyes she saw humans in a circle around a bonfire. When she closed them she saw animals by the dozens flying and walking and hopping and swimming all about them, some coming to rest near individual humans. A walrus pulled up beside Sina and leaned against her leg. An eagle sat on Payok’s head. A seal lay on his back at Immaqa’s feet, writhing playfully. An Arctic fox tugged at Obie’s sleeve.

  Linda watched with eyes closed as Utterpok stood and began to stomp around the bonfire. His song grew louder, the words almost Pentecostal in feel. He pounded the drum with forceful arcs and danced a shuffling dance. “Only hearts know how to find their way in the dark!” he shouted to the sky. “Only hearts.” Turning at the sound of a cough and a loud huffing of breath, Linda saw a massive polar bear enter the circle from directly behind her, felt the rasp of its fur on her face as it passed. The bear strode right inside the old man’s body. Utterpok roared to the aurora above, then collapsed to the ground. The drum fell silent.

  Linda opened her eyes to see all five travelers lying peacefully on the snow, their bodies tended by the remaining Inuit. Not one of them made a sound.

  15.7

  At first she thought it was her father coming toward her. Her heart leapt and she trembled with joy. But it was not her father. She could see the difference. This was the man called Obie, whom she understood to be her uncle. Her father was still gone, absent from the Universe, even though his body still lived.

  Obie approached quickly and shared his heart in a beam of greeting. “We’ve come to find your father, Grace,” he said.

  “You know me?” asked Grace.

  “Of course,” said Obie. “And I’ve been counting on your help.”

  “We will help,” said Grace.

  “We do not have much time,” said Obie. “Will you follow us?”

  “We will,” said Grace with a firm nod. “Where do we go?”

  “Your father’s flesh will guide us,” said Obie.

  Obie flickered out and Grace turned to speak to her companions. “It’s time,” she said.

  “Let’s go, eh?” said Evlyn.

  Grace gazed out over the entirety of the Cosmos and nodded. It was time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  16.1

  “Who the hell are these people?” asked Bob, gesturing toward the fur-clad figures who had accompanied Obie into the astral realm. She and Rice were watching from inside a veil of concealment they’d crafted in the center of the Inuit’s ritual circle, coterminous with the bonfire.

  Rice glanced up. His former student hovered with a small group of Eskimos and a bunch of mangy animals in the sky overhead. “Carl always was real good at making new friends in strange places,” he responded dryly, with a crude Southern accent. As Rice spoke, Obie and his furry friends receded further, approaching another group of souls who floated dimly in the distance above them. After a few moments, Obie and his gang flickered out, followed not long thereafter by the sparks he’d been speaking with. Was that a little girl, Rice wondered? He laughed. Carl was one twisted fuck.

  Rice scanned the area around him in all directions, looking for astral stragglers, finding none. Carl’s whole crew had now moved on to their final destination, totally missing the fact that he and Bob had been right there in their midst, watching them. No surprise, really. With loverboy’s body as a jumping board, they’d had a clear signal to follow, and were no doubt in a hurry to make their grand rescue. The People, of course, would be waiting for them. Easy as pie. But Rice was still pissed off. They shouldn’t have to be doing this at all. Fucking bugs, giving these bastards the body like they did.

  “Boss?” said Bob.

  “I’m staying here,” said Rice, crawling out from behind the veil.

  “But—”

  “You take Alice and go kick their asses, like we talked about.” Rice stuck his face right into Linda’s and breathed heavily. “I’m gonna dog Ma Kettle here and do her when she falters. Fuck that damned Specter shit. I’ve had enough of this bitch to last me two lifetimes.”

  Bob sighed. “We have no real idea who these people are,” she protested.

  Rice looked up at Bob, wincing to see her face so distorted. “Holy fuck, Roberta. Can’t you keep yourself together better than that?”

  “We don’t know what we’re up against,” Bob replied, ignoring his jab.

  Rice laughed. “You’re up against a homeless schizophrenic and a bunch of New Age whale-munchers, Bob. What the fuck are you afraid of? Ya got Random, for chrissake. He’s there right now, setting the trap.”

  “I guess you’re right, boss.” Bob backed off into the sky, where Alice waited in the far distance. “You take care of our girl here.”

  Rice turned back to Linda. “Oh, you bet I will, Bobby.” He reached out with his tongue and licked the President’s face. “You bet I will.”

  16.2

  A slight breeze had risen, pushing the flames away from Linda. She was thankful for that. Her eyes felt crushed and trampled by the smoke and the cold, and by the night without sleep. She sighed with deep fatigue. How could she sleep? She’d lost her pills. The only thing keeping Bob and Rice out of her head was the aliens. But now they’d pulled their ships back, for reasons she did not know. A test, Utterpok had said. As if she needed another test. Linda shifted on the tarp, changing positions to warm her other side. She sat at the edge, between fire and ice, and held onto herself as best she could. She imagined she could feel the hot, wet breath of the caribou, or one of their noses rubbing her cheek. The thought gave her comfort.

  Aamai brought her a mug of hot, spiced tea from the huge thermos at the back of the snowcat, handing it to her with gentle consideration. The Inuit held silence and she did not intend to break it with questions or conversation. She had little idea what was happening here. She simply had to trust. And wait. She lifted the mug to her lips and let the tea console her, smiling as her throat tightened with love and loss,
thankful for Aamai’s attention. In such harsh times, small acts of kindness made a huge difference.

  She looked down at Cole. His face flickered in the firelight as if he dreamt. Perhaps he did, somewhere. And perhaps he would come back to tell her his dreams. Obie had been right, to not get her hopes up. And Aamai had been right, to do the opposite. Linda held hope and hopelessness together in her heart, disparate and desperate twins born of this time of collapse and transformation. She looked up to the heavens, to the stars and the northern lights, to the depths of space and time. There was room enough in the world for both hope and despair.

  16.3

  “Who could that be at this hour?” thought Ruth, sitting up and switching on her bedside lamp. “Cole?” She nudged her husband’s sleeping body.

  “Hmm?” he said.

  “The doorbell. It just rang.”

  “You’re kidding me,” he said sleepily, rolling away.

  “Cole!”

  Cole rolled back and opened his eyes. “What?” he said.

  Ruth pointed at their bedroom door, and the stairway beyond. “The doorbell. Somebody just rang it.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. Cole sighed, pulling back the covers and swinging his feet to the floor. He stood, scratched his stomach for a moment, then grabbed his robe from the back of the wooden armchair. “I’ll go check it out,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

  Ruth rose and followed to the top of the stairs, not bothering to put anything on. Cole clunked down the steps and stood at the door. “Who is it?” he demanded. There was no response. “I said ‘who is it?’” Cole repeated, louder this time. He switched on the porch light. There was still no response. He reached into the coat closet and grabbed the baseball bat that leaned in the back corner.

  “Cole?” called Ruth from upstairs.

  “Just checking,” answered Cole.

  Raising the bat over his shoulder, he unlocked the door, swinging it inward as quickly as he could, shouting “Ha!” into the night air. There was no one there. Stepping out cautiously, bat first, he looked from side to side and out into the darkness. Not a sign of anyone.

  Cole stepped back in and locked the door. “You sure you heard the doorbell?” he called, replacing the bat.

  “Of course I’m sure,” said Ruth, as though offended by Cole’s doubt.

  Cole sighed, switched off the porch light, and lumbered back upstairs to bed.

  16.4

  Obie walked back from the porch. “Nobody’s home,” he said. “And the door’s locked.” He looked around the neighborhood, a section of middle-class suburb with neatly trimmed lawns and new paint and young trees. Someone’s idea of heaven. Cole’s body had drawn them to what looked like a little green bungalow in the Midwest. They were not on the physical plane, but it certainly looked as though they were. Almost. The streets only extended for a couple of blocks in each direction before coming to an abrupt end. Beyond them, and filling the sky above, there was nothing but blackness, devoid of stars. Although the scene was well lit, there was no sun in the sky.

  “That’s my mom and dad’s first house,” said Grace.

  Obie turned. Before him in the street stood an odd crew, the Inuit with whom he’d traveled and these four they’d picked up. The Forces of Good, he thought with a smile. Grace, a girl of five or six dressed in sky-blue overalls and a pink blouse, took a step forward. “I saw some pictures once,” she said, brushing her short dark-brown hair away from her face. “In my mom’s scrapbook.” She tilted her head quizzically. “How did you know me, Uncle Obie?”

  Obie smiled. “Figured it out myself, Grace,” he said. “From what the President told me. I knew I’d find you here somewhere. It’s nice to finally meet you. Will you introduce us to your friends?”

  Grace nodded, kneeling down to pet her dog. “This is Dennis. Emily says he belongs to her, but really he doesn’t belong to anybody but himself.” She stood up and turned toward Evlyn and Jack. “This is the woman who got me out of the glass house. She’s called Evlyn. And this is the Little Prince. But really he’s Jack.” She turned back to Obie. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Linda and my Dad since they left. ‘Cuz of the scary ones.”

  Obie could see that Jack was a hybrid, no doubt living amongst the alive ones, given his lack of a tether. The woman was an old soul between lives, he guessed, also untethered. Though she was fairly stable, her form flickered a bit from time to time, as if she were still integrating her many incarnations. Dennis was firmly tethered, he could see, but it appeared that Grace was not. That troubled Obie greatly. Somehow the girl had been killed. What had Rice done?

  “I’m glad to have you here with us,” said Obie. He indicated the Inuit with a sweep of his arm. “Here we have Sinaaq, our leader, and her sister Immaqa. Payok, a warrior, and Utterpok, our angakkuq.” Each of the Inuit nodded in turn as he introduced them.

  Grace considered Obie and his friends, how they had animals around them, how they seemed to be almost animals themselves. The old man stood with a polar bear at his feet, and the tall warrior had an eagle on his head. She smiled, thinking of the scary ones. Even the skeleton couldn’t beat a polar bear, could he? Dennis stepped forward and came nose to nose with the white fox that sat at Obie’s side. The fox growled and Dennis growled back and raised his hackles. After a moment, the fox looked away as if bored, and the little Whippet turned and took his place at Grace’s feet.

  “Do you know what’s going on here?” asked Obie, kneeling before the girl. He glanced over his shoulder at the little green house. “I expect that your father is inside, but I also expect that there are some rather confused, angry people in there with him. You said you’ve already met some ‘scary ones’?”

  Grace nodded. “They’ve been chasing after my dad and Linda, ever since she came to our house,” she said. “We’ve been protecting them.” She looked with pride at Jack, Evlyn and Dennis, then back to her uncle. “There’s a scary woman with a face that melts. And a strange little girl. There’s a new one, a man in a suit who’s got fire for hair. And a skeleton.”

  Obie looked down and rubbed at his eyes.

  “Do you know about the skeleton?” Grace asked.

  Obie sighed. Mr. Random. Fuck. He’s still around? “Yeah, Grace,” he said, “I know about the skeleton.”

  16.5

  Mary glanced at the sky as she strode back to her car. She would not have been surprised to see a wok hovering overhead, a couple of soldiers ready to take her out with their ray guns. Rice had gone mad. Who knew what he was up to now? Implants or no, he could find her if he wished. All she could do was keep moving, stopping in big, busy truck stops like this one and keeping her mind as clear as she could.

  She keyed her old Toyota and started the engine, backing out under the harsh, yellow lights of the parking lot, merging onto the expressway and the relative comfort of the dark highway. She was headed south, back to D.C. She wished she knew what to expect when she got there.

  Mary felt like a dog on a leash, as if forces much larger than she were leading her about the block. There was no reason she could imagine to have gone to Vermont, and yet by being there she had been able to save someone who would have otherwise died: the father of the man who was helping Linda, the grandfather of his children. Seeing those kids’ bedrooms had changed her. The Star Wars poster. The flowered bed. The book on the floor. And that nap she took. Even though she did not know who was guiding her, she did know for whom she was now working.

  She was working for those children.

  16.6

  When Payok saw the old woman smash her fists against the front picture window, he joined in with gusto, thankful for something to do. The American, Obie, had called this whole thing a Confusion, a spell woven by sorcerers to confound them. He’d said that they might break in by refusing to believe in it, but the magic had proven too strong for that. They would be forced to play by the sorcerers’ own rules. And that meant breaking into a house, which Payok knew how to do. Breaking and ente
ring is what had put him in jail. And it was in jail that he’d found the writings of Sinaaq, and where he’d chosen his name: Payok – “he wrestles.”

  Upon his release, just six months ago, he’d walked away from his old life. He caught the Greyhound from Brandon to Lynn Lake and found a pilot there willing to trade a ride to Whale Cove in exchange for his grandfather’s pocket watch. It took two more months to get to Resolute, two months of odd jobs and hitchhiking and catching a boat or plane when he could. Two months of wrestling with who he’d been and what he’d been told was true. Two months of struggling to find something that made sense. He smiled when he saw the sign: Resolute. Indeed. Payok was as unyielding as a concrete wall.

  His wrestling had paid off. He met Aamai on his first night there. Aamai took him to Sinaaq. The prophetess had named him her warrior on the spot, and she’d taken him as her lover. And now, for reasons he did not fully comprehend, he’d been chosen to accompany her on this journey. Somehow he’d managed to follow them to this strange realm, though he’d never been here before. He decided that it did not matter that he did not understand this place. He would leave that to others. Sinaaq needed his help and protection. He did not intend to fail her. That was enough for him.

  Payok and the old woman hammered on the glass until it splintered and then shattered in an avalanche of shards that skittered in all directions, like electric butterflies, before dissolving into nothing. An earsplitting wail broke forth from within, like the gibbering of a demon. The window began to re-form. The old woman fell back at the screaming but Payok leapt up like an eagle and slipped through the jagged opening before it resealed. Scanning the room quickly to make sure he was alone, he stepped to the front door, flipped the lock, and pulled it open. The wailing stopped. Holding the door firmly, Payok gestured for the others to enter. “I see no one here,” he called out.