by Joseph Lallo
Samuel nodded at Mara. “It looked like the world I remember.”
“Yes, it probably did,” Major said. “But if you had been a kind of tourist, you probably would have discovered minor anomalies with that place. French fries may not exist there, or Jimmy Page may have been a founding member of Black Sabbath.”
“Does this have something to do with the parable you told me when we first met? Something about the lion and its different parts?” Samuel asked.
He struggled to recall the earlier conversation through the pain in his head. Major looked at Mara and Kole. Mara nodded, and Kole threw an arm into the air.
“Tell him, old man.”
Major squared up to Samuel and spoke inches from his nose. “What’s the first thing you remember from this place?”
Samuel looked at the ceiling. Bits of memory had come back, especially when he was able to hold reflections, like the picture on the wall and his pocketknife. Without the physical prompt, he struggled again.
“I remember dropping from the tree. Someone tried hanging me, I guess.”
Kole whistled and shook his head, amused.
“Someone hanged you?” Major asked, his voice prodding into Samuel’s memory.
“Or maybe you were trying to get off by yourself. What do they call it? Autoerotic asphyxiation?”
Kole laughed, but Mara stayed quiet.
Samuel’s face glazed over. He looked to Kole and then back to Major. “Suicide? You think I was committing suicide?”
“Kole tried, as did I. Mara hasn’t been able to unlock her memory. If you can, that would mean three of the four of us ended up here as a result of a suicide attempt.”
Samuel’s hand came up to his throat and he remembered the bruises. He looked at Major’s neck.
“I remember the circumstances, and I think you will too, eventually,” Major said.
“Yeah, just in time for the cloud to eat us all,” Kole said.
“Can you shut up for more than three minutes at a time?” Mara asked.
Kole shrugged and went back to the stove to pour himself another mug of tea.
“So we slipped in the process and ended up here in this place,” Samuel said. “And the reversion is eating it, and it’s coming toward us.”
“Don’t forget that we don’t know if we can all slip, and if we can, we don’t know what we’re slipping into or if we can get back. Could be a world of blind supermodels where you’re the only guy, or it could be a dark, empty world getting eaten by a black cloud.”
Major glared at Kole. “We seem to be in a holding tank of some kind.”
“What about the wolves? What happened to them?” Samuel asked.
“I don’t know,” Major said. He trailed off, but with a thin veneer of truth covering his words.
Samuel opened his mouth to ask about the other spirit he encountered on his way to the Barren, but then he reconsidered. Mara read the look on his face.
“What? Is there something else?” she asked.
Samuel shook his head and turned back to Major. “So how do we get out?”
“I hoped the man you slipped into had the answer. But he doesn’t,” Major said. “The solution must come from within these walls.”
***
Samuel watched Mara move about the Barren. She walked with a determined grace, as if every step had its own purpose. He followed her to the tree line, where she gathered sticks for kindling, snapping the twigs to place them in a bag.
“Need some help?” he asked.
Mara shrugged without lifting her head from the forest floor. Samuel approached, bending down to pick up pieces of broken branches.
“So you don’t remember how you got here?”
Mara spun on him, her eyes glaring with untold emotion. Her nostrils flared and she closed her eyes. Samuel watched the surge pass. Mara opened her eyes.
“No. No, I can’t remember,” she said.
“Did you go to your senior prom?”
Mara stopped and made eye contact with Samuel. A slight smile forced the corners of her mouth up.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Prom. Did you go?”
“Yes.”
Samuel let the one-word reply hang in the silence.
“Did you?” she asked.
“Not my own. I was too cool. Spent the night sitting in the woods with my other loser buddies, a case of beer and a bag of weed. Had a girlfriend a few years younger when I was in college. Ended up going to her prom at my old high school when I was twenty-one. My younger brother was in her class, so I was at their senior prom three years after not going to my own.”
Mara waited until she was sure Samuel finished recounting his experience.
“That’s pathetic,” she said, her face relenting with a reluctant smile.
Her comment brought another wave of recollection from Samuel. He brushed past the light banter and dug deeper into his patchwork of memory. “I know I had a wife, but that’s about it. I mean, I saw the picture on the wall, the ‘reflection,’ as Major calls them. I knew that was my wife, but I don’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember the name of the thing that sparked fire when I first woke up here.”
“A lighter,” Mara said.
“Yeah, a lighter. So I get these bursts of memory, but it’s more like being asleep on a train. The ones I can remember now are only snippets of my life.”
Samuel waited. Mara looked at him and shook her head.
“The fire is probably low. Let’s get this back to the cabin,” she said.
Samuel followed her, watching her hips sway with every step. Mara’s feet appeared to glide across the organic debris on the forest floor. Before she opened the door, he spoke.
“There’s something he isn’t telling me.”
Mara turned to face him. She dropped the sack of kindling next to the door and put her hands on her hips.
“And there’s something you’re hiding, too,” she said.
She stepped toward him and turned her worried eyes up to his face. “I don’t know where we are. I don’t know what this place is, and I’m not sure I even want to return to my locality. It’s not likely that would happen anyway. But this reversion will wipe us from existence, and I don’t want to be here when it does.”
Mara stepped around Samuel and pointed to the west, where the pulsing, dark cloud loomed higher in the sky. “You see that? It’s coming for us, and when it does, we’re finished.”
“Major knows how to get out of here? Is that why you’re at the Barren?”
“I’m at the Barren because the Barren is the only place to be. I know you’ve met our friends the wolves, and I’m not convinced they’ve been sucked up by the cloud. So if you have doubts about this place or us, there’s the path.” Mara pointed at the narrow trail leading to the tree line and to the west.
“I don’t trust any of you, and whatever it is you need me to do to get out of here ain’t gonna happen until Major or you, or the dickhead, levels with me.”
Mara huffed and looked over her shoulder. Samuel nodded and picked up the bag of firewood before opening the cabin door.
Chapter 10
The rain came like a cruel, silent invader. It fell from the sky in glistening waves that obscured the tops of the trees, swallowing the light. Major, Kole, Mara and Samuel sat on the floor of the cabin watching the dwindling supply of kindling burn down into anemic, yellow flames. Samuel could not remember when the rain began or how long it continued. The lack of natural light combined with the quickening reversion hampered his ability to judge time. He recalled two fits of sleep on the hard, wooden floor, where he thrashed and awoke achy, a prisoner of fitful dreams just beyond his grasp. He remembered the image of a train moving on a track in the most desolate place his head could conjure. But the vision disappeared before he could recall it. Major rationed the remaining crackers from his rucksack. Samuel was thankful the odd locality made sustenance less of a
survival necessity.
“Look.”
Mara’s silhouette cut a shape in the greasy window next to the door. Kole huffed and waved a hand while Major and Samuel craned their necks forward, seeing nothing but the back of her head.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Samuel stood and bent down to look through the pane of glass Mara had cleared with her sleeve. She managed to push the grime across the surface with enough force so they could see out of it. They both stood, staring into the black abyss.
“I can’t see anything,” Samuel said.
“You have to wait for the lightning,” she said.
“Lightning?” Major asked. “When did that begin?”
“It caught my eye a few hours ago. Of course, no thunder coming with it, but the lightning came, and each flash drenched that black place with a burst of light.”
Samuel looked at Major, and then back to Mara. Kole continued to sit on the floor, using his finger to draw concentric circles in the dust.
“There.”
Major shook his head in frustration as he looked outside a second too late, but Samuel saw it. At first, he chuckled to himself. He held his breath, withholding judgment until he could take a better look. What felt like hours passed before the next strike, but Samuel was ready. His initial curiosity washed away with the surging rain.
The bright bolt illuminated a form standing twenty yards from the cabin, facing east. Samuel kept telling himself it was an ape, but he knew better. Mara reached down and grasped his hand, squeezing hard. She continued to stare out the window, her breathing erratic and muffled.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
Samuel gave her hand a return squeeze and looked at Major.
“I did,” Samuel said.
The storm tossed another round of lightning down from the sky. Samuel wondered whether the dark cloud eating this place sent the storm or if it happened naturally. Either way, the darkness and the downpour seemed to conspire against his sanity. The concurrent blasts of soundless light fastened to the shape like a spotlight.
Samuel held that image in his mind like a photograph, a single frame of time frozen in memory. The rain matted the man’s hair to his head, covering the gray, exposed scalp. Water dripped at an angle as it ran from his chin. Ragged flaps of flesh lay exposed on the man’s face, bloodless and rotten. Samuel noticed the man wore tattered remnants of clothing that fell in strips about his body. His arm jutted inward at an unnatural angle. Artifacts of pants came toward the ground to meet bare feet that sank into the cold mud left exposed by the melting snow. Nothing on the creature mattered to Samuel more than its eyes. Samuel looked into the lifeless, black orbs and felt a whimper crushed within his chest.
“Who could it be?” Mara asked.
Another round of bolts crashed through the forest as Major stood. He looked over Mara’s tousled, black hair at Samuel.
“There’s more.”
Samuel heard the words enter his ears as if they came from outside of his own head. He shuddered and felt the muscles in his abdomen cramp. He could no longer feel Mara’s vise grip on his fingers.
Two more stood behind the first.
“Are they people?” Mara asked, still hopeful in her heart, but not in her mind.
“They used to be,” Major said.
Samuel looked at him, tilting his head to one side, awaiting elaboration.
“When I first saw them, I thought they were reflections, but they’re not. When they appear, the wolves get real skittish.”
“Undead?” Samuel asked.
“That’s one way to describe them. I think they’re more like warnings. They come just before the final phases of reversion. Canaries in the coal mine.”
“Ha,” Kole said, still sitting on the floor drawing in the dust. “Zombie birds.”
Mara crinkled her face and shook her head at Kole.
“What do they do?” Samuel asked.
“Not sure,” Major said, shaking his head. “I’ve only come across them a few times. They don’t do much but draw more of their kind, like moths to the flame.”
“For fuck’s sake, dude. Are they canaries or are they moths?” Kole asked. “Tell it like it is, and quit being a fucking drama queen.”
“He’s just trying to explain what’s happening, you asshole.”
The outburst from Mara grabbed Samuel’s attention. He saw her shake her head and heard Kole laugh in response.
“It doesn’t matter, does it, hon? This place is heading to the shitter with zombie tour guides. Your prince charming there can slip, but he’s got no way of controlling it and we don’t know if he can do it without us. Probably has a small pecker, too.”
Samuel shifted and turned his shoulders toward Kole.
“Everyone quiet down.” Major rubbed his forehead, trying to think and de-escalate the situation at the same time.
“Tell the bitch to quit her yapping,” Kole said.
Samuel took a step toward him, and Kole stood at the same time. The men faced each other, nose to nose. Kole flexed his biceps.
“Go ahead, Sammy. You want a crack at me, go ahead.”
Samuel balled both fists. He had eased the right one back to his hip when he felt Mara grip his wrist.
“Let it be. Don’t give the prick the fight he wants. Save your strength.”
Samuel looked into Mara’s eyes, and his fingers eased back from inside his palms. He shook his head at Kole, who hadn’t moved.
“Why here?” Samuel asked Major as he stepped away from the confrontation. Kole winked at Mara, and she glared back.
“It could be that the Barren draws them somehow, like magnets. It drew us here, didn’t it?”
“You told me to come here,” Samuel said.
Major shrugged. “Semantics. You would have ended up here, regardless.”
“What do we do?” Mara asked.
“There isn’t much we can do. Nobody is planning a Sunday hike any time soon. We stay here for now.”
“Genius,” Kole said.
“Man, you’re not helping,” Samuel said, snapping.
“Look,” Mara said.
In the flashes of electricity filling the sky, the handful of motionless figures had turned into dozens.
***
Although Major passed through many reversions, he did not have a memory of the horde and did not remember their function, which was to keep the talisman from being used and to immobilize anyone who could use it.
As the undead stood shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the cabin, Major ordered a watch. Samuel and Mara agreed, while Kole refused to cooperate. His dust drawings had evolved into charcoal portraits, which he drew on the walls using the ash from the fire. During Major’s shift, Samuel felt the pull of sleep. He curled into a ball with his head on the hardwood floor. The image of a train returned as a new dream seeped into his subconscious.
The track extended to the horizon in one long, loping stride. It curled like a tail around to the east, where the setting sun tore a flaming path in the sky on its descent in a bizarre retrograded motion. A wind moaned outside the cabin car, the noise signifying to Samuel that he was dreaming. The landscape lay as a flat expanse with an occasional pile of scree left like crumbs on a table. The dream-world contained no trees or manmade structures as far as Samuel could see.
He turned his dreaming eye inward to the passenger cabin. Two rows of seats sat divided by an aisle, two chairs in each row. The dark cloth on the seats hid stains left by thousands of riders covering thousands of miles. Samuel looked up and noticed a single, glowing bulb above his seat. The car rattled and hitched as the train pulled it through a slight curve in the track, still bearing east on its unknown, eternal voyage.
“I’m not leaving here.”
Samuel turned to his right and saw Kole in the seat across the aisle, smiling and flipping through a pornographic magazine.
“I’m dreaming,” Samuel said.
Kole shook his head and chuckled. “No shit.”
Samuel sat forward and raised his head above the seats. He looked to the front of the car and then toward the back.
“Just the two of us.”
Samuel turned back to face Kole with a look of disgust.
“I’ve always hated that song.”
The single reading light flickered and died, leaving Samuel’s dream self with nothing but the silhouette of empty seats and Kole’s voice.
“I don’t care, because I die with this place.” The sentence drained the remaining frivolity from Kole’s voice.
“What about me?” Samuel asked.
“What about you? I don’t know what your trip is, man. I don’t know what punched your hole or how you slipped. But I know why I ain’t going home.”
Samuel slid from the window to the aisle seat. He looked into Kole’s face and saw a line of moisture under one eye, the darkness concealing everything else.
“I can’t give you absolution, but I can listen.”
Kole nodded and began. “Always shot my mouth off before my brain could catch up. Guess they woulda labeled me ADHD these days, shoved drugs down my throat to cure me. Back in the late ’70s I was a simple troublemaker. Knew early on college was not in my future. My older bro got the brains, I got the brawn.”
Samuel saw Kole glance down at his left bicep.
“After high school, I started to unravel. Hung out in the wrong places with the wrong people, and sooner or later, that shit catches up to you. My dad warned me. I always knew he liked me the best. Well, the best out of the boys. My youngest sister was definitely his favorite kid. Anyway, he knew where I was headed. He never told us stories of his childhood, but I had a feeling he’d been up to the same shit, which is why him and I bonded.
“I ran numbers for a while, and scored a stash with low-level dealers, mostly street thugs who would sell you a vial of rat poison and let you die an agonizing death for ten bucks. I found out selling drugs required much less time than running numbers, and if you skimmed the inventory, you could get high for free. That’s when I lost control.”