by Tim McBain
Chapter 29
The light stretches out for a long time. I move through it, and it moves through me somehow. And I feel so weightless. And I did it. I accomplished it. I did the thing I needed to do. I improvised. I made things happen.
But all I can think about is how the last time I walked through this light, I knew that Glenn was with me. I couldn’t see him or hear him or anything like that, but I knew that he walked in the light with me.
And I know the weightlessness is a lie. And I know the light moving through me only happens for a little while. It’s not for forever, even if it feels that way. And I wonder how long it will be before the light goes out for me, how long before it leaves me face down somewhere.
But no, no. There’s more left to be done. There’s another task on the horizon yet. Another carrot dangling out there to chase. Another reason to not think about what’s really going on, where this ride really ends. So even if I know that this task leads nowhere, only solidifies the emptiness, I may as well go do it, right? What else is there to do?
I mean, I’ve killed Farber once, even if it was a trick somehow, even if it wasn’t really him. I can do it again.
I make a gun with my finger and thumb, point it and fire at the imaginary Farber in front of me. His head explodes like it always does when I picture this. It liquefies, a spray of blood with little bone shards the size of coarse coffee grounds. It rains red all around me.
The light dims a touch, which startles me and erases the pictures in my head. Then the weightlessness changes. It stops me mid-stride, bends me all around so I can’t tell what way is up anymore, and this nauseous bloat enters my gut, this feeling like the world dropping out from under me, falling away from me. And I realize that a fog rolls in to replace the light, a pale gray mist too thick to see through.
When the bending stops and the nausea fades, my hands dangle over my head, so I must be upside down again. The fog still swims around me, roiling and twirling in a way that makes it look like both smoke and liquid at the same time.
And there’s a flash of blue light that seems to come from everywhere. I blink a few times. Things seem to have become solid now. Sturdy. And the fog retreats, a wall of it sliding away to reveal that – hey, here I am, in the alley, hung upside down just like always. Right back where all of this started.
And I wonder if the flashing and the bending and the nausea and the fog wall retraction happen every time I get transported here. Do I just not remember them? Am I not conscious for that part? Or was it just this once? Toss those on the pile of questions that never get answered. If only I could figure out a way to burn those. I could have a wicked bonfire.
Should I just wait here? Is that the solution to my problem like last time? How did Glenn put it? That I needed to accept my fate. That I needed to stop fighting my situation, accept what is happening to me so I can move on from it. Something like that.
I don’t get it. I could craft a narrative where it made sense back then, but now? I don’t follow the logic. What the hell am I supposed to accept?
I curl my top half up to the rope, untie the knot. I fall to the ground, slipping a little on the moist asphalt but staying upright.
Amity struts around the corner. She likes to do this silly walk sometimes, only here in the alley, I think because she’s wearing the robe that hides her face and looks sort of intimidating. I would call it a pimp strut. I can think of no other terms to describe it. It reminds me of those Youtube videos of a guy in a Darth Vader suit and some storm troopers dancing with a lot of emphatic pelvic thrusting.
We find a nice dry spot away from the dumpster and sit on the sidewalk. I tell her about all of the things that happened, though my thoughts are jumbled so I tell it all out of order – the screwdriver, the powder, my conversations with Mike, being unable to communicate with Babinaux, though I saw her freed. Her forehead wrinkles up as I explain this last part.
“You sure Babinaux would know to go into hiding so quickly?” she says.
“I would hope so,” I say. “She is a smart lady and all. I mean, she slid me that screwdriver, right? She was hoping I’d find a way out of there. She must know that if I did find an escape route, she’d need to be long gone.”
Amity squints for a second, and then nods her head.
“So hey, it’s weird that I walked through the wall and wound up here, right?” I say. “I mean, usually this alley is only accessible by seizure, and the wall trick took us out into the woods last time, into the snow.”
She shrugs.
“Maybe you had a seizure on the way in,” she says. “Or maybe you’re cut off from the other world until you sort this hanging thing out again.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say.
I scoot back a little so I can lean up against the brick wall. My spine lets go as my shoulder touches the cold stone, and it feels good, a relief, like a great weight removed. I crane my head to look up into the greasy heavens, the tendrils of cloud oozing into each other, little scum bits fluttering along the surface. When I look at the sky here, it always feels out of focus, like my pupils can’t quite constrict the right way to get it to make sense. I see the texture. I see the pieces of smoke roving around, clashing into each other, but it always maintains a touch of blur to it.
Amity scoots herself next to me. Not too close, of course. She reclines into the bricks much as I did.
“I’ve been trying something new,” she says.
“Yeah? What’s that?” I say.
“You know the trick where you kind of focus and let your consciousness drain out of your forehead?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
Her hand fumbles into the hood, scratches her neck.
“Well, I’ve been curious about what you can do in that state. The floating around, I mean,” she says. “I decided to see what happens if I touch the tree while I’m out of my body.”
Her voice gets quiet as she comes to the end of this thought.
“So what happened?” I say.
“I don’t know. It won’t let me do it,” she says. “It’s like a forcefield protects the tree. I can get within maybe five feet, and then I’m stuck.”
“Weird,” I say.
We fall back to quiet, watching the haze lurch and sway above us like an angry sea of grease.
“You know, you should come try some of these things,” she says. “I think we could figure out something important. Something that makes all of it make sense. I think maybe I can’t do these things on my own, you know? Maybe neither of us could, but I bet we could do them together.”
“Well, it seems like I can’t get out there at this point,” I say. “I’m stuck in the damn alley again.”
“It won’t be like this forever, you know?” she says. “It’s a passing phase. Another test. You will move on from here once you sort it out. It’s just telling you something. Or maybe reminding you something.”
She still believes it has some message, some sense behind it like it’s transmitted from some divine place. But I keep thinking about it as reflections of what’s inside. Like my intuition or subconscious or something gets refracted out here into the energy, the place where we all connect to each other. And out here, an impulse or fear or whatever becomes a real place that doesn’t quite make sense. A living dream I walk through, experience, touch, hear, taste, and smell.
So if that’s so, is what it tells me the truth? What if it’s not some divine message? What if it’s more like a gut feeling? Intuition isn’t infallible at all. It lures people into bad choices every day. Sure, hunches can reveal unbelievable things, can accomplish great feats, but they can be dead wrong just as often, if not more.
I look over at Amity, watch her eyes flick from spot to spot in the sky. I can’t say all of this to her. I can’t say any of it, in fact. It’s the one thing I can’t talk to her about, that I don’t want to argue about. My bad feelings tend to be contagious, and I don’t want to convince her that she is wrong. I don’t want to drag her down
here with me.
I mean, I kind of like that she believes it. It gives me some hope. Maybe I can never take that leap to faith, but some people can. Smart people. That’s for the better, I say. It leaves that little glimmer of hope shining out from under the closed door in front of me.
I like listening to her version of all of this. It’s a good deal better than my version.
“What do you think it all leads to?” I say, leaning my head back so the back of my skull touches brick.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“The other world and the tree and all of that,” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think maybe it’s different for different people.”
“Well, what do you think it is for you?” I say.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “But I’m open to pretty much anything.”
Chapter 30
Time goes by. Eventually we decide to take one of our walks around the empty world out here. Cracks run up and down the concrete and asphalt. Potholes cup water in their gaping maws. Wet coats the streets to varying levels in all directions, everything from a spritz of moisture to a half an inch of standing water.
From a distance the buildings don’t look abnormal, but up close they all look to have been empty for a long time. The mortar between the bricks pulls back like an eroding gumline. Dust clouds the windows.
So far as I’ve ever seen, the flies circling the dumpster are the only other things alive out here. I think that fits my theory of this all being some mental projection into the energy that we can share. It’s too much like a dream, not like something someone would consciously create. But what do I know?
We don’t talk. When you spend your time locked into these weird situations, there is somehow less to talk about. Sure, we sum up the endless series of strange experiences to each other, but after that? There are no reality TV shows to comment on or celebrities to gossip about. We’re immersed so far in our own worlds that there’s just less to say. Our minds don’t get as many opportunities to wander as a lot of people. Not the same way, anyhow.
But that’s okay. With Amity, it still feels okay for it to be that way. Silence is like a thing we share. Maybe it’s our thing.
We turn a corner, and I realize that we’re right by the black fog now, a little less than a half of a block shy. And I know I should go now. I should go back and figure out the end of this story.
I look at Amity and her eyes blink shut for a long second and she nods.
We kiss for a few thousandths of a second and just as I wonder where the hell I will wake up next, the worlds collide and disappear all at once.
Chapter 31
I’m falling in slow motion, which seems like the only way I ever fall. I open my eyes, but it’s bright like turning on the lights in the middle of the night.
I see green all over in the flash that my eyes are open? Is it grass?
Yes. I confirm this when I land open-mouth-first in the grass. Tastes exactly like grass, so I put two and two together. My body lands in a heap, it piles onto the ground in a way that makes me feel clumsy and awkward like a baby deer’s floppy legs giving out underneath it over and over. I lie still, let my dignity gather itself up.
I roll over onto my back and prop myself up a little on my elbows. Squinting, I give my body a once over. Everything looks to be in order. I’m wearing the hospital robe and scrub pants again, so I believe I’ve made my return to the real world. And I guess I didn’t fall that far because I’m uninjured and not in any real pain.
All of this news is good.
But where am I?
I look around. A field of well-kept grass surrounds me, and I’m fenced in with pines to the right, left and rear. A street snakes over a hill that blocks my view dead ahead. Something about the location seems familiar, but I’m a little disoriented, and I can’t see much. I may have been here before, but I probably didn’t drop out of the sky en route, which I’m guessing can throw off your internal GPS and shit.
I yawn and smoke rolls out of my mouth. Unsettling. I realize that it’s my breath, of course, and then it dawns on me how cold it is. I push my hand into the grass and find it stiff, almost crunchy. Chilly as hell, too.
I stand, brush the dirt off of the hospital gown. Guess I’ll see what’s on the other side of the hill. I tread that way, blades of grass stroking at my bare feet like bristles on a wire brush. I hop over a drainage ditch to get to the edge of the street and walk in the sand and rocks on the shoulder of the road. The incline seems steeper now that I’m on it. I guess it always does.
Wait. Isn’t there supposed to be snow? When I turned myself in, it was definitely snowing. Now the road is clear and dry. It’s a little chilly, sure, but there’s no evidence of recent snowfall.
I wonder how much time has passed. I did hang around with Amity longer than usual. Time got away from us. And hours there can be days here.
Jesus, I hope Babinaux is OK.
I get to the top of the hill, and I know where I am. I’m on the road headed to the hospital. In fact, I’m about a quarter of a mile from where I parked the Taurus. I wanted to park far enough out that none of the League people would see me with the car. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is blow my car cover and have to get a different one. When you’ve got a sweet set of wheels like a 1993 Ford Taurus, you don’t mind walking a half a mile or so to protect it.
I picture myself behind the wheel, wind blowing in my hair, making my hospital robe billow up from my lap. I pop the cassette into the player and rock out to the imaginary music the red light provides, shaking around like a crazy person.
Shit.
Should I not walk on the road? What if one of these freaks passes me on the way to or from the hospital? I look at the sparse woods on the other side of the ditch. Nah. I’d probably go super slow, hurt my feet stepping on a bunch of sticks and stuff. No thanks. It’s not far, so I doubt I’ll see anyone.
I pick up the pace a little, though, speed walking as best I can considering the cold rocks jabbing at my toes. Screw it. There’s no traffic. I jog on the edge of the road, the asphalt colder than the dirt, or at least it feels like it.
All I can think about is getting hit by a van. Didn’t Stephen King get drilled by a van and have to relearn to walk and talk and stuff? I can’t remember all of the particulars, but I remember getting the distinct sense that I never want to get hit by a van.
And then I hear something, a distant rumble. I think it’s coming from behind me, grumbling up from the bottom of the hill. I look over my shoulder as I run.
Please don’t be a van. Please don’t be a van.
There it is. A fucking van. A white van.
I sprint off of the road and leap to the other side of the drainage ditch. I try to imagine how this looks – a barefoot guy sporting hospital gear running into the woods to get away from traffic. Totally sounds like an escaped mental patient.
But I care not. I will not be hit by a van. Not today.
I wait in the woods until the taillights disappear in the distance.
Chapter 32
By the time I get to the car, the cold worms its way inside my chest. My teeth chatter. I check the upholstery within the Taurus with my hand and find it will be no help either. Frigid.
Still, I’m just glad that the car is unlocked and the keys remain under the seat where I left them alongside the gun. This time I leave that where it is, though. No way I’m touching that slab of ice to my skin.
I start the car up. Even in the cold, it fires up on the first try. I just listen to the engine for a second. It purrs like a kitten. A kitten with lung problems, admittedly, but a kitten all the same.
I back out of the field I parked in, toppling tall grass in the process. So cold, though. All I can do is shiver like a dog’s tail tucked between its legs. I imagine what the warmth will be like, how it will hurt at first as it wakes all the sleeping nerves back up. From there it will slowly morph into something that feels good.<
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I swing the car out onto the street, and I can hear the tires skimming over the blacktop. Being back on the road makes me comfortable. It makes time speed up as things fall back into something familiar, into a routine.
I work my way back the way I came, gliding past the pines, then through town, then back on the highway. The world passes by in a blur on the side of the road, that familiar smear of fast food signs and green and dented up guard rails.
The heat kicks out of the slatted vents and thaws me out as I drive. I wish I could stick my face between the black plastic dividers to speed the process up. Or at least my nose. I pinch it to try to spread the lukewarm from my fingers into the frosted tip of my nose, but it only seems to cool my fingers.
As the tires crunch over the gravel in the motel parking lot, I get the first twinge of fear. I don’t know how much time has passed, how much they might have learned about me in the meantime. What if they already know about this place? What if there’s someone watching the motel? Or worse, what if there’s someone waiting for me in my room? Part of me tells myself that I’m paranoid, just like I always got scared just as I opened the door before. Right? Maybe.
The lot is empty. That’s good, at least. But then, they’d want it that way to make me less suspicious. I park in my usual spot and grab the room key out of the glovebox. I fish a hand around under the seat until my fingers find the gun and grip it, tucking it in the elastic belt line of the scrubs. Once everything is in place, I make for the door to room 113.
The cold spreads from the ground into my feet as I tromp over the gravel and grass. But I barely notice the physical chill compared to the burst of cold fear surging all through me. The skin crawls over my arms and from there the tingle spreads to my chest.
Shit, the curtains stand a little bit open, maybe like a six inch gap, enough that there’s no way that it happened by some accident of mine. I always made sure to close them. I didn’t like the idea of people peeking into my room for some reason even if I’m not going to be in there. Could a cleaning lady have done that? Does this place even have cleaning ladies? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one. Does my bed get made by someone? I think not.