What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  “You know this is a restricted area.” It was a woman’s voice, but authoritative, like a cop or park ranger.

  “A what?”

  “You see that rock over there?” The beam of the flashlight swung away and pointed ambiguously down the cliffs to Adam’s left. “From that rock there, to the rock over here”—the light swung around in the other direction—“this area is off-limits to the public.” The light swung back into Adam’s face. “No one is allowed out here at night without a permit. Do you have a permit?”

  “No, I don’t. Sorry, but I didn’t know—”

  “Well, now you know.” The flashlight clicked off.

  Adam caught the glow of the cigarette again as his eyes readjusted to the darkness. In a slightly less aggressive tone, the woman added, “If you really want to walk around out here, you can go down thataway.” She aimed the flashlight where the cliffs were much lower. “Past those rocks you’re fine. You just can’t be in this area. Like I said, it’s restricted.” With that, the light clicked off again.

  Adam made his way down toward the unrestricted area. The terrain shifted from bedrock to sandstone with wind-carved alcoves here and there. Adam stepped into one and sat down. He took another swig of wine and looked up at the stars. They were spinning slightly now. His faculties clouded by alcohol, Adam struggled to review what had just happened. Did I almost die back there? For the first time, he became aware of just how chilly it was. He considered heading back to the hotel, back to the world of people like Danny and his perfect bride and their gang of Tone Lōc–chanting cohorts. Adam took another pull at the wine bottle.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a pen, would you?” The voice was unnervingly close. It was the woman in the giant parka, standing at the entrance to the alcove.

  “Jesus!” Adam spilled wine down the front of his jacket.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just my pen ran out of ink.” Her voice, now that she wasn’t reprimanding Adam, was soft and throatier, and there was the trace of an accent Adam was too drunk to place.

  “No. I don’t have a pen.”

  The woman stepped closer, her face still hidden in the shadows of her hood. “A pencil maybe? You look like a pencil guy.”

  “I don’t have a pencil either.”

  “Maybe you could check your pockets? It’s important.”

  Adam was too tired and drunk to be polite. “Look, lady, I don’t have pencils or pens, okay? I’m not an Office Depot.”

  The woman seemed like she might say something else. Instead she abruptly turned to go. Then just as suddenly she turned back, sat down, and pulled out a cigarette. “Well, I have to ask . . .” Her tone was casual. “Were you going to jump off the cliff back there?”

  Unprepared for the directness of the question, Adam fumbled for a response. “No. No, I—”

  “I’m just curious. Because from where I was sitting, it sure looked like you were.”

  Adam rubbed his eyes. “I was just looking at . . . the water,” he said feebly.

  The woman stared at Adam. “You don’t like being alive anymore?”

  Adam wanted to lighten the moment with humor, but nothing came to mind. “No, I guess I don’t.”

  The woman lit her cigarette. “That’s sad.”

  Adam hung his head. “Really, I wasn’t going to jump. I just wish I had a . . . a Reset button. You wouldn’t happen to have one?”

  “I’ve got cigarettes. Want one?”

  “Smoking is bad for you.”

  “So is jumping off cliffs.”

  Adam blinked a few times and then nodded. He was feeling more relaxed and more sociable. Perhaps it was the anonymity of the situation. Or maybe just the wine.

  The woman handed Adam a cigarette.

  “There’re too many people on the planet anyway,” Adam slurred. “One less wouldn’t be such a big deal. I mean, come on, what’s the point of all of us anyway?”

  The woman considered this. “That’s a rather weighty question. I assume you’re not religious?”

  “Do you consider the Internet a religion?”

  “Your cigarette is backward.”

  Adam turned his cigarette around and the woman did her best to light it in the erratic wind. In the strobe-light flashes from her lighter, Adam caught three glimpses of her face. The first was a porcelain mask with clean, exotic features, like an Egyptian statue. The second gave away full, sensual lips, stained red from the cold. The last flash caught her emerald-green eyes, now looking directly at him.

  The lighter succeeded on the fourth try, and Adam lit his cigarette. “I wish I was religious,” he said. “Boy, that would make life easier, having all those questions answered for you. But, come on, how is that even possible today, when you’ve got science and technology and 24-hour news?” Adam laughed and then started to cough.

  The woman waited for him to settle down. “So you have a more scientific worldview then?”

  “How can’t I?” Adam wiped his mouth. “Science is . . . science. It’s got all the facts.”

  “Facts are overrated.”

  Adam gave a drunken snort. “But it’s all we’ve got. It’s the truth, like it or not.”

  “What is?”

  “Science.” Adam leaned back and looked up at the great expanse of stars above. “And science tells us that life is just a freak accident, right? So here we are, two random blips of life accidently stuck on an insignificant planet in a run-of-the-mill solar system, off in some corner of an obscure galaxy, one of two hundred billion, drifting through an infinite universe—which now, by the way, they think is only one of a gazillion other universes inside the multiverse.”

  After a long silence the woman asked, “Ever consider becoming a motivational speaker?”

  The two random blips of life sitting on their insignificant planet broke into laughter. The woman looked at Adam. She had a strange, subtle smile, a Mona Lisa smile.

  Adam sighed. “I guess I just need to suck it up and go through the motions. Like Danny.”

  “Who’s ‘Danny’?”

  “Some guy at the hotel who just got married.”

  The woman took a drag from her cigarette. “And what are ‘the motions’?”

  Adam shook his head. “Well, you’re born, you go to school, do some job, get married, make some babies, keep working until you retire, and then you die. That’s it. The motions.”

  “Well, maybe there’s something about the world that you just haven’t discovered yet. Or something you’ve forgotten how to see.”

  “Like an Easter egg!” Adam added. “Sorry, stupid video game reference.” An Easter egg was a secret object or level that programmers sometimes hid in games, like the dream world in Adam’s first game, Lucid Larry. “Well, if there is something like that out there, it’s too late for me to find it.” Adam stood up and wobbled a few steps. “You want some of my wine? It’s magic, by the way.”

  “No, thank you. What color are your eyes?”

  “Purple.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Brown, I think. Do you want to check my license, Officer?”

  “No. Do you live around here?”

  “Nope. You?”

  She shook her head and looked away. “I’m just here to meet someone.”

  “Oh.” Adam dropped his cigarette on the ground and tried to step on it. “So you’re not some Coast Guard person or whatever?” He danced on top of the glowing sparks on the ground. “What was all that about needing to have a permit?”

  “I was bluffing. I thought you might be a drunk tourist from the Mendocino Hotel.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I am.”

  “But you were trying to kill yourself, which makes you much more interesting.” The woman expertly snubbed out her own cigarette, and after putting the butt in her pocket, stood up.

  “Great.” Adam sighed. “The only time in my life a woman says I’m interesting, and it’s because she thinks I want to kill myself.”

&n
bsp; She gave Adam another Mona Lisa smile. Adam noticed a few wisps of red hair peeking out from under her enormous hood. “Good luck finding that Reset button. Last I checked it wasn’t at the bottom of a cliff.” And with that, she turned to go.

  Before the woman got too far away, Adam called after her, “What are you doing out here? Do you have a permit?!”

  “If you had a pencil, I’d write myself one!”

  “Seriously! What are you doing out here?”

  Her voice was fainter now. “Research!”

  “What kind of research!”

  “Personal!”

  “Oh, come on, give me more than that!”

  The woman, just barely visible in the distance, turned back to Adam. She slowly raised her left arm and pointed up at the sky in a gesture that was almost ceremonial.

  Adam looked up and then back over at her, confused. “The stars?”

  “Beyond the stars!” the woman yelled before turning and disappearing into the distance.

  Adam sat back down. “Beyond the stars.” Why is that so familiar?—

  Adam jumped to his feet.

  “Hey!” Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called out again, “Hey! Wait!” Adam stumbled along the cliffs in the direction the woman had gone. A thick morning mist had begun to creep in off the water, wet and biting. Adam didn’t account for the slipperiness and, after an overly ambitious leap onto a rock, he slipped and fell, hard. His head hit the ground, and everything went black.

  From deep within Adam’s mind, long-forgotten impressions slowly welled to the surface. Weighty scenes, not from his ordinary memory drawers, but from somewhere much farther down. A secret hiding place beneath the filing cabinet of his forgotten youth, under the floorboards, buried in a strongbox.

  It was inside this box that unconscious Adam discovered a single card of microfiche. At first he didn’t recognize the outdated recording format, but as he slipped it into the dream-convenient microfiche projector, he took a moment to appreciate its vintage authenticity.

  The first image was blurry, but as the focus adjusted, he began to make out what looked to be the edge of a doorframe. Looking closely at the image, Adam realized he was in it! His six-year-old self was pressing his face against the doorframe, peering around the corner, holding a stick in his hand.

  Willfully immersing himself in the impression, Adam was amazed by how much he could actually see, hear, feel, smell, taste. This microfiche is fucking amazing! He saw chips and cracks in the white semigloss paint on the doorframe. In the room before him, he heard water boiling. He could smell sweet onions and herbs. Someone was in there, he realized, clanking pots and gently humming.

  Through the steam, an elderly woman materialized, wiping her hands on her stained, floral apron. On her head was a tall, black hat with flowers and shiny little ornaments sticking out of it randomly. This was his grandmother, Anne. Anne is powerful, little Adam thought. She knows things. In his dream state, Adam came to an odd realization: the six-year-old voice inside his head sounded exactly the same as his voice now. It wasn’t younger or less intelligent. If anything, his six-year-old self possessed an awareness of the world that was remarkably astute.

  Adam’s grandmother turned quickly, eyes wide, seeing him at the doorframe. She raised her arms and cackled like a madwoman! Oh my God! Adam felt an electric thrill run through his entire body as he squealed with laughter. He raised the magic wand he was holding and zapped his grandmother. She was knocked back by its force, disappearing into the steam, as Adam turned and ran down the hallway and out of the frame of microfiche.

  The next image was a high overhead shot, in which Adam saw the small figure of his younger self running, taking large, bounding leaps down a grassy slope below a small wood-frame house. Dreaming Adam knew he had lived here as a boy, but now he could actually see it. The slanted cellar door, the squeaky back porch with Anne’s collection of abalone shells, the broken rocking chair, and the sea glass that was glued onto the porch’s wooden railing, glowing in the sunlight, red, emerald, blue, opal. Everything was here and remarkably clear.

  In the third image, Adam saw his younger self sneaking through a dense grove of massive, ancient trees, the ground underfoot a thick blanket of redwood needles. He could do a backflip here, land, and not be hurt! Ferns rimmed a noisy stream that cut through the trees. Young Adam moved beneath the arboreal canopy until he saw his destination—the biggest tree in the grove, an old-growth redwood with a trunk the size of a house. Rounding it, he reached its far side, where a huge hole in the tree gaped like the mouth of a cave. Inside is where we meet, young Adam thought. She discovered it.

  She? Adam wondered.

  As if in answer, a girl’s laugher sounded from inside the tree. Then above a flickering candle, a face appeared. Alabaster skin. Bright green eyes. Red hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. The girl smiled enigmatically, a Mona Lisa smile, and then beckoned with the candle, inviting Adam in.

  Facing Adam, she held the candle toward his outstretched hand. Wax dripped on his skin, and Adam felt a wince of pain. More wax dripping, and her emerald eyes locked on his. Then she slid her own hand on top of his, pressing it down into the hot wax, sealing their hands together. Suddenly the scene grew dark. Adam struggled to stay with the light, but it faded, flickered, and then winked out completely.

  Adam’s eyes fluttered open. He was awake. In bed. He looked down at his hands. Small, six-year-old hands. It wasn’t over yet! There was another image on the microfiche. Adam looked around. The room was cold and dark. It was the middle of the night. A few feet away he could make out embers glowing in the mouth of a cast-iron, wood-burning stove. Adam was back inside his grandmother’s house, in his small bed under the living room window that faced the field behind the house and the redwood grove beyond.

  Adam looked out the warped glass of the window as a soundless gust of wind slowly rippled through the grass, moving toward him. He looked back across the room at his grandmother’s art table, which was covered with odd objects and stacks of old books. He climbed out of bed and crept across the icy-cold floor, tugging down a musty tome as big as his torso. Its pages pushed dust into swirls as Adam searched for his favorite picture, the one of a shepherd boy on his knees, peeking under the veil of the night sky and into the machinery of the universe beyond.

  “What lies beyond the stars?” he heard the girl whisper.

  Her breath caressed his face like the wind rippling across the grass. “What lies beyond the stars?” she whispered again.

  Adam lay his head down on the open book and closed his eyes, drifting off into a dream within a dream, where from the heart of a redwood grove a mysterious girl with green eyes, red hair, and a Mona Lisa smile called out to him.

  CHAPTER 11

  WHAT THE CHICKEN BOY SAW

  It was early morning out on the bluff, and the five-year-old boy had just successfully busted out of his minivan jail cell. First he ran, then jumped, then spun ecstatically until he fell flat on his face. He lay motionless on the ground like a corpse, grass and rocky soil pressing against his left cheek.

  “Bobby, come back here right now!” called his jailer.

  Lying so close to the earth, the boy felt like he had fallen into his own secret universe. Closed off from everything around him, there was just the sound of his breath and the microcosmic landscape directly in front of his nose. He wondered if anyone had ever peeked inside this particular universe before, noticed these little tufts of grass or this little pear-shaped rock shining opalescent like a miniature star. The boy was friends with all the stars in the sky. So why not be friends with this little one too? he thought. Just because you’re so teeny-tiny doesn’t mean you’re not special. Has anyone ever noticed you before? There were so many other little rocks out there, but the boy decided that this one was special because he had noticed it; he was giving it his attention.

  “Bobby, don’t lie in dirt!”

  The five-year-old corpse jolted back to life as if he
’d been hit by a defibrillator. WHAM! He was up! He was running, the wind whooshing through his hair, and without warning, the boy started to cluck and flap his wings. Somehow he had transformed into a chicken. “Bawk-bawk!”

  “Bobby, don’t make me come down there and get you!”

  He was a chicken, an unstoppable chicken making a break for the ocean. But as the dirt trail became rock cliff, the Chicken Boy abruptly came to a halt. On the ground only a few yards away lay a man’s body, curled up and half-hidden in the tall grass. Squatting down, Chicken Boy poked its cold cheek. Nothing. Again he poked, and this time the face winced slightly. Mostly dead, thought the boy. Gathering some small rocks and pebbles, the boy did his best to bury the body, placing one rock on its leg, a few on its arm, one on its cheek . . .

  “Come on, Bobby, we’re going back into town. Ice cream!”

  As intended, the last two words hooked the boy’s attention. Unable to resist, he turned to go, but after a few steps, he stopped to look back at his discovery.

  “Goddamn it, Robert! Get over here, NOW!”

  Chicken Boy scurried off.

  Cold hard facts was Adam’s first conscious thought as he reached up and brushed the pebble off his cheek. Trying to sit up was an even colder, harder fact. His entire body pulsed with pain. He touched the welt by his temple. Jesus! It felt like there was another rock stuck there, one that wouldn’t brush off.

  Adam staggered to his feet. Whoa! This sun is way too bright. He sat back down precipitously and pressed the heels of his wet palms into his eye sockets. Fragmented memories from last night intermingled with delirious dreams. He opened his eyes again and looked around. He was out on the cliffs, all right. Over on the ridge to his left, a cluster of seagulls were squawking away, while behind them a young mother was leading her child firmly by the arm toward Main Street. Adam looked back toward the ocean.

  “Beatrice,” he said quietly to himself. The sound fit nicely between the crashing waves.