What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  Standing in the shower, Adam let the hot water beat against the welt on his temple. Less sharp pain now, more dull. He could deal with dull. The rest of his body was slowly thawing out as he stood there staring up at the showerhead. It was surprisingly similar to the one at home. What if I’ve never left that shower? Adam thought. What if all of the things I think happened over the past 24 hours were just part of another Adam moment? What if I’m trapped in an endless series of Adam moments? While Adam’s mind continued to swirl round and round, something else inside of him decided to take charge. Just as it had the previous morning, Adam’s left hand, which was resting on the hot-water faucet, slowly twisted. The ice-cold shock hit Adam like a belly flop.

  Half an hour later, Adam walked down to the lobby. He had done his best to clean up. His hair hid most of the purple lump on his temple, but he couldn’t do much about the prominent bags under his eyes. Looking around, he saw faces from the previous night’s wedding that looked only marginally better than his.

  “Do you have a guest at the hotel named Beatrice?” Adam asked Dorothy, who also seemed a diminished version of her perky self behind the check-in desk. “I don’t know her last name, but—”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t just give out guest information,” Dorothy said flatly. She wasn’t offering Adam any smiles today. She was either worn out from dealing with the wedding party or more likely annoyed with Adam for not being more responsive to her various attempts at flirtation.

  “She’s an old friend of mine. I mean, I think it was her. We grew up together. She’s from this area; I know that.” Adam tried to stay calm as he spoke, but for some reason, he was amazingly energized. His body still ached, but it was also buzzing in a pleasant way. He could feel himself standing there talking to Dorothy with a vibrancy he hadn’t experienced in a long time. “I’m sorry. I know this is weird, but could you just tell me if anyone with red hair is staying here at the hotel?”

  “If she’s from around here, why would she be staying in a hotel?”

  “Good point. But I’d still be very grateful for any help you could give me.”

  Dorothy reluctantly looked at her computer screen. After a moment she turned back to Adam. “Is she with the wedding party?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “Then she’s not staying here. You’re our only guest that’s not with the wedding.”

  Adam spent the next few hours walking around town, checking with the other inns and B and Bs. No luck. He walked slowly past several nearby cafés and gift shops, but acknowledged to himself how unlikely it would be to find someone like Beatrice buying an I Heart Mendocino tee shirt. He went back out onto the bluff and looked around. Not many people out there today. Eventually he returned to town, and after wandering aimlessly for a while, he found himself facing a sign that read Closed to the Public, hanging from a chain across the bottom rung of the ladder beneath an old water tower.

  Without thinking, Adam climbed over the chain and started hand over hand up the wood rungs. Halfway up the tower, he realized that he was doing something illegal. Normally the thought would have stopped him (in fact, he never would have come this far), but today his body was moving faster and more purposefully than his self-defeating mind.

  From atop the water tower, Adam could see most of Main Street, the ocean bluff beyond, as well as many of the other streets around town. Patiently he scanned for a glimpse of Beatrice.

  Observing the world from his perch, Adam again noticed the subtle buzzing sensation in his body and the unusual sense of well-being. His thoughts felt clear and light, as if up on the water tower, in this place he wasn’t supposed to be, his mental circuitry had been elevated above its everyday, pedestrian pathways.

  Watching people strolling through town reminded Adam of the old black-and-white photographs of Main Street in the lobby of the Mendocino Hotel. They were probably taken from this exact spot, Adam thought. Of course the cars were different, and the way people dressed, but everything else is pretty much the same. Different generation running around doing all the same things, following the same script, and thinking it’s all unwritten.

  Virgil Coates, the man whose words had been the only thing to keep Adam going lately, had explored the idea of being trapped in cycles of repetition in Navigations of the Hidden Domain. In the chapter called “Currents,” Coates’s Everyman, now lost at sea, realizes the helplessness of his situation. As he tries to direct his small boat across the vast ocean, all his efforts prove futile. He realizes that it is not he who determines his course, but the fathomless force of the water’s currents. He is a slave to their influence, not only physically but emotionally as well. Even his thoughts, which the Everyman had always cherished as uniquely his own, seem to be just echoes of thinking done by other men whose ships had plied these waters before him.

  Bleak, Adam thought. What sane person wants to believe life is predetermined, that he’s nothing more than a puppet denying the truth of his strings? Ordinarily Adam would avoid contemplating a depressing subject like this any further, but today, up here on top of the water tower, he felt brave enough to keep going.

  Was that Coates’s point? Unless I face the full truth of the human condition, both the good and the bad of it, then nothing else is possible. Is that what he meant?

  Adam watched a group of young girls sitting at the picnic benches across from Main Street. They were all talking at once, laughing and gossiping. Had the photographer of the pictures on the wall of the Mendocino Hotel observed the same scene, only with frocks and petticoats instead of jeans? And what about those tough guys in front of the dive bar, smoking cigarettes, acting cool? Had there been a similar group of guys in the exact same spot 50 years ago? 100? Are we all just stuck living out recycled storylines? Unbidden, a paragraph from Coates’s “Currents” chapter came to mind.

  One of the gravest mistakes made by counterculture revolutionaries of the 1960s was the belief that “Big Brother” was an imminent threat. Unfortunately we live in the world envisioned by Aldous Huxley, not George Orwell. In this brave new world, we are our own jailers. What many fail to understand is that Huxley, a skilled traveler through the Hidden Domains, was not predicting a future dystopia. In truth, his great work was an allegory that sought to bring to light something that happened to humankind a long, long time ago.

  Have we all been duped? Tricked into a false sense of importance and uniqueness? Oh, and don’t think for a second that being up here on top of a water tower places you above that truth, Adam told himself. How many other Adams are out there in the world? Struggling to make sense of it all, unable to just go through the motions? Have they all been swallowed up by technology, like me? Too busy playing video games or updating their online profiles? Are any of those other Adams willing to consider looking away from their screens long enough to see if the world outside contains an Easter egg—a chance at a new level that might lead to something that has always seemed just out of reach?

  A half-hour later, Adam began to feel like he was being watched. When he looked down at the street directly below the tower, he saw that someone was. A young boy, maybe five or six years old, was staring up. He was oddly still. Then, quite suddenly, the boy folded his arms and started flapping them like stubby wings. “Bawk-bawk! Bawk-bawk!”

  Adam pulled back a bit from the edge of the tower, concerned that other people might notice him up there. But before the boy could draw anyone’s attention to Adam, an angry woman, presumably the boy’s mother, ran over and latched on to him. “I told you to stop making that horrible noise! You’re not a chicken!”

  The frustrated woman dragged the boy and two even younger kids over to a white minivan parked on Main Street. Watching this, Adam felt an ache in his gut. The scene was somehow familiar to him. Before he could figure out why, Adam sensed something else wrong with his stomach. He was famished.

  Sitting at the hotel bar, Adam ordered a plate of steak frites, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a bowl of tomato soup. Pete cleaned
glasses as he listened to Adam describe the previous night’s encounter with the mysterious redhead.

  “It was a magic bottle,” Pete said with a profound sense of awe. “I warned you. When you get one, anything can happen.”

  Adam didn’t argue. While devouring his lunch, he continued to share with Pete his efforts so far that day to track down Beatrice. “At this point I’m not really sure what else to do,” he confided, dipping his grilled cheese in the tomato soup. “She said she was meeting someone, but it didn’t sound like, you know, romantic. More like business or something.”

  “And you checked with all the other B and Bs in town?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Did you try across the bridge? Over at the Standford Inn?”

  “No, but I called them from the room. No luck.”

  “And you said this redhead, she grew up around here, right?”

  “Yep, I’m pretty sure. If she’s who I think she is. We both did.”

  “Well, maybe she’s still got family nearby.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Adam felt discouraged. “Unfortunately I can’t remember where she lived back then. I don’t remember a specific house—to be honest, I don’t remember much of anything.”

  “Her last name?”

  Adam shook his head. He was starting to realize how hopeless his situation was, but Pete refused to give up.

  “Hey!” Pete slapped his cleaning rag on the counter. “I know who can help. Dynamic Dave.”

  “Dynamic Dave?”

  “Yep. Works up at Shandell’s Organics. Dave’s lived here for what must be close to fifty years. And he knows everyone. Seriously. Everyone. The guy . . .” Pete searched for the right word. “Well, he’s a bit strange. But I’m telling you, he has an incredible memory.” Pete tapped the side of his head. “Incredible.”

  Shandell’s Organics was located in an old wooden church that had been converted into a grocery store. Everything in the place seemed very organic—the produce, the wine, even the healthy snack bars. Up a small staircase, in what was once the choir loft, shelves were lined with hundreds of jars and bottles filled with herbs, spices, tree bark, fungi, and essential oils. This was where Adam finally found Dynamic Dave.

  As Adam soon realized, Dave was anything but dynamic. The nickname was apparently more of an ironic, local joke. Simply put, Dave was about as close as you could get to the walking dead. His memory, however, did live up to Pete’s billing.

  “By my recollection,” Dave said in his slow, monotone slur, “there have been three women named Beatrice who have lived in the Mendocino area during the past fifty years.” Dave’s face was directed at Adam, but his gaze seemed to be focused more on the wall behind Adam. “Beatrice McAllister lives in Comptche, approximately fifteen miles away. She is in her late sixties and owns two llamas by the names of Buck and Chuck.”

  “Mmmm. Probably not.” Adam quickly glanced behind him to check out what Dynamic Dave might be looking at. There was nothing there.

  Dynamic Dave blinked several times, and then continued as if reading carefully from a script no one else could see. “Beatrice Kelly, daughter of Bruce and Cindy Kelly. But she’s dead, so it’s unlikely you ran into her.”

  Adam looked closely for some sign that Dave was joking. His face was deadpan. “The last Beatrice I am aware of is Beatrice Duncan. Beatrice Duncan is thirty-eight years of age and lives in the town of Caspar, four and one-half miles north.” Before Adam could get too excited, Dave added, “But it’s probably not her either.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Beatrice Duncan does not set foot outside the house anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s a very . . . large person.”

  “Oh.”

  Dynamic Dave blinked a few more times and then shifted his focus to Adam. “I don’t recall your face or your name. You say you grew up in Little River?”

  “I lived with my grandmother there, but only until I was six or maybe seven. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much from those days.”

  “What was your grandmother’s name?”

  “Anne.”

  “Anne Sheppard?”

  “No, she was my mother’s mother. Her last name was something like . . . Bear?”

  “Anne Beers?”

  “That’s it, Beers. Did you know her?”

  “I knew Anne Beers. Lived in a little white house, one mile up Little River Airport Road, on the right.” At that moment a customer came upstairs, and Dynamic Dave turned from Adam to offer his help. The customer was interested in whether black cohosh could help the circulation in her feet. Dave pedantically listed the various aliments black cohosh could be used to treat, poor circulation not being one of them, before proposing an alternative. Finally he turned back to Adam. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  Dynamic Dave blinked out some calculations and then said, “That would put you in Little River from 1971 to 1978, or then-thereabouts.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Well, there were lots of hippie people around in those days. And I remember there was a group of them squatting in the woods by your grandmother’s house. And one family had one of those VW campers, and the mother had a funny accent—French, I think—and the father, he was in trouble with the law, and they had a little girl. With red hair.”

  “Yes!” Adam half shouted. “That had to be her! That was Beatrice!”

  Dynamic Dave droned cautiously, “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But sounds to me like Little River is going to be your best bet.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ABALONE SHELLS, SEA GLASS, AND CAT STEVENS

  Adam drove south down Highway 1, his economy rental car cautiously creeping around the hairpin turns. He slowed down as a sign appeared out of the fog: Little River—POP 412, ELEV 90. Just beyond the sign, Adam passed a large, picturesque inn on his left, and a gas station/post office on his right. And that was it.

  He thought about turning back to stop at the inn, but first he wanted to explore another possibility. A little farther up the road, Adam slowed at an old cemetery. Before he’d left Shandell’s, Dynamic Dave had given him directions to Little River, and just as Dave had described it, directly across from the cemetery there was a small road that headed inland, into the redwoods. Adam signaled and turned onto Little River Airport Road.

  Five minutes later he was parking on the thin, gravel driveway of a badly neglected white house, its windows boarded up long ago. It was his grandmother’s place, no doubt about it—the early childhood home that he had glimpsed in his microfiche dreams the night before. All but swallowed up by voracious blackberry vines, the house looked very different now, depressingly different.

  Stepping from the car, Adam was immediately greeted by a nostalgic fragrance. As he followed the scent down into the field that stretched between the house and the redwood grove below, he recalled the image from his dream, the snapshot taken from directly overhead of a six-year-old boy running through this same field. That mental picture had been so vivid that Adam now stopped and looked up at the sky. How could I have a memory of this place from way up there? he wondered. I guess dreams are just strange like that.

  The redwood grove was not much different from what Adam had recalled in his dream. But it felt different. Darker, duller, as if its magic had weakened with the passage of time. Adam continued toward the stream, trying to recall details from his memory. Did other people live down here? Were there hippies and a VW van? As hard as he tried, he couldn’t evoke any new memories. He then spotted the giant, old-growth redwood with the burnt-out cave in its side. It was every bit as majestic as it had been in his dream. He found nothing inside. No children’s fort, no Beatrice, and no further memories.

  Heading back up toward the house, Adam felt a slight aching sensation behind his right eye. Perhaps it was just from his rough night, or perhaps it was that strongbox of buried memories trying to resurface again.

  He stopped to look at the slanted cellar door
and then climbed onto the porch, avoiding places where the wood planks had rotted. The railing was still attached, but Adam didn’t find any sea glass glued to it. No abalone shells next to the door either. The front doorknob was missing, and the door was nailed shut. Adam pushed hard with his shoulder, and the rotting wood gave way. Inside a thick layer of dust caked the floor, and scraps of junk lay here and there. Adam walked over toward the kitchen and paused, positioning his face by the doorframe as he had in the dream. It was painted white in the dream, wasn’t it? Maybe the white is now buried below the other layers of paint.

  Peeking into the kitchen, he focused his eyes on the spot where he had seen his grandmother. There was nothing there now but curling, rust-stained linoleum tiles.

  Adam stood, discouraged that no new memories had presented themselves. But that dull ache in his brain was getting stronger. He could feel there were secrets hidden in this house that he needed to see, if only he could find the right trigger to force open the past. He walked down the hallway into what was once the living room. The cast-iron stove was still there. Crossing over to the far window where his bed used to be, Adam looked out through the warped glass at the field outside. His hand settled instinctively on the windowsill, and there, hidden under a layer of dust, he felt something smooth.

  It was a small piece of emerald-green sea glass glued to the sill. His pulse quickened as he stared at it, transfixed. There was a clicking sound in his right ear, and then a hollow pop. The glass was now glowing. Not reflecting light, but actually glowing from its own source, deep within. The light continued to grow brighter and brighter, filling the room, pulling Adam into a hidden dimension of time and space.

  The first thing Adam noticed was movement in the field outside the window. Someone was out there, looking up at him. A young girl whose white dress set off her mane of auburn tresses. She beckoned to him. Come on. Come outside. Her smile promising mischief.