What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  “Well, thank you for the book,” Adam heard himself say.

  Adam was beginning to suspect that the restaurant’s overhead lights had been set dimmer than usual. The room looked fuzzy, as if a layer of television static had been superimposed over everything. Glancing up at the three pathetic birthday balloons floating above his head, he struggled to make out their colors. Three shades of beige. And then there was the grating buzzing noise. Also coming from the light fixtures? Or maybe it was just his tinnitus acting up.

  Adam gave his head an Etch A Sketch shake to try to clear his mind. If he were to survive the evening, he would need to “stay in the moment,” as Dr. M. liked to say. Just stay at the table and focus on the conversation. Just stay in the room.

  The conversation currently going on at the table had veered toward home security systems. Zach worked for a company called IDCS, “Iron Dome Community Security,” he explained. “And I’m excited to be able to share the news that IDCS is being acquired by none other than—drumroll, please—Virtual Skies! That’s right, buddy, we’ll all be under the same umbrella.” Zach laughed. “Crazy, isn’t it? Video games and home security? But hey, man, everything’s integrated these days. We’re all connected.”

  “That’s right.” Adam nodded.

  “So, now what kind of setup do you currently have?” Zach asked.

  “Well, let’s see . . .” Adam wasn’t sure what Zach meant by setup. He looked to Jane for help.

  “We have a house alarm,” Jane answered. “I don’t remember the brand name—”

  Zach cut her off. “No, no, no. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yeah, no, that’s not what he meant,” Brittany added with a smile.

  “What other preventive measures do you have in place?” Zach looked at Adam, who still didn’t know how to answer. He blinked a few times to try and wash away the noisy static that was making it hard to focus on Zach’s face.

  “We have an emergency kit somewhere,” Jane jumped in. “The kids both have their cell phones. And of course Blackhawk security is always driving around the neighborhood. We let them know when we take trips out of town, right, Adam?”

  “Yes, we do.” Adam nodded agreeably.

  “Okay, well, that’s good as far as it goes,” Zach said.

  “But what IDCS does,” Brittney picked up, “is offer a completely revolutionary way of looking at home and family security.”

  “Integrated security, holistic security,” Zach went on. “Taking in all the variables, considering all the hazardous elements—”

  “And let’s face it, nowadays there are a lot of hazardous elements out there,” Brittany tacked on with a laugh.

  Adam noticed the buzzing sound in his ear jump up a few decibels.

  Zach laid a muscular forearm on the table and leaned in. “Adam, let me ask you a personal question. Do you keep a firearm in the house?”

  Adam stared blankly at Zach. A gun? Adam thought. Wait, why is this guy asking if I have a gun? Does he know I tried to kill myself once? Is this some kind of test?

  Jane gave Adam a little poke. “Sweetie, Zach asked you a question.”

  No, of course it’s not a test, Adam realized. He’s just asking you because of his fucking job. I’m seeing meanings that aren’t really there, just like Dr. Mendelson warned me about.

  Jane nudged him more forcefully. “Adam, honey, are you there?”

  “Yes; sorry. I’m sorry. What was the . . . What was the question?”

  Jane laughed. “That’s our Adam. Game programmers are always lost in their heads, dreaming up new worlds for the rest of us to enjoy.” Jane was smiling, but the side-glance she gave Adam contained the subtext of worry.

  Adam smiled and bobbed his head to reassure her. “Sorry. She’s right. Sometimes I do drift a bit.”

  “No, no, no—” said Brittany.

  “No, no, no,” Zack continued. “My bad. I’m always talking about my work. It’s your birthday; we should be talking about your work.” Zach smiled. “Making video games, I mean, that is really friggin’ cool. That’s just—”

  “Just the coolest thing ever,” Brittany sang out. “And your kids, my God, they must love it. Huh? Don’t you?” Brittany, her eyes Japanese-anime wide, looked over at Madison and Chandler.

  Both kids offered perfunctory nods before returning to their devices.

  Adam sipped his water in an attempt to dampen the dread that was slowly clawing up from his gut to his lightly buzzing head. Reality seemed to be flip-flopping tonight, swapping roots for branches as if the external world was becoming more surreal just as the phantoms of Adam’s inner world seemed to be preparing to step boldly into the light. Last night’s dream seemed more real than anything he could see as he looked around the Silver Oak Grill. Did I somehow end up on the wrong side of reality? Adam wondered. Just stop thinking about it and breathe. This is just a tough night. Just be in the room. Focus on the conversation.

  “Oh, I refuse to watch X Factor, or that new one, The Voice,” Brittany was sharing with Jane. “I am totally loyal to Idol.”

  When the food arrived, Adam tried to concentrate on eating; however, everything in the restaurant seemed to be making an effort to distract him. The drone of banal conversation. The flickering imitation candles on the table. The grotesquely enlarged chicken breast on his plate. And towering above it all, the navel of absurdity itself, the Silver Oak centerpiece with its painted branches rooted in the enormous crystal bowl filled with thousands of black-and-white marbles. Adam could not stop looking at the fucking thing. And the longer he stared, the more it appeared to be growing, reaching up toward the ceiling as well as spreading down over the tables below it. It reminded him of something else, some other towering monstrosity. A building . . . reaching up into the fog.

  “What the hell are we doing here?”

  Adam froze. Did I really just say that out loud?

  “I hate this place. The food is disgusting.”

  Adam exhaled, relieved to find that the voice belonged to Howie, Jane’s dementia-laden stepfather at the opposite end of the table.

  “This is your favorite restaurant, Howie. You love it here,” Cassandra asserted.

  “No. This place is a fucking joke,” Howie continued. This was the most vocal Adam could remember Howie being in years.

  Cassandra put down her fork and with both hands tried to soothe her husband. “We’ve been here a million times, darling. We practically live here, for God’s sake—”

  “No, no, no. You’re wrong. Why would I ever come to a place like this? I hate it here.” Howie suddenly locked eyes with Adam, and in that moment, Adam saw something he couldn’t believe. Howie was completely cognizant. Behind his panic-stricken eyes, he had woken up! Physically depleted, yes, but mentally he was right there, fully aware of everything that was going on. Everything.

  “Oh dear God. This is hell. This place, it’s a living hell! Get me out of here. Please get me out . . .” His weak voice cracking, Howie sounded like a pitiful, helpless child. “Please . . . please . . .”

  It was as if Howie, the end of his life nearing, had just discovered that he’d been sleeping through it all. On the very last step up to the gallows, he’d been given one last look at his life before the hood went on.

  Don, Howie’s caregiver, stepped in like an executioner to control the situation.

  “Okay, big fella. Let’s try to focus on that cauliflower. Let’s get a piece of that cauliflower on your fork. Okay, here we go . . .”

  As Don placed the cauliflower into Howie’s mouth, the old man gave Adam one final, desperate look. And then, just like that, it was over. Howie was gone—the vacant stare returned, the momentary spark blinked out.

  The implications of the moment weren’t lost on Adam. Yes, Dr. M. warned me about reading too much into things, Adam thought. But you know what? Fuck Dr. M. Fuck pretending like I don’t see what’s going on here. No matter what drugs they put me on, no matter how strict they make my routine, there�
�s no hiding that something is going on beneath the surface of what we’re all supposed to just accept as normal life. Something is seriously wrong with this place, and Howie saw it, and maybe it’s too late for him, but I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

  “I do think there’s a lot to be said for a safe environment,” Jane was saying. Zach had maneuvered the conversation back to home security.

  “No, absolutely.” Zach nodded. “And allowing us to help maintain control of the environment, that is really the key—”

  “Keeping the unknown out,” Brittany chipped in. Then, with a forced smile, she turned to Adam. “How’s that chicken, Adam?”

  Adam gave the best nod-shrug he could muster. But his auto-response system was breaking down. Jane was already sensing something was up with him, but worse was this damn Lynch couple. Adam could feel them both eyeing him suspiciously. He knew he needed to extract himself from this situation as quickly as possible. He needed to find the right exit, not just out of the restaurant but out of everything it stood for. There had to be a way out, a doorway or portal hidden somewhere.

  “At IDCS we call it perimeter control,” Zach said loudly, his eyes locked on Adam now. “Like, if you imagine an enormous fishbowl, maybe. You can picture that, can’t you, Adam?” Zach made a big circle with his hands. “And inside are all the things we know and love. It’s safe here, right? But outside the bowl, this stuff out here”—Zach waved his hands around—“this is the unknown, all the things that we want to keep out. You follow me, right, Adam?”

  Holy Christ! Adam was following all right. This guy’s not talking about home security, he’s talking about something much, much bigger. Something hinted at in that picture of the shepherd boy looking under the veil of the stars. Something Beatrice—yes, Dr. M., I fucking said her name!—something Beatrice said about the fishbowl of stars that aren’t really stars but holes that allow the light to come through. But why is Zach, or whoever this is who’s posing as Zach, why is he saying this?

  Then Adam saw it. Something so terrifying flashed across Zach’s blurry face that it made Adam’s heart jump into his throat. Through the white noise of Zach’s sales pitch, Adam caught a glimpse of something ancient and dark—that same parasitic force that had acted through his stepmother, Gloria, in his dream, and had turned humanity into a sea of computer-obsessed zombies. It was now speaking to Adam, no longer veiled in dreams, but right here, in Blackhawk, California, sitting across the table from him smiling, here in the fucking Silver Oak Grill.

  “So what we do, Adam, is we focus our attention on the bowl itself, the barrier between worlds. To keep all the unknown elements out while keeping all the known ones inside. And it’s important to keep that barrier strong, or God knows what might get in. But when we’re vigilant, and do our job . . . well, then we can all sleep safe and sound, can’t we?”

  Adam stood up. The tumblers had suddenly fallen into place. He had discovered the way out. The hidden doorway.

  “I have to go,” Adam said matter-of-factly.

  “You what?” Jane was confused.

  “Excuse me,” Adam said to no one in particular and then left the table.

  “Are you going to the bathroom?” Panic rose in Jane’s voice. “Adam?”

  Adam kept walking, not toward the bathrooms but toward the center of the restaurant.

  “Adam?” Jane stood up. “What are you doing? Adam!”

  Without slowing down Adam took hold of an empty chair from one of the tables he passed and dragged it toward the center of the restaurant. The young couple seated at the two-top had just received their entrees, and they were so distracted taking pictures of their food with their phones that they hardly noticed Adam setting the empty chair down next to their table. They did, however, react when Adam stepped up on the chair and then onto their table. Then with considerable effort, he pushed over the massive Silver Oak centerpiece.

  The sleeping boy on the merry-go-round shuddered and then opened his eyes. The sound that woke him came from far away. It sounded like a giant glass object had shattered. Squinting, the boy looked around, shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. His eyes, which had been closed for so long, needed time to adjust. As the abandoned school yard around him came into focus, so did the sounds—the buzz of cicadas, the gentle wind sighing through the redwoods, and the drip-drip-drip of the water fountain.

  A blue-and-white dragonfly landed next to the boy on one of the warm metal bars of the merry-go-round. “How long have I been asleep?” the boy asked.

  “My goodness, what a silly question,” the dragonfly responded. “That would, of course, depend on: one, who is asking; two, what you consider to be long; and three, what your definition of sleep is.”

  “I see,” the boy said. “But do you at least know the time?”

  “Time, time, time. It’s such a boring concept.”

  Boring or not, the boy felt the day was getting on. It would be dark soon, and now that he was awake, he needed to go somewhere. Didn’t he?

  The boy began to climb down off the merry-go-round, but then he stopped. He realized that he didn’t really know where he was meant to go or what he was meant to do. Even though the merry-go-round had been a prison, at least it was a familiar one.

  After some consideration the boy decided to wait where he was. Perhaps someone would come to help. His grandmother Anne had told him that if he ever got lost in the woods, he shouldn’t panic, but should simply sit still, stay calm, and wait patiently.

  “Eventually, Adam, someone will come for you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  FORGETTING ADAM

  Adam sat in his straight-backed chair by the window and watched the fog bleed through the distant row of cypress trees. A sharp tug, and the chair jerked a foot to the left and then twisted with a squeak. He was now facing the coastline beyond the hospital property.

  “Is that better, handsome? Does that feel better to you?”

  Miss Ferguson searched Adam’s eyes.

  She had recently discovered her patient’s tendency to turn and face the ocean while at his window. Even when his chair had been set to face another direction, Adam Sheppard leaned forward or contorted his neck to face the coast. Miss Ferguson tried to convince him, verbally, that he could move the chair himself. “Set it wherever you want, dear. This is your room now, your chair.” But nothing seemed to get through to the silent newcomer. So Miss Ferguson took it upon herself to check in with Adam’s chair situation every morning. He was a recent arrival at the Presidio House, but she already knew there was something special about him.

  Three months earlier, Adam had done his best to completely destroy the Silver Oak restaurant. After tipping over the false tree, he proceeded through the room like a wrecking ball, methodically breaking everything he could get his hands on. Most patrons fled, stumbling through a sea of bouncing black-and-white marbles toward the exits. Adam’s new neighbor Zach, along with Howie’s caregiver, Don, were the first to try to talk Adam down from his rampage. After dodging plates, silverware, and a flying chair, they wisely backed off.

  Several of the younger members of the waitstaff were next to give it a go. One, fresh out of high school, tried to rush Adam and actually managed a decent tackle before attempting to get him into a headlock. But two years of high school wrestling is no match for mental insanity. Adam wormed free and, with bloody hands, dug through broken glass and ceramic until he got ahold of a large, wood-handled steak knife. Wielding the blade like Spartacus, he quickly convinced the young waiter to abandon his attempt at heroism.

  By the time the police arrived, Adam was behind the bar, smashing through vodka, tequila, and Scotch, working his way up to top-shelf Cognacs. Luckily no steak knives were within reach, or he might have been shot. Instead he was Tasered, followed by enough kicks and baton strikes to fracture four ribs and a collarbone.

  Dr. Mendelson pulled up to the Silver Oak Grill 20 minutes after receiving Jane’s call. He was greeted by a parking lot full
of police cars, confused patrons, and several ambulances treating minor injuries. Eventually he found Jane.

  “I tried, Dr. M., I really tried,” Jane sobbed as she collapsed into Dr. Mendelson’s arms.

  Dr. M. did his best to console her as he scanned for Adam. He finally caught sight of him in the back of an unmarked Crown Vic. It wasn’t easy, but Dr. Mendelson was eventually able to convince the police to bring Adam to a hospital for treatment before taking him in to be booked. Once they arrived at St. Joseph’s emergency room, Dr. Mendelson swiftly arranged for a psychiatric evaluation, which got Adam admitted to the hospital’s closed psychiatric unit, thus avoiding a trip to jail.

  In the days that followed, lawyers set to work untangling Adam’s various legal messes while he remained at St. Joseph’s sedated and in restraints. His body, however, continued to strain against the physical and chemical bonds with unbelievable strength. There were nightly flare-ups, violent storms that once brought a 250-pound male nurse to tears. But with each day, Adam’s waves of rage receded a little further, until at last he submerged into a completely nonresponsive state.

  A decision was made to transfer Adam to San Francisco General’s psychiatric ward. For several weeks, doctors there poked and prodded, trying without success to bring him back from wherever it was he had gone. Psychiatrists weighed in, suggesting a wider range of treatments and medications. Electroconvulsive therapy, which had shown great results for many bipolar and clinically depressed patients, had no effect whatsoever on Adam. So as his physical health waxed and the hope of mental recovery waned, arrangements were made for long-term care. Options were limited in California, thanks to the Reagan budget cuts of the 1970s that had shut down nearly all long-term mental health facilities in the state. But a private endowment had helped keep the Presidio House open, and on January 27, 2011, Adam Sheppard moved in.