“Okay, Thomas,” I said, “ . . . you know who I am?”
His green eyes lit-up, as his face lifted, “You . . . you are John. We all know who you are.”
Not wanting to look like this is my first supernatural rodeo I said, “And do you know of my last name?”
He smiled, “This is a test. You're testing me?”
Uh, yeah. This is, um, a test.
He nodded, extending his hand, “You are St. John the Divine. I mean, you are his reincarnate. You are the John, prophecized by St. John the Divine. The one that will save us all.”
Well, at least people aren't expecting too much out of me.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Where are the rest of you?”
His eyes glance up to the sky, searching it as he moved closer to the wall. And I'm thinking that this is something he had learned from experience, so I follow suit.
“Most of us, at least in this part of the city, are gathered at the church. They are instructing the new ones about this place.”
I asked him what they called it, not wanting to be rude and call it Deadside when it's really called Nightmare World, or Horrorville. I'm sensitive to things like that. Who has glowing symbols all over his body, impeccable social grace, and two thumbs? This guy, right here.
“Oh, this is the Deadside. We're Deadsiders. And you,” he said nodding towards me, “well . . . you are the one who walks between, the one who can cross—you're the savior. The Crosser.”
Oh, shit.
I'm way out of my league. I hope he doesn't see that I'm just some washed-up idiot with my memory destroyed. That I was just one interview away from being a tard-farmer who has to wear long-sleeved shirts so that the mentally incompetent don't give him MRSA. I am a hundred things . . . but not a one of them is savior.
When they find out about me, the letdown will be of epic proportions. Biblical . . . literally. I cross my arms around my glowing body. I'm really starting to get cold. And, even though my body is not shivering, I'm most certainly feeling it. It's like I'm freezing to death, without the shakes. What the hell is happening to me?
“You have to go and meet everyone,” Thomas said, “ . . . at the church.”
Where is that? I ask him. Does this place have roadsigns? A map? Something I can follow?
“Oh,” he said, “it's too far from here. We won't make it by nightfall.”
You mean it gets darker? I said. Darker than this?
He had a nervous smile on his face—one of those smiles where your mouth curves upwards, but your eyes aren't smiling at all. And it faded quickly as he spoke, “ . . . I know that you will figure all of this out, John, but until you do . . . you need to be very careful what you do and where you go. You don't have much time.”
I told him that I already knew about the spooks and the gatherers.
“Oh,” Thomas said quietly, “ . . . I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the real dangers of Deadside. You need to avoid the spies. They're everywhere.”
Doesn't that make them difficult to avoid? I asked.
“You just need to stay with one of us. One of the believers.”
My back was aching I was so cold, and I could barely feel my hands and feet anymore. I looked at Thomas, my new dead tour guide.
“There's an old movie theater, it's on a highway road called Northwest.”
Northwest Highway, I repeated. Yeah, I know that road.
“Where it crosses the thirty-five highway.”
I knew what he was talking about. There's an AMC Theater, with like 30 different screens and tubs of popcorn as big as a trash dumpster. Ricky took me there to see the new Jason Bourne movie.
Out loud I tell him that I know of this place. When, I ask, should I be there?
“Tonight, at precisely sunset,” he said glancing over at the building where the green sun was hovering. “She will meet you there. She will explain everything.”
She who? I asked him.
“The girl who came to you . . . Kristen.”
Alright, I said. What now?
“You must return. Your time here is limited.” He glanced around, his eyes darting nervously, “ . . . they'll be along soon. And we don't want to be here when they come.”
They as in the Screamers? I said.
He nods his head. “You have to go, now. It has been my honor to meet you, John. Save us. Save us, all.” And then he backs away from me, turns and runs as if his life depends on it.
For a moment I just stand there thinking of everything that just happened, and the sheer weight of all of it. But then that little voice in my head—the one that tells me not to piss on electrical outlets—it instructs me to run. Because, as a general rule, when somebody near you shags-ass like it's the end of the world . . . your best bet is to do the same.
In less than a minute I was bursting through the door of Ms. Josephine's Shop. “It's me,” I say between breaths. “I'm back!”
She instructs me to go back to my body, and her words sound worried and frantic. Something is going on. And I don't need to hear anything else. I know if I stay here any longer I am either going to be attacked by some horrible thing, or frozen too much to move.
I figure that I have to crawl back in through the tear in my chest, so that's what I do, and the second I get my head inside, I feel my body sucked in behind me. It's like I've been shoved into me.
And then there's a bright flash, a loud thumping sound to add to the intense humming, and I open my eyes to Ricky jabbing an IV needle into my arm.
And I'm way beyond shivering cold.
It's hard to breathe and I can't talk. All I can manage is to moan, breathing desperately through my clenched teeth.
“Stay with me, Jack!”
Chapter 36
Ms. Josephine's, Earth Plane.
12:58 pm . . .
“Stay with me, Jack,” Ricky says as he squishes a large bag of clear liquid. I feel a warm sting start working its way through my body, from my right wrist upwards. Ms. Josephine places a warm blanket over my body, tucking the sides in around my legs and torso. And my chest is burning near those sticky patches.
“Your core temperature dropped below ninety-degrees. Thirty-two-point-two Celsius, Jack. That's where the shivering reaction ceases. Your pulse, respiration, and blood pressure are dangerously depressed. You're half dead.”
I'm full dead . . . just half living.
And as an afterthought he added, “Oh . . . and your heart stopped for a bit, there.”
“We can only bring you up a few degrees an hour, okay. So this is going to suck for a while. Just try and relax.”
That's like saying, Hey Jack, you're freezing to death, just kick back and relax, buddy.
I manage to eek out the words, “I'mmmmm . . . c-c-co-ld-d-d-d!”
“I know you are,” Ricky says as he plunges that thermometer into my ear. “But if we heat you up any faster your cardiovascular system will collapse. And that's a decidedly bad thing. Then I'd have to use the syringe on you.”
I notice that the syringe doesn't look full anymore. Either it spilled, or evaporated, or I've been dead recently. And right before I was going to try and curse him out . . . the blackness overcame me.
Chapter 37
Ms. Josephine's Shop.
3:14 pm . . .
I started to come to, and I was still shivering. “What happened?” I ask, trying to get my bearings. The room looks unsteady and wobbling, but that's most likely me.
Ricky sat down beside me. I was under about 15 blankets, lying on my back in a soft bed that was sucking me downward. Ms. Josephine was at the foot of the bed, cooking something.
“Okay,” Ricky started to explain, “ . . . while you were over in the Land of Sorrows, your body temperature was taking a nosedive.”
I felt cold, I tell him. And hungry . . . hungry for McDonald's. But more cold than hungry.
“Well you should have. Your temperature dropped at a rate of about a full degree Fahrenheit every ten
minutes. After an hour you were already in hypothermia. I've never seen anything like it. I had to hit you with the stuff and then zap you. Just once though, you came back nicely.”
Like there's a way to die and come back to life, nicely.
“But now,” I said, “I guess we learned something valuable.”
“Yeah,” Ricky laughed, “ . . . you can only stay over there for an hour. Every second after that is pushing it. Really, half of that's pushing it. And also . . . ”
And also, what?
“Well, in order for me to get your core temperature, I had to use another type of thermometer. It goes into your . . . ah . . .” and then he makes a circle with the thumb and fingers on his left hand, and used his right index finger to give me a visual about how he stuck something in my . . . well, you know.
Dying, I say under numb lips, is not what it's cracked up to be.
“Do you feel good enough to talk about what happened on the other side?” Ricky asks delicately as if I might crumble into a thousand pieces at any moment.
I shrug, sitting up. Ms. Josephine then stacked several pillows behind my back. “What do you want to know?” I say.
“Once you crossed over,” Ms. Josephine said, “ . . . tell me what you seen.”
I cleared my dry throat. I felt like I just got back from climbing Mt. Everest. First thing I encountered, I told them, was the inside of Ms. Josephine's Shop.
“Just like this?” Ricky asked.
Yup. Darker, but the same. So, I recounted, I headed out and everything was empty. Uninhabited and twisted and grey. Oh, and cold. Very cold.
“You was dere, alright,” Ms. Josephine agreed. “Dat's what dey tell me . . . when I commune. Dey say 'ow strange it looks, like dis place, but wit'out da life. Wit'out da colors and da warmth. And everythin's bent funny, like if you was lookin' through some kind of lens.”
The sun is green. The wind cuts down from above and blows right through you. You can feel your body losing heat with every gust.
“Yeah, well,” Ricky added, “that's your body starting to turn into an ice cube. You know what . . . it's like your body was converting into a cadaver. I think, when you're over there, your body here, it quits. It decides that you don't belong here. Maybe a body without a soul is like a building without anyone to keep the lights on. No soul, no purpose.”
And then I told them about the birds. I tried to explain to them the irksome way in which they flew around, off in the distance, as if they were insects. Giant, black birds, but with the flight patterns of a swarm of hornets. I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
Ricky had an idea about using a heating blanket in the future to keep my body temperature loss more manageable, but Ms. Josephine didn't seem convinced.
“Death is death,” she said. “ . . . if da body don't want to stay livin' wit'out the soul, den it don't make a difference whether you are in da refrigerator, or sittin' on da beach in Jamaica. Death is death.”
No soul no purpose.
Death is death.
When did my family become so insightful?
“Well,” I say, “we need to figure something out. And quick.”
“Why?” Ricky said. “We can approach this like scientists. Experiment after experiment. One step at a time.”
Yeah, that sounds wonderful, just so long as the next experiment begins at sunset.
Both of them looked at me like I had eaten the family pet. Like I had been caught fondling a reptile. They peered at me in the way we would all peer at the president if he suddenly pulled off his face to reveal an alien head—although that would certainly explain a lot.
“Tonight?” Ms. Josephine spat.
I nodded. Tonight, indeed. This guy who met me in Deadside—Thomas—he said that I needed to meet at the AMC Theater today, at sunset. Said I was St. John the Divine.
Ignoring the fact that I am now a saint, Ricky clarified, “The AMC Theater where we saw the Bourne Legacy?”
That's the one. But did you hear that they say I'm a saint?
“They watch movies?”
No, no. They use it for, like a church or something. Saint . . . anyone?
“Huh?”
Ms. Josephine crossed her arms, her expression somewhere between uncertainty and skepticism. “Dis all sounds very odd to me.”
All of this, I say, it's all so confusing that I'm not sure what's hard to swallow. I told them about Thomas, and how the only color on him was in his eyes. How his skin was grey like those big-eyed aliens that are always abducting idiots in Iowa. And how he said that my time was limited.
Like he knew I was slowly dying.
“So you need to stay close to your body,” Ricky surmised. “What if they grab you and run off somewhere that's too far for you to get back?”
We both turned to Ms. Josephine.
She didn't look too certain. “Dis is a problem I 'ave been considerin' for da last couple of 'ours. Some of dis is new to me too, boys. I'm learnin' a bit myself.”
Shit.
“Watch your mouth, child,” she chastised.
Sorry. But seriously, Ricky had a good point. Suppose a bunch of envious little monsters throw me in the back of a carriage—or whatever it is they drive—and haul me more than thirty three minutes away from my slowly freezing body? This would be a problem, no?
She bit her bottom lip as she considered the scenario. “I'll need to give dis some tinkin'.” Then she glanced across the room, at the Book of Sighs “And da book don't say nothin' about dis problem?”
Oh, well, I mean, no.
What I don't say, and avoid even considering is that I may not have finished the entire book. I mean, I've basically covered it all, but there may have been a couple pages in the back that I didn't get to. But, I've definitely covered all of the broad strokes. For sure.
“And deir ain't no mention of any of dis in dere?”
The problem, I explain, is that it's all so convoluted. Since I never really studied the bible, I'm not sure what the important changes are. It's all just religious mumbo-jumbo to me. I definitely wasn't a preacher in my past life.
Something flashed in my head. “Hey,” I say to Ms. Josephine, “there was something else that I felt when I was there—here—walking around. I had this feeling I was being watched. Like people were hiding, staring at me from the darkness. I was alone, but I didn't feel alone.”
“Dey's da watchers, most likely,” she said.
I'm going to have to start writing all of these things down. Spooks, gatherers, screamers, believers, icky birds, and now watchers. They should have a guide book for all of this.
“Watchers are da other psychics, like me, but dey can actually see you. Me, I can only listen and talk. I'm blind over dere. But some of dem, monks in China and India, mostly, dey can actually see.”
“Are they good or bad?” Ricky asked.
“Ain't no concept of good or bad,” she answered quietly. “You boys need to understand dat dese is just 'uman concepts. Evil and good, dat's just labels. Tings we say to put people into sides. And den we choose one, call it good, and da other is evil. Just concepts.”
Well, I say, we need to figure this out, and quick. Because in—I looked at my watch that I am not wearing—Ricky, what time is sunset?
“Seven-thirty-something,” he shrugged.
Right, well, by seven-thirty-something I need to be diving out of my chest. I don't want to screw this up. They say I'm a savior. That I'm St. John the Divine. Saints, I say, they're never late for appointments.
“You two rest a bit,” Ms. Josephine said. “I got to do my own research. Look at da book,” she said as she put her hand on my forehead. “I 'ave a feelin' you might see somethin' you missed before.”
That was her nice way of calling me a stinking liar. She has good bedside manner.
Chapter 38
Ms. Josephine's Shop.
4:52 pm . . .
Ricky and I decided to take another look at the book. I wanted to go back o
ver that Book of Sorrows part, which Ricky thinks is the 23rd book of Revelations. So we took each verse, line by line, and looked for any hidden meaning. At the same time, Ms. Josephine was pouring over books that look older than the dinosaurs. The kind of books that cough up dust when you open or close them.
“First three talk about getting dragged over there,” Ricky said as he read. We were both sitting on the edge of the bed, him holding my chicken-scratch translations.
Number four, I point out, that's about some door. Although, it could be something proverbial. Those religious types, they always want you to interpret things. A cat next to a box is never just a cat next to a box. It has to do with some country falling into ruin after a war. Something completely loose and unreliable.
“Verse five, it's dark. Verse six, everybody's sad. Bla, bla, bla. People standing near a gate. There may actually be a gate, somewhere.” He looked over at me, “ . . . you might want to ask about that, tonight.”
Seven. Once you're there, you can't go to heaven. That's kind of scary.
“I don't know,” he said, “ . . . would you want to spend eternity with all of your ex-girlfriends?”
I don't know any of my ex-girlfriends, I reminded him. He told me I was blessed. I thought I was cursed. This is all getting confusing.
“Eight . . . that's about those Screamer things. Probably want to stay away from them. Verse nine says you need to really pay attention to the screamers. Two verses. Okay, then . . . screamers are bad.”
Ten, I say. Ten seems to fall in line with what that Thomas guy was saying. It says that he—who I assume is St. John—will walk again. And that he will put the Land of Sorrows to peace. So I'm him. Or, at least, they think I am.
Ricky continued reading, “ . . . for the one that walks of both light and dark, living and death, he will be their savior.” He sat back, glancing around the room. Reverently he echoed, “savior . . .”
See Jack Die (Part 1 in the Paranormal Series) (See Jack Die Series) Page 18