“I am the Alchemist. I see you received the suit. Good. Your prescription.”
The white-faced man placed the bag on the narrow counter between them, kept a thin, ashen hand atop it.
“You remember how to take these?”
In truth, there was something deeply, deeply familiar about all this.
“Take two a day: one in the morning, one in the evening,” the Alchemist said, tapping his finger on the paper bag. “And take one whenever you begin to feel… disassociated. Not yourself. And always with plenty of water.”
Travis nodded, afraid to open his mouth and give release to whatever was waiting on his tongue.
“You’re lucky,” the Alchemist said, pushing the bag forward and lifting his pallid hand from it. “You get to try to save them this time.”
* * *
Back on the main road, Travis dumped the bag onto the passenger seat. The prescription bottle was plain, labeled only with the store’s name and his.
Inside, there was a large amount of pills, small stars with eight tiny points, oddly colored.
White, but not the powdery white of aspirin. These were shimmery, opalescent as the light struck them.
He knocked one into his palm, uncapped the water, swallowed the pill.
* * *
At home that night, Travis removed the suit, put it gently onto its hanger. He placed it into the closet, where it merged with the shadows there, congealed into the greater darkness.
The prescription bottle, though, he carried into the kitchen. He threw one of the strange, star-shaped pills into his mouth and downed a glass of water, panting and gasping as he finished it. Before he’d even caught his breath, he refilled the tumbler, drank that, too.
Stumbling into the main room, he bumped into the edge of the couch, his hand finding the cell phone that he’d set onto its arm. He fumbled with the phone, disabled the feature that sent his number out.
Travis, wobbling now from a kind of exhaustion he had never experienced, opened his mouth—dry, despite the water he’d just drank—collapsed onto the bed, his head only grazing the pillow.
And he was fast asleep, gone away…
… somewhere else.
* * *
Around 3 a.m., Travis stirred. As if sleepwalking, he lurched to the kitchen, filled the tumbler with water. When he’d downed four glasses, he made his way back to the futon.
Scooping the phone from the dark sea of the carpet, he flipped it open.
For 15 minutes, he pecked at the phone, dialing 39 numbers in all.
When each was answered—and they were all answered—Travis emitted a series of strange sounds, staccato buzzes and clicks, mechanical, electrical in nature: pops and sizzles that sounded like shorted wires.
Each number listened for a few moments, there in the dead of night, hung up.
* * *
When he awoke, the sun was just coming through the windows. He ran his hand through his hair, scratched his head.
His heart froze, and his hand began to shake uncontrollably.
There was no hair on his head; it was bald, smooth, without even the roughness of stubble.
Looking at the bed, he saw his hair, strands of it, entire clumps of his scalp, whole sheets of his skin with hair still attached, strewn about the bed.
He raced to the bathroom, snapped the light on.
What he saw in the mirror made him brace his shivering arms against the small sink.
Not only was he completely bald, his skin had gone a disturbing, unnatural grey, his eye sockets, his temples, the hollows of his cheeks gaunt and spectral.
He gasped, noticing that he had lost his eyebrows, too, giving him the stricken look of a cancer patient. The hair on his chest and his arms was also gone.
Laughing nervously, he pulled the waistband of his underwear away from his belly and watched a puff of dark hair tumble down his legs.
Still giggling, he went into the kitchen, drank five glasses of water, each filled to the brim, and took the strange pill. Afterward, he showered, dressed in the black suit, and left his apartment, the pill bottle rattling in his pocket.
Travis climbed into his car, having no idea of where he was going other than that he was not going into the office today—probably never again, at least not looking like this.
There was a large white box, plain and unlabeled, on the passenger seat. Inside, nestled in tissue paper, was a hat: a plain black fedora with a plain black band around its crown.
It slid over the smooth skin of his newly bald head, settled low over his eyes.
Beneath the tissue, there was a sheet of paper with names and addresses.
* * *
He steered the car, making turns as if he knew where he was going. On an older residential street, he pulled to a stop in front of a brick bungalow, snug and well maintained. Travis removed the piece of paper, compared the address to the one on the mailbox.
Outside, the air felt too thick, the sun too bright. The front door stood open behind a glass storm door, revealing a tidy, well-appointed house, hardwood floors gleaming, motes of dust swirling in the early morning light.
An older woman appeared in the hallway. She wore a pair of capri-length jeans and the kind of overly floral blouse favored by women of a certain age. Her feet, veiny and calloused, were slid into a pair of scuffed, pink flip-flops.
“Mrs. Hearn?” Travis asked, then halted, his eyes bulging. Instead of his own voice, he heard something flat and monotone, high-pitched, as if someone had sped up his real voice. It sounded distinctly tinny and mechanical.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you Mrs. Gail Hearn?”
“And who are you?”
“My name is Mr. Tesla,” he replied, letting the words fall from his mouth without thinking about them. “I am from the government. May I come inside?”
“This about those UFOs?” She still hadn’t opened the door more than a crack. “Mrs. Rostenkowski said that a few of you… people were down talking to her a couple days ago.”
Travis said nothing. He knew those she was referring to, the Annunciators, knew their functions, what they were doing… for, he suddenly realized, he was one, too.
They were like him, doing what has doing, wearing black suits, taking star-shaped pills, drinking glass after glass of water.
“May I come in?”
Mrs. Hearn looked up and down the street as she opened the door.
Travis followed her into a small sitting room. She motioned him to a recliner, while she sat on a couch facing him. The couch was draped with crocheted blankets in a bewildering variety of autumn colors and flanked by end tables sporting clean ashtrays and small dishes of hard candy.
“Mrs. Hearn,” he began. “In addition to the UFOs, you saw a creature?”
Travis was unconcerned with the UFOs. He knew what those were, too, the Watchers, knew they had already fulfilled their function in what was transpiring.
Mrs. Hearn narrowed her eyes. “I only told a few neighbors and my family…”
“We are aware.”
“Well, I can tell you it wasn’t no person or bear or other damn thing,” she said, warming to the subject. “My backyard butts up to the park along the riverfront. Lots of trees back there.
“It was about 11 p.m.; I went outside to take the trash out. I caught something out the corner of my eye, about 30 feet away.”
Travis already knew what she had seen, the Harbinger, knew what it was, what its purpose was, but let her go on.
“It was about 10 or 12 feet tall, thin with spindly legs and arms. Its head was odd, no more than a bump on its shoulders, no neck or nothing. An enormous set of wings came from its back. Huge wings. They were sparkly, like…”
“Like a moth’s wings,” Travis finished.
“Exactly,” she chuckled nervously. “Then, two little glowing red lights flashed from where I suppose its face was, and it leapt into the sky, flapping those weird wings. Headed over toward the bridge.
“Well, I ran inside, locked the doors, and turned off the light. And that was it. Mrs. Rostenkowski said she’s seen it on some TV program. Called it a ‘mothman.’ Hah!”
“You are familiar with the bridge, Mrs. Hearn?”
“What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“Your husband worked on the bridge.”
Now, her frown became angry. “Well, yes, he did, but he died earlier this year. I don’t know why you’d be interested in that. Say, what branch of the…?”
“Might I trouble you for a glass of water?” he interrupted. “I must take a pill. My energy is running low.”
This somewhat odd statement elicited sympathy from her. At her age, she was well acquainted with the necessity of taking medicines at precise times.
“Of course,” she said, departing the room and returning with a tall glass of water. He popped the star-shaped pill into his mouth, drained the glass in a single, long drink.
“I will leave now,” he said, handing the glass to her. “It would be wise not to discuss any of this. It could be dangerous for you.”
“Is it a matter of national security?”
“A matter of national security,” he nodded.
Her eyes widened. “Well, I know a lot of people don’t take that seriously, but I do.”
Travis stepped toward the door, paused. “And about the bridge. Avoid it if you can. Something terrible will happen.”
Travis got back into his car and drove away.
He repeated this visit 38 times that day with the other names on his list before returning home.
And another 39 times the next day, with names taken from a brand new list that he found on the passenger seat of his car.
* * *
Sunday.
He dressed quickly in the black suit, exited the apartment. Over the last few days, Travis had let his mind slip away more and more often, calmly, not fighting the feeling that came over him. He simply let his conscious self float along, tugged by some great, dark current that pulled him from the shores of what he knew, who he was.
For he found that when he did, he knew where to go, who to see, what strange things to say. They were like lines in a script that he had memorized and discarded.
When the compulsion, the geas that constrained him loosened, he returned to the little apartment that increasingly felt alien to him, carefully hung up the suit, made a series of phone calls, then collapsed into a sleep so profound that neither reality nor dreams could penetrate it.
The Alchemist had told him to take a pill whenever he felt disassociated. Travis had assumed, at the time, this meant feeling less like himself.
Now, he knew the man… man?… had meant when he felt more like himself.
It wasn’t important that he be Travis… it was important, vital, that he be a conduit.
A conduit from what to what, he didn’t entirely understand, but he knew that it was important.
Not to him.
But to them, the deeper part of that current, the part that pushed him aside, carried him away, the consciousness that eclipsed him.
Oh, to them it was important.
To them, it was vital.
And behind it all, suffusing everything he did, was the bridge.
Because it wasn’t just a bridge, not just a structure to bring people from one side of the Meramec River to the other to eat McDonald’s and shop at the Super Wal-Mart.
No, the bridge represented something, embodied something more than the ordinary span of iron and concrete and steel arching over a river.
Not here, not in this reality…
But in their reality, the reality that lay close to ours, separated by the thinnest of membranes?
Oh, in their reality it embodied so much more.
In their reality, it was a doorway, a thing spanning our here to their here.
In their reality, it was a thing of dread, a thing of fear.
A thing to be destroyed…
* * *
The diner was steamy inside, and the warm, moist air rolled over Travis as he tugged at the door, a little bell tinkling over his head.
Travis stood in his dark suit, his dark hat, stood and surveyed the room. Most seats were filled; the counter was crowded elbow to elbow. Pink-uniformed waitresses wove between tables, bearing trays of food. The clatter of forks and knives and plates made a strange symphony on air smudged with grease, edged with coffee, softened by the warm smell of toast.
“Grab a seat anywhere, hon,” said one waitress. “Be with you in a sec.”
Travis heard her words as sounds, nothing intelligible. He stepped forward, moved as if in a trance, sat in a booth near the window. His hands, ashen, unreal looking, clasped atop the greasy Formica. He didn’t look at the menu or take notice of anything, anyone.
A waitress stood suddenly by his elbow. “What can I get you?”
“I would like five glasses of water, please,” he said, the droning, mechanical edge to his voice no longer a concern to him.
“Five?”
“And… toast.” Travis uttered the last word as if unsure whether he wanted it and unsure he knew what it was any longer.
“White, wheat, or…?”
“May I have a newspaper?” he interrupted.
“Sure, there’s a machine right outside the door.”
Travis reached into his jacket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, held it to her pinched between two fingers.
“I am… not from around here. I am unfamiliar,” he struggled with the words.
The waitress took the money uncertainly, touching the part of the bill farthest from his fingers. She scurried away, first to speak in hushed tones with the other waitresses, then to duck outside.
When she returned, she set five glasses of water on the table, along with a small plate of buttered white toast, a copy of the local paper folded in half, and his change.
Travis placed a pill into his mouth. Then, in rapid succession, he drained the contents of each of the five glasses of water.
The Masonville Courier-Gazette’s headline was about some local scandal involving a school board member. But there, at the bottom, was the beginning of the story he knew he had been waiting for.
UFOS? MOTHMAN? MEN IN BLACK?
Locals Report Strange Encounters, Warnings about Bridge.
He scanned it, the words entering his brain and completing a complex equation left there by them. The equation ran inside him, in the organic circuits that they had begun to understand more fully… and fear.
The program set into motion by these words raced through Travis, causing his body to spasm with such force that he shook the table, rattled the glasses.
Heads turned toward him, eyes widened.
Travis stood, upsetting the table. Several glasses rolled from the table, shattered.
His aspect had come upon him now, finally fully activated.
He lurched toward the door, every eye upon him, every face tight with fear.
“Avoid the bridge,” he said.
With that, he left, drove to his final destination.
* * *
The bridge arced some 100 feet over the dappled silk of the river below. Its steel span, its thin, gracile cables were painted white—pure, blinding white—in the glare of the sun. From a distance, the bridge looked like a weaver’s loom. The weft and warp of its threads held up the flat deck of the bridge as if it were a piece of fabric already woven.
In a way, that was exactly what it was. Well, not here… but there, the stuff of the bridge had woven a doorway, a doorway that, had they known how to access it, to open it, the people of this reality could have simply walked through to the reality of the others.
And that, they could not allow.
So, they sent their Alchemist, their Watchers, their Harbinger, their Annunciators.
Each one of them—the Watchers, the Harbinger, the Annunciators—expressed a profound message, a meaning that apparently didn’t translate through the eth
er separating them from us.
Perhaps that meaning was: Don’t build these structures.
Perhaps it was: We come in peace, but don’t think you do.
Perhaps something simpler, perhaps more complicated.
Whatever it was, in all the time they’d felt they had to do this, the message never got through, not in the way it was intended.
Because of that, because of fear, because of incomprehension, the final avatar that was sent, the final avatar that was always sent, was the Plectrum.
Travis, standing there on the deck of the bridge, looking down into the water, cars whizzing past him, realized that he was not, as he had thought, an Annunciator.
He was the Plectrum.
You’re lucky. You get to try to save them this time.
The Alchemist hadn’t meant ‘them’… at least not the ‘them’ that Travis had thought. He had meant them, those entities beyond the barrier, deep in the current that had carried away his mind, his will. It was an honor to be selected as the Plectrum, at least to them.
He drew a deep breath, reached over the railing and touched one of the thick cables. This close, he could see that it was actually formed from 20 or more thinner cables woven together. In turn, those cables were formed from even thinner ones.
The Plectrum—for that was what he was now—touched the cable with Travis’s pale fingers, as white as the clouds overhead. He was somehow able to insinuate his fingers between the cables in a way that should have been impossible.
Looping fingers around three of the thinner cables, he flexed his hand, plucked the cables as he might the strings of a huge harp.
A low tremor vibrated the concrete, thrummed through the supports and down the other cables until the whole structure quivered. The tone it produced was so low that it was felt rather than heard, and it momentarily disoriented Travis.
Little Deaths Page 17