The words melted together and became a butterfly. Another shadow passed over it. More words. Find the others.
“What others?” But as soon as they had formed, the letters came apart, and the water ran drop by drop out of my hands and back into the ocean with a sound like weeping. My key had fallen into the water and was drifting away. I chased after it with a shout and snatched it, but I tripped and the water came up over my head.
I jerked out of the trance, gasping. My hair felt wet. I touched it; just sweat, in this stuffy car. My key was still in my hand. It was getting dark in here now, and the shadows felt threatening. I expected him to step out of them at any time, darker than they were. But why? Why now? And what was he doing that I needed to stop? Seeing the butterfly in the water convinced me that going to MetamorphosUS was somehow part of this. I hoped there would be something there to guide me.
The darkness was too unsettling. I slipped the key back around my neck and pulled out my journal. It was just a cheap composition book, the kind with the hard black-and-white covers so you can write in it even if you don’t have a hard surface. By this point, the covers were plastered with stickers and photos and other bits of odds and ends I’d pasted on with clear tape, things that turned the covers into sort of a travelogue of what I’d done while I had it. I nestled my flashlight between my jaw and my hunched shoulder and flipped through the pages.
It wasn’t a journal in the conventional sense. At first I’d kept a notebook with me for my secret love, writing lyrics and fragments of ideas for songs. I couldn’t play an instrument worth a damn, let alone compose anything, but I thrived on music and especially songs with lyrics that were true poetry. I’d always wished I could write songs, even just to sing to myself, so I contented myself with writing lyrics that I was too embarrassed to show anyone.
Over time, though, my journals got more like a commonplace book where I jotted everything from phone numbers, to lists, to names of books I might read someday, to notes to myself. I doodled in them, pasted souvenirs or clippings, even sketched a little. I also wrote down people’s stories in them, sometimes. I’d always been the kind of person that strangers like to talk to, for whatever reason--my mother’s like that too, she always said that she and I just had “sympathetic faces”--and once I started wandering after the accident, I made a hobby out of writing down the things people told me. It was partly that I just love stories, and partly that it was comforting and familiar to go back and read them when I was alone in a new place. I had a few of them in my pack now. They were unnecessary bulk, but it’s not like I had anywhere to put them, and I couldn’t part with them.
I opened it to a fresh page, dated it, and wrote down what I’d seen in this vision. I did that sometimes when I got something useful, or if I felt a prompting to tell someone something but wasn’t going to see them right away. It helped me remember everything that was important, and I hoped that someday I’d read back over them and see a pattern emerge that would make sense out of what my life had become.
My hand hurt from trying to write evenly amid the jostling motion. I shook it and opened and closed it a few times while I paged back through the book. At the end of an earlier entry, I’d tried to sketch my Beloved’s face. It wasn’t terrible, given my mediocre drawing skills, but it only sort of resembled him. Still, I liked how I’d drawn the mouth, with that little upturn in the corner that could either be sly or tender, much like him. Where had he gone, beyond that wall of mist? Would I ever see him again?
Well, it’s not like I was going to get any more answers right now. I put the book, pen, and flashlight away and decided to try to sleep. I didn’t think I was tired, and yet I passed right out.
When the train reached Hamlet, dawn was hurrying to meet it, painting in the pale grayness of the world with layers of watercolor. I peered out the door, saw an uncoupled car on another track that I targeted for cover as I scoped out the situation, and jumped down into my best action-hero pose. I scurried to the uncoupled car and pressed against it, adjusting to the irregular light of the floodlights that pierced the last of the gray. It was a little chilly and there was dew on the car where I touched it.
I skulked around for over an hour before the train to Baltimore rolled in. There wasn’t a great spot for riding. My only option was to grab a seat on the small platform area on the back of a hopper. It meant exposure to the high winds when we got up to speed, it meant being physically alert the whole time because there was only some narrow railing between me and the open air if I got jolted, and it meant being extra vigilant about not getting spotted. I’d have to wait until the train started to move, make a dash, grab the bars of the railing, and leap up--with my pack strapped to me. If I fucked it up, I’d lose my chance to get on board, and then I wouldn’t make it to Baltimore in time to meet my ride.
When the train creaked forward, I bolted from my hiding place, jogged alongside the train for a few strides as I reached for the bars, and in one motion swung around to grab the bars with my other hand while I jumped and caught one foothold. I planted the other foot on the platform, ducked under the railing, turned around, and pulled myself all the way up. I steadied myself and dropped down to a sitting position, shaky with adrenaline and relief. As far as I could tell, no one had seen me.
The train continued to crawl out of the yard. I caught a glimpse of motion as we passed through and exited a tunnel, a figure breaking away from the wall and running toward me. I felt a flare of panic and then saw it was another hopper. The figure was wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up and only carried a small pack, and they made the leap and climb up to my platform with some difficulty. I was annoyed at having to share the space, but at least it was noisy enough that there was an excuse not to talk if I didn’t feel like it.
The hopper slid down the wall next to me, a little closer than I would have liked, and crossed his legs. He pulled back his hood, revealing a half-shaved head with a flop of bright blue hair falling in his eyes and big plugs in his ears. I stared at him, disbelieving. “Charlie? Charlie Horse?”
He stared back at me. It took him a minute, but I saw recognition take shape. “Mari, right? Wow.”
“Yeah.” Well, this was just great.
He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “So weird that we’re both here.”
“Imagine that.” I pulled my knees up close to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, not making eye contact with him. It was going to be a long five hours to Baltimore.
He seemed to get the message, or maybe he didn’t want to talk to me either. After a few minutes without any overtures, I relaxed a little and leaned my head back on the top of my pack, turning my head to watch the brightening countryside sliding past. It was kind of pretty in a desolate way, but then I’ve always found lonely and forgotten places to be beautiful.
It was a good thing I’d slept in the first train, because it meant I was wide awake now. With the wind whipping by, chilling me and making my nose run, and the hard textured steel of the platform digging into my butt, I’d never have been able to sleep. Not that it was safe to sleep out in the open like this. Definitely first-class accommodations, here.
Charlie opened a beat-up water bottle and took a long drink from it, then offered me some. I shook my head. Nope. Besides, I’d relieved myself in some scrubby undergrowth while waiting for this train’s departure, and I was now back to keeping my bladder as empty as I could. People with normal lives, I reflected, did not have to micro-manage their pee.
He shrugged and closed it. “Just make sure you drink enough,” he said. “This wind, it sucks the moisture right out of you. I got killer headaches until I figured that out.”
“Did you.”
He stretched out his legs and shifted around. “Hard to get comfortable,” he commented. “But it’s worth it, right? I mean, how many people get a view like this?”
I looked off his side of the train, where he was gesturing.
Right beside us was a wide rolling strip of mostly-brownish high grasses, undulating in our wake like the thick fur of a vast sleeping animal. Beyond it was a narrow band of tangled brush and weeds that served as a lint trap for all kinds of bits of trash, and past that, there was a long irregular line of old industrial buildings, blackened with age. Still, the early beams of sunlight glinted playfully off the glass in the windows and warmed the topmost edges of the rock faces beyond them.
“It’s hard to talk over the train and the wind. So maybe we should, you know, not.” I folded my arms, tucking my fingers into my armpits.
I wished he would stop looking at me. “Would it make a difference if I said I was sorry? That I’m trying to get my shit together?”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I know. I know. For what it’s worth, I was bringing you back the money I took. I always was going to. I just needed a hit to make it through. But when I came back, you’d moved on.” He hugged his knees.
I couldn’t take the sadness in his voice. Something crumbled in me. “For gods’ sakes, Charlie, you could have just asked me for cash. We were friends. We were supposed to be looking out for each other.” That had been the worst part, waking up in the shitty squat we shared with ten other people and discovering that he hadn’t even tried to wake me up to ask for help before he fucked off with my cash.
He couldn’t look at me anymore. “Come on. Really? You were the one who gave me the ultimatum. Get it together or get out of your life.”
Ugh. He was right. I’d had some friends later on educate the self-righteousness out of me; I’d known Charlie early in my time on the streets when I thought I knew a lot more than I did about being on the margins of society. I said the thing now that I hadn’t even said to myself back then. “I thought if I didn’t, I’d end up the same.”
I almost had. The painkillers they gave me when I was recovering numbed out a lot of other stuff too, like the gripping panic of my flashbacks to the accident. I’m still not sure how I avoided getting hooked except that I was newly broke and too naive to know where to go to get anything illegal when my script ran out.
He rested his chin on his knees. “I get it.”
I stole a glance at him. “How are you? Pain-wise.”
“Not great. Managing. Trying some alternative healing.”
“I hope that helps.” I meant it, despite everything. Dammit, I still liked the guy. He’d taught me a lot, and his quick mischievous smile always made me feel happier, more adventurous. “So where you headed?”
“Going to a burn, of all things.” He laughed, but I froze. “Called MetamorphosUS, heard of it? I got some friends in Baltimore, hoping I can hit them up to help me get a ride the rest of the way. What? What is it?”
“That’s where I’m going too,” I said.
“No shit? That’s crazy! Guess it was fate, huh? Giving us a chance to talk before we saw each other there?” I could see the bigger question in his eyes.
“Definitely. Good to have a chance to fix things first.” I allowed myself a little smile. He returned it and then some.
“So what’s bringing you there?” It was a fair question. Although burners often had values in common with crustpunks and other nomads, the communities didn’t cross many paths. Burner events tended to be more for people who had homes and regular income.
I was going to blow it off with a non-answer, but both Suze and the handful of tears in my hand had told me the same thing. Find the others. I licked my cold, dry lips. “I was told to go there. In, um, a dream.”
He straightened up. Turned to face me. “To stop him? The man with the bloody hand?”
I faced him too. My mouth was dry. “You’ve seen him?”
“Constantly. In my dreams, I mean. Ever since my life went to shit. I thought he was a ghost or something my brain invented to deal with stuff. I’m terrified of him.”
“He’s not,” I said. “I think he’s a demon.”
Charlie exhaled, shaky. “I thought I was crazy. I thought it was nuts for me to go to this thing. I don’t know anybody there. But I felt like I had to do it, no matter what.”
I looked at my hands twisting in my lap. “I thought this was nuts too. But yeah, I felt the same way. What was the message like for you?”
“I had this dream that I was walking through a big campground with all this wild art and people in weird costumes. At least I think they were people. I kept seeing glimpses of him. I tried to follow him, but I kept losing him. Then I was outside a tent, and I saw a red handprint on it. I started seeing the handprints here and there. I followed them, and there was water-- a pond or lake or something. There was a cloud of flies over it. Bodies started rising to the surface, dead bodies. I think they all had a hole in their chests. They floated and stared up at the sky but then they started talking, one at a time, until they were all talking so loud I couldn’t take it. Saying the same things over and over. ‘Stop him. He’s coming. Don’t let him take what he seeks. Join the others. Stop him.’” He huddled down, shrinking back even from the memory. “I thought it was just another nightmare. But the next day I saw my healer. She gave me a ticket to Morph. Said she’d gotten it but couldn’t go, and her psychic intuition told her she was supposed to give it to me. I asked her to show me pictures from past years. Mari, I recognized the campground. I knew I had to come.”
“Charlie, do you have any weird abilities?” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that.
“Weird how?”
“Weird like, psychic or, magic or something. Like your healer.”
He took a long time to answer me. “I was supposed to. My grandfather was a medicine man and he wanted to teach me to follow him, said I was chosen for it. But my mom wouldn’t let him. How did you know?”
I also took my time replying. “Because I kind of do too. Since my accident. I don’t understand a lot of it yet. But I was also told to find others. What if that means that there are other people with abilities like ours who are also being called there, who are looking for us? If we’re supposed to figure this out together?”
“That would be amazing.” There was hope in his eyes. “I figured I’d show up there, but I had no idea what else I was supposed to do or how I was going to stop him.”
“Me neither.” I put my back against the car again. “Well, I have a ride from Baltimore, maybe they can take you too. And I guess we figure out the rest when we get there.”
“Guess so.”
We rode on in silence for a while, but now it was comfortable. I still didn’t understand this task we were supposed to do, but I felt a lot better having someone to share it with. I relaxed, just a bit. After some time, I turned my head to look at him. “It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it? What else are you up to these days?”
“I’ve got a lot of plans. After this weekend, I’m hitching to Brooklyn to crash with some friends. They’re helping me get in with this program one of them started. Working with city kids to make art in their communities. If it goes well, it might give me contacts to get back to school for a special degree thing in art and urban planning.” He smiled. Pride shone through.
Now I really felt like an asshole for writing him off as a junkie for so long. “Charlie, that’s fantastic. That’s perfect for you.”
“You know what I’m really excited about?” His smile grew bigger. “This program, it’s all sustainable art. I’m going to show these kids how to take junk and scrap and empty or trashed places, and make art out of it. Teach them that just because something gets thrown out, doesn’t mean it’s worthless or can’t become something that people want. Hey, let me show you something.” He pulled his bag into his lap and rooted through it, pulling something out and handing it to me.
It was a small, simple wooden picture frame filled in with a mosaic of broken ceramics and objects. “It’s beautiful.”
“Picture that, but on a
big wall or a piece of pavement, making a mural. That’s something I’m going to do, but with pieces found in the neighborhood of the site. I love the idea that there are all these things that on their own are broken, but together they make something beautiful and strong.”
“Like nothing is really trash, like it’s just another kind of treasure.” I traced my fingertips over the terrain of the mosaic. A cat’s face from a figurine, a delicate Delft blue tree beside water, a curly teacup handle, a swirled marble, an hour hand from a clock, so many intriguing bits that somehow fit together exactly right. I looked up at him. “Charlie, I’m so sorry I ditched you. And for the things I thought about you. I’m so sorry.”
He blinked a few times and stared into his bag. “Thanks. That really...I’m sorry too. I fucked a lot of stuff up back then. With you, with a lot of other people. I regret a lot of things that happened.”
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to get someone talking. Sometimes the craving for human contact just kicks in. He started talking about trying to get into rehab, begging on the streets by flying cardboard signs in median strips, living under bridges for a while, eating out of dumpsters, fighting off people who’d tried to steal his stuff. It made me wonder how long it’d been since he’d had a real conversation at all. His gaunt, high-cheeked face got animated, his thick unkempt eyebrows moving expressively as he rambled. Loneliness poured off him.
And then his flood of words trickled out and he gazed out over the now-sunny landscape. “I miss my girlfriend,” he said, and his voice was raw. “We broke up a long time ago, but I miss her.”
I knew better than to say anything. I just kept my attention on him to show I was listening.
“She tried so hard. She was way more patient than I deserved. And she was such a good person, taught signing to deaf kids, volunteered, all kinds of stuff.” He rubbed his nose roughly with the frayed cuff of his hoodie sleeve. “She thought I was smart, and talented. She got mad that I wouldn’t go back to school or get my shit together. I didn’t believe her when she said I was better than that.”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 4