The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch

  Moss heard the television from within the room, a laugh track. Anxious to meet this young woman. Moss knocked.

  “Come in.”

  Marian was sitting up in bed. She looked comfortable despite the tubes threading her arms to IV drips and the oxygen tube lacing her nostrils, the splay of wires monitoring her vitals. She was awake but wan, exhausted. Her hair was pulled back, accenting the oval cast of her face. Although Moss knew of echoes, she had rarely been in their company. She had thought of echoes as duplicates, but that wasn’t true, she realized now—this young woman was Marian Mursult.

  Marian turned toward Moss. “What’s wrong with me? Everyone stares when they come in.”

  Bandages wrapped her wrists—from the exposure? Moss wondered. Or a suicide attempt? No one had mentioned anything. Seinfeld was on the ceiling-mounted television.

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” said Moss, aware of emoting the same scrabble of uncertainty that annoyed her so often when people first noticed her prosthesis. “Are you Marian?” she asked, guilty again of pretending nothing was wrong. “I’m Shannon. I’m with an agency called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Can I talk with you about what’s happened?”

  “I don’t remember everything,” said Marian.

  “That’s understandable,” said Moss. “Do you mind if I have a seat?”

  There was only one chair, already beside the bed. The heart monitor’s sonorous tones and the hushed sounds of machines Moss didn’t recognize made the room feel fragile. She had been at Marian’s funeral earlier that morning, had watched a priest bless her closed casket with holy water.

  “I know you’ve already told your story to some others,” said Moss. “My colleague, William Brock. You might be wondering why we don’t just talk to each other, why I’m going to ask you to tell me what you’ve already told him.”

  Moss noticed that Marian was shaking. Cold? Terror at her memories?

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Marian.

  Moss used the call button, and a moment later a nurse checked on her, helped lift Marian’s blankets to her shoulders without disturbing her tubes or wires. Marian asked for a cup of tea, and the nurse returned with a plastic pot of hot water and a few Lipton tea bags.

  “I’m all right, and I understand,” said Marian. “I don’t think that man, Brock—I don’t think he believed me. So you want to hear for yourself, right?”

  “It’s not a question of believing you,” said Moss. “But I’d like to hear from you. I don’t want to hear your story from someone else.”

  “I saw myself, did he tell you that? I saw myself out in the woods,” said Marian. “I think they wanted to kill me, but they killed her instead.”

  A surprising sense of recognition. I saw myself out in the woods. Sideways-winding snow, the woman in the orange space suit reaching to her. “I believe you,” said Moss. “Tell me everything. How did you get out there?”

  “My dad has a friend, this guy named Fleece,” said Marian. “A war buddy. Dad took care of him, like he couldn’t take care of himself, there was something wrong with him, he was . . . I think his brain was injured. They went riding together, motorcycles. He met me after my shift, told me I was supposed to go with him, that something had happened to my family.”

  “Why didn’t you drive?” asked Moss. “You left your car in the parking lot.”

  “He told me something terrible happened, said I shouldn’t be driving when I found out. I was so scared—”

  A hitch in her breath. Moss took the girl’s hand in hers. “It’s all right if you need to cry,” she said. “Take a minute, it’s all right.”

  “Did he kill my mom? Is my family dead, is that true? Why?”

  Moss held her hand, “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why this happened. I want to find out why.” She wanted to comfort Marian but knew Marian would never truly recover from these deaths. “Tell me about Fleece. Where did he take you?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me what happened. He said he was taking me home,” said Marian. “But he was going a different way, and when I asked him where he was taking me, he pulled over, tied my wrists. He put me in the back of his truck.”

  “He tied you up back there?”

  “Tied my wrists with twine,” she said. “I was gagged. I can’t . . . This is . . . Things don’t make sense.”

  “I believe you,” said Moss. “I need to hear what happened to you.”

  “That man from the FBI, who was here before you—he didn’t believe me. He kept trying to catch me in a lie, asking me all sorts of questions, the same questions again and again, but I’m not lying, I swear to you. I swear to God I’m not lying. I’m just confused.”

  “Marian, where did Fleece take you?”

  “There was a place my dad used to take me to,” said Marian. “Family vacations, but back when my sister and brother were too small, my dad just took me. He called it our Vardogger. Just some made-up word, I guess. Like Never-Never Land.”

  “Vardogger,” said Moss. “Where’s the Vardogger?”

  “I was just a kid, I don’t know. We were in the woods, but there was this lodge where he’d meet with his friends, sometimes their families too. Pine trees that Dad called hemlocks. There was a river. He liked to fish. A waterfall. All sorts of caves, crevices in the rocks I could squeeze into and hide out.”

  “Was it the Blackwater Lodge?” asked Moss.

  “I think so, maybe,” said Marian. “He hasn’t taken us for years, though. We’d go there, and I loved it because sometimes I thought that the mirror in the lodge would come to life. Sometimes I’d see myself at the river in the woods and think it was the mirror girl. My reflection, following me. You know, like Peter Pan and his shadow? I only saw the mirror girl a few times, standing across the river. My dad told me she wasn’t real, that she was just my imaginary friend, just a daydream because I was a bored kid with no friends around.”

  “And that’s where Fleece took you?” asked Moss. “To that lodge?”

  “Not that lodge, but it was the same place, those woods,” said Marian. “I don’t know how long we drove. The ride rattled me, and I got hurt. It seemed like forever, but when we stopped and he opened the rear door, I could see it was still dark and still a long way off from morning. Fleece pulled me from the truck, pushed me deeper into the woods. He said ‘I’m sorry’ over and over, telling me that he wanted to keep me safe, but that it was too late and he had to do what they told him to do. He said my family would be dead in a day, but he didn’t want me to die, so we should just do what they say.”

  “Who?” asked Moss.

  “I don’t know. Voices?” said Marian. “He was scared. I could tell he was terrified of something, and then he threw me to the ground, all of a sudden, and that’s when I recognized where I was. He’d taken me to the Vardogger.”

  “How could you tell?” asked Moss. “This was the middle of the night, out in the woods—”

  “Because there’s a tree that marks the Vardogger, this old dead tree that looks like a skeleton. It’s all white, with no leaves. The Vardogger tree. And I heard the river I remembered as a kid, right there past the tree.”

  The Vardogger tree—Moss knew the tree. When she was lost in the woods, Moss had seen the tree repeating, Fleece’s tree, the tree of bones in the mirrored room. Marian’s father called it the Vardogger; Patrick Mursult had known this place.

  “I said to him, ‘Christ have mercy on your soul,’ and he told me he was going to show me the end of time,” said Marian. “I was scared of him and didn’t know what he was talking about. He told me that things were knotted up all around us.”

  “A place near the Red Run?” asked Moss. “A river, a clearing surrounded by pines.”

  “He took me past the Vardogger tree, and we stepped out into that clearing, saw the river in front of us. We were in some other place in the woods, there were other trees—other Vardogger trees, a lot of them, in a
line. He was pulling me along—we crossed the river over a fallen tree, and the weather turned to ice. That can’t be real, can it? On the far side, our feet sank into the mud, and the sky was ridged like I was looking at the roof of a mouth, and we saw ourselves reflected outward, like I was looking at myself through a kaleidoscope—over and over and over, all around me. I couldn’t look anymore and started to pray, but he said he wanted to show me God, and he lifted my head to the sky, and I thought I saw Jesus on the cross appearing over the river, but the cross was upside down and his mouth was bloody and, oh, God, oh, my God, the body had no skin . . .”

  Moss wanted to scream, but for Marian’s sake she crossed the room to collect herself. She looked out the window but saw her reflection in the glass. Marian had seen the Terminus. She had seen the hanged men.

  “Fleece told me he had to tie me up again,” said Marian. “He took me back to the Vardogger tree and pushed me down. He pushed me against the tree and tied my wrists around the trunk. He said that someone would come for me, to take me somewhere else. I asked him where they would take me, but he said he didn’t know, that he wasn’t allowed to know. He said, ‘I’m damaged, so I’m not allowed to know.’ And then he just left me there, out in the middle of the woods. It was so quiet. Everything was silence.”

  “How long were you out there, tied up like that?” asked Moss.

  “I don’t know,” said Marian. “Not long. Not even an hour. When I knew he was gone, I pulled at the twine and felt it give a little at my wrists, like it had a little play. It took me a while, but I was able to pull my hands free.”

  She held up her wrists, showed the bandages. “Bloodied myself up pretty bad,” she said.

  “But you were free,” said Moss.

  “Yeah,” said Marian. “I was freezing, my hair and clothes were wet, because it had rained. I didn’t know where I was, but I remembered the lodge my dad used to take me to, figured it must be close. I thought I could find it.”

  “You knew where you were?”

  “I thought I was on the wrong side of the river from the lodge. I couldn’t find that tree we’d used to cross the river, but I knew I could wade across, or swim if it was too deep, so I stepped in,” said Marian. “It felt like ice, the water was so cold, and there were rapids there. The water came up to my neck, but I could walk. I lost my footing, and it swept me down, but I came to the far side and crawled out. I’d never been so cold. I crossed this little meadow. I couldn’t even feel my toes in the mud because I was so numb.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t die,” said Moss.

  “I could hardly walk, because I couldn’t feel where my feet were beneath me, but everything still seemed the same, like I had wandered in a big circle. Then I realized that I’d somehow come back to where I’d started from, still on the wrong side of the river. I came to softer mud that had been chewed up by truck tires—from Fleece’s truck, I thought. I could see where the tires had scooped out the mud. I ran back through the trees, and that’s when I saw her.”

  “Who?” asked Moss.

  “The mirror girl,” said Marian. “I saw the yellow of her shirt at first, just like mine, and then I realized I was looking at someone tied to a tree, just like I’d been, the same white tree. I came closer and saw her hair hanging, wet. I circled the tree to come up on her from the front, so I wouldn’t scare her, and when she saw me, she said, ‘I remember you,’ and I told her, ‘I remember you, too.’”

  “You were children the last time you saw each other,” said Moss.

  “I wanted to help her get free, and so I told her to pull out her wrists like I had done, and she pulled but couldn’t get free. I tried to help her, but she wasn’t tied up with twine—her wrists were tied up with wire. Her hands and arms were bloody, they were real bad. She’d been trying to pull free but couldn’t do it, and the wire wouldn’t break. It wasn’t loose at all. I tried to help but caused her so much pain when I pulled. I didn’t know what to do. So I stayed a little while with her.”

  “You had to leave her,” said Moss.

  “I was worse off than she was because of the river,” said Marian. “I was so cold. I was turning to ice. I was wet, shivering so much. She told me to get help. She told me she’d be all right, that her dad would be coming for her, that her dad would know where to find her.”

  “And so you tried to find help.”

  “I don’t remember what happened after I left her. I thought I was dying. My memory’s just gone. I just woke up here, in the hospital. She might still be out there. She’s still out there.”

  “We’ll find her,” said Moss, thinking, One Marian here, another in the Ryder truck. “Marian, why would someone want to attack your family?” she asked. “Can you think of anyone who would want to do this to you, and why? Anyone that was upset with your dad?”

  “It’s sick,” she said. “I don’t know who would do something like this.”

  “Any old Navy buddies? Anything like that?” she asked, already knowing who might have killed her father, Hyldekrugger, Cobb, but wanting to hear Marian say the names. Victims of violent crimes often knew who the perpetrators were and why the crimes had occurred. “Had your father been in touch with anyone?”

  “You have to understand that my dad was different,” said Marian. “He had thoughts that intruded on him. He said he was recruited for some Navy program. Mom never liked him to talk about this stuff with us, but he couldn’t help it sometimes, like it all just came rushing out of him. He said . . . he told my mom that the Navy had recruited him to build a ship made of fingernails, I know that sounds crazy, like I’m not remembering right, but that’s the way it was. He said the ship will sail carrying the bodies of the dead.”

  “What does that mean, Marian?”

  “I don’t know. My dad spent a lot of time away from home,” said Marian. “He spent time with his friend Fleece. They’d drink together. And his lawyer, he saw her a lot.”

  “Who was his lawyer? Why did he need a lawyer?” asked Moss.

  “I just heard my parents talking a few times after I’d gone to bed,” she said. “He was drawing up contracts for something. Needed a lawyer’s help. My mom asked if the lawyer would be able to help with our move, but my dad didn’t want to drag her into everything.”

  “You were moving?” asked Moss. “Do you know why?”

  “I wanted to finish high school to graduate with my friends, but she said we were leaving, just as soon as my dad was ready. Mom didn’t know when that would be, maybe after graduation or maybe next week. They wouldn’t even tell me where we were moving, but I heard them talk about Arizona a few times.”

  “Think of everyone that your father spent time with,” said Moss. “Is there anybody that I should know about? You mentioned a family lawyer. Do you think your dad’s lawyer is involved somehow?”

  Marian furrowed her eyebrows. She said, “I don’t think so, I can’t think of why. Although there was something—” But she stopped herself.

  “Let me know,” said Moss. “It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong or right, but I want you to fill me in so I can follow up on everything.”

  “My dad was cheating on my mom,” said Marian. “I don’t think she knew, but I figured it out, figured out something was going on. I heard him on the phone this one time.”

  Nicole. “Do you know who he had a relationship with?” asked Moss, but Marian shook her head. “You heard him on the phone?”

  “He was using a pager, always taking calls in private, and I knew what that meant, I had an idea,” said Marian. “My mom must have looked past it, let herself be lied to. But there was this one morning a few weeks ago, I heard him fighting with someone on the phone. Someone was threatening him. I heard him say, ‘Don’t tell him,’ and I thought he meant this woman’s husband or boyfriend. ‘I want to see you. Don’t tell him, not yet,’ and he hung up. Once he left the room, I hit Star 69, and a woman’s voice answered. I just hung up.”

  “Who do you think this woman
was going to tell? Someone your dad knew?”

  “I guess so,” said Marian. “Yeah, it sounded like he knew him.”

  “If I say someone’s name, would you recognize it?”

  “I can try.”

  “Charles Cobb?” asked Moss. “Jared Bietak?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marian. “I don’t think so.”

  “Karl Hyldekrugger?” asked Moss.

  “Yes, my dad mentioned him,” said Marian, her eyes haunted as if a ghost walked among them. “My dad was scared of that man. He used to talk about him sometimes. My dad called him the Devil. He sometimes said the Devil could eat people with his eyes.”

  Hospital corridors were unnerving spaces: blank corridors, turns, further corridors, fluorescent glare on glossy floors, innumerable doors. What would have happened had we never found the Ryder truck? Moss wondered. Jared Bietak and Charles Cobb would have disposed of Marian’s body—where? In the mass grave, in the mound at the house in Buckhannon. And this Marian? Hikers would have found her where she died in the woods. Moss imagined this young woman’s life, the bewildered grief and insomnia, the late-night television, cyclic news of friends mourning her death even though she was alive—Marian would be alone tonight, she would be alone every night for the rest of her life.

  “What’s going on, Shannon?” Brock asked when Moss had returned to the hospital boardroom. Moss closed the door behind her, poured herself a cup of coffee from the plastic decanter. Powdered cream, sugar, stirring with a red plastic straw. Fleece had taken Marian, had driven her to the woods. He had shown her the end of time, had tied her to the Vardogger tree. An echoing, one Marian tied with wire, the other Marian tied with twine. One Marian found dead in a Ryder truck, the other Marian found alive.

  “It’s scary what they can— You see that lamb Dolly on the news and you think how terrifying it really is, the age we live in,” said Brock. “Impossible things. That lamb should be an impossibility, but everyone just accepts it. We doubt the existence of miracles, but when they happen, we treat them like they happen every day. Clinton signed that ban just last week, I saw on the news. President Clinton banned human cloning, but I’m realizing now what’s going on here—”