“See what?”
“The future. Have you tried knocking yourself out after we were together?”
“No. What are you thinking?”
Vauxhall looks to Paige, gives a half-smile. I’m not sure Paige knows, but now she has a pretty good idea something went down. Vauxhall says, “I think that maybe your abilities changed. Mine did, they got heightened, so maybe yours did too. You think it’s worth trying?”
“Maybe. But I don’t know if I want to try now. I don’t want to see something that will just crush me. I think it’s best to stay right here, in the now,” I say.
Vauxhall asks, “What’s next then?”
“It’s about time I went home,” I say.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ONE
Dr. Borgo-
Funny getting a letter from me, right?
How old-school is this? Anyway, I’ll keep it short and sweet. First off, I want to thank you for helping me out with the whole Grandpa Razor scene. Really, it wasn’t you helping me out so much as you saving me from killing the guy. Sometimes, when I’m thinking back on it, I worry it wasn’t the best idea to have stopped me, but then I come to my senses and realize I’m just being pessimistic. And that’s the reason I’m writing.
What the hell is going on with me?
Seriously, it’s like I’ve got that multiple personality disorder thing that always pops up as the killer’s motivation in those bad cable movies. Actually, I don’t think I do, but whatever it is that’s going on with me, it’s disturbing. Not so much disturbing to me as it is to everyone else around me. My friends, they’re kind of freaked out by it. My girlfriend, the person I’ve been in love with for like ever, she seems scared of me. How terrible is that?
So I was just writing you for those two reasons. 1. Thanks. 2. Can you help me explain this? I don’t think I’ll be able to stop by the office anytime soon. And I don’t think it’s something you’ll need to run blood tests or whatever over. Frankly, if the future that I’ve seen happens, then I’m sure you’ll be seeing tons of me when I’m in the Alzheimer’s Wing.
Cheerio!
Ade
P.S. Chances are pretty good you’ll get this letter after everything goes down on the beach. Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all your help over the past few years. Means a lot to me. Late.
TWO
I don’t bother with the side entrance tonight.
There are two freaks on the porch, a young dude I’ve seen before and a woman with a baby asleep in a sling on her chest. When they see me they do these excited little jumps and even clap their hands.
The young guy wants me to tell him when he’s going to get married.
The woman, she wants to know the same thing.
I sit down on the porch and they sit next to me looking with the most eager eyes the same way they’d sit listening to a guru. These people have never actually met me. Never heard me speak. They have no idea what sort of week I’ve had and what I’m gearing up to do when I step inside my house.
Honestly, I feel bad about what I say to them. First I clarify that I’ve gone clean and there won’t be any more visions. “Besides,” I add, “I only ever saw my future. Not anyone else’s. Also I should mention that the last time I did something, it didn’t look good. You might want to forget about the future being anything but grim.” And then I get into detail. Some of it, I’m embarrassed to say, I make up.
The young guy, he lopes off the lawn head hung low and shaking.
The woman, she’s just trying to keep her baby from screaming.
I get inside to find Mom waiting up for me.
I haven’t seen her in a few days, but we fall quickly into old habits the way trained monkeys might. When I walk in she does not get off the couch to hug me. She just smiles and opens the Revelation Book and clicks her pen open. Also she’s sipping tea and watching PBS.
I sit down on the other end of the couch and she shuts the television off and says, “Thank God you’re back.” Then, opening the Revelation Book, she asks, “Where do we start?”
“With nothing,” I say.
She starts writing. Says, “Okay, and in the nothing?”
“No. Really. Nothing. No visions. Like I told you.”
“No visions?” She looks me over. Sees my skin unbroken. My bruises yellow if there at all and nothing wrapped around my head. No busted lip. No stitches. She asks, “What are you doing, Ade?”
“I’m not knocking myself out anymore, Mom. I’m done. It’s been a while now.”
“Did Baby Jesus tell you to stop?”
“No.”
“Why? I don’t…” She’s shaking her head robotically.
I tell her that I don’t talk to Jesus. I tell her that I never have talked to Jesus and that Jesus never has and never will figure into the visions. I say, “All the things we’ve seen, all the things we’ve traced out, all the stuff about my future self, it doesn’t get good for me because of Christ. It gets good because I stop.”
Mom closes the Revelation Book and sighs.
I say, “I’m in charge of my own life, Mom. What if right here and right now is all that matters? What if everything else, everything you want to read in that book, what if it’s all just dreaming? Just wishful thinking?”
Mom moves over to my side of the couch and starts massaging my shoulders. Says, “You remember when we went to Cave of the Winds in the Springs? You were only ten or maybe nine at the time and the whole drive down you were carrying on something crazy. Anyway, we’re in these caves and you’re just having this fit. The tour guide is ready to leave us behind. She’s looking at us and frowning and ready to just kick you down into some bottomless shaft. The whole tour you’re getting on everyone’s nerves. Just driving everyone crazy and I can’t seem to do a thing about it. I’m embarrassed as all hell. I’m trying to calm you and trying to look like a decent parent, like an effective parent, but it’s going nowhere. I’m temped to turn back when we enter one particular part of the cave system and we’re looking up at all the stalagmites and stalactites-I can never remember which is which-and you suddenly stop complaining. You go silent. We had to stay in that room for five minutes longer than most tours stay. Everyone on the tour was fine with it because you were finally being quiet. You sat down on that cold stone floor so deep beneath the ground and just stared up at these rock formations. It was like it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. As though you were staring into the celestial heavens. Staring straight into the face of God himself. Sweet Jesus, that’s when I knew. Right then.”
“Knew what, Mom?”
Mom says, “I knew that you were a miracle. To be honest with you, I saw you in that cave and immediately realized that there was something more going on in your head than just the usual kid stuff. And you weren’t marveling at the strange developments of nature either. You were seeing beyond what all of us see. The world’s a curtain, Ade, and you were seeing right through it. Right though to the other side. To the strings and the hands that hold them. You saw the geometry of the Maker’s design. We see the simple wings, but you see the souls headed to Hell. You see the needle. What the rest of us only guess at. What scientists can only dream about.”
Mom’s talking dragonflies again.
She says, “Come in the kitchen with me.”
I look around the corner, up the stairs, and to the kitchen where the lights are on and two women, both Mom’s age and type, are sitting at the table drinking tea and looking back at me. They’re smiling, faces wide and warm. Also there’s a laptop and a projector sitting on the table.
In the family room, now with my back to the kitchen, I ask Mom who these women are.
She says, “Part of our flock. You’ve met them before.”
“When?”
“Many times.” And she touches my head. “It’s okay if you don’t remember.”
“Why are they here? It’s the middle of the night, Mom.”
“Waiting for you, Ade.”
I sit and one of the women, a chubby one with a mess of curly hair, says, “You need to put your faith in the Lord. If he beckons, you answer the call, don’t you?” And Mom says, “Jesus is love, Ade.”
Of course, this all sounds very familiar. I saw this when Jimi hit me with the baseball bat and the vision was dull. Well, here it is again only in real time. The déjà vu built right into the very fabric of my life.
I actually look forward to seeing where this leads.
“What are you guys talking about?” I ask.
“Love. Duty,” Chubby says.
The other woman-she’s got straight brown hair and a long-time-smoker’s face-says, “Being in love is the best thing ever. Wonderful. Have you seen this girl in the visions? Has the Lord directed you to her?”
Mom tries to answer, but Chubby shushes her.
I say, “I did seen her in a vision.”
Eyebrows up, Smoker says, “How far out?”
“I saw her two years ago. She’s here now.”
Smoker smiles. Chubby sips her tea. Mom crosses her arms and looks at me sad. Her eyes flickering closed and open and closed and open. Not blinking but signing something unconsciously.
I say, “I’ve loved her for years.”
Chubby, hands in prayer pose, says, “Wonderful, but…”
Smoker says, “Amazing, but…”
Mom says, “Your future, it’s already written itself. For you to get to where you want to go, baby, you need to trust in the Lord and do his bidding. Past few weeks, at the church, we’ve been working it out. These ladies have been there right along with me, sleeves rolled up and getting in the trenches. As it’s written, Proverbs 10:4, ‘He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.’ You’re the wealth, Ade.”
“Mom, I’m super tired, just want-”
“Aren’t you interested in what we found out?”
“Found out?”
Chubby fake-claps her hands. Smoker says, “Something wonderful.”
I look to Mom. She grins, says, “We weren’t looking as deep as we needed to. We weren’t seeing all the connections. You know, watching you put all those cards, all the string, up around your room, that project you and your friend were working on, it gave me an idea. Take a look at this.”
Mom turns the projector on and nods for Chubby to dim the lights.
THREE
And she starts a slide show.
Pictures of me up first. Me when I was ten with freckles and my hair like straw. I’m running. Wearing a train conductor’s hat. And there’s me at the zoo riding the bull sculptures. And there’s me in a swimming pool. And then me only a few years ago with a black eye I don’t remember having. Next slide is a painting of Jesus. He with a crowd of followers. He in his robes, looking the ancient Israelite but all the people around Him dressed in modern clothes. A chef, a businessman, a surgeon, a woman with a child on her hip and a wooden spoon in her hand.
Mom says, “All the signs were there from the get-go.”
Next slide is a time line. It starts now and goes out for years. Right near the middle, maybe when I’m forty, there’s a big red cross and under it, written in Comic Sans, is the word “Rapture.” The next slide, it’s a Photoshopped cloud in the shape of a hand. A big exclamation point next to it.
Smoker says, “We found it. You saw the hand of God in a cloud. Pointing east to Jerusalem. The sign everyone’s been waiting for.”
Mom says, “There all along.”
I start getting up from the table. I tell the women, my mom, that I’m just really tired and I appreciate them sharing this. I tell them that I’d love to spend a little more time on it tomorrow. I say, “Nice presentation. Must have taken some time.”
Chubby stands and raises her hands, “It’s not over, Ade.”
Mom says, “Please, Ade. Five minutes.”
I sit back down with a groan. The slides continue. More pictures of me intermixed with passages Mom’s typed in from the Revelation Book. There are charts and even diagrams. My future laid out in black and white, with a terrible font. I’m really not paying much attention but nod when they look at me. Smile when it seems like I should.
Everything they’ve got, the whole presentation, is based on all the stuff I made up. All the stuff I pretended I saw in my visions. See, my mom’s organized it all chronologically and, looking it over, she thinks there’s a pattern. This slide show, it basically says the Rapture’s due any minute now.
All of this from my lies.
From the cloud I said looked like a hand. From the dude I saw pulled on the breach who was drunk, the dude I added the Jesus just off the cross pose to. The mourning dove I added to the tree in the college vision. And older stuff like the chrysanthemum seen in a mall store and the eyes of a child that were pale fire.
She goes all the way back, years and years of my fibs all lined up and trotted out like they’re real signs, like this is the road map to Heaven. What’s odd about it though, and what I seem to have forgotten in all my making stuff up, is that the further out she goes, way out to when I’m middle-aged, the visions get darker.
Where she’s got it marked as the Rapture, there are the words “cloudy” and “darkening” and “nightmare.” And what’s uncanny about it is I can only think of the visions I’ve had showing me a future that’s indistinct, murky. I think back to the visions that seemed threatening, the ones that made me frightened. The storm at the beach. I see what Janice showed me and I honest to God shiver right there.
Smoker notices, she rubs my shoulder, says, “It’ll all be okay.”
And suddenly I’m actually paying attention to my mom’s slide show and I’m waiting with bated breath for her to show me what comes next, what happens after the Rapture. When she flicks on the slide of the mental institution I almost fall out of my chair.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, half shouting.
My mom looks at me worried. She says, “It’s from the vision you had after you crashed your car on Ninth Avenue. It was only this past summer. July, I think.”
“I don’t remember,” I stutter. “What did I say?”
Mom looks to Chubby. Chubby looks to Mom. Chubby shrugs.
Flipping through the Revelation Book, Mom says, “It was somewhere right over here, just by… Right, okay, here it is. You said that you saw yourself living in this place. That you were crippled or something but that you weren’t too worried about it because somehow, down deep, really, you knew it was only an illusion. You said there was an angel there, an angel told you.”
“What angel?”
Reading right out of the Revelation Book, Mom says, “A man in a mask told you.” Then mom looks up and grins, closes the Revelation Book and folds her hands over it. “The Lord certainly works in such funny ways.”
There it is, this whole thing already known. The past right here.
If anything, realizing I’ve seen it before and forgotten, it makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to run screaming out of the house and smash my head against something hard. I want the Buzz so badly. So incredibly badly.
When the presentation is over and Chubby puts the lights back on, I lean back in my chair and struggle over whether to burst their bubbles. The way I’m feeling, I think I have to.
Smoker asks what I think. If I’m convinced.
Chubby says, “This is why you can’t stop. Jesus will provide you with another love. This girl, she could be sent here for another reason. To distract you. Satan’s certainly been known to do such things.”
I wait for a moment of silence. A few breaths in and out.
And
then I say, “Mom, I make up most of the stuff that I see. All those little details that you guys have based this whole presentation on, I made all those up. I didn’t see that dude in the Christ pose. His arms weren’t out. He was squished. And the chrysanthemums? Never once saw one. The sun. The clouds. All of that stuff I made up so you’d be happy with me. So you’d make me dinner. Take care of me. Talk my teachers down.”
Smoker looks to Chubby.
Chubby looks to Mom and Mom just shakes her head.
“You know, you do look tired. You’ve had a long week. Why don’t you go ahead and get some sleep. I’m sorry we bothered you with this tonight… it-”
“Made up, Mom,” I say, standing. “All of it to make you happy. To give you the world you really truly wanted. And for a long time, well, for the whole time, I was fine with it too. I was happy to do it. But not anymore, Mom. My head is clear now. The only future we need to care about, to really think about, is tomorrow. Maybe next week. I’m not going to throw away my life just to make sure I get into the next one.”
Chubby screws her face up.
Smoker nervously picks at the back of her neck.
Mom asks, “Well, what made you so worried about the slide of the mental hospital? You were visited by an angel, you told me so yourself. Please don’t try and backpedal away from it, Ade. I’m here to help you.”
I feel sorry for my mother, but I say, “Lies, Mom. I’m a good actor.”
Mom is breathing quickly. Nostrils flaring. Mom’s in sympathy mode. Only it’s not the kind of sympathy you associate for someone who’s sick. For someone with something terminal or wasting. This, this is the kind of sympathy reserved for people who work really long hours. People who sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. Priests. Kamikaze pilots. The way she looks at me when she’s with it is the way you look at an icon. At a saint. Her eyes are deeper than they’ve got any right to be. Crying without tears. She says, “After all we’ve done for you? You say these things in front of my friends? The only people who really care for you, Ade? The people who-”
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