by Rob Heinze
They appeared to be glowing white footprints. They gave a low fluorescence gleam to the hallway. Charley followed their path up the stairs. He got up the first three flights okay. By the fourth, his legs felt rubbery and weak. He huffed and pulled his legs up. All the while the footprints never faded. By the time he reached the top floor (he had lost count of how high it was), his legs felt dangerously unsteady.
The top floor was lighted from a roof access. This access had previously been covered with a piece of wood. That piece of wood had recently been shifted. The shift had exposed an opening and through that opening spilled warm light. There was a ladder leading up to the access. The white footprints that he had followed led to the base of the ladder. There was no other place to go but up.
He popped another piece of gum into his mouth, and then he started climbing. He never liked ladders. Going up them was always easier than going down, but he didn’t like them as a rule, no matter in which direction he climbed. He got closer and closer to the daylight, and for a fleeting moment he imagined a dark hand clamping onto his ankle and pulling him off the ladder.
He struggled to get the board further off, but he was eventually able to pull himself onto the uneven, patchy roof.
Those of the Light were standing off near the building’s edge. They were facing him. They didn’t move. Charley marveled at the beautiful fluidity with which their bodies seemed to move.
I want to see their faces, he thought.
The white figures jumped off the building. Charley, startled by their abrupt movement, ran towards the ledge. He got to the edge and glanced over. They were gone. Confused, Charley searched the entire street below but saw nothing. There was no sign that they had ever been there.
Why did they bring me up here?
That was when he saw the message across the street, written as he had seen the first message from the highway overpass. It was on the front of a building, which was across the street. It had not been there before; he was certain of that. He didn’t know how it had gotten there. For that matter, he didn’t know what it meant.
Beware of Be, it read.
“Beware of Be?”
It made no sense to him. He had no idea.
He puzzled over it for about an hour, during which time he looked for signs of Those of the Light. They did not appear. Sighing, and getting nowhere with the message, he strolled around the roof and found a fire escape. He could see a small square yard that was heaped high with trash. It looked as if the surrounding buildings had used that space as a landfill. He went back to the roof access and glanced down. He saw only darkness. The white footprints that he had followed up were gone.
What was the point of that? Why did they lead me up here?
Not keen on descending into a landfill, but even less keen on walking through an unlighted building, Charley went to the fire escape. The metal was rusted and flaking, but the contraption was still workable. The descent was rocky, the whole mess shaking, but he reached the bottom unscathed and cut a small path through the debris. At one point, a fat rat emerged from the trash and looked at him with glowing eyes.
Hello, Fella, what’s your business in town?
The rat saw him, studied him for a moment, and then disappeared back into the debris. Now the count was a person, a bird, a rat, and whatever Those of the Light qualified as.
There was an exit to the street through a narrow alley. Emerging into the open street brought surprisingly little comfort. He got on his bike and started to peddle up the Avenue towards the GWB. He soon forgot about the odd message, and it would not reoccur to him for quite some time.
16
The trip was tiring. The sky was bruised purple-blue. Dusk, malicious, was coming steadily upon the city. The last few blocks before the on-ramp were filled with eerie, silent buildings. His backpack had become unduly heavy, and the weight was enough for him to thank God that he had a bike. Walking—he couldn’t even imagine walking.
He hopped off his bike when he reached the on-ramp to the George Washington Bridge. It wound its way up and up. He could see the bridge stretching out into open space above the Hudson River. He took a deep breath and walked his bike up the ramp. His mind jumped from thought to thought like an ADHD kid in a lecture on history: it went from Ray to Sarah, to his job, to his parents, to what he might find in Jersey, to Those of the Light and their message, back to Jersey. His mind told him that he would find nothing in Jersey—that it would be the same as New York and the rest of the world…that is, empty.
Ray was right, Charley, you know that, don’t you? You’re in a coma.
By the time he got to the lower level of the bridge, his legs were on fire, and he had to stop and rest. He stood and gazed across the empty gateway to Jersey. There was something different about this bridge. Crossing the Queensboro had been strange, but there was something more here. He didn’t know what. It was like a turning point in his story. He wondered what Ray was doing. Was he lighting candles in preparation for the approaching darkness? Was he jerking off to the Britney Spears poster? It was hard to believe that he had left the man only hours ago; it felt like days…weeks, even.
He stood up and flexed his legs. Tomorrow they would be sore. The thought of tomorrow brought thoughts of tonight, and that made him wonder if he was going to sleep—and where? He couldn’t waste anymore time. Darkness, hinted at by the mean blue hue in the sky, was closer. He got on the bike. He began to peddle. Soon he was moving away from New York. The Hudson River flowed far, far below him—moving mindlessly and endlessly. On the opposite bank, against the rising mountains, he could see foamy white lines that almost looked like ice.
He started to peddle faster. He thought of Sarah. He thought of Ray. Maybe he was eating a dinner that he had warmed up by candlelight, crying between bites, his eyes enlarged and magnified as they had been during their first night together. Maybe Those of the Light were waiting outside that small house, waiting for Raymond Chandler, possible stroke-sufferer, glass-clad, creature of habit and too afraid to change?
Soon Charley Allen was peddling fast. Sweat trickled from his brow. He was half-way across the bridge.
And when he saw the Jersey side, he stood up on the bike.
Interlude - Sarah I
The clear man was in Charley’s room again today. I have seen him before. He came and stopped in the doorway a few days ago, while I was sitting by Charley’s bed. When I first saw him, I swore that I had been able to see through him. I remember it so clearly because Seinfeld reruns had been on, and I remember seeing Jerry Seinfeld’s face where the man’s chest should have been. That’s the TV across the hall, I remember thinking. But it had happened so fast that I figured it was just my exhausted mind.
Then today…
I went downstairs to get a snack from the cafeteria, even though I wasn’t hungry. To be honest, I have forgotten what hunger feels like. I came into the room and the clear man was standing over Charley’s bed. This time I swore that he was clear—transparent—because I saw the IV bag that was behind him. He wasn’t touching Charley—at least not that I could see—but it felt like they were touching. I don’t know how to explain it, and I know it doesn’t make sense, but there was some connection between them.
Charley and I met at training for a job. We first spoke during registration, when the HR guy was having us sign all the tax papers. It was a short talk, but enough that something happened between us. After that, we sat in training all day without speaking, yet there was still this connection by our closeness.
Four years later, I come into his hospital room and find this clear man with that same connection to Charley.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
The clear man looked up. He was a normal guy in his forties with close-cut brown hair and unremarkable brown eyes. He wore a sweater and jeans and had about two day’s worth of unshaven beard.
He was not transparent or clear, but that impulse impression of sparseness did not go away in my mind.
“Just saying a prayer,” the man said.
“Do work in the hospital?”
“A volunteer,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
The man pointed to something on his sweater. I was so confused (and a bit unnerved) that I didn’t realize why he was pointing to his sweater. Then I looked down and saw it was a name tag. The name read: greg.
There was no last name. Last names were private, I told myself. No one’s nametag says their last name.
“He’ll be okay,” the man said. He was looking at me the whole time. He was just a normal guy, okay, so why was it fucking weird? “I said a prayer, and in his dreams is a place to which he heads, and there he will do battle.”
There he will do battle? I thought. Who talks like that?!
“Okay,” I said.
The man sort of smiled, then came around from Charley’s bed. I kept watching him very carefully; I felt like he might vanish. But he didn’t: he walked out of the room, stopped, said “I’ll be back”, and turned right down the hall.
I quickly went to the door and looked out.
I’ve seen enough movies to have the preconceived thought that the man would be gone, vanished, but that wasn’t what I saw: I saw him standing hesitantly at the entrance to the next hospital room. For a moment, I felt that he went clear again, as I saw an empty gurney through his body, but then he stepped into the room and out of sight. That visual disturbance passed (but there was an empty gurney at the end of the hall).
I was tempted to follow him, but Charley’s nurse came in and started taking inventory on Charley.
“Do you have volunteers on this floor?” I asked.
“You mean Greg?” The nurse asked.
“Yeah.”
“Greg and several other volunteers are assigned to patients in comas.”
“Why?”
“Greg is a coma survivor.”
“Really?”
“A five year coma.”
I couldn’t tell if she regretted saying it, but it stung. Charley was only out a few weeks. The thought of five years…
“And the other’s too,” the nurse said.
“Excuse me?”
“The other volunteers are all coma survivors. From what I understand, there is a group of them that visit hospitals around the world. They have a special connection to patients in comas. I have seen people awaken after visits from Greg and the others.”
I felt my skin explode with goose-flesh. I shook it off, but said nothing. The nurse went about fussing with Charley’s IV and other meters. She changed his bedpan and checked the catheter. I thought a long time about the clear man and the group of volunteers. I thought that I had been frightened of the man, scared of the hallucinations of my mind that he had somehow been transparent.
In his dreams is a place to which he heads, and there he will do battle…
The fear was replaced by intrigue. I suddenly wanted to ask the man named Greg a hundred questions. I hoped he might stop back on his way out, but he didn’t. I kissed you on the head, and sat until I feel asleep in the chair. After a while, my mom texted me to come home, I needed rest. So I came home to my familiar but strange house, unable to sleep, thinking about you and the clear man. I wrote this to stay connected to you, and think I will keep writing in it to document your progress.
I miss you, Charley. Love, Sarah.
###
Today I saw the clear-man, Greg, again. He was in your room, but he was not alone. I had gone outside to get some air and call my mom. She was supposed to come and visit, but she was running late. I wanted to make sure she was okay. When I came back up and into your room, the clear man was sitting in my chair. He wasn’t clear—transparent—but he looked somehow frazzled. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so when I saw him, I startled.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, as if I knew him.
“How long have you been gone?” He asked.
I was confused, and scared: his tone expressed something urgent. “I-I’m not sure…”
“More than an hour?”
“I don’t think so…”
“They’re on the floor,” he said.
“Who?”
He stood from the chair and moved quickly towards me. His motions and urgency set me on guard and in fear.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
I had brought a Starbucks coffee and it spilled over-spilled the opening onto my wrist as I tried to get out of his way.
“Don’t leave him until I come back,” he said, and was gone.
I started to cry, my eyes welling. I felt guilty, with no idea why I should feel guilty.
They’re on the floor…
Who? I wondered.
I looked down the hallway and saw Greg rushing down the hallway, stopping at each door. I could only assume there were patients therein. As Greg went further down the hall, his motions fast and jerky, something came out of a room a few doors down. At first I was convinced that the shape was a shadow elongating on the pale hospital floor—perhaps a permutation of a shifted privacy curtain, but then the shadow somehow broke off from the room, like a blot of ink in those water-toys kids play with. It was a man, as normal as Greg, yet I know what I had seen: the man had been a black, lightless shape.
He came walking to me calmly. I didn’t know what to do. I felt paralyzed. The hot sting from the coffee on my wrist had turned cold.
“How is he?” The man asked.
“I’m sorry?”
The man looked over my shoulder to Charley. I felt an instinctual revulsion come over me. It was the sort of horrid sensation a parent might feel when they see an adult touch their child in an inappropriate manner.
“He’s fine,” I said.
“For now,” the man said. He had green eyes and dirty blond hair. He smelled like cheap cologne.
“Hey!”
There was a shout down the hall. Greg was coming up the hallway, moving fast but not running. The man in front of me turned to look down the hallway.
Charley, I don’t know exactly what happened, but something passed through me…like a small current of electricity. And I swear that the man in front of me went dark—completely black and shapeless—like a void torn into the hospital hallway. It was brief, and then he was whole and Greg was standing next to him.
“What are you doing?” Greg asked him.
“Checking on patients,” the man said.
“You’re not welcome on this floor.”
There was something ancient and familiar in this exchange. Their words and mannerisms were those of people who knew each other and were guarded based on past experiences.
“I can help as well as you,” the man said.
“Your help isn’t needed.”
They were both afraid to fully engage each other. I felt that.
“Should I ask the director?”
“She hasn’t allowed you here,” Greg said. “You should go.”
I thought it would go on forever, but the man, looking past Greg, decided that Greg was right.
“I should go,” he said. “There are others in waiting.”
Then the man walked away from the door and out of my view. I watched him go into a turn and vanish. I turned back to Greg and yelped.
There was a women standing next to Greg. She was in her early thirties, with glasses and her hair in a pony-tail. I hadn’t known she was there, or coming…but I think the man who left had seen her. I looked at her name-tag and it read: LILY.
“Thanks for coming,” Greg said to her. She smiled.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about him when we’re here.”
“What about when you’re not here?” I asked.
They both said nothing. I shifted my weight and looked back to you on the bed.
“He’s strong and determined,” Lily said. “He’s moving towards the place where Light and Dark do battle.”
I looked back at her. “What are you talking about?”
&nbs
p; “We have to go make sure he leaves,” Greg said, motioning down the hall. “He loves you and you’re a rock.”
With that they left and I cried. By the time I stopped crying, my coffee was cold and I didn’t want it.
If delirium was possible from no sleep, I am pretty close to it.
Wake up, Charley, ok?
They called me a rock, but I need you…
I need you.
Part Two - Aegir Somnia
1
Jersey was the same as New York: lifeless, dead, vacant, unnerving. Charley peddled from the bridge down to the Turnpike South, his legs exhausted but he not stopping. He couldn’t stop. Night was falling across the land slowly, depositing layer by layer of darkness across the sky. In normal times, the lights in buildings would begin to pop on, their yellow glow mysterious in the dusk-colored sky. Automatic headlights on cars would spring to life, lighting up this long expanse of asphalt on which Charles Allen now rode alone.
He needed to find a place to sleep. Technically, there was no reason why he couldn’t travel by night; he just didn’t think it would be a good idea. There was a better chance of hitting a pot-hole or something. He needed his bike undamaged and functioning. It was really cutting down on his traveling time.
He peddled on until the darkness in the sky had settled down heavily upon the land. Then he got off his bike and looked for a nice place to hole up on the Jersey Turnpike. Here he learned a sad truth: there really was no place nice along the Jersey Turnpike. The road dipped down underneath an overpass, and here he found a stairwell that went up to the street level. He labored up it with the bike. On street level, the city—which one he was in, he didn’t know—lay in a dead sleep like an abandoned town found in a clearing of the woods.
This is the first night I’ll be here, he thought.