“He was the source,” I said. “For some of the demons, at least. My cohort. We were all—I don’t know—stories. Characters. He made us up and then sent us into the world.”
Valis smiled curiously. “Perhaps you’re thinking that Phil made me up as well. That you and I are imaginary.”
I blinked. It sounded stupid when he said it like that. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Yet your author is dead.”
“I’m not saying I have it all worked out.”
“You’re not completely wrong, I suppose. There are some humans who have a gift for seeing the seams that stitch the world. Call them whatever you like. Your old man was one, Phil another. Who knows how many are out there? Thousands at least. At this moment, some teenage Japanese girl is pouring over a manga, a Hindu boy is praying
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Shiva to life. These sensitives are a little closer to the boundaries. Their grip on the consensual world is a little tenuous.”
“You mean they’re crazy.”
He shrugged. “Let’s not debate cause and effect. All we know is that when death comes for them, when the darkness calls, some of them do not go gentle. They refuse to be pulled in, and so they pull something back out.”
“The demons.”
“Us,” Valis said. “You’re going to have to learn to accept what you are.”
“Which is what—aliens? Archetypes?”
“I don’t yet know. Perhaps the Jungians are right, perhaps not. We know that we are more than human, immortal yet polymorphous, incorruptible yet malleable. Consider my case: I am the embodiment of the rational, exactly what Phil needed when he reached for me. He clothed me, however, in the form that allowed him to make sense of me. So, I became a science fiction writer’s creation, an artificial intelligence from outer space. That is my aspect. And you, you’re the cartoon brat, the troublemaker, the boy rebel.”
“I’m not that boy anymore.”
“No.” He touched a hand to his unbearded chin, and looked at his hand. Bertram’s hand. “You and I are special. We outgrew our prescribed roles.” The hand returned to his lap. “We stayed too long. As soon as we began to covet the lives we’d interrupted, we began to move beyond monomania, beyond the pasteboard personalities we’d been given. Our task now is to abandon amnesia. To remember what we are, and claim our place in the world.”
“Unless someone finds a way to get rid of us,” I said. My fists—
Del’s fists—clenched the bedcovers. I’d known it was a risk looking for Valis, but I had to know the truth. “Someone like Dr. Ram.”
He tilted his head. “Do you have something you would like to ask me?”
“He was trying to pluck out the Eye of Shiva—that’s your way of putting it, right? He was going to kill the demons. The kid they ar-2 7 4
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rested for shooting him, Kasparian, was a fan of yours. It would be easy enough to dress him up like the Truth and send him up there. If the Truth killed Dr. Ram, then no one would believe he had a cure for possession.”
Valis nodded, as if agreeing with my logic.
“But the kid figured it out.” I said. “He realized what had happened, who’d really possessed him. So he faked a confession, just to keep Dr. Ram’s work going.”
“You don’t sound very sure,” Valis said.
“So did you do it?”
“If you’re asking if I possessed Eliot Kasparian,” he said, “the answer is yes.”
I stared at him. He wore a placid expression that Bertram could never have managed.
“However, it wasn’t that night in Chicago,” he said. “In fact, it was only a few days ago. As you say, Eliot was a fan of mine. Crazy, as it turns out, but a fan nonetheless. If he had continued to insist that the Truth had possessed him, your fellow demon would have killed him. I felt it was my responsibility to rectify the situation.”
“Wait a minute—Kasparian killed Dr. Ram himself? It was his own idea?”
“Influenced, unfortunately, by Phil’s writings. But yes. I would have preferred that Eliot had decided to take responsibility for that deed, but when he did not, I took the necessary steps.”
“You . . . you possessed a man to make him confess that he wasn’t possessed.” I shook my head. “That’s not a fake fake, that’s—I don’t know what that is.”
Valis smiled. “I work in mysterious ways.” He stood up and moved the chair to exactly where it had been. “When we talked in Chicago, you asked me what good I was doing Phil walking around in his body. I’d been asking myself that question ever since I began to realize my true nature. Philip K. Dick will die, alas. When that day comes, I will no longer be able to ignore my larger responsibilities.”
He started for the door.
“Wait!” I said, and scrambled off the bed. Pain lanced across my
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chest before I could shut it down. I fell to my knees. In my head, Del began to kick and thrash, and the restraints began to shred. “What are you going to do? What am I supposed to do?”
“We’re gods,” he said in that flat voice. “It’s time we started acting like it.”
In the morning Bertram knocked lightly, then backed into the room carrying a breakfast tray. “Room service!” he said with forced cheer, and stopped short. “Del, what’s the matter?”
“I’m fine.” The boy scraped at the inside of my head with something that felt like claws, and I clenched my jaw. It had been like this since Valis left. I couldn’t maintain my concentration, and the pain from my ribs spiked with every movement.
I breathed carefully. “How’d you sleep?” I asked.
“Me? Fine, out like a light.”
He set down the tray across my thighs. Coffee, bagel, newspaper. One of the headlines read “Jungle Lord Frees Chimps at Brookfield Zoo.” Nothing had changed. The world was as demon-haunted as ever.
“You want cereal?” Bertram said. “I can make you cereal. How about aspirin?”
I nodded toward the doorway. “How is she?” I asked.
“Your mother? Yeah, well, not good. She came down for a while, and I could tell she’d been crying,” he said. “She called Lew, and Amra’s driving him over in a little bit. They’re all very . . . worked up.”
He stepped back from the bed, knocked into a stack of Rubbermaid boxes, and stopped them from wobbling. “What did you say to her?”
he said.
Del lurched, and I winced. I covered it by looking away, out the window. I could see the whole backyard—the big willow tree with the stepping blocks still nailed to the trunk, the top of the garage, the new wooden fence Lew had put up a few years ago. Beyond the fence were the buildings of the industrial park. When we were kids it was open fields, a creek, a small forest. They’d kept some of the trees, put in a walking path, built a bridge over the creek.
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“Bertram, I need you to do me a favor.”
He came around the bed, sat in the chair, and leaned forward. “I told you, I owe you. Anything you want, Del. Anything.”
“This is a big one,” I said.
I told him what I wanted. He blanched, but he stayed in the chair; he hung with me. He asked a dozen questions, most of which I couldn’t answer. But he agreed.
In half an hour he was packed. I heard him saying his good-byes to Del’s mother, their words indistinct. I’d told him what to say if she questioned him, but she didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. The taxi must have arrived then. The front door opened and closed, and Bertram was gone.
Lew and Amra arrived a short while later. They talked for a long time in the kitchen, and then they were coming up the stairs. I put my hands under the blanket, where I could clench my fists unseen. Del pitched against the inside of my head. I’d done this to myself, I realized. I’d let him out, and I didn’t have the will to shove him back in. Del�
�s mother opened my door. “Are you awake?” she said. She looked years older than last night.
Lew and Amra came in behind her. Amra leaned over the bed and hugged me gently. I inhaled, memorizing her perfume. Lew still limped, his knee gripped in a complicated brace. He looked much better than he had in the hospital, but his color was still a little gray, and he seemed thinner. He carefully sat in the chair, and patted my shin through the blanket.
“We both look like shit,” he said.
My face heated and my throat closed, the body’s response to signals for guilt, shame. I’d almost killed him that night at the lake. Killed him without thinking.
Lew said, “Hey man, don’t—don’t sweat it. I’m fine. The doctors say I’ll be fine. I don’t look that bad, do I?”
The three of them stood around my bed for a few minutes. Amra tried to make small talk, but conversation proved too awkward, too full of silences. Under the covers I dug my fingernails into my palms. Finally Amra said, “Why don’t we let you two catch up.”
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Lew watched the women leave. “Mom’s been telling us some wild stuff,” he said.
“It’s all true,” I said.
He grimaced. “Maybe not. You’ve had some crazy shit go down, and it’s easy to get confused, to jump to conclusions.”
“Yeah.” I coughed, cleared my throat.
A minute passed. “Shit,” Lew said.
“He’s still here,” I said. “The little kid.”
Lew nodded. “That’s what Mom said.”
“You’re going to have to start all over,” I said. “Dad’s gone now, and Mom’s too old to do this on her own. You and Amra are going to have to help.”
Lew looked stricken. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t stay, Lew. I’m barely holding on here.”
“Oh Jesus.” He pushed himself to his feet. “You can’t just . . .” He walked to the window.
“The last time, he woke up screaming. He was freaked out, that’s all. He was surrounded by strangers. Just hold him down, keep talking. He’ll recognize you. I know he’ll recognize you.”
“This is bullshit,” he said. “This is total bullshit.”
“Lew.” He finally looked at me. “Come here. Come on.” He walked toward me. “Put your hands on my shoulders. That’s it.”
He leaned over me. His hands gripped my biceps. “Like this?” he said.
“Harder.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” he said. His tears were running into his beard. “You’re a lot bigger than you used to be. I just had a heart attack a couple weeks ago.”
“You big baby,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re saying I can take you now?” Del threw himself against my skull. I grunted, closed my eyes.
The Black Well blossomed above me. Bobby Noon was dead, but the network of souls, the well’s myriad tunnels, remained. I’d been born somewhere in that dark.
At the bottom of Harmonia Lake I’d relearned the secret of jump-2 7 8
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ing. All you have to do is break this habit of breath and blood. Take everything and everyone you love, and throw them away. All you have to do is die.
Lew yelled, “Mom! Amra! We need you!”
“Shut up,” I said. “And hold on.”
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There were six candles on the cake. The boy scrunched himself tighter into his seat at the patio table, hugging himself to contain his excitement. He held his breath as his mother used the big grill igniter to light the candles one by one. It was windy, and she had to light some of the candles twice. They sang to him: his mother, his big brother, and his brother’s wife. The boy, whose body was that of a grown man with a baritone voice to match, didn’t sing along. He had trouble with words. He could say “Mom”
and “Lew” and “no.” His doctor, Dr. Aaron, said that more words would come back in time. She was sure the temper tantrums would settle down too. They’d learned some of the things that could set him off: he didn’t like small spaces; he couldn’t stand tight clothes; he didn’t like the dark. He slept with the lights on, and once when the fuses blew during a thunderstorm and the house went black he screamed and screamed.
“Go for it, my man,” Lew said. The boy blew out all the candles at once, and they all clapped.
The boy pushed his chair back from the glass table, scraping metal legs 2 8 0
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along the cement. He drew up his long knees and sat squinting in the sunlight. He wore blue shorts and a Spider-Man T-shirt. His mother cut the cake—an ice cream cake, vanilla and chocolate both—and levered thick wedges onto paper plates.
“The big one’s for you,” Lew said. The boy gripped the white plastic fork and pushed it against the cake. It was hot and humid, nearly 90 degrees, but the cake had been in the freezer all night and was rock solid. Amra leaned over him. “Do you want me to cut it into pieces for you?”
He shook his head. He adjusted his grip on the fork and jabbed it in, breaking a tine. He frowned. “Go easy, Del,” Amra said. “I’ll go get some silverware.”
The boy picked the plastic out of the cake, then licked the ice cream from his fingers. Lew said to his mother, “I thought later we’d go miniature golfing? I’ve got some time before we have to get back.”
The boy jabbed again, shaking the table. He’d smeared ice cream up his hand and forearm. His mother put a hand on his shoulder. “Del, that’s not—”
He swung down. The fork snapped in half and his fist smashed into the cake, splattering ice cream. His mother said, “That’s enough!”
The boy angrily threw himself back in the chair, legs kicking. He didn’t know his own strength. His foot caught the underside of the glass table, flipped it up, sending cake and plates and cups flying. The edge of the table struck the cement and cracked, loud as a gunshot. The boy’s chair tipped over backward, onto the grass. The boy jumped up, already crying. He ran pell-mell for the back of the yard, toward the wooden fence that shouldn’t have been there. He jumped, reached with his too-long arms over the top, and swung one oversized leg over. He rolled over, scraping his chest on the fence posts, and fell to the other side. He lay sprawled on a strip of grass at the edge of a two-lane road. Beyond the road, the field he used to play in was gone. Low brick buildings and parking lots and tidy lawns covered everything. A paved bicycle path wound between the buildings, leading toward the line of trees where the creek used to be. He got to his feet and plunged into the street. A car came out of nowhere. Brakes squealed. He kept going, too scared to look back.
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Once into the trees he found that the creek was still there. He ran along its edge, stumbling in and out of it, soaking his gym shoes. He slowed, looking for his old hiding spots, but everything was smaller than it should have been.
He sat at the edge of the water, not caring if he got muddy. He tried to stop crying. Gnats swarmed his face.
He heard them calling for him, somewhere above him. He crawled up the bank and wormed his way into the undergrowth. He pressed himself into the bushiest bush, the branches scraping at his arms and back. A few feet in front of his face was the back of a park bench, the walking path a few feet beyond that.
A minute later they walked past his hiding place. “I’ll check the playground,” he heard his mother say. The woman who said she was his mother. Overnight, they’d changed more than the park. His mother replaced by a gray-haired woman. His brother turned into a giant. And his father—
they’d told him his father was dead.
He watched them split up, disappear between the buildings. Still he didn’t move. Gnats flicked across bare legs. He itched all over. But he stayed hidden.
A short, chubby man sat down on the bench, his back to the boy. The man took off his bas
eball cap and ran a hand across his scalp. He was bald on top, frizzy around the sides, like Bozo. Next to him on the bench was a bag like a big purse.
“You can come out now,” the man said without turning around. “The coast is clear.”
The boy didn’t move.
“Or you can stay there.”
The boy poked his head out, looked left and right. No one else in sight. He crawled forward on his elbows. He tried to stand and slipped. The bald man got up and extended a hand. The boy took it and got to his feet. The man was smiling at him, but it was a sad kind of smile. The boy jerked back, recognizing him. He made a noise like a choked scream. The bald man still had his arm. The boy closed his free hand into a fist and swung, catching the man across the temple.
“Hey!” the bald man said. He stepped back and covered his ears with 2 8 2
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his arms. The boy came after him, swinging with both fists now. He struck again and again, hammering at him.
The bald man didn’t try to strike back. Eventually he dropped his arms and let the boy flail at him without obstruction. The blows turned the man’s ears bright red, drew blood from his nose. He stood there, silently absorbing the punishment. After a minute the boy stopped, panting.
The bald man turned his head and spat a dollop of blood. “I deserved that,” he said. “And more.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. His golf shirt was streaked with red. Both cheeks looked bruised, and one ear seemed pulpy and red as a tomato. “I don’t know how I’ll make it up to Bertram, though.”
The boy glared at him.
“All done?” the man said.
The boy slapped him across the cheek, hard enough to turn his head. The man rubbed his jaw. “Okay then.” He walked back to the bench and sat down. The boy remained standing, tensed to run.
“I won’t bother you again,” the man said. “I promise. I just wanted to tell you that you never have to worry about . . . me. I’m going to keep the other demons away from you too. Kind of a guardian angel.”
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