Alice Isn't Dead

by Joseph Fink

  Lucy kicked him off her with the toe of her boot. He made a wet whooshing noise, like a drain sucking in the last bit of water, and rolled away. But he was on his feet by the end of his roll. Thistle creatures had surprising grace despite the awkwardness of their bodies. He jumped at them again. A headfirst jump that only would be possible for someone absolutely unafraid of injury. His forehead hit Lucy’s nose and they both landed against the wall. Lucy had her hands on her nose and her eyes closed. He spun her by her shoulder, slamming her head into the wall. Then he tried to tear a chunk out of her back. So Alice put a knife through his head.

  Even a year before, she wouldn’t have been able to do that. But she was a different person now. She understood the stakes. The knife went through his head and burst out the ear canal of the other side, spraying the pungent fat along the dumpster.

  “Huh, huh, huh,” the Thistle Man said, turning toward her as his face split into two and melted toward his shoulders. He fell to the ground where he continued to make a soft repeating sound with his lolling tongue.

  As usual, the professionalism in Alice was gone the moment the job was done. She hugged Lucy.

  “We got him!” she said, dancing her around a bit. “We got him!”

  Lucy danced with her, but there was a stiffness that Alice felt to her movement. She wasn’t as happy as Alice, and Alice didn’t know why.

  “We did it.” Lucy smiled slightly back, but the smile ended at her lips. This change had happened a month before, and there had been a heaviness to her friend and fellow soldier in this war.

  What Alice didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was that Lucy had been promoted. This promotion was kept secret because of the process involved. Lucy had been taken into a room where a supervisor had carefully and sympathetically laid out the truth of the war to her. She had been working with Bay and Creek for six years, and she had seen the true horror of Thistle that they had been working against. And here was her supervisor, explaining that Thistle wasn’t the real enemy. That Thistle existed because America needed them to exist, so that Bay and Creek could work for a greater good.

  “What greater good?” Lucy had demanded.

  “War is a powerful force for change,” said her supervisor. “Don’t you agree there’s a lot about this country that needs to change?”

  At first Lucy knew she would leave, but then the doubt came upon her. She was a good person, working with good people. She had sacrificed everything, leaving behind a man she loved, leaving behind two children, because she had believed that nothing was more important than winning this fight. And she had found Alice, who had been the bravest and most capable person she had ever had serve by her side.

  Surely this work couldn’t be for nothing? Even if she hadn’t been privy to the details of what they were doing, she knew in her gut that it had to be for the good. So she agreed to keep working for Bay and Creek while she reconciled what she had learned with what she wanted to keep doing.

  If she was going to stay, then she needed Alice to stay too. But she worried about how Alice would take that same revelation, if she would understand the way that Lucy had, about that grand plan that neither of them was big enough to see, that if they had been doing good before, then they must be doing good now.

  The reason, Lucy knew, was that Alice had Keisha. Alice had a family that she went back to between every mission. Keisha was going to be the reason that Alice wouldn’t accept the truth about Bay and Creek, and then she would be killed because Bay and Creek couldn’t let people walk away once they knew.

  Lucy had become so quiet lately only partly because of what she had learned. What made her even more troubled was what she would have to do next. She would have to convince Alice to leave Keisha behind forever. It was the only way to save her.

  “You sure you’re ok?” said Alice.

  “I’m great,” said Lucy. “Let’s go tell headquarters the good news.”

  43

  “Everything you’ve given me has checked out,” Tamara said, “but be patient. A few of your stories coming up true doesn’t mean I can go to print. Something like this, we need everything airtight.”

  “I get it,” muttered Keisha, but she was impatient. She had been doing this for long enough, and she wanted it to be over, while knowing that it was maybe not any closer to over than when she had started. Alice let Keisha do these calls, even though they both knew that Alice was better at talking with strangers. Patient Alice. Alice doing everything asked of her while she waited for Keisha to forgive her. It made Keisha furious. Why should she ever forgive her? Why did Alice think she was owed that? The nicer Alice was, the angrier it made Keisha.

  “Yeah, well,” she said, “let me know if you need anything else to verify. Once you’re all aboard we can really start working.”

  “Sure,” said Tamara. “But, hey, before you go. A friend of yours passed along a message. I guess she didn’t know how else to reach you. She said you’ve changed your number since she last tried, and she says that’s smart. I don’t know how she found out I’m talking to you. But . . .”

  “Well, put it in the folder.” Tamara had established a secure shared folder so that Keisha and Alice could send her information without revealing identity and location.

  “Will do. You be careful out there.”

  “Yeah. You be careful in there.”

  She flipped shut the old cell she was using that week and flipped open her laptop. The folder had a message from Sylvia.

  “Miss you and love you. I’m safe. I’m looking for the good. I will find it. There are oracles on these roads.”

  And an address in Wisconsin.

  Keisha had filled in Alice on Sylvia, and so Alice didn’t ask questions, just googled the address. “It’s a water park. Or it was. Closed a few years ago.”

  Keisha nodded.

  “If Sylvia thinks we should go there, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “There are oracles on these roads,” said Alice.

  “Apparently so.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  Keisha felt some pleasure in knowing something Alice didn’t and wondered if she should feel guilty about that pleasure. No, she decided. She wasn’t the one who had to feel guilty about anything.

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said.

  They drove in silence for hours, as the scenery shaded greener. It’s hard to tell regions apart by the human structures. A CVS is a CVS, a Starbucks is a Starbucks. Every town is built like every town, and so all that changes is the nature that’s been allowed to stay. As a traveler heads north, the trees shift from broad leafy canopies to the narrow spurs of conifers, and the suggestion of hills gives way to great structures of rock with sweeping aprons of untouched snow. Or, on another drive, the hills dot themselves away into nothing, until the traveler hasn’t seen elevation in hours, nor many trees, only a lot of grass, and a lot of road. Or the traveler leaves behind a wetter, greener climate and the world fades from grass to kindling, to dirt and rocks, and then, like a sign marking a border, the first great cactus, harbinger of the desert.

  It’s up to nature to tell people that they’re moving. Otherwise each Kmart sign looks like each Kmart sign, every Subway sandwich tastes the same.

  “How long are we going to be like this?” Alice said, after an hour of silence.

  “Like what?”

  “Please don’t pretend ignorance.”

  “Mm,” said Keisha.

  “I left because I thought that’s what I needed to do to protect you.”

  Keisha didn’t say anything.

  “I thought you were in danger and that the only way to protect you was to leave. And that’s why. And I’m sorry.”

  Still Keisha said nothing. They entered Wisconsin.

  It was a rainy, cold day in the Dells, and any tourists who might have been around had been driven into the malls and indoor water parks. No one was on the road, certainly. They arrived at the King Arthur Camelot Splash Zone, which had seve
ral letters broken on its sign. The park was inside a dark and boarded-up building; the slides that wrapped around the exterior walls like vines were unmaintained and sagging. If there was a hiding spot for an otherworldly creature in the region, this looked as likely a place as any.

  One of the doors was propped open with a bit of cardboard. Maybe from teenagers who came by to drink and skate in its empty pools. Or maybe so this oracle could come and go. The two of them slipped inside. Faint light seeped from between the boards, but it took a long time for their eyes to adjust to seeing anything at all. The swimming pools looked like open mouths. The slides were looming spirals in the air above them. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.

  “Shit,” said Keisha. Her hands were shaking, but she wouldn’t let Alice hold them. “Let’s just find this . . . whatever it is.”

  They walked along the edge of one of the pools looking for something out of the ordinary. It didn’t take long. Once they were able to make out details of the space, they saw steam in the center of the room and started toward it. One of the hot tubs was full and bubbling, the water clean, the mechanism well maintained. Keisha felt a crunch under her foot. It had been a piece of candy, still in its wrapper. There were offerings of all kinds around the hot tub. Bills, fives and tens, left on the ground. Some candles. Baseball cards. Cigarettes. Bottles of booze. Candy.

  “Offerings for the oracle,” said Alice.

  “So where are they?” said Keisha.

  “Maybe had to use the bathroom.”

  Keisha looked into the water, through the bubbles, at the concrete benches where once vacationers had sat. Was there a shape there? A mass forming in the steam? She couldn’t quite tell what was solid and what was vapor. The shape spread, like ink in water, until it was a cloud of gray, which rose toward the surface, and a person with a gray hoodie pulled completely over their face emerged sitting relaxed with arms spread along the sides of the tub. Their hoodie was dry. The air was perfumed with the smell of heather.

  “There are,” said the person in the hoodie, in a distant, gentle voice, “oracles on these roads.”

  44

  It was Alice who first suggested they live together, and Keisha was once again reluctant. Not that Keisha didn’t trust the lasting nature of their relationship, but she had never lived on her own and wanted to get a sense of what that was like before cohabitating. Alice knew what living on her own would be like. It would be lonely and not as good as living with Keisha, and it was stupid to deny themselves a pleasure so simple and easy as company. But when Keisha finally agreed, Alice felt some panic. Maybe this was moving too fast. Maybe it was important after all to see what it was like to live on her own. She assumed that she knew, but assumptions were fantasies that had the delusion of reality. Alice spent the better part of a year making excuses. “You’re the one who brought it up!” said Keisha, and that was true, but Alice’s feelings were also true. She struggled with them for those months before moving in to that studio apartment Keisha had found. The first night, sleeping on an unfamiliar mattress, Alice looked over at Keisha, only a few inches away, and she knew that she had made the right decision in the same way she knew her own name and which vegetables she liked and didn’t like. It was innate, requiring no interrogation; even when later they bickered or had quiet spells, she knew that the choice had been right and that their lives belonged together.

  “Two lonely warriors in an unbalanced war,” the oracle said. “Come sit, lonely warriors. You can put your feet in the water if you want.”

  Keisha shrugged and pulled off her shoes. Alice put a worried hand on her, but Keisha shook it off and let her feet slip into the water. It was hot enough to sting, and she could feel the muscles in her legs letting go of miles of tightness. Seeing this, Alice joined her, and they both sat with their legs in the water, facing the oracle.

  “So what now?” said Keisha. “Do you predict our future?”

  “I don’t predict the future,” said the oracle. “I only maintain it.”

  “Cryptic,” said Alice.

  “Some subjects are so complicated,” said the oracle, “that even speaking of them plainly sounds cryptic.”

  Keisha felt dizzy above this pool of heat in the cold room. The overwhelming smell of flowers. Her vision swirled, and against the far wall she saw a flicker in the shadows. She felt that they couldn’t stay here long. There was a strangeness to this place that would pull them further and further in, and if they stayed too long, they would never be able to leave. Thinking this, she tried to pull her feet out of the water but found that she couldn’t muster the will to do so. Alice was sweating and seemed to be experiencing the same problem.

  Enough, thought Keisha. We have questions.

  “Then ask them,” said the oracle.

  “What is Praxis?”

  “That I cannot tell you.”

  “Why can’t you?” demanded Keisha.

  “I maintain the future,” the oracle said and offered nothing more.

  “What does Praxis want?” asked Alice.

  “Praxis is not about wanting. Praxis is about doing.”

  “What does Praxis do, then?” Keisha snapped. “I don’t want to stay here all day.” Or much longer than we already have, she thought.

  “Praxis fights against Thistle, under whatever name they choose to operate,” hummed the oracle. “We have always fought against Thistle. For as long as there has been Thistle, Praxis has fought it. For as long as there has been Praxis, Thistle has threatened it.”

  “War forever,” said Keisha.

  The oracle shrugged almost apologetically. “There are always bad people. Thistle is merely a focus for that. For the world to move forward, the good people must struggle to organize a better world. Praxis is merely a focus for that. We did not start this struggle, but gave ourselves entirely to it.”

  Above the murmur of the water, Alice heard a quiet crack, like glass being stepped on. She turned around, scanning the room, but it seemed empty as far as she could see. Much of the room was dark, though, darker than she had remembered it. The sun must have set while they were talking.

  “But what are you?” said Keisha, urgently. She couldn’t get her legs to leave the water. She felt that the oracle was holding her there, but it was possible that what was holding her was her anxiety. The most pernicious effect of anxiety was it made it difficult to tell what was actually dangerous and what was just a jumpy reaction of the spine. “We have evil inhuman monsters on one side, and mystical creatures on the other,” she said. “What kind of being are you, and why are you helping us?” If that is what you are doing, she didn’t say.

  There was a patter of feet, far across the space. The oracle lifted themself up, so they stood knee deep and dry. The darkness in the room was closer than before. Keisha could not make out the farthest of the empty pools at all anymore.

  “There is not your struggle and my struggle,” said the oracle in a voice that boomed out into the dark. “There is only our struggle. We fight alongside you because there is only one fight.”

  Out of the darkness, a figure walking, then many more. Thistle Men. The one in front was gaunt and stumbled forward with his head turned as far sideways as it could go. His mouth was open and his tongue was lolling.

  “I’m sorry, Keisha,” the oracle said. “Our time is up. Remember this: No one sees the future. They only ever maintain it.”

  Keisha and Alice, finding that they could stand, scrambled back from the water. The hot tub was surrounded on all sides by the men. Laughter, coarse and wet, like a person laughing into mud.

  “What is Praxis?” said the Thistle Man with the tilted head. “What is Thistle? Tell me what will come to pass, O oracle of the roads.” More laughter.

  The oracle did not step out of the water. They were standing in the water and then they were facing the Thistle Man, head bowed. The Thistle Man in the lead lunged forward and the others followed, whooping.

  Keisha had seen an oracle absolutely
destroy a Thistle Man in that low-quality tape in the motel room in Saugerties, but it was another experience entirely to have it happen in person. The oracle never took a step, only was in one place, and then was in the next. They were next to the Thistle Man who had lunged at them, and with a casual twist of their hands the Thistle Man was torn in half straight through the torso. The strength involved was unimaginable, absolutely beyond the realm of human. But many more Thistle Men were coming out of the darkness. The oracle flickered from one to the next, killing as they went, but no matter how many they killed, more came. The oracle had their hands on one of the men when three others grabbed them from behind and one of the men sunk his teeth into the oracle’s shoulder. The oracle shrugged the man off, but blood poured down their body. They moved a little slower now, and another group fell on them, dragging them down. The oracle was impossibly strong, but there were too many Thistle Men for anyone. They had the oracle down on the ground, and there was a terrible screaming, the oracle’s gentle voice in terror and pain, and the Thistle Men had their hands in the oracle’s open chest, pulling and tearing.

  The oracle stopped moving, stopped screaming. There was a thud, deep from the earth, and the bubbling hot tub turned cold and emptied, the water sucked directly downward with no spiral. The empty tub was dry and covered in dust and leaves. Alice and Keisha found that their feet were dry, their socks and shoes back on.

  The room was almost completely dark now. Keisha and Alice could not see the exits. They could only see the smiles of the Thistle Men, turning to them, one by one by one.

  45

  Those first years with Bay and Creek were a brutal shock for Alice, a shift into a world of subterfuge and violence. She thought often of running away, but she didn’t know what her employers would do if she tried, and she didn’t know if Thistle would seize the opportunity of her no longer living under the protection of Bay and Creek. She felt stuck and she felt scared. When she would walk through the door, home from a mission, Keisha would grab her and kiss her and hold her for the longest time. The contact, simple as it was, felt electrifying after the absence.