Fire in the Wall

by S G Dunster

  Fine. It exists now; I’ve seen it.

  It sharpened again and grew even more detail: a long, curved beak that looked like it was meant to straw nectar from some great, house-sized flower.

  And they were there, I saw, in the distance. Blooms of red along the lake’s shore. House sized.

  “I made those,” Lil said, watching me, one side of her mouth curled up slightly.

  “The birds? The flowers?”

  “The birds. Cool, huh? And they’re watching for me. They’ll tell me if anything comes here that we didn’t make.” She took a deep breath, and let it out in a whistle between her teeth. “That’s when we’ll know they found us.” She gave me a quick look and ran down the hill like a kid. A kid who hopes her momentum will give her flight.

  “Great. Right,” I shouted, running after her, meeting her at the bottom of the hill. “Birds to keep us safe. Sounds good.”

  “Shut up.”

  She led us to a little canoe that rested at the edge of the lake—yellow, orange, and white striped, naturally—and gestured for me to get in. Satie scampered into the hollow just behind the prow and curled her misshapen tail around herself so it hid her face.

  “Another lake to cross.” I shivered, thinking of the face in the other one, the thing that had tried to grab me, and climbed into the boat quickly, avoiding the water.

  “Yeah, I tried to make a lot of things, a lot of confusing things to keep them guessing. I change it every day so they can’t easily find us.”

  “Right,” I repeated. I glanced up at the sun. “It’s pretty hot. Can you change that?”

  “Uh,” Lil said, stepping aside so I could pass her to sit in the canoe’s stern. “No.”

  “No? You made mountains and you can’t get the sun to move a little?”

  “I tried. I’m . . . not really in charge of the sun, here. Maybe though,” she added, a gleam in her eye, “if we tried together, we’d be strong enough to fight them and we could change it.”

  “And mares eat oats,” I replied conversationally, “and does eat oats.”

  Lil smirked. “And little lambs eat ivy.”

  “Right.”

  “Row, you lazy bum.” She shoved my shoulder with the oar she carried and nodded at the one lying in the boat next to me. I picked it up and obediently dipped it into the clear water—grey, this time, and quite deep from the looks of it. Silver on the surface, blinding with the reflection of the sun.

  We paddled up to the island’s shore—the inner curve of the crescent. It had a wide beach of bone-white sand. Lil helped me out, and together we dragged the canoe to shore, bringing it out of the water. “There.” She turned away from the shore and made a grand sort of gesture. I turned to look.

  It was a treehouse, of course. Three baobab trees spaced perfectly apart, built across with several stories of platforms, all hung over with rope ladders and rope swings. High, high in the treetops was a stretch of grass-thatch roof. It was almost straight out of The Swiss Family Robinson, which had been one of Lil’s favorite movies when she was younger.

  Lil gave me a wide, gleeful smile. “Come on.” She broke into a run.

  We passed a rope swing, the drop-off point of a zip line, and came to a tree. She scampered up the long rope ladder that hung there. I followed her up thirty feet, fifty feet . . . . By the time we got to the first platform, we were more than a death fall from the ground.

  If such a thing were possible here. Death.

  If I weren’t already dead. If I were dead, though, would my mind be doing all this? Wherever I was, whatever I was really doing, my brain still had to be functioning, right? And this definitely wasn’t heaven. Or hell either. I hoped.

  I walked up to the front door—reeds, woven and fitted inside a wooden frame. Lil held it for me and led me into a large room with leaves and twigs as walls, dozens of soft couches, poufy cushions big and deep enough to sleep on, bright hammocks strung from the ceiling all over the place. And a fireplace made of smooth, jewel-colored river stone.

  “A fireplace in a treehouse?”

  She grinned. “It’s what you want. That’s all you have to worry about here. There’s no rules. Only what you make. If you can expand your mind a bit and imagine a fire that won’t singe your branches. It’s optimism, Logan. You’ve got to be optimistic.” She threw herself onto one of the cushions and propped her chin in her hands, looking up at me. “If it weren’t for the others, it’d be the perfect place. We’d stay here forever, Logan.”

  “No,” I said sharply, feeling a flare of panic. “No, we’re not staying here, Lil. Who knows what’s really happening to us up there. Everyone thinks I did something to you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Did you?”

  “No. I . . . don’t know. I don’t know, Lil.”

  “I do. Logan. I’m fine. I passed through the wall with Satie. See? She’s fine, too.” She stroked the gecko between its beady yellow eyes. “Don’t let them talk you out of what you know is real.”

  “She’s not fine. She’s clay, and she’s alive. You’re not fine, either. You’re here making baobab trees. And most of all,” I said, sitting in a pile of giant, multicolored poufy pillows piled in the corner, “I’m not fine. Because I’m seeing all this. I’ve broken completely, Lil. I’m gone. Like my— “

  “Don’t say it,” Lil said.

  We glared at each other for a long few seconds.

  “His mind’s broken,” Lil said, breaking the silence. “But you aren’t broken. You just . . . see. Where others don’t, you see. It’s the only reason you could follow me. Sherriff Winters could stumble around the streets and basements of St. Anthony for years and not find his way here. You and me, we’re special.”

  “Special,” I repeated. “That’s what disturbed people often think. That’s what serial killers think. That they’re special, different, beyond rules.”

  “It’s not just us,” Lil replied. “He thinks so, too.”

  “He, who?”

  “The Grey Man.”

  I groaned, grabbed a pillow, and punched it. “Frickin’ Grey Man,” I muttered.

  “He’s told me, Lo. That I’m . . . that we’re special. And if anybody knows special, he does.”

  She looked up at the ceiling, beamed wood and living wood intertwined. Her eyes grew dreamy, unfocused. She wasn’t looking at the ceiling; she was seeing what was in her head.

  “We’re different. It’s a gift, what we can see. We just need . . .” she hesitated. “We need to find him. Soon, or we might be in a little bit of trouble.”

  A great clap of thunder ended her sentence, and there was a huge downpour—drops like gravel plinking off the wooden structure we sat in, shaking it, shaking the tree. Along with it came a gust of wind, which scattered some of the drops in through the windows.

  The wind was scattering ice-cold water over me, dampening my front. It’s too bad Lil didn’t make any curtains.

  Even as I thought it, curtains appeared, of course. Not orange-white-yellow striped curtains; steel grey ones, with a royal blue fleur-de-lis pattern. My curtains. Heavy canvas, they were un-buffered by the wind and rain. They stayed put, shutting out the weather.

  “You did it,” Lil said. “Will you look at that?”

  Slowly, hesitantly, I reached out to touch them.

  I looked down at my hand there on the window frame. It was wet with water. I brought it close to my face and thought of the water, gone . . . of clean, warm, dry skin.

  My hand still glistened with wet.

  “The water won’t go away easily,” Lil said. “Making something is a lot easier than making something go away. Because you can see and feel it already, it’s hard to un-imagine something.”

  “Right,” I said, bringing my hand down and wiping it on my wet swim trunks—wait, I wanted my warm sweat pants. Soaking up the wetness on my arms, legs, trunk, they folded me in dry, fluffy comfort. Soft. Dark black like a deep, comforting shadow.

  “I’ll get into something c
omfortable, too.” Lil’s wet things fuzzed into a yellow nightshirt, hanging down to her shins. “And I’ll get us something to eat.” She walked to the table in the center of the room.

  I stood at the curtains, stuck. There was too much around me, too much happening. It was squeezing me still and frozen.

  I was feeling stuffy, confined. That room with its Lil-bright colors, the hideous creature scampering across the floor smelling like fish-eggs, the tuneless hum emanating from Lil as she stared down at the table’s empty surface. And then dishes appeared—plates full of scrambled eggs, French fries. A stack of French toast, pots of syrups, and bowls of fresh fruits.

  I pulled open the curtain and gasped in the cool, wet air. It was bracing, clarifying. Even though I’d just barely changed into something dry, the water dripping down my face, along my neck, was important.

  The world was a green mist of drizzle and rain out there. I could see the vague shape of the mountains, the trees all around us, and the grey expanse of the lake. I thought about going out again, running somewhere. A heaviness of emotion came down on me, making me weak in the knees.

  It was light outside, but I was very tired. Lil was right; I was also hungry. How long had I been wandering around in those tunnels under the city? Who knew? I couldn’t possibly guess.

  I stepped back and was about to let the curtain go when I saw a flicker of movement at the pool’s edge. It looked like an ant from up here. Shriveled and dark, it crawled out of the jade-colored water and lay on the pale beach, then rose up.

  It was like a strike of electricity. Watching it, I knew it was watching me. And even if it couldn’t see me, it was aware I was watching it. I could feel the awareness like ozone in the air before a storm.

  It raised a limb and shook it, as if it were shaking a fist at me. It leapt into the underbrush.

  I shivered and let the curtain fall over the window.

  Chapter 7

  Lil and I sat across from each other at the table, a giant mound of grilled cheese sandwiches, toasted perfectly golden, between us along with the French toast, fruit, and eggs.

  All of Lil’s favorite foods. Not mine.

  I didn’t remember wanting grilled cheese. In fact, if I could choose, well, hot chocolate sounded good.

  Immediately, it appeared in front of me, steaming on the table.

  “Good,” said Lil. “Me, too.” A second mug appeared in front of her.

  I picked up a sandwich—still warm, though I didn’t know why, because nothing had cooked it—and bit.

  It was grilled cheese, all right. Sharp cheddar, just the way Lil likes it.

  I swigged my hot chocolate. Hazelnut, just the way I like it. Satie was busily making his way along the table, headed for the platter of sandwiches.

  Lil broke off a corner and Satie snatched it from her fingers, gulping it down with her long tongue.

  “Geckos eat bugs.”

  “Satie likes sandwiches,” Lil replied.

  I stared at her, and bit off another bite. She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Do you want to catch some bugs for her?”

  “Fine,” I said, deciding to change the subject. “The Grey Man. You keep mentioning him. Is this the old guy, the one you sculpt and draw? The one I hallucinated moving on the table the night you left? That’s who you’re talking about, right?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t hallucinate. He’s real. He crosses the barrier between the worlds, I guess you could say. The one down here, the one up there. He crosses.” She frowned at her sandwich, and placed it carefully back on the tray. “I told him we’d be coming before we went down that night. I expected him to be waiting for us. I guess he must be really far away or something. Otherwise he’d’ve come to me sooner.”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t want to see you.”

  “No,” Lil snapped. “We’re special, Logan. He wouldn’t stay away.”

  “Sometimes hallucinations, and people, disappoint you, Lil,” I stood, setting my half-eaten sandwich aside. “I’m tired.”

  Sleep. Of course.

  The idea—so brilliant, so logical—made me groan that I hadn’t thought of it before. Of course that’s what I had to do to wake up from this. I had to go to sleep. And when I woke up . . .

  Then I’d wake up.

  “It’s not dark out,” Lil replied. “Just rainy.”

  “I’ve been awake for a long time.”

  “How do you know how much time you’ve been awake?” Lil stood, too, and her face was a little pale, her eyes troubled in a way I hadn’t often seen.

  She was scared.

  “I need to sleep,” I said, feeling even more confident. This version of Lil, wherever she came from, didn’t want me to sleep. My fevered brain, caught up in this hallucination, didn’t want me to sleep. These demons, whatever they were, were afraid of my sleeping.

  Which meant it must be the right choice. It had to be the answer. Right?

  “Good night.” I turned my back on her and thought of a bed: a cot, narrow, simple, with a green wool blanket and pillow. I climbed into it, pulled the blanket up over my head, and ran through the Articles of Faith I’d learned as a child in Sunday school, the surest way to put me to sleep, to help me ignore the noises around me: rain whaling the roof and sides of this rickety little house; Lil’s movements in the room.

  I fell asleep. Real sleep. My body—here, there, wherever it was—rested and dreamed. Strange, scrappy fragments of dreams, not the kind you’d remember, but restful enough that when I woke, I was completely refreshed.

  When I woke.

  In the round treehouse, the windows let in broad rays of sunlight, illuminating Lil’s sleeping form curled up on her pile of pillows in the corner.

  I sat up. “No. No.”

  Lil, lying in an elephant-sized hammock, all piled with dozens of bright poufs, didn’t stir. Her hair covered her face. She was snoring lightly. Satie was tangled up in her hair.

  Disappointment and fear fell heavy on me. For several long minutes I sat there, blinking, hoping with each blink Lil’s bright treehouse world would go away replaced by my dull, musty attic bedroom. Instead of beams and trunks, steel grey curtains and a rainbow of pillows. In front of my face, a bookcase of battered books. At the foot of my bed, a closetful of worn secondhand clothing.

  The curtains filtered the sunlight, making vaguely fleur-de-lis splotches across the rough-plank floor.

  Finally, I stood and went to the window. Velvet grass. Trees. Steely water crashing on the shore. A great white bird sitting in a swaying palm.

  I was hungry.

  No I wasn’t. I was sick.

  My stomach rumbled. No, I was hungry.

  What to eat?

  Anything, Logan, I told myself half hysterically. You can have anything.

  Pancakes. That’s what my mother made sometimes, when it was a special day of sleeping in, or after something big and hard happened, with plenty of that thick, corn syrupy, maple flavored ooze that tasted so good mixed with butter and some apricot jam.

  I smelled it. The pancakes. The syrup. The apricots. I turned, and there they were, waiting for me on the table.

  My appetite retreated again. Something heavy curdled in my belly.

  I’m still stuck.

  Down the ladder I went without even thinking. Knot by knot, I lowered myself to Lil’s forest island.

  I stood on the dark, loamy ground, still barefoot and bare chested, legs warm in my sweatpants, and tried to un-see it. Lil had said something about me not believing something. The manzanitas. She’d said they’d be harder for her to keep if I didn’t believe in them.

  Get rid of it. Get rid of it all.

  But no matter how hard I thought of emptiness, when I opened my eyes, the treehouse, the forest . . . it was all still there. I never stopped feeling it under my feet. I remembered, then, what else Lil had said, about it being hard to completely un-imagine something. To un-see it.

  It made sense. When you can feel soft dirt under your feet, how do y
ou un-feel it?

  I’m like Dad. Stuck somewhere. Permanently hallucinating. Catatonic, in a chair. It’s happened.

  And he was there, in his chair, right in front of me. Wrapped in a fuchsia and Christmas green afghan, staring, his eyes in slightly different directions, his jaw slack. Right there on the forest floor. My Dad. My insane, empty, completely useless, shell of a father.

  “Go away,” I said to it. “Go away.”

  I closed my eyes tight, opened them.

  Still there.

  I kicked the chair, overturned it. He fell helpless onto the ground, naked ankles and feet spattered with mud, eyes still glazed and staring. His glasses fell off in the mud.

  “Dad,” I sobbed, and fell to my knees next to him. I touched his face. He was real. A pulse beat in his throat. He was warm. He was my dad, lying there, helpless as a baby. I pulled his upper half onto my lap and held him, rocking slightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you here.”

  “Nobody means to,” a voice hissed.

  I jerked my neck a little too hard turning around, and a dart of pain shot down to my collarbone.

  She stood there in the shadows. The same pale, heart-shaped face, mole touching the left eyebrow. She looked, if possible, even more emaciated. And she was filthy. Her clothes hung off her in rags. Her hair was in huge, wooly matts down her back. Her knees were knobs in the middle of bones strung together. I had no idea how those legs kept her up.

  Something about her face, the way she moved, jerking when I shifted position, made me think of an animal—feral, wild.

  A chill swirled through me, settling in my belly. “Who,” I tried to say, but it came out a croak.

  “Jenny,” she said. “I’m Jenny.”

  “Are you real?” I asked her. “Or made up?”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and she shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”

  “What? Real, or made up?”

  She gave me a snarly little smirk. “Both.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well.” She took a step toward me, “You’d best hang on to that.”