He was still trying to decide what to do when he realized two figures had started down the drive and were coming quickly, shadows reeling in closer behind them with each step.
He turned and shuffled toward the dumpster. He could hear the dull echo of their footsteps now. I've been seen, he thought, but kept moving anyway, slower and slower it felt. He could see the gap better as he came closer, but still wasn't sure if it was big enough.
When he reached it, he saw that it wasn't.
He backed into it as far as he could and waited. It was a little darker there, but not dark enough to hide him. He'd probably been seen. Or maybe, he told himself, they aren't looking for me.
They came up the loading dock stairs and right to him.
"You're Kline," one of them said, the dark-haired one. He was missing an eye and most of the fingers on one hand. The other hand had been replaced by a gun prosthetic. An ear was gone as well. The other man, blond, lagging slightly behind, seemed only to be missing a hand, his right. His other hand held a gun.
Kline nodded. The inside of his head felt bruised.
"What did you do to Mlinko?" the dark-haired man asked.
"You mean specifically?"
"I mean where is she?"
"She's not anywhere," said Kline. "She's dead."
The man lifted his gun-arm, pointed it at Kline's head. "I suppose you know we've come to kill you," he said.
"I can't say I'm surprised," said Kline.
"Any last words?" asked the blond man, lifting his gun as well.
"I don't know," said Kline.
"You don't know?" said the dark-haired man, raising his eyebrows.
The blond man, Kline realized abruptly, had taken a step back and was now well behind the dark-haired one. He was no longer pointing his gun at Kline: it seemed to be slowly drifting away. A moment more and it was aimed at the dark-haired man's head, just behind his range of vision.
"Yes," said Kline quickly. "I do have something to say."
"What is it?" said the dark-haired man.
Kline opened his mouth but didn't speak, just kept looking from one man to the other, waiting for whatever would happen next.
"Too late," said the dark-haired man. "Time to die," he said, and then he was shot in the head by the blond man. He fell, gargling and frothing until the blond man pushed the snout of his pistol against the other man's ear and shot him again.
The blond man kicked the body once and then put his pistol away. "He cometh not with an olive branch but with a sword. He smiteth," he said, then moved toward Kline, smiling.
"Mr. Kline," he said, holding out his hand. "What a pleasure it is to finally meet you."
PART TWO
He could hear the sound of cars ahead, at some distance--or perhaps only something that sounded like cars. Perhaps only the wind. It was hard to know what he was hearing and what he only hoped to hear. He limped toward the sound.
There was a brief rise and then a dip and then another rise. Something was scraping the lining of his skull. He came out of the scrub and went down into the dip and stopped in a sickly stand of cottonwood edging a dried streambed. After that, there was no cover, only sparse dry grasses and dirt.
He leaned against the tree awhile. Yes, he thought, almost certainly cars. He tried to imagine climbing the rise and seeing asphalt at the top, but he couldn't imagine it. Before he knew it, his body had slipped and he was sitting, stump throbbing. He wasn't sure he'd be able to stand up again, let alone make it up the rise.
With his remaining hand, he unwrapped his stump. Its extreme showed the dead circles from the burner, pus seeping through where he had burnt it too deeply, two lumps just below the elbow that must have been the sheared bones. He covered it up again.
The blood in his shoe had grown sticky, the outside of the shoe pasty with dust and blood. He could tell from the blood dripping down his face and onto his shoulder that his head was bleeding, but he was afraid to touch it. The only time he'd touched it, his fingers had gone in deeper than he'd thought possible.
He sat leaning against the tree, trying not to lie down. His hands felt like they were curling in on themselves and dying, even the hand that wasn't there.
After a while he managed to move his hand enough to fumble a sharp stone off the ground. He prodded the end of his stump with it. It made it feel like a knife was being pushed into his eye, but he felt almost alive again too. Yawing and drunken, he crashed up to his feet, lungs feeling like they were drawing in something other than air. He took a step and saw the ground flash toward him and then flash away, and then he was walking somehow, his vision such that he could only just distinguish between earth and sky. What had sounded like cars now sounded like rock scraping against rock, the pain slowly fading back to the same dull, shocked ache he had felt for hours now.
Gradually he made out the shape of the rise. He moved toward it and slowly started up. The sound warped, became more like cars again. He watched the ground in front of him and tried to lean toward it enough to keep moving forward, but not so far as to fall.
About halfway up, he thought he was going to fall backward and had to tack to one side. His feet kept trying to turn downslope; it was all he could do to keep crabbing uphill. His body felt like a separate animal. He could only watch it, encourage it on.
And then dust and scrub grass vanished, replaced by ash-gray gravel and, just beyond that, the asphalt of a two-lane road. Not a car to be seen in either direction. He took a step onto the gravel and then another step, and then collapsed.
I.
When he awoke, he was screaming. He was not on a roadside, he was not on a hospital loading dock; he was in a bed, but not in the bed he had been in before, not the bed he had expected to be in.
"You're awake, then," said a blond man beside him who was missing his right hand.
It was a hospital bed, Kline saw, but he wasn't in a hospital. Instead, he appeared to be in a sort of old-fashioned drawing room: thick brocaded drapes, a grand piano, herringbone parquet floors.
On the wall directly across from him were two paintings which, despite gilt frames, seemed remarkably out of place. One was a simple portrait of a man's head, except the face had been gouged out to leave a pink, cone-shaped hole. The other, all grays and browns, showed a man wearing a leather helmet, leg amputated to the middle of his thigh. One arm was mostly missing, the other arm either partly missing or wrapped up and invisible. He was either blind or his eyes had rolled back into his head. He was either singing or screaming, Kline couldn't say which. Beside him lay a woman partly swallowed by a cloth bag, lying in a puddle of blood.
The blond man, he realized, was observing him closely, almost hungrily. Kline turned his head slightly to meet his gaze. The man didn't blink.
"Which do you prefer?" the man asked with a slight smile, gesturing at the paintings behind him.
"Does it matter?" asked Kline.
The man's face fell. "Of course it matters," he said.
"Is this a test?"
"Why would it be a test? It's just a simple question of taste."
"What if I say I like them both?"
"Do you like them both? Exactly the same?"
"What am I doing here exactly?" asked Kline. "What's all this about?"
"Where are my manners?" said the man. He reached out as if to lay his hand on Kline's remaining arm, instead touched Kline lightly with his stump. "You're with us," he said confidentially. "Trust me, you're safe here," he said.
"Who are you?"
"Call me Paul," said the man.
"Are you planning to kill me, Paul?"
"What a strange idea," said Paul.
"How long have I been here?"
Paul shrugged. "A few days," he said.
"Where's here?" asked Kline.
Paul smiled. "No need to worry about that now," he said.
"But," said Kline.
"No buts," said Paul, standing up now and moving toward the door. "You're still far from well. Lie back
now. Try to sleep."
But he couldn't sleep. He lay in the bed, staring at the two paintings, the one on the left precise and clinical, the one on the right chiaroscuro and looking as though it had been done while the artist was channeling an insane Dutch master. The light coming through the window's panes slowly shifted, shuffling about the walls and then disappearing. The windows went slowly dark and opaque, the room lit by a single lamp to one side of him, near the wingchair in which Paul had been sitting. It was harder now to make the paintings out, the light from the lamp catching in the paint and beryling there, hiding the image behind.
In the half-light he began to grow anxious. He sat up slowly. His head ached but not as much as it had in the hospital. When he moved his shoulder, he still felt pressure in his eye, but nothing more. His legs were sore and worked only reluctantly, but after a moment he had edged his legs out of the bed and was standing.
Almost immediately, a blond man was beside him, touching his elbow lightly. He was not sure where the man had come from, certainly not through the door. From behind one of the curtains perhaps?
"You should rest," the blond man was saying in a soothing voice. "There's no need to get up." It was not the same man he had seen before, he realized, not Paul, although they looked similar. This man had a thicker face, was shorter.
"What do you want?" asked Kline.
"Is there something you need?" asked the man. "If you tell me what you need, I'll do my best to retrieve it for you."
"Where's Paul?" he asked.
"I'm Paul," the man said.
"Paul was the other one," said Kline. "You're not Paul."
"We're all Paul," the man said. He touched Kline lightly on the chest, nudged him until he sat on the bed. "Please," he said. "Please rest."
He let the second Paul coax him fully back into the bed, lifting up one of his legs and then the other, then dragging them over until he was lying again where he had been, in the half-light, staring at the vague shapes of the paintings. The Paul circled around behind his head and disappeared.
Getting out of the bed, even briefly, seemed to have exhausted him. Perhaps Paul, the second Paul, had been right.
In the morning he was awoken by a third blond man also missing his right hand. He came in through the door, a tray balanced precariously on his stump. He settled the tray on the bedside table, helped Kline to sit up, then moved the tray onto Kline's lap. Little silver vessels nestled fruits and a hardboiled egg and thick slices of bacon. There were toast points in each corner of the tray like a garnish and a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice.
Kline reached out and took the egg. He took a bite out of it, then looked into the chalky, cooked yolk. The blond man murmured approval.
"What is it?" asked Kline. Looking at him more closely, he could see that his hair wasn't naturally blond. It had been dyed.
"I was certain you'd take the egg first," said the man.
"You were?"
The man nodded, smiled.
"Is everything a test here?"
The man's smile fell. "I didn't mean to offend you," he said. "I would never presume to test you, friend Kline."
Kline grunted, put the rest of the egg in his mouth and chewed.
"What's your name?" Kline asked.
"I'm Paul," said the man.
"You're not," said Kline.
"We all are," he said.
Kline shook his head. "You can't all be Paul," he said.
"Why not?" said the man. "Is this a teaching?"
"A teaching?" said Kline. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Should I write it down?"
"Write what down?"
"'You can't all be Paul.' And whatever else comes thereafter from your lips."
"No," said Kline, a strange dread starting to grow within him. "I don't want you to write anything down."
"Is that too a teaching?" said Paul. "'Write nothing down'?"
"Nothing's a teaching," said Kline. "Stop saying that."
Kline started into the bacon. As he ate, Paul stared at him, his brow creased in concentration, as if afraid to miss something.
"Am I a prisoner here?" Kline asked.
"A prisoner?" said Paul. "But we're helping you."
"I want to leave," said Kline.
"Why?" asked Paul. "We believe in you, friend Kline," he said. "Why would you want to leave? You're not healed yet."
"You haven't always been called Paul, have you?" Kline said.
Paul looked surprised. "No," he admitted reluctantly.
"What did you used to be called?"
"I'm not allowed to say," said Paul. "It's a dead name. 'You must lose yourself to find yourself.' That's a teaching."
"It's all right to say," said Kline. "You can tell me." Paul looked to either side of him and then leaned forward, whispering into Kline's ear: "Brian."
"Brian?" said Kline.
Paul winced.
"Why Paul?" asked Kline. "Why are you all Paul?"
"Because of the Apostle," said Paul. "And the other one, the philosopher's brother."
"What's this all about?"
"A work," said Paul, his cadence slightly odd as if he were a child reciting something memorized. "A marvelous work and a wonder, such as has never come to pass before in the world of men." He leaned in closer. "We have a relic for you," he whispered.
"A relic?"
"Sshh," said Paul. "They didn't know its value," he said. "But our agent did."
Kline caught a brief movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to the doorway to see another man standing there, one hand missing, hair blond. He was frowning.
"Ah," said Kline. "You must be Paul."
The Paul beside him stiffened. He lifted the breakfast tray and hurried out. The Paul in the doorway moved to let him past, then followed him out, pushing the door shut behind him.
Another Paul came in a few hours later to bring him lunch, then another Paul not long afterward who changed his dressings and massaged his legs and helped him up to the bathroom. Neither were talkative, both answering his questions simply and noncommittally. Yes, they were each called Paul. Yes, they both had had other names, dead names, but both were firm in their refusal to divulge them. No, he was not a prisoner, they claimed, but they both encouraged him so strongly to remain in bed that he felt as if he were a prisoner. To the question "What am I doing here?" and the question "What do you want from me?"--each posed to a different Paul--they just smiled. All, they assured him, would be explained in time. "By whom?" he asked, and was not surprised when they answered, "By Paul."
After the last Paul was gone, he tried to think. Could he make his way out without them stopping him? His shoulder still throbbed when he moved that side of his body. His head hurt too, but the knife was mostly gone from his eye, and when it came was not nearly as severe, as if it were stabbing into a wound whose edges had already been cauterized, was just slightly tearing the fleshy edge of his brain. He was hardly at his best, but he was far from his worst. Was he in good enough shape to leave?
Over the course of the day, the paintings started to feel familiar, no longer so strange. True, they were grotesque, but it became harder and harder to keep that in mind. The screaming or singing man started to seem more and more incidental to the composition of the picture as a whole, and he found himself thinking about the pattern of ochres and blacks and clammy whites, about the cast of light and shadow, in a way he almost found soothing.
A Paul came in, a new one or a repeater, he wasn't sure. They had all started to look alike to him. The Paul held a dinner tray. Kline ate slowly. He was, he told himself, feeling much better.
"Paul," he said.
"Yes?" said Paul.
"I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what's going on here?"
"That is not for me to say," said Paul.
"I suppose not," said Kline. "I should wait for Paul then, should I?" Paul beamed, nodded. "Soon," he said. "No need to worry."
After Paul was gone, K
line lay thinking. He could get out of bed and when one of the Pauls came, as long as he was not a large Paul, he could probably feign weakness and then, while the Paul was unsuspecting, overpower him. He would hit him in the throat as hard as he could, or almost: not hard enough to kill him. Would it be hard enough? Would it be too hard? He kept thinking about it, imagining his hand flashing out, how the Paul's throat would feel to the blade of it, of the hand.
But no, he realized, he was now too curious to leave before finding out more about what was going on.
That night he had dreams of conflagration, scattered bits and fragments of burnings that seemed, he reflected later, to be assembled from many moments of smoke or fire, benign or otherwise, that he had experienced in his life. Yet in the midst of the fragments was a single roaring kernel: he saw himself, arm missing to the elbow, stumble out of a doorway and shoot a gun-handed guard through the head. This is a dream, he told himself, and was pleased that he could recognize this, though later there came gradually a nagging suspicion that it was not just a dream, had not always been a dream.
He shot the guard through the head and the man fell back gasping, hissing blood through his lips in a fine mist that slowly shadowed the floor beside his face. After a little while, the fellow seemed dead. Kline searched his pockets, found cigarettes, a book of matches. He used the matches to light the dead man's clothing on fire, then stood watching, making sure the flames started feeding up the wall.
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