by Tim Pratt
“Like the moon bridge,” Darrin said.
“The what?”
Darrin shrugged. “That first night, when you attacked Nicholas in San Francisco, I saw a bridge, high in the sky, beautiful silver, luminous like the moon. I saw it another time too, when I was riding in a car. It was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. Where does it go?”
Ismael shook his head. “I do not know. But perhaps it leads to the light. If you see it again, you must take my hand, so that I might see it too.”
“The times I saw it, it looked impossibly far away,” Darrin warned. “I’d have about as much chance of reaching the real moon as getting to it.”
“You would be surprised at the avenues of approach the briarpatch affords. Would you stop at anything to reach that bridge, if there was a chance you might find Bridget waiting on the other side?”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I? That should give you some idea of the lengths I’m willing to go to.”
“Indeed. Come. We’re nearly there.”
“Nearly where? Another desert? Another petroleum swamp?”
“I do not think you understand the nature of the better world. How could you? My description . . . it is too abstract. So I’m going to take you to a place where you can see the light.” He reached out a hand as if to touch Darrin’s arm, then thought better of it. “If you see the light, you might understand why Bridget was willing to leave you for it. That might make you feel better.”
“You care about how I feel now?” Darrin crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not convinced.”
“I am a compassionate man,” he said, and Darrin realized Ismael actually believed that. He’d loathed the man before, but now, for the first time, Darrin feared Ismael, because people who would do horrible things for the sake of compassion were dangerous, like the madmen who killed their own families to spare them the pain of a sinful world. Now Ismael did clap Darrin on the shoulder, a companionable gesture that Darrin resisted the urge to flinch away from. “Come,” Ismael said. “Soon you’ll see the light.”
Off in the distance, something broke the surface of the tar, a serpentine shape dripping blackness, coil after coil rising up and falling down again. Darrin shivered, and, at the same time, wished he had his camera so he could photograph the thing, though it would be tricky, getting the settings right, so it would appear as something other than blackness against blackness. He’d have to take the pictures in his mind now.
“I’ve often thought of bringing a torch here,” Ismael said, “and throwing it into the tar. If it didn’t snuff out immediately, it would burn ferociously, I think, and I wonder what would rise up to escape the flames? Think of the creatures that must live beneath this blackness, and their suffering, their miserable unlikely lives. It would be a mercy, I think, to burn them. But it might destroy this bridge, and so I have always refrained.” He set off across the bridge.
Darrin looked at his back for a moment before following. A compassionate man, he thought, and then hurried to catch up.
Bridget Baits a Bear
1
“You said before you didn’t have any idea where they were going,” Orville said between mouthfuls of hummus and pita. God, hummus. How could something that looked like mush be so delicious? He sat with Bridget in the far corner of a little Middle Eastern restaurant near Lake Merritt, far enough away from the customers that he could talk to her unheard, probably. “So where do we start?”
Bridget didn’t seem to hear him. She’d been staring off into the distance for a while now, though whether she was lost in deep thought or simply overwhelmed by recent revelations, Orville didn’t know. She’d wanted to go charging into the briarpatch the moment they left Darrin’s house, but Orville had needed food before setting off on a trek like that. This new body seemed to need more fuel than the old one ever had . . . or, maybe, he just felt like he needed to eat more often, since food was now more pleasure than chore. Bridget had slowed down a bit as they walked to the restaurant, melancholy creeping over her when she didn’t have immediate action to distract herself.
“Bridget?” he said, and she looked at him, cocked her head, and nodded.
“If Ismael is taking Darrin into the briarpatch in hopes of finding a direct route to the better world, I think I know the first place they’ll go. He’ll want to show Darrin what he’s looking for. There’s a kind of . . . scenic overlook, I guess . . . a place where you can glimpse the light of the better world. I think they’ll go there. I don’t know how long they’ll stay there, though, and if we miss them . . .”
“Well, let’s go.” Orville mopped up the last of his food and shoved a wad of pita into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed as he stood up, leaving some cash from his poker winnings on the table.
Bridget nodded. “Just let me think . . . We could have gone directly from Darrin’s house if I’d thought about it, down the stairs where we shoved that mugger—that leads to the same world, branch, or whatever, that we need to pass through. Hmm. There might be a better way though—I know a shortcut from the lakeshore to Ismael’s neighbourhood, and from there we can go through his back shed. It’s still kind of a long journey that way, but time moves funny in the briarpatch, so maybe we’ll get to the scenic overlook before they leave.” Bridget seemed livelier now, with a plan of action in mind.
They crossed the street, went over a freeway overpass, and were soon within sight of the water. Bridget led him toward the ornamental pillars that decorated this end of the lake, and the air shimmered, revealing a passageway between two pillars that led into a place of green mist. “Hold your breath, and squint your eyes,” Bridget said. “The air in there isn’t good, but it’s only a few steps across, just follow me straight in, okay?”
Orville nodded, wondering if the green mist was poison gas, if it would burn his skin, if Bridget would be so sanguine about rushing through there if she still had a body of her own. But that was unfair. Bridget did care about him. At first she’d wanted to keep him safe out of simple expedience, because she was tied to his body, but he believed she’d grown to care about him for less selfish reasons. She hadn’t given him a reason to stop trusting her yet. So he took a deep breath, squinted his eyes, and plunged into the green darkness.
2
They made it to Ismael’s living room in less than five minutes, passing first through the choking green mist—which hadn’t burned him, but had given his sight a strange greenish tinge for a while afterward—and then through what seemed to be a giant’s playground, with jungle gyms as high as skyscrapers, titanic slides, and a filthy merry-go-round with carved wooden animals straight out of undersea-themed nightmares. Bridget led him beneath a swing-set the size of an auditorium, through a shadow that was also a door, and from there into Ismael’s remarkable living room, a nexus of branching pathways into the briarpatch. “Where to now?” he said.
“First, we pack a bag for the trek.” Bridget showed him Ismael’s supply room, selecting a backpack for him, and filling it from Ismael’s cupboard, stocked well with water bottles, jerky, trail mix, bandages, and other travelling necessities, including a can of red spray paint in case they deviated from the path and needed to leave markings to follow back. “Want a walking stick?” She opened a closet filled with them. Orville selected one, a Victorian-style walking stick with a heavy brass ball on top. Then he paused and nodded at the chrome-plated shotgun lying on the pillows. “Ah, do you think . . .? You said there are dangerous things in the briarpatch.”
Bridget shrugged. “If you want to carry it, it couldn’t hurt. It might stop a bear, I guess. Have you ever used a gun before?”
Orville had—his stepfather had tried to make a man of him in a variety of ways, and marksmanship being one approach. “It’s been a while, but yes.” They looked around for shells, but couldn’t find any, so Orville opened the breech on the shotgun and took the two shell
s out, pocketing them. He remembered enough about basic gun safety to know carrying around a loaded shotgun wasn’t the smartest idea, and he hadn’t survived a leap from a bridge to accidentally shoot himself now. The backpack was equipped with a number of rings and snaps for securing gear to the outside, so Orville rigged it sufficiently to hold the shotgun in place, barrel pointed skyward, then slung the whole thing on his back. It wasn’t too heavy, and the weight was well-distributed. “Lay on, MacBridget,” he said.
They went into the backyard to the sagging wooden shed. “When we go through here, into the briarpatch,” Bridget said, “there’s a bridge, and . . . Ismael liked to surprise people with it, but I’ll just tell you. You’ll see your own corpse there. I probably won’t, since I’m not alive anymore, but you’ll see a dead body that looks just like your own. After that, there’s not too much to worry about, until we get to this dense wood full of weird trees. You can’t leave the path there, no matter what you see, and you mustn’t climb the trees. I tried to climb one once, and Ismael had to pull me down. I’d rather not have to do the same thing for you, okay?”
“Got it,” Orville said. “Dead body, evil trees. I’ll be careful.”
He didn’t think it would be so bad, seeing his own corpse. It was just some trick of the briarpatch, after all, and he was prepared for it. But when they walked through the shed and out again, onto the long bridge, the thing at the other end didn’t even look like a person at all. Orville only made it halfway across before the wind shifted, and the smell—rot and salt—hit him like a wet rag in the face. Having a sense of smell had seemed like a great gift, until now. He leaned over the side of the swaying bridge and vomited up his hummus and pita, setting the bridge to swinging sickeningly, and he sank down, holding onto the sides, trying to steady himself, breathing through his mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” Bridget whispered. “It wasn’t so bad for me.”
“That’s what would have happened if I’d hit headfirst and really died,” Orville gasped, squeezing his eyes shut. “If that boat hadn’t found me and pulled me out of the water.” The corpse at the far end of the bridge was wet, shattered, spilling open. Orville abruptly rose and rushed across the bridge, jumping over his corpse, and continuing down the path without looking back. He was shaking, and his knees were weak, but with every step he put between himself and the corpse, he felt better. What had he been thinking? His life had been hard, yes, and miserable, and it might have continued that way indefinitely, but had he really believed that being a broken pile of meat would be better?
“You wanted oblivion,” Bridget said, walking behind him now as they followed the narrow path and passed through a cleft of rock. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Life is hard.”
Orville nodded. That was true. But seeing that body back there made him wonder if, maybe, death wasn’t harder still.
3
After the path under the lake, after the cavern with the deadly trees (which Orville had avoided by staring at his feet during the walk), they finally reached a rock-strewn plain beneath a sky so grey it hurt to look upon. Orville swung his pack off his back, sat on a flattish rock, and took out a water bottle. “I’m assuming this is a safe-ish place?”
“It was boring as hell the last time I walked this way,” Bridget said. “This is the longest part of the walk, and it’s hard to find the path. Ismael marked some of the rocks with spray paint so we can find the way.” She pointed to a rock splashed with red. “There’s this big boulder, and you crawl under it, and come out in the scenic overlook.”
“Is this place actually in the briarpatch, or is it just, like, some badlands somewhere, on a really overcast day?”
Bridget shook her head. “I’ve never been here when the sky wasn’t just like that, but I’ve only been here a couple of times, so I can’t be sure. The air smells stale, though, don’t you think?”
Orville sniffed obligingly. He didn’t have a lot of experience smelling air, fresh or stale or otherwise, but he thought he knew what she meant—the place did have a stifling, closed-in feel, despite its evident vastness. The sky seemed too close to the earth. He took another swig of water and started to repack his bag.
“Shit,” Bridget said softly. “Orville, is that shotgun loaded? I see a fucking bear.”
Orville looked around, startled, and after a moment saw a shape far off on the horizon, brown, shaggy, shambling. He supposed it could be a bear, though as he watched, it disappeared behind some rocks. He took the shells from his pocket and loaded the shotgun, trying to keep his hands steady. “Can’t we just, like, go wide? Try to avoid it?”
“We can try. But in the briarpatch, bears often travel in packs. Besides, we can’t stray too far from the marked rocks, or we’ll get lost.”
He tied his walking stick onto the backpack where the shotgun had been, and they moved off, Bridget silently pointing out red-daubed rocks. Orville started to speak, to ask how much farther, but Bridget shushed him. “Sound can carry a long way out here,” she whispered, and Orville wondered if the bears could hear her, or if, being a ghost, she would be outside their observable experience. Either way, he kept his mouth shut, and the only noise was the crunch of small rocks underfoot. The shotgun, cradled in his arms, felt very heavy. After an interminable time, Bridget whispered, “We’re nearly there. It’s that big rock ahead.”
“One more step, motherfucker, and I’ll air-hole you.”
Something hard and pointed pressed into the small of Orville’s back, and Bridget spun to face Orville, her eyes narrowing. “Shit,” she said. “It’s that guy who tried to mug us, the tall one that we shoved into the briarpatch.”
Orville closed his eyes. The mugger. Of course it was. Hadn’t Orville learned in junior high that standing up to bullies didn’t do any good? The teachers, the books, they all said if you stood up to a bully, he’d leave you alone in the future, because they preferred easy prey. But the one time Orville had stood up for himself, had shoved Bobby Cavalier back when he tried to steal Orville’s lunch money in seventh grade, it hadn’t worked out so well. Bobby and two of his friends had jumped Orville in the bathroom the next day and dunked his head in the toilet, and that had been just the beginning. Orville had let Bridget convince him to fight back, and now these were the consequences, and they would probably be more deadly than a toilet-dunking. But the lead ball of dread in his belly was lightened a bit by the knowledge that the man wasn’t dead; Orville hadn’t helped kill a man after all. That was something. It would be a great comfort when the mugger shot him in the head.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” the mugger said, voice rough like he’d been screaming for hours, “but I know what I’m going to do about it.”
Bridget waved her arms around, and then grunted. “I guess getting knocked down the stairs hasn’t made him any more perceptive than he was before—he still can’t see me. This place is part of the same world you can reach from the stairs down by Darrin’s house, where we shoved him, but it’s miles and miles and miles away, that’s why I didn’t bring us by that route. He looks really bad, like he’s been here way more than a day. I think time must have slipped a gear for him or something.” She circled around. “He’s got a pistol pointed at your back, Orville. You probably figured that out. He—”
“Drop the gun.” The mugger jabbed Orville harder. He let the shotgun fall to the rocks. “You got anything to drink?” the mugger said, and now the fear-roar in Orville’s head subsided enough that he could hear the mugger’s desperation.
“Sure,” Orville said. “In the bag.”
“I could probably manage to hit him in the head with a rock,” Bridget said. “But I don’t know how hard, and if it’s not hard enough, he might shoot you. You know I’m not thrilled at the idea of risking your life. You have any better ideas?”
The gun left Orville’s back. “Turn around,” the mugger said.
“Goddamn briarpatch,” Bridget said. “Ismael says he thinks the place has a sense of humour, sometimes, the kind of stuff that happens, people get flung together against all odds. I mean, there must be millions of miles of space out here in the back forty of the world, and we run into this guy again.”
“Answer me!” the man shouted.
Orville flinched. “I’ve got water for you,” he said, because it seemed like something the man might appreciate.
“I been drinking out of puddles,” the man said. “There’s places around here that aren’t the desert, exactly, I walked and walked and never got anywhere, I been eating berries and raw fish and shit, I’m lucky I didn’t die.”
“Beef jerky too,” Orville said. “If you just let me take off my bag.” He glanced down at the shotgun by his feet. The mugger hadn’t told him to throw it aside, or kick it—
“Kick that gun over here,” the mugger said, and Orville suppressed a sigh. Did thinking make it so? He gave the shotgun a kick, terrified it would go off and blast his shins, but it just spun a couple of feet closer to the mugger.