Hellworld

by Tom Leveen

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Pretty cool. Hey, you seeing anyone?”

  Innocent question, I told myself immediately. Innocent question—it happens to be the topic of conversation right now, you’re the one who started it, do not do not do not read into this.

  “No,”I said. “Too busy, mostly. You know.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya. Well, guess we’ll see you in the morning, then?”

  “Sounds good.”

  We hugged again, a little longer that time. Charlie headed back into the hotel, and I took off for home. I again tried, in vain, not to imagine what Selby looked like, how much smarter she was than me, or anything she and Charlie might be doing in their hotel room right that very moment.

  After dropping off the truck and keys to Mrs. Brower, I went home and decided to watch season one of The Spectre Spectrum. I thought maybe I’d find something on an old ep that I’d missed the previous hundred thousand times.

  No such luck.

  13

  Now

  * * *

  I once watched a prank video online in which a guy on a cell phone stood at a bus stop and pretended to get world-ending news from a relative. “Dude, Florida just got hit by a tsunami; it’s coming this way!”he said to people. “My aunt’s going to pick me up over here—come on, we have to go!”And people went. Either they didn’t have their own smartphones, like me, or they simply didn’t stop to consider whether it was true. They just panicked because of one person’s claim.

  Somehow I’m thinking about that dumb prank as I scan Charlie’s phone for information on what’s happening near us. The Internet has exploded with quote-unquote news, but none of it agreed, and all of it was bad. Viral cell phone videos are only making people more confused and scared, which makes them panic, and that makes things worse.

  The speed with which people are losing their minds is remarkable. But then I have no room to judge.

  “Here,”Charlie grunts, and pulls my attention away from his screen.

  We catch a break, pulling into an urgent care clinic in the small town of Oro Valley, a few miles northeast of Tucson. Traffic is light. I can see smoke from I-10 billowing in the distance, and guess that everyone has either bailed out of town already, or they’re staying home and watching the news.

  The urgent care building stands alone, a short building painted adobe red with lava rock decorative gravel lining a concrete sidewalk that leads to the entrance. It looks clean and safe, somehow. Normal. Inviting, even. Maybe that’s because inside are professional medical people who can finally help us.

  “Get her in,”Charlie says as he stops in the parking lot. “I’ll go get gas.”

  “What? No. No, we stay together.”

  “There’s a Circle K right down there. I’ll be there and back before you’ve even finished the paperwork. You’re okay.”

  I don’t like it, but can’t find a good argument. I help Selby out of the RV and into the clinic. Charlie waits until we get in before rolling out of the lot and toward the gas station. For no good reason, I get a crush of fear in my chest that we’ll never see him again. That he’ll leave us here, or something will happen the moment we’re apart.

  Then again, maybe I have a million good reasons.

  The urgent care lobby is empty except for a nurse sitting behind a counter. Everything is gleaming white inside except for the lobby furniture, which is the same color red as the lava rock outside. As I help Selby to the check-in, I see a laptop sitting on a desk just below the counter. It’s showing live stream helicopter footage of the 10, which looks like a war zone. Flames, black smoke, cars at a standstill, people milling about. Or lying still on the pavement.

  “Can I help you?”the nurse asks, barely able to take her eyes off the screen. Her blue-black hair gleams under recessed lighting that gives me the absurd, momentary impression that everything is absolutely okay. This woman clearly dyes her hair; who would do that if the world was really ending?

  I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just this fleeting thought. Fleeting hope, maybe.

  “She’s hurt,”I say, holding on to Selby with both hands, her arm slung over my shoulders. “She’s been stabbed.”

  That gets the nurse’s attention. She stands up. “Someone stabbed her?”

  “No,”I say quickly. “She tripped. Fell on something. In our car. RV.”

  “Fill out her information here,”the nurse says briskly, dropping a clipboard onto the counter. “I’ll bring her around back.”

  “I don’t know her infor—”I start to say, but the nurse walks away. A moment later, she appears from a door off to our left and takes Selby from me, guiding her into the back of the building. Selby says nothing as they stumble off, her face a grimace of pain.

  I pick up the clipboard, but stay to watch the laptop screen. The laptop is muted, and it feels wrong somehow to lean over and try to bring the sound up, so I just watch.

  The blacktop of I-10 is on fire. A crush of vehicles jams the entire roadway for what must be miles. Portions of the road have already literally melted away, creating a roiling tar pit sucking at the burnt-out shells of cars. I do not see any of the hairy dragonfly things.

  The nurse reappears behind her counter, drying her hands on a paper towel. “You said you were in an RV when she was hurt?”

  “Yes,”I say. It sounds confident enough, I think.

  “Were you in the wreck?”the nurse asks.

  I blink. “What?”

  “On Interstate 10. Were you in the big accident?”

  Accident? I think. There was no accident. Not by a long shot.

  “No,”I say carefully. “What, um . . . what happened?”

  “They don’t know. But look at it. Isn’t it awful?”

  We watch the screen for another minute. Then I start to move to a chair to attempt to fill out the paperwork.

  “What did she get stabbed with?”the nurse calls after me.

  “Uh . . . knife?”

  Nice one, Abigail. The nurse narrows her eyes at me.

  “I mean, she was standing up in the RV,”I say. “Cutting up vegetables and stuff. We weren’t in the wreck, but we saw it, and he—Charlie, the driver—he had to slam on the brakes. She lost her footing and fell against it. You know.”

  Not terribly convincing, but the nurse seems to accept it. “How about you?”she says. “You don’t look well. Are you all right?”

  “Not really.”I sit down, and my muscles protest.

  I stare at the paper on the clipboard, toying with the pen attached by a string of tiny metal pearls. Name? Well, Selby Lovecraft. Address? Date of birth? Insurance company . . .

  I set the clipboard down, lean my head back, and close my eyes. I don’t think I fall asleep, but can’t say for sure; all I know is that at some point I snap up when someone sits beside me.

  Charlie.

  “You okay?”he asks.

  “Don’t know. No. You got gas?”

  “All filled up.”

  A man with short black hair wearing blue medical scrubs comes out from the side door and approaches us. I notice he positions himself between us and the exit. Maybe it’s unintentional. Maybe it’s not.

  “I’m Dr. Kay,”he says, not unfriendly but not smiling. “Would you like to tell me what happened to your friend before or after I call the police?”

  Charlie and I look at each other. Very smooth. I can’t tell if he’s thinking the same thing I am: that given what else is happening not far from here, I doubt very much the police will give much of a crap about us.

  “It was an accident,”I say.

  Dr. Kay is silent, keeping his deep brown eyes trained on me.

  “She fell against a knife while we were driving,”Charlie says. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have slammed on the brakes.”

  “We were camping,”I add, for no particular reason. When did I learn to lie like this? “That’s our RV out there. We tried to get to Tucson, but the freeway was all backed up. We came straight h
ere.”

  The doctor’s expression relaxes a little. It’s a weak story, but not an impossible one. “How are you related to her?”

  “Just friends,”Charlie says.

  “Mmm.”Dr. Kay studies us a moment longer, as if trying to decide his next course of action. Then he sighs. “Well, we do have a bit of a problem. She needs more attention than we are equipped for here.”

  “How bad is it?”I ask.

  “Hard to say. There could be extensive internal damage, or it could have missed everything major. Her belly is not distending and there’s no rebound pain. Those are good signs. Right now I’d guess she perhaps hit the liver, which is sort of a best-case scenario. It’s always possible, however, that she could be bleeding internally, which is very dangerous. The problem is that I’m the only doctor in town right now, and there are no ambulances to the hospital in Tucson.”

  “So what do we do?”I ask. “I mean, what’s the safest bet?”

  “There are two options. She can stay here for observation, which is what I recommend. That way if she gets worse, at least I’d have an opportunity to take action. Or you could try to take back roads to Tucson, which is where the nearest hospital is. But there’s no predicting the condition of the roads and traffic, and no guarantee of reaching the ER in time in the event of a complication. Also, there’s likely to be quite a backup in the ER anyway. It is not a good situation, no matter how we look at it.”

  “So who makes the call?”Charlie says.

  “I have treated her as best I can. And I’ve given her something for the pain. The bleeding has stopped. I would say the decision is up to her parents or legal guardian.”

  “And if we can’t get ahold of them?”Charlie says.

  “Then it is up to her. Where are her parents?”

  Charlie and I meet each other’s eyes. “We don’t know for sure,”he says. “She moved out a while ago. They don’t talk.”

  Dr. Kay doesn’t seem to care much for that answer. “I’ll get some more information from her,”he says, like we’re total idiots. And I suppose we are.

  The doctor disappears into the office. Charlie stands and heads for the doors, so I follow. We stand outside together on the sidewalk, feeling the stillness of the town penetrate our bones.

  “I don’t—”Charlie begins, then snaps his mouth shut.

  Not really meaning to, I slide my hand into his. His fingers grip mine tightly, and after everything that’s happened, the touch of warm, living skin on mine makes me dizzy for a moment.

  “Yeah,”I say, and my voice catches. “Me either.”

  14

  Then

  * * *

  I heard Dad’s car pull up a couple hours after my trip to MGM. Hurrying, I ejected the Spectre Spectrum disc and shoved the entire box set under my bed just as Dad came inside. He immediately sank into the couch, turned on the TV, and began listlessly watching daytime talk shows. The couch had a divot in it these days, perfectly conformed to his body. I’d only sat in that spot once recently, and immediately gotten back up. It had felt like entering a casket.

  He didn’t even look up as I stood watching him get settled into his spot. “Dad?”

  “Hi, Plum.”

  “What’s going on?”I asked, although I knew.

  “I just couldn’t do it,”he said. “I tried. I went back to the office, and I asked, and I met with my boss, and . . . I don’t know what happened. I just couldn’t.”

  “It’s okay,”I said, lying.

  Dad had gone farther and farther between episodes like this in the last year or so—a huge improvement. But sometimes his depression just got the best of him. He’d always been somewhat predisposed to sadness, I think, from what I could remember as a little kid. Mom’s big laugh and love had done a lot to mitigate it. I remember that, even when I was little, it seemed that Dad’s smile always came late, like he needed to check everyone around him to make sure it was okay.

  Since Dad already felt bad, I had nothing to lose. I sat down beside him.

  “Dad,”I said, keeping my tone as relaxed as possible. “Can I ask you something sort of hard?”

  “If it’s about boys, I don’t know how much help I can be.”He managed a weak smile.

  “It’s about Mom.”

  A deep crease appeared between his eyebrows as the smile torqued upside down. “Okay,”he said helplessly.

  “What if . . . I mean, I don’t want to make you mad or sad or anything, but . . . what if we found out for sure that she was gone?”

  Dad’s voice flattened. “You mean dead.”

  “Well. Yes.”

  Dad’s head bobbed on his neck—not really a nod, but not really anything else, either. Finally, he said, “Maybe that would be okay. If it was for sure. For definite. What’s that word we kept hearing? Closure? I think we’d have closure.”

  The last of my doubts about going with Charlie disappeared when he said that, but I still didn’t want to tell Dad the whole story. Not yet.

  I waited until dinner that night to tell my lie. I did not like lying to my dad. It wasn’t in my nature or my repertoire. I only knew I could get away with it because if you’re not a liar, you can count on being able to tell one really big lie and people will believe you. Also, I didn’t think Dad would bother trying to verify my cover story.

  “There’s an astronomy conference this weekend I’d like to go to,”I explained over leftover spaghetti. “I’d get credit for it. It’s in Phoenix.”

  I said it sort of quickly, hoping he wouldn’t make the connection. No luck. Dad’s shoulders slumped. Phoenix meant Arizona, and Arizona meant Mom.

  “So I’d be leaving tomorrow morning. There’s a group of other online students who can give me a ride. But I don’t have to go if you don’t want me to. . . .”

  I’d put this idea together—this lie—while watching TSS. Now came the part I hadn’t scripted. I didn’t know how Dad would respond to my being gone.

  “The bills,”Dad said listlessly.

  “They’re all paid up, we’re fine.”

  “No, I mean you shouldn’t be the one in charge of paying them.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I have to get better,”Dad said, gazing blankly at the kitchen table.

  I sat statue still. He hadn’t said anything like that before. Ever.

  “What can I do?”I said after a long pause.

  “Go,”Dad said. “Go, and have a good time. I’ll make some calls.”

  “What kind of calls?”

  “For help.”He shook his head, very slowly. “I can’t keep doing this to you. I know what you do. I know how you keep this place up, Plum. It’s not fair. To you.”

  I wanted to reach out, touch his hand, something, but we hadn’t made physical contact in years. Not intentionally. I didn’t think we knew how.

  “It’s not fair to you, either,”I said.

  “Maybe,”Dad said. “You should give yourself a raise. In your allowance. Or a bonus. Take whatever you need for this, uh, field trip. If there’s any money left. Is there?”

  “Some.”

  “Take it. You’ve earned it.”

  “Dad . . .”

  He looked up and met my eyes. His eyelids were at half-mast. “Yes, Plum?”

  “I don’t have to go. I can stay. It’s all right.”

  “No,”Dad said. “It’ll do you good. It’ll do us both good. I’ll find a place to go, make an appointment.”

  “Okay. Sure. Okay.”

  I realized then that as much as I didn’t like lying to Dad, I had no alternative. If I’d told him the truth, about Charlie and all the rest of it, he would not have said everything he just did. If anything, telling the truth would only make things worse, maybe for a long time. Somehow my lie about an astronomy conference had jarred something else loose instead. Something good.

  That night, I climbed into my tree house and watched as the constellation Cygnus appeared overhead. It was the first one I could identify without Mom’
s help when I was little. It was late before I finally came down and tried to get some sleep.

  And tried.

  And tried.

  15

  Now

  * * *

  Charlie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that I’m holding his hand. While it feels great, like my entire heart is located in between our palms, it’s not exactly the romantic scenario I envisioned over the years. Mostly, in fact, it’s just contact. Human contact.

  “I’ve been thinking about Selby,”Charlie says finally.

  My heart shrivels a little between our hands. “What about her?”

  “About how she did that to herself. In the cave. Something made her do it. Something made her spill her own blood.”

  “Yeah.”While not the most visually terrifying thing we’d seen in the past twenty-four hours, Selby driving a knife into her own gut while desperately trying not to do it . . . that memory wasn’t going away any time soon.

  “I wonder if it’s the same thing that took our parents.”

  “Sure,”I say. “Why not.”

  “Abby, I’m serious.”

  “So am I!”I turn to face him, but our hands stay entwined. “Charlie, what are we going to do? I mean, what the hell are we going to do? Alex is dead and we haven’t even told anybody yet. There’re monsters, real giant monsters, out there killing people. And it’s our fault. What do we do?”

  “Been thinking about that, too,”Charlie says. “There’s always Dr. Riley. He’s the next-best thing to an authority. Maybe he has some ideas, now that all this has gone down.”

  “I don’t know, I just want to go home. I want to see my dad. I want to go to bed.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, Abby,”Charlie says, making sure I’m looking in his eyes. “I’m sorry this all has happened, believe me. I am. I’m already doing math in my head for how much therapy this is gonna cost me, you know? But I don’t want to figure out our next move by myself—I can’t figure it out by myself. We have to find a way to undo this.”