by Sarah Dreher
“I intend to sue you,” Tunes said, “for false arrest and bodily harm. I have an excellent attorney.”
“We,” said Marylou, who had been watching the exchange like a spectator at a tennis match, “have a Mafia lawyer.”
“Okay,” Ed Garr said, coming forward and taking the gun from Marylou, “it’s all under control now. Care to come downtown and make a statement?”
“I most certainly do.” Marylou put on her hat, tossed the ties over her shoulder in an imperious gesture, and marched from the room.
Edith Kesselbaum beamed. “Isn’t she wonderful?” she asked Aunt Hermione.
* * *
Stoner hesitated at the entrance to Gwen’s hospital room, afraid of what she was about to see.
Gwen was alive, but in Intensive Care. She was going to be surrounded by tubes and monitors and terrible machines.
Her knee throbbed something awful. But after twelve hours of pain killers, she’d had enough. They made her feel unreal, floaty. And Stoner felt a great craving for Reality. Even if Reality hurt.
Well, Reality was waiting for her on the other side of that door. She gulped a breath of antiseptic-smelling air and pushed it open.
Gwen was actually sitting up in bed, pale as the sheets, her eyes like dark wells. Her left arm was bandaged to her side, her hospital gown draped loosely across her shoulder. There were relatively few machines and monitors. Just one counting the drops that flowed through an IV into her hand, and one that purred along counting her heart beats. She looked very small and very vulnerable.
She saw Stoner and smiled. It was just a smile, a little one, but it made the sun shine.
“Hi,” Stoner said. She limped across the room and touched Gwen’s hand tentatively with one finger.
Gwen wrapped her fingers around Stoner’s. “Hi, yourself. I’d embrace you, but I have a hole in my chest.”
“That’s okay.” She felt very shy all of a sudden, here in this strange place.
“What’d you do to yourself?” Gwen asked, indicating Stoner’s leg.
Stoner shrugged. “Not much. Tore something or cracked the knee cap or something like that.”
“Ought to be on crutches.”
“Yeah, well, you know me.”
“Yes,” Gwen said, looking deep into her eyes. “I know you.”
She felt a rush of warmth. “I’d like to kiss you, but I’m afraid I’ll fall on you.”
“That’s okay. I probably have hospital breath.” She rubbed a finger over the back of Stoner’s hand. “Stoner, I had...the oddest dream.”
“Did you?”
“I dreamed we were on the rides… I don’t remember which ones… Horizons, I think. And The Land. Except that they weren’t rides, they were real.”
“Uh-huh,” Stoner said noncommittally.
“Was it a dream?”
“Sort of, and sort of not, I guess.”
Gwen grinned. “Thank you for clearing that up.”
“It’s kind of complicated. I’m not sure, myself.”
“What happened to everyone?”
“Millicent Tunes and David are back in jail—conspiracy to commit murder, something like that. David was Tunes’ patient, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. How tacky.” Gwen reached for her glass of water.
Stoner took it and held it while she drank. “Want to hear something funny? Marylou talked David into suing Tunes for malpractice.”
“Please,” Gwen said. “It hurts when I laugh.”
“She’s even getting him a lawyer.” Stoner shoved her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know. She’d better watch out. I think he already has a crush on her.”
“I have a lot to catch up on.”
“It’ll keep.”
Gwen was beginning to look tired. Stoner knew she should go, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t ever want to leave her again. “You almost died,” she said softly.
“So they tell me.”
“If you had... Gwen, I...” Without knowing it was coming, she burst into tears.
Gwen pulled Stoner’s head down onto her shoulder and stroked her hair. “I know. I feel the same way.”
“I’m sorry. Here you are all hurt, and I’m...” But she couldn’t stop. Her crying felt hard and jerky, like rocks being forced from her chest.
Gwen let her go, stroking her and whispering her name.
In a while her sobs melted and smoothed. Stoner fumbled for a tissue and wiped her nose. “You came so close, and I was so scared. I didn’t know anything could scare me like that.”
“Must be love,” Gwen said gently.
“I don’t know if it’s right, to love someone that much. To need someone that...”
“Pebbles...” Gwen said.
Stoner looked up at her. “What?”
“Shut up.”
She kissed Gwen’s hand and rubbed it against her own cheek. Her skin felt so smooth, so safe. She just wanted to go on feeling her closeness. For an hour, for a day, forever.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re tired, I just need to be near you.”
“It’s okay, Stoner.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Stoner grinned. “I don’t suppose you are. Not for a while.” She was silent for a moment. “I really thought you were dead,” she said at last.
“So did I.”
Stoner looked at her. “You did?” She reached for another tissue and tried to repair the ravages to her eyes. “You mean with the lights and the tunnels and all?”
Gwen smiled. “A little, maybe. I felt something. Like leaving my body. And there seemed to be someone there—not like real people, exactly. Kind of like a presence. And I sort of remember saying I had to go back...” She shrugged. “It might have been a dream.”
“This whole thing has been crazy. Too much unexplained… stuff.”
“Speaking of which,” Gwen said as she reached for the water glass, “rumor has it you brought down that man with a stapler.”
“A staple gun. It just deflected his attention.”
“You used a staple gun against a real pistol?”
“It was the best I could do. I had to do something. Besides, it was a very powerful staple gun.”
Gwen shook her head. “Did you ever hear of letting the police handle it?”
“I was afraid he’d get away.”
“Butches,” Gwen said with a weary sigh. “Go figure.”
Stoner kissed her.
* * *
“Now,” Aunt Hermione said as she finished off the remains of her bar-b-cued spare ribs. “Tell me what you’ve made of it all.”
“All what?” Stoner asked, knowing perfectly well what she meant.
“The things that have been happening to you.”
“I don’t know.” She started to get up. “You want dessert?”
Her aunt placed her hand over Stoner’s. “I do not. And neither do you. You know we need to talk about this.”
It was mid-afternoon, and the crowd at the Crystal Palace cafeteria was beginning to thin out. Stoner looked around at the floor, the glassed ceiling, the line of people filling their trays. Everywhere but into her aunt’s eyes. “Some funny things happened, that’s all.”
“That is not all, Stoner,” Aunt Hermione said firmly. “Sit down and talk to me.”
She dropped back into her seat and stared at her plate.
“I don’t mean to be parental about it,” Aunt Hermione said, “but I do feel a little responsible for you, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” She felt about sixteen years old, as helpless and frightened as she had felt when she’d run away from home and come to live with Aunt Hermione all those years ago. Her aunt had taken charge for her then, when she was lost. Well, she was lost now. “I don’t know how to talk about it,” she said.
“Just tell me what’s been happening.”
She glanced up. Aunt Hermione was gazing at her calmly,
patiently. It made her feel a little safer. “Well, when Gwen was dying, well, it was as if we’d gone into another dimension or something...”
“I know about that, dear. I was there.”
Stoner grimaced. “That doesn’t make me real comfortable, you know. I think it was maybe just a dream.”
“I’ve seen you fretting and worrying and trying to make sense of it—or park it somewhere so you won’t have to think about it—for days. You refuse to talk about it, and you won’t go near EPCOT Center. Something happened to you there, and it had nothing to do with Marylou’s kidnapping or Gwen being shot.”
“I’ve asked you a thousand times,” Stoner said, “don’t read my mind.”
Aunt Hermione sighed in mock exasperation. “You can be such a brat at times.”
“Okay, okay, here’s what happened. It wasn’t much, really. We went on the Land ride, and the dog followed the boat, only Gwen couldn’t see it. And I saw someone in an upstairs window at the farm house, and that turned out to be Callie Rose. And then I was outside the Wales shop, only somehow I was in Wales...”
Her aunt waited for her to continue. Stoner shrugged. “That’s all.”
“And what do you make of that?”
She tried really hard to concentrate. She knew what she made of it, but she didn’t want to know. Every time she got near it—and she had gotten near it at least a hundred times in the past few days—she pulled back. Because what she got near was like a hot stove, and she knew if she touched it she was going to be burned in ways that would change the way she looked at reality forever.
“You have to face this, Stoner. One way or another. You must believe in it or reject it, because if you don’t settle it in your mind, it’ll just eat away at you.”
There were birds flying over the Crystal Palace. Stoner wondered idly if the park people had to clean droppings off every night.
“I don’t know how to settle it,” she said.
“Yes, you do.”
She felt trapped. “Okay, let’s assume—hypothetically...”
“Hypothetically is good,” said Aunt Hermione.
“Let’s say there are two different dimensions of reality, or more, even…”
“I’d say more.”
“...like parallel universes or something. And there are places where the curtain or wall or dividing line or whatever is thinner than in other places. And maybe EPCOT is built on one of those spots, so illusion becomes reality, and reality becomes illusion… or whatever.”
Her aunt nodded very seriously. “I believe that’s a good explanation. However, if everyone experienced it, it would make headlines. Why do you suppose that hasn’t happened?”
“Because...” Okay, this was the hard part. Just get it out. “Because not everyone can see it.”
“You did.”
“I guess,” Stoner said.
“And Callie Rose?”
She glanced up. “What about her?”
“She reached out for you, and you heard her.”
“Yeah.” Stoner squirmed uncomfortably. “Guess we have a connection through twenty past lives or something,” she said flippantly.
“Or she reached you because you were willing to be reached.”
“I am not willing to be reached,” she flared up. “My Goddess, don’t I have enough to cope with in the real world?” She could just see it. Calls for help from spirits who couldn’t move on. Psychic screams from lost souls. They could expand the agency. Get a new motto. Don’t know where you belong? Stuck on the material place when you were aiming for the etheric? Passed over, but your luggage didn’t follow? Call Stoner McTavish, travel agent to Spirit.
“What you do with it is up to you, of course,” her aunt was saying. “If you don’t want Spirit to reach you, there are ways to protect yourself. But I’m afraid, Stoner, these things will continue to happen to you until you acknowledge them.”
She stirred the dregs of her tossed salad and brutalized a shred of lettuce. “That’s what Gwen’s always saying,” she pouted.
“And does Gwen also say that whenever you turn petulant, it’s because you’re getting close to the truth.”
She stabbed a sliced green olive viciously. “Yes.”
Aunt Hermione leaned back in her chair. “Well, then, it seems our conversation is completed. Shall we have dessert?”
* * *
“If I knew what we were looking for,” George said, “I could probably be more helpful.”
“It’s really complicated,” Stoner hedged. “I just want to see if something is the way I remember it.” Sure, she was really eager to explain to this woman she barely knew that they had—maybe—entered another dimension of Time and Space inside the Horizons ride. Where they had met a woman, who was the living embodiment of one of the Audio-Animatronics and working this very artificial orchard—except, of course, in the Other Dimension it was a real orchard. And this woman had been a practicing Wiccan of the future, who had been given a gift by Aunt Hermione. And said gift might or might not still be in the pocket of the Audio-Animatronic version of the real Other World woman, and...
Right. George would believe every word of that.
“Please,” she said. “Trust me. I’m not going to hurt anything.”
“Well, I know that,” George said. “Do you think, if I believed you were the kind of person who’d hurt anything, I’d have invited you to our trailer for a wonderful micro-waved Tupperware dinner?”
Stoner grinned. “And a fine dinner it was, too.”
“It was not,” George said. “It was a humiliation. But remember, you knew what you were getting into.”
“I did,” Stoner said. “But Marylou didn’t.”
“Wasn’t she great?” George said with a giggle. “I’ve never seen anyone be so polite for an entire evening.”
“You would have,” Stoner said, “if you’d ever seen me when she takes me out to exotic ethnic restaurants. I hope you didn’t mind my setting her up. It was pay-back time.”
“I loved it.” George unlocked the back entrance to the Horizons pavilion and shined her flashlight along the wall until she found the electrical control panel. She threw a switch and lights went on. “We’re in, Ed,” she said into her walkie-talkie. “I’ll check back when we leave.” She stuck the walkie-talkie back into its belt holster. “You should see the lights going on at Computer Central about now. We’ve just been registered as a major breach in security.”
“You won’t get in trouble for this, will you?”
“Nah, I’ll just let Ed call me Sweet Thing a few times.” She led the way to the entrance to the ride. “Where to?”
“The Mesa Verde section.”
George started off along the track, past the Looking Back at Tomorrow exhibits. In normal light, without the black lights and moving vehicles and projected images, the exhibit had a flat, dull, slightly ominous look. Like an amusement park out of season. They crept past the OmniSphere, with its gigantic curved movie screens, silver gray, silent and eerie. Then Nova Cite, and finally the orchards of Mesa Verde.
It was all there. The control tower. The painted backdrop of orange trees. The robotic pickers. And Elaine, or rather her Audio-Animatronic persona, looking out over her grove, wearing the same jump suit.
Stoner hesitated. “How often do they launder these clothes?”
“Not often,” George said. “It’s pretty clean in here.”
“Do you think they’ve done it since I was here last week?”
“Easy enough to find out.” She pulled out her walkie-talkie. “Ed, bring up the cleaning schedule for Horizons on the computer, will you?” She waited a moment. “Okay, when did they clean here last? Uh-huh. Okay, thanks.” She turned to Stoner. “They finished up the week after Labor Day, and won’t be in again until just before Thanksgiving.”
So if the pentacle had been there, it was still there, in Elaine’s pocket. She stepped onto the floor of the exhibit and reached out to touch the mannequin. She hesitated.
If she found the necklace...?
She would know that everything she’d been taught about life and the world and space and time was wrong. That this thing called Reality was only a half-truth, no more Reality than a photograph of the ocean was the ocean. And, most of all, that she had a great deal to learn, because what she had learned in her more than three decades here was like kindergarten compared to what still remained unknown.
And if she didn’t find it?
Then she wouldn’t know for sure. There was still the possibility that what she had experienced had happened, but the necklace hadn’t made the trip back. So there was still the opportunity...
But she knew what would happen. Slowly at first, but with increasing certainty, she would become convinced that it had all been a dream, or an illusion, or some shift in her thinking brought on by anxiety. The experience would fade until it was merely odd—and finally not even odd but something that might have happened, but she wasn’t sure. And when that happened, the magic would be gone.
She dropped her hand.
“Find what you were looking for?” George called.
Stoner turned to her. “I think I did,” she said.
* * *
It was their last morning in Walt Disney World. A drizzly, nasty, unwelcoming morning. But after a week of looking at day after day of sunny sameness, they were glad for the change. Edith had offered to spring for breakfast at the Top of the World, but Marylou had insisted on the Character Cafe, which everyone found very puzzling until Goofy appeared. Marylou began flirting shamelessly.
“I must say,” Aunt Hermione said to Edith, “Marylou acquitted herself admirably on this adventure. She had that wretched man completely flummoxed.”
Edith gazed adoringly at her daughter. “Didn’t she? Do you know, when she was growing up, I was so afraid we weren’t an adequately dysfunctional family. I could just imagine her turning out as straight and stuffy as a Republican. But she’s wonderfully flaky, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Gwen said, “I think you can put any fears on that score to rest.”