by Terry Miles
I grabbed Emily’s hand and helped her up.
“What are you doing?”
“We need a car,” I said as I led her through the arcade to the front door.
* * *
—
As soon as we stepped outside, I started to feel a low buzzing in my head and a woolly itching at the base of my skull.
I could tell that Emily was experiencing something similar.
Everything appeared slightly unreal. It was definitely night, but there was a dusty dark gray blur sticking to everything. The world was fading into a photocopy of itself.
The people walking around the streets and driving in cars didn’t appear to notice that anything had changed, but the darkness was up there, hovering over everything.
I looked up at the host of faded swimming shapes that smudged and streaked the sky above us, and I started running, faster, pulling Emily along with me.
“Where are we going?”
“Lakewood,” I said.
I could see recognition slowly move across Emily’s face. She let go of my hand and stopped running.
“I’m not going back there, K.”
“It’s at least a half hour drive,” I said. “I don’t have time to argue.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“What if we can put everything back to how it was?”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s still dead.”
“You can’t know that,” I said. “Things could be different.”
I had no idea how much of what Crow said was real, but I wasn’t just going to sit there in the arcade and wait for the end of the world. I stepped out into the street, put my hands in the air, and almost got hit by a car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Emily asked.
I started walking along beside the cars parked outside the arcade, checking to see if any of them were unlocked.
“We need a car,” I said.
Emily shook her head and stepped out into the street.
I finally found a car that was unlocked and turned to Emily just as she flagged down a cab.
“You can’t hot-wire a fucking Prius, K,” Emily said. “Come on.”
* * *
—
We made it to Emily’s car in six minutes. There was almost no traffic. The cabbie smiled and thanked me for the generous tip. If the world was really ending, who gave a shit about an extra twenty bucks?
Emily put her car into gear and started to pull away from the curb when somebody knocked on the window.
It was Marianne Sanders, the detective with the scar across her face who’d taken our information at Fatman Neil’s.
Emily rolled down the window.
“Where are you two off to in such a hurry?” she asked.
“Visiting a friend for dinner,” Emily said.
Sanders smiled at Emily, then turned to me. “How do you know Easton Paruth?”
“Um…I don’t. I mean, not really,” I said.
“Then why do you suppose she was tracking you on her phone?”
“I have no idea. We went to see her, to ask her a couple of questions.”
“Questions about what?”
“About the game I told you about.”
“The same game that led you to speak with Neil Arroyo just before he was killed?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time you saw Ms. Paruth?”
“Um…a couple of days ago I think. Why?”
“She’s been reported missing.”
I shook my head. Fuck. I hoped she was okay. Easton was kind of terrifying, but she’d been (mostly) nice to me.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you two to come with me,” Sanders said, and moved to open Emily’s door.
“Sorry,” Emily said, “we’re in a hurry,” and floored it.
If the world was going to end, whatever Detective Sanders wanted to talk about really didn’t matter. If we somehow survived, we could deal with her then.
* * *
—
I loaded Google Maps and found the quickest route to the freeway.
I listened to the sound of the tires on the wet asphalt as Emily guided the Volvo through mostly deserted city streets. I wondered if the lack of traffic was due to the violent shaking, or if maybe it was something else—something connected to the way the gray sky above us no longer felt like a sky, but rather like a permanent stain on the world.
Whatever was going to happen, it wouldn’t be long now.
44
THE NIGHT STATION
We made it safely out of the city and drove down I-5 in silence for twenty minutes. As we moved through the night, the chaos of the city gave way to the peaceful quiet of the suburbs, and I imagined the people who lived there feeling safe and warm behind their perfect lawns and creatively shaped mailboxes. They’d be getting ready for bed, reading stories to their kids while half-thinking about something else, signing forms for field trips, putting off sex to finish bingeing a show on HBO, and all the while, just outside their doors, the entire multiverse was most likely coming to an end.
I kept running back over everything that had happened—everything I’d learned about my parents, the Gatewick Institute, and Annie and Emily Connors. But if what Swan had said was true, did any of that stuff matter?
“We’re almost there,” Emily said.
I heard a slight tremor in her voice as we approached the road leading up to the Petermans’ house. As we made the turn, I felt something pass through my body.
The darkness was coming.
“Can you feel it?” I asked.
Emily turned and looked at me. She could definitely feel it.
At that point, the world started shaking so violently that Emily could no longer keep her car between the lines. She somehow made the turn onto the old logging road and pulled over.
The shaking stopped a few seconds later.
“We should get going,” I said.
“I’m sorry I was such a dick,” Emily said. “It’s not your fault you can’t remember how amazing I am.”
I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’s okay to be a dick when you lose the most incredible human being you’ve ever met,” I said.
Emily smiled. “Even if you’re not fortunate enough to remember how much you fucking love me, you’re still the closest thing to family that I have left. We’re family, K.”
“You’re goddamn right we’re family,” I said. “Now, let’s do whatever the hell it is we’re going to do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Even if it means dying in an accident because we were stupid enough to drive in the dark with our headlights off,” I said. “I’m no longer capable of giving half a fuck.”
Emily laughed, and then she guided the car into the middle of the road and started driving up toward the Peterman house.
It was the exact same route we’d taken all those years ago.
“One-oh-seven point three,” I said as I adjusted the frequency of the car’s radio.
“You really think this is going to work?” she asked.
“Honestly?”
Emily nodded.
“Not really,” I said.
“Fuck you.” Emily forced a laugh. “Ready?”
I nodded.
Emily turned up the radio and the sound of static filled the car.
And I was brought right back to that night in the truck.
I’d relived it so many times, it was easy to get back there now, driving along the same road in the dark with Emily. The farther we moved up the road, the more I felt like I was actually somewhere else, somewhere back in time.
Then, Emily turned off the headlights and another wave of darkness poured into the truck and passed through my body. I could feel it slide into my sku
ll, right behind my eyes. I shook my head and pressed my palms against my eye sockets. It wouldn’t be long before the darkness coming from outside was everywhere and the entire world started shaking again.
Emily grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. I could tell she was thinking about Annie. From the light of the touchscreen on the dash, I could see the tears streaming down her face. I squeezed back.
The last time we were here, speeding along this road with the headlights off, I was terrified. This time, even though I could feel that the end of everything was approaching, I wasn’t scared. I was pretty sure Swan had been telling the truth, that our world was going to end, and if she was right about the timing, it was most likely going to happen very soon.
What did it matter if we died in an accident a minute or two early?
While Emily fought to keep the car on the road, I leaned forward and listened to the radio.
It was so quiet at first that I could barely hear it, but it was there. Music. It grew louder, eventually cutting through the static enough that I could make out the song. It was “Were You Blind That Day,” the impossible song by Steely Dan.
Of course it was.
I turned up the volume on the radio, and I remember thinking, what are the odds of that song playing on the radio in that moment?
Suddenly Emily leaned forward. “Can you see it?”
I saw it.
There was something in the middle of the road up ahead. It was thick and dark, and appeared to be moving, but I couldn’t make out any detail.
This time we didn’t swerve, and Emily didn’t turn on the lights.
We drove straight toward it.
As we sped forward, the shaking became unbearable and the darkness both inside and outside the car became something else—but maybe someplace else is more accurate. The reality of the space, or whatever it was that held the atmosphere in place, felt…thicker, almost slightly damp. It was as if we’d entered another world.
Then Emily screamed and a wild metallic buzzing, like a million wasps on a tin roof, filled the inside of the truck and burst into my head.
And then…we were definitely someplace else.
* * *
—
I was floating.
The familiar briny oily smell of wet fur and feathers filled my nose. It was peaceful, but I could still feel the powerful darkness all around me. It felt like we’d entered something like the eye of the storm. Whatever or wherever it was, the world wasn’t shaking, and I could no longer feel the wheels of the car beneath me on the road.
As we slid forward into a thick blackness, the briny oily smell slowly turned into something else.
It was familiar, but it took me a moment to place it.
It was the scent of Dewberry perfume oil that I’d smelled back in the truck all those years ago.
And then I was suddenly adrift in the in-between place, but it was different this time—less chaotic.
Once again I felt the cool syrupy darkness, and the seemingly endless currents were rushing by just like before, but this time I felt more in control. If I focused my thoughts, I could see the colors and shapes of the currents, and if I closed my eyes, I could actually feel them and bring them closer.
This time I didn’t reach down to try to find my mother’s hand, or Chloe’s.
This time I was holding Emily’s hand, and I could feel her strength helping me focus. I could feel the strength of her desire and love for me.
I knew that it was time to make a choice.
I focused all of my attention on the currents, and immediately felt the familiar deep buzzing start moving through me, but this time, somewhere way out there in the darkness, I saw a distant smudge of light.
I knew what I had to do.
I squeezed Emily’s hand, and once again reached down into the endless darkness.
I’d made my choice.
I cleared my mind and willed the distant light closer.
The smudge slowly became a flicker, then it morphed into a glowing swirl as it rushed toward me, slicing through the darkness, speeding, pulsing, humming, and burning, and then—
I was on my mother’s knee in a strange house surrounded by our things, and—
Running through an open field jumping over the black well, and—
Broken and alone in the Harvard Exit Theatre waiting for The Passenger, and—
In somebody’s kitchen laughing with my father as an old man, and—
In the truck with Annie and Emily Connors—
The left side of my body began to tingle as the light came closer, but just as it was about to reach me, I felt somebody grab my other hand and pull.
I turned my head to see who it was.
That’s when the light hit me, and the world exploded in a blinding flash. I was stretched thin and twisted, all emptiness and cold.
And then the light was gone, and I was choking on the darkness.
I couldn’t move or breathe. I felt like I was in a sensory deprivation tank filled with wet black cement.
And then I was back in the car with Emily.
Through the windshield, I could see the twisted shape of the gray shadow thing that had torn the Magician apart in that Super 8 film.
It was swaying back and forth, a melty twist of dark burning smoke.
I saw Emily close her eyes as she squeezed my hand tight.
I opened my mouth to scream, and suddenly I was a black hole, and I was pulling everything that existed into me.
There was a screaming from the burning heart of the world and everything exploded in a brilliant blaze of liquid fire and darkness.
And then there was nothing.
45
A THREE-HUNDRED-LANE FUCKMONSTER SPEEDWAY
I woke up alone in a large bed.
Sunlight streamed into the room through two sets of leaded glass windows.
I was in a medium-size bedroom in what appeared to be some kind of cottage-style country house. I could see a thick grove of evergreens through the windows, which led me to believe I was probably still somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
I could hear a song playing from a distant room.
It was “Third World Man” by Steely Dan.
I slipped out of the bed and followed the sound of the music.
It was coming from the kitchen. Somebody was in there, and it sounded like they were cooking. I moved down a long hallway, turned a corner, and saw Alan Scarpio standing in front of a stove making what appeared to be French toast.
“Good morning,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Scarpio looked pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen him, although this time he was wearing dark jeans, a black long-sleeve cotton shirt, white Stan Smiths, and an apron with a saying on the front that read: MR. GOOD-LOOKIN’ IS COOKIN’.
“Where’s Emily?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You were alone when I found you.”
I nodded and tried to remember what had happened in the car after we’d turned off the headlights.
Scarpio held up a spatula. “We got French toast, eggs, and some kind of vegan bacon.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re in Lakewood, in the summer house of somebody named…” Scarpio picked up a piece of mail from the kitchen counter. “Morris Peterman, apparently.”
“How did I get here?”
“I went for a walk and found you just off the road in the middle of the driveway. I carried you up to the house.”
“How did you get here?”
“I arrived a couple of hours before I found you. But I actually rented this place about six months ago, after I received this postcard in the mail.”
Scarpio handed me a postcard. On the front was a familiar photograph. It was the willow tree that I’d last
seen hanging upside down on the wall in the reception area in Crow’s penthouse. On the back was a typed message with the address of this house and what I assumed was today’s date.
“You received that postcard six months ago?”
Scarpio nodded and smiled. “Yep,” he said.
I sat down on one of three high wooden stools positioned along the kitchen counter.
“How did you end up out there on the road, if you don’t mind my asking?” Scarpio asked.
I gave him a quick summary of everything that had happened from the moment we’d discovered the map in The Horns of Terzos until I woke up there in that house.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s one hell of a series of events.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it sure was. Where have you been?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You were missing.”
He nodded. “Over the next little while, you’re probably going to notice a number of discrepancies between what you remember about the game and what others experienced while you were playing. I’d suggest saying as little as possible to anyone until you have a firm grasp of their understanding of events, but that’s up to you.”
“So you were never really missing?”
“Let’s just say that I was working on something off-grid, something I needed to keep…to myself.”
“Something you kept from your entire company?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Were you playing Rabbits? Is Rabbits connected to the multiverse?”
“You sure you don’t want to start with French toast?” He smiled. “You must be hungry.”
“Do you mind if we talk a bit first?”
He smiled and nodded. “Sure.”
“Is Rabbits real?”
“Of course,” he said.
“What about the Meechum Radiants?”
“I’m pretty sure they exist, but I suppose it depends on who you ask.”
“So, what are they?”
“Are you familiar with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku?”
“A little,” I said.
“Kaku, using an analogy to discuss alien intelligence, referenced an anthill sitting next to a ten-lane superhighway. His question was: Would those ants be capable of understanding what a ten-lane superhighway was?”