by Micah Thomas
Thelon didn’t want to relive that. “Stop. I was there.”
Now T was the one who nodded. “In these dreams, I could change nothing. I was a voyeur. I began falling asleep during the day, during class. The dreams were that powerful over me, calling to me, wanting me to see when I didn’t want to. But I felt dread and anxiety all the time. Irrational stuff. Each door I opened, I feared would lead me to a corridor on the Moon. I needed professional help. It wasn’t uncommon for the stress of graduate finals to trigger breakdowns—typical Millennial problems—so I went to the campus psych clinic. They got me on Xanax, Lexapro, and eventually Klonopin, but I had found that drinking was the real help.”
Thelon said, “Your body is a fucking alcoholic, man. I feel that shit..”
T shrugged, accepting the statement. “I’m sorry. With the help of the meds, I evened out. The dreams either stopped or were blocked by the sedatives and drink. I resumed my studies and that’s when I met her.”
“Annie?”
“Yeah, my salvation. We met at a picnic. I was sitting on a quilt in the campus quad on a sunny afternoon, watching my peers laugh and toss frisbees. She sat down beside me and asked if I was okay. My instinct was to give her that corny smile, but my eyes wouldn’t cooperate and I started crying.”
“T, that’s sad, man.” Thelon could imagine how shitty that must have been. How much stress must have been chewing T up to cause it. He could imagine because he’d had a little taste himself. The body he took from T still felt all those emotions. That’s what it was. Embedded in there, some shitty physical memory of how to freak out and I hate that we both must deal with it. His hands unconsciously balled into fists as the tension suffused his body.
“It was, but she suggested we take a walk,” T went on. “You see, she was grounded in her life. She wasn’t needing anything. She was complete and her completion gave me strength. I poured everything out to her. Told her about Dad’s health, my drinking, my fears about losing him and being a man. And lastly, I told her how scared I was of going crazy.”
“Hmm. So, then what happened?”
“Annie wrote the letter to the board for me, asking for an extension on my deadline. We went home together, and she fit in like a missing puzzle piece. Mom loved her. She got me in real therapy and off the sauce, except for wine at dinner. She accepted me and then later, we both graduated. We both got jobs in NYC—She as a lawyer and me, a business analyst. I was then the youngest ever executive. We lived separately and even bounced around the idea of splitting up to take in the opportunities of the city life.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. We grew even closer. I proposed a year ago on our dating anniversary and in three weeks from now, we are getting married.”
“Oh, shit.” Thelon hadn’t realized what he’d stepped into and sank into horrible guilt.
“Yeah. Everything was Facebook perfect in my life. Engagement photos were real. I was happy. Nothing Internet fake about it. Then, a month ago, I had a premonition—well, no, it was more than that. I knew you were coming through and started making things ready.”
“How though?” Thelon plucked at his beard. His face was itchy and weird, like he’d walked into a spiderweb but there was nothing to remove.
“You told me.”
The sticky irritation settled into Thelon’s body, through his clothes, pressing strange webs against his chest he plucked at. “I don’t remember that.”
“You told me you’d say that.”
Thelon started to vibrate. His muscles shook and twitched as if his body was very cold, but he wanted to hear more. Wanted more than anything for this to make sense. “Huh?”
T stood up and turned his back to Thelon as he reached towards the sun. “You learned something while you were out in space with Henry. Something important. I need you to remember.”
Thelon got up too, but his body cramped, muscles contracting, aching. “But I do remember—lots of it. Oh, God. T, something is wrong…”
T turned to him again. “Your thinking parts, your brain and reason—that is the smallest part of your experience. Your body needs to remember. It’s how you knew about him. It’s how you warned me in a dream just like this one. I did everything you said to do. Now, I need you to complete the other part.”
Thelon tried to sit back down but missed the seat and caught his arm on it as he half fell, half knelt. “I don’t get you, man. I think I’m dying. Fuck.”
T walked around the table and towards him. “I’m going to move your energy now. This will be jarring.”
Bending down, T reached into Thelon’s left side. Thelon’s scream stuck in his throat, unable to get out.
He observed T’s hand penetrate his abdomen bloodlessly and then he yanked out a bundle of luminous fibers. Thelon’s mind recoiled. There was no room for rational thought as yard after yard of fiber optic cables instead of guts were tugged out of him. The pain was incredible. Nothing in his entire life hurt as much. The excruciating disembowelment locked him into cascading tidal waves of agony. His eyes swelled in their sockets and his entire body contracted, then nothing.
Thelon awoke in the hotel, huffing and puffing, heart racing. He ran his hands over his body, seeking a gut-leaking hole, but found nothing out of the ordinary. A gasp escaped him.
His body trembled with chills, but despite the adrenaline rush, he felt fine. Pain was a distant thing now, and he thought with a clear head. It was just a dream. Again, he stroked his side where T had pulled at him in the dream, but his tentative fingertips touched only firm flesh beneath his shirt.
The bedside clock read eight a.m., but the closed curtains blocked the light so completely that the room looked as though it was still night. Thelon knew he’d had a strange dream, but the physicality of being awake was a confirmation of reality. By the time he took a piss, Thelon thought only about getting back on the road. He yawned and stretched. Well, shit. Henry’s still sleeping.
His hand hovered near the curtain he planned to open wide to let the light stream in. He had to do something. His neck jerked his head straight up. The thought came from outside himself and he knew it. With the imperative still ringing in his mind, he slipped on last night’s clothes and went to the hotel business center.
The desktop machines had a working Internet connection and with his mouth hanging open in concentration in an effort to not lose this compulsion before he started, he opened a browser window. Though he had no conscious memory of the password, he closed his eyes and his fingers knew his Facebook login.
A dozen messages from Annie waited for him. They escalated in severity, starting with concern over his missing phone, then his being sick, and finally, pissed off—where the fuck was he?
He typed as automatically as he had his password: “Annie, love, I’m sorry I’ve been unavailable. I’m not having second thoughts, but there’s something I need to do, and I need to do it alone. I’m not in trouble. I’ll check in soon. Please, just give me a little time.” There. Sent. The message didn’t relieve him of all guilt, but Thelon done something. He let out a long and heavy sigh. Baby, baby, Thelon. What are you doing?
When he got back to his room, Henry was gone, and he stood there by the door, caught in a moment of panic before he keyed himself back in carrying a plate of waffles and sausages.
~
THEY LEFT BOISE on that overcast morning. Thelon didn’t eat the waffles but drank coffee with lots of cream. Hunger pains came and went, but food either repulsed him or held no interest.
Miles and miles above worries and thoughts, his mind worked on cruise control. Thelon drove onward to Ely, which was a nothing town only five hours away. This would be a brief stop made on account of being too tired to deal with the bullshit that would be Vegas.
Henry kept to himself, somber and quiet as if something had changed between them. Thelon let it go until the feeling grew in momentum and became a thought. Is something wrong? Did I fuck up?
“You cool?” Thelon asked as
they carried on moving south bound beneath a darkening sky.
Holy shit, it’s dark out. They’d only been driving a brief time and left in the morning. Thelon knew this, but the overcast was so intense the SUV’s headlights automatically turned on.
Henry laughed. “You know, being sober is a blast.”
Thelon remembered that Henry was high when he’d met him and was accustomed to being high. “You going through withdrawal or something?”
“No. Actually, I’m okay. It’s just strange. Hard to say, but I’m cool.”
Thelon didn’t know what to say either and so he drove. The road presented something to pay attention to. Somewhere to focus the eyes and react. The motion of the car and the passing scenery functioned to keep Thelon from thinking too hard about anything. They made progress moving from A to B and Thelon remained still and calm.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Henry said at some point.
“What?”
“It’s noon. Not even. And it’s dark like the middle of the night and has been for miles.”
“Oh yeah.” The thought lacked traction for Thelon. He was going through the motions, thoughtless and groovy.
Henry said, “Dude, you need to sleep. Let me drive.”
“No. I’m good,” Thelon said, shaking his head and blinking at the ever so slightly blurry highway lights in the distance.
. “You’re driving on the braille,” Henry insisted. “The little bumps on the lane are giving you a message. Something like, ‘hey, asshole! You’re swerving like a drunk.’”
Thelon thought about pulling over, giving Henry a try at the wheel or taking a rest, but... His thoughts blurred like his vision.
“Nothing but desert here. It didn’t make sense to pull over. He had to keep driving.”
“Thelon,” Henry said in a serious tone. “Can you hear yourself? Who is he in that sentence?”
“I said no.”
“Hold up. We’re gonna come back to that, but do you see this?” Henry tapped his passenger window and leaned back against the seat.
A gray blob was flapping like a garbage bag in the wind, keeping pace with the car, on the passenger side.
“Slow down?” Henry suggested.
“Naw.” Thelon sped up, but the thing matched them. In his peripheral, he thought it was a deer, an owl, or a giant bat. His imagination filled in the gaps with nonsense and terrible shapes. He didn’t want to look at it and his neck itched terribly. His body was too hot and the AC wouldn’t go any cooler.
“Whaaaaaaaat the fuck,” Henry said.
The shape pulled up and crossed in front of the car, suspended in the glow of the headlights. Time slowed for Thelon. He saw indefinite and impossible details of the gray- brown, black blob, sharp points and feathered flurries. It fluttered, madly working its way across the front bumper. As it rounded the driver’s side, time caught up and it zipped out of sight. Thelon slowed back to ten over the speed limit. His heart, however, still beat too fast and his stomach flipped in nauseating cramps.
“I’m gonna be sick. Pull over,” Henry said, retching out the window before Thelon could do so.
You and me both, brother. Thelon didn’t want to, but braked abruptly and pulled off to the shoulder, emergency flashers on.
Henry leaned out the passenger door and true to his word, threw up. As he caught his breath, he said, “I don’t know how you are not freaking out.”
“I am. Don’t worry, I am,” Thelon said, mouth dry and throat rough. I’m not, though. I don’t feel anything.
“You want to tell me what that was?”
“I don’t know exactly, but there’s more to my story. Stuff I didn’t want to tell you, but probably should have.”
“Great. Is it going to explain ghost cars chasing us and Mothman dive bombing the car?”
The emergency flashers blinked bright, the only light on the dark highway. They both got out and stood in the desert. The star field above was giant, filling the sky.
Thelon shook off a fresh round of chills. “I told you I came from another world, and you believed me—or said you did. Well, I think there’s going to be more of this. Worse.”
Henry paced back and forth. “I’m with you, man, but you need to level with me.”
Thelon sighed and crossed his arms. “There’s something after me. It takes different shapes, but there’s something not right about it and I don’t know what it is.”
“This stuff common in your world? Like, spooky shit?”
“No. Yeah, but no. There were things that were like magic or some shit, but I didn’t see any of it until I was in the city and that all felt like science until I met you—and you were like a ghost. I don’t know. Since I woke up here, nothing feels the same as it did. Meeting you back then was the first time I saw behind the scenes. The first time supernatural shit was real for me. And that became the real world. I got a feel for it, I could sense things, but since I woke up here, I can’t do any of that shit anymore and nothing feels real. Like I’m blocked up and totally fucking lost.”
Henry listened, then wiped his mouth again. “I don’t get you, but hey, think we should get rolling? What if that thing comes back?” Henry nervously looked up at the starry sky.
Thelon shrugged, scared but resigned. “I don’t think it matters if we’re in the car or not. They are chasing me, but I don’t know what they want. It’s like being haunted. They scare me half to death, but so far, they don’t really do anything else.”
“Is that all?”
“I guess I’m surprised and glad you can see them, too. I thought I was going crazy.” Thelon wasn’t sure whether he was going to tell Henry about Nestor. Part of him wanted to, but Nestor’s warning was there. ‘If you tell them about me, you all die.’ Well, I don’t want that. The weight of the secret bothered him. It wasn’t fair. He could be leading this guy to his death or something worse. While he said he had a plan, Thelon was just doing what he was told. I have to tell him part of it, but I’ll leave out the details. I need help.
“I saw. Doesn’t mean I believe, but I saw.”
“I need a favor, and it’s gonna sound weird,” Thelon said. “And when we meet up with your girl Cassie, please promise me you won’t tell her.”
Henry snorted. “What happened to no scams?”
“This is different.”
“What you got?”
“If you see me starting to wig out—I’m not even sure what it looks like on the outside, but if I get real weird...I might even start to disappear. What I need you to do is dunk me in water. Find water and find it fast. Drag me into a lake if you have to, but I need you to do it quick and repeatedly until I come back.”
Henry smiled. “That is weird, but I’ll do it. How will I know when you need it and what if I can’t find none? We are in the desert, after all.”
“Like that thing we saw—something fucked up. That’s how you know. If we can’t find water, I don’t know what will happen.”
“All right. Can we get back on the road now?” Henry shuffled his feet. Kicked a rock.
How much does he understand? What isn’t he telling me? There’s something too easy about his acceptance.
They drove, listening to a call-in radio show about the supernatural and strange. The host spoke in a welcoming and accepting tone as callers reported strange lights in the night and a sense of wrongness in their worlds.
“Can we turn this off?” Thelon asked. It was far too close to home.
“No way. Hearing about other people seeing shit is definitely making me feel better,” Henry argued. “We should call.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Liar. I see you hiding one all the time.”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Then why you looking at it all the time?”
“It’s not for that.”
“Wait a second.” Henry flipped on the dome light and got the paper map out of the glove compartment. “The GPS isn’t right.”
“What?�
� Thelon asked. He looked around and swerved the car over the line in the process.
Henry clutched at the oh shit handle and said, “Easy, captain. That sign just said 10 miles to Vegas. We are supposed to be just now reaching Ely.”
“How far apart are they again?” Thelon asked, the now familiar confusion coming upon him again.
“Five fucking hours,” Henry said.
“You must have misread it.”
“No, dude. Look at the mile marker. Those lights up ahead. That’s Las Vegas.”
“That’s impossible.” Thelon, queasy and uneasy, studied the GPS and it agreed with Henry. They were heading into Vegas early.
“Nope,” Henry confirmed. “We just cut five hours off our trip, maybe more.”
Thelon gulped, but had nothing to say. It was freaky, but he felt the road beneath the car was super smooth, like he was floating. He felt the steering wheel moving beneath his grip, gliding them into town and a hotel valet parking queue. A nice one. Glitzy. Golden lights, neon signs, the illusion of riches and grandeur.
“We are going to stay here?” Henry asked. “Hot damn. I’m guessing we aren’t going to play the machines or tables at all?”
“Yeah, no. Um…I’m not....” Thelon’s words failed him. He couldn’t describe his mix of confusion and passive fear. “Mind if I just crash?”
“I wouldn’t abandon you for all the money I could lose down here.”
The valet took the car and Henry rolled their bags over to check in, doing most of the talking and none of the paying. I really could not do this without him being him, exactly as he is.
Once in their room, they found they’d gotten a single bed.
“Should I go back down?” Thelon asked, voice a whisper.
Henry patted the enormous king mattress and said, “Second night together as roommates and you’re afraid to crawl into bed with me? Come on, now.”
Thelon sat on the mattress. Sad. So terribly sad. Where is this feeling coming from? I might fucking cry.