"Oh? Did he tell you to do that?"
"No. Just because I work for your uncle, doesn't mean I need him to tell me to do things."
Jessie slowed to a stop and seemed to stare down the road. Slowly, he raised his head slightly, took a deep breath, and climbed into the BMW. They began to head back to Dresden Port at an orderly speed.
"You were rather rough with him this time, Master Jessie. He means well."
Jessie gazed down at the dirty sneakers on his feet. He was glad to get off of his bad leg. "What's the saying? About the road and good intentions?"
Nielson tried to bring some compassion to the situation. "You don't think you're being too severe? This man raised you-"
"From afar, with cash, and only through intermediaries. My father should have raised me. He didn't solely because of his brother. He isn't doing this because he's a good individual. It's because he feels guilty and he's utterly alone at this point in his life. You know, when he took over-? We had the most extravagant Christmas days. Action figures, puzzles, video games... the works. More than any kid could want."
Nielson remained quiet, listening to every word but focusing his eyes on the road.
"And then there were three hundred sixty four days where I just existed to him. Because of business. Because of some chippy impressed by the amount of drinks he could afford. So I was the latchkey kid of the town's wealthiest man, being watched over by a conga line of paid help. Someone to throw money at so he could pat himself on the back and tell himself he was doing the right thing. And to some degree, he did. I didn't go hungry and I don't deny that."
"I had shelter, safety, a respectable allowance for comic books even... but he wasn't there as a person. He's wasn't like a father and I didn't really learn anything from him during all his absent months. So because he douses everyone and everything in money, I'm supposed to be a fan of this man now? There's a difference between philanthropy and trying to control people, Nielson. He's been trying to turn me into him... his own image. Look at him. Does he seem happy? Does he strike you as having a purpose of his own anymore? He could probably invest in more factories or otherwise stay busy, but I think he knows it's beginning to seem pointless. He's good at business, but he doesn't know how things work. It's the difference between selling the clock and putting it together. That's where he and I are."
"I'm on my own. I get to live my life as I see fit and yeah... I make mistakes, okay? Some of them definitely bite me in the ass. But I have to be free to make those errors and learn. He can't help me with that. He's an enabler, not a teacher. And his idea of someone to raise is either a clone or a pet, not a son."
"Honestly, Nielson? You were more of a father to me than he'll ever be at the end of his days."
The English butler remained stoic, driving calmly through town as he obeyed the speed limit. He nodded thoughtfully on occasion. He could do that much, regardless of whatever he could say, Jessie's disdain for his uncle would likely never end. But that last set of words, to hear more of a father... Nielson was skilled in the art of the stiff upper lip. For times like this, he needed to be.
He never had any children of his own, always too caught up in a task for one entity or another. Working hard in his youth, honorably performing his duties with the Royal Air Force in his prime, and a loyal servant for the last twenty years. He had known many women and lived a colorful life. But there was never anyone to call his own son or daughter, something he and PJ Mannington shared in common. Such was the nature of certain men, caught up in the world's events and distractions, never really allowing themselves a moment for the hearth.
Professionally speaking, he would never really be allowed to indulge himself in such thoughts of raising the next generation, let alone fatherhood. Yet Nielson had a good upbringing with his own father and had always wanted to share the wealth of experience as a result. He understood the tragedy of the modern day, where mother and father are so frequently together just 'for the kids', if at all. Or both were entrapped by the impossible financial demands of the western world, forced to work their lives away. How many children in America were fatherless? It seemed like an epidemic and such a waste of what could have been. It was not at all difficult for him to understand PJ's motives even if he didn't share his outlook on much else.
If he were ever allowed by code of conduct and exempt from PJ's controlling social graces, he would have taken Jessie fishing at the many ponds dotting New Jersey’s varied landscape, told him stories of the reality of war as well as the heroism of the forgotten, show the young man how to whittle, and so on. Maybe even teach him the lost art of etiquette to help Jessie lose that acidic tongue of his. But it wasn't meant to be. He had to remain unaffected. Friendly, yet distant. Still, it warmed his old heart to hear what Jessie had to say.
Traffic slowed to a crawl in Dresden Port proper. The roads weren't the biggest but the place didn't experience a lot of through traffic either. Jessie sighed, taking note of the various police cars and fire engines roaring by on the opposite side of the road. Maybe the tire yard by the industrial lots was on fire again.
CHAPTER 11
I dreamed of a foreign place. I think I saw it somewhere in between our wait at the 4 H grounds in the red eyed world and our native Dresden Port. Along the way, there was a seamless flow of time, from then to now. In that place, everything was a constant, neither before, later, or now. It was time but without meaning in the way that I thought I understood it. And I knew this only from the taste of the air.
There above, I watched from within an ambivalent moment and observed a passage of unknown make. It was textured with a flowing matterless river of red and navy blue checkerboard that seeped along the indefinable walls to some unknown destination. I receded into myself and my view panned back just as I focused my sight onward. I was bilocating all at once.
The passage and texture flowed further and while in two places, I observed it from up close and afar. It was revealed to be a single hair-like structure connecting into a multi-directional maze of other such strands and chambers. The more I tried to look at the bigger picture of it all, scaling myself backwards, the more infinitely vast it became. The passages were interlinked in many places while ending dead in others. I could not follow the one I began with and lost my focus upon it as I was overtaken by the greater view.
The air was full of black and reddish clouds, furrowing and blooming, reflecting an unspecific light source. I saw more and more of this maze of pipes and directions, whereupon I saw a great tree composed of light and mottled crystal, all of which subtly changed colors at a whim. It was here that the passages seemed to condense and explode even further outward, making the branches and roots seem one and the same. I could see in the darkness that many tiny orbs of sparkling light traveled the now tiny lines and filled the tree with beauty. Ever circulating, ever onward.
And within the darkness itself, small motes of sentient eyes watched. I sensed no outright evil or prevailing justice from them, although they felt ominous nonetheless. And none seemed to resemble the other. Furthermore, I was certain they noticed me, but they did not react noticeably other than what might have been a shuffling presence in those vague places of black and somber red. They harkened an alien voice to me that said only 'blood and shadow'. It was less a message and more the stirring of a forgotten breeze amidst the falling of rain. It was a call felt, but not heard.
My mind began to hurt and my ears, if they were there, began to bleed along with my eyes. It was not the words, nor the disorientation of this ethereal place, but the scope of it. I saw more trees and more mazes. It was to behold the sky and stars from all positions. Blinding, incomprehensible amounts of information. It was ignorance made known by the obvious. Yggdrasil, Yax Imix Che, the Sephirot, names, names, names... I could not swallow or speak all the words of these places and representations. Everything was constant and the impossible universe was force feeding my senses, daring me to develop a new one.
I blacked out, blinded by the
sheer sensation. What was this frontier I’d beheld? I didn’t know... but the mere attempt of trying caused me to wake up from a stupor in Ramone's car and vomit outside the passenger side door of his Challenger. I remember feeling glad he was still out cold in the driver's seat. He wouldn't have appreciated that.
I sat in Black Beauty, sickened but numb for hours. Ramone did not stir for quite some time, apart from a twitch every now and again. I could only wonder if he was seeing the same thing or some other fevered dream. Was this part of the process?
I stepped outside a few times. Mainly to cover my stomach's contents with dirt and rain soaked tree foliage, but also to get a feel for my surroundings. I knew it was the 4 H grounds, but was this in our world or the red eyed one? No one seemed to show up to make the answer easy and for my own sake, I was a bit too nervous to wander far off. Despite the number of hours I waited for Ramone (he didn't respond to his name being called, let alone being jostled by the shoulder), I wasn't able to come to any real conclusions about what had happened, although I certainly replayed Ullah's words in my mind long enough. I watched the makings of a blackish smoke rise in the distance and wondered to myself if the southern tire yard was on fire once more. Why did we have that thing again?
Occasionally a police cruiser would drive by the main road past the camp grounds. And fortunately for us, loitering wasn't a charge when done at the park. If this was my side of reality, the small town cops here could be hard asses on occasion, but they really didn't care if you lit a joint out of the way of things or had a tall beer opened while sitting on the hood of your car in front of your house. I knew some towns could be completely anal about that sort of thing. Of course, if I had to field questions as to why the driver of the vehicle was unresponsive in his seat and why there was the smell of freshly hidden upchuck nearby, I'm not sure how convincing I'd be at lying. I was still a little too weirded out by the less than mundane experience I’d had.
For the most part, the hours passed quietly with the weather unable to decide if it was warm or a bit chilly. Clouds seemed to dance with the sunlight above, giving us the weather condition of a 'bipolar front' here on the ground. I could never tell what the season was in this town. The calendar could say April and we might run the gamut between July and November on a whim of the breeze. I always wondered what it was like in other states where the weather was less of a metaphorical platypus. I was starting to long for the balmier days here in Dresden Port. Cold and damp were not my friends.
Eventually, Ramone started mumbling and coming about around seven in the evening. There was a trickle of sunlight still outside, but the camp's parking lights lit up the lot like some theatrical stage. Still, the place was growing increasingly full of shadow. I'd been out here many times drinking a domestic lager with Ramone after hours and these grounds never bothered me. But there was a first for everything. I can tell you, I did not like that anxious part of myself.
Ramone blinked his eyes and sat up slowly, looking a bit hung over all the while. He glanced to me, groaned, and then searched past the windshield to get his bearings. It took him roughly two minutes before he came to a semblance of being actually awake and coherent. "Hrmm...? We home yet?" Although I didn't know, I was glad to hear him ask the very same thing. Of course, I couldn't have said, so I shrugged.
He soon fired up the Challenger, which in turn kicked up dirt and mud in its wake. We traveled down the many dusty back roads of Dresden Port, passing by the dingy houses of neighbors we'd surely seen in town, but never learned the names of. Everything... seemed normal.
"Hot damn, we made it!" Ramone announced cheerfully upon reaching the statue of the Captain in the middle of town, now in its proper pose. We had been looking in the windows of eateries from the gloom of the streets. Everything looked the way it should, as the patrons of a small two calendar diner sat and chatted with their non-red eyes. We were indeed home. We shared a fist bump and a relieved laugh.
Finally content to settle in, I asked Ramone what he saw in between the red eyed world and where we were now. He gave me the weirdest look. "Saw what? I don't remember anything. I don't feel like I had a dream, either. I was there, blackness, and now I'm here. Why? Did something happen?"
I felt a little sheepish and I don't know why I thought he would have seen what I did, let alone shared a dream. It was admittedly unrealistic of me, but it felt genuine enough. In any event, I told him about the maze, the checkerboard texture, the eyes, and so on. Not in great detail, but enough that he might get the gist of it. He listened and nodded his head a few times, but had no useful feedback. "Sounds trippy... or like something I'd see at a Led Zeppelin laser light show. I don't know, man, I'm sure it felt real to you, but I don't see what it has to do with anything we just dealt with. Sometimes a dream is a dream and what you saw might be some combination of the weirdness we just dealt with." I could only shrug again.
"Hey... I've got about twenty missed calls on my cell," Ramone said, noticing the device in his pocket. "Let's see... huh."
Reflexively, I looked at my own cellphone. I had about the same amount of voicemails on mine. All of them from Jessie.
"You too?" Ramone asked inquisitive rhetoric. "What's going on with that boy?" We took a few moments to listen to Jessie's messages for us. It was not common of him to outright call much, let alone nearly two dozen times in one day. And to leave a message, atop that! Jessie never called to simply chat. He would only address you over the phone if he had some business or clarification to make. And even then, he disliked 'speaking to the machine'.
The truth became evident upon our faces as our eyes widened. Bad stuff had been going down since we were gone and Jessie had been variously keeping us updated or trying to get us to pick up the phone, alongside a bit of frustrated swearing.
Chang's Fix-It shop had burned down along with Jessie's basement apartment and Jessie had been brought in for questioning for several hours. He wound up having alibis in his uncle Mr. Mannington and his butler, Nielson. He suspected his uncle as having something to do with it, although I didn't understand what. And then about an hour ago, he demanded we meet with him up in Black Mountain at some country bar we never heard of called the Silver Light. Ramone and I then tried dialing him, but he wasn't picking up or the calls weren't getting through.
"Geez, what happened?" Ramone asked. "The Silver Light? I've never been, but I think they've got a mechanical bull and line dancing over in that joint. Why would he go there? It's about the last place you'd find that guy."
I sniffed, thinking it over. "I don't know... but maybe that's the point. You know how secretive and conspiratorial he tends to get. If I were looking for him, I wouldn't think to check a niche mountainside country bar."
Ramone sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Makes about as much sense as anything else going on in the last two days. Alright, try texting him again, let him know we're on our way. Gonna be a while. Those mountain roads are complete trash in the dark. Deer and bears everywhere up there, too."
I did as Ramone asked as we headed down the highway, but Jessie still didn't acknowledge his cell. Although it wasn't out of character for me, I felt uneasy about the whole thing. It seemed like too many things were happening at once. Personally, I couldn't see Jessie setting fire to his workshop apartment and his job- it was clear to anyone with a brain who knew him, that Jessie was serious about his work. The fact that he lived underneath Chang's shop was proof enough for me.
Could an accident have happened? I felt that was closer to a possibility. Something electrical or fuel related was not out of the question with all the gizmos, appliances, and tinkering he involved himself in. Of course, I wanted to rationalize it anyway I could. If there was some outside chance that our journey together earlier to red eyed Jessie's shop somehow caused this, I was not comfortable finding out the implications of a transdimensional butterfly effect. I already had a bad enough habit of second guessing myself.
CHAPTER 12
Simon and Ramone reached the Si
lver Light around nine thirty in the evening. The road up Black Mountain was a mess of potholes, near illegible road signs that sat half warped over adjacent cliff sides, and many, many deer who hadn't evolved the instinct of moving away from car headlights. And befitting the town's name, most of these roads were perfectly unlit in the dark of night, which wasn't helped by the many outlying passages of well cracked asphalt that were bereft of guard rails. It was a feature enjoyed by the residents, (at least, outside of winter) and loathed by anyone else forced to make the ride up here. Black Mountain people had a reputation for being disinterested in attracting any new blood to their own neck of the woods, so no efforts were made as a result.
The Silver Light was a rustic wooden rectangle of a building that looked like a dive bar from the outside, with the drawn curtains, and the dull orange neon glow of some common beers being offered. Through the door as the duo approached, a twangy country song could be heard... something about a man singing about his platonic love for his red tractor. The area tended to attract a fitting crowd.
Stepping inside, the air was thick with clouds of cigarette smoke coming from a series of pool tables and the body heat of a dozen slurring drunks. Although it was made illegal to smoke inside establishments that weren't pipe shops or hookah bars, the general sentiment of the Silver Light, and in particular, Black Mountain people, was good luck enforcing it. They held their own cultural laws and their mountain was effectively sovereign to them. NJ was already choking in micro-managing social laws, but they preferred to cough from something else. Black Mountain wasn't a sunny bend-over-here-it-comes-again suburb of happy smiling families. Their reputation for being ornery to being told what to do just because someone in Trenton said something was well earned. And with a local ordinance stating that law enforcement for the town had to live in town, Black Mountain remained eternally clannish in their stand offish way of living. It was admirable in some lights.
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