Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  “Hey,” I croaked, rubbing my eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Four-fifteen.”

  It was still dark out, and still raining.

  “Can’t sleep,” Martha said with a wan smile. “It’s that old man. I feel like he’s still out there.”

  Her remark made me glance out the windows, shivering.

  Whitley had turned on every light, and I could see the giant fallen branch, the gardens and pool, the stone path leading down to the dock.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” I whispered.

  We went on talking, though eventually the silences between our words stretched out farther and farther, like the distance between a final chain of tiny islands before the open sea.

  Martha and I had never been close, though by rights we should have been. As the only scholarship kids at Darrow, we were two rescue mutts of humble bloodlines and skittish temperaments thrown into a kennel of world-class purebreds.

  She’d attended Darrow on a physics scholarship established by a genius alumnus who’d worked on the God Particle. She’d been the first winner in twenty-eight years. Valedictorian of our class, she went to MIT on a full ride for mathematical engineering.

  She’d been raised in South Philadelphia by a single dad, and her family was even poorer than mine. I never met her dad, though Cannon once said he owned a gas station and went by the nickname Mickey Peanuts. Jim told me Martha had had a considerably older sister who’d died of a drug overdose, and that death was the reason Martha’s mother left. But Martha never mentioned a sister, and any talk of her mom was in connection with a single trip to Alaska she’d taken when she was ten.

  I’d spent hours in her company, yet I couldn’t tell you who or what Martha ever loved beyond this weird underground fantasy novel called The Bend. The book was why she wallpapered her dorm room with mysterious posters of steam trains and scoured Reddit forums for other megafans, known as Benders. She even dressed up—with a surprising lack of embarrassment—once in a top hat and spectacles, or a gray barrister’s wig—to celebrate the apparent birthdays of the characters. She always kept a copy of the book at the bottom of her backpack, pulling out the doorstop of a thousand torn-up pages—crudely Xeroxed, bound with frayed twine—at the start of class, reading, it seemed, to avoid talking to anyone.

  At heart she was Jim’s friend. They’d met when they were kids at some invitation-only camp for the gifted, housed in a nineteenth-century mansion in upstate New York called Da Vinci’s Daughters and Sons. Jim was there because he’d composed an entire musical about Napoleon, which had been staged at his Manhattan private school and gotten him profiled in New York magazine. Martha was there because she’d built a working airplane engine in her garage.

  It was Jim who urged Martha to apply to Darrow, Jim who sought to have her around. Over the years she’d become an integral part of our group, giving every situation its deadpan punctuation or making some awkward reference to a chapter in The Bend that no one understood. And yet I always suspected Jim had been her only true champion, that Cannon, Wit, and Kip accepted her the way one accepts a lifelong inconvenience, like asthma or a spouse’s beloved cat. He never stopped insisting she was amazing, that one day when we were sixty we’d look back and think with disbelief, I was friends with Martha Ziegler.

  “Which will be like saying you were friends with Steve Hawking. That’s how big she’s gonna be.”

  The two of them had a shabby shorthand, laughing at things only they found funny, arms slung around each other’s necks like old cardigans. While it didn’t make me jealous per se, it could lead me to notice something Martha did—heavy glance, weird remark—that would set off alarm bells, and I’d entertain my long-standing suspicion that she was harboring a burning secret: she was in love with Jim. It was why she’d never liked me.

  I could only assume she’d been heartbroken by his death. In the aftermath—the ten or so days before summer break—she was glum and taciturn, scuttling out of Final Chapel ahead of the entire school like some startled attic bat. She was agitated. Dimly I recalled how she’d left school suddenly the day before I did, vanishing without saying goodbye. Whitley, ever attentive to the embarrassing things people wished to hide, couldn’t stop saying, “Something’s up with Martha.”

  Now here she was, staring at me with that stark telephoto stare I’d always found nerve-wracking. Whatever she had felt about Jim’s death, whatever had been uprooted, was hidden now, like a pod of blue whales thundering through the depths of an ocean with a still surface.

  I realized that she’d just asked me a question.

  “What?”

  “I was wondering if you still made those dream soundtracks.”

  She was referring to my hobby of creating albums for movies I made up. It was just something I did. I didn’t know why. As a child I’d always been painfully shy, so terrified of speaking in class, my teachers often thought I had a stutter or a hearing problem. I began crafting pocket-sized books with lyrics and hand-drawn art for movies I wished existed, like the soundtrack to a hit teen vampire movie called Blood Academy. Or Dove Nova, the biopic of a Swedish teen pop star who vanished into thin air, her disappearance forever unsolved. There was no point to these albums. I couldn’t even explain why I made them, except that I liked to imagine they were artifacts of some other world that existed beyond the one we could see, a world where I wasn’t timid, and unsaid words didn’t collect in my mouth like marbles, and I was brave. They were my what-ifs, my glass menagerie, as Jim said.

  One night freshman year during a snowstorm, the whole school was in the auditorium for Holiday Dance when the power went out. I had accidentally ripped the back of my dress, so I left Jim to run back to my dorm to change. To my surprise, I encountered Martha in the dark of the common room, reading Pride and Prejudice with a flashlight, so absorbed she hadn’t realized one of the windows was wide open and snow was collecting in the corner three inches thick. We ended up hanging out for two hours, just the two of us. It was the only time we ever did. For some reason, probably in the hopes of making things less uncomfortable between us, I’d shown Martha my collection of dream albums. Ever since then, when we were alone, she tended to ask about them, like they were some one-size-fits-all subject she could rely on to get me to talk. It could be a little unnerving.

  “No,” I said, feigning a yawn. “Not really. I think I’ll go find a bed upstairs.”

  She nodded, her face solemn. “Good night, Beatrice.”

  I slipped out—Martha returning to her book—and trudged upstairs, finding my favorite guest room at the end of the hall. I pulled back the comforter and slung myself into bed.

  Any other night I would have been kept awake by the memories inside that room. I was curled up under the heavy covers, same as always. The only thing missing was Jim snuggled beside me, composing lyrics by the light of his cell phone.

  I set my alarm for six and closed my eyes. I’d sneak out before any of them were awake.

  And that, for better or worse, would close my final chapter on Wincroft.

  When I awoke it was light out.

  I was freezing and covered in sweat. No, not sweat, I realized after a moment, blinking. It was rain. I was soaked because I was sitting in the backseat of the Jaguar convertible, the top still down. It had been parked, seemingly by someone very drunk, in a flower bed in the front yard of Wincroft.

  It was still pouring rain. Kip and Martha were beside me, wearing confused expressions.

  “What are you doing?” Kip asked me. He was soaking wet, his eyes bloodshot. A raindrop dangled off the end of his nose. “Where are you taking us?”

  I had no clue what he was talking about. I scrambled out of the car, raced across the driveway to the mansion, and threw open the front door. I nearly collided with Whitley. She was frozen in the foyer, wearing the same outfit she’d had on last night. She surveyed me with
a look so stunned, I understood immediately that something terrible had happened.

  “What? What is it?”

  She only stepped past me, staring out the door, speechless.

  I hurried past her into kitchen. Shivering, I took inventory of my body. I felt fine. My head was clear. Yet somehow I’d overslept. I wasn’t going to make it to the Crow by opening. My parents would be scrambling to keep up with the morning crowd, then lunch, and my dad would be so strapped he’d forget to tell people about the specials, and my mom would use this as an excuse to say they didn’t need specials anymore, they were too expensive, which was sometimes enough of a spark to make them start arguing, which they rarely did.

  Cannon was standing at the kitchen island typing on his open laptop.

  “See, look!” he shouted over his shoulder, seemingly believing I was Whitley. “New York Times. It’s the exact same thing.”

  I stepped beside him. He was amped, like he’d had about six cups of coffee.

  “What is it?”

  “What is it?” he mocked, turning to me. He grabbed my head, directing it at the screen.

  “ ‘Senate Pushes for New Immigration Initiative,’ ” I read.

  “The date,” he snapped.

  “Friday, August thirtieth. So?”

  “So? So? It’s yesterday.”

  Scowling, he was tapping the keyboard, loading CNN.

  “CNN. The Post. Time. All of them say the same thing.”

  He shoved his iPhone into my hands. I blinked stupidly down at the date overlaying a photo of what had to be his fencing-champion girlfriend.

  He was right. August 30. 5:34 p.m.

  There had to be an error with the International Date Line. Terrorists had hacked the network. As if reading my mind, he held up his wristwatch, the hour and minute hands set to 5:35, the date turned to 30.

  “How could hackers get into my TAG Heuer?”

  I could only stare.

  At that moment, his phone rang. Someone named Alexandra. He snatched the phone.

  “Alex. Hold on. Now, wait a—wait a— Tell me what day and time it is. The date and time. I’ll explain in a sec—would you tell me the goddamn date? I’m not asking you to recite the Declaration of— WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND TELL ME—”

  Whatever Alex’s confused response was, Cannon furiously hurled the phone at the sliding glass doors. He collapsed on the couch, staring wild-eyed at the floor. I hurried to my purse and dug out my phone, which was actually pretty strange because the last time I’d seen it, it’d been upstairs.

  My phone read the same thing. August 30. With a shiver of panic, I dialed my mom.

  “Hi, Bumble—”

  “Mom. Mom? Where are you?”

  “On our way to the Dreamland to see His Girl Friday. What’s the matter?”

  “You didn’t see the movie yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Mom, what day is it?”

  “What? Why are you shouting?”

  “What’s the date?”

  “It’s—it’s Friday, August thirtieth.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “I’m looking at the dashboard right now.”

  “It’s the thirtieth,” I heard my dad chime in.

  “Mom, I called you last night, remember?”

  “Last night? What?”

  “Last night I called, and said I was spending the night at Wincroft, and you asked me to be in for opening because Sleepy Sam was getting a tooth pulled.”

  “Sam is out tomorrow? He called you? Sam is out tomorrow,” she told my dad.

  “He called Bee, after we’ve made sure he has our number about nineteen times?”

  “Bee, what’s going on up there? Is it awful? Why don’t we come get you?”

  I hung up, blood rushing in my ears.

  My mom called back, but I was too shaken to answer.

  I sat on the couch, trying to calm down. This had to be some kind of lucid dream. I willed myself to wake up. Wake up. After a moment, I realized Kip and Martha had drifted inside. They were standing stiffly with stricken expressions, like they’d just woken up from sleepwalking. Whitley had stepped back into the kitchen, her every gesture slow, as if pretending to walk on the moon.

  “Y’all?” whispered Kip, his voice scarcely audible. “Was there an earthquake? Or some end-of-days world event we’re just finding out about?”

  That was when the doorbell rang.

  I didn’t wait for the others. I jumped off the couch, sprinting past Kip and Martha, and yanked open the front door.

  “Perhaps this time I’ll be invited in for tea,” said the old man.

  “The first thing you must do is stay calm,” said the Keeper. “Panic will get you nowhere.”

  He was making tea.

  He had asked for tea when he’d strolled inside, and as we were all too alarmed to react to what he was saying, he had, incredibly, started making it for himself. He filled the kettle, turned on the gas stove, and grabbed a mug from the cabinet, as if he had visited this house many times before.

  “If it’s any reassurance, remember one thing,” he continued, his fingers nimbly straightening his dark blue silk tie. It caught the overhead light, and I saw it had a discernable pattern of stags identical to the stag presiding over the entrance to Darrow.

  “Others have gone through the Neverworld before you. Many more will after. Hundreds of millions of others will expire never having had the opportunity that each of you has. So you must look at this as a gift. A chance to change history, for your choice of who will live will affect billions of moments barreling into the future for infinity. In other words, there is a precedent, and you aren’t alone. You must rely on each other. Each of you is a key, the others your locks. This isn’t a nightmare, and it isn’t a dream. It’s a crack you will continue to fall through until you vote. The sooner you accept where you are, the sooner you will all escape.”

  The old man here, again, wearing the same dark suit, speaking in the same grand voice, was so incongruous and strange, none of us could really pay attention to anything he was saying. Whitley and Kip were standing by the kitchen island, staring openmouthed at him, as if he were a poltergeist. Martha was on the couch, stone-faced, her feet planted like she felt faint. I was doing my best to follow what he said, in case there was some clue that might reveal who he actually was. Yet all the while my mind was screaming, It’s a prank. It’s a prank. It had to be. Somebody—international terrorists, hackers from Anonymous or some other group—was playing a cruelly ingenious trick.

  I noticed Cannon had disappeared upstairs. Now he reappeared, hauling his duffel.

  “I’m out,” he announced.

  “What?” asked Whitley, alarmed. “Where are you going?”

  “Airport.”

  “But it’s yesterday,” said Kip.

  “No, it’s not. Of course it’s not. Yeah, we can’t explain it, but there is an explanation. I’m sure the physics department at Harvard is working on this as we speak.”

  “I’m afraid the physics department at Harvard is ignorant of your plight,” interjected the Keeper, wringing out the tea bag on a spoon. “They’ve got their hands quite full trying to solve quantum gravity. Specifically, the vacuum catastrophe.”

  Cannon surveyed him coldly. “I’m going home.”

  “To do what?” asked Kip. “Complain? ‘Ma? Uh, today’s kinda yesterday’?”

  Cannon shrugged. “I’ll be damned if I’m staying here with him.”

  He left. We listened to the front door slam. Then, suddenly, Whitley was scrambling after him. And Kipling. Martha too. They were all moving, running away as if they’d just learned the old man was wearing explosives. They grabbed car keys, handbags, sweatshirts, phones. I didn’t want to be left alone with him
, so I grabbed my bag and ran out into the downpour too. They were sprinting to their cars, engines roaring to life, windshield wipers flying. By the time I’d started the Dodge truck and reversed, all four cars were gone.

  The Keeper had walked out onto the front steps. He took a sip of his tea.

  The reality of the situation, that we were just leaving him there in the house, a complete stranger, was too wild to fathom.

  “Don’t worry!” he shouted cheerfully at me over the rain. “I promise not to steal the silver.”

  I floored the gas. As I roared down the driveway, I had the acute feeling of being chased. Yet, rounding another bend, I saw no one behind me. When I took a final glance back at Wincroft, the red brick mansion sinking behind the hill, even the Keeper appeared to be gone.

  * * *

  —

  It began to get dark. The rain was relentless, the sky black and blue. As soon as I’d gone a few miles, peering in at every driver to make sure they were alive and not ghosts, aliens, or zombies (most doing double takes, wondering what my problem was), I began to relax. All the drivers looked human, alive, and ordinary, chewing gum, fiddling with the radio, utterly at ease with what day it was, what time it was.

  Everything was normal.

  I called my mom again.

  “Bee?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the movie. What’s going on? You scared us, the way you sounded before—”

  I drove straight to the Dreamland in Westerly. My parents were waiting outside, ashen. I parked in the fire lane, leaving the engine running. I wrenched the door and ran, throwing my arms around them.

  They were real. I wasn’t dreaming. It was going to be all right.

  My mom was distraught. “You’re never speaking to any of those people again—”