Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  “You should vote for me because you shouldn’t vote for me,” he said. “I’m a mediocre, fucked-up shithead.”

  I spoke last.

  All I said was that I was an ordinary girl destined for an ordinary life, but they could vote for me because I’d make it my aim to do small acts of kindness every day.

  As I said it, I was acutely aware that I sounded as disingenuous and desperate as they all did. Even worse, none of them were listening. They watched me, sure, but their attention was buried under the weight of their fates, fastidiously, hungrily inspecting it like Gollum inspecting the Ring, wondering if the Neverworld was real.

  I couldn’t blame them. I was a blubbering mess too. Rarely had I passed the eleven point two hours without bawling as I drove to Westerly to see my parents at the Dreamland, usually just observing them without their knowledge, because to actually spend time with them made me sob uncontrollably the next wake. I’d tried explaining to them what was happening.

  “I’ve been in a car accident, and I might die, and this limbo is called the Neverworld Wake according to this weird old man who won’t leave us alone.”

  They always listened. Yet I could see that the only real feeling they had was devastation, believing that Jim’s death had messed me up even more than they’d realized and I needed twenty-four-hour psychiatric care. So I’d gotten in the habit of sitting in the theater, unseen, a few rows behind them, beside this massively fat guy in a Brooklyn Book Drop T-shirt. I always smiled at him, thinking: Do you realize how lucky you are? You have a tomorrow. I ate popcorn, watched His Girl Friday, and snuck out before the lights came on.

  The result of that vote was no different.

  “There is no consensus,” said the Keeper.

  We all voted for ourselves. I couldn’t foresee a time when we wouldn’t. It was all we had to keep us going: the possibility, however remote, of getting out of here, of getting back to life.

  And all the while the Keeper watched us.

  He was still there, appearing when least expected. Sometimes he came inside and made tea. Sometimes he worked on the Wincroft grounds as a gardener, wearing a black hooded slicker. In spite of the rain—which would, during some wakes, turn impossibly to snow, temperature dropping, swirls of snowflakes spinning like miniature tornadoes through the air—the Keeper trimmed vines, rosebushes, ivy, and privet, the wisteria and lilac knotting the trellis. He swept the stone paths and hoed flowerbeds. He stood atop a green ladder and cleared dead leaves from the gutters, wiped the glass panes clean on lanterns and lamps. He removed lichen from the wings of the crow gargoyles silently cawing.

  Other times he could be spotted from a distance, a faceless silhouetted trespasser hurrying across the lawn and into the woods, as if taking a shortcut through Wincroft on his way somewhere else, somewhere unknown.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know how long we’d been in the Neverworld when we had the fight.

  Time was vague here. It miraged and optical-illusioned the more you tried to look back on it, or fit it into a traditional monthly calendar. On close inspection, the hours were real. But if we tried to add them up into some larger understanding of the passage of time—how long we’d been here—they evaporated and grew unclear.

  The passing of four wakes felt the same as four hundred.

  The more wakes that passed, the more terrified I became. I could feel the others growing listless and distant, as if disinterested in ever actually leaving.

  “I vote for Kanye!” shouted Cannon, raising his glass. “Kanye is my choice for who lives.”

  “There is no consensus,” announced the Keeper.

  Whitley began to drink all day. So did Cannon and Kipling. Then all three started helping themselves to the pills E.S.S. Burt kept in his master suite, hundreds of orange bottles of uppers and downers lining the medicine cabinets like candy in a sweet shop. It wasn’t uncommon for them all to be either manically hyper or unresponsive and lethargic. Kipling paced outside, having conversations with the rain, wearing nothing but that pink wig and a green silk peacock-patterned bathrobe belonging to one of Burt’s girlfriends.

  Once, while gathering everyone for the vote, I couldn’t find him. Searching the mansion, I finally spotted him floating in the pool on a swan raft in the torrential rain.

  “Kipling!” I grabbed the leaf net and used it to haul him to the side.

  He could barely open his eyes. “Hello? You there, God? It’s me. Judy.”

  “Kipling. Can you hear me?”

  “I’d like to order room service, please. I’d like the spaghetti Bolognese.”

  He rolled off the raft into the pool, sinking. I pulled off my shoes and raincoat and dove in after him, finding him drifting motionless along the bottom. Madly I kicked him back to the surface.

  “Kipling! Can you hear me?”

  “ ‘It’s the final countdown,’ ” he sang, his eyes slits.

  I was the lone nurse working in a madhouse.

  While Martha had remained sane, she had also decided to remove herself, washing her hands of the situation, it seemed, ducking out without word at the beginning of every wake. She spent the day outside. A few times at dusk I caught sight of her wandering the woods fringing the far lawns, hauling her black bag, studying the treetops with a pair of binoculars like some professional bird-watcher, or an environmentalist recording evidence of acid rain. She’d fumble in her bag, which looked so heavy I wondered if inside was a copy of the same underground book, The Bend, she’d lugged around Darrow. Instead, she’d remove a thin black notebook and scribble in it for a minute before trudging on. Once, I ran after her.

  “Martha!”

  She kept walking, pretending she hadn’t heard me.

  “Martha! Wait!”

  She stopped and turned. I could see she didn’t want to be bothered—certainly not by me.

  “I’m worried about them,” I said.

  She nodded. “So?”

  So? I could only stare at her, rain coursing down my head and arms. Hadn’t she witnessed what was going on? Didn’t she care?

  “They’re going crazy. They’re not taking it seriously anymore. I don’t know what to do.”

  She shrugged. “It’s all part of the acceptance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When criminals are sentenced to life in prison, there’s a ninety-four-percent chance of mental collapse within the first year.” She shrugged. “Just leave them alone.”

  “No way. We have to stick together.”

  To my shock, with another awkward shrug, she began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I shouted.

  She didn’t answer.

  “I need your help! Please! Don’t you want to get out of here?”

  She held up a hand—a mild gesture of acknowledgment to a child having a tantrum—and kept walking.

  * * *

  —

  We were shipwreck survivors in a raging sea. Now they were forcing me to let go of their hands so they could sink into the waves and drown.

  I was going to be stuck here forever.

  Here, in the Neverworld, where I’d never grow old.

  Never have a family.

  Never fall in love.

  I was an immortal vampire without any perks. No bewitching beauty, no golden eyes or shimmering skin, no ability to run three hundred miles an hour and flip cars over.

  I was a ghost with no haunt. I couldn’t turn TVs to static or swivel porcelain doll heads 360 degrees, causing normal humans to have nervous breakdowns. I couldn’t make toddlers stand in zombie trances in living rooms, captured in shaky found footage in the dead of night.

  I was a ticking clock in a timeless world.

  Without time, nothing had meaning. Never before had I understood how crucial the p
assage of time was to caring about something. It gave it an expiry date, a wick, a rush, a burn. Without it, everything sat in place, dumbly waiting.

  In my darkest moments I thought of Jim.

  I’d come to Wincroft to find out what happened to him. Now even that question, the one I’d spent the past year turning over and over in my mind, shriveled and flattened in the face of the Neverworld, like a little worm on the driveway in the beating sun.

  * * *

  —

  The night of the fight, I’d just returned from the Dreamland. Letting myself into Wincroft, I heard screaming coming from upstairs. I sprinted up the staircase, realizing they’d locked themselves in E.S.S. Burt’s bathroom in the master suite.

  I knocked. “Is everything okay?”

  There was no answer but snickering.

  “It’s almost time for the vote.”

  This was met with more laughter.

  “Hello?”

  The door was flung open. Whitley stood there wearing an oversized red-sequined evening gown. Her eyes were bloodshot and smudged with eyeliner. Kipling was draped like an exhausted panther over the edge of the tub. Cannon was sitting on the counter, bandana tied marine-style around his forehead. It was obvious from their flushed faces—and the array of empty Dom Pérignon bottles scattered across the tiles—that they were wasted.

  “Sister Bee, charmed to see you,” Whitley said primly. “We won’t be joining you. Ever.”

  “What?”

  “We aren’t voting. We’re staying at Wincroft until the end of time. So there.”

  She rolled her eyes at the look on my face.

  “Oh, God, Bee. Stop mothering everyone. Your good-girl nun act is never getting you chosen. In fact, it’ll be over my maggot-infested body that I ever allow some Mother Teresa type to triumph on to life. No way. It goes against my very life philosophy that one must get filthy to live. You must get down in the dirt or you’ve done nothing.”

  “I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m not a nun. I’m not even that good.”

  She waved her hand as if shooing a fly and turned, idly surveying her reflection in the mirror.

  “It’s not about the vote,” I went on. “It’s about staying together. We could lose ourselves forever in this place. Remember what Jim used to say about friendship? About us? What we have is a loyalty that can see us through anything.”

  Whitley bit her bottom lip, trying not to laugh.

  “You still love him. Wow. He was the only person you ever saw in a room. And it’s still true, even though he’s dead. By the way. Did you ever wonder why he chose you? Out of all the girls at school?”

  She rubbed some lipstick off her chin. I braced myself, because I knew what was coming. Her tantrums always began this way: she made some grand opening statement like a veteran prosecutor holding a jury rapt, the perfect set of words to slice her target in two.

  “He chose you because a plain setting makes the diamond sparkle brighter.”

  I said nothing, willfully reminding myself to ignore whatever Wit said when she was angry. Yet I felt my face flush, a nervous voice in my head chattering It’s not true.

  “I disagree,” said Cannon, frowning. “The problem always was that you loved Jim.”

  “He’s right,” muttered Kipling. “It was obvious, child. Like a wart on a lifeguard’s big toe at a public pool.”

  “Oh, please.” Whitley glared at him. “You were obsessed with him. Admit it. Don’t think we didn’t see you ogling him, your Southern accent going all syrupy around him, like you thought you could seduce him with some third-rate community-theater impression of Truman Capote. And you.” She turned to Cannon. “You were happy when he died.”

  “I was gutted,” he answered in a clipped tone.

  “Gutted with glee, maybe.”

  Cannon glared at her, his face implacable. “You hate the Linda? Well, too bad. You’re her to a tee. All that’s missing are the face-lifts, the cankles, and the army of men who have fled you like a storm warning for a Category Five hurricane. But don’t worry, angel. That will come in time.”

  “There is no time,” noted Kipling, holding up a finger, half asleep. “Not anymore.”

  Whitley stared at Cannon, mouth open, shoulders trembling.

  “Cannon didn’t mean that,” I whispered, touching her arm.

  She threw off my hand, seizing a bottle from the floor. Cannon ducked as it exploded against the mirror behind his head.

  “You’re all monsters! Get out of my house!”

  She elbowed me out of the way as she fled. Seconds later, she reappeared at the end of the hall brandishing a shotgun, aiming for my head. I took off down the staircase as a shot blasted the ceiling, chandelier swinging, bits of plaster and molding crashing to the ground.

  “Get out! Termites! Leeches! Rats!”

  More shots rang out as I reached the front door and pulled it open, colliding with Martha.

  She was wearing a green poncho, soaking wet from the rain.

  “Beatrice? What’s the matter?”

  “Worms! Maggots! Those disgusting fish at the bottom of the ocean with switchblade teeth! GET OUT! ALL OF YOU!”

  I didn’t answer. I sprinted outside to my truck and took off, blasting across flowerbeds, mud puddles, broken branches, swerving back onto the driveway as I tried to catch my breath.

  * * *

  —

  I had to get away from them. I had to clear my head.

  Everything they said, I kept reminding myself, was just the Neverworld talking. Being stuck here, day after day, made you think and feel the darkest things, as if daring the universe, God, whatever was out there, to prove that they weren’t true.

  A plain setting makes the diamond sparkle brighter. You loved Jim. You were happy when he died.

  I didn’t want to think about it. I drove straight to the Captain’s Crow, letting myself in with the spare key my dad kept stashed behind the outside wall thermometer. I’d make a grilled cheese, eat some Wreck Rummage, and fall asleep. I’d figure out what to do tomorrow, yesterday, today, whatever it was.

  The moment I entered the restaurant, however, slipping through the tiger-stripe shadows, I realized something was very wrong.

  The café chairs, normally overturned on the tables, had been tossed all over the floor. The glass on the display of ice cream was cracked. Within the smells of toast and sunscreen was something else—something rancid. I’d just slipped into the kitchen, wondering if Sleepy Sam had forgotten to take out the trash, when my sneaker kicked shards of glass. Bending down, I saw I’d stepped on my great-grandfather Burn’s pencil portrait. It had moved from its usual place over the door. Somehow it had ended up by the stove, facedown, the frame broken.

  There was a robbery. That was my first thought.

  Then I felt the wake descending, the blackest of sleeps pulling over me like a coffin lid, and I realized something else was going on, something strange.

  I heard a faint tapping. Looking up, I screamed. In the window overlooking the alley by the sink, a face stared in at me.

  The Keeper.

  His gaze was neither hostile nor friendly, only stark, his jaw slashed by shadow. I realized that he was cutting away the ivy and vines of honeysuckle that had overtaken the wall, which my mom had never gotten around to pruning.

  When I stumbled outside to confront him, he was striding down the alleyway.

  “Hey!” I shouted after him. “What do you want?”

  He ignored me, splashing through puddles, the clippings in a bag tossed over his shoulder, rounding the corner.

  “Leave me alone!”

  It was then that it occurred to me what he was.

  The Keeper was a reminder.

  The vote. The vote. The vote.

  After the fight, they went their separate ways. The
moment they sprang back to the wake, Kip, Martha, Cannon, and Wit dispersed like seeds off a dead dandelion. They left without a word, sometimes without even looking at each other.

  I let them go. I had no choice.

  Was it depression? Probably. Fury over their fate? That too. Or maybe they just wanted to see what it felt like to climb beyond the Danger signs and Keep Out barricades, the barbed wire protecting the edges of the lookout atop the skyscraper, and jump.

  What happened to us didn’t matter. Peril didn’t exist. If the Neverworld Wake had one asset, it was that we could remain forever young, like the Alphaville song. We could live and die and live again, without consequence.

  Kipling began hitchhiking.

  The moment he appeared in the back of the Jaguar, he took off down the drive. After he did this countless times, his expression an enigmatic mixture of resolve and expectation—as if he were actually looking forward to something—I followed him. I tailed him out to the main road, where, just before the stone bridge, he began walking backward, sticking out his thumb.

  It was always the sixth car that stopped for him. A brown Pontiac with a dented fender.

  I watched him disappear into that Pontiac so many times, I just had to know what was so captivating that he couldn’t miss out on it, not even for one wake. So I caught up to him.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  He turned, startled to see me, then annoyed. “What?”

  “Who picks you up in the Pontiac?”

  He kept walking. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “Leave me alone, Bee.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “None a your goddamn business.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “No.”

  He was furious. He actually looked like he was considering hitting me, or tying me to a tree so he could get away.