by Sarah Dreher
She circled the low hill and settled back to the ground in a perfect landing. She waited for Rock to give its next direction.
Forward this time.
Reaching the base of the hill, she saw that it wasn’t a hill after all, but a man-made mound encasing what looked like a burial chamber or underground storage area. She poked her head into the darkness to get a better look.
It was only a dark cave. Shadowless and empty. By standing to the side to let in a flicker of light, she could barely make out a large hole in the floor.
“I suppose I’m expected to hurl myself down that,” she said aloud.
Rock pulled her hand downward.
Okay. Alice in Wonderland time.
She stepped into the darkness and fell.
Even before she left the tunnel, she knew this was a bad place. Through the entrance she saw fog. Nothing but fog, silent and unmoving.
She hesitated to step out into that thick grayness. Two steps from the tunnel entrance and she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. Rock was gone, her hand empty. The sun was polarized. Her senses were useless.
She tried calling to Burro, to Old Man, to Siyamtiwa, to anyone. Nobody answered. It didn’t surprise her. More than at any time in her life, she felt her utter aloneness.
Maybe she could go back up.
She sent her mind back up the tunnel, back to the Upper World. But no matter how hard she tried, how carefully and completely she envisioned it, she didn’t move.
Well, she couldn’t stay here forever, neither here nor there. Carefully, keeping one hand on the cave wall, she moved forward and slipped sideways into the fog. The rocks that formed the entrance to the tunnel were solid against her back.
And what now?
She could stand here and hope some troop of Girl Scouts working on their Rescue Merit Badges would happen by. Somehow she didn’t think that would happen.
It was becoming hard to breathe in the fog. Every lung full felt like half air and half water. Like July back in Massachusetts, when the low pressure systems and the heat and the inversion layers and the humidity and the pollution grew thicker and thicker, hanging like a bell jar over the state.
Siyamtiwa had told her to turn to the things in nature for her answers. Except the things in nature were on strike.
I must be pretty awful, she thought, when even rocks won’t talk to me.
Finally she couldn’t stand it any more. She had to do something, to move even if she got lost. She was lost now anyway. What difference did it make? What difference did anything make?
Three steps and there was nothing on any side but fog. She couldn’t even see her feet.
She forced herself to wade blindly through it. Sooner or later, she was certain, she’d find herself back where she’d started. But there might be something interesting along the way.
For a full hour she trudged through the pale white light and dampness. She’d seen nothing, heard nothing, touched nothing. This must be what Purgatory is like, she thought.
The ground beneath her feet began to turn soft. She must be getting somewhere, then. She hadn’t crossed marshy ground before, and this was definitely marshy.
A moment of exhilaration.
And then the ground, the ground she still couldn’t see, began to suck her down, mud grasping at her ankles. She wasn’t just sinking into swamp or quicksand. This stuff was alive, and pulling at her.
Horrified, she stepped back. A shoe came off and disappeared into the fog.
Stoner stumbled backward toward the solid earth she’d left. Her back foot sank into mud.
In a panic, she turned in circles, searching with her feet for something she could stand on.
The ground all around her had turned soft and grasping.
The little patch of firm earth where she was standing was beginning to shrink. She was certain of it. She tried calling again. Called her Guides. Called the people she knew in Ordinary Reality. Called Gwen and Aunt Hermione and Elizabeth and even Marylou. Even Mogwye would be better company than this terrible loneliness. The crows could come and pick ants from her brain to their hearts’ content. At least she wouldn’t be alone.
She was surrounded by absolute silence.
She sank down on her tiny island of solidity. Out of friends, out of strength, out of time, and out of ideas.
“All right,” she said, holding her hands out and upward in supplication, “I give up. If there’s any Great Spirit or God or Cosmic Consciousness in the universe, I’m yours. I won’t try to do it myself any more. It’s all in your hands. But there’s one thing I have to insist on. Please, please don’t expect me to have Faith.”
She wasn’t sure how long it was before she had the feeling there was someone… or something… there. It wasn’t that she saw it or heard it. It was a sense of life. And movement.
“Who is it? Help me. I’m lost.”
The feeling of movement stopped, but the entity was still there.
She tried to read its intention, good or malevolent. If it was anything, it was neutral.
She waited and listened.
Off to her right it seemed as if the fog had congealed a little. She stared into it.
Yes, there was something there.
She studied it until her eyes ached. She could see it, but it wasn’t moving.
Waiting for her to make the first move, maybe. Waiting to pounce.
Maybe it couldn’t see her if she didn’t move.
She tried to hold herself very still, to stop breathing. Because whatever this entity was, if it wasn’t harboring dark thoughts toward her it would have made itself known by now.
She heard a sound like rustling. At least, if fog could rustle this is what it would sound like.
It seemed to be coming from behind her. She started to turn...
...and found a hard, masculine hand clamped over her mouth. Another hand held her shoulder, keeping her to the ground.
“Don’t move. Don’t scream,” a male voice whispered aloud.
Heart pounding, she did her best to nod agreement.
He released her mouth, eased the pressure on her shoulder.
Slowly, she turned to look at him and nearly screamed despite his warning.
The man was grotesque, a character from a slasher movie. His face was entirely covered with patches of green and black and khaki paint. Dark eyes glittered from white rings. His clothes were dark and torn. His mouth was closed around a razor-sharp hunting knife.
Stoner was frozen with fear.
He took the knife in one paint-covered hand and lowered it to the ground. He smiled. The smile was horrible.
They stared at one another for a moment.
The smile faded from his face, replaced by bewilderment. “Don’t you know me?” he asked. His voice was tinged with disappointment.
She knew him. “Cutter,” she said, and began to laugh and cry all at once.
Chapter 13
He sat on the ground opposite her, their knees touching. “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Stoner waved one hand in what she hoped was a “no problem” gesture but which ended up making her look like a nineteenth century lady about to swoon, and tried to get control of herself.
“Oh, God,” Cutter said helplessly. “Oh, shit.”
She managed to find her voice. “It’s all right. You startled me. Your face...”
“Shit, I forgot.” He pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and scrubbed furiously at his face. “The camouflage stuff. Damn.”
His knees were still pressed against hers. That was strange. The Cutter she knew would never have allowed that.
“I used to get off on this stuff,” he explained. “When I was a kid. Playing soldier. Maybe because my dad was in the war.” He wiped the backs of his hands. “Or maybe all boys do.”
“I think they do,” Stoner said. The way he was talking... That wasn’t like him at all.
“My dad wouldn’t talk abo
ut it,” he said. “I mean, he told me where he’d been and all, but not what it was like. I didn’t understand that until ’Nam.”
Stoner looked him in the eye, dead on. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
“Oh.” He quickly pulled a chain and dog tags from beneath his t-shirt and handed it to her.
It identified him as Cutter, all right. David Cutter.
“David?”
“Yeah. That was my name. Before.” He ducked his head in an embarrassed way. “Mom called me Davy.”
“I never knew you had a first name.”
“That was… you know. I dropped it.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Reminded me too much of the past, I guess. It made me feel weak.”
It wasn’t just that he was talking so openly, she thought. There was something else different about him. He looked like Cutter, especially without the camouflage make-up. But a younger, much younger Cutter.
She mentioned that.
“Whoa.” He whistled and ran a hand through his crew cut. “That’s a tough one to explain.” He thought hard, wrinkling up his forehead. “Tell you what. You come back to my place, and you’ll understand.”
Stoner couldn’t resist. “Why, Mr. Cutter, are you making an improper suggestion?”
He blushed. Cutter actually blushed. “Oh, my God, no. I mean, if you… why...”
“I was only kidding.” She touched his hand. He didn’t flinch. Very, very strange. But she was glad for his company, terribly glad. Even if he wasn’t quite… well, not quite himself.
“Listen,” he said, glancing around, “I think we’d better get out of here.”
“Suits me.” She got up. Cutter scampered to help her. “I wasn’t particularly fond of it, anyway.”
“Trust me,” he said. “It’s a really bad place.” He closed his eyes and seemed to be scanning the terrain with a sixth sense.
Stoner waited.
At last he said, “Hah,” and started off to his right.
When she tried to follow, her feet sank into the fog. “Cutter? I’m going to drown in here.”
He turned back. “Just pick up your feet.”
“I tried that earlier.”
“Step on top of the fog.”
Okay. Step up. On top of— She reached out tentatively with one foot and froze.
“You gotta do it like you know what you’re doing,” he said. “It’ll do what you expect it to do.”
She hoped the fog was easy to fool, and mentally crossed her fingers for luck. She repeated “the fog will hold me” over and over to herself in her mind, fast and loud so nothing else could get in. Then, in a show of bravado she hoped would intimidate any and all self-respecting vapor, she jumped up on it with both feet.
The fog held.
“See?” he said.
“Uh-huh. But why can’t we just sort of levitate to wherever we’re going. That’s what I’ve been doing.”
“Doesn’t work in here,” he said. “Now hurry up.”
They walked quickly in an unknown direction. Once or twice Cutter signaled to her to stop, opened his senses to the air, then started off again with the assurance of a beagle picking up a rabbit’s scent.
He was at home here, she thought, in ways he would never be back in Ordinary Reality.
“Okay,” he said. “Here comes the hard part.” He turned to her. “Things are going to be kind of ugly from now on. We’ll get through it, but you can’t break stride or make noise or you’ll never get out.”
She just looked at him, having no idea what he was talking about.
“Things can get you,” he explained.
It still made no sense.
“They like new souls.”
“Who does?”
“The ghosts.” He looked at her curiously. “You know where you are, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing here? People who come here always do it because they want to.”
“I might have, though I doubt it.” She’d had just about enough of this enigmatic talk. “Where are we?”
“This is the Place of the Dead.” He dropped cross-legged to the ground. “Jesus.” He shook his head. “Man, this is so fucked up.”
She stood over him. “Cutter, will you please explain what’s happening? Or do you want me to turn into a raving maniac right here and now?”
Cutter pulled a roll of licorice laces from his shirt pocket and offered her some. She shook her head. He wrapped a foot of it around his finger, making a little coil and knotting it, and popped it into his mouth.
“Cutter...” Stoner repeated threateningly.
“Okay, okay, let me think.” He thought and chewed. “Here’s how it is. People come here when they think they want to die. You know, like suicides. Or a piece of them does. So what we—the guys and me—what we do is find them and get them out so they can think it over. If they want to go back in… well, we did our best.” He glanced up at her with an expression that begged her to believe him. “That’s what we try to do, save people’s lives. That was what we thought we were doing when we went to war, but they lied to us.”
Her heart flooded with compassion for him. For him, and for all the other kids who thought they were going to save the world and found out—after it was too late—that they’d been tricked and used. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He shrugged it off. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
“What’s about me? I still don’t know why I’m here. I certainly don’t want to die.”
“Part of you does.”
Stoner shook her head. “Really, I don’t. Someone made a mistake.”
“Nobody brought you here but you,” he insisted.
Something inside made her uncomfortable. She brushed it away. “Well, if I did,” she said lightly, “I would like to withdraw my original request. If I didn’t, I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
“Fair enough.” He got to his feet. “Remember, follow me, keep moving, and it’s Quaker meeting from now on.”
“Quaker meeting?”
“‘Quaker meeting has begun,’” he quoted. “‘No more laughing, no more fun. No more chewing chewing gum.’” He grinned. “My mom used to say that to me. When I was getting out of hand.”
For a moment he looked as if he might cry. Stoner reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder. He let her.
“Jesus,” he said, “sometimes I miss my mom.”
He straightened and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Let’s saddle up,” he said in a John Wayne imitation, and plunged off into the mist.
Stoner follow, trotting to keep him in sight. She wanted to call out, to ask him to wait. But he had told her not to speak.
At first she didn’t see anything but whiteness. Flat, silent, unmoving mist. Then shapes began to appear. Slender, broken silhouettes of trees. Dead trees. Black, scorched skeletons posed in the mist like the ruin of a forest fire. She could smell them, too. Wet ashes and rot.
It reminded her of a picture she’d once seen, of the city of Hiroshima after the bomb.
Trotting along, keeping pace with Cutter, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. One of the trees had moved. Or had it? She wasn’t sure. And that one up ahead, hadn’t it been on the other side of their pathway just a second ago?
She glanced behind and saw another, huge trunked, with broken limbs and twigs like fingers. It hadn’t been there when she’d passed. Well, it had been there, but at least five yards to the right. She was certain of it.
Now she saw movement everywhere. Branches appeared from nowhere and darted at her face. Tendrils combed at her hair.
She wanted to scream.
She bit her lip and kept running.
A stump, high as her waist, loomed in her path. She put on the brakes.
A hand grabbed her and shook her roughly.
Cutter. He gestured to her to keep going.
She gulped a lung full of decay-
saturated air and pushed herself forward.
It seemed as if they’d been running for hours, days. Her knees burned. Her hip joints stabbed with every step. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.
A stitch caught her side and nearly pulled her to the ground with pain. It felt as if her ribs had grabbed a nerve and were grinding it between them. She’d never known pain like this before.
If she could only stop, just for a minute. Stop and stretch and spread her ribs enough to release it.
But she didn’t want to die, she told herself.
Don’t you?
It was her own voice in her head.
Of course I don’t.
Think about it.
She thought. About all the good things in her life. Marylou, Gwen, Aunt Hermione. Their home together. Her friends in a dozen different places all across the country.
And the emptiness? That little pocket of emptiness that makes things not quite right and not quite real.
That’s only life, she argued. Existential. Knowing where I end and other people begin. Being human means...
Being lonely.
It bubbled up inside her like a black ocean. Aching, hollow, utter loneliness. Loneliness so terrible, so complete she could...
Die.
Yes.
She nearly said it aloud. And it was true. She wanted to die, not carry this terrible burden of emptiness one step more.
“Stoner!”
She jerked as if she’d been struck by lightning.
Gwen’s voice.
“Don’t you dare stop,” Gwen said in her most intimidating accent. “If you don’t come back to me, by God I’ll… I’ll… you won’t like it.”
Stoner nearly sang out loud. She lengthened her stride and caught up with Cutter.
He gave her a look of surprise, and gestured forward.
The mist thinned. She could see shapes. Shapes with color.
Not black, not gray…
Green!
She raised one eyebrow questioningly.
Cutter flashed her a V-for-Victory. Or maybe for peace.
She made a dash for the finish line.
And smashed right into something invisible, firm, and wall-like.
