by Dean H Wild
They talked of things significant only to the moment and yet pertinent for the ages as the black numbered wall clock swept time away.
“Track and field this year?” Mick asked at one point, the nominative left off because such casual speech seemed to fit easily into the moment.
Robbie’s deep and innocent eyes studied the game with eager intensity, yet he managed a half-smile. “You kidding?”
“Just thought you might like to join in with some kind of activity.”
“You mean not be the nerdy kid who hangs around with the teacher after school?”
“Not what I meant. There’s opportunity, that’s all. Meet some people, work as a team.”
“Nope. Who would I meet chasing a ball or jumping hurdles anyway? The same people I see in the halls here every day. People I’m not interested in teaming up with, mostly. There are by-yourself people in the world, Mr. Logan, and I guess I’m one of them.”
Robbie slid his bishop forward. His slender limbs, aglow where the sun touched the downy hairs of youth, moved with a grace that made up in confidence what they lacked in strength.
“You can’t do everything in the world by yourself, you know.”
“No, but I think I’m smart enough to know the difference.” Another half-smile graced his face. “I’ve had years of practice already.”
Mick offered an appreciable nod and focused on the game more closely. His king, already cornered, had become smothered by his own pawn and was highly at risk. In this particular “by-yourself” game, Robbie definitely took the upper hand. Mick moved his knight, hesitant. Robbie leaned forward, his intensity now burning bright as he studied and re-studied the configuration of pieces in the upper corner of the board. At last the boy reached across the board, beaming. “That’s a checkmate, Mr. Logan.”
Robbie took up his knight and claimed Mick’s blocked-in king in an exaggerated capture.
They laughed and Mick congratulated the boy with a hearty and somewhat wistful handshake. Students like Robbie were rare, and their stays all too brief.
“Thanks for the break,” Mick told him and got out of his chair, “but I’ve got seventeen more Frost essays to grade before I go home.”
“Gotta go home and study anyway,” Robbie said. The last rays of March sun streaked through the window and gilded his face. His eyes glinted. “I hear some guy is planning a pop quiz on poets other than Robert Frost for tomorrow.”
“The guy’s brutal from what I hear.” Mick smiled. “A real tyrant. Especially after he receives a whipping on the chess board.”
They both laughed. Robbie left him, the doorway shaded by fading daylight.
The painful choking noise came from the hall less than a minute later, and he stuck his head out of the door with a sudden unexpected skim of sweat on his palms. An instant in-the-wind sensation put him on high alert.
The building’s central stairwell gave access to four floors of classrooms. Its turns and landings formed an open shaft of veined marble and mahogany. Gazing into it always assaulted Mick with rolling swells of vertigo. Two boys grappled at the central railing which, on this topmost floor, formed a sort of pen around the dizzying space. Justin Wick, a burly and notoriously discontented student from a family of money was one of the boys. Mick had him in third period American Lit and found him to be a brooding, uncooperative sort. The other boy was Robbie. He was on the wrong side of the railing, kicking out to gain purchase over the open expanse of the shaft. His hands gripped the other boy’s forearms desperately and Justin Wick, feet firmly planted on the hall floor, shrugged in an attempt to shake him off.
Mick meant to rush out and break up the scuffle, but the precariousness of their off-kilter positions locked up his muscles. A hasty or brutish attempt to break it up might result in success on Wick’s behalf and grant Robbie a three-story fall.
Dark handshake sprang into Mick’s thoughts. Robbie’s Frankenstein assessment. Except this was another type of dark handshake playing out before him.
The will of the dream took license then, because Mick shouted. “Hey!”
It filled his head with the resonance of a cathedral bell and echoed down the hall, but in reality he’d only been able to manufacture a dry squeaking sound. Justin Wick’s voice rang out instead.
“You gonna get an A now, brownnose faggot? A for asshole?” Justin then sensed Mick, turned from his business with a snap of his head and a fluff of dirty blonde hair, and glared directly at him. “Is he, huh? Is he gonna get an A?”
“What are you doing, Wick?” Mick managed to say. “Pull him in right now.”
There was no stunned regret in Justin’s hard face over a prank gone too far. There was only heartlessness and lack of reason. It hit Mick like a kick to the stomach. Still, he rushed forward.
“Fly, little fairy,” Justin said forming a wide set but ultimately cold smile. “You just fly on to the Land of Nod. Sounds like a fairy place, someplace hungry for fairies like you, so that’s where you gonna go.”
“No, Wick. Stop it.”
Justin Wick’s eyes narrowed to slits. “The Land. Of. Nod.”
He disengaged Robbie’s desperate hands with a pinwheeling of his arms. Robbie fell without a sound.
Mick froze. He heard a heavy clunking sound against the third floor railing below followed by a breath of silence, then another looser, batting sound, more distant against the second floor mahogany. The final soundless gap was longer and the awful smacking sound on the marble lobby floor stole his breath like a gut punch.
Justin Wick laughed and motioned to the stairwell shaft with a goofy did-you-see-that expression. Mick’s dream essence intruded—or was it a memory of a different kind? Doors slammed all around him, around the entire building. Classrooms once filled with meaningful ideas and passions shut up as if by a mighty wind. Rooms of warm light, sealed.
And then something new. Justin Wick stopped his infernal laughter, his face pale and grave. He turned and spoke directly to Mick.
“Hey Logan. Welcome to Wonderland—”
Mick sat up with a cry caught in his throat. Judy was next to him, her hands folded between her pillow and her cheek, her breathing slow and easy. Undisturbed. Good.
He rolled over in the moonlit dark, his heart pounding, his teeth working over his lower lip. Wonderland, The Land of Nod. Wonderland. The Land of Nod.
He slept, not at all.
CHAPTER NINE
Cy Vandergalien was glad to see the windows dark when he pulled up to the house. Alice wasn’t a problem; she hauled a book and a bag of cheese puffs off to bed most nights and was conked out by eleven at the latest. His nephew was the one usually knocking around in the basement playing his crazy-ass music too loud, puffing his joints, and pounding the piss out of his broken down laptop. But tonight, all was quiet. At the ripe old hour of straight-up midnight, Cy could finish unwinding from the trials of the day in peace.
Not that he wasn’t pretty loose already. The boys from Elmore Excavation spent it hard and fast tonight at The Chapel Bar. Cy wasn’t much for sucking beer on a weeknight, but he wanted to be sure the gentleman’s agreement he put together with Johnny Elmore was going to stick. Mellar’s Out needed to win the initiative, first thing, and judging from the number of red posters popping up around town, he was confident the desired outcome was in the bag. Then old Johnny could move in and raze that shithole of a mercantile building. Once cleared—at the village’s expense, of course—the land could be had for a song if a person had the right “ins” . . . and nobody possessed more of the right “ins” than yours truly, village president and all around nice guy. Then it was a matter of Elmore Excavating buying it from him for a ridiculous and extravagant amount, Elmore claiming a sizable but much-needed business expense—all major tax breaks invited—and one Cyril A. Vandergalien walking away with a tidy bundle of profit free and clear by this time next year. Nothing helped a man unwind better than money in the pipeline, he thought as he climbed out from behind the wheel, gave his ca
r a pat as if it were an old chum, and stepped into the moonlit driveway.
“Good evening.” A voice came to him from some distance away. “Cyril Vandergalien?”
A man walked toward him, streetlamps throwing his shadow out long and narrow and reaching.
“Evening, and you got him,” Cy said back since he was not foreign to after-hours meetings or clandestine encounters. Sometimes, they were the best kind. “Up kind of late, aren’t you, stranger?”
“Late it is,” the man said. All decked out in a dark suit he was, with a tightly-knotted black bowtie. He removed his hat and took a stance at the end of the driveway. His gray hair fell around his shoulders. “And we both have obligations to keep, so I’ll make this quick. I’m wondering if you might direct me in one small matter.”
“I’m off the clock and I’m bushed, but if you make it quick I’ll try to oblige. Shoot.”
“I have some interest in the old Knoll town records, but I am unsure where to find them. My usual . . . intuitions aren’t guiding me. They’re blocked, almost.”
“Everything you want is at the old village hall. Mick Logan’s been working there these past few days straightening her out, so he can probably dig up whatever you need. You got family here, doing one of those genealogy things or something?”
“I am somewhat of an historian of late.” The man’s eyes searched the night. “Logan. Logan. That name seems to be blocked as well. How curious.”
“Blocked? What the hell does that mean, Mister . . . ?”
“Thekan.” His hand came forward. “I’m the Honorable Judge Thekan. And my mission in your town will be brief but quite critical. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Vandergalien.”
Cy’s hand became enveloped in the other man’s grip. Cool flesh, unpleasant almost. The whole exchange took on the qualities of a dream, right down to the low, buzzing sensation that traveled from Thekan’s palm to his own and the almost perceptible points of light trapped in the man’s eyes. When Cy spoke, the words slipped around in his mouth. “Seems there was something else I wanted to ask you, but for the life of me—”
“Ah well. Forgotten is foregone.”
“Right.” Cy narrowed his eyes. “So, you plan to stay in town for a while?”
“A few days. If I’m welcome, of course.”
Cy’s thoughts hitched as if through a mental pothole. Damn, what did they put in the beer down at Chapel’s anyway?
“Welcome as any,” he said at last.
He dug for his keys with the sudden urge to rush inside and curl up next to his snoring Alice. In the same instant a green glow lit up the sky to the southeast, beyond the cozy houses crouched along Knoll’s streets. Northern Lights was his first assumption, but the glow lacked the familiar restless shimmer of the aurora, and it was not in the north at all.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Lovely,” Thekan said with a casual flick of his hand. “Like an awakening.”
Cy felt the words take shape in his mouth like a mass of dark and feeding fish. “The Crymost.”
Thekan’s stare hardened. “Your state inspector told you all about it, remember? Called you on your telly-phone.”
“He did?” Cy asked even as the memory pushed in. “Oh yeah. He did call me. I think. Didn’t he—?”
“Just this afternoon. And he told you to expect such an oddity for a while. A natural phenomenon.”
“Yeah, phenomenon. Completely—”
“Completely harmless. Completely natural, yes. But we digress, and you were on your way to sleep. Gentlemen’s agreements can be exhausting, after all. And you forgot to mention to your excavator how you want him ready to begin the razing of that dreadful building immediately after the voting results condone it. The very next day, in fact. It would be for the best.”
“Right. The best. Guess I’ll give old Johnny a call in the morning. Not sure why I forgot it. Been a hell of a day.”
“You’ll do all those things tomorrow with no trouble. But now it’s time to rest. Gentlemen’s agreements, after all.”
“Rest. Yeah.”
Cy trudged into the house and undressed as he crossed the bedroom. He climbed into bed wearing just his undershorts. The greenish glow over The Crymost was plainly visible when he glanced out the window. Completely natural, but people were going to notice. Best to spread the word about it first thing in the morning. No sense in letting speculation run wild.
On another, uneasy level, he thought about deals in the dark.
***
A few of Knoll’s citizens drove up to Pitch Road to investigate the green glow as the night wore on. Most, however, stayed in town, gleaned information from those who came away from The Crymost with firsthand accounts and passed it on, spinning a web work of information, phone to phone, house to house, street to street as the hours wore on.
In the way of stars and formless dreams, the glow was swept away by the sunrise. Talk of it over breakfast was brief for the most part, sometimes even disregarded. It was Knoll business, Crymost business, and there were many who concluded in the reasoning daylight it was best not to challenge the ways of the town’s lachrymose place.
Cy Vandergalien’s phone was on the kitchen counter, muted. When he stumbled down for coffee and switched it on, it lit up immediately.
PART THREE:
WONDERLAND
CHAPTER ONE
AT A LITTLE PAST eight, Mick had already fielded three calls on the garage landline regarding last night’s light show. He placated each caller with his lack of excitement on the matter—he’d been in Knoll long enough to know how to assuage the public at large. While he dealt with them, Harley gave Axel, who showed up on time and actually appeared eager, a rundown on how to operate the Swisher.
The fourth call came in while he was getting ready to resume his cleanup of the village hall. It was a reporter from the Drury Courier who wanted to know if Cy Vandergalien might want to provide a statement about the glow in time for the afternoon edition. Mick considered the aggravation Cy was sure to find in such a request and said “Sure, here’s his home number,” before hanging up.
Harley came over and hitched his pants with a grimace. “Well, for better or worse, I got our boy over there ready to roll.”
Axel blinked at Mick slowly from aboard the Swisher, then fired it up and guided the mower out of the bay door. His first morning would be easy: the roadsides of The Plank at the town’s outskirts and then the patch of lawn around the old mercantile.
“I think he got it,” Harley said while he hung up some stray tools. “Seemed alert enough, but I got nothing back from the boy, really. Like I was talking into an empty room.”
Mick stared through the open bay door and listened to the diminishing growl of the Swisher. He was reminded of another person who spent much time in a state of aware blankness. Justin Wick, scourge of Lincoln Middle School, slasher of teachers’ tires by way of a butterfly knife, which was confiscated after he held it to the throat of a terrified seventh grader who thrashed just enough to cause an inadvertent but very deep slice just below the jawline.
The kitten Wick supposedly mounted in splayed-out fashion to the back wall of the family garage with a pneumatic nail gun was a legend of the darkest proportion, a tall tale with no proof to back it up, and yet Mick was sure he was not the only one who could too easily picture Justin’s enamored fascination over the small creature screeching and writhing toward slow death. Doubt over the accuracy of the tale was cloudy at best among the Lincoln faculty. Most of them had grown weary of Justin’s endless string of student lunchroom shoves and chokeholds, of his brooding classroom presence and volatile hallway assaults to the point of frustration. The rumors of him toting pockets full of street drugs through the halls of Lincoln dwelled likewise in the foggy land of maybe-maybe not. The notion that Justin was trouble with a capital T was upheld by most of the school, and the idea that he would one day come to no good on a devastating level went without question. None of them, whether upholding the
se thoughts as pitying or prophetic, realized how soon the devastation would come.
Mick shook himself. Too much, too soon after last night’s dream. He needed to shut it down hard and fast and get his day started in earnest.
But a trailing thought stuck with him as he went back to work. It slid in uneasily, summoned by the past but clinging to the moment, pitying and prophetic in its own way in regard to the blank and brooding Axel Vandergalien. Trouble, it said, with a capital T.
***
Midday clouds rolled in and gave the day a harsh, steely glare. Mick came out of the village hall at noon, ready for lunch. Today the workload was easy: pertinent old receipts and invoices required boxing and transport to the firehouse for safekeeping. Harley sat outside of the bay door in his creaky high-back chair, his hands folded across his stomach, his bagged lunch untouched at his feet. The hollows under his eyes seemed very deep.
“Cy says he’s got it on good authority the glow up to The Crymost is a natural occurrence.” Harley said. “Nothing to worry about. He’s going to put something in the Drury paper to that effect tomorrow.”
Mick dusted his hands off and thought, be ready, our so-fair town makes the papers yet again.
They both looked up at the familiar sound of the Swisher’s engine. Axel guided the mower expertly up to the bay door and killed the engine. There were flecks of grass caught in his hair. His jeans were shaggy with clippings from cuff to knee.
“Roadsides are done,” he said, almost righteously as if they were expecting them not to be. “And the mercantile, too. Christ, what a shithole.”
“Yard’s all frost heaved,” Harley consorted. “Riding over it kicks at the kidneys a little. Did you gas up when you were done?”
“Forgot.” Axel hopped down. “Copeland’s is at the other end of town, old man.”
