He shrugged. “Yes. And no.”
“Did you love her?” asked Christopher.
“Yes.”
“Were you guys, like, getting in on?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Christopher giggled. The sound should have been disconcerting given their conversation, but Billy felt the opposite. He felt relieved.
“You’re weird, Mister Mathis. You talk funny and you’re like a comic book vigilante. Like the Punisher. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Billy smiled. “Honestly, son, you could never.”
“Why not?”
“You are my student now. What I did for Marisa I would do for all my students. That includes you.”
Christopher’s grin widened. He glanced over his shoulder and jacked his thumb in the direction of the two lawn chairs. “So,” he said, “you wanna come over and enjoy the sunshine for a little bit?”
“Yes,” said Billy. “That might be quite nice.”
He walked with Christopher across the room. The sunlight bore down on him. It tightened his flesh as it warmed his surface layers.
He hoped it would have the same effect within.
* * *
Once again the words wouldn’t come.
He sat over his pad, pencil clutched so tight between his fingers that the wood splintered. Each time he placed its tip on the page, ready to spill his thoughts, those thoughts deserted him. He grunted in frustration.
It was not like he didn’t know what to write. He did. The stream of letters and punctuation ticked like a dot-matrix printer in the back of his mind, yet whenever he tried to inscribe them they became migrating geese and fluttered away.
It must be the monotony, he reasoned. Performing the same tasks every day while thinking the same thoughts and eating the same non-nutritious meals. He glanced at Christopher, who was bundled as always beneath his pile of dirty blankets. Billy’s mind wandered.
Creatures of habit we are. But what if those very habits are what kill us?
He yawned, stretched his arms above his head, and listened for the crack that usually followed. This time none came. He rolled onto his back, pulled the covers over his chest, and squeezed his eyelids shut.
Just sleep, he told himself. You will feel better if you rest.
Yet he could not. Strange sounds kept him lingering on the edge of consciousness while his legs twitched. They were inappropriate sounds; the clatter of a tin can, the whistle of a marching band’s leader, jovial yet disturbing carousel music. He covered his ears. It did no good. The noise grew louder, trapped inside his brain, confined by the barrier of his two palms.
He grunted and sat up. His head was groggy and pressure built up in his abdomen. He rose to his feet, hoping he’d be spared the embarrassment of urinating in his pants. He made his way to the bathroom in a squatting gallop.
After emptying his bowels, everything changed.
There was no longer a roof over his head. A crystal-clear blue sky replaced it. He stood before a carnival funhouse, staring at his reflection in the trick mirrors outside the entrance. His body changed from slim to fat to slim again, from young to old, whenever he moved. His clothing shifted, as well. One moment he was in a pair of beat-up overalls; next a pressed, navy-blue suit jacket with tie; then grease-stained prison garb complete with his serial number stitched across the left breast pocket – GB-93667.
An uproar rose behind him and he turned. A mass of pale faces had gathered. They gawked at him, their numbers too great to count. Most were strangers, but some he recognized; his juvenile parole officer, old teachers, classmates, and co-workers. Eric Calhoun’s family was there, as well, along with the judge who sent him to prison. They were all dressed in black. Billy recoiled into the marquee. The crowd surged forward.
“Fucking nigger!” someone shouted.
“Yeah, who you think you are?” another voice said.
Still another declared, “They’re always coming where they ain’t wanted!”
“Influencing our children!”
“Raping our little girls!”
“And killing our good, well-bred boys!”
Then, as one, they all shouted, “Keep to your own kind, you bastards!”
They were on top of him now. He felt their hot, stinking breath as it beat upon his face. He closed his eyes, dropped to his knees, and screamed. Hands fell on his shoulders. He tensed up, ready to fight for his life against the inevitable beating, but nothing happened. The upheaval drifted away like dandelion seeds. The calm bubbling of running water replaced it.
He opened his eyes and found himself alone. Scattered bits of colored paper skipped across the grass in front of the funhouse, which now appeared beaten and ragged. Moss grew around the tent spikes, turning the bottom edge of the canvas a smudged shade of green. He glanced beyond the tent, where the rest of the carnival unfolded. It looked deserted.
“Do not worry, dear boy,” a woman’s voice said. “They’re all gone. Have been for a long while.”
Soft fingers caressed his neck. He turned to the side and there stood a lady. She had silky, dark skin, round cheeks, a large yet appropriate nose, and long black hair. A light blue dress clung to her body, showing off her curves. She possessed kind eyes, a shade between gray and blue. Her characteristics belied age. She could’ve been anywhere between eighteen and forty.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“You can call me Bella,” she said, beckoning him with a curled index finger. “Let’s take a walk.”
He followed her. They strolled past the ring toss booth, strongman station, beanbag throw, and Freaks of Nature tent, until they reached the edge of a cobblestone path leading across an empty clearing.
Billy glanced at the carnival behind him. “What was that place?” he asked.
“The Pennsylvania State Fair,” she replied.
“My mother took my brothers and I there every summer during my childhood,” he said. “I never remember it looking like that.”
“I never did,” she said with a wink, “but it is how you see it today. It is how your fear sees it.”
“How would you know that?”
“You are dreaming, William. This is all in your head. Just like I am.”
He pinched the skin on his arm. It hurt. He looked at the woman. She smiled, but that smile gave off the impression that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“This makes no sense,” he said.
“It will, in time. Follow me.”
She guided him down the path into the surrounding woods. The forest was calm. Billy relished the flawless scents of nature. He remembered feeling this way as a younger man, when he would sit alone on a boulder along the banks of the stream behind his campus apartment, listening to the birds sing while cool water splashed against his bare feet. During those moments he felt connected with Thoreau, experienced the desire to toss aside all his worldly belongings and exist in harmony with a world stripped of material value.
How naïve I have been.
A splotch of yellowed grass appeared to his left. He stopped walking. From behind a thatch of ragged bushes emerged a lion. It was large, agile, and foaming at the mouth. It licked its paw and raised its eyes. They were amber and cold enough to make steel brittle. Billy watched the animal, afraid to move, until it nodded, turned around, and traipsed back into the dense foliage. It lashed its tail and disappeared.
“What was that?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Not right now, anyway.”
“Why not?”
She looked at him. Her eyes twinkled. “You don’t need him. Yet.”
She went on. A few paces farther into the woods the path forked. Bella waved her hand and started in the direction of the left-bound trail. Sunlight illuminated the lush greenery there, bringing every color to its full and crisp potential. Billy didn’t follow her.
This is strange, he thought while he stared at the road to the right, the one not taken. Down there n
o light could be found. The skeletal limbs of leafless trees formed a gray canopy that made it look more like a tunnel than a trail. Thousands of bare branches jutted out on either side of the path like ribcages.
In the center of it all, not fifty paces in, stood a solitary birch tree. The bark peeled off a trunk that split halfway up its mass, forming twin stalks that rose in the shape of a V. A skull had been implanted in the nook. It stared at him with glowing, empty eye sockets. Billy tried to look away from its awfulness but could not.
He took a step forward without thinking. The sensation of pushing his fingers into a bowl of porridge followed. It crossed from hand to toes to ankle to lower leg. Dizziness caused his balance to waver, but he kept striding onward.
The rest of his body passed through the barrier. Flashes of dark color swirled in front of his eyes, blinding him. He heard a series of cracks and snaps. When his vision cleared, the dead forest came alive. Trees swayed in unison on either side of the path. They reached for him with their decayed vines, wrapping his legs and arms. He tried to scream, but a branch twisted around his throat and cut off his air before he could make a sound. Laughter came from all around him. The branches, acting as puppet strings, forced him to the ground and dragged him in the direction of the massive, dead birch. The skull nestled in the tree’s rotten vagina grinned at him, the upper jaw working up then down, growing wider each time, maneuvering its way down the trunk until it became a huge, spiraling channel lined with razor-sharp teeth. The limbs pulled him toward the hungry mouth. His heart rate rose to the point he feared it might seize. Once more, he went blind.
In a flash he found himself hovering in the air, and then falling backwards. The thickness of the atmosphere evaporated. He landed with a thud, groaned, licked blood from his lips, and opened his eyes. Everything seemed back to normal. He lay in the center of the road, just beyond the accursed division line. The trees were back to simply appearing haunted rather than performing as such. Bella hovered above him. She smirked.
“Don’t go that way,” she said.
“So I discovered.”
He dabbed at the corner of his lips with his finger. It stung to the touch. When he withdrew, he held the digit out to his strange guide.
“If this is a dream,” he said, “then why am I bleeding? Why would I understand that this is a dream? And where, exactly, am I?”
She shook her head, turned her back to him, and continued walking down the path.
“Very well,” grunted Billy, and he followed.
They marched for a long time, tracing the zigzag path through the forest until it ended. The expansive, smoldering remains of a city replaced the trees. Skyscrapers reached for the heavens with crippled steel fingers. The streets were devoid of life.
“Where are we now?” he asked.
Bella grasped his hand and squeezed. “Pittsburgh,” she replied.
The sky grew dark. A light flashed in the distance. It seemed to impart from the heart of the city, itself. He glanced at his escort, who offered him a nod of affirmation. They strode into the barren concrete wilderness.
Sodom and Gomorrah hold no candle to this, he thought as he surveyed the ruins. For the first time he understood how much devastation had spread across the land. The shadows of people in motion created ghostly silhouettes on the walls of buildings, similar to those chronicled after the fallout of Hiroshima. The buildings themselves sported gaping holes, and black smoke still exhaled from many of them. The automobiles lining the road were in such a state of corrosion that they hardly could be classified as cars any longer.
An odd realization struck him: there were no bodies to be found. Even the confines of the prison had been stacked to the gills with corpses. So where were they?
He shook his head. “Is this real?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is the whole world like this?”
“Yes.”
“Then why is Greensburg still intact? And why, even though the destruction is worse here, are there no carcasses?”
Bella tilted her head and stared at him. Her skin tone seemed to grow even darker. The air around her became misty, like she existed in a fog. Her eyes turned a murky shade of brown. She spoke, her tone distant and lacking emotion, in a language he knew he shouldn’t be able to comprehend, but did.
“His influence will be greatest where populations are densest…raze the temples of leadership…the people will follow…with harsh conditions comes harsh existence…even those who at first repel will not possess the strength to move onward…this way He encircles the land like a snake…and obliterates the enemy from within…just as with the body…the mind…the heart…”
Billy gave her a cockeyed look. “What does that mean?”
She shivered. The haze surrounding her lifted. She looked like herself again. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and once more treaded down the hill towards the city below.
The blinding white light, the beacon of hopelessness, continued flashing. They followed it, Billy side-by-side with his peculiar aide. It was a lonely journey, silent. Nothing jumped out at them, nothing reached out with clutching fingers, and no one offered a hesitant greeting. Bella didn’t speak, either. She kept her jaw rigid and eyes straight ahead, focused on the light.
Before long they arrived at an abandoned industrial strip. At the end of that strip sat a hotel. The wavering, intense glow they followed shone through the windows on the third floor. He brushed his hand over the sign in front of the building, but when the ash crumbled away so did the words hidden beneath it.
“Come,” said Bella. She stood at the entrance. She opened the door and stepped inside. The light swallowed her.
The interior of the hotel was luxurious, with elegant furniture in the waiting area, a huge fireplace, and countertops of impeccably carved marble. Ferns decorated every corner. He shook his head and focused again on that which drew them in. The light was still ahead of them, flickering like a torch. It caused his shadow to grow and shrink on the burgundy carpet below his feet, like the funhouse mirrors.
Up the stairs to the second floor they went. Then it was down a long corridor, until they stood in front of a pair of large wooden doors. Happy Gold, Katy and John! proclaimed the banner hanging above them. Fifty Years and Counting! He glanced at Bella. She nodded. With a fist wrapped around each door handle, he pulled both open at once.
The room was huge, a banquet hall he presumed, much like the one he’d seen in his dream. But that was another dream, was it not? he wondered. If anything that I dream is actually a dream at all.
He maneuvered around the space, taking care to touch whatever he could to test its solidity. Everything appeared tidy and decorative, dressed up for an occasion he assumed never took place. The tables were outfitted with white- and gold-trimmed cloth. Sitting atop the tablecloths were placards stating hundreds of names and Menorah-like candleholders supporting three candles apiece. It was all very fancy – fancy, and useless.
Thirteen steps farther inward, he reached an area where the tables had been pushed to the side. In the open space he found a woman. She was on her back a few feet from the dance floor, her arms flat by her side.
He recognized her. The one from his waking dream, the one who’d cried out for help. The one he had saved from a nightmare.
So many dreams, so little sense they made.
Bella was beside him again. “Who is she?” he asked her.
“Her name is Marcy,” she said.
“Why does she appear to me?”
“Oh, William, she does not appear to you.”
He scrunched his brow. “Oh.”
Kneeling down, he grasped the sleeping beauty by her wrist. A faint pulse thumped. Her pale skin shimmered in the ghostly light and her chest rose and fell in short, erratic bursts. Her eyes moved beneath closed lids, as if she was frantically trying to find a way out of the darkness. An unexpected feeling of adoration and sadness overcame him. He bowed, kissed her on the cheek, and then sat back to ad
mire her. Even with her bluish lips, pasty complexion, and shoulder-length brown hair a muddled rat’s nest, she was breathtaking.
Tears formed in his eyes. “Why am I here?” he asked.
“She’s sick,” replied Bella. “She’s infected with death. She needs help.”
“And that help comes from me? Why me?”
She shrugged. “There are many unanswered questions in the universe, William. If it weren’t you it would be someone else. Just feel lucky that it is you.”
“Why?”
“Because she is important. And that means so, in turn, are you. You’re the wildcard.”
“Wildcard?”
“The unexpected variable that changes everything.”
He aimed his eyes at the ceiling. His heart sang. “What do I have to do?”
“Just listen, and listen close.”
He closed his eyes and did just that. Sure enough a sound emerged, like the tapping of a drum. It was a tune, soft and sweet, one he recognized; God Bless the Child, sung in a voice both far away and close at the same time.
The girl, Marcy, was singing to him. He remembered.
“She sang this for me,” he said. “After…”
“Follow her voice,” said Bella. “Find her. She doesn’t have much time. She cannot be let to wither away. This would be disastrous. You must act quickly.”
“Very well, I will do just that. But what will I do when I find her? How can I help?”
“You don’t need me to answer that, William. You already know. The ability to save her has been in your blood since the moment you were conceived.”
“But…”
She pressed a finger to his lips and cocked her head. Her eyes darted back and forth. “You have to go now,” she whispered.
“Why? What is happening?”
“Don’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
* * *
“Wake up, Mr. Mathis!” Christopher was only inches from his face. His voice was deafening. “You gotta get up now!”
Billy groaned and rolled over. He was in the department store office again. The oil lamp still burned by his feet. Sleep needles pricked his thighs.
Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II) Page 10
