* * *
From the light outside the window, Tyler guessed it was late afternoon when he awoke again. He wanted to get out of bed. His limbs still felt heavy, but not quite like before. He examined himself, more alert this time, and found scratches and bruises but nothing that looked severe enough, in his opinion, to justify keeping him here. And he still hadn’t seen Chris.
Feeling for some reason like a rebel, he struggled to sit up and then get his legs over the side of the bed. To his consternation he discovered he was wearing a long white nightgown. True, considering the collision his clothes were probably in rough shape. But these people could have had the decency to put him in shorts.
Walking was harder than he thought. He’d made it halfway across the room in the direction of the door and was leaning with one hand on the wall, panting, when the door opened and a woman came in, disapproval written all over her homely, middle-aged face.
“Now,” she said. “Jacob told you to stay in bed.”
What, were you eavesdropping? Tyler thought, but he didn’t ask. Neither did he budge from his position on the wall. Truthfully, being on his feet was harder than he’d expected, and he was not sure he could stagger back to the bed, much less out the door.
The woman didn’t seem to care. She marched over, took Tyler’s arm, and half-prodded, half-steered him back into bed. “Now then,” she said, “Jacob told me to find out if you’re hungry. Are you?”
“Umm,” Tyler said. “No.”
Her frown was enough to prompt a retraction. “I could eat something,” he said. “But not much.”
“That’s better,” she said. “I’ll bring you supper.”
“How is my friend?” Tyler rushed out before she could disappear.
She stared at him as though he were out of line. “The big guy,” he continued. “The one I came here with.”
“He’s fine,” she said abruptly. “He’s getting lots of sleep and eating, like you should.”
Aware that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her, Tyler settled back into the bed and resigned himself. At least if he ate, he would be one meal closer to getting strong enough to get out of here completely.
A breeze stirred the curtains, and he wondered when the windows had been opened and what he would see outside if he could get over there. All that was visible from the bed was blue sky. He thought he heard chickens clucking and maybe the far-off sound of some kind of farm equipment. He couldn’t hear or smell water, which made him unhappy. Tyler had always lived on the bay. Being inland made his feet itch.
He strained his ears for sound outside his room but could hear nothing, confirming his suspicion that he was in some far-off upstairs corner of a house. And he found himself wondering again if these people could possibly be Oneness. On the surface they looked like it. Jacob had mentioned “the women,” so it wasn’t just a family house. And Jacob himself had had an aura—a powerfully attractive sort of charisma that in a way reminded Tyler of Richard. The sort of aura that spiritual power gave off.
Thinking of Richard made Tyler realize that he hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone in the village, and if they had figured out that he and Chris hadn’t come home last night—or whenever exactly the accident had happened—they would be worried. He made a note to ask for a phone when the woman came back with his supper.
He had a definite impression that she thought of him as a pesky little boy, so he might as well pester some more.
His mind went back to the original question. Were these people Oneness? No, he decided. If they were, he should be able to sense connection with them, to know them, and he didn’t. And yet . . . he doubted himself. He was still new at this, and he was drugged up and probably injured. And there was something about these people. If it wasn’t Oneness, what was it?
His desire to talk to Chris galloped back up again, and he blew out a breath of frustration at his failed attempt to reach the door. Whatever they were giving him for pain, he wished they would stop it. At the moment he would prefer a little pain to being unable to stand without a wall to lean on.
The woman came back, pushing the door open with her hip while balancing a tray of food on the other. Apparently they weren’t going to overstuff him—the tray contained a steaming clear broth and a small plate of crackers. Tyler was pleased to find he was hungrier than that, and simultaneously annoyed that they were babying him. He tried to muster enough consternation to protest, but all that came out of his mouth was, “So, um, I’m Tyler.”
The woman glared at him. He wondered if she knew how to smile. “Lorrie,” she said shortly. Then she drew herself up a little and continued, “Jacob is my husband.”
What was he supposed to say to that? Congratulations? “So is this your home?” he asked. “I mean, do you own this place . . . this . . . farm . . .”
Apparently the drugs were affecting his ability to speak intelligently too.
“No,” she said. “The community owns it.”
“The community?” Tyler asked.
“Five families,” she said. “We live here together and keep ourselves separate from the world. Farm the land, raise our own food.”
Apparently that question had pulled out the plug.
She nodded toward the window as though Tyler could see anything through it other than clouds. “We farm about twenty acres. Expecting a good crop this year. Everybody works hard to provide for everyone else. That’s how it should be.”
It suddenly occurred to Tyler that these people were doing him a service, even if they were only feeding him broth. He felt ashamed of his impatient attitude. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it, “for helping me and Chris. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”
She looked at him like he was an idiot, but he thought he detected a slight softening around her eyes. “You’d be in a hospital, most like.”
“So why aren’t I? I mean, why didn’t you just call an ambulance?”
“It’s not our way.” She thought better of the abrupt answer and went on. “We don’t involve the world unless we have to. This time we didn’t have to. Neither of you are hurt that bad. Eat your supper, you’ll be out of here soon.”
Unlikely, Tyler thought, as long as you keep feeding me various forms of water. But he didn’t say that out loud. Obediently he picked up the spoon and maneuvered soup clumsily into his mouth, pleased to find that the broth was deceptively flavourful and made him feel stronger and more clear-headed after only a few bites.
Lorrie left. He still wanted to see Chris.
Closing his eyes, Tyler tried to reach out for the Oneness. To feel the connection with the great community that stretched across the earth and in some way held everything together, like a web of threads creating a tapestry. He felt . . . he wasn’t sure what he felt. No clear connection with any other soul; no contact, so to speak. But he felt a conviction, a settledness in the pit of his stomach, that said he was not alone and that he was centred in something far greater than himself and that something was love and strength.
It was more than enough.
He found that he was tired by the time he finished his soup and ate a couple of crackers, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke, a committee had seated itself in his room.
At least, that’s what he thought at first. Their serious expressions, folded hands, and air of discussion gave that distinct impression. They reminded him of town council meetings in the village, which he had occasionally attended with Chris when something was going on pertaining to fishing regulations.
With a slight jolt, however, he realized they weren’t exactly human.
There were six of them, and he couldn’t tell what they were sitting on. There were no chairs, but they were definitely sitting. They were all a little too big—too tall and too broad—to be human, and with two of them, he couldn’t quite make out whether they were male or female. The rest looked male. He thought.
The real clincher was that he could see through them.
They were tal
king. The biggest of the group said, “The Oneness has often expressed itself in communities like this.”
“Then what makes this one different?” This was a smaller one, younger maybe. “Why is one community a ground for evil, and another is a place of health and growth?”
“The difference is Spirit. A community based in the Spirit is free at the core. And others are bound. Love makes free; fear binds. What comes of a community like this depends on what’s at the centre, but that is not always obvious from the outside.”
“It’s obvious to me,” another commented.
The big one looked witheringly at him. “Because you can see things they can’t. That is not their fault. They are as God made them to be.”
“And that is why,” one said in a tone of awe, “they can love.”
Tyler was not sure whether the beings just vanished or whether he woke up from a dream, but either way the room was quiet, just a breeze stirring the curtains, and there was no one there.
What in the world?
Maybe it was the drugs, he told himself.
Or maybe not.
He wished Richard was here so he could ask whether translucent, now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t committees were a normal part of life as Oneness. Richard would know the answer to a question like that, and if they were a normal part of life, he would be able to explain why and what it meant when they showed up.
But Richard was not here, and he had forgotten to ask about a telephone.
Determined anew not to keep going alone, Tyler forced his legs out of bed and staggered across the room. This time no one interrupted his sojourn. He cracked the door open and peered into a hallway. Empty. He wasn’t sure how he was going to find Chris or a phone—either one would do at the moment—so he just kept staggering on, out into the hallway, one foot after another, with his eyes and ears open. He felt like a guilty child up for a drink after he’d been put in bed and expected a stern parent to interrupt him at any moment. But no one did. Apparently he’d escaped while everyone was busy.
The hallway was typical for a country house built toward the earlier end of the century; narrow, with several rooms opening off of it on either side. He listened carefully outside of each door for some sign of Chris’s presence. Said sign nearly hit him in the nose: one of the bedroom doors opened into the hall at the same moment Tyler was leaning toward it for a listen. He jumped back, uncomfortably tipsy on his feet, just in time to avoid being smacked by it. And Chris staggered out.
Chris looked considerably worse than Tyler did, or at least worse than Tyler thought he did. His arm was still in a cast, but the cast looked dirty and beat-up, and “beat-up” was the best description of how the rest of Chris looked too. He was banged up and scratched and bruised, and even less steady on his feet than Tyler was.
None of which stopped him from grabbing Tyler in a huge, wordless bear hug. They leaned on each other for a moment and then both staggered backwards and let the walls hold them up.
“Good to see you too,” Tyler said. “You look rough.”
“You’re not exactly pretty yourself. Where the heck are we?”
“On a farm. Somewhere.”
“We should be in a freakin’ hospital.”
Chris was angry. Tyler frowned. He’d been irritated at their rescuers, but he’d mostly chalked that down to the combination of drugs, trauma, and inconvenience, not to any actual bad calls on their part.
“They’re not taking bad care of us,” Tyler said. “They don’t like hospitals.”
“They Oneness?” Chris shot back. “That why you’re taking their side?”
Tyler pulled back. “Hey, come on. Nobody’s an enemy here.”
As an afterthought, he added, “I don’t think they’re Oneness. They could be. Maybe.”
“Shouldn’t you know that?”
Tyler shook his shaggy head. “I’m new, all right? I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Chris groaned and leaned even more of his body weight against the wall. “My everything is killing me. I want to get out of here and go home.”
“I thought you wanted to go to a hospital.”
Chris’s eyes glimmered. “Because they’re understaffed. They would send us home.”
“So the problem with these people is, they’re taking too good care of us.”
Humour finally sparked in Chris’s expression. “Something like that, yeah.”
He looked Tyler over with new interest. “You hurt?”
“Achy,” Tyler said. “Bruised pretty good. But nothing serious. I don’t think. They’ve got me on some pain killer and it’s messing with my head.”
“You seem pretty normal to me. You’ve always been a dope.”
Tyler managed a punch. “Takes one to know one.”
Chris looked around. Both ends of the hallway ended in a blind corner. Presumably at least one had stairs around it. “Come on,” he said, hauling himself off the wall with another groan. “I want to find a phone.”
On the march down to the end of the hall, Tyler wondered what had happened to Chris’s cell phone. Most likely crushed or lost in the wreck, he thought.
Oh, the truck. He hadn’t even thought about the loss of the truck. That was going to be a pain to recover. He hoped Chris had good insurance.
Tyler had never really been the one to deal with that kind of detail.
The hallway was wallpapered with a striped, pale pink and blue pattern, and Tyler trailed his fingers along the stripes as they walked. The corner was sharp and the stairs down narrow, and the wallpaper gave way to something hideous and flowered that didn’t match the stuff upstairs at all. He wondered how many years this house had stood and how many clashing tastes had wallpapered parts of it.
The stairs ended in a square room on the ground level with one small, high window. The room was lined with shelves full of empty canning jars. Its door stood just slightly ajar. Chris pushed through without hesitation, and they stood in another smallish room, this one furnished as a sitting room. Windows looked out on a pleasant green day, but the aspect was overshadowed by the roof of a porch. Tyler felt cramped and wondered if the house ever really opened up. The cottage he shared with Chris was tiny, but it always seemed a part of the cliffs and the sea and the sky. The village cell house had been purposely bought and then redesigned for space: the large common room was meant to bring a community together, even though the village cell was so small. They had always planned for more than they had. And in prayer, Tyler thought, maybe they met with more than were visible.
He wondered if the common room ever played host to committees.
That room was empty as well, but by now they could hear voices in another room, and a door swinging and banging against its frame. Chris led the charge. In the dank atmosphere of the house, Tyler thought unexpectedly of being boys together, chasing monsters through the cliffs. Chris had always been the one to lead.
But Tyler doubted they would find any more monsters here than they had ever actually found in their boyhood.
Another door led them into the kitchen and a flood of light. The room was far more open than anywhere they had been in the house; Tyler suspected it had been an add-on. An open kitchen with three industrial-size fridges and lots of counter space, including a central island, opened onto a dining room that was just as large. A big oak table looked like it could comfortably seat twenty people, and a few smaller tables off to one side seemed designed for younger, smaller people. Tyler briefly checked for wallpaper, just out of curiosity. Both kitchen and dining room sported a bright yellow chicken print, but the feel was much more modern than anything upstairs.
Ten women were up to their elbows in suds, bread dough, or huge bowls of mixed ingredients. They had been talking; they stopped when the boys entered the room and exchanged glances. Their expressions confused Tyler: unease, disapproval. One glared at him, and he recognized Lorrie.
“We wondered if we could use the phone,” Chris said.
“We’re up,”
Tyler added, kicking himself inwardly. Well, that won the award for completely unnecessary statement of the day.
“We’re glad to see you’re feeling better,” one of the women said. She spoke softly, almost hesitantly, but Tyler thought she meant it. She was younger than Lorrie, maybe thirty or a little older. He thought she looked a lot like Miranda, the girl who had visited him with a glass of water when he first woke up. All the women wore long skirts and aprons, and they wore their hair long and tied back. They looked like something from Little House on the Prairie.
Lorrie was much more down to business. “You can’t use the phone,” she announced. “We don’t have one.”
Chris blanched. “You don’t have any?”
“We came here to get away from the world,” Lorrie answered. “Telephones are just a way to bring the world in.”
“What do you do in an emergency?” Chris pressed. “What if you have to call 911?”
“We don’t have to do that,” Lorrie answered. Tyler thought the younger woman was about to say something, but she evidently thought better of it.
“Seems stupid to count on that,” Chris said. “Nobody counts on accidents.”
Tyler looked askance at his friend. Apparently being in a wreck had made Chris even more bearish than was usual lately.
Or maybe he just really wanted to see Reese.
“If we had an emergency, we would deal with it,” Lorrie said, her voice frosting over even more. “We do take care of our own as well as strangers, Mr. . . .”
“Sawyer,” Chris said, his answer to the pointed inquiry a clear capitulation. “Listen, I’m sorry if I was being rude. We just need a way to reach family and let them know we’re all right.”
Lorrie was still looking at Chris like he was something distasteful dragged in from the outside—from the world, Tyler thought—but she answered, “I’ll talk to Jacob and see what we can do. Now, we had best get back to our cooking.” She shot the other women a look that said they’d all dallied long enough. “And you young men had best go back to bed. You don’t seem to believe it, but your bodies took quite a beating in that accident.”
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