Either way, it was this metaphor that came to mind as I awoke with a start, slumped on the passenger seat of my Accord, screaming like I was six again and kicking out with my limbs in a spastic imitation of a man straddling a live electrical wire.
‘WHAT’S GOING ON? WHERE AM I? WHY AM I—?’
A hand fell on my shoulder.
‘Shush. It’s okay. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Now go back to sleep.’
I looked round.
Frankie. In the driver’s seat.
My driver’s seat.
‘Frankie? What? Why are you—?’ I gasped as the obvious dawned. ‘Wait—did you kidnap me?’
‘If by “kidnap” you mean did I carry your unconscious body down to your car, load you in, then drive away with you passed out in the passenger seat, then... yes.’
‘THAT’S KIDNAPPING.’
And while we’re on the subject, care to explain exactly how he managed to do all that without you waking, Dan? Are you really that heavy of a sleeper?
Frankie sighed. ‘See? This is why I didn’t tell you, Dan. I knew you’d get mad. Look how mad you are.’
‘YOU FUCKING KIDNAPPED ME.’
‘I did not kidnap you. Jeez, you’re so dramatic.’ He nodded through the windshield. ‘Besides, we’re almost there.’
I followed his gaze.
It was some dirt road. I saw trees. A collection of collapsed wood-pieces that looked like somebody’s poor attempt at a perimeter fence. All covered under a blanket of inch-thick snow.
I tilted my head to look at him, incredulity turning all the skin on my face lax. ‘You didn’t...’ I said.
But he had. He really, really had.
He nodded. ‘You’re damn right I did, mister. Someone’s got to pull you out of this slump you’re in. You can’t hold on to anger, Dan. Holding onto anger is like holding onto a hot coal—the only one who gets burned is you.’
‘Did you just quote Ghandi at me?’
‘Face it, Dan. You’re on the edge. You’re treading water. Sooner or later you’re going to have to let somebody in. And seeing as you really don’t have any other friends, that somebody’s going to be me.’
‘I have other friends,’ I said.
‘Oh really? Name one friend you have besides me.’
‘I have... Doug.’
‘The racist from downstairs?’
Doug was the guy from the apartment below mine. Doug was a supervillain. Or maybe not, but he had an Eastern European accent, and really what other job opportunities are there in America for somebody with that kind of handicap? He was a tall, wiry man with liver spots and sagging skin, and he always seemed to be wearing a robe, regardless of what time of day it was. He was like a poor man’s Hugh Hefner.
He was also super racist.
I nodded. ‘We’re very close.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s his cat’s name?’
I thought it over. ‘Doug Junior?’
‘He doesn’t have a cat, Dan.’
Balls.
‘And besides, if he did have a cat, he most definitely would have eaten it by now.’
Because all Eastern Europeans are pet-eaters, apparently...
The Accord’s headlights arced suddenly to the right as we turned onto yet another country lane, this one narrower, and even less maintained than the one we had just left. I saw fresh tyre tracks in the snow up ahead. From the looks of them, more than one pair. Above our heads, branches reached for us in the growing dark, their gnarled limbs beckoning to us like the crooked, skeletal fingers of Death himself. Needless to say, it was spooky as hell.
Slumping into the passenger seat, I let out a groan.
Great. Trust Frankie to try and cure my depression by taking me to the one place in the world I’d least like to go. Goddamnit.
When we finally emerged at Lake Fairburn, full-dark had fallen.
For reasons that have never been made clear to me, Lake Fairburn has always been a magnet for teenagers. I suspected a lot of the reason was due to its seclusion. You had to really want to come to Lake Fairburn in order to drive all that way through miles upon miles of treacherous, unkempt country road—not that this stopped the teenagers, of course, who took it all in their stride like the relentless, sex-hungry zit-demons they were. Every once in a while the cops would swing by, pay Lake Fairburn a visit, break up whatever nefarious activities the teenagers currently hanging out there happened to be engaging in. Mostly, though, they left it alone.
I spotted the first of the group, moving awkwardly by the back of an open-bed truck, in a fashion the more cultured amongst us might interpret as dancing. She was a young girl; probably seventeen or eighteen, with curly golden hair, not unlike Abby’s. Despite the bitter cold that held the evening, she wore very little in the way of clothing. Just short-shorts and a pink sleeveless tee, cut raggedly to just above her belly button, like she’d suddenly needed to dress a wound, but had nothing else with which to do so.
She must have seen the approach of our headlights, because she suddenly stopped dancing. She turned back to some place I couldn’t see and raised her hands to her mouth.
‘Hey, Craig, they’re here! Those guys are here!’
We pulled up close, and she shakily made her way over to greet us, the faint sound of some generic pop song or another trailing closely after her.
She was actually way younger than I’d initially assumed. Probably closer to sixteen, than twenty. As she stepped up to the driver’s side, I noticed suddenly how smooth and toned her stomach was, then made myself look away, because noticing that felt wrong.
‘Hey, you’re those guys, right? The alien dudes?’
Alien dudes. Christ.
She was very drunk. Her mascara was smeared, and there was spittle forming in frothy clumps on either side of her mouth. Her hair hung tousled over to one side, and one eyelid seemed determined to close itself, leaving her half-lidded and looking more than a little sunshine-bus material. There was something rabid about her.
‘That’s us,’ said Frankie, opening his mouth before I had chance to object. He looked around questioningly. ‘Where is it?’
‘In Beaner’s truck. This way.’
Beaner?
We stepped out of the car and followed her across the snow towards the waiting cluster of vehicles. I’d never been to Lake Fairburn at this time of year before. To my left, the lake’s frozen surface lay white and still, like the cataract on some felled giant’s eyeball. Above us, stars shone fierce and bright like an endless procession of curious, unblinking eyes. It was pretty, in an irrelevant sort of way.
We stepped up to a gaggle of young men and women, each dressed in what looked to be increasing layers of nudity, crouched around a fire comprised of what I thought was a combination of old pallets and couch-parts. Another thing you should know about Lake Fairburn: it’s a dump. Not literally. You weren’t supposed to dump shit here, or anything. Regardless, over the years, Lake Fairburn had become the go-to place whenever you had a dresser or couch or any other unwanted household item to get rid of, and because of this there was always plenty of shit on-hand for anybody so inclined to make a fire out of.
As we approached, a man stepped forward from the group. Tall guy. Skinny. Holes in his ears like the ones people always get when they’ve decided they want to become rock stars, or homeless. Like the others, he was mostly naked—spare, thankfully, for a pair of trendy sports-pants, of whose brand name I was unfamiliar, and a beanie hat approximately three sizes too big for him.
I almost burst out laughing.
Yup—this was Beaner, all right.
‘Yo-yo, Frankenstein! My man!’ said Beaner, stepping up to Frankie, whom he then promptly embraced in a fierce but totally non-gay man-hug. They shook—one of those elaborate, complicated handshakes, like the ones frat members and cult leaders are always using to signify their mutual love and respect for one another. Frankie has always been way cooler than I am. I stood there like a sore thumb, pretending to be wat
ching the fire, wondering if this “Beaner” was going to try to hug me, too, if handshakes were something you could just up and learn on the fly, even without any formal training.
‘Been a long time, Craig,’ said Frankie, stepping back. He gestured at me with a thumb. ‘This here’s my buddy, Dan.’
Beaner turned to face me, seeming to notice my presence there for the very first time. He put his hands on my shoulders and stared hard into my eyes. To say it made me uncomfortable, would have been an understatement. ‘Welcome, Dan. Any friend of Frankie’s is a friend of mine.’
Uhh, thanks?
‘Though I should mention I go by Beaner, now.’ He pointed to his hat, like it wasn’t already glaringly obvious. ‘But never mind all that. You fellas have come to see something, ain’t ya? Come on—it’s this way.’
We let him lead us over to one of the several vehicles parked behind us in a rough horseshoe. As we walked, I took in all the cases of beer, the strewn cans lying everywhere and—holy shit, is that a keg? Man, teenagers today fucking party.
We came to a stop beside another pick-up truck, not unlike the one we had seen upon first arriving. In the bed lay a lump of something small and round-shaped, wrapped loosely in a dirty beach towel.
Before I could so much as open my mouth to inquire about it, Beaner grabbed the beach towel by one corner and heaved.
‘Voila!’
It was a rock—though, granted, not like any rock I had ever seen before. About the size of a basketball, maybe a bit bigger. A spider-web of cracks ran through it from top to bottom, and looking into them I could see what looked like a very faint, yet unmistakable reddish glow. On one side, barely visible in the poor light, was a marking—like a hieroglyph. For no obvious reason I could think of, I was reminded of those signs they always have on the fences at power stations: WARNING. DANGER OF DEATH. KEEP AWAY—which, looking back now, is exactly what it was.
Beaner turned back to us, grinning like a Cheshire cat on smack. ‘So? What do you guys think? Is this cool, or what?’
‘It’s a rock,’ I said.
‘Not just any rock. What you’re looking at is a genuine, bona fide meteorite.’
‘You brought us here to look at a meteorite?’
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was better than an alien. But still, talk about an anticlimax.
More of Beaner’s crew had gathered around us now, each of them staring silently into the truck-bed with something like genuine awe.
When I was a kid, my Grandma Helen had taken me to see Prince perform. This had been in Atlanta. I remember standing there, in the front row, looking around at all the people’s faces standing beside me staring up at him.
The expression on their faces had been the exact same expressions I saw on the faces of Beaner’s friends now.
Look at them. They’re fucking in love with this thing.
Beaner nodded at one of the group—a short guy with dreadlocks and pockmarked skin.
‘Show him.’
Without a word, the guy leaned into the truck, picked up a crowbar I hadn’t even registered had been lying there.
Then, before I could hazard a guess as to what he was about to do—
He whacked it.
DONG.
The light from the rock intensified for a moment, then settled.
I blinked, surprised.
Huh. Well there’s something you don’t see everyday.
‘And that’s not the only thing,’ Beaner went on, as if reading my mind. ‘When we first found it, the fucking thing was singing at us.’
I looked around the group again, all those chuffed, beaming faces. Whilst I couldn’t deny the thing lying in the truck-bed before me was strange, I didn’t think it deserved that amount of reverence. Okay, so it glowed—and maybe sung occasionally, too. Whoopty-fucking-do.
I just didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
‘How did you even get this?’ I asked, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
‘Picked it up right before the army got there,’ said Beaner. ‘From Ackerman’s Field. It was just lying there, in the crater. Bobby here saw it coming down, managed to give us the heads-up. Said it looked like fireworks, only in reverse—didn’t you, Bobby?’
He gestured at a fat guy over my shoulder boasting sporadic chest-hair like mould-growth, who nodded eagerly.
I decided I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
‘I’m sorry—why are you all naked, again?’
A handful of knowing smiles from around the group.
‘This rock,’ said Beaner, who I noted was smiling hardest of all. ‘It spoke to us. Told us things. Wonderful, magical—just impossible things. About life and death, the universe. All the universes.’
‘Did it tell you to take off your clothes, too?’
Frankie threw me an elbow. ‘Don’t mind him. He’s just grouchy cause he got dumped yesterday.’
I groaned. ‘For the last time, Frankie, I didn’t get—’
Okay, so you know those moments you have sometimes where you suddenly become uniquely aware your life is about to take a drastic turn for the worse? Maybe you receive a bad diagnosis. The neighbour from across the street singles you out for an unbridled hate campaign. Perhaps your dog dies.
These are things that might happen. It’s the three or four seconds before your out-of-control semi jack-knifes into a nearby group of nun-led orphans out for their annual—and I guess, last—field trip, whereupon the realisation quickly dawns that no matter what happens next, your life will never, ever again be as it was.
Well, little did I know, but I was about to have one of these moments.
Seriously—fuck my life.
There was the sound of a woman shrieking from behind us.
It was another of Beaner’s group. Petite girl. A redhead. She had one hand pressed to her face, eyes wide and staring, the other hand outstretched, pointing at something I couldn’t yet see because of all the shoulders currently blocking my view.
Then one of the shoulders shifted, and—
I squinted.
The fuck?
It was a man—or at least, what I thought was a man. Technically speaking, he was a man. He had arms and legs and a head—all the usual telltale signs.
And yet, there was something about him that just didn’t feel right.
He was pale, for one thing. Skin like a porcelain doll’s, and equally unblemished. Maybe he was albino, or something. He wore a lush black suit, expertly fitted, and on his head sat a hat of the kind businessmen always used to wear back in the fifties when the fear of getting your hair rained on was a genuine concern. Did I mention he also had no eyebrows? Yeah.
Of all these things, however, the thing I have to admit I found most strange was the truncheon-like staff he held in his hand—which, from what I could make out, was currently busy exploding the little Vietnamese-looking guy I’d noticed earlier upon first arriving.
Vietnamese Guy squealed as the truncheon-like staff pressing up against his chest suddenly crackled.
There was a blinding flash of light. A pop like when you accidentally sit on a balloon, then have to go lie down for a little while until your nerves have recovered.
When I looked back, Vietnamese Guy had vanished. All that remained of him now was a twelve-foot-diameter ring of blood and viscera in the place where he had until only seconds ago been standing, staining the ground a blackish-red like the Devil’s snow-cone.
He killed Vietnamese Guy! That racist!
There was a moment of deafening silence.
Then everybody was running—Frankie and I included, for reasons I really should not have to point out.
I was a good half a dozen paces, however, before noticing Frankie was going the complete wrong way.
I should explain; Frankie has always had a problem making good decisions. I mean, shit, just look at his life choices. But that wasn’t his biggest problem. Really, his biggest problem was his curiosity. Most people
, they see a fire, they go call the fire department, or the sheriff’s office. Frankie? He’d pull up a chair and watch that thing burn—just on the off-chance something unexpected and amazing should happen.
So it should come as no surprise then when I tell you that Frankie did not split for the treeline, as he so obviously should have—like the rest of us were doing. Instead he ran towards the well-dressed albino man, shouting random expletives, and informing him—in increasingly vivid detail—exactly how he would soon be dining on the flesh of his own pasty nut-sack.
‘Frankie! What are you—?’
He reached into his pockets, pulled out what I for one crazy moment thought was snow, but that I realised all too late was not.
‘SURPRISE, DICK-BAG!’ he cried as he launched the handful of salt—my salt, from my kitchen—directly into Albino Man’s face.
He waited for him to melt.
He waited some more.
After a few seconds and no melting, he turned back to me. ‘He’s not melting, Dan...’
He was right. Even from as far away as I was standing, I could see Albino Man’s face was noticeably un-melted. Hell, it wasn’t even singed.
(I should also mention there was a good reason we thought salt would melt him. Yeah, as it turns out, the Phonies aren’t the biggest fans of salt. It kind of melts right though them. Yeah—I know. Hey, I didn’t make the rules, okay?)
Albino Man stood there motionless a moment, salt dripping from his face and shoulders like dandruff.
He raised the truncheon-thing.
‘Run!’ I cried.
But Frankie was already moving. Across the snow, through the network of parked cars and beer kegs.
I caught up with him moments later next to a burned-out old Ford and crouched low.
‘Did you fucking see that?’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘Guy just took a saltshaker’s worth to the face, and he didn’t melt even a little.’
‘I saw it.’
‘Do you think they’re—?’ He shifted his gaze over my shoulder and his eyes widened. ‘Dan!’
I turned.
It was the girl from before—the one who had so drunkenly greeted us upon first arriving at the lake. She was stumbling over the snow, a few feet from where we knelt, a beer in each hand, seemingly unperturbed by the fact we were currently under attack. I noticed she still didn’t have many clothes on.
Dan and Frankie and the End of Everything Page 4
