Left behind on the platform as if blown in on the wind, an angel bathed in the orange glow of the new day, her eyes dreamy and introspective as she stood there, acknowledging no one and nothing. And in the Saloon’s unique perversity, the angel wore a straitjacket instead of wings.
Then, like a marionette whose strings are suddenly cut, she collapsed.
Drawing on movies, Jack scooped her up as best he could, cradling her in his arms and carrying her inside. He laid her down upon the bench, chance more than design that he didn’t knock her head against the doorframe or trip on the steps. He was not a man of spontaneous action, but planning, planning, and still more planning. It was no real surprise to him that Jools left; the only surprise was that she stayed as long as she did.
Jack rocked back on his heels, trying to decide what to do next. She was young, this Sanity’s Edge angel, with a sweet face and wan features, sand-colored hair disheveled and matted with sweat, dressed only in hospital-issue pajamas and a straitjacket. She didn’t appear injured, her breathing low and soft like someone asleep. He thought he should free her. It seemed like a good idea—provided she wasn’t a psychopath determined to tear out his liver and eat it with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti. But staring at her, tracing the curve of her neck, the soft lines of her face, he knew that wasn’t the case. She looked just the smallest bit fragile, lying there in the orange shadows of dawn, just another victim lost on this side of madness.
He fished his pocketknife from his jeans. It was small, but the blade was extremely sharp. With a little effort, he was fairly certain it would saw through the thick canvas of the straitjacket. So he rolled her on her side, mindful not to let her head hit the armrest, and discovered something about straitjackets that he had never realized before: they were easier to get into than out of, the back opening with a series of buckles.
* * *
Ellen awoke to the mechanical buzz of broken machinery, the sound like a swarm of bees trapped in a long, steel shaft. She cracked an eye to a room of white walls stained with orange light. Across from her, a magazine rack. Above that, a train schedule. The rude buzzing was accompanied by a flickering light from a candy machine not a foot away from her head, something inside the machine on the verge of breaking down, the light burbling in intense spasms.
This was not the hospital room she remembered with its canvas surface reeking of the captured stink of lunatics and retards squealing inanities while their bladders emptied into the soft padding. She was on a wooden park bench in a waiting room.
But how did I get to a place with a park bench?
Her mouth felt dry and pasty, eyes glued with a sticky crust that only came after an abnormally long sleep, or riding down a really bad trip. But since she appeared to be on a park bench in a train station waiting room and not the mental ward, she must still be aboard the Dreamline; not riding down the high or finishing up the trip, but still on board. She had recollections of a strange porter and a train with an ear-splitting whistle, a Beatles song stuck in her head, and a doctor—his name escaped her; probably didn’t matter anyway—telling her things, procedures they would perform, things they would do. The details escaped her like a fading dream; maybe for the better.
But all real, distinctive and clear; as real as right now seemed real.
The hospital—staffed by imbeciles and stinking of insanity—had to be real. She knew that. If there was one thing she was good at, it was distinguishing realities, knowing which was real and which was not. And this station was not. There was no rational purpose or explanation for it. Probably just LSD and mushroom derivatives, nothing more. Alice was always eating or drinking something.
But there was no denying that this place felt real, looked real, sounded real. Her senses could be fooled—it had happened before—but never like this.
Maybe this is something new, a more complete break with reality than ever before? Maybe this is what happens when you trip on the Dreamline one too many times? Maybe you trip without dropping or shooting up? Maybe you can’t even help yourself? Maybe you trip and don’t come back? Not ever.
Maybe?
On the floor, reaching from an enormous hole gnawed in the wallboards, something completely out of place with reality: a monster’s tail,
Maybe?
Oh God!
Fear freed her eyes from the bleary plague of sleep as she stared at the monstrous appendage, scales liquid-smooth and glistening, forked with an irregular split that bristled with straggled tufts of fur like witch grass. It was the leftover trimmings of some separate reality, a discarded prop to an unfinished tale, the surreal scraps of a lost metaphor.
Not real, she insisted.
A ripple surged through the thickly muscled fragment of unreality, a flexing of that which did not exist … but wanted to.
Please, don’t be real, she thought furiously. Not this.
The tail flicked gently back and forth, an angry warning or maybe just the unconscious tremors of a monster in the throes of dream; a dream within a dream of a nightmare that she could not end.
The drone of the candy machine grew louder, a mechanical grinding like teeth gnawing into the base of her skull. She squeezed her eyes so tightly they ached, part of the ritual, part of the game. She used to play the game as a child—back when it wasn’t really playing. You made the monsters go away by hiding under the covers, by closing your eyes very, very tight, holding your breath and waiting for them to disappear. If you couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see you, couldn’t find you, couldn’t hurt you. That was the rule. That was the point of the ritual. Shut it out; make it go away.
But the tail didn’t go away. If anything, it was closer, the room shrinking, squeezing the tail out further and further from the hole, crowding it towards her, the irritated twitch growing more restless, inescapable.
It’s just a dream! It’s not real! That’s why you’re in a little train station instead of the hospital, why you’re not wearing the straitjacket. You’re dreaming. Just wake up and everything will be okay. Just wake up. Just wake—
The tips of the tail coiled at the leg of the bench, scales scraping like shark skin against the floor, whispering upon the iron, coming for her.
It’s not working. Nothing’s working! Just go away! You’re not real. Hands clamped over her ears, knees curled to her chest, reduced to a desperate fetal ball, her brain screaming: Go away! Go away!
“Not real!”
* * *
Jack turned the corner of the waiting room with a glass of water and a cup of coffee just as his first charge was losing her mind.
“Not real.”
“What?” he asked.
“Monster,” the girl pleaded from the bench, her entire body crushed into a frightened, shaking ball. “Make it go away.”
Jack looked about the empty room. “There’s nothing here.”
“It’s there,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
He stepped slowly into the room, trusting her warning even if he didn’t know why, and set both drinks down on the floor. He looked back at the chewed hole in the wall behind him, empty and half-revealed in the slanted light of dawn: exposed planks and studs, some evidence of dust, but otherwise nothing.
But once, maybe. Yes, he could allow that once there might have been something. Reality at the Sanity’s Edge had a way of being … slippery.
“It’s gone now,” he said. “There’s nothing there anymore.”
She opened her eyes, stray tears running down the side of her face, and tried to stare past him to the empty hole beyond.
“See,” he said. “Nothing. Just you and me.”
She stared at the empty hole in the wall suspiciously, the mix of mescaline and Demerol keeping her from waking up, from fighting this unreality. Lenny’s idiot fucking dream cocktail. “When I get my hands on Lenny, I’m gonna kill him.”
You already did that.
“What?” she jerked sharply.
“I said, who’s that?” Jack aske
d.
“No one important.”
An awkward silence settled between them, one Jack felt compelled to fill. “I brought you something to drink. I didn’t know what you would want, so I brought you a glass of water and cup of coffee. The coffee’s black. I can get you some cream and sugar if you want, though.”
The young woman continued to blink and fixate upon the empty hole. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jack,” he answered, then added, “Jack Lantirn. I arrived yesterday.”
She pushed herself up to a sitting position, staring around bleary-eyed, absorbing the strange surroundings of the saloon’s waiting room with a stony expression. “Could I have some water?” He placed the cup into her hand and she sipped at it. “I don’t suppose you have a sweatshirt or something?”
“There’s a blanket here if you’re cold,” he said, and tried to drape it over her shoulders. She adjusted it, holding the edges together, and continued sipping the water.
Jack allowed another awkward moment of silence to pass before asking, “What’s your name?”
The question seemed to surprise her. “Ellen.”
“Ellen, my name’s Jack,” he said before remembering he had already told her. “I guess you came here on the train, too.”
She looked at him for the first time, staring into his eyes. “I don’t know. I remember a train and a conductor, but I’m pretty sure that was a hallucination. I was in a hospital in a straitjacket. That I remember. And now I’m on a park bench in a train station with monsters hiding in the walls; probably a side-effect of the mescaline. Unless I’m really crazy this time.”
“You’re not crazy,” Jack said, his answer a little more forceful than he expected. “A train dropped you off on the platform just a couple minutes ago. I brought you inside and took the straitjacket off of you, then went to get you some water. But this isn’t a dream, and you’re not crazy.” He offered her a smile. “Two people can’t share the same delusion.”
“They can if one of them isn’t real,” she answered.
Jack frowned. “I guess I can’t argue with that. So who made who?”
She looked away, either unable to answer or unwilling to argue with someone she was half-convinced might be a product of her imagination. How could he prove this world was real when she was convinced that everything in it, him included, wasn’t?
“I could show you around,” he offered. “Maybe that’ll help.”
She shrugged indifferently and stood up, blanket pulled up on her shoulders, the cup of water held in both hands like a chalice. Jack took the coffee and led her out of the waiting room. “It’s called the Sanity’s Edge Saloon,” he explained. “I’m sort of the caretaker, I guess. But I just got here yesterday and no one has been around to tell me what to do.” He decided not to tell her about the phone call from the Writer yet—the dead Writer—or the way things seemed to happen by magic; it wouldn’t help dissuade her argument about neither of them being crazy or imaginary. “So I guess you shouldn’t expect a lot of answers from me.”
“They gave you a job taking care of this place, but you don’t know anything about it?” she asked dubiously. “Who’s your employer?”
“I met him a couple days ago, and he made me a really great offer. I didn’t have a whole lot else going for me, so I agreed. He was supposed to be here to show me around, tell me what to do, but …” He spread his hands as if to say, these things happen. What can you do? But then he wondered, do these things really happen? “Anyway, this is the main room for lack of a better term. There’s a refrigerator behind the bar with some food, and there’s probably some on the shelves, too. And there’s always the candy machine back there—”
“I don’t want to go back there,” she interrupted.
Jack nodded uncertainly. “Okay. Well there’s a Pepsi machine outside on the porch.”
“Any chance I can find some clothes? Maybe that fit a little better than these?” she asked.
“Uhm, maybe. I guess we can take a look upstairs.”
“Would you mind?”
He shrugged, leading the way to the second floor. He took a mouthful of coffee as he walked. He would have preferred cream and sugar, but was afraid to ask her to wait while he got some, and carrying it occupied his hands and gave him an excuse to stop speaking before he poured out a stream of nervous babble in an endeavor to maintain a lopsided conversation. She was pretty, about his age if he was to guess, and had quickly managed to get under his skin. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. There was something familiar about her, too; something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“So what happened here?” she asked, looking in the bathroom at the half-completed walls, the missing ceiling, absent floor tiles.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It was like that when I got here.”
“There’s a lock on the door, but half the walls are gone. Kind of contradictory.”
“A lot of things here seem to be.” He crossed the tiles to the other end of the bathroom, and she followed, looking out over the vast wasteland that stretched away into forever. “I don’t think privacy will be a problem, though.”
Ellen shaded her eyes and stared out into the distance before nodding and retreating back into the hallway after Jack. “I don’t suppose I could get some of that coffee?” she asked as they walked into the large bedroom.
Jack looked down quickly at the half-empty cup. “I started drinking from this one already,” he said apologetically. “I can get you a fresh cup if you’d like.”
“That one’s fine,” she said, gesturing absently to his. “If it’s alright?”
He shook his head, yes, and passed her the coffee, taking the empty glass in exchange. There was something about her acceptance of the entire situation that intrigued him. Or maybe it was simply her company in a very lonely place. “There might be some clothes in the closet,” he suggested.
Jack wasn’t sure what she would find or whether it would even fit, but after a few minutes digging through the closet on hands and knees, Ellen reappeared with a gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and a pair of cheap tennis shoes. She was holding one of the sneakers against the bottom of her foot, sighting it for fit. “Is it all right if I borrow these?” she asked.
“Sure.” It wasn’t as if anything she found would have fit him. It wasn’t even his.
“Good.” She started to pull the drawstrings on the pajama pants then looked up at him self-consciously, as if realizing for the first time that he was there. “Uh, would you mind turning around?”
Embarrassed, he nodded and turned away, dutifully staring out the open French doors. But the saloon’s silence, disturbed only by the arrhythmic ticking of the clock, left him only the sounds behind him, the sound like shifting feet on hardwood, the maddening rustle and slip of fabric that intimated what Ellen was doing. He could not help but imagine, and felt himself blush for it.
“You can turn around now, Jack,” she said.
For clothes scavenged from what was probably the hamper of a disappeared and completely deranged writer—who subsequently claimed to be deceased—they were an astonishingly good fit. The sweatshirt was baggy on her, the jeans a little loose, but she seemed comfortable enough in them. She was sitting on the floor tying her shoes, which appeared to fit perfectly.
“You look nice,” he said, then wished he hadn’t; it was a stupid thing to say.
But Ellen only shrugged indifferently, her attention shifting to a bookshelf by the closet and its array of curios. “Is that a real saber-toothed tiger skull?”
He followed her gaze, realizing he had never paid much attention to it. When he arrived, he had been more interested in the room at the top, the room where he could write. He had never really gotten around to exploring much of the rest of the saloon. “I don’t know.” Then, against his better judgment, he said, “You know, for someone so insistent that this isn’t real, you’re certainly acting like this is real.”
She seemed nonplussed. “How els
e am I supposed to act?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think—
(that you’d be embarrassed about changing your clothes in front of someone you believe is nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination)
—you would be thirsty or cold or anything. You know; if it’s just a dream.”
“You have to treat dreams the same as reality, Jack. You never know when a dream will end and a hallucination will begin.”
“You have a lot of experience with those?”
“Yeah,” she remarked, still seemingly uninterested. “You don’t act like most of my hallucinations.”
“I’m not a hallucination!” he said, realizing it sounded more angry than intended. “Sorry. This place is real. I’m real. This isn’t a dream you’re simply going to wake up from. You have to accept that?”
“Why?”
“Because if this was a dream, I’d have answers to your questions. Instead, I know no more than you do. And if this really is a hallucination, then you’re probably still in a padded room talking with imaginary people while an intern shaves circles in your scalp where the electrodes will go. And you still wouldn’t need a change of clothes because you’re not really here.”
Ellen said nothing, her gaze focusing on some point a million miles away, haunted. And Jack remembered belatedly that she arrived wearing a straitjacket and scrubs, and mentioned a hospital. Maybe this place was a reprieve for her, the reality behind her worse than he could imagine. And maybe—hopefully not, but maybe—his remark hit too close to home.
“I was wrong, Jack,” Ellen said abruptly, her voice hardening. “You are exactly like all of my other hallucinations. You’re an asshole.”
They stared at each other across the empty space, each measuring the hurt they had inflicted upon the other. Finally, Jack turned away. “Just forget it,” he grumbled.
He started up the spiral stair. “I’ll be up here trying to write if you need me. There’s food behind the bar and in the waiting room if you’re hungry. Help yourself to whatever you like. I don’t think the monster you saw earlier will bother you.”
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 14
