And the entire room smelled like Christmas. It was the only way to describe it, a seasonal aroma of spices like nutmeg, gingerbread and cinnamon, of peppermint and cloves. But that nostalgic air was infused with the unmistakable odors of coffeehouse espresso, sweat, and the dust from a library of old books newly disturbed. The aromas were so pungent she could almost see them, filmy wisps of vapor hugging to the edges of the room like wary ghosts.
Jack lay on the floor, curled in exhausted sleep, hands balled into tight, agonized fists. He looked pale and worn, a dark crust of long-dried blood under his nose and smeared on his clenched hands. His hair stood every which way, and even as he slept, she saw him flinch with small spasms of unrelenting energy, the startled expression upon his sleeping face of someone caught too deep in a dream to escape on his own.
Behind her, Nail snored loudly. Looking at the gargoyle, she saw his eyes crack open, black and watchful. Then they closed again, the gargoyle returning to his slumber.
On Jack’s desk, a litter of pages, difficult to read, the print size and fonts changing without purpose, painful to the eyes, echoes of the unbalanced mind behind their existence, mad creations of a mad god. The paper migrated towards an old pneumatic tube bolted to the wall near Jack’s printer, an ooze of loose leaves that shuffled into the mouth of the tube. A single page hung suspended from the open lip, flapping gently, unable to seal the vacuum and force itself down. She did not remember the pneumatic tube, did not remember the oddly artistic folds of metal surrounding the opening, suggestive of something less mechanical than biological, almost … sexual.
On the Jabberwock’s screen, a single ticket rendered in gold, the image unimaginatively labeled, TICKET. At the bottom of the screen, a singular message: “Press ENTER to send.”
Scattered around the desk was the evidence of Jack’s labors: a paper landscape littered with coffee cups, most empty. One lay on its side, broken. Still another held the remains of some slippery substance, a kind of fungus or slick of pond scum. Pages marked with dried or drying coffee stains, with ruddy splats that were definitely not coffee (too red), blops of curdling cream, crystals of granulated sugar, the dusty remnants of a melange of spices, the origin or combination impossible to know.
“What have you been doing, Jack?” she wondered softly.
On one side of the desk, an island of order in the chaotic sea of pages and coffee debris, a thin, blue binder, a Post-it on the cover reading The Last Ticket Home. Ellen cautiously flipped it open, flitting through several pages. Unlike the others, it was perfectly sensible, no convoluted print, no wild ramblings, no misspellings or incoherent lines. Ellen stopped on a passage, squinting in the dim light.
“Has it ever occurred to you that this is all just a delusion?” she asked. “Maybe you’re a desk clerk at a Travel Lodge who’s forgotten his prescription, the one you take to control your manic-schizophrenia. And now you’re hacking out a bad novel on an old Smith-Corona, jumped up on coffee and LSD and the mad visions in your head.”
“I’ve considered it,” he remarked dryly. “The question is, have you? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that you’re the one who’s trapped within your own head, and me and all the others here, we’re all just delusional flights of your own twisted fancy while you wait for some doctor to finish taping electrodes to your temples so he can fry you up like an egg?”
“Yes.” It was a defiant reply, but without the conviction of truth.
“Why would we both have a delusion of another delusional person?” he asked rhetorically, as if that somehow proved his point. “This has to be real: us, this place, all of it. We just spent our lives never realizing or wanting to admit that this side of reality existed.”
“You’re not proving this reality; you’re simply justifying your own lunacy. The argument doesn’t hold.”
The notebook was snatched from her hands.
“You’re not supposed to read this,” Jack growled, exhaustion draining his conviction. “It’s not… it’s not ready yet.”
She felt her reply—apology, complaint, explanation, whatever—die in her throat, and could only stare at him, amazed and a little frightened.
Jack swayed unsteadily, the blue notebook gripped in one hand, the other locked tight, trying and failing to unclench. They were swollen and red, the muscles in his hands and wrists cable-taut, the fingernails chipped and split, bleeding. His eyes were unfocused; red holes underlined with dark circles, his face holding the gaunt, empty expression of exhaustion and chemical dependency. One of his eyes was abraded, the cornea gone bright red and bloody. The other was pale, its color—his eyes were green … weren’t they? —washed out, drained. She wasn’t entirely sure he recognized her. His stare suggested he might still be half in the dream-state. A shiver coursed through her, the air suddenly and noticeably cold.
“Jack?” she said, trying not to startle him. He looked like a sleepwalker, or maybe a strung-out Dreamline rider. Did he know what world he was in? Did he care? “Jack, it’s me, Ellen.”
Eyes blinked, tried to focus, failed.
“Jack, are you all right?” It was a silly question because the answer was obvious. He was exhausted, stretched to his limit, a frayed cord over a chasm in danger of snapping at any minute, the tattered ends left to drift uselessly out of sight. “Let me help you.”
She didn’t wait for his reply, but put her arm around his waist, guiding him to his chair. His skin felt clammy, slick with sweat suffused with the chemicals and concoctions he was ingesting, his entire body saturated, junk spilling out through his pores. No rancid smell like someone asleep in their own waste, rank with unshowered opium sweat. She knew what that smelled like, had woken up next to it in that time before, that time that slipped further and further away until it seemed inconceivable now. Jack’s smell was different, more ancient, more like … Oversight.
He placed the blue notebook on the desk, hand overtop it. Behind them, Nail turned alert.
“Help me put these pages into that,” Jack said, some of the coherency returning to his expression as he gestured limply towards the pneumatic tube. “All accept what’s in the blue notebook. I’m not … it’s not ready.”
Ellen obediently started collecting the sheets, trying to arrange them, but Jack only shook his head. “Just stuff them in,” he said. “That’s all that matters. All it needs.” By way of example, he picked up a double-handful of pages and jammed them into the message tube. The papers were immediately sucked away.
He turned his attention to the screen, leaving Ellen to finish clearing up the pages on his desk while Nail offered a pile that, in Jack’s urgency, had drifted unbidden to the floor. Jack peered at the screen, leaning close then pulling back as if trying to manually focus his eyes; as if he could see something more than the image of the golden ticket displayed on the screen. Finally he nodded, satisfied.
As the last of the pages disappeared with a whispery soosh, Jack pressed ENTER.
* * *
Gusman Kreiger waited, the lightning rod resting across his knees. To his left, Rebreather stood in silence, a gray statue jutting from the desert, as inexplicable as the lonely stone gods of Rapa Nui, later called Easter Island.
Their explanation was more sinister than anyone guessed, but it was not a story he was fond of retelling; past indiscretions made him maudlin.
To his right, Reginald Hyde sat like a lump on the sand; the corpulent hedonist dozed fitfully, once-jovial features now haggard and worn, the pleasant rolls of flab now hanging weights, stones about the fat man’s neck.
The Caretaker was up to something. He had shut Lovebone out, dreaming dreams of his own that shielded him and the others from Lovebone’s manipulations. Hyde had not slept well since, afraid of something that lay inside of his mind—or the Caretaker’s, take your pick. Only this morning had Hyde seemed to find some sort of inner peace, falling into a fitful doze after two days of unrest.
That bothered Gusman Kreiger. It bothered him even more then when the Ca
retaker embarked upon his newest endeavor two mornings before, the morning he killed the Dust Eater. Something had changed, and Kreiger did not know what. Worse, there was no way he could find out. The accursed barrier and the twice-accursed Guardian kept him and his away. Oversight, though inside, was a non-factor; a gamble tried and lost.
When the stakes are all or nothing, you roll the dice.
He chewed ruefully upon the inside of his cheek. The loss of the Dust Easter he could accept. But the loss of Oversight might cost him more than he could afford.
Water under the bridge, spilled milk; call it how you like.
And now the Caretaker had changed tacks again, leaving Kreiger with another mystery; too many for his liking, but he had come too far, the roads back now closed to him, his options narrowing. He had hoped otherwise, but always knew it would come to blood.
The whistle from across the chasm of madness cut through Kreiger’s mood like a blade, and for one horrified moment, he saw himself as a pig stretched out for a heaping bucket of slops only to feel the farmer’s knife across his throat, feel the hot splash of his own life bursting across his neck and face.
The train’s banshee wail startled Hyde from his sleep with an almost girlish squeal. Rebreather turned his head to the chasm, face inclined in a kind of wonder.
The trains were coming!
Kreiger was on his feet, eyes wide, staring at the tracks, blackened reflections of the indigo sky. He turned to the others and saw only vacant expressions, and cast an accusatory glare at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon and the hateful creature sheltered therein.
The trains were coming!
In a rage, Kreiger propelled himself towards the Nexus, hands curled into claws, face twisted into a snarl of bestial hatred. “Caretaker!”
The Cast Out slammed headlong into the barrier, air shimmering as if he was a pebble against a sunlit pool, insignificant and small. Where his hands contacted the silver air, the skin immediately darkened, blistered, smoked.
It was Rebreather who saved him, tearing him away from the barrier, Kreiger’s palms raw and bloodied, dripping upon the thirsty Wasteland dust. And in that brief moment, he nearly killed the mad giant, glaring at the unreadable menace of the tall Cast Out’s faceless mask, glass-covered eyes, canvas-concealed features. Instead, he drew strength from Rebreather’s stoicism, his unwavering faith.
This wasn’t over.
The horrific scream of the great lunatic engines pounded the desperate silence of the Wasteland again, and behind him, Papa Lovebone started to cry, the bone priest hanging his head and blubbering, a spoiled child who has finally realized that life is about disappointment.
“Stop that,” Kreiger ordered, picking up the fallen staff, blood slick against the coarse metal.
Again the trains whistled, a noise like nails raking a chalkboard. Hyde ignored the order, had perhaps not even heard it, shuddering sobs shaking the wide expanse of his hairless, tattooed flesh, a quivering echoed by the Wasteland’s bone white surface as the thundering trains neared, and the region shook at their coming.
Three strides ate the distance between Kreiger and Lovebone, and he struck the bone priest hard across the cheek. “I said, STOP THAT!”
Hyde looked up sharply, wounded but obedient.
“We are not done yet. Five trains or none of them mean a thing. If he cannot call all five, then the place can still be ours. And I will fight to the last breath to make it so! If you are not with me, tell me now, and I will make an offering to God of the fatted calf that Rebreather and I may feast upon it, our last supper!”
Hyde paled slightly, seeming to gather his wits. He stood slowly, soft delicate hands wiping tears from his face. “I’m with you, Kreiger. Always.”
In the distance, the growing glint of speeding chrome and steel, the coming trains.
“We’re not done yet,” Kreiger promised.
* * *
The Saloon came awake as the first whistle broke the dawn, Jack clumping down the iron stairs, Ellen behind him, steadying him while Nail followed. Lindsay stared blearily from the bed as dawn tinged the twilight-gray to a subtler blue. The second whistle made her jump; made Ellen flinch also. Only the Caretaker and the Guardian were immune, as if it was all to be expected.
“Jack?” the little girl asked uncertainly.
“It’s okay, Lindsay,” Ellen said. “It’s time to go.”
Jack shuffled ahead, unconcerned. He was a sleepwalker, a dreamer caught in a dream, everything happening for no other reason than it was meant to, designed to. Lindsay would follow him. She had to.
Leland Quince stared from his doorway as Jack passed, the businessman already dressed, clothes wrinkled and slept in. His face haggard and dark with a two-day-old beard.
Again, the distant trains whistled their approach, and Leland wordlessly joined the procession down to the main room.
Jack went straight to the ticket booth, barely noticing Alex as he emerged from the waiting room, pulling on a T-shirt. Oversight followed, her expression different from the others; not wonder or curiosity, but resolution. Jack saw that, though he saw precious little else. He was acutely aware that he was moving on autopilot, staring as if through straws, everything on the periphery lost in shadow. But he saw Oversight, saw the pain in her eyes that she tried to hide, and he thought he understood.
The pulled-down shade of the ticket booth snapped up loudly, tickets appearing in the half-moon hole cut through the bottom of the chicken wire. Jack swept them up and turned to the others, the ones that the Writer said he should look after, take care of.
“It’s time to go,” he said woodenly, leaning against the booth as if it was the only thing keeping him standing. “These tickets will send you on your way.”
“And where is that?” asked Leland, not a baited complaint, but a simple question of no small concern.
“Where I say,” Jack answered, ignoring Leland’s scowl. He selected one of the five and passed it over to the businessman. “This one’s yours.”
Leland looked at it then back at Jack. “What does this mean? There’s nothing on this ticket about where I’m going.”
Gone was the man’s imperious tone. What remained was worry: worry that Jack would not forget, would not forgive; worry that Jack planned to exact vengeance upon him for his complicity with Kreiger, worry the tickets were Jack’s means to that revenge.
Jack ignored him. “Lindsay, this one is yours,” he said more gently, handing her the large tag of stiff, dark orange paper that was the ticket out of the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.
“Ellen.”
Ellen received her ticket with numb fingers, unable to stop looking at Jack. Did he know what he was doing, she wondered, or was he simply pushing the buttons in a desperate hope that something—some mad combination, some fated sequence—would miraculously work? Her eyes flicked down to the tickets and she saw only the phrase, “And miles to go before I sleep…” She wanted to ask the others if their tickets looked the same, if they also had some equally insensible riddle to their destiny, but she could not make her tongue move, make her mouth spit out the words.
“Alex,” Jack passed him a ticket.
The young man stared at it much as the others had, a mixture of wonder and trepidation at the strange article coming into his hand, as if it might be a pass through the gateways of heaven or hell, a talisman of unknown power.
Jack glanced at the final ticket then up at Oversight as she quietly separated herself from the rest, moving towards the bar, refusing to look at them or acknowledge them. He thought he understood, and if that was true then he had her to thank. “Oversight, this is yours.”
She turned suddenly, her face stone, her eyes wide and hard. Ellen felt the breath catch in her throat, wanted to breathe—needed to breathe! —but could not seem to make her lungs draw air. She simply stared as the last ticket was offered up to the woman from the Wasteland. She felt cold, felt herself start to shake. This can’t be, she thought, too much like a dream to be
real: standing in front of a bunch of people more strangers than friends, wearing nothing but a T-shirt—practically naked—and everything around her was horribly wrong! Wasn’t that like a dream? There was only one ticket left and it was supposed to be Jack’s! How was he supposed to get home without—?
The Saloon seemed caught in ice, in amber, in stone. No one moved. No one spoke. There were only eyes staring at the ticket Jack held out to the woman from the Wasteland and Oversight’s confusion.
“What are you doing?” Oversight asked, her voice small and broken, the plea of a child.
“I’m sending you on,” he answered then turned away, walking out through the waiting room. The door flew open violently, the glass rattling until it seemed it would break. And as Jack stood there upon the platform, swaying unsteadily, the first of the trains screamed up in front of the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.
* * *
The others joined him on the platform, standing in the shadow of the mighty chrome and silver train, its windows polished into mirrors. The door to the passenger car stood open, revealing only darkness.
“Lindsay, this one’s yours,” Jack said, slapping the metal car unsteadily.
The little girl approached the dark doorway, stopping at the threshold. “Jack?”
“Hmm?” he said dreamily.
“I don’t want to go.”
He looked down at her for a moment, her eyes innocent, and he hoped she wouldn’t cry. This was hard enough, what he was doing to them. So impossibly cruel. He couldn’t bear it if she cried.
He got down on one knee in front of her, giving her a hug. He placed his lips to her ear and whispered. “Can you keep a secret?”
She nodded into his shoulder.
“You’ll see all of them again. I promise.”
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 34
