Outview (The Inner Movement)

by Legg, Brandt

  O U T V I E W

  Outview

  Published in the United States of America by The Sager Group

  Copyright © 2013 by Brandt Legg

  All rights reserved.

  Original poems attributed to Lihn written by Roanne Lewis

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9881785-4-0

  ISBN-10: 0988178540

  Cover designed by: Caitlin Legere

  Formatting by: Siori Kitajima and Ovidiu Vlad for SF AppWorks LLC

  www.TheSagerGroup.net

  www.BrandtLegg.com

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. Published in the United States of America.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Teakki and Ro

  1

  I kept running. Nine of us had sworn our lives to protect the precious artifact sewn inside my belt. Six were already dead, maybe more. Struggling for breath, I pushed through the tangled jungle toward the majestic pyramid. That’s when I heard the horses. Scanning wildly, I knew my life meant nothing unless the treasure was protected. A conquistador’s maniacal cry ripped the air. The glint of a sword flashed; my chest sliced open. I crawled a few feet toward a deep, sacred pool. Soldiers laughed as one pushed my gutted body with his heavy blade. He teased me to the edge of the limestone cliff, then shoved its point through. Smiling, I fell ninety feet before plunging into the water.

  A car horn startled me. The taste of blood still filled my mouth, my body screamed in pain. I was losing my mind. What the hell was going on? “My name is Nathan Ryder. I’m sixteen. I’m in eleventh grade. This is Ashland Oregon. It’s Friday, September 12th . . . ” I repeated the mantra until the tragic scene in that ancient Mayan pool receded and I was fully back in the present. I had lived through at least a hundred deaths since the “Outviews” began a year ago.

  I strained to get up off my bedroom floor, a burning ache in my chest. I was surprised to be already dressed for school. Outviews weren’t mere dreams, as their torment and physical impact could last for days. The car horn blared again. Kyle, my best friend, was waiting in the driveway. I dashed out of the house.

  “Man, you look like hell. What happened?” He greeted me with a concerned look as I climbed into his old Subaru Outback. Kyle was almost two years older than me, but we’d been in the same grade since he’d arrived from Vietnam. Back then, his English was pretty bad. When the other kids were either ignoring or making fun of him, I asked if I could take a picture of the incredibly elaborate ancient city he was sketching. The drawing was so realistic you’d swear it was a photograph. He wanted me to wait until it was finished, which took another couple of days. We’d been friends ever since.

  “Rough night.” I riffled through the CDs he kept in a shoebox. “Thich Nhat Hanh, Einstein’s Theories, Stephen Hawking . . . come on Kyle, don’t you have any music in here?”

  “Too much to learn, no time for music, except maybe Mozart.”

  “Kyle’s the only teenager I know without any music on his iPod,” his cousin, Linh, my other best friend, said from the backseat. “Why was it another rough night?”

  I turned around and looked at her. She was a grade behind us and didn’t look as Asian as Kyle because her father was Irish, but there was an exotic beauty that disarmed me. Her name meant “gentle spirit” in Vietnamese, which was fitting. Her presence made me feel grounded, and during these tumultuous times, being with her was addicting.

  “Just couldn’t sleep.” Normally, I told them everything, but the Outviews were too hard to explain, especially after what had happened to my brother, Dustin.

  2

  I struggled through the school day, but at least it was Friday. Linh and Kyle convinced me to come home with them.

  “Nate, you really do look awful.”

  “Thanks, Linh, you look great.” Her long black hair in a ponytail, a few strands dangled around her high cheekbones.

  “I’m sorry.” She put her hand on my shoulder as we were getting in Kyle’s car. “Oh, I just realized it’s your dad’s birthday.” She closed her eyes and hugged me.

  “It’s not that, really.”

  “How old would he have been?” Kyle asked as he got in the driver’s seat and slid a cigarette in his mouth. He never lit it, but whenever he drove or worked on his computer, he usually held one in his lips; he said it reminded him of his dad. We had that in common, losing our fathers. It was part of our bond.

  “Forty-seven today but-- ”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Linh said.

  “I killed him Linh. Whatever you say or think doesn’t change it.”

  “Nate, you’re the only one who believes that.”

  “Really? Ask my mom why she can hardly look at me, why she works around the clock so she doesn’t have to be around me.”

  “Your mom and dad built that restaurant together. She’s just trying to keep it going.”

  “Linh, I know you like my mom, but let’s get real. The Station is one of the most successful restaurants in town.”

  “How would you know? You never even let us go,” Kyle said. “Have you even been back in the four years since the funeral?” He shot me one of his stern looks, peering over his mirrored shades. His mop of coal-black hair, shaggy and unkempt, combined with the cigarette to give him a tough guy image.

  “What is this, gang up on Nate when he’s down day? Let’s go.”

  Kyle began the short drive to his house.

  “It wasn’t like I lost just my dad. The whole family was obliterated that day.” My voice cracked. “I was only twelve, and all mom cared about was me not making a scene at her perfect funeral.”

  “She was grieving too, Nate,” Linh said.

  “She’s always been so practical and driven; get better grades, haircuts and manners.”

  “At least she makes the best brownies,” Linh said.

  “Yeah, well you eat them. I want my dad back. He was the gentle one. He was always encouraging me, more like a friend. Everyone loved him. Two hundred and twenty people jammed the restaurant for the funeral . . . and they all knew he was dead because of me.”

  “No,” Kyle said.

  “You weren’t there. The only one who understood was Dustin. Some lady said that my mother was never going to be able to handle two teenage boys on her own. She nailed that. It started right then: Mom and I got into a huge fight, in front of everyone.”

  “What about?” Linh asked.

  “I don’t even remember. Dustin swooped in and told Mom our aunt Rose was looking for her. A minute later, he and I were outside laughing. I can still see his funny dunce expression when he called the funeral another episode of The Ryder Family In Crisis reality show.” Dustin had always taken care of me like that. I smiled just talking about it.

  I tried not to think of the funeral, but that day replayed regularly in my head. It was a line that marked the end of my childhood, of my family. The ever-growing chasm between Mom and me started then. It was the last day we were allowed to see Aunt Rose, Dad’s sister. And, it began the brutal march toward the loss of Dustin. In truth, I’d been a basket case ever since the funeral. The Outviews were just th
e final piece to shove me over the edge.

  Something else happened at the funeral, something that would make going on without my dad and even the Outviews seem trivial. Of the more than two hundred guests listening to eulogies that day, two were destined to impact my life like colliding comets. One would attempt to kill me many times, and the other would try equally hard to save me . . . but I didn’t know any of that then. I was just a kid trying to get through my shock and guilt.

  3

  I was happy to escape the car once we arrived at Kyle and Linh’s house. It was a restored Victorian near the Southern Oregon University campus where his uncle was a physics professor. His aunt, a secretary at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, always got us free tickets. We’d seen every play for three seasons. I liked them, but Bà, Kyle’s grandmother, made me a little nervous. She was an old medicine woman or something, and during the Vietnam War, she took care of soldiers with herbal remedies. For the past two years, they’d been my “normal” family.

  “Nate, when my parents were killed in Vietnam by that explosion, I was twelve, like you when your father died.”

  “I know,” I said suddenly feeling selfish.

  “Everything was taken from me, too. Everything.” He looked at me across the car’s hood, pulling the cigarette from his lips. “I spent almost a year in an orphanage, before Bà and Linh’s dad got me out and brought me to America.” Lihn’s father was Kyle’s biggest hero, and he was whom Kyle named himself after once he decided his Asian name was holding him back.

  “Sorry man. I’m not a Zen master like you.” I knew he was reminding me of his story to make the point that I didn’t have it all that bad. Kyle had been holding me together for a long time, but even his great patience had an end.

  I followed him into the house. We were on the steps to the attic when Linh caught up to us, tapping my waist. “You okay?”

  I turned to face her. She stepped up so we were inches apart on the narrow staircase. “No, not even close. Are you happy I’m finally admitting it? And surprise, today is the day you get to find out how not okay I really am.” I had to tell them; the Outviews were a secret I couldn’t carry any longer.

  A harsh glance told me she was hurt but her answer came softly sweet. “Yes.” She touched my hand. The innocence of her face countered the knowing in her dark eyes. “It’s your fear making you lash out.” Linh was intuitive that way. “Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll help you. I promise.” She took two deep breaths as if coaxing me to do the same. I got one done before Kyle called to us.

  Kyle’s room was in the attic, or rather it was the attic. He and Linh’s dad had converted it into a spacious loft that occupied the entire top floor of their old house. It was one of my favorite places to hang out. Other than the dormer windows, all the available wall space was lined and stacked with thousands of books. His computer lived on a glass desk near one end, his bed at the other end. Three couches filled the middle of the space, all facing each other with a large triangular coffee table in the center. Giant posters of Hubble Space Telescope images covered the slanted ceiling above the bookcases, along with some of his more intricate drawings. I walked past his five thousand-piece all white jigsaw puzzle and the matching black one next to it. He’d been working on them for years. “When are you going to give up on these puzzles?” I asked. Each was a little more than half done. “It gives me a headache to look at them.”

  “It’s meditative. They help keep me balanced, yin and yang.” As if he was telling me this for the first time.

  I scoffed.

  “You just don’t have the patience for it,” Kyle said.

  I laughed. “Neither do you, or they would have been finished a couple of years ago.”

  “You can help any time you want.”

  As usual, Linh, Kyle and I each sat on our own sofa.

  There’d been almost no sleep in two nights while I tried to avoid Outviews. My brain was hardly working so I avoided the subject, scared of their reactions. I fell asleep in midsentence.

  Saturday, September 13

  Eleven hours later, I woke up. It was two a.m. Linh was gone, and Kyle was crashed in his bed. I stretched and stood up; a note fell to the floor. I read it by the light from his computer screen. Kyle had sent a text to my mother from my phone telling her I was sleeping over. I realized that I’d slept for all those hours without any Outviews. Sitting there in the dark, the tears flowed like they hadn’t since I was a child. I used a pillow to muffle the wails because for ten minutes I cried, curled up in a fetal position until exhausted, sleep captured me again.

  Some time later I awoke, still in darkness. The familiar sick feeling came, my eyes got heavy, and the room blurred. Not again, I begged, as the spiral and mist of an Outview started to take me back to a place I didn’t know but knew I did not want to go.

  The woods were thick with smoke and gunpowder. My faded uniform was unmistakably Union, and off in the distance canon fire boomed. Somehow I’d been separated from my company. I checked my musket and bayonet and continued toward the battle. Halfway down into a ravine I spotted a lone rebel soldier, filling his canteen in the stream, and trained my rifle.

  “Hands up, you filthy reb!”

  He turned slowly around. “My God, Henry, is that you?”

  “Kent?” I said. We’d grown up together in the mountains of Virginia but wound up on different sides. I looked around again to be sure we were alone and then shuffled toward him. “Damn, Kent, I hoped we wouldn’t meet again until after the war.”

  “Is it ever gonna end?”

  I shook my head. Suddenly there was noise above us.

  “Those are your troops,” he said, panicking.

  Through the grime and dirt were the eyes of my friend, my childhood. “Go! Get on out of here.”

  His eyes flashed silent thanks, then instantly he turned and escaped down the creek. I reached the top of the ravine and a captain’s boot kicked my face sending me rolling back down. Two fellow Union soldiers quickly retrieved me.

  “I just watched you let the enemy go. You some kind of spy, private?” the captain asked.

  “No sir.” I spit dirt, blood, a tooth.

  “You’re lying!”

  Before I could respond, a bayonet pierced my groin. Blood gushed with my agonized scream. Another soldier set a pistol to my head before the captain stopped him.

  “We don’t waste bullets on traitors.” They tied ropes around my legs and dragged me behind their horses. Underbrush, rocks and fallen branches gorged and ripped at me.

  I heard a familiar voice from somewhere else.

  “Nate, Nate, are you all right? What’s going on?” Kyle was shaking my shoulders. He had saved me again. I pushed myself up. The light was on.

  “Oh God, Kyle, you brought me back. Thanks, man,” I said, trying to find my bearings.

  “Back from where? What are you talking about?”

  “I wish I knew.” Then I realized Kyle was Henry. It didn’t make sense.

  “You’re really worrying me. You’ve been acting seriously strange,” he said, as if his stare could pull the answer out of me.

  “I need you to help me do something . . . it’s probably illegal, maybe even dangerous.”

  Kyle stood up and looked down at me, tossed a fresh cigarette in.

  “We’re friends. You know I’ll help but you need to start talking. Illegal? Dangerous? You better talk a lot.” His look showed what I already knew. He had an extreme fear of authorities. A siren could make him hyperventilate, and seeing someone in uniform would send him into cold sweats and near paralysis.

  I didn’t want to mix Kyle up in my troubles but couldn’t get out of them without him. It was all so fantastical. I was scared that telling him might harm our friendship or worse, that speaking it out loud would make the insanity real. Kyle was the smartest person I knew. He was in every advanced class our school offered, even taking a few college courses. If anyone could help me with my wild plan and figure out what was
causing me to lose my mind, it was Kyle--but only if he believed me.

  4

  Linh came in, carrying a large tray of food. She was like out of a dream, breezy and glowing. The digital clock showed it was just after six.

  “Bà and I have been cooking since five, so you better like it.”

  “What did we do to deserve this?”

  “I told her you’ve been sick and stressed. She said good food would fix you up.”

  “Is it safe to eat?” I teased.

  “Nate, don’t be mean. Bà loves you.”

  I took a few bites of Xoi Trung, sticky rice with egg. “It’s so delicious I might actually start to believe that.”

  “Talk, Nate.” Kyle grabbed a Bành Bao, a Vietnamese cake.

  The food and especially the perfect sleep had momentarily improved my outlook. Although still reluctant to reveal too much, I began with the question that had consumed me for months. “How do you really know if you’re crazy or not? I mean, if you’re crazy, are you in any kind of state to know you are?”

  “What are you talking about?” Kyle squinted his eyes.

  “I think I might be going crazy, lock-me-up-because-I’m-insane kind of crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “For at least a year I’ve had these nightmares, and they’re not your regular wake-up-heart-pounding bad dreams. They seem completely real like I’m different people all the time. It’s totally schizophrenic. And I hear voices, too.”

  “What do the voices say?”

  “Mostly they say my name, like an echoing whisper, but there’s a lot of other stuff like ‘listen’ and ‘remember.’ Usually not more than a word or two at a time.”

  “They aren’t telling you to kill anyone or yourself or anything crazy?”

  “No.”

  “Nate, you’re stressed out. You think you killed your dad. I mean hearing things, nightmares, not sleeping, and what happened to Dustin . . . why don’t you go talk to someone, a counselor?”