Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “It’s a cooling station,” came the guide’s voice as she resurfaced.

  “What?” She spun to face him, struggling a bit to control her orientation. She found it difficult to stay upright, but whenever she relaxed, bubbles pushed her to the surface.

  “This building. It’s where they cool the runoff for the big pumps that heat the foundry over there. I’m Floyd, by the way.”

  “Okay, Floyd,” she said, but it was hard to stay high enough above the water to talk.

  He took her hand and led her to a shallower part where her feet easily touched the bottom. The current tried to pull her back toward the center of the room, and she stood strong, letting it wash away Pucker-lips’s murky blood. She ducked down under and ran her fingers through her hair, feeling it untangle in the weightlessness, then popped up with a sigh. It was a little quieter on this side of the room.

  “There’s a smile on you,” said Floyd. “You got a name?”

  “Loxley.”

  He repeated it to himself. “That’s really pretty. Why are you covered in blood?”

  “I killed a man.”

  “I see. It’s a might weird, you looking so happy about it.”

  She searched her heart, but she felt no sadness in what she’d done, only shock. Pucker-lips and his friends had been going to hurt her, and now they couldn’t. If she killed enough of them, they’d never be able to harm her again. “He was going to kill me, and his friend killed my best friend.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  In this peaceful place her mind felt sharper than it had been in days. Memories of the terrible event came streaming back in perfect clarity. “Split his leg open with a knife. He bled out on top of me.”

  Floyd nodded. “Okay, then.”

  “He was really surprised.”

  “I’ll bet he was. You don’t seem like the dangerous type.”

  She thought about it. He was right, she didn’t look like someone who killed people. “That made it easy to get my knife in him.”

  He took a few steps back. “You’re making me a little nervous.”

  She shrugged. “You asked.”

  “That I did.”

  “I like you okay, Floyd, but I’m glad you’re nervous around me.”

  He nodded. “So I won’t try to do anything bad to you?”

  “No,” she said. “Because it’s only fair. I’m always nervous around people. Someone else should be nervous around me.”

  He laughed, and she scowled. He grinned and swam away a few feet before turning back to say, “Don’t worry. You still make me nervous.”

  They continued to float around the pool for another hour, and she found it easy as long as she didn’t fight the current. Floyd told her how sometimes he came there with other men to go swimming. He said he was glad his friends weren’t there today, because he didn’t trust them to be nice to her. She didn’t ask what he meant. Her fingers began to wrinkle. Floyd said he had to go get something and scrambled up onto a mossy bank before exiting from a door she hadn’t noticed before.

  All alone, Loxley stood on her big toes and closed her eyes. She hovered, letting as little of her body touch the ground as possible. She focused: on the scent of wetness, on the thousands of bubbles popping under her chin and spraying her neck, on the fizz winding through her pants legs to tickle her inner thighs, on the constant crash of water. In this place, she could become nothing. She never wanted to leave, but she knew she couldn’t stay.

  Floyd came back and she saw a pile of clothes in his arms.

  “Where did you get those?” she called to him.

  He began to strip on the bank, tossing his soaking clothes aside. “The lockers are near here. Lots of clothes in there, and the locks don’t work for shit. I got you some, too. Hope you don’t mind a work suit.” Floyd’s body was hideous, but she didn’t look away. He was the second naked man she’d seen, and she wasn’t much impressed; men were flabby, weird creatures, and the penis had an unpleasant appearance. She thought back to Nora’s experience with Jack, and didn’t think much of him, either.

  “A work suit?”

  “Yeah. Foundry boys wear them. Figured it was fine for you, since you showed up in coveralls. Not exactly high fashion.”

  “I like my coveralls.”

  “Yeah, but they’re wet, and bloodstained... and it’s freezing outside. You go out there in those, you’re going to die.”

  “I don’t want to go out there at all.”

  Floyd stopped lacing up his stolen boots and looked at her. “You can’t stay here. People come around to check this place every morning, and I don’t know what those people might do if they found you.”

  She loped through the water to the mossy concrete and pulled herself out of the pool. The carpet of plant life felt cool and refreshing on her palms after the hot water. She unlatched the straps of her coveralls and yanked them down past her panties. Floyd turned away.

  “I’ll wait outside,” he mumbled.

  “Why? Cold out there.”

  “Wouldn’t be appropriate for me to watch you dress.”

  She stripped out of her skivvies and stood up to grab the gray foundry worksuit from Floyd’s pile. “I watched you get dressed. We’re not going to fuck.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  She slipped into the suit and zippered the front. He helped her into the Consortium-issue boots, which had to be the least comfortable shoes she’d ever worn. They looked old, and her feet bounced around in the empty space inside. When she stood, she felt like a different person – no longer a farmer, but a company girl. She hated it, and the clothes stunk of someone else’s sweat.

  Her old clothes sat in a sopping wet pile, patiently waiting for her to pick them up. Pucker-lips’s bloodstains were all over them, even though the water had faded them. Loxley didn’t need them anymore; they were corrupted, useless. Her old self never would have left them behind, but her old self wouldn’t have knifed someone, either. Her new thoughts exhilarated her as much as they frightened her.

  “I don’t need you, anymore,” she said.

  “What was that?” asked Floyd, wringing out his clothes.

  “My clothes. I don’t need them anymore.”

  “Oh. Okay, then. You really are a strange one.”

  Strange. Not crazy. Not retarded. She forced her eyes to lock with his. She would have hugged him if he’d been closer. “Thank you, Floyd.”

  “Let’s get you back upstairs before someone sees us.”

  The Summoning Bell

  FLOYD AND LOXLEY parted ways on the seventh, a few miles from her house. True to his word, the man had never once tried to touch her inappropriately, and when he held out his hand for her to shake it, she took it. He disappeared with the coming sunrise, leaving her with no idea how to find him if she needed him again.

  She ached to return to her apartment, if only for a little while, to see her garden. Someone would be waiting there to kill her, though, and her real garden was in another world. Maybe the other Loxley had stayed behind to work on it with Nora. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t herself anymore, because her real self was at home, across the stars, where life was good.

  She hugged her jumpsuit tightly; it didn’t shield her from the wind much, and she walked closer to the walls to avoid the chill of the open streets. She only had one place to go – Don Fowler’s. He owned the whole building, and he would have somewhere she could stay for a little while. Once safe, she’d start formulating how she would murder Hiram and Duke. Maybe she could hike up to Edgewood once a day to watch the house, and if she got a gun, she could shoot into Duke’s car when it left Bellebrook. She imagined Duke and Hiram in the back seat of his already-bloody limousine, oozing gunshot wounds dotting their skin. She considered killing Marie, too, but if she tried to kill everyone who helped Duke, she’d never finish.

  Officer Crutchfield had died trying to shoot everyone in the car. It wasn’t a good plan.

  These thoughts occupied her mind all the
way up to the third ring, where the apothecary shop stood unlit in the murky morning light. She’d never been here so early in the day before, and she intensely disliked the look of the place. There was a sliminess to the way the shadows clung to its frosted windows. Sometimes, things offended her senses in a way that didn’t seem to disgust other people.

  She slipped around back, to the alleyway that led to the door to Don’s home. He often went upstairs during the day because she gave him headaches. He would always tell her the same thing, “You’re killing me here. Call me if you see someone come in. Don’t try to help them yourself or you’ll scare them off.”

  She reached out and banged on the wood as loudly as she could.

  No response came. Between the clangs of the steelworks far below, she could hear snoring through an upstairs window. His bedroom must be above his door. She banged again, and she heard a man and woman’s hushed voices; one was Don, the other must have been his wife. Loxley had never met her.

  She knocked again for good measure, and she very clearly made out the word, “Jesus.”

  After two minutes of rustling from inside, the peephole on the door lit up, then winked at her as someone moved between it and the light. Don swung the door open. He wore a threadbare housecoat and a tuft of fluffy white hair sat upon his chest like a boll of cotton. It made her feel badly to look at him in his state, like he was naked. Don wore a lab coat and his hair was always slicked back; he did not wear these clothes. This man had wild white hair, greasy from sleep. He frowned.

  “Why are you sad?” she asked him.

  “I’m not sad,” he replied, his voice growling with congestion. He hacked up some phlegm and spat it out. “You’re fired because you didn’t show up for work yesterday, and you’re not helping your case by waking me up. What are you wearing?”

  “I borrowed a jumpsuit because we went swimming at the Foundry.”

  “Is that why you missed work? To run around with your little friends?”

  “I was going to come to work, but then someone hurt me a whole bunch,” she said, pulling back her sleeve so he could see the bruises. “Then some men tried to kill me.”

  He leaned against the door frame, his eyes locked on her arm. “Loxley, I have tried to help you time and again, and for what? You never take my advice, and I don’t know if you can even understand it. I’ve been praying for you, child.”

  “Okay. Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  Loxley shivered, and she felt a twisting in her guts. The cold ring of the steelworks counted out the seconds for her. Clang... clang... clang...

  Don shook his head and held up his hands. “Mrs. Fowler and I have both talked for a long time, and this... this whole thing just isn’t going to work. I can’t stay involved with you and watch you plunge to whatever dark fate awaits you.”

  “I need to come in, Don.”

  He looked her over. “No. It’s going to be the same thing every time. Good luck, Loxley. I really do hope you find the peace you’re looking for.”

  At the edge of perception, she sensed something about Don she’d never felt before – something about his reasons for being who he was. He always liked to be a respected caretaker, if a harsh one. Her observations struck her as odd, because she normally didn’t notice those sorts of things. He reached up to close the door, and she made herself look him in the eyes. He stopped dead and stared right back at her. She concentrated on the feeling, using the heart of the steelworks to steady her mind.

  Clang...

  She held his gaze, even though her heart hammered her for it. The ants and crackles harried her limbs, but she held still, as one might hold one’s hand to a flame. There were a billion miles of circuitous thoughts inside her head, but she felt as though she could straighten a single section. She tugged at herself and images of Nora erupted into life all around her. How was it that Nora could see the animal aspects of other people? What secrets did she have? What would she say to Don?

  Clang... Louder. Clang... Louder. The steelworks became static and she unwound from infinite tangled pathways. The crackles reached a crescendo before dropping off entirely, leaving relief in their wake. The banging faded, too. Only the misty morning of the third ring remained.

  Don started to close the door.

  “Don, wait!” she shouted, slapping her palm against it and blocking the way. “I know you. I understand that you’ve only ever wanted to help people, and I respect you for it.”

  His eyes narrowed in confusion. She noticed it that time. The man definitely felt confused.

  “But I can’t help you, Loxley.”

  “Yes, you can, but I’m not like everyone who comes in here to buy medicine. You can’t just give me a prescription and send me on my way. I can’t take a pill and magically be someone else. I know you care, and I am genuinely trying to accept the things you tell me. You want to be a hero to everyone you meet – to the rich man trying to save his child, to the poor woman who can’t afford the medicine she needs – but I’m different. If you want to be a hero to me, it takes time and patience.”

  The words spilled from her lips with startling precision, appealing to aspects of her employer that she’d never cared about before. She left out the parts where he was a bossy, arrogant piece of shit, but the fact that she thought that at all was somehow remarkable. She’d never considered the possibility that her friends might tell her one thing when they felt another.

  “You’ve been a good boss to me, even though I couldn’t always see that, and I’m sorry. I wish I could recognize the gifts I’m given, but it’s part of my condition, and for once, I have the clarity to admit that. I’m not asking you to change your whole life for me. Hell, I’m not even asking you to feed me. I just need a warm place to stay today or I’m going to die out here.”

  She straightened her back and shoulders. She stepped closer, into his personal space, astonished that she could muster such a feat under stress. His jaw dropped, and his hand slid down the door. She took the opportunity to push it open a little further.

  “Just do me this one last favor... This one last thing. After that, you can say you did everything you could, and I was beyond saving, but if you turn me away today, you’re giving up on the reason you got into this business in the first place. You just want to help people, but it always turns into you giving them advice they won’t take. Well, I’m here right now, asking you not for advice, but to help me. I’ll be gone with the evening, but please, give me somewhere to sleep. Just today, okay?” She rested her head against the doorframe. “Just today...”

  She sounded just like Nora. She wasn’t Nora, but she could conjure all the turns of phrase and speech of the dead woman. She could hold her body in such a way as to make it more appealing. It wasn’t as though she could draw forth the ghost’s memories, but she could sense its subtle influence on her mind. She could look at Don’s face without trying to puzzle through the multitude of muscles that created his expression.

  “Loxley, I don’t know what you expect me to say here.”

  “I expect you to say, ‘For your years of service, I’m going to let you sleep on my couch for one day,’ because you’re a good man, and because I’m going to die if you don’t. I can’t go home. I don’t have anywhere else.”

  The steelworks fell silent, and fatigue bit into Loxley’s joints. Her knees buckled, and she was glad she’d been leaning on the door.

  “Just today, girl?”

  “When have I ever lied?”

  His shoulders fell and he stepped aside. She shuffled past him, into the sickening potpourri warmth of his house. Cross-stitched platitudes hung on the wood panel walls. Plush carpet sunk underfoot. In the dim gloom of the back room, she saw an older woman glaring out at her, thin as a skeleton, with taut lips and sunken eyes. Loxley had never been to Don’s house, nor had she ever seen his wife. Judging from the hatred evident on the woman’s face, she’d heard stories from Don.

  Loxley spotted the couch at the edge of the den
and walked toward it.

  Don stepped in front of her. “Not before you get a shower. Maddie and I already agreed that I’m done making special exceptions for you. I’m not having you ruin my couch.”

  The world started to spin. Without the Foundry hammering in her ear, her breath became short and her legs itched. “Yeah,” said Loxley.

  “Maddie, would you take her to the shower?”

  The woman stepped into the light. “Don’t you ask me for anything, Donald Fowler. We talked about this! You said you were done helping her!”

  Things got blurry. Loxley swooned, placing a hand on the couch arm to steady herself.

  “I am, honey. Just today, and Loxley will be on her way.”

  “And what happens when today turns into tomorrow?”

  “It won’t, honey.”

  “You don’t know that. She looks hurt. She needs a hospital, not a couch.”

  Her eyes swam in and out of focus.

  “We’re better stocked than the hospital.”

  “So you’re giving her free medicine, too?”

  “It’s the right thing to do, Maddie. Am I supposed to let her die?”

  “You’re supposed to be looking out for us!”

  “We’ll have this discussion later. For now, Loxley... Loxley, are you all right?”

  Her knees gave way, and the ground beneath her feet flipped sideways to strike her face.

  Home

  “LOXA-LOX...” HER MOUTH moved on its own as she opened her eyes to see the cold winter’s light spilling into her room. Her room. Her apartment, back in her world.

  “Lox, Lox, Loxley... Get up, up, up,” she sang.

  She lay flat in her bed, her arms and legs so heavy they felt as though they were melting down onto the mattress. Who had taken off all of her clothes? Was it her? She couldn’t remember. She smacked her lips, expecting the rotten taste of sleep to linger, but she tasted nothing. She watched the pockmarked ceiling, wondering if she could ever count all the nodules.

  “I’m awake,” she said, her fingers traveling across the mattress to the divot where her mother once laid. They met with warm flesh.