Each mystery seems forever locked away from me now. I’ve heard some of the men in Acadia say that I have a dark past. That something happened a long time ago to me—that I ran away from the village and went into the Deadlands. That I touched metal. They know that for some reason, I have been forgiven, but they can’t understand why. I’ve heard them whisper that I’m a Saint, and that that is enough punishment for a lifetime.
I envision the red throngs, marching along distant shores. How somewhere they march still under low-hanging clouds that spread mist inland from the sea. Carrying on their ancient war against God. And how, so long ago, the descendents of our original civilization showed their full might and then relinquished, unable to temper their own purpose. Their own meaning.
I remember how for years I told myself I wouldn’t do it after all. I wouldn’t wait for the fissure. That I’d rather die sooner, because it’s useless to do something for her now. Pointless. Because what I felt so long ago just isn’t as real anymore. I can only believe in the myth of its strength—that I once felt something as powerful as that, as her, in this life.
Still, something about my birthday tonight is different than all the others. Maybe it’s because I know it will be my last.
I think of how time has passed, how the pictures in my house have collected, one stack upon the other. How my daily task in the garden has filled my life with small but good and trustworthy meaning.
But something strange rifles through me tonight as I look out at the tower. It’s an old recklessness I thought had dies decades ago. The urge rises in me with murky images and smells of a rocky shore and the sea. A fence I’d hopped long ago. Some place where the wrecks of old ships had trapped me and almost killed me at the hands of some horned monster pent up within its walls.
When I raise my eyes to the tower, even in the dark, I see through its walls. I see a floor where Maze lies, and where she pressed her body against me, and there were warm breaths painting patterns on our skin. Where she’d spoken and told me that this life that I live now would have been enough for her.
I don’t even know what my body’s doing before I’m already moving back to the house. For once, I don’t want the wolves to pounce on me. Because there’s some daylight left, just a bit, and suddenly, I feel as if I need it. I look down at my body. How it’s still good enough. I tell myself that. It’s still good enough to get there.
I walk inside like any other night, but instead of going to bed I am compelled to my trunk. I open the top and remove the most recent stack of drawings. Most of them are her. I don’t know why, but she seems clearer to me now—after so many years of not being able to see her. I can finally draw her face.
For a moment, I see the end result of the journey. A pile of bones on the floor. A useless metal cylinder. And a glass wall that my dreams trick me into knowing will open.
I push through the pictures of her until I find one that is just right. I stuff it into my pocket. And then, at the bottom, where they are safest, I take out the maps. I spread them all over the floor. Examining each one. Suddenly, I know that some of them are accurate. And each of them leads me back there.
Through the forest to the log. And then the old sewer. Across the wolf-ridden field and past the haunted skyscrapers until I come to the coast. And then, I just follow the coast. Not toward the place where the bones of the Resistance are buried. I go in the other direction. All the way to the skulls. And then, the door. Wrist had said it opened without the tattoo. What about the other doors? You can’t get any farther after them. It doesn’t matter. You’ll die closer to her. Better than here.
And I think of one giant fuck you as I walk back to the beach with a heavy bag at my side. It goes into my palm, and then, the disc flies out into the ocean. I turn around and head back through town. I think I see a light on in Father James’s house. But he doesn’t try to stop me this time when I run. My heart beats and I leap the last fence. For the first time in forever, there are nothing but trees. In one last thought of June, I think sadly about the fissure, and the end of the world. But then, there’s nothing else but what’s around me. This step and the next. I take out the knife from my bag. For some reason, I remember this. Being alive.
Thorns rip out of my skin with each thrust forward, but the pain doesn’t bother me one bit. The only thing at all that surges through me, that I feel, is the thought of Maze.
Chapter 30
When June comes running from the beach, she doesn’t realize that the Great Chapel of Acadia is slanting low on its side, nearly touching the ground, one of its walls collapsed. She can’t process it. She presses through the crowd until she finds Father James.
“June—thank God you’re safe. There’s been an earthquake.”
“Father…” she says, out of breath.
“What is it?”
“I saw something. At the beach,” she says.
Father James looks around, as if somehow he suspects seriousness in her claim. They find their way to a calm patch of road where the main streets intersect.
“What did you see?” he says. His eyes dart to the chapel where Father Trust ushers everyone back. There is a high-pitched proclamation that God has been angered, and that the sun sits large in the sky today to signal his fury.
“Something fell from the tower—two things.”
“Nonsense,” Father James says, but some old memory turns his head. He looks down the empty road that leads to the last fence before the forest. A fence he’d seen a boy leap over once when he’d been a young Father.
THE END
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Table of Contents
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part 3
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part 4
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part 5
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
AUTHOR’S MESSAGE TO THE READER
WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 34
