Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

How could Jack answer? What could he say? Ever since that day he'd pulled Freddy Nunemaker from the sand heap, he'd thought of this place, when he thought of it at all, as “where you go after.” He'd never formulated it more than that, never tried to attach any other name or explanation to it. And now, with Sprague asking him to name the place, he found himself unwilling to say even that. It wasn't just “where you go after,” but also, and he now understood it more fully than ever before, as the place --

  “Did I pick better this time?” The voice and the face materialized at the same moment, out of the mist in front of him.

  Jack didn't understand.

  “In the train car, you said I'd picked a strange place to meet... is this any better?”

  He was still trying to get over her sudden appearance, and Sprague was saying, distantly, “Jack, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “I can hear you.”

  His mother grimaced; her expression said “Why is he bothering us?”

  “Then tell me what's going on.”

  ‘Tell him you went to visit your dear old mom,” she said, and Jack wondered, suddenly, if Sprague could hear her voice, too.

  “Can he -- “ he started to whisper to her, but she shook her head, smiling, and said, “No, not unless I really wanted him to. I'm dead, remember?”

  “What was that?” Sprague asked, anxiously. “What did you start to say?”

  “I'm where you think I am,” Jack said, “doing what I have to...”

  Sprague switched off the outgoing microphone, and slammed his fist against the console. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He swiveled in his chair, toward Nancy. “'Where you think I am, doing what I have to’ -- what is all this cryptic bullshit?”

  Nancy kept her head down, said nothing; with Sprague, she'd learned the hard way that it was best simply to let the storm pass. If you tried to calm it, you'd only get drenched.

  It was Jack she was worried about -- she was fairly confident no physical harm could come to him, floating serenely in the sensory-deprivation tank, but she wasn't at all sure about the psychological effects he might sustain. How many times could he make this bizarre, unnatural journey -- wherever it was he actually went, however it was he actually got there -- and still return unseamed, unaffected?

  Over the intercom speaker, she heard him say “Not until now,” and wondered, with a shiver, who he was talking to.

  “But now you do?”

  He looked around again, trying to pierce the veil of mist. “I know that this is where I must have been.” It was, in some ways, familiar to him now; it was “where you go after,” where he'd come to fetch Nunemaker, Zakin, Garcia. But it was also unfamiliar -- the white light, which beat so relentlessly, was nowhere to be seen. To the extent he could determine direction at all, it was somewhere off to his right, and above him; from that direction, he could sense, through the passing vapors, a faintly warming glow. But nothing more than that. He had the vague, ineffable feeling of having arrived in some sort of limbo.

  “We were here together, a long time ago,” his mother said, wistfully. She wasn't wearing the high school jacket this time; she had on a simple summer dress, with fabric straps that tied over her bare shoulders. Jack didn't remember it among the things he'd found in the attic trunk.

  “I didn't know whether I wanted to stay here, or leave,” she said, absently brushing her hair back, over her shoulders. “I didn't know what I could expect.”

  “What you could expect, if you left?”

  “If I died, outright. If those... if they had let me be one thing or the other.”

  Dead or alive, Jack took her to mean.

  “I'm sorry,” he said.

  She shrugged, and gave him a sad smile. “Not your fault, God knows.” She laughed, harshly. “Nothing you could do about it,” she said, looking him up and down. “You had no more on you then than you do now.”

  For a second, Jack had no idea what she meant; then, with another horrid shock, he realized that he must be appearing to her naked, just as he was in the tank. He looked down at himself, and saw that, like the spirits that he had encountered here before, his flesh was both visible and strangely transparent. He tried to cover himself with his hands, then wondered if his hands couldn't be seen through as well. He felt foolish even trying to hide himself, and his mother laughed at his attempt.

  “I was wondering when you'd notice,” she said. Throwing her head back, she laughed again. He wanted to laugh with her, but was still too embarrassed.

  “Is there anything I can do,” he said, “to -- “

  “Cover yourself?” She paused, as if contemplating it, then said, “I don't think so... you come here with whatever you have, or don't have, on your back.”

  “But you,” he said, “each time I've seen you, you've had something else on, even things that I've seen in the trunk at Mam and Clancy's.”

  She was nodding her head, as if pleased that he was so perceptive. “That's different,” she said. "I'm different, in case you haven't noticed.”

  Suddenly, she was wearing the blue-and-white jacket with “Weehawken High” on the back.

  “I am no longer bound...”

  Then she appeared to him in a tie-dyed shirt, and a pair of feather earrings.

  “.. .by the boring conventions...”

  A red sweater and blue jeans.

  “.. .of everyday life. I can wear anything I wore...”

  A ski parka and boots.

  “.. .and even be anything I was.”

  A little girl, with green eyes and short dark hair, stood in front of him -- she looked to be six or seven years old. A butterfly pin was clipped to her plaid jumper.

  “For grammar school, I went to St. Ignatius. Did you know that? I hated the uniform, and I always wore this,” she said, displaying the pin, “just to be different.”

  Jack was dumbfounded.

  “The thing about the spirit is,” the little girl went on, rubbing one shiny black shoe on top of the other, “it can look like anything it was in life, from the second you started to the second you died. It's all the ages you were, and no age at all. That's what I call the good part.”

  “What's the bad part?” Jack asked, numbly.

  “It can't ever change.”

  Jack was confused. “It just did.”

  She wagged her head from side to side, chin down, like a little girl refusing to take her nap. “No it didn't. Just the way it looked changed. It stayed the same.”

  Jack followed, and yet he didn't; he felt that his mind was about to explode, with all that it was being asked to grasp. He didn't even know who, or what, he was talking to anymore -- a little Catholic schoolgirl, fresh from catechism class, or an elusive young woman, with a tragic past. An elusive young woman who'd once carried him in her womb.

  “Mother,” he said, feeling ridiculous addressing a six-year-old that way, “I need to -- “

  “You don't need to call me Mother,” the girl interrupted. “Call me...”

  And she changed again, before his very eyes, into the young woman in the summer dress.

  “... Eliza. That's what I liked my friends to call me, at the end.”

  “Eliza, then -- I need to know what's happening to me. I need to know what I can do, and how.” The vapors seemed to grow thicker between them, her figure somehow to recede. “I need to know what's happening to me.”

  In the control room, Sprague howled with frustration -- he'd been hearing one-half of the conversation all along, the enigmatic apologies and queries, the comments on what she -- presumably his mother, that's what he'd called her at one point -- was wearing, the puzzling question “What's the bad part?” He was overhearing all the critical questions, but none -- not one -- of the critical answers. And now, the most important information of all was about to be transmitted, and again he was locked out, unable to hear it, unable to glean for himself what he'd worked so hard to uncover.

  Nancy could see him debating whether to cut in, thro
ugh the intercom, or not. And she knew he was afraid that if he did, he might break the trance, or interfere with what little he was getting. But there was something else, something that had just begun to show up on the cardiograph readings, that she wanted Sprague to know, right away.

  “I think you should look at this,” she said. “This hasn't ever happened before. His heart rhythms have slowed, even more than usual. It's almost as if the machine is having trouble reading them.”

  Sprague, still itching to interrogate Jack, cast a distracted eye over the charts.

  “I don't know if it's a mechanical defect, or if something is wrong with Jack,” Nancy said, and Sprague actually began to focus in on the data, “but either way, I think it's clear we should stop the experiment now.”

  Sprague was rubbing his lower lip between his fingers.

  “Shouldn't you begin the instructions to break the trance state?” Nancy urged. “I think it's very clear that -- “

  “Nothing will be stopped, until I say so.” Sprague's eyes flashed behind his spectacles. “Is that clear?”

  “What's happening to you?” she said, echoing his question. “That's easy -- you're waking up.”

  He'd never felt more like he was living in a dream.

  “You've figured out that you're not like all the rest of those people, the ones who mind all the rules and do what they're told...” She seemed, as she spoke, to be moving backward, away from him. He started to follow her. “You've figured out you don't belong with them.”

  “Where do I belong then?” But she didn't answer. She seemed to have wrapped herself in a shroud of mist. As best he could tell, they were moving away from the source of light and heat. How slow, or fast, they were going, he had no way to gauge. He only knew that, as he traveled, he felt increasingly cold, and inconsolable.

  “You belong,” she finally said, “with me,” and sighed, sadly. “I'm the one who made you what you are, who gave you these special... gifts.”

  The mists were beginning to boil around them now, a dark and turgid stew of movement.

  “I died, giving you life... and I gave you something more.” Her voice was earnest, but her features, behind the mist, were unclear. “I gave you a piece of my spirit, Jack -- a piece of my life... and a piece of my death.” Out of the swirling cloud of vapor, her arm extended, the blue-and-silver bracelet dangling from the wrist. He reached out, to take her hand, but her fingers remained tantalizingly beyond his grasp.

  “You were born opened up, to the whole universe -- and I saw to it you stayed that way.”

  The fog around them grew denser and more agitated, and he suddenly became afraid of losing his way in it. He clutched again at her extended hand, and this time she let him grasp her fingers. He felt himself drawn, with extraordinary power, into her embrace; her eyes were blazing green, with delight, and her teeth sparkled white as she laughed. Over her shoulder, far behind, but growing closer all the time, he could now make out a churning bank of thick black cloud, rolling in place like a monstrous wave, seething like a storm held in check on the horizon...

  “You have to stop it, now!” Nancy insisted. “If you don't, I will.”

  Sprague was scrutinizing the charts, running the paper strips back and forth between his fingers. The brainwaves had done just as he'd expected; he'd learned not to be surprised by this. But the heart readings... they made no sense at all. The rhythm had slowed, altered, then slowed some more; just when it appeared it would come to a stop, it had suddenly been punctuated by a strong, regular beat again... with a murmur effect after. It was as if the heart were beating in syncopated time, as if one rhythm were gradually subsuming another, as if, in fact, there were two hearts beating on the single chart...

  “Are you going to stop it?” Nancy said, rising from her stool.

  ... as if there were two hearts beating, one growing stronger, the other weaker; Sprague gazed out in wonder at the pale blue tank. My God -- what did he have inside of it now? He suddenly jumped up out of his chair and made for the glass door.

  “What are you doing?” Nancy shouted.

  “Don't touch anything!”

  He threw the door open, and ran into the humid room. The wrestling mats squelched beneath his feet. His fingers scrabbled at the indentation in the hood of the tank, then he caught hold of the hatchway and slid it back.

  Jack was curled, in the fetal position, his head awkwardly twisted up and out of the water. His eyes were open, staring blankly, unfocused. He was breathing, but low, and stertorously.

  And he was alone in the tank.

  Sprague looked wildly around the room -- had something escaped when he'd opened the hatch? -- then back inside, at Jack. His eyes had narrowed, against the intrusion of the light, and his left hand, held until now as if it had been clutching something, suddenly relaxed.

  Damn, Sprague thought -- damn damn damn. He'd come so close, closer than ever before! But what would he have in the way of proof? Nothing, again. Absolutely nothing.

  Nancy was standing beside him now, looking tense and terrified. Logan's eyes were fully closed. “Jack,” Sprague said, tonelessly, and with some reluctance, “I'm going to bring you out of the trance state now...”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “How LONG wILL it take?”

  “Just two days. By Friday morning, your new phone number will be in operation.”

  “And the one I have now,” Jack asked, “will be working until then?”

  “Yes.”

  He figured he'd just do as he'd been doing, and leave the answering machine on. “Okay. Thanks,” and he hung up. By the end of the week, he'd be free of all the unsolicited calls. And he'd only give out his new number to the few people who needed to have it, and whom he could trust.

  But what should he do now? Nancy wasn't coming over till seven o'clock, and it was only two now; outside, it looked cold and gray. Still, anything was better than hanging around the apartment, practicing scales and wondering if he should give Bert a call to ask about his job. He figured he'd go over to Riverside Park and get some fresh air.

  In the downstairs foyer, he stopped to collect his mail -- a couple of Christmas catalogues, a Con Ed bill, and two letters with return addresses he didn't recognize. He was checking to see if they were really addressed to him when a man in a brown tweed jacket and an ascot pushed the door open and said, in an English accent, “Jack Logan, I presume?”

  Jack hesitated.

  “Geoffrey, with a g, Mansfield -- from the Investigator.” He put out his hand and Jack reluctantly took it. There was a camera slung over his shoulder.

  “I've called for you at the Institute of Abnormal Psychology, and I'm afraid that got me nowhere. And answering machines I find so off-putting -- I thought I'd just come ‘round and see if I could catch you in your very lair.” He smiled, not very convincingly, and with one hand tried to brush down his thinning hair. “Windy out today -- reminds me of home.”

  “What is it you want?” Jack said, stuffing the mail into the pocket of his overcoat. “I'm on my way out.”

  Mansfield was not a man to be easily deterred. Still smiling, he said, “Just a few minutes of your time, Mr. Logan. Your story, as it's been presented in the Post, has interested me, but I don't feel -- to be perfectly honest with you -- that it's been accorded the kind of attention which, if what's been said is true, it truly warrants.”

  Jack pushed past him, and out of the door. Mansfield pretended to have been holding it open for him.

  “Nothing personal,” Jack said, over his shoulder, “but I'm really not interested in any more stories about me.” He walked quickly away. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “But you haven't,” Mansfield said, scurrying up to walk beside him. “This was all entirely on my own initiative. I don't hold you responsible for what I decide to do.”

  He'd had his phone number changed; now, Jack wondered, would he have to move? The camera was bobbing against Mansfield's back.

  “What I'd like,
if you could just spare me the time -- and I'd be very appreciative if you could -- is to talk to you, in depth, about these unusual talents of yours. I want to know what you think about them, and who the real Jack Logan is. I'm not interested in some superficial, sensationalistic rehash of what's already been said -- I want your words, and your thoughts, on what's been happening. I want, and I believe the Investigator's readers would want, to know exactly -- “

  Jack stopped, turned, and put up his hand. “I meant what I said. No story.”

  Mansfield, his mouth still open, looked as if he was just waiting for Jack to finish, before going on with the rest of his pitch.

  “No story,” Jack repeated, to forestall him. “Now if you want to walk around after me, there's not much I can do about that. But it's not going to do you much good either -- I've got nothing else to say, about any of this.”

  “But I can promise you -- “

  “So with all due respect -- “

  “ -- that your story will be told --”

  “ -- bug off.”

  Mansfield's mouth shut, then seemed to set itself rigidly into place. He glared at Jack. “I'm giving you one last chance,” he said, between barely parted lips, “to cooperate with this. The story will be written, one way or the other, and I can promise you,” he said, repeating his earlier phrase in a more sinister tone, “it will be better for you if you'd gone along.” His hair, what there was of it, was blowing wildly about his head.

  Jack couldn't believe the guy was threatening him now. “See ya around,” he said, and turned away. As he walked down the block, he could swear he felt Mansfield's eyes boring a hole in his back.

  The park was just what he needed -- sparsely populated, with a strong wind blowing off the Hudson. He went past the barren trees and brown earth, down to the waterfront. He headed south, toward the boat basin, and when he got there, turned up the collar of his coat and took a seat on an empty bench. His thoughts skittered from his encounter with Mansfield to the TV show with Robb, from Nancy to Stephanie (shit, what if she showed up now, walking Kurt's dog for him?), from his mother to Mam. Christmas was right around the corner and Mam and Clancy would be expecting him; he didn't look forward to it. Especially now, with Mam so unwell.