Eyes Wide Open

by Ted Dekker

  “What did they do to you?” she asked.

  “They put me in a black room,” he said.

  She nodded but didn’t ask for any elaboration. That was fine by him.

  “When we were in with Nancy you said that you didn’t me see as fat,” she said. “Was that true?”

  “You looked the same as you always do. Not fat, no.”

  “Are you delusional?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “I think so.”

  “So you could be wrong.”

  He nodded. “Maybe.”

  She looked at the wall, away from him. “Did you find Alice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she any help?”

  He shook his head, still feeling dazed and lost. “No. I found some keys but they’re no good.”

  “Keys to what?”

  He remembered that they were in his pocket. He’d noticed them while in the dark room. He didn’t remember putting them in his pocket after Fisher had found him—he was in too much shock. When he’d taken a shower earlier, he’d found them again and slipped them into his fresh pants.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the three keys on the wire. Held them in his palm.

  “Desk keys,” he said.

  She looked at them, hardly interested.

  “There’s a desk in here.”

  Nothing more, just that. Not said with any hope or eagerness. It was just an observation. But with no other options apparent, Austin stood up, walked across the room, and rounded the desk.

  Three metal drawers ran up one side. Without much thought, he slipped the key into the bottom drawer and twisted it.

  The key turned without a fuss.

  “It fits,” he said.

  Christy pushed herself and crossed the room. “It does?”

  He pulled the drawer open as Christy rounded the desk.

  The inside of the drawer was lined with velvet the color of a rich wine, more purple than red. An old wooden box sat in the middle. Someone had scratched the word Lamps onto its lid with a knife or a nail.

  “What is it?” Christy asked.

  “A box,” he said.

  His pulse surged as he pulled it from the drawer and set it on the desktop.

  For a moment, they both stared at the strange box, which looked ancient now in the light. The keys Alice had led him to delivered this box to them. This is what she’d seen? Not a way out, but something they wanted to remain hidden?

  “Are you going to open it?” Christy asked.

  Austin unlatched the small brass clasp that held it shut. The box opened to reveal two pairs of wire-frame spectacles on a velvet lining identical to the drawer’s.

  “Glasses?” Christy said.

  Austin lifted a pair gently from the box. They felt insubstantial in his hands. He passed them to Christy, then took the other pair out and set them on the desk. Surely there was something else, maybe hidden inside the box.

  But there wasn’t.

  “Alice mentioned something about lamps,” he said. “This is what she meant. Glasses. Just glasses.” He sighed and glanced at the desk. “Maybe there’s something else in one of the other drawers.”

  Christy rounded the desk and held the glasses to the light. “They’re just old, smudged glasses,” she said as she lifted them to her face. “Nothing…”

  She gasped, mouth gaping.

  Austin followed her stare and saw that she was looking at the mirror. But he saw nothing unusual—just a full-length mirror fixed to the wall.

  She, on the other hand, stood rooted to the floor, staring with such shock that he wondered if she was having some kind of attack. One glance at her emaciated frame, and anyone could see a heart attack wasn’t out of the question.

  “Austin!”

  “What is it?”

  She didn’t seem able to respond.

  The second pair of glasses lay waiting on the desk. He reached down and picked them up. Glanced at Christy again.

  “This… This isn’t possible,” she said, face white.

  A knot of fear twisted in his stomach as he brought the glasses to his face. He took a breath, faced the mirror, and slipped them on.

  “IS IT just me?”

  Austin wasn’t answering.

  Christy tore her eyes from her reflection, jerked her head around, and saw that he’d put on the other pair of glasses. He stared at the mirror, face white.

  A single glance around the room told her that nothing else had changed. Only what she saw in the mirror.

  She turned back to her reflection. She was still dressed in the yellow skirt—still had yellow ribbons in her pigtails, still had on the makeup and black shoes—but that’s where the similarities ended.

  The Christy returning her gaze now wasn’t the gaunt bag of bones who’d had all her fat sucked out, not the ugly pig she’d seen in the bathroom mirrors. She in fact looked identical to the Christy who’d first found her way into the psych ward by way of the old storage room.

  But that wasn’t entirely true, either. Whereas she had thought of that old Christy as too thick, too pimply, too stubby in parts, the Christy looking back at her in the mirror was identical, but she wasn’t too anything.

  Christy blinked.

  Austin, on the other hand, looked like plain old Austin, blue duds and all. He hadn’t changed.

  “Do you see me, Austin?”

  “I see you,” he said, voice full of wonder.

  “You see yourself?”

  He hesitated. “I haven’t changed.”

  “But I have, right?”

  “You… Yes, you’ve changed. Back to the old you.”

  “The ugly one?”

  “You never were ugly.”

  “But not the fat one.”

  “You never were fat.”

  She glanced at him. Saw him lift his glasses and peer at the mirror, eyes round. Then quickly lower them back onto the bridge of his nose.

  Christy looked down at her hands. Normal. So was her belly and her legs. So the change wasn’t only in the mirror. Everything about herself had changed.

  And without the spectacles?

  Christy lifted her hand to her glasses.

  “Don’t!” His hand grabbed her wrist and jerked it away from her face. “Leave them on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because… trust me.” He quickly scanned the room. “Leave them on.”

  The dejected, rail-thin Austin who’d been wheeled into her bedroom was dejected no longer. He looked the same, she thought, but he wasn’t quite as thin. Or was that her imagination?

  “What’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Nothing else has changed.” He glanced back at her image in the mirror, as if to make sure it was unchanged. “But I have a feeling that we’re looking at reality somehow. Through these glasses.”

  “So… my fat hasn’t been sucked out?”

  “Maybe not. No. And that’s what we’re going to believe. Which might mean that the problems we see here aren’t problems.”

  “What problems?”

  “All the problems! Lawson. Fisher. The locked doors…”

  She followed his logic immediately.

  “You’re saying that these glasses are helping us see things the way they really are.”

  “Something like that,” he said in wonder, gazing around.

  “So then the room is real, but not the way I see myself in this room.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, maybe? How does that help us?”

  He faced her, urgent. “I don’t know! I don’t know squat, but I’m going with it, okay?”

  She blinked at the eruption of emotion. It made her wonder what they’d done to him.

  “Fine,” she said.

  He faced the door and stared hard.

  “We’re going to get out.”

  She stepped up beside him. Nothing about the room had changed.

  “How?”

  “Just keep your glasse
s on. Promise me.”

  Her heart was pounding. If he was right… Really? Could they just walk out? But that seemed impossible. The guards, the doors… Lawson.

  “Promise me,” he repeated.

  “I won’t take them off.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He started for the door.

  “Just go?”

  “Just go.” The authority in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “Now, Christy. I can’t go back into that hole.”

  He placed his hand on the doorknob and hesitated while she hurried up to him. If he was right, the handle would turn. If he was wrong, they were still locked in. She could hear his heavy breathing, matching her own.

  “Turn it,” she said.

  He turned it.

  The handle rotated without resistance.

  He pulled the door wide and stepped back. The black-and-white checkerboard hall waited beyond the opened door.

  Open!

  Austin took her hand and they walked into the hall, then turned to the left without speaking.

  Goosebumps prickled her skin and chilled her flesh. Her skin. Her flesh. The real her.

  “Keep walking,” he said.

  Christy matched his stride down the middle of the hall, half expecting to see Lawson or Nancy round the corner ahead. Instead, they did, without encountering a soul.

  Down the next hall and around the last corner.

  Then toward the elevator.

  “Just keep walking,” Austin said. “No matter what, just keep walking.”

  They passed the operating room, like two ghosts gliding unseen. But that was because there was no one to see them. As soon as someone saw them, it would be over.

  No… No, the door had been open. They were seeing differently now. And now there was no problem.

  They reached the elevator and Austin pressed the call button. It shone bright. The car was coming up, responding without needing a keycard.

  Christy exchanged a look with Austin, who stared stoically as if afraid any display of emotion might pop this dream.

  The metal elevator doors opened. Empty.

  They stepped in, Austin pressed the down button, and the elevator ground slowly to the first floor. The door slid open.

  “There is no problem,” Austin said. “Just keep walking. Right to the front.”

  He left the elevator with her only a half step behind.

  When they entered the main hall they saw Linda to their left, talking to one of the patients about medication. She cast them a glance and went right on as if there was no problem.

  And there wasn’t.

  A warm glow spread down Christy’s body. She was walking down the hall beside Austin, head up and stride strong, and nothing was stopping her. Nothing could, right?

  This was the way out. Alice had been right. Somehow, the glasses she called lamps were the way out. What it all meant, Christy didn’t know or care at the moment.

  They passed several attendants and four other patients without so much as a worried glance or a question. They reached the main door that led into the main reception. It was almost as if they didn’t exist. They did, of course, because people obviously saw them, but no one seemed to care.

  Nor did anyone make any attempt to stop them when they pushed through the door into the reception area.

  Austin pulled up, hand sweaty in hers. Two doors—the one straight ahead that had led back to Lawson’s office, and the one to their left, which led into the main hospital.

  “The left one,” she said.

  When Austin started forward this time, he went fast with long strides, ignoring the watchful eye of a receptionist behind the glassed-in receiving counter. They were going to get out. The exit was right there and through that exit, freedom. Christy could feel it in her bones.

  Real bones. Hers.

  Austin banged through the door’s crash bar with her close on his heels.

  They flew down a short corridor that ended at double doors marked EXIT. This was it. They were out!

  Fresh air filled her nostrils as she slapped through the doors.

  Bright sunlight.

  Christy could not remember feeling the kind of relief and gratitude that swept through her body as she tore after Austin. Away from the hospital, never mind that he was dressed as a patient. The nightmare was behind them.

  She’d taken only five or six long strides when he came to a skidding stop, forcing her to veer sharply to avoid crashing into him. And only then did she notice that the ground under her feet wasn’t made of asphalt or concrete as it should have been.

  It was made of sand. Sand and rocks and boulders that stretched out fifty yards or so before ending at the base of a cliff.

  She gasped and jerked back, heart stuffed into her throat.

  Austin half crouched, panting, arms spread out as if to steady himself.

  She blinked. Jerked her head to her right.

  They were in a canyon with vertical walls opened onto a serene mountainscape a few hundred yards ahead. The sky on the horizon was colored in rich reds, streaming with golden sunrays—a breathtaking sunset.

  Her lungs were working hard, trying to supply enough oxygen to her confused mind. A mind that was telling her she was dead. They had done surgery on her and she’d died during the operation. This was the in between. Unless this was the no between, a place where only the insane live.

  Christy whipped her head back to Austin, who had turned and was staring back toward the hospital.

  She turned with him and stared at a cliff, which rose where Saint Matthew’s had stood.

  Twin ancient, weather-worn doors with rusted handles had replaced the glass doors through which they had escaped.

  Christy stared, unbelieving and yet, strangely, believing. In what, she didn’t know, but the thinnest thought whispered through her mind.

  You’ve been here before, it said.

  “What’s…?”

  She couldn’t find the words to express what she wanted to ask. Didn’t even know what she wanted to ask.

  “It’s gone,” Austin said. “That can’t be.”

  True. And yet it was.

  “How…?” He looked at her and blinked. “Is this real?”

  Christy looked at the ground. Sand. She bent down and raked her fingers through it. Warm. Lifted a handful and let it spill through her fingers. A hot breeze caught the finer dust and blew it away.

  Austin turned a full circle, gazing up. He cautiously stepped away from the cliff toward the middle of the canyon. Looked both ways. Then up again.

  He was slowly lifting his hand toward his face, going for his glasses, Christy thought, when she heard the distant sound of boots crunching in the sand.

  The world seemed to stutter around her, then slow to half time. A quarter time.

  Austin, with his fingers on his glasses.

  She, turning her head slowly toward the sound.

  The mirage-distorted image of a tall man approached. He was dressed in a wind-whipped black trench coat, striding toward them in slow motion, like an outlaw who’d stepped off the screen of a high-budget western and forgotten slow motion only happened on the screen.

  The man pulled a splinter of wood he’d been chewing on from between his lips and flicked it casually to the side, still caught in quarter time. She watched the stick tumble through the air as the man came to a stop, ten feet from them.

  “Leave the glasses on,” he said.

  THE WORLD around Christy stalled completely. The wind forgot to blow, the pounding of her heart faded, the canyon stilled as if it were a painting. There was Austin to her right, thumb and forefinger on the wire-frame spectacles that had shown them a way out; there was the man in the trench coat standing ten feet to her left, strong hands loose by his sides; there was her. Frozen in time.

  Immobilized, because something told her that she might know this man. And then the world restarted, and she blinked.

  “Hello, Christy.” The man dipped his head. Shifted his ey
es past her. “Austin.”

  And evidently this man knew her. Knew both of them.

  “Been a heck of a day, I’m guessing.”

  There was something about his soft voice that bathed Christy in enduring calm.

  The man stood about six feet tall, worn blue jeans and a white shirt under his coat. Black boots, those worn by bikers, not cowboys. No hat. His hair was dark and his jaw was strong, the kind that had seen its share of harsh weather and was no worse for the wear. How old, she couldn’t tell, but he stood with the ease and self-assurance of someone who’d circled the world a dozen times on foot and lived to tell of it.

  For several seconds the man looked at her with kind blue eyes that seemed to hold her in a place of unquestioned safety, gentle and powerful at once. Her mind didn’t know where he had come from or why he’d come, but her heart seemed to bond with him in way that made her want to cry.

  With one glance, this man had given her more love than she’d felt in her entire life. Or maybe she felt so emotional because she’d just been through hell to find him.

  And yet, looking at him now, she didn’t feel like she’d been through hell. In fact, she felt no distress at all.

  Not about where she’d come from or why. Not about what she looked like or didn’t. Not about what she had done in the past or would do in the future.

  The wind toyed with the man’s hair and lifted the tails of his coat.

  “You can call me Outlaw,” he said.

  “Outlaw,” Austin said.

  Christy saw the circular stone pendant that hung on a leather cord over the man’s breastbone. A large O with tribal markings and a single, embossed word inside the O that she didn’t know.

  O for Outlaw.

  “Out,” the man said, walking up to Christy. “The narrow way that few follow. Beyond the laws bent on death, where the burden is light and the yoke is easy. And yet oh so hard to find.” He lifted his hand and drew Christy’s hair behind her ear. Brushed her cheek with his thumb. She could smell the faint scent of fresh earth on his skin.

  “Which is actually in,” he said, placing his hand flush against her heart. “Where you’re already perfect.”

  He was speaking with words using his mouth, but she might have guessed that his meaning came from his hand, because with that touch, she felt warmth wash through her torso. An overwhelming urge to weep rose through her chest and throat.