“Map won’t do us any good, we’re off road,” he said. “Don’t worry about it though, shouldn’t be too hard to find our way back.”
That seemed to reassure her. They returned their gaze to the sky, where Doris pointed at the full moon hovering above them.
“Think stars help when it’s space you’re exploring?” she asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, she added, “Still can’t believe people have actually set foot up there.”
“Me neither,” he said. “Our grandchildren will probably be living on the Moon.”
She exhaled a plume of smoke which expanded to form a circle of grey around the lunar brightness.
“Well, I sure hope humans learn to sort out their problems down here before they go out and start causing trouble in outer space.”
Keith suddenly felt painfully aware of the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of the Earth floating within it. And what did that make him? An adulterer, leaving his wife and child so he could go fuck out in the woods. What consequence did that carry in the grand scheme of things when the span of a human life amounted to nothing more than a blip in time?
“What if this is it?” he asked. “And there’s no afterlife when we die?”
Silence filled the gap in time before Doris answered.
“It’s a scary thought,” she finally said.
The trees rustled behind them, breaking through the eerie quiet. Doris tensed up, her naked body clenching against his.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Probably just the wind.”
A musical chirping sound played into the air. She smiled this time as she asked the question.
“And that?”
“Probably just a bird or some other animal.”
They both shot up at the sound of a high-pitched squeal.
“That,” he said, before she had the chance to ask another question, “sounds like an animal getting eaten.”
She put out her cigarette, gathering her clothes and holding them against her body.
“Then we should go,” she said. “Let’s get back to the car.”
“Relax!” he said. “It was probably just a cat eating that bird.”
The roar that followed shook the ground beneath them. One of the trees toppled over and crushed the car, the force of the impact shattering the windshield and sending shards of glass scattering across the forest.
Doris screamed and took off running before he could say anything, throwing her clothes aside as her arms flailed about. Keith chased after her but had trouble keeping pace. He moved his feet frantically but only seemed to be running in place as she gained distance.
“Doris!” he yelled. “Doris!”
Suddenly, just as his feet started to move him forward, something pulled her screaming into the forest. He tried following the sound of her shrieks when a spray of blood hit him in the face.
Keith turned and ran in the opposite direction. Behind him came another roar, and the pounding of footsteps like the steady beat of a drum. He dared a glimpse over his shoulder and saw a shadow with red eyes and claws giving chase.
The thought came to him intuitively, if irrationally that he needed to find the map if he wanted to escape. Keith ran to the wrecked car as the creature gained ground on him. He dove underneath the felled tree and reached his hand through the broken windshield, desperately searching for the map below the compressed hood of the car.
The shadow creature circled the wrecked automobile, a soft purring sound emanating from it, somewhere between the mechanical and the natural, like a revving engine or a cat about to pounce. Keith sliced the back of his hand on broken glass as the creature lunged at him, and then his fingers found the map.
*
Keith awoke, struggling to catch his breath as sweat poured down his face. His knuckles were white from clutching the bed support rails. Forcing himself to pry his hands loose, he saw that blood was trickling down from one of his knuckles almost as if it had been scratched. Had he done that to himself in his sleep? And what had he been dreaming about? He couldn’t remember.
The room was dark, but he managed to reach over to the bedside table and grab some paper towels. He used one to wipe away the trickle of blood from his hand and then grabbed another to dab away the sweat from his brow. As he did so, he was surprised to discover that he had no hair.
Keith fell back, panting onto his pillow as exhaustion set in. His breathing slowly regulated itself and he felt his consciousness slip away once more.
*
Late to his own wedding, but at least he had the excuse of getting lost. Post-War New Jersey seemed to be in a constant state of construction and the map makers simply couldn’t keep up. He’d taken a detour around a closed parkway exit, and it took stopping to ask for directions at five gas stations before he regained his bearings.
Of course, he knew that’d be no excuse for Anna. Nothing was ever good enough for her. He thanked God that tradition forbade him from seeing the bride until after they’d been joined in holy matrimony, so he wouldn’t have to face her wrath until after the wedding. She would have to fake happiness until then, for the sake of all the friends and family who had come to watch them get married.
Keith waited at the altar of the small church. The midday sun broke through the stained-glass windows of saints, illuminating those gathered in a kaleidoscope of color. Jesus presided from upon the crucifix, his sad eyes gazing out upon the congregants and begging them to ask for his forgiveness. His groomsmen lined up beside him in matching tuxes, while the bridesmaids aligned opposite in dresses of floral blue.
Anna’s sister, the maid of honor, had been glaring at him since he’d come busting through the doorway sweaty and disheveled, waving the map and trying to explain his lack of punctuality on account of being lost. It made no difference. They’d already conveyed his betrothed’s disappointment and impatience on her behalf. Everyone was anxious to get on with things, so he wiped off his brow with a towel and tossed the map underneath the first row pew.
Music burst forth from the organs. The familiar tune of “Here Comes the Bride.” Keith watched as the people in the pews rose like a synchronized wave from front to back, turning their heads as the bride walked down the aisle escorted by her father. She wore a long satin gown, tight bodice with a scooped neck, and lace sleeves that ran the length of her arms. Behind her veil, he could make out ruby red lips parted into a smile.
Keith had known Anna since high school. Now it was 1963, only a year after they’d graduated, and here they were getting hitched. Sure, they were young, but not that much younger than most couples getting married these days. That didn’t prevent Keith from feeling apprehensive about doing the right thing. The thing that everyone expected after he’d gotten Anna pregnant.
The recitation of the wedding vows droned in his ears. He tried to listen but found himself distracted. Only certain words registered in his mind.
“In sickness and in health… ’til death do you part…”
Sickness… death… he secretly thought to himself that wouldn’t be such a bad way out. But he shouldn’t have such thoughts. It was uncouth. Not gentlemanly. Not what was expected of a good boy like him. A good boy who tried his best but always seemed to come up short.
When the couple said “I do” and the ceremony ended, the pastor gave them permission to kiss. Keith turned to his new wife and lifted back the veil, leaning in to press his lips against hers. Opening his eyes as the room darkened, he had a brief glimpse of a hollow skeleton beneath the veil before Anna’s blue eyes returned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “You’ve gone pale.”
He couldn’t bring himself to answer. The image of the skull had frozen him in place.
Those gathered murmured nervously amongst themselves. Anna’s eyes shifted to and fro. She leaned towards him and whispered harshly in his ear.
“It’s bad enough you arrived late and embarrassed me in front of my friends and family, you better no
t ruin this now. I know you’ve gotten cold feet and feel like everyone is forcing you into this, but you promised to do the right thing. You promised! You’re not going to leave me at the altar. You’re not going to leave me alone to raise your child. Do the right thing, Keith. Do it!”
Her last words turned into a roar as her eyes caught fire, setting the wedding dress ablaze. It burst at the seams from the heat, and the shadow creature emerged from the fire, unsheathing its claws and baring its teeth.
Everyone in the church screamed and fled. The shadow creature caught up to an elderly group and tore them apart with tooth and nail. Keith watched in horror as limbs littered the pews. Those who made it to the back of the church scattered in panic only to find all of the doors locked shut. Some tried to hide, and others, braver or perhaps more foolish, tried fighting back. It didn’t matter. If they fought, they were defeated. If they hid, they were found. If they ran, they were caught. Soon enough the monster had killed them all. Then the shadow creature turned on Keith.
“The map!” he said aloud.
He’d been having difficulty remembering things lately, but he knew that the answers were inside the map. That clearly stood out in his mind. The shadow creature expanded, eclipsing the sunlight until the room was enveloped in darkness, nothing visible except for the red of its eyes and the whites of its teeth and claws. But Keith had already dived onto the floor in the first row and swiped his hand desperately back and forth beneath the pew. His hand brushed against the map.
*
Gradually, light reappeared. Not the natural light of the sun, but the artificial incandescence of a light bulb placed into a lamp. Keith looked at his withered hands, skin barely hanging to the bone, wispy gray hair hardly covering the length of his arm. The room was small and confined. Upon a table beside the bed lay a tray with half-eaten hospital food. On the other side of him sat an elderly woman with a dour face and frowning lips.
“Hello Keith,” she said.
The voice sounded familiar but for some reason he couldn’t place it.
“Hello,” he said back.
“I trust you slept well.”
He placed his hand against his brow to think about it. No hair. That was something else he felt he should have remembered. That he was bald now.
“I don’t remember,” he answered honestly.
“Yes, you’ve been saying that a lot lately.” She sighed. “Though from what I heard the map was supposed to help with that.”
“The map!”
He said it with unmitigated excitement. The map! The one commonality between his leaps back and forth in time.
“Yes, the map,” the woman said.
“Where is the map?”
She stared down at him in defiance, then pointed. There, framed upon the sterile white façade of the hospital wall, hung a colorized image of what appeared to be a human brain.
“They’ve used all the modern technology at their disposal to try and map your brain,” she said. “Lord knows you got enough publicity for it after announcing your condition. Guess those are the kind of benefits that come with celebrity. You’d think you were the president or something with all those adoring fans mourning you outside. But then again, they never knew the real you, did they? They just see the famous rock and roll drummer whose brain took all his talent away too soon while his hands were still ready to play.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. The story she told sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t piece together the puzzle. After a prolonged silence she asked him a simple question.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
He searched for some sign of recognition. Nothing in the wrinkled lines of her face jogged any memory. Nothing in the fading powder gray of her shoulder-length hair. Nothing in her cracked pale lips. The brightness of her blue eyes was the only thing that stirred his thoughts. Something familiar resided within them. He strained to think, but it only resulted in a massive migraine and still no answer. Squeezing his temples, he screamed.
“I can’t remember!”
The woman remained impassive as he struggled. She could only shake her head.
“It’s me,” she said. “Anna.”
Anna. The name did ring a bell. He felt like he’d just been thinking about it. A passing image of a young girl with auburn hair. He remembered sharing a home with her and a child.
“My wife?” he asked.
He reached for her hand but she smacked it away.
“Ex-wife!” she corrected.
Anna laughed, a mocking cackle devoid of any joy.
“You really don’t remember anything, do you? At first, I thought maybe you were putting us all on. God knows, you love a good show. I’m not here to comfort you, Keith. I just… I had to see for myself.”
Daunted by the confusion, he struggled through his brain for memories of this woman. He came across an image of a young boy with his father’s chestnut brown hair and his mother’s deep blue eyes.
“We had a son,” he offered.
Anna opened her eyes and sat back.
“We did,” she said. “We still have him. So you do remember some things.”
“I remember a boy…”
“That was decades ago. He’s a grown man now. You ran off with that girl who was one of your dancers. Michael never forgave you for that, it never mattered how famous you got. He always thought the price of your fame was tossing us aside like trash.”
“Who is Michael?” he asked. “Is that your brother?”
“Michael is the name of your SON!”
She shouted this at him even though the distance between them was no more than a few feet. Keith cowered against his pillow as spittle showered him. One of the nurses in the hall popped her head into the doorway at the noise, but Anna told her that everything was fine and the nurse left them alone again.
“But you do have a brother. Don’t you?” he asked.
Keith’s question was not rhetorical. It begged for reassurance. Anna scrutinized him through narrowed eyes.
“I honestly can’t tell if you’re just messing with me. No, Keith, I don’t have a brother.”
She stood and placed her purse over her shoulder.
“Michael is an only child. I never remarried or had any other children. Neither did you, at least not that I’m aware of, although who the hell knows with all those groupies. Michael will be here tomorrow. It was hard but I talked him into seeing you before… well, before you forgot.”
“Wait!” he begged. “You have to tell me more. Please, help me remember!”
Anna paused in the doorway and lowered her head. Tears in her eyes and sobs in her chest started to form until she forced herself to regain her composure.
“I don’t see why I should, Keith. You never cared to remember about us until you started to forget.”
Having said that, she walked out of the room. Keith felt a panicked apprehension grip him as she left. Left alone, he always started to feel so tired. His body started to quiver and his eyes felt heavy with sleep. He tried to pry them open but his fingers were too frail. Within moments, he could feel himself starting to doze off.
*
It was an apartment in transition. Still largely a byproduct of the conservative decor of the early 1960s but with a noticeable influx of color. Keith had recently taken LSD, although he hadn’t been with his wife when he’d done it. She didn’t approve of drugs, especially with the child in the house. So he had to sneak it in around rehearsals and gigs.
His first experience with acid had opened up the world of psychedelic imagery. He bought lush colorscape paintings from Greenwich Village, and even painted his drum kit to match. She’d never approved of the drums in the first place, but was absolutely livid when she saw the convergence of bright colors he had dipped them in. Before, her only concern had been that they were taking up too much space. Now, they also didn’t match.
His wife had long been of the opinion that he should get a “real job.” The truth
was that his gigs paid better than her career as a diner waitress, but she resented even having to work in the first place.
“A real man would make enough so that I could stay at home and raise his child,” she said.
Keith had tried to do that when Michael was a baby. He’d worked the office job during the day, and spent what limited time he had at night trying to make it with music. But so much changed in the intervening five years. President Kennedy had been shot, there were race riots in the streets of nearby Newark and Plainfield, and musicians like Bob Dylan and the Beatles were releasing music the likes of which he’d never heard before. He’d given up the office job and tried his best to emerge himself in the counterculture scene, but at the end of the night he always had to return to his family.
His wife lectured him as she walked out the door to work the night shift. Reminding him of all the things he did wrong with their son and telling him not to do them again. It didn’t matter. She’d never be satisfied, and he’d long ago given up trying to meet her expectations.
When the door closed behind her, he placed Michael down on the couch in front of the television. The grainy black and white images faded in and out. He adjusted the antenna to get better reception. A map of Vietnam appeared on the television screen, offering a tepid update on the seemingly endless war. Then it switched to a scene of Haight-Ashbury where hippies were converging on the other side of the country in something called the “Summer of Love.”
Keith reached for the Atlas sitting on his coffee table and opened it up to a map of California, staring at the golden coast that stretched from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He couldn’t help but feel that, if not for the accident sitting on the couch next to him, an entire world of opportunity would open up.
“You know what?” Keith whispered at his son. “Sometimes I wish you would just disappear. That something would come and take you away. Then I could leave you and your mother and not have to feel guilty about it.”
As soon as these words left his lips, a strong vibration rattled the windows. Michael jumped off the couch and ran into his father’s arms.
“Daddy?” he asked. “What was that?”
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