Half-a-mile further up the Road, the terrain buckled and rose up into Galloway Hill. A quarter-mile up, a heavy chain hung across the gravel path. But even from here, I saw the decrepit building of the Irresistible Grace Calvinist Church perched on top of the Hill.
I felt no breeze out here in the stifling afternoon, and heard almost no sound. I breathed slowly, acquainting my lungs with the air's humid texture. A far-flung grumble of thunder rolled in from the west like the midday sky trying to clear its throat. We really needed the rain.
Ben threw the car's back door closed with the sound of a shotgun blast. "Fuck this," he said, drawing out the pair of syllables as if the stagnant heat made even the simple task of speaking unbearable. He spit onto the gravel.
"Couple of minutes, and we'll get out of here," Phil said. "I just want to check something out."
Ben waved an arm as if it didn't really make that much of a difference. It was about as close as he would get to admitting that he made us waste our morning at the Library. If Phil meant to see this idiotic adventure through, Ben wouldn't to try to talk him out of it.
Phil just nodded. I trudged back to the car, and the three of us hiked across a forty-foot stretch of shaggy scrub grass before reaching the treeline. Ben led the way as we ducked between a pair of gnarled willow trees.
No trails cut through this swatch of overgrown foliage. The tangled canopy turned the still air between the trees into a grey twilight. A city ordinance protected this undeveloped southern sprawl of Prophecy Creek.
The three of us picked our way across uneven terrain. Phil passed Ben and me to take the lead, navigating with the compass in his wristwatch. Because even at just three square miles, we could easily get lost in these woods.
I followed in Ben's wake by a few paces. He hauled himself up over the hulking trunk of a downed Scots Pine, and said, "You get that email from Ethan last night?"
"The one he sent two days ago?" Phil called back.
"Maybe," Ben said. "I've been busy."
"You've been busy," I repeated. "Yeah."
"Hey," Ben said over his shoulder, laughing, "I got a whole life you guys know nothing about." He ducked under the low branches of a spruce. "I do shit."
"Don't tell your Outer Banks story again," I said.
"Not that it isn't utterly fascinating," Phil added with surprisingly little sarcasm, "because I assure you that it is. But I can only hear about Naomi so many times before I feel an intense urge to smack you upside the head."
"Seriously, man," I said, shaking my head. I hiked around a tangle of bramble bushes, jogging to catch up to Ben. "How could you not have closed that deal?"
"It was a delicate situation!" Ben insisted.
"That should be the title of your autobiography," Phil told him, checking his orientation on his wristwatch.
He angled to the left. The three of us trudged up an incline as the trees thinned out. Another hundred yards further along the woods ended altogether and the ground fell away into a rocky ten-foot drop.
The first steps of a stone bridge perched at the edge of the bluff, jutting out over the gap before dropping off into the air as well. We stood at the precipice, looking out over the southwestern branch of Prophet's Creek. On the far side of the gulley lay the quarter-acre chunk of land that some called the Everlasting Land, and some called the Timeless Island, and others called Prophet's Point.
Thunder muttered again. Closer. Like a warning.
"Here be dragons, baby," Phil said, grinning.
Ben glanced at him, then looked to the sheet-metal sky. "Ethan said it's been raining in Edinburgh for six days," he said. He coughed out a dry laugh, and waved a hand. "I'd take that over this ungodly shit any day of the week."
I looked down the abrupt drop-off into the channel. The heat of the last week-and-a-half dried out the Creek, leaving little more than a shallow stream. The remnants of the Wenro bridge stood out of the water like broken teeth, creating a jagged path across the riverbed.
Phil checked his watch. "Just a couple of minutes."
"Yeah," Ben said. He sounded distant, and I saw him staring out across that isolated chunk of land, toward an unchecked growth of creeping shrubs. Toward the crowns of four soapstone boulders. The Four Brothers.
"Let's get this over with," he said. He dropped into a crouch, then cast himself over the crag, skidding down the crumbling bank with startling dexterity. Phil looked to me and smirked, then lowered himself down the slope as well. I followed, and the three of us gradually clambered across the stepping stones of the bridge's carcass.
On the far side of the stream, Phil paused, bent, picked up a handful of grit. He looked at me as he dug the plastic sandwich bag out of his jeans pocket. "'Coarse sand, red in color'," he quoted. He dumped the grit into the bag, sealed it, and tucked the sample back into his jeans pocket.
"You dragged us out here to collect sand?" Ben said.
Phil looked to Ben, and said nothing. Then he turned toward the island of Prophet's Point, hiking up the narrow shore toward the stretch of high grass beyond.
Ben watched him, then said to me, "He dragged us all the way out here to collect fucking sand."
I laughed, and started up the shore after Phil.
Nothing grew taller than waist-high out here. Only a collection of skeletal and contorted trees managed to survive on this island. We ventured further from the shore, and I felt a scratchy vibration building under my brain. My eyes itched, and my fillings ached.
I glanced back over my shoulder to find Ben a couple of paces behind. He shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes, blinking as he tramped through the grass.
A moment later, Phil came to a stop at the foot of those bulky stones. They stood in a crude semi-circle among the stunted shrubs, leaning at their own crooked angles, their surfaces pitted from all the rounds of ammunition that struck them so long ago. Even in the flat grey light, they somehow held their own iridescent luster.
The shortest came to just below my shoulders. The tallest towered higher than Ben's spiked hair. Many had attempted to measure the height of these stones, and everyone disagreed on their findings. Ben stood to my right, panting as sweat popped across his face.
Another cough of thunder rolled across the afternoon, and I looked up at the brushed-chrome sky. Rain would come, and it would be hard, and it would hit sooner than later. "You got some sand and looked at some rocks," Ben said irritably. "Can we get the fuck out of here?"
I looked at Ben, saw him squinting at the tallest stone. From my other side, Phil said more to himself than to us, "What the hell was he looking for out here?"
"Who the fuck knows," Ben spat. He watched that pockmarked chunk of soapstone, his face tight like he couldn't quite fight off a migraine. "He's dead."
That gritty ache made my eyes feel full of hot sand. I squinted at the boulder in front of me, cocked my head, blinked against the boulder's phantom glare. Those gouges stood out like uncountable scars, and as the heat blossomed inside my brain, I saw the pattern.
I took a step toward the stones, and then another. Ben called to me from miles away, "What are you doing?" He reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my shirt before I got any closer, and I spun toward him, disoriented.
Phil took a step closer, inspecting the random scatter of dents. I turned back to the stone, pulled my sleeve out of Ben's grip, inched in close toward the Second Brother. I reached out for a hunched crop of weeds crawling up the base of the stone, pulled it free, backed away.
I looked at him and laughed. "Saiph."
"From what?" he demanded, blinking at me.
I stared at him, shook my head. "Not safe." I pointed to the uncovered area of the stone, where one indentation sank deeper than those around it. "Saiph. The right foot of Orion." Ben looked, and I indicated the rest of the points in the pattern. That unmistakable pattern. "Betelgeuse, Rigel. Bellatrix." I pointed three fingers toward the center of the stone, a mad grin on my face. I blinked. "And that cluster right there a
cross the middle. Orion's Belt."
I heard Phil speak faintly. "That would mean—"
"It doesn't mean shit," Ben said. "Those are bullet holes. May's Raiders shot this place to shit back in the day."
I squinted at the stone, then took a step closer. Now that I saw them, I couldn't believe that those dents could have been anything other than the three points of Orion's Belt. And there below the center indentation, I found another line of three pits pointing groundward. The sword of the Hunter, with Hatsya at its point.
Phil backed away to my left. I heard him distantly as I reached out toward the pearly surface. "Mike, you —"
Then his words faded behind an electrostatic buzzing inside my ears. My fingers never reached the rock, never got closer than two feet. They got close enough.
Every hair on my body stood out. Thirty-thousand amps sizzled through my blood, and the bitter stench of bleach flooded my lungs. For one glorious moment, I felt the elusive texture of eternity as the voice of the universe brushed against my mind. I laughed, and the sound made me think of black ice. Then noise and heat and light detonated inside my skull like a nuclear blast.
I gasped. A swarm of raging hornets scattered inside my chest. A massive expanse of dented sheet metal hung in front of me. A steel strap tightened around my gut. Something firm pressed against my back. My body jostled, and then I saw Phil's face in front of me.
His mouth moved, but no words came out.
The taste of brimstone and cordite burned the back of my throat. I blinked, and turned my head to see high grass beside me. My mind pivoted wildly before squeezing itself back into the cramped precincts of my skull.
I pushed myself up off my back onto my elbows, and ignored the hot throbbing in my brain. Wind rushed in my ears as Phil and Ben crouched at either side of me. I shook my head. Dark sparkles of pain perforated my mind, and I closed my eyes, gasping at the shrill whine in my head.
Minutes lumbered by before I could hear again, and then every sound reached me through a watery filter. That scorching band around my chest loosened, but never fell away. Each breath felt like swallowing flame. I struggled to get my feet under me, and with Ben at my right and Phil at my left, I managed to stand up. My head felt full of molten lead, but I fought off a wave of vertigo.
The four bulky soapstones stood twenty feet away. I watched them, then looked to Phil. "What happened?" My own voice sounded hoarse and impossibly far away.
Phil stared at me for a long moment, then turned to Ben, who still looked thunderstruck. Ben just shook his head, and Phil turned back to me. "You—" he said, and that wind gusted in my ears again. "—lightning."
"I got struck by fucking lightning?" I said.
"Well," Ben said, "the stone got hit. You weren't even touching it, but it threw you like a fucking shotput."
Phil looked me over. "We thought you were dead."
Ben smirked. "I didn't think you were dead."
"Is that why you shrieked, 'We fucking killed him!'"
"I have never shrieked in my life," Ben insisted. "And certainly not over him." He glanced to me. "No offense."
I shook my head, and then suddenly, for no real reason at all, I laughed. That brought the vertigo back, and a fresh batch of dark sparkles. Those raging hornets swarmed through my chest again, but I laughed once more in spite of the pain. Ben and Phil watched me uneasily.
So I looked at Ben, and laughed harder as I said: "This beats the hell out of your Outer Banks story."
6.
Phil pulled his rickety Chrysler Newport to the curb.
I shoved the passenger's door open and climbed out when he asked me, "You sure you're okay, Mike?"
I glanced back at him with a lopsided smirk. He'd asked me the same question roughly two dozen times over the last six hours, and my answer hadn't changed. After regaining my breath and my hearing out on Prophet's Point, the worst had been a grisly grinding in the right side of my chest as I'd hauled myself up the creek bank.
A bruised rib, I'd told Phil and Ben and myself. From getting thrown like a fucking shotput. Nothing serious. I hardly minded the dull ache across the right side of my back, and I barely noticed the swarm of raging hornets in my chest every time I tried to draw a deep breath.
So I just smirked, and laughed lightly. "Yeah, man," I repeated the line I'd told him all day. "I'm good."
Phil watched me, not believing me, letting me tell my lie. I backed across the sidewalk in front of the rowhome at the corner of Perennial Drive as Ben emptied out of the back seat and climbed into the front.
"You heard the kid, Phil!" he said, yanking the door shut with the sound of a shotgun blast. He drummed his palms on the vinyl dashboard. "He's good! Let's ride!"
Phil bent toward the steering wheel to look past Ben. I laughed, ignoring the steel strap that tightened around my gut, and nodded to Phil. "See you guys tomorrow."
"Same bat-time," Ben said, grinning, "same bat-shit."
Phil finally cracked a small smile. I raised an arm in valediction as he dropped the Newport into gear, pulling away from the curb. The car rolled away up the narrow street, and I turned to climb the stoop to my front door.
A hideous little ceramic bowl stood on the small end table just inside the door with a paperclip and a blood-red six-sided die mixed into a handful of change. I dropped my keys into the bowl and crossed toward the kitchen.
"Regina?" I called out. I got no answer. I glanced up the stairs to the second floor, and saw the door standing closed. I paused. "You home?" Still no answer.
I crossed the kitchen and found a note stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. My mother would be home late. I smirked at the note and opened the fridge, digging out the pizza box and a half-empty liter-bottle of Jolt Cola and carrying them back to my bedroom.
I glanced to the Seiko Chronograph on my right wrist. The blank face stared back up at me. I watched the empty display, then pulled off the band and dropped the dead watch on top of the bureau beyond the foot of my bed.
I snapped on the television beneath the Infinite Regress poster tacked to the wall, flipped channels until I found a Night Gallery rerun starring Louise Sorel and Bradford Dillman on the Sci Fi Channel. I laid the pizza box on my drooping mattress, set the liter-bottle on my desk.
I tried to draw a breath, and felt the steel strap tighten around my gut. I stared at the carpet for a few seconds, then headed out of the room and down the short hallway to the bathroom. I pulled open the door to the medicine cabinet above the sink, rifling through the shelves until I found a bottle of extra-strength aspirin. I shook out three pills, tossed them into my mouth, ran the faucet.
I filled a cloudy glass with water from the tap, poured it down my throat, swallowed the tablets. Then I set the glass down and looked at my reflection, in my own eyes the color of brushed chrome. I tried to inhale deeply again, and the raging hornets swarmed inside my chest.
Just a bruised rib. That was all. Of course it was.
Sorel and Bradford gave way to William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and special guest star Joan Collins. I ate two slices of cold pizza and finished my soda before Shatner, Nimoy and Collins yielded to an abysmal Eugène Lourié monster movie being mocked by Mike Nelson and two robots.
By the time Ogra obliterated Tower Bridge, a deep pressure blossomed under my right shoulder. The three aspirin blunted the sharpest edge of the pain, but I couldn't quite ignore the throbbing. The Royal Air Force launched its futile attack, and I snapped off the television, climbing under the blanket fully dressed.
I tossed for nearly an hour before coming to rest on my chest, my right arm hung off the edge of the mattress. That loosened the steel strap around my gut, and the raging hornets receded enough that I managed to find sleep.
Until I woke up wheezing, well after midnight came and went. I gasped for waterthick air. Each breath felt like swallowing flame. A nightmare lodged inside my throat, choking me. I couldn't catch a full breath. I was dying.
I blinked in the
darkness, and felt a fiery band cinched firmly around my chest. Every half-breath filled my lungs with brimstone and cordite, and I stared at the blood-red digits of the clock on my desk. Minutes ticked by.
I was awake. I knew it. The pain convinced me.
Ten minutes passed, and I pushed myself off the drooping mattress, staggered out of my bedroom. Thick darkness flooded the house. I stumbled across the dining room, slumped into a chair, laid my head against the faux-wood tabletop. I knew that I should call someone, but it felt like too much work to think of the right person.
I sat at that table for a couple of minutes, my shoulder throbbing, my gut tightening with each breath. I would rest here, maybe take a nap, then figure out what to do. I had only bruised a rib, after all. Nothing serious.
Then the living room lights flared, driving poisoned needles through my eyelids. My mother heaved the front door closed, dropping her own keys into that hideous ceramic bowl on the end table next to the loveseat.
"What's going on?" she asked, giddy and slurred.
I tried to form a sentence, but couldn't find the air. I could only shake my head. I don't fuckin know.
She tossed her purse onto the couch, pulled her jacket off and laid it over her bag. She crossed the living room into the dining room, stood next to me, rubbed my back as I sat slumped across the table. "What's wrong?"
"I don't...know..." I mumbled against the faux-wood. A cascade of dark sparkles perforated my mind, and I closed my eyes. Something was wrong. Something serious.
"I can't...breathe..." I stuttered, fighting faintness.
"Okay. You'll be fine," she said. "What happened?"
I tried to answer. Nothing came. I shook my head.
"What was going on before I got home?" She asked. Sudden fury boiled at the bottom of a long, dark tunnel in my mind, and I wanted to scream in her face.
"Nothing," I mumbled hoarsely into my arms.
"Okay," she said, rubbing my back. "It's okay."
My fury rose. My voice did not: "I can't…breathe…"
The Danger of Being Me Page 3
