Deactivate security?
The cursor hovers over ‘YES’.
She looks to the other monitors. The brick house camera is focused on Cyn, standing beyond the fence, leaning on sticks. She’ll know I’ve been hiding. She’ll be pissed.
She releases the mouse like a hot coal.
“Ms. Miranda?”
Miranda switches the view on one of the smaller monitors to the front porch, swings it around to focus on the old man. He has a slight hunch near his shoulders. His hair is wispy around the crown.
He knocks again. Turns his head.
Looks right at the camera.
He knows!
He drops his hand to his side, still looking. A nod of resignation. Perhaps a brief smile.
“Perhaps she’s trapped.” He turns to Cyn. “We need to find a way to communicate. Maybe there’s a crack in one of the shutters; I can slide a note inside for her to see.”
He looks at the camera again.
“She needs to know she can trust me. That I can help.”
They walk back to the dinner house. One slowed by injury, the other by age. Miranda watches them go through the front door, sees them sit down at the dinner table. But she doesn’t switch the view to look and listen.
Instead, she runs to the kitchen.
She begins hiding food around the house.
33
The ledge is sharp.
The fog shifts. Beckons.
The fall, bottomless.
Sleet pecks the windows.
Cyn’s breath curls in column after white column, each fading into nothing. The stove lifeless.
Pain greets her. Good morning.
Her heels throb. Each pulse pushing pins into her legs. She pulls the covers up to her chin, closing her eyes, wishing it away. But it doesn’t. Nothing goes away, no matter how many times she asks.
The girls are waking. The bed in the far corner is missing. Cyn lies still, hoping her heels will forget she’s awake. She scratches another day on the wall, ignores the endless lines behind it. They are her challenge, each line a brick in a wall that she’s building up to the sky, one she can crawl over, where the sun shines and birds sing and pain does not exist.
Each day a brick. Heavy and solid. Each day she carries a brick to the wall and puts it in place.
“Good morning,” Jen says.
Kat and Mad mutter back, dressing quickly.
Cyn throws the covers off and reaches for the stack on the floor. The undergarments are dingy and already reek of dead skin. The bottoms of her socks are black and damp. She peels them off, replaces them with another pair that are soiled, but dry.
The girls walk past, ask how she’s feeling, if she needs any help. Except Jen. She won’t look at her.
Kat turns the block of wood nailed into the wall—a rudimentary lock cobbled together from parts in the barn—and opens the door. They brace for the weather, start the morning trek to the dinner house.
The girls run. Cyn walks.
The sleet stings like frozen sand.
The dinner house is warm.
The table is pulled away from the stove. Miranda’s bed—the one she was sleeping on before retreating to the brick house—is in front of the roaring stove. Mr. Williams is sitting on it, fully dressed, hair slicked back.
“Good morning,” he says.
Sid is curled up on the floor, a blanket serving as his mattress.
Cyn goes to the footstool to dress her wounds. She folds a piece of paper until it’s thick and narrow, wedging it between her teeth like a bit, and begins to unwind the grimy wrappings. The bandage is soaked with watery discharge and slimy pus.
She bites harder.
Pills.
The time has come. The wounds aren’t healing. She reaches for the cabinet—
She jerks her hand back like the cabinet is hot, slowly looking at the smudges on her first two fingers. She didn’t touch the ink trap yesterday, hadn’t gone near the cabinet… It can’t be.
The dirty socks. The sore feet.
“I don’t like the way those look.” Mad starts up the griddle, looking down at Cyn.
Cyn quickly opens the cabinet, hiding the blue smudges. She pops the lid on one of the bottles, shakes out two white pills.
“You sure?” Mad asks.
She pops them in her mouth, dry swallows. They stick in her throat. Mad hands her a cup of water. The kitchen door opens. Kat carries four eggs in one hand, puts them on the counter.
“That’s it?” Mad asks.
“Feed’s almost gone. Surprised we’re getting any eggs at all.” She blows into her cupped hands. “Need to think about eating those chickens before they go to waste.”
Mad shakes her head, cracking the eggs on the griddle.
“Can you give them horse feed?” Cyn asks.
“Not much of that, either. Can’t imagine they’ll make it through winter in the pasture—grass’ll be gone. Maybe it’s best to let them go, fend for themselves.”
They’d been preparing wood and food for winter, but what if nothing else survived?
Cyn smears ointment on her heels, dresses them up for another day. Ink smudges the wrappings.
“No breakfast for them,” Cyn says.
Mr. Williams and Sid sit at the far end of the table near the door. The old man looks at Cyn at the other end, next to the stove.
“No, you won’t do that!” Jen slams the table. “You’re not going to take away their food!”
“This ain’t a camping trip, Jen! Mom and Dad won’t pick us up before it’s over, so let’s get clear. We will run out of food, we will get sick.”
Jen keeps her fists balled on the table.
“There’s no room for manners, Jen. Unless something changes, we die. All of us.”
“I hardly think we’re a threat, Ms. Cyn,” Mr. Williams says. “We’ve agreed to sleep in separate quarters, but it’s not fair to deny us food when we’ve offered to help.”
“You didn’t agree to anything. We made you leave the bunkhouse at night. You’re lucky we let you sleep in the dinner house.”
“You did, Cyn,” Jen says. “You made them leave.”
“And you’ll get food when you talk. You arrive like tourists and haven’t told us anything. I’ve got a feeling you know plenty. Begin with him.” Cyn nods at the kid with the blank stare, the wet lip. “What’s his problem?”
“It’s complicated,” Mr. Williams growls.
“Start talking or start starving.”
“You going to starve me, too?” Jen says.
“You threaten us, damn right I will.”
“Or if I just threaten you.”
Kat and Mad have already finished eating. Jen’s plate is still full. She’ll sneak them food later.
Not if I can help it.
“Well, Mr. Williams?” Cyn says. “You hungry yet?”
He stands up. Sid gets up automatically. Mr. Williams looks out the window at the brick house, still battened down tight as a tank.
“Okay.” No gold cap glittering this morning. “In private, Ms. Cyn. We’ll talk in private. I’ll leave you to finish your breakfast.”
They go out the front door.
Jen looks at her plate. The food completely untouched.
“Eat your breakfast.” Cyn forks eggs into her mouth. “If not, the rest of us will. But they won’t, Jen.”
She eats.
34
Cyn limps towards the barn, trying to keep the crutches from chafing her underarms. The sleet is sticking to the walls, wet on her face. Kat waits in the open breezeway. Mr. Williams is at the other end, looking at the mountains.
“Want me to stay?” Kat asks.
“No. Watch the boy, he’s in the bunkhouse.”
Kat steps aside. Cyn slows, careful not to slip. She leans the crutches against the stall. One of the horses pokes his head out, nibbling on the end of the crutch; his eyes are large in his skull.
Cyn takes a moment, then slow, limited steps down
the middle of the breezeway.
“You did the right thing,” Kat says.
Cyn stops, looks back.
“He’s up to something and we ain’t got time,” Kat adds. “Hunger’ll make anyone talk. You did the right thing.”
She leaves her to go alone. Cyn doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s relieved someone understands.
“Quite a sight.” Mr. Williams doesn’t turn around. “Rich and detailed, not a thing missing. It’s beautiful.”
Cyn refuses to sit on the bench. She stands next to him. She’s already sweating.
“You’re cold and hungry.” He looks at her, nostrils flaring. “You have an infection, you’ll have a fever. It’s all very convincing.”
“No more games.”
“I wanted to see the brick house before having this talk. It’ll make more sense once I see the inside.”
“I get the feeling you won’t come out.”
He looks across the pasture again. A gust of wind hits the wind harvesters.
“None of this is real.” His expression is flat. He’s no longer enamored with the view.
“I thought you would take this seriously.” She turns around, wishing the crutches were closer. “Let me know when you’re hungry.”
She makes it to the first stall.
“You dream about the gray world at night.”
She stops, hand on the wall.
“You dream of static, of fog and haze. You dream that something is out there in that nothingness, but then you wake up. You realize it’s just a dream.”
His voice is stronger.
“But then you went to the edge and discovered it wasn’t a dream. You stepped out of the cold, out of this world, and saw the nothingness that is in your dreams. You went there, you peered into the gaping gray sky, the world of the Nowhere.”
Cyn scratches the old wood. Not finding something to grab, she collapses on a bench, leaning back.
Exhaling.
“Where did you go?” he asks. “Where did you find the edge of this world?”
“Two miles out, straight south,” she mutters. “There’s another fence.”
“That’s not a fence, not like what’s around the brick house. That is the limit of this world. You stepped out of it and into the Nowhere.”
She turns her distant gaze to him. He’s a fuzzy silhouette, the snowcapped mountain a bright, white backdrop. Her stomach turns.
“That gray void of nothing used to be another illusory world like this one, only it was tropical and lustrous and exotic. You won’t remember this, but you and the girls would come visit it, but that was a long time ago, before it collapsed and Sid and I became homeless souls.”
He steps closer.
“Our…identities…if that’s what you want to call them—our true Selves—are frayed and dissolving. I don’t think there’s any way to truly express what it’s like to be lost in the gray, Cyn.”
She twitches. He smiles.
“You only came for a visit; we live out there. Imagine what it feels like to be pulled apart, piece by piece, and set loose on the wind, randomly mixed with so many other disintegrated souls. Sid and I were doomed to waste away, becoming thinner. Becoming less. Our souls bleached lifeless.”
He laughs without mirth.
“But then you peeked into the Nowhere, you shone like a beacon. Suddenly, I knew this world still existed, that there was something out there besides the Nowhere. We were able to draw out of the miasma of despair.”
He looks at his hands, turns them over like he still can’t believe it.
“Sid, my boy, didn’t transition as well as I did. Part of him is still out there.”
“The world doesn’t end, Mr. Williams. You don’t walk two miles and drop off the edge.”
“In this one you do.”
“No, but someone did insert something in our necks that gets triggered by an electrical fence. I ain’t saying I know how they do it, but it’s possible. It ain’t magic.”
“No. It’s a dream.”
She chuckles, turning her head. “It’s not magic, it’s a dream—that’s what you’re saying?”
“You’re asleep, Cyn, but this isn’t your dream. Someone else is dreaming this world. And you’re in it. We’re all in it.” He waves his arms, gestures at the grand view beyond. “Your real self, whoever you are, is real, Cyn. You’re somewhere, just not here. You think you’re real, but you’re asleep. You need to wake up.”
“And you?”
“Me, too. Sid, the girls…we’re all real.”
“But asleep?”
“We’re part of an…experiment, so to speak. It’s hard to explain, you’ll have to trust me.”
“Whose dream world is this? I mean, if it ain’t mine, whose is it?”
“That’s irrelevant. The point is, we can escape. We can wake up in our bodies, wake up in reality where the world exists beyond the edge, where there is no Nowhere. Where we can escape the suffering, get back to living.”
“And you expect me to believe this?”
“No.” What little joy had filled his eyes quickly drains. “You don’t realize this is a dream, so you’ll hang on to it to the very end. Only you can discover it’s false. This is not how I wanted to tell you.”
“Why are you still here? If you know this is a dream, wake up, then. Go ahead, disappear or say the magic word, whatever you’ve got to do, you do it and I’m a believer.”
“Knowing the truth isn’t enough, child. It’s hard work to escape.”
Cyn throws her head back, thumping the weathered wood. There are old nests and white streaks on the rafters, holes in the roof and cobwebs in the corner. These are not the details of dreams.
And she’s never had a dream she couldn’t wake up from.
Sweat forms on her forehead. She swallows the nervous swelling in her throat. “We’re out here starving and freezing and you say just wake up.”
“It was summer where we were.” He holds his arms out. “That’s why we arrived in those clothes. We’re lucky we survived.”
Her laughter is as empty as his. She rolls her head on the wall, eyes him with a shallow smile. “You’re a liar—you’re up to something. And you can starve, for all I care.”
She throws her weight forward. Her steps are small. Her heels are cracking.
“What’s your plan?” Mr. Williams calls. “To survive long enough to see your feet rot off?”
“If it’s a dream, I’ll get new ones.”
“Just because it’s an illusion doesn’t mean you won’t suffer. You’re invested in the dream, child. You don’t want to give it up, no matter how much it hurts.”
Cyn uses the wall to slowly turn around.
“What happens when I die, Mr. Williams? If this is a dream, won’t I wake up?”
He sinks his hands in his coat pockets. “You already died; you have the marks on the wall to prove it.”
The end of the breezeway tilts. She blinks the world back into focus but the floor wobbles. She needs to get out, get some air, get away from the nonsense.
“You’re saying we start over? We wake up in a cabin without memories?”
He nods. Isn’t it obvious?
Cyn doesn’t want to believe it. He’s convincing, but that doesn’t mean he’s right. The squeeze of hunger will bring him back to his senses. He’ll talk.
He’ll tell the truth.
She just wants her crutches, wants to go lie down.
“We need to find the gate,” Mr. Williams says. “It’s the center of the dream. In our world, it was a sundial. If we find the gate in this world, we can use it to wake up.”
Cyn reaches the other end. The crutches stab beneath her arms. She’s panting and sweating. Nausea swirls inside her stomach, reaches for her throat.
“Tell me.” Her voice echoes in the stalls. “What was your tropical world called?”
She feels him smiling. “Foreverland,” he says.
“Foreverland is dead. If you don’t tel
l me what you’re up to, so are you.”
She starts for the bunkhouse where she can rest. Her mouth begins to water. She gets a few steps before vomiting. On her hands and knees, she throws up her breakfast onto the ground, melting the sleet.
This is not a dream, she thinks, heaving again. Dreams don’t hurt.
35
“I can do it.” Cyn tries to prop herself up on her pillow.
“Just lie down and shut up.” Mad wipes Cyn’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Eat the soup and take those.”
Cyn looks at the oblong pills. “I’m not taking these.”
“Those from a bottle,” Mad says. “The other pills must be old or you’re allergic to the medicine. That’s why you puked. Girl, you’ve got a fever and your wounds smell like road kill. You going to take every medicine in that cabinet if you got to.”
Cyn can’t get warm. Can’t stop sweating. This could be it. It’s all over. If the old man isn’t lying, then I’ll just wake up wondering what all those lines on the wall are for.
She puts the pills on her tongue, chases it with chicken broth. Mad brings another spoonful to her lips and sneaks a look toward the back where Roc is sleeping. “More of those clear bags are gone,” she whispers. “I started a count.”
“What bags?” Kat asks.
Mad tells her about the plastic bags in the cabinet. Chills storm Cyn’s body with renewed force. Now she wants to forget about them, wants to forget the ink. I’m stealing them. I’m the one who’s been going to the little house in the woods, taking those bags with me. And I don’t remember doing it.
The dead woman on the path—she’d had one in her hand. Was she the one taking them before they awoke? What’s in the cabin? What could make Cyn sleepwalk almost two miles through the night until the flesh wore off of her feet?
I wish this would end.
“Is the old man crazy?” Mad tips the bowl for the last couple spoonfuls. “He thinks this is all a dream and you believe him?”
“You ever go hungry in a dream?” Cyn says.
“He said we were part of an experiment,” Kat says.
Kat admits she went around the barn and listened, heard all the nonsense. Cyn wishes she didn’t do that; now she’s got to explain everything when all she wants to do is sleep.
Foreverland Is Dead Page 12
