Foreverland Is Dead

by Tony Bertauski

  “It’s hard to explain.” He avoids looking at her. “Let’s say we were exploring expanded consciousness, living life outside the physical body. My wife, Barbara, volunteered to participate in Patricia’s experiment, which only allowed females.” He chuckles. “I was on a tropical island, and she was in this place.”

  “So you’re saying this place, right here and now, is like Foreverland?”

  “In a way. You see, the girls in Patricia’s program—”

  “The Fountain of Youth.”

  “Um, yes,” he stammers. “I believe that’s what they called it. How did you know?”

  “I saw it somewhere.” She sips her tea. “Go on.”

  “Okay. Whatever happened to Foreverland also affected Patricia, only she didn’t crash. She rebooted. Your experiment started over.”

  “Then where’s your wife?”

  “I don’t know.” He pauses with a grimace, although it looks forced. Fake. “Maybe they got out before it crashed.”

  “But why didn’t we get out?”

  “Look, Miranda, I don’t know everything, just where we are. I do know this, we don’t want to stay here.”

  She pulls her legs onto the chair, throws a blanket over her lap and sinks into the cushions. Mr. Williams sits back quietly.

  The music soothes the moment.

  “It’s not fair.” She holds the teacup with both hands below her chin. “Foreverland was nice.”

  “It was utopia, Miranda. Patricia’s world is an exact replication of reality. This place is exactly where my Barbara lived, all the way down to the pictures. I don’t know how Patricia did it. It’s almost like she absorbed the details of reality around her and created this alternate reality in her mind. Patricia made this world exactly like the physical one. There’s almost no difference.”

  She hides half her face behind the blanket. “I want to wake up.”

  “There’s no waking up.” His eyebrows shade his eyes. “She didn’t create this world to last, there’s only so much food, only so much time. The only way out is to escape.”

  “And then what? If we die, we wake up?”

  “In Patricia’s world, you start over, you wake up without memories.”

  “How do you know?”

  He sighs. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been through this.”

  The corners of his mouth turn down grimly.

  “We have to escape.”

  “A gate.” Miranda pulls the blanket down. “You told Cyn in the barn there was a gate.”

  “It’s like a doorway between reality and this world, the epicenter of Patricia’s mind.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s another sundial. We’ll know when we get near it, feel reality begin to quiver. There are several square miles to search and the weather is getting worse. It should be in the middle, but I don’t even know where that is.”

  He rubs his face, yawning. His eyes are red. His cheeks hang like dead skin.

  “I’m old and tired, Miranda. Old and tired. I can’t take much more of this.”

  “We’ve got plenty of food, Mr. Williams. There are elk in the countryside, I’ve seen them. It’s not as bad—”

  “No!” He launches to his feet. Miranda sinks into the chair. “We can’t wait, this won’t last. And I won’t go into the Nowhere again, do you understand? I can’t do it, Miranda.”

  He points at her, his finger knobby and hooked.

  “We have to find the gate. And when we do, I have to be the first one out.”

  She pulls the blanket up higher.

  He downs the remaining tea, puts the cup on the table. He rubs his face, again. “I need some rest. Would you mind if I take one of the beds?”

  She nods, cowering.

  Without another word, he slips into the bedroom next to the stairwell. Miranda doesn’t move from the chair, curled up and shivering. It’s very late. She is scared and awake, but sleep eventually comes.

  At some point, she hears drawers opening and closing.

  39

  The wind harvesters’ blades are locked in place against the punishing wind. Mad stops in the kitchen. Cyn looks up from the footstool.

  “It’s me,” Cyn says. “I’m the one.”

  “What?”

  She holds her head like she’s clamping it together, hair tufts sticking out between her inky fingers.

  “In the mornings…” Cyn starts, trailing off. “In the mornings my feet are cold, my bandages wet and muddy. But I don’t go to bed like that—I just wake up that way.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Cyn holds up her hand, exposes the ink stains. “I’m stealing the bags.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I know!” She squeezes her head, rocking back and forth. “I’m sleepwalking in here, stealing the bags, but I don’t remember. I don’t know why.”

  “And doing what?”

  “Taking them to that…” She waves her hand at the wall. “That cabin in the woods, I think.”

  She doesn’t tell her how she ruined her feet, walking all the way back the night of the excursion, not remembering a thing.

  “But you don’t have a key.” Mad holds two keycards, both around her neck. “How are you getting in here?”

  Cyn’s eyes sit in deep, dark pockets. “I don’t know.”

  She stares at her feet. The toenails are cracked and caked with mud, her skin slightly off-color. Throbbing.

  Mad’s hand is cool on her forehead. “I think the fever is back. We need to try another bottle. And unwrap your feet—”

  The outside kitchen door opens. The wind spits sleet inside. Kat backs into the room, hood over her face. She hugs herself, stomping her feet.

  “The chickens are dead.”

  “What?” Mad says.

  “Chickens. They’re dead.”

  “All of them?” Mad says.

  “Yeah, all of them. Something got inside, feathers everywhere.”

  Kat pushes the hood back, looks at Cyn, who is hunched over. “What’s up with her?”

  “Sleepwalker,” Mad says.

  Kat waits, rubbing warmth into her arms. The chill creeps into Cyn just under her sternum. She shakes all over, looks up, her face about to cave in.

  “I walk at night,” she says. “I get up, I steal one of the bags, and I take it to the cabin in the woods. That’s what the old woman was doing when she died on the path—I saw the plastic bag in her hand.”

  “So you took her place?”

  “How the hell should I know? Does anything make sense?”

  Cyn shakes her head. No one has an answer. The more they know, the less they understand.

  The front door slams, someone stomps their feet. Humming a little tune and flapping their lips. Jen is dressed in enough clothes for two Eskimos. She turns her head left and right, aiming the long snorkel at each of them, her face deep inside the hood.

  “Anyone come out of the brick house?”

  No one answers.

  When the long, fuzzy hood points at Cyn, a deep breath is sucked in. She pushes the hood off, kneeling in front of her.

  “You don’t look good,” she says. “And the bandages are wet and nasty, why aren’t you wearing the boots? Get those off. We need to start a new medicine. Right, Mad? She looks flushed. Someone get some water.”

  Jen opens the cabinet, grabs one of the three brown bottles still left. Kat reaches in before the door closes, snatches a clear bag.

  “You’re feeding someone,” she says. “This ain’t medicine, I bet. These are nutrients, you’re feeding someone through the veins.”

  Cyn takes pills from Jen and water from Mad. She sits up, lets Jen begin unwrapping her right foot, trying to remember taking the bags. But it’s the same, always the same, every night. Blank. Empty.

  How would she know how to fix an IV? How could someone force her?

  The dreamer.

  She doesn’t want to bel
ieve the old man, doesn’t want to think about the dreamer hiding away in the woods, making her sleepwalk to care for her.

  “Ooh.” Mad turns away, covering her nose. “Don’t look, Cyn.”

  The odor is obscene.

  The wound is pitted, the edges inflamed, the center white with pus. Her ankle is stiff and achy.

  “That’s not good,” Kat says. “Double up on the pills, I say.”

  “Okay.” Jen backs away. “All right. Mad, get a bucket of water and a rag. We’re going to clean this up, get it wrapped. Then we’re taking you back to bed and bringing you some soup. You got more soup, Mad?”

  Mad drops the bucket and rag next to Jen. They stare at it.

  “Kat,” Jen says, “get behind Cyn.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll need to hold her.”

  Jen’s gentle at first. But Kat does have to hold Cyn. She wraps her arms around Cyn’s chest, each dab of the cloth like a hot poker knifing through her leg.

  The room starts to turn.

  They carry her out. She doesn’t remember that.

  The storm pelts her, but she doesn’t take cover Her face is numb before they reach the bunkhouse. They tuck her in her bed. Kat stokes the fire. Cyn feels Jen lean over, hears her scratch the wall.

  Adding another day.

  40

  The showerhead drips.

  Miranda backs away from the mirror, the edges fogged. She pulls her hair up and clips it into place with a small barrette in order to show off her ears and the dangling pearls. Mr. Williams found the earrings in Barbara’s room and asked her to wear them.

  Don’t sink to their level, he said. Don’t be afraid to be who you are.

  They’re going to hate her, think she’s showing off, rubbing it in their faces. But she likes them. They compliment her complexion.

  So does the necklace.

  She brushes her teeth and rubs a splash of perfume on her wrists. One last look.

  She feels good, like herself. Who she is.

  Mr. Williams is standing at the window in the front room, hands in his pockets, staring at the dinner house. His hair slick with comb lines. He found a yellow collared shirt and white sweater vest. Gender neutral.

  Sid is on the couch, doing the usual.

  Mr. Williams turns. Smiles. “You are a beautiful young lady.”

  “Thank you.” She straightens up despite the tension in her chest. “I don’t think this is a good idea, though. I don’t want to go with you.”

  “We cannot allow our wants to be the compass of our lives, my dear. Life demands. We answer, like it or not.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “How you feel is irrelevant.” He wraps a wool scarf around his neck, holds a coat out.

  She can’t move. “They hate me. They’ll hurt me.”

  “Of course they hate you. But they can’t hurt you.”

  He lays the coat over the arm of the chair, reaches into his pocket. He dangles a black key fob.

  “What is it?”

  “Stay near me.”

  He holds the coat up, again. The gold cap twinkles. He looks from beneath shaggy eyebrows with cold blue—almost gray—eyes.

  She’s compelled to move.

  Miranda slides her arms into the sleeves. Mr. William’s zips it up and hands her a scarf.

  “It’s cold out there.”

  Sid puts on a frilly coat over multiple sweatshirts, sliding leather gloves over his hands, his wrists still exposed. Mr. Williams pulls a thick stocking cap over his head and buttons up an overcoat. He slides his hand over the back of Miranda’s neck, his palm soft with lotion. His thumb caressing her hairline.

  “Sid,” he says. “Lead the way, my boy.”

  The wind whistles through the doorway.

  Miranda steps onto the front porch, turns her back to the west, losing her breath in the frigid gale. She gulps at the air. Painful as it is, the air feels clean and fresh. Purifying. Only then does she realize how bad it smells inside the house.

  “Come along!” Mr. Williams holds out his hand.

  They walk single file, Sid leading the way. His lean body is hardly a shield, but bears the majority of the weather. Miranda shuffles along, head down, plowing through their tracks. Snow falls into her shoes, packing against her socks. When they reach the dinner house, the path widens.

  They stop outside the bunkhouse.

  Snow is melting into puddles near the door.

  Kat and Mad are gathered around the stove. Jen sits next to Cyn’s bed. They look up, their cheeks sunken, their listless eyes dark. They don’t look emaciated on the cameras.

  In person, they look like refugees.

  Miranda’s legs threaten to buckle. Her skin is cold from the weather, but her insides are numb with fear. She stays behind Mr. Williams.

  He looks around, observing the quarters. Hand in pocket.

  “You bring food?” Kat stands.

  Mr. Williams pulls a chair up next to Cyn’s bed, sits with a groan. Miranda goes with him. The blanket is pulled up to Cyn’s chin. He feels her forehead.

  “She’ll be dead in a week,” he says. “Maybe less.”

  “We’re giving her medicine,” Jen says.

  “It won’t matter. What I have to say is more important.”

  “You said this is a dream.” Kat stands over him.

  Mr. Williams is unfazed. Miranda steps back. She never should’ve trusted that thing in his pocket. The girls might be starved, but desperation can be dangerous.

  Sid stands near the door.

  “It is a dream, Ms. Kat.” He leans forward, using his momentum to stand. “And the dream is ending. We need to be out before it does.”

  He walks to the stove and warms his hands. Miranda follows him. Kat tells her she looks pretty. She doesn’t mean it.

  “There’s an exit out there,” Mr. Williams announces. “I don’t know what it looks like. Where I came from it was a sundial, but it could be anything. Whatever it is, it’ll be located in the center of this world.”

  “You mean dream,” Kat says.

  “I don’t have time for this.” Mr. Williams’s eyebrows lower. “You can believe me or not, you can stay here when it all comes to halt. I don’t really care. But what you will do is help me find the gate. I would assume these cabins are in the center of this world but I have my doubts. That means it’s out there. Somewhere.”

  He sweeps his crooked finger around the room.

  “We’ll need to find it. All of us.”

  “Ain’t going out in this weather,” Kat says.

  “Yes, in this weather, Ms. Kat. You will go out and so will the rest of you.” He nods at Jen and Mad. “We’ll also untie the young lady in the back; the more feet on the ground, the better.”

  Miranda grabs the back of his coat. “I don’t…that’s not a good idea,” she whispers.

  “There will be five of you searching. You will go in five directions, walk for an hour, and return.”

  “You’re not going?” Kat asks.

  “I’m far too old to be out there.” A dangerous edge sharpens his tone.

  “If it’s a dream,” Kat says, “why do you care how old you are?”

  He stares at her until it’s uncomfortable, his hand working inside his pocket.

  “You’ll look for something interesting, like a sculpture or waterfall. I don’t know. More importantly, you will feel it when you get near it. It will vibrate inside you, a tingling sensation at the very core of your existence. Do not touch it.”

  He takes a long moment to look at each of them.

  “If you encounter it, do not touch it. Come back for the rest of us and we’ll all leave this dream together. That’s how it works.”

  He walks to the back of the cabin, Miranda attached to his coat. His footsteps clop on the wood floor. Roc is a dark lump in the corner. Miranda closes her eyes, both hands grasping his coat. She wishes Sid was with them.

  “Miranda and I will bring al
l the food out of the house,” he says. “We’ll eat until our bellies are full, give us strength.”

  Roc rolls over at the mention of food.

  He nods at her. “Can you behave yourself?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “If you can’t, you will never leave this place. Answer me.”

  She nods. Miranda isn’t convinced.

  “This isn’t a dream,” Jen whimpers. “I can feel and see and hear. I hurt. This is real, Mr. Williams.”

  He walks over.

  Mr. Williams kneels next to her with much effort. He reaches out, runs his hand over Jen’s black scrub of hair, cups her cheek. Her eyes are big, imploring. And they roll back.

  She slides out of the chair.

  Mr. Williams places her on the floor.

  “What’d you do?” Kat says.

  “I’m in charge, girls.” He looks down at Jen, brushing something off of her lips. “There is a device imbedded in your neck. It will deliver a jolt to your nervous system if I want. It will render you unconscious. I have this control.”

  He holds up a fob and hands it to Miranda. It fits nicely in her hand, her thumb snug in the button’s indention.

  “And so does Miranda.”

  He reaches up. Sid is there to help him.

  Mr. Williams’s knee has stiffened. He limps to the door and waves Sid and Miranda to his side.

  “I’m trying to help all of you, you understand. Without me, you would rot inside this dream for eternity. I don’t ask for thanks, just a little help so that we all can escape.”

  “Bastard,” Kat mutters.

  Mr. Williams doesn’t hear it, or chooses not to acknowledge it.

  “We’ll eat in an hour,” he says. “Be dressed and ready. We’ll plan our search.”

  “What about me?” Roc says.

  Mr. Williams doesn’t bother smiling. “Sid will come for you.”

  She mutters something, too.

  Miranda holds the fob. Both hands shaking.

  Sid opens the door for Mr. Williams. She hurries after him.

  41

  She can hear the weather battering the windows.

  Doors open and close. Logs pop in the stove.

  Coughing.

  Cyn swims through watery delirium, a spirit paddling against the current, rolling beneath the surface, attempting to keep her head above sanity.