Foreverland Is Dead

by Tony Bertauski

  They don’t heal the mind. But they don’t waste the body.

  Old women unwilling to die.

  Yeah, she gets it.

  She knows why Barbara Graham brought her out here. And she hates herself even more for hoping that Barbara was nice, that maybe she was trying to help her.

  That maybe she was good.

  Not a murderer.

  “Where is she?” Cyn asks. “Where’s Patricia?”

  53

  The white truck is next to the helicopter. The men are loading boxes onto it this time, presumably full of evidence for analysis in a real lab.

  The techs watch Cyn come out of the brick house. One of them smokes a cigarette. They stare. She looks right back at them, jonesing for a drag.

  Do I smoke?

  They call Thomas over. Maybe they’re talking business. Maybe not. They watch Cyn and Linda walk toward the tents while chatting.

  The wind harvesters are still turning, the solar panels following the sun as it peaks. All that energy going to the brick house, powering all that equipment, all those toys. Only a slice of it goes to the cabins, enough so that the girls don’t die. They already had a miserable life, just more of the same out here.

  That’s the point. They made it miserable to be here, which made Foreverland even more inviting. Once the girls got a taste, they wouldn’t want to leave.

  Desire. Best drug there is.

  Important people are in front of the tent on the far right, nearest the brick house. They watch Cyn and Linda approach. Popular for all the wrong reasons.

  “Dr. Mazyck.” A young lady wearing camouflage approaches. “Mr. Erickson would like to speak with you.”

  “Certainly.”

  They follow her to the third tent on the left, the one closest to the dinner house. Camouflage Lady opens the door.

  “Wait here, Cynthia,” Linda says. “I’ll be right out. If you’re hungry, you can go to the mess tent. There’s a cooler in our tent, too. Help yourself.”

  Cyn’s not hungry. Even if she was, she’s not walking closer to the important people still outside the tent. Enough with the staring and wondering.

  Cyn hears a deep voice from inside the tent. “How’s she doing?”

  A generator starts up, eating up the conversation before Linda responds. The important people point at the brick house. Thomas comes around the corner of the garden, shaking hands. They talk a bit, a few heads turning toward Cyn.

  Dammit.

  It feels like a bear is standing on her chest. A spotlight sizzling on her skin. She steps around the corner of the tent. The generator is too loud to hear anything inside. She’s not sure she wants to hear it, anyway.

  They’re discussing what they’re going to do with her—that’s what they’re doing. How’s she doing? What is she saying? What does she know? Does she remember? Does she remember?

  DOES SHE REMEMBER?

  They should be talking about the girls. Not Cyn.

  An ATV coasts out of the wood and parks behind the bunkhouse. The rider turns the key off, goes through the back door with an armful of IV bags. Time for lunch, girls.

  The voices inside the tent rise above the hum of the generator.

  “We can’t keep her here,” he says.

  “You can’t send back,” Linda says. “Not yet.”

  The voice fades into the background noise; perhaps they have realized that the walls are only fabric. They want to send her back…where?

  Home?

  The guys are finished loading the helicopter, sitting on the tailgate and talking to the pilot. It’s too far away to know if they’re looking at her, but she doesn’t wait around.

  The path to the little cabin is right around the corner.

  She knows the way.

  The trees soften the noise from the generators and all-terrain vehicles. Dried sticks break beneath her boots. Up ahead is the turn where the body had lain. Much of the undergrowth around that spot is trampled or uprooted.

  The body was here, too.

  They probably already know her name, where she came from. What she was doing. At least she’s dead. Good.

  A green tent extends over the front of the cabin, the flaps tied open. There are tables of equipment and computers with bundled cables running through the open door like black snakes. A skinny tech slouches on a folding chair, tapping on a keyboard.

  A generator is grinding away behind the cabin, loud enough to mask her footsteps. He doesn’t see her until she’s in front of the tent.

  “Whoa.” He pops up, the chair falling over. “You’re not allowed back here, not without permission.”

  He holds up his phone like somehow that’s proof no one called to give her permission.

  Cyn doesn’t pay attention. She sees through the open door. She sees the body lying on an elevated platform. The hands are curled over the chest like dried claws. There’s mild pressure building inside her head, the odd sensation that comes with bizarre and unlikely events. The impossible.

  If what they say is true: there’s a god in there. She contains a universe.

  And the world slowly begins to turn. And tilt.

  “Hey. You hear me?”

  A shadow passes between her and the god.

  A hand snatches her arm—

  She pivots, raising her arm and twisting, kicking the back of his legs, using leverage to drop him. A fist glances off the side of her head, but she’s on top of him. He bucks, but she hooks her heels behind his legs, limiting his range— Footsteps.

  Someone wrenches her arm behind her back. She loses her grip and the tech throws her off, scampering through leafy debris. A knee punches her between the shoulder blades, grinding her cheek into the earth.

  “Stop!” Linda comes around the corner. “Get off her! Now!”

  The man twists her other arm. Doesn’t budge.

  “She’s all right, Henry.” Linda kneels down next to them. “I promise, she won’t do anything. Will you, Cynthia?”

  She tries to nod, but her head is pressed into the ground.

  “I’ll take responsibility. Please, just let her up.”

  The knee eases a bit, testing her. Cyn holds her position, doesn’t fight even though the strain on her shoulder aches. All at once Henry jumps back.

  Linda helps her sit up. Cyn rubs her wrist, swinging her arm to relieve the pain. Linda rubs the mud off of her cheek. “Are you okay?” she whispers.

  Cyn nods.

  “She didn’t have to do that,” the skinny tech says, rubbing the back of his head. “She’s not supposed to be back here, and she wouldn’t answer me. All I did was touch her and she went off.”

  “I understand, Jeff,” Linda says. “We just came back to look at Patricia and she got ahead of me. It won’t happen again. Will it?”

  They wait for Cyn to respond.

  She shakes her head.

  Henry crosses his arms. Jeff continues rubbing his head where it was planted in the dirt. They’re not moving. Linda places a call. A few seconds later, Jeff’s phone buzzes. He answers the call from someone with more power than Linda.

  The men stalk off.

  Jeff explains how the hell a girl beat his ass.

  The room smells like antiseptic.

  Cyn stands on the threshold, listening to the hum of machines and the grind of the generator. There’s enough room to slip between the wall and the platform.

  Her wrinkled skin is like tissue paper wrapped around bones. It’s hard to guess her age. A wire protrudes from her forehead, the needle completely embedded. A clear tube runs beneath her nose, her chest slowly rising and falling. Nothing else moves, not even the eyes beneath the lids.

  So frail, so brittle and small. A dried-up body on the outside. A universe inside.

  Are the girls still cold? Hungry?

  Cyn abandoned them, left them to suffer alone. “She was in a vegetative state when her husband experimented on her decades ago. It’s controversial technology, one that creates an alternate reality by d
irectly connecting the brain to a computer, transporting the person’s identity into a program. The technique is illegal.”

  “Why?”

  Linda considers how much to say. “Too many side effects.”

  “Like what?”

  Another pause. “Reality confusion, for one.”

  Sure. Which one is the dream?

  “Patricia spent many years in a psychiatric ward before her son, Harold Ballard, took her. There are no records of where they went, but Harold is the one that created Foreverland. We can only guess that he used her to develop another alternate universe.”

  Linda strokes the blanket over the old woman’s leg.

  “She suffered from a split personality before her husband’s experiment. He claims that he was attempting to heal her mind, to place her in a supportive alternate reality before waking her back up. Unfortunately, it locked her inside of her mind.”

  “You think she’s a victim?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know what’s happening; she’s just trying to survive, trying to make sense out of her reality like the rest of us. Imagine being the only person in the universe.”

  Cyn feels like that now. She bends over the old woman’s face. It smells like mold.

  “We hope to begin interpreting what’s inside her, to see her world, like pointing a camera inside her mind. If we can do that, we can communicate with her and the girls. Guide them out.”

  The wire is right in front of her. It would only take a second to rip it out, to end the girls’ suffering. Would the universe turn off? She can’t do that. As much as she wants the suffering to stop, she can’t take the chance that she’ll make it worse.

  “How did you get out, Cynthia?” Linda says, sensing her thoughts.

  Cyn shakes her head. What good would it do if she knew? They can’t tell the girls. All they can do is wait.

  And waiting helps nothing.

  54

  The generators cycle on and off all night. Cyn hardy notices them anymore. Like the rooster.

  But there’s no rooster here. No horses.

  Just lots of people. Lots of food.

  And guilt.

  Linda’s gone. Probably an early morning meeting. When she’s not prodding Cyn to remember, she’s talking to the important people. She hasn’t said anything about home; maybe they were talking about sending her somewhere else. Like a lab for experimenting. For some reason, this place feels like home, not somewhere else. That should alarm her.

  There’s a chill this morning, enough to make her hurry getting dressed. She digs a yogurt out of the cooler, peels the foil off the top while stepping outside. Her breath is foggy.

  The two helicopters are still in the field. The ATVs are lined up at the dinner house. She sees people sitting at the table through the windows, more of a meeting than a meal. Cyn dishes out the peach-infused yogurt and goes around the back. The backdoor to the bunkhouse is unlocked.

  The inside smells clean.

  The nurse isn’t there. The door clicks behind her. Nothing moves. Clear bags hang on metal stands, empty tubes running inside skin. She rubs her arm where the stent was removed—still sore.

  She’s smothered by the silence. Five bodies, but nobody here.

  The front door opens. A young man sets a box on the floor, washing his hands at the dispenser set up on a small table. He’s smaller than Cyn by a few inches, maybe a few pounds, too. He pulls the blanket off of Kat’s body, bunching it at her feet, and turns her onto her side, careful not to disturb the tubes and wires.

  And needle.

  He does the same to Jen and Mad.

  “Oh good gracious!” He jumps back. “Have you been standing there the whole time, young lady?”

  Cyn doesn’t answer.

  “Scared the hell out of me.” He strips the blanket off of Roc. “Grab her feet.”

  He doesn’t ask if she wants to help, just tells her. And that’s enough to get her going. She approaches the foot of the bed, nervous to be that close to her. For some reason, touching her makes it real.

  Feels like meat.

  “Go wash your hands,” he says. “I could use some help setting up bags and rubbing them down. Jackie is still taking care of Sandy and we’re a little behind.”

  Sandy?

  Cyn goes to the dispenser, rubs the sanitizing gel on her hands while he opens the box, pulling out six bags. Each contains separate packets that need to be mixed. He sets those aside.

  Cyn hangs them on the stands. He connects them.

  He shows her how to rub their legs, focusing on the pressure points where bedsores are likely to fester, including the buttocks. The beds, he says, are specifically designed to relieve pressure, but can’t prevent sores indefinitely.

  “If we weren’t doing this, it’d get real smelly in here.”

  He lets her massage Mad’s heels. Cyn rubs the lotion in circular motion, her eyes following the wire from the girl’s forehead to the black box on the table. Cyn’s bed is on the other side, the needle still stuck in the tube.

  When they’re finished, he hands the extra IV bag to Cyn.

  “I thought Jackie would be over here by now. Take this over there while I finish up.”

  “Where?”

  “The big house, second floor. I assume she’s taking care of Sandy, still. I hope she is. The poor girl needs the IV changed.”

  “Who’s Sandy?”

  “The little Sleeping Beauty.”

  “You mean Miranda?”

  “No.” He flicks the IV bag hanging on Mad’s hook. “I mean Sandy. She was in the brick house when we got here, second floor. Maybe she was in that empty bed before that, I don’t know.”

  He points at Miranda’s bed.

  “All I know is that she’s upstairs. Trust me, it’d be a lot easier if she was over here, but there’s no way to move her. So if you’d be a dear and take that up to Jackie, I can get this finished.”

  Cyn stands there, holding the bag.

  Miranda could be her middle name. She’s just a kid; it wasn’t her fault she woke up in the brick house.

  But she did.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  Cyn’s breathing loudly, exhaling through her nostrils like a bull pawing the dirt.

  She can hear the techs talking in the back room, the keys tapping. The office chair popping. No one stops her from going upstairs.

  All the doors are open. Boxes and folders are stacked, the beds stripped, the dressers empty. All except one.

  She lies on top of the king-sized bed, hands folded over her stomach. Her blonde hair is splayed on the pillow, eyes closed. She’s wearing loose-fitting clothing, rather plain. Probably not what they found her wearing when they discovered this place.

  The IV bag is empty.

  Cyn walks to the side of the bed. This piece of meat smells better than the others. Looks better.

  She was so frail and timid when she woke up, curling up in the corner like a mouse. But she was the one who had pulled her out of the fence that first morning. She was the one who had sent out winter gear and warned her about Roc. Cyn wanted to protect her.

  But then she went inside and never came out.

  And neither did the food.

  Not a mouse. A rat.

  She was so different from the rest of them. It wasn’t just her hair or the clothes; it was the way she spoke, the words she used. Once she was safely inside the fence, it was the way she looked at them. The way she wrinkled her nose when she was near, the way she turned her head. Kept her back straight, walked like what came out of her didn’t stink.

  And the thing in her neck didn’t work.

  “Miranda Myers is a seventy-seven-year-old woman.” Linda is at the door. “She was diagnosed with cancer, was given about six months to live before she relocated out here. When we arrived, we found her body in the back room—the one behind the computer room. Sandy Bell’s body was up here. At first, we couldn’t understand why she wasn’t in the bunkhouse.”
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  Miranda’s slender hand is limp. Cyn takes it, a lump rising in her throat. The heavy bracelet slides up her bony arm. Miranda is engraved on the gold plate. Before it looked like expensive jewelry. More of a dog collar now.

  Cyn massages her hand, kneading the palm with her thumbs.

  “We think Miranda was crossing into Sandy’s body when Foreverland collapsed.”

  Sandy.

  Is she as scared and meek as she looks right now? Or maybe she was scrappy, mean, and nasty like the rest of them. I’ll never know.

  “Did she introduce herself as Miranda?” Linda digs softly with the therapist voice.

  Cyn brushes the blonde hair from the young face while rage and sadness tangle inside. She resists the urge to yank the hair from her pretty little head.

  It’s just a body. Sandy’s body.

  “She came out of the brick house when we woke up like this innocent, scared little girl that didn’t belong out here. Didn’t belong with us.”

  “Do you belong here?”

  “That’s not what I mean. She didn’t know anything about this. She was afraid of Roc. She was cold and hungry, like the rest of us. She went inside the brick house, sent out clothes for us to wear.”

  Linda takes the other hand, massaging it like Cyn.

  “Her name is Miranda,” Cyn says. “That’s all I know.”

  “Where do you think Sandy went?”

  Cyn shakes her head. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Right now, we think Sandy—her identity or soul, whatever you want to call that true nature—was pulled out of the body and replaced with Miranda’s identity. It’s a body swap, but we don’t know where the girls go once they’re pulled out of their bodies.”

  Where do you go when you don’t need a body?

  That’s the question everyone wants answered. Just because you have an answer, though, doesn’t mean it’s right. Maybe Miranda knows. Maybe she knows where she sent Sandy once she pushed her out of her body for good.

  Yeah, Miranda knows.

  The sleeping girl’s lips begin to quiver.

  Linda doesn’t notice; she doesn’t see the wisp of smoke leak from the corner of Miranda’s mouth. She doesn’t feel the frigid grasp of misty fingers ooze from the young girl’s lips, doesn’t see the vapor slither up Cyn’s arms, creep around her neck. Doesn’t see it seep into Cyn’s vision.