The Awakening

by K. E. Ganshert

  I have no objections to finding him first, so thirty minutes later we are in a cab heading west with a driver who speaks a lot of Farsi and little English. We drive past tenement housing and masses of chaos—blaring music, wailing sirens, street vendors selling illegal contraband, even an angry protest outside a fetal modification clinic that breaks into violence. More than once, I see money exchanged for bags of white powder or various colored pills and abandoned churches with things like where’s your god now? graffitied on stained-glass windows. Scantily-clad women show off cleavage and a whole lot of leg on street corners.

  A street evangelist stands on a mountain of plowed snow that is more black than white, pleading with passersby below. They jeer and mock and spit. Someone pushes him and he topples off the snow. Two people kick him while he lies on the ground. I cannot peel my attention away from the window. The anarchy should make me nervous. Instead, it offers an odd sort of comfort. Here in Detroit, the authorities are so busy keeping people alive that I feel safely obscure.

  When we finally arrive at 22 West 56th street, we ask the cabbie to wait by the curb in front of a home with a sagging roof, a warped front porch, and several missing shutters. Luka rings the doorbell and we wait outside in the bitter cold. A few seconds later, locks click—at least five of them—and the door opens just enough to show a woman’s weather-worn face over a rusted chain that remains securely in place. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Josiah Aaronson here?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Jacob. This is Lily.”

  She looks from me to Luka, then pulls her face away and starts to slam the door shut.

  I place my hand against the wood to hold it open. “It’s about Dr. Roth.”

  Her eyes narrow into slits. “What did you say?”

  “It was nothing.” Luka takes my arm and attempts to step off the porch. Mentioning the doctor’s name was impulsive, not to mention highly dangerous. There’s a national alert out on me, and those national alerts include Dr. Roth’s suicide.

  But I dig in my heels and repeat what I said. It’s obvious she knows something.

  “If I were you,” she says. “I’d stay far away from that man.”

  Luka stops pulling my arm.

  “You knew him?” I ask.

  “Of course I knew him. He was supposed to help my husband.”

  So this is Dot, the wife. “Can we speak to him?”

  “If you want to speak to Josiah, you’ll have to go to the cemetery. He died years ago.” The door slams with such force, I have no chance at holding it open. Locks click back into place. That is all the information we will get on Josiah Aaronson.

  Back in the cab, Luka tells our driver to head south. He doesn’t look at me the entire drive, not once.

  My remorse is profound.

  My careless blurting got us nowhere. Dot Aaronson could be reporting us to the police right now. Surely they will put two and two together and realize that Tess is in the city, and Luka Williams is accompanying her. I want to apologize, but I can’t. Not with our cab driver within such close proximity. By the time we arrive at our destination, so much regret has pooled inside my stomach I feel waterlogged.

  The townhouse at Gabriel’s address is in better shape than Dot’s home. The signs of wear and tear are less pronounced and offset by nice curtains in the windows and a clean welcome mat out front. Luka knocks on the door. A deep bark sounds from the other side. Nobody answers. He knocks again. The barking turns into a growl.

  A gust of frigid air blows up the walkway. Luka turns back to our cab, motioning for me to go ahead of him. He stops in front of the mailbox, checks to see if the cab driver is watching, then quickly peeks inside. The envelopes are all addressed to a Miss Loraine Seymore. Wherever Gabriel lives now, it’s not here.

  With dwindling hope, we drive to our last stop—Claire Bedicelle. Twelve at the time she saw Dr. Roth, eighteen now. She lives in a smaller suburb further south. As we reach the outskirts of Detroit, Luka relaxes a little, as though the oppression of the city no longer drags at his shoulders. Our cab driver stops in front of a snow-covered yard and a home that reminds me of Leela’s. The woman who answers the door looks like an older version of the girl’s picture in the file. Wrinkles etch themselves around her eyes and mouth—the kind that look more the result of a hard life than old age.

  “Sorry to bother you.” Luka sticks his hands deep inside his coat pockets. “But we were wondering if Claire Bedicelle lives here.”

  The woman grabs the lapels of Luka’s coat. “Have you seen her? Do you know where my daughter is?”

  Luka totters back, alarmed. “No, ma’am, we don’t.”

  The frantic hope on her face crumbles.

  A man steps into view—a big, burly man of a man. He wears a scowl and a mustache. “Reporters are not welcome here. We’ve said all there is to say. Claire ran away years ago.” He pulls his wife inside and slams the door shut.

  Luka and I stare at nothing but the grain of a paint-chipped door.

  So that’s that.

  Our mission resulted in three dead ends—a dead man, a missing man, and a runaway teenager. We make our way back to the hotel room, pay the exorbitant cab fare, and order room service for dinner. Luka barely speaks. In fact, he’s hardly said anything since our run-in with Dot Aaronson. His silence turns my already frazzled nerves inside out. I pick at my turkey club while he sits on the bed, burger and fries abandoned by his side, scanning Gabriel’s file as if he might be able to find something he hasn’t already found.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally say. “I never should have brought up Dr. Roth’s name. It was foolish.” I have no idea why—maybe from the disappointment that has been today, or the weight of his growing disapproval, or the ache of missing my family—but tears gather in my eyes. I blink down at my plate and dissect a French fry.

  He shuts the folder on Gabriel’s dream journal, waits a beat, then opens the top drawer of the hotel room’s nightstand and pulls out a thick phone book. “I think it’s time to find Dr. Carlyle.”

  I’m not sure I’m ready to move away from my apology so quickly, but Luka is already turning to the C’s. Turns out, there are thirty-five William Carlyles in the Detroit area, seven W. Carlyle’s, and two Dr. Carlyle’s, MD. We use the new phone we purchased at some smaller city in Iowa, not the hotel’s phone, in case it’s under surveillance, and start at the top of the list.

  “Are you the Dr. William Carlyle who used to refer patients to a Dr. Charles Roth?”

  Twenty-nine times, Luka’s question is declined.

  Twenty-nine times, my hopelessness steepens.

  Then we reach the thirtieth.

  “This is he.” The voice on the other end of the line lilts up, making the statement sound more like a question than a certainty.

  Luka and I look at one another. A spark of optimism meets in the center of our locked gaze.

  “Hello?” The man says. “Is anyone there?”

  We decided beforehand on the next question we would ask, should we happen upon the correct Carlyle. We figured this question would either be met with confusion, in which case we would hang up, or the answers we’ve been desperately seeking. Luka clears his throat. “Are you a believer?”

  There’s a long, agonizing pause. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “A former client of Dr. Roth’s.”

  Another pause—this one so stretched out that I’m positive he hung up. Or maybe he’s keeping us on long enough to get a location of our phone call. I reach for Luka’s hand. He needs to hang up. Now.

  “Meet me at the coffee shop on Ninth and Main tomorrow morning at ten.”

  Before Luka can ask any more questions, there’s a soft click. Dr. Carlyle has hung up. We have no idea if his invitation is a trap.

  Chapter Ten

  Behind the Door

  I’m assaulted by wolf whistles and vulgar innuendo as soon as I step outside of the cab. It’s as though these street men hav
e never seen a female before.

  “Hey sweetheart, what you with him for?”

  “Why don’t you come over here and get yourself a real man?”

  Luka drapes his arm around my shoulder, and since there’s no fear in him, there’s nothing from which the men can feed. They disperse. Several street vendors hassle us about buying knock-off purses and small bags of who-knows-what. I shrink into Luka’s side while he gives them all a polite, but firm, “No thank you.”

  We head toward Ninth and Main, where a hole-in-the-wall coffee house advertises the city’s best java on a dilapidated sign. Luka removes his arm from around my shoulder, opens the door, and motions for me to go ahead.

  It’s hot inside. Uncomfortably so. Up on the stage, a woman with the longest hair I’ve ever seen strums a guitar. A barista slouches behind the counter reading something on her phone. College-age students in berets and bowler hats play chess or hunch over laptops. Nobody looks twice at us in the doorway looking around for a man who might be Dr. Carlyle. The only problem is, we have no idea what he looks like. Nationality, age, general appearance—we know none of these things. He didn’t stay on the line long enough to tell us.

  Luka motions toward a man sitting alone at a table-for-two in the far corner—silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, a pressed light blue button down shirt. The man stares back at us. After a short beat, he gives us a subtle nod. Luka must interpret it as an invitation, because he leads me through the clutter of tables.

  The man looks older up close than he does from far away. There are age spots on his skin and his silver hair is thin on top, thicker on the sides. I’d guess him to be in his mid- to upper-sixties. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”

  Luka pulls out the chair for me and snags one for himself from a nearby table. “You didn’t give us a chance to explain.”

  Dr. Carlyle sets a small slip of paper on the table between us and slides it across the surface. He looks over both of his shoulders, then leans close. “The paper has an address at the top, with directions to another address below. You take a cab to the first address. Then you walk by foot to the second. Make sure nobody sees you or follows you. When you arrive, you go to the basement. At the end of the hallway, you’ll find a red door. Knock on it, six times, like this.” He knocks a pattern into the table. Two fast taps, pause, two fast taps, pause, two fast taps. “Keep doing that until somebody answers, and when they do, ask to speak with the captain. You can tell him I sent you.”

  “Who is the captain?” I ask.

  “I’m sorry. That’s as much as we have to say to one another.” Dr. Carlyle stands, brushing his hands down his starched shirt to wipe away nonexistent crumbs. He wears pressed khaki slacks with a sharp, straight crease down the front of each leg, like he has a wife who irons his clothes and sets them out before he goes to work every day. It’s what my mom does for my dad. The normalcy of it, in light of the situation we find ourselves in at the moment, makes me want to cry.

  He grabs a black wool coat from the back of the chair. “How is my old friend?”

  “Dr. Roth?” Luka asks.

  Dr. Carlyle nods.

  “Dead.”

  The doctor’s arm pauses—half inside the sleeve of his coat, half out.

  “Several days ago he was found hanging from a noose in his apartment. Authorities have ruled it a suicide.”

  Dr. Carlyle processes the news in silent stillness, one that is bloated with unspoken truth. We all know the authorities are wrong. Dr. Roth didn’t kill himself. Dr. Carlyle slips his coat all the way on. “Please don’t contact me again.”

  And with that, he heads to the exit, buttoning his coat as he goes.

  *

  Once we’re safely inside another cab, Luka unfolds the note Dr. Carlyle slipped him across the table and recites the address. The cabbie’s face twists up in disbelief. “You wanna go there?”

  Luka double checks the slip of paper. So do I. Dr. Carlyle’s scrawl is unusually tidy for a doctor—as if he took intentional care to write neatly so we wouldn’t misread or second guess.

  “Yes.” Luka’s neutral tone gives nothing away.

  The cabbie isn’t so good at neutrality. He shakes his head like we are a couple of fools and shifts the car into drive. “It’s your funeral.”

  Our funeral?

  What exactly are we getting ourselves into? As we wind our way through the heart of the city, a million questions ping around inside my head. How can we trust Dr. Carlyle? What if he’s leading us somewhere dangerous? Why couldn’t he tell us anything? Who is the captain and what if this whole thing is one giant trap? I pull my coat sleeves over my hands to keep from scratching the inside of my wrist raw.

  My window refuses to roll up all the way. The sliver of a crack lets in cold air that sets my teeth to chattering. I want to draw nearer to Luka, snag some of his warmth. Ask him to put his arm back around me like he did when we were walking to the Java Hut. But he makes no move to join me on my side and I’m too chicken to join him on his. So I shiver while the cabbie turns down a street that looks much less like a street and much more like a war zone. My shivering stops, replaced instead by gaping.

  The cabbie pulls to a stop at the start of the ramshackle strip in front of what appears to be the only shop still in business. A tattoo parlor with a giant dragon on the grimy window and a neon sign that flickers. The Dragon Den.

  Luka peers outside. “This is it?”

  “It’s the address you gave me. You want me to wait here?”

  I’m not even sure I want to get out at all.

  “No,” Luka says, his tone still casual. “We’re good, thanks.”

  “Hope the needles are clean.”

  I give the cabbie a weak smile, then step out into the cold. A gust of wind pushes against my body. Luka pays the driver and the cab drives away. Neither of us move until the car turns out of sight. Luka looks down at the slip of paper and motions for me to follow him.

  My teeth resume their chattering. “I’m not so sure about this.”

  “It’s our only option.” He starts walking down the street. Away from civilization. I lengthen my stride to keep up. The place may have been a business district once upon a time. But now? Now it’s nothing but crumbling buildings—many only half-built—with skeletal frames and busted windows and vulgar graffiti. We stick to the shadows, avoiding the sporadic homeless man or woman warming his or her hands over a garbage can fire. Staying unseen is not difficult. The street is mostly deserted.

  The closer we get, the faster Luka walks, as if propelled forward by a force I cannot see or feel. I stumble a time or two on garbage and debris, but Luka is always close by to keep me upright. Finally, he stops. “This is it.”

  All I see is a large abandoned warehouse that must have suffered from a fire at one point in its existence. Black stains crawl up what little remains of the walls.

  “I feel something.”

  “What?”

  “Some sort of energy.”

  If I weren’t popping pills, perhaps I’d feel it too. It’s strange, these pills. Luka thinks they protect me, but at this moment in time, I feel vulnerable. Blind, even. “Is it good or bad?”

  “I’m not sure.” He walks behind me as I maneuver through the rubble—close enough that should I fall, he will be there to catch me—until we’re standing inside a building that is all cement and debris and rows upon rows of empty shelves. Whatever the place used to store is long gone.

  “Over here.” Luka leads us to an exit sign above a doorway with no door. It opens into a stairwell. I follow him down to the basement. Down, down, down. Deeper than any basement has any need to be. When we reach the last step, the air is deathly still, interrupted only by the sound of Luka’s breathing and my own heartbeat. Down here in the bowels of this warehouse, I feel like Alice falling through the rabbit hole. Or perhaps I fell down that hole a long, long time ago and I’m only just realizing it now.

  The dark corridor leads one of two ways. L
uka pulls out the flashlight attachment on his Swiss army knife and shines it down both. The edge of the light’s border reveals nothing but more hallway. He stands there for a moment with his eyes closed, then picks left. The hallway stretches on and on—a never-ending narrow cement prison without a door in sight. A few mice scamper near the edge of the wall, squeaking and skittering. When we finally reach the end, we stand in front of a steel door that isn’t so much red as a faded, brownish pink.

  My mouth goes cotton-ball dry. This has to be it.

  Luka pivots around to face me, his shoes scritching against the floor. “I need you to promise me that if I tell you to run, you will run.”

  “What?”

  “Before I knock on that door, I need to know that you will run if I say so.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Will you run too?”

  “If I can.”

  My head begins to shake—slowly at first, then growing in fervor. If Luka is asking me to leave him behind, that is a promise I can’t make. Never.

  “Tess.” He takes my hand between both of his and clutches my palm over his chest, dipping his chin so his gaze is more level with mine. “I can’t knock on that door unless I know that you are safe.”

  I could never run away from him. Not in a million years. If Luka goes down, I will go down with him. If he refuses to leave me, then I refuse to leave him. But we cannot stand here forever, especially not when our answers might be on the other side of the door. I give him a small nod. Call me Tess, the liar.

  Luka makes himself a shield between me and whatever potentially dangerous thing lies before us. He raises his fist and knocks in the way Dr. Carlyle instructed.

  Knock, knock … knock, knock … knock, knock …

  Nothing happens. No sound. No movement.

  Luka knocks again.

  More nothing.

  My breath escapes like a squeak. All of a sudden, in a moment of stunning clarity, I am overwhelmingly positive that we have lost it. Our marbles have gone and rolled away. We’re standing in the basement of an abandoned warehouse in Detroit, Michigan facing a door that has nothing but empty space on the other side.