by Guy Adams
Her son, a retiring type who was obviously used to doing what he was told, just smiled and went back to fixing loose floorboards.
On one edge of the camp was the most amazing machine I’d ever clapped eyes on. It looked like a train that had given up on its tracks and found itself some fat wheels. It had clearly seen some hard travelling: the paintwork was chipped and burned, some sections heavily damaged.
“Looks like it came through a battlefield,” I said to a man sat in front of it. He was in his early fifties, I’d say, bald and with the pink, slightly chubby skin of a drinker. I knew that look well enough, having grown up around my father. The stranger had none of Pa’s fiery temper, though; he just smiled and nodded.
“That it did, and I for one am still finding it hard to believe we got here in one piece.” He held out his hand. “The name’s Patrick Irish. I’m a writer.”
“Elwyn Wallace, bank clerk in waiting.”
“Where we’re going, I’d be a bit disappointed if we still needed banks.” He laughed, pulled out a notebook and jotted down my name. “I’m trying to keep a record,” he explained. “A writer’s job. We’re surrounded by stories, here, and I’d like to get a few of them on paper.”
“But how will they finish?” I asked. “Seems to me the best is yet to come.”
“Well, yes,” he agreed. “Though sometimes the journey’s the thing. Whatever happens to us in a couple of days’ time, it will be a fresh start. A new chapter!”
Given that I had been working my way across the country in search of just that, I took a degree of comfort from the idea. “That sounds good to me.”
“You and me both,” he replied. “When you have the time, maybe you could sit down with me and tell me about your journey?”
“Happy to,” I said, “though you might not believe all of it.”
He laughed again. “Ask around. You’re surrounded by miracles and magic. We’ve all seen things we would never have believed possible, and now we’re sat waiting for the arrival of Heaven. We’re beyond skepticism at this point. I’ll believe anything you tell me.”
He was right about that. In the days to come, I’d hear countless stories to match my own.
The old man and I made camp on the far edge of everyone else. Predictably, he wanted to keep his distance.
“Did you expect so many people?” I asked him. “I mean, there must be hundreds here.”
“No,” he admitted, taking the saddle off his horse and setting to building a small fire. “Word has certainly spread more than usual.”
“More than usual? You’ve done this before?”
He nodded.
“But I thought Wormwood was only supposed to appear every hundred years? You’re old, but...” Then I realised I was being stupid. There was no point in judging the old man by human terms; if there was one thing I had learned over the few days in his company, it was that. He might look like one of us, but that didn’t make it so.
As much as he wanted to avoid the rest of the camp, people were naturally curious and eager to hear about our journey.
“Surely they know,” I said to the old man, after having being asked so many times.
“I told you,” he replied. “Everyone’s journey is different. The challenges we face are personal.”
As the sky darkened, I began to see the truth of his words. Every now and then new people arrived at the camp, but they didn’t simply walk out onto the plain. They appeared from all over the place. The air would shimmer, much as it had done in the desert we had crossed, and then someone else would appear. I had no doubt that to them, as had been the case with us, the passage seemed natural. The camp appeared ahead of them as they came to the end of whichever road had brought them here. From this side, they just emerged from nowhere.
I talked about it with the party next to ours. Hs name was Clarke, a doctor from Montana traveling with his wife.
“We heard the town was going to appear in Oregon,” he said. “From a Chippewa medicine man who had been travelling through our town.”
“Oregon? We’re miles away from Oregon!”
Clarke shrugged. “Maybe, but that’s where we went, and we’re sitting here now just as you are.”
He didn’t seem altogether happy to be so. He and his wife had a sad way about them. As the night wore on, I soon found out why.
“We’re hoping to see our son,” he said, “lost to us these five years now. He was helping me fix the roof. The damn rains had been getting in, and I never was one for that sort of work. Show me a human body that’s in need of fixing, and I can do the job, but when it comes to wood and nails...”
He looked out across the crowds of people. “Though sometimes I can’t fix everything.”
His wife held his hand and there was a warmth from the two of them, then, that burned harder than the fire.
“I tried everything I could,” he continued, “but Jack was...”
He didn’t want to finish the sentence. “I should never have let him up there, but he always had such a good eye for that kind of thing. God knows where he got it from. He could make anything.”
“We’ll see him soon,” his wife said. “Together again.”
He nodded and looked to us. “Are you here to be reunited with someone?”
I shook my head, feeling guilty for some reason. “I just kind of fell into this,” I admitted. “He led and I followed.”
The doctor looked to the old man. “You?”
“Old friends,” he said but, as usual, refused to go into detail.
“You should come and see me in the morning,” Clarke told me. “I’ve got some cream that’ll help take those burns down.”
I told him I’d do just that. The desert had taken its toll, and my face was still pink and blistered.
Later, as we prepared to sleep, the old man pulled me to one side. “We should be careful,” he said, “I can’t control my appearance when I sleep. And as you know, people don’t always take kindly to it.”
“If you lie in front of the fire,” I suggested, “people probably won’t even notice.”
He nodded. “But if they do... be ready.”
For what, I could hardly guess, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary.
I woke to the sound of kids laughing. There were a couple of them, hunched down by the old man.
“He’s glowing!” one of them said. “Like magic!”
The old man woke with a start and sat up, that light in his throat swallowed away as he got control of himself.
“Oh!” the other kid moaned. “Bring it back! I want to see it again.”
The old man looked at me, confused.
“Don’t mind them,” said a woman’s voice. “They’re a mite too inquisitive for their own good.” She appeared in the faint light of the fire and took hold of her kids.
“I wouldn’t have hurt them,” the old man said.
She smiled. “I never thought you would. We’ve seen enough things on our journey here to be a bit more open minded. This world is filled with all sorts, and if you’re here, then I guess God wishes it.”
“Please show us again!” one of the kids asked.
“Now come on,” the woman said. “Let the man get his sleep.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, and I swear it was the first time I had seen him appear in any way uncertain. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth and the fire glowed. Both kids laughed and clapped their hands.
He opened his eyes again and the light in his mouth dimmed.
“Well, mister,” she said, “if I have as much problem lighting a fire tomorrow as I did tonight, don’t be surprised if I come over and ask you to breathe on it.” She laughed and led her children away.
I looked at the old man, his face a perfect picture of confusion. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, you can face down killer towns, but you’re lost when it comes to kids.”
He gave me a scathing look. “Go back to sleep.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
AS DAWN BROKE over the camp, it was clear that even more people had appeared during the night.
“Much more of this,” I said to the old man, “and we’re going to have a city of our very own.”
We had breakfast—with more of his wonderfully lethal coffee—and afterwards I decided to take a walk. Drop in on Clarke, and maybe pay a visit on the writer and tell him about Wentworth Falls; I was pretty sure he’d like that one.
I found Clarke after a few minutes. He had set up a temporary hospital. So many of the people that arrived were in need of attention that he and a couple of the other members of the camp who were medically trained had decided to get organised. There was a row of bedrolls, filled with patients in various states of disrepair. A couple particularly drew my eye.
“What the hell happened to them?” I asked.
One was a man whose eyes appeared to have vanished, a smooth band of skin running from above his nose to his hair line. The other was a dwarf. Both were in a bad way, their skin red and bruised, some places turning almost to black.
“Exposure to extreme cold,” said Clarke. “They appeared in the night, both so close to death I can hardly believe they’re still breathing.” He held up the man’s hands. The fingers were raw and swollen. “Even if he does pull through, I can’t imagine he’s going to be playing the banjo anytime soon.”
“Harmonium,” the man said, suddenly convulsing.
Clarke held him down, straightening the blankets he had covered the man in. “He keeps saying that. God knows what he’s talking about. Maybe the others will know.”
“Others?”
He led me over to another bed where a man lay holding onto a black girl. He held her so tight it was a wonder she could breathe. They had the same signs of damage from the cold.
“It may not look like it,” said Clarke, “but they’re in better shape. They’ll pull through soon enough.”
“Soon enough to see Wormwood?”
“That’s the question. Everyone seems to agree it’ll appear tomorrow afternoon, so I guess they have time yet. Whatever happens, though, they’re lucky to be alive.”
He gave me some cream for my burns and I left him to it, heading back out into the camp and over towards the large train.
Irish had company today. A whole row of seats had been set up, and he was joined by a young man and woman, the first wearing rough work clothes, the second looking mightily out of place in a long, expensive dress.
“Well,” said Irish, “if it isn’t the banker. Pull up a chair.”
I did so, sitting between him and the young couple.
“These are two of my travelling companions,” he said. “Billy Herbert, our fine engineer and driver, and Lady Elisabeth Forset, a jewel plucked from England’s crown and dropped here to glitter in the dust.”
“You can tell you’re a writer,” I said.
“Never use one word when four will do just as well.” He laughed, and the other two shook my hand.
“You look like you’ve marched across Arizona,” said Billy. “I’ve eaten steaks less cooked than that face.”
“It smarts some,” I admitted, “but it didn’t kill me, so I guess it don’t matter all that much.”
“We’ve all been through our fair share of trouble getting here,” said Lady Forset. She looked out over the camp. “All of us.”
“Yeah,” said Billy. “And here was I thinking I was traveling with the only handful of lunatics that had heard of Wormwood.”
I admitted that I’d thought the same, and we all joked for awhile about the fact that we were sat in a place that none of us had ever believed could exist.
“Of course,” said Billy, “there’s no guarantee it will appear. Tomorrow evening we could all be feeling pretty stupid.”
“It’ll appear,” said Lady Forset. “I’ve no doubt about that anymore.”
“No,” said Billy, “I guess not. Then God help us when the rush begins.”
“I’m sure Heaven has plenty of room,” said Irish. “Certainly most of the people I know would be going to the other place!”
“Hell?” Billy asked. “Seems to me most of the folks here have already ridden through it.”
Which led into my telling them my story, Irish writing down notes as I went.
At one point we were interrupted by an old man in monk’s clothing.
“Father Martin,” said Lady Forset, “meet Elwyn Wallace, the only man I’ve ever met to have been attacked by a town.”
He looked at me and his lower lip trembled. He looked momentarily terrified. Suddenly he seemed to get himself under control and managed to offer me a weak smile. “Forgive me, my son,” he said. “It was your face; it reminded me of something... someone. I seem to see it everywhere I look, of late.”
With that he excused himself and returned to the privacy of one of the carriages.
“Don’t mind him,” said Billy. “He’s struggling with his conscience at the moment.”
The engineer told me the story of how they had fought their way past a grotesque tribe of Indians to arrive here, saved only by the invention of Lady Forset’s father.
“You’ll meet him soon, I’m sure,” she said. “He’s always working on something or another.”
At that moment there came the sound of a small explosion from the rear of the train.
“That would be him now,” she said.
AFTER A FEW hours I left them to it, returning to our section of the camp, and the old man. He was sat in silence, looking out over the camp, in a world of his own.
“Only one more day,” I said. “Then it’ll be here.”
He looked at me, a dreamy look on his face that showed he hadn’t quite been listening.
“Wormwood,” I explained. “Everybody says it’ll be here tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I can feel it.”
“I was wondering,” I said. “If things are supposed to get stranger and more dangerous the closer you get to the place, how come here it’s all so peaceful?”
“The journey’s done,” he said. “This is a charmed place at the centre, the eye at the heart of the storm.”
“Not that I’m complaining,” I admitted. “I’m only too happy to catch my breath.”
We sat and watched the people. A new family had appeared in the middle of the afternoon, a mother and father and so many children I could only imagine the nights got cold where they lived. It was like watching a Sunday School picnic, the way they all set about their chores and prepared their food. It seemed so delicate and normal.
The religious crowd were here in full, of course. Several congregations had developed in the camp and, as night fell, hymns erupted from all corners as they began their worship.
“If you want to go and join in,” I said to the old man, “don’t let me stop you.”
He gave one of those rare half-smiles and set about preparing some food for his horse and my mule. He was as relieved as I was, that old nag. I don’t think he expected to make the journey either. Now he was content to eat and lie down next to the old man’s horse. I think he was in love.
The night passed quietly, but for a brief commotion from the hospital tent. Someone was shouting. An argument, maybe, or a grieving family member. I thought about the man with no eyes; perhaps he had woken up and was causing trouble? If so, I had no doubt Clarke could handle it. The man had been nothing but bruises and wounds, I doubt he could put up much of a fight.
THE NEXT MORNING, the camp was buzzing with anticipation. The hymn-singing of the night before was early to pick up again and it was like working your way through a carnival as I made my way over to the hospital tent.
“Morning,” said Clarke as I entered. “Don’t tell me you need more cream for your face. You were supposed to rub it on, not eat it.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just wondering if you needed some help. I heard some fuss last night and thought I’d check to make sure everything was alright.”
“It was nothing I couldn�
�t handle. Our blind friend woke up, and was surprisingly active, given his condition. Apparently he lost his wife on his way here; he wanted to go back and find her. Easier said than done, as I told him. Besides, even if he could work out how to retrace his steps, he’s hardly fit to go running off back into whatever freezing hell he came from.”
“He seems quiet enough now,” I said, walking over to where the man lay.
“I injected him with veterinary tranquilisers,” said Clarke. “It was the only way I could shut him up.”
“What about the rest of his party?”
“Still out for the count, thankfully. My favourite kind of patient.”
AS THE DAY drew on, the mood got even more excited, people shouting, laughing and praying. A couple of fights broke out, but nothing that got too out of hand.
I stopped by the train again, finally getting the chance to meet Lady Forset’s father.
“I might have something for those burns,” he told me, peering at my face as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
“Stick to the cream,” Lady Forset told me. “The last medical cure he offered nearly blew a man’s leg off.”
Finally I headed back to the old man and sat down to wait for the thing that had brought us all here.
It was just shy of four o’clock when people first started shouting and pointing to the sky out west. The air seemed to be flexing, the clouds beyond it twisting and bending as if viewed through distorted glass. Then there came the rain. It fell warm and peculiarly coloured, a sort of faint purple, lasting about half an hour before the ground itself started shaking.
“Keep steady,” the old man said, taking hold of my arm. “It can get pretty violent.”
At first it was hard to tell whether what we were seeing was just distortion again, but slowly, a distinct shape began to form about half a mile away. Lines resolved themselves into gutters and roofs, joists and gateposts. Over a period of about an hour, a town solidified out of nowhere. I thought of Wentworth Falls. It had that same false, perfect quality. A town that had never really been lived in.
