Yesterday's Gone (Season Four): Episodes 19-24

by Sean Platt

  She shrugged again. “I’m not sure. I didn’t do anything different from what I would usually do. Rose brought her friend Mary in for help; we fixed her migraines after Veronica brought her in — she introduced her because of the Maris Brothers. Mary wanted help for her daughter, but she wouldn’t say what for. The only thing she seemed sure about was that she didn’t want to do it at all, but her daughter, Paola, did, and insisted that she go inside. As soon as she did, everything went wrong. The Capacitor whirred like always, but it was the wrong kind of whirring, and it sparked like usual, but the sparks seemed … angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “Yes, they were too fast and too many.”

  “Hmmm,” Steven stopped rubbing Marina’s foot, and leaned back into the sofa, stroking his chin, as if he’d fallen into thought. After a moment of quiet he asked, “And they didn’t tell you what the girl’s problem might be?”

  “No,” she shook her head.

  “And do you always know what the problem is, before you put someone into the machine … into The Capacitor?”

  “Well, yes but … ”

  Steven cut her off. “Well then, couldn’t that be the problem? Maybe The Capacitor understands intention, maybe it’s somehow able to read the operator, in this case that would be you. Maybe because you didn’t know, it couldn’t do its job.”

  “I think maybe it did do its job. I think maybe the girl was supposed to be younger.”

  Steven frowned, confused.

  “I know that sounds weird, but … well, The Capacitor turned her young, by a lot of years, Steven. She came in as a woman and left as a girl.”

  With a shocking absence of emotion, Steven said, “I know. I saw her from the window.”

  Marina looked at Steven, then, not knowing what to say, continued.

  “If it could make her young, then maybe something else made her old — before they came to us. Maybe that’s why they were here. I don’t know … ” Marina shook her head, getting upset. She needed a drink. “ … Maybe I was wrong about The Capacitor, maybe my father was wrong. Maybe the machine … isn’t good, or at least not what I thought it was.”

  Steve stood from the couch and headed toward the bar to make Marina a drink. “Relax,” he smiled, “you’re all over the place. You just said you thought that The Capacitor did do its work, and now you’re saying your faith might be misplaced? In practically the same breath? Your faith is correct, Marina, and it’s one of the things that gives you your strength. It would be best not to lose it. True belief doesn’t mean the world will give you what you want, it means knowing the world will give you what’s right.”

  Marina stared at her man, grateful for him being right so often.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, crossing the room to hand her a tumbler of scotch. “We’ll look into The Capacitor, starting right now. I’ll talk to Dr. Phillips as soon as you finish this drink, okay?” Marina took the drink, trying to smile. “I promise, all of this will be fine.”

  She thanked Steven, told him that Dr. Phillips was with The Capacitor already, then started sipping scotch as he left, hopefully on the way to deliver his promise.

  As Marina sipped, she kept feeling worse, wishing that Rose had never brought the two women into her house to give her a scare and question her faith. As the alcohol started to buzz inside her, Marina decided she could wait no longer. With every second feeling like a minute, and every minute something like an hour, it would take a year to muffle discomfort.

  She stood, went to the desk, picked up her phone where she’d dropped it an hour before, scrolled through the contacts, found Rose, and hit the number for her cell.

  Marina let the phone ring seven times — no voicemail — then hung up and let it ring for another seven. She tried again after that, hoping that the third time would be charmed, then hung up feeling worse than ever.

  Marina dropped her cell onto the desk, wishing she could hurl it through the window without having to wait for a new one, then slammed her ass back to the couch and sipped her glass to empty, hoping to dull more shitty feelings with every fresh swallow.

  But she didn’t. Somehow, every sip seemed to make Marina feel worse, from the first glass from Steven to the second prepared by herself. Then, by the end of her third glass, Marina was thoroughly drunk.

  Her empty glass landed on the carpet, spilling the final few drops into the fibers. Marina’s head drooped as she started losing herself to sleep.

  And as she slept, she dreamt.

  Marina didn’t fall into the casual dreams she was used to, threaded thick with loose ends and nuggets from her day. These were horror incarnate; things Marina didn’t understand but longed to; things her mind was trying to say; starting to whisper, rolled into screams when she failed to listen.

  Something inside Marina clicked, rinsed her resistance and left her world in nothing but white.

  As the empty settled around her, she saw something surface from the dark: the girl, Paola, even younger than she had been when falling out of the machine, maybe by a couple of years.

  The girl ran from the light and into the dark, racing as if chased. Marina raced after the girl, away from the light and into the black, ignoring her hammering heart.

  She crashed into darkness and infection plagued her mind; a virus seeping from Paola’s dream into hers, making Marina somehow certain that what she could through the girl’s eyes was true, that wherever she was, every molecule around her, though dreamlike, was absolutely real.

  She had to escape, but couldn’t.

  Escape was flight, and that meant leaving the girl, abandoning her to the blanket of darkness.

  Marina couldn’t do that, so she crept forward instead, stepping timid yet bold into the black, until she saw the horrible truth: what that darkness was and what that meant.

  It snarled, and Marina woke screaming, heaving and panting as she fell from the couch, rolling from the sofa and the man sitting, his arms draped across it from either side, smiling like a demon as he stared into her eyes.

  “Oh, I really wish you’d not seen that,” Steven said, then leapt from the couch, circled his hands at Marina’s neck, and began to squeeze the ragged breath from her body.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 7 — Luca Harding

  It was impossible, but the sun swallowed the entire sky anyway.

  It was too hot. Luca felt like he might pass out, if not die from the weight of a 100 summers at once.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking the desert, but it felt like two forevers. His body was soaked in sweat, his skin red and peeling and sore.

  His lips were cracked and dry, starting to bleed.

  Luca felt like one of the astronaut chickens Mom bought from Albertson’s, their skin all wrinkly and crinkled under the plastic dome. He wasn’t sure he could last much longer, but felt so tired he thought he might die if he slept.

  Something inside Luca kept telling him to look for a rainbow, promising that if he found it, that colorful arc might tell him where to go. But he couldn’t see any rainbows, no matter how hard he looked, and so he had no idea how to get home, or how he had gotten to wherever he was in the first place.

  Luca had tried telling himself he was inside a dream, or rather, a nightmare. He had said it over and over, but couldn’t get himself to believe it. No nightmare was so relentless or unending. He wondered if he had been kidnapped while he was sleeping, then driven far, far away. The only other thing that made any sense was that Luca had died in his sleep and was now walking through hell.

  No, this wasn’t like the Hell he read about in the Bible, though Dad had always said the Bible wasn’t exactly true (even though Grandma said it was), but rather stories that were supposed to represent God in a way that made it easy for grownups and kids to both understand. “Man’s best guess,” Dad had said.

  Maybe hell was really just an endless desert, and Luca was there because he deserved it for murdering Johnny Thomas and Trevor and Gus and Kiyor.

&
nbsp; **

  The wind came and went, but each time it did it whipped Luca in the face with gritty sand that stung his eyes and bit him all over his skin.

  Luca had cried and cried, until he ran out of tears; he had hoped and hoped that he would wake up, until he surrendered, knowing he wouldn’t; and he had walked and walked for so far, that he had finally given up the idea of doing anything else, maybe ever again.

  Until he finally slept.

  And that, of course, would come with death.

  Unless that had already happened, which Luca figured it probably had.

  He kept walking his endless walk that felt somehow oddly familiar — like he’d done it before — like when Johnny Thomas was choking him, and he thought he could see his entire life like a movie played fast, except it wasn’t his, even though it felt like it, because the new one that felt as real as the old one had his family dying in a car accident, some old man adopting him, and a brother whose name just sat there on the tip of Luca’s tongue.

  The movie didn’t feel like imagination, it felt like something that had happened; a memory as impossible as him walking; a memory like the one that told him to look for the rainbow.

  But Luca had never gone on a walk through the desert, or lost his family, or had a rainbow tell him where to go.

  Even though the stuff inside him swore that all of those things had happened.

  Luca kept forcing himself forward, a step at a time, each more painful than the one before it, every step growing more certain that nothing would feel better than if Luca were to simply lay down and die.

  Maybe if I lie down, like I did on that porch swing, I’ll wake up back there.

  Yeah, that’s it.

  I just need to rest.

  He fell to his knees, but the moment his hands touched the white sands, Luca jumped back up, palms like lobsters from the lots of hot on the ground.

  He would have cried if he had any wet in his eyes, but it was all dried up or gone. So instead, Luca kept walking.

  **

  Something dark dragged shadows across the sand. Luca, startled, looked around, but saw nothing. He realized with a chill that the something wasn’t on the ground, but rather above him, hovering with the promise of death.

  Luca looked up to a large dark bird, circling.

  A vulture, waiting for me to lie down … or die.

  I can’t stop.

  Must go on.

  Luca wondered if the bird would attack him if he wasn’t dead. From what he could remember, vultures only fed on bodies. He didn’t think they actually killed anything. But he wasn’t sure about that, and didn’t even know if the bird was a vulture. It might’ve been a predator, maybe waiting for Luca to get even weaker.

  Get weaker, or in the sun.

  Luca laughed: the irony of a bird waiting for him to finish roasting. He thought again of the astronaut chickens, and couldn’t stop laughing.

  The more Luca thought that the chickens weren’t funny, the louder he laughed.

  Oh, God, I’m losing my mind.

  Luca kept walking, trudging through the sand, ankles burning as he tried to pull himself from his ugly whirlpool of thoughts. If he could somehow remove pain from his movements, he might be able to go on, like a robot without feeling.

  Just. Keep. Walking.

  Eventually, I have to find something.

  Luca continued, ignoring shadows from the circling bird.

  After a while, the shadows left, when the bird gave up and disappeared. Luca felt relief that he could surrender his guard. And at the same time, felt an odd sense of loneliness with his only companion gone.

  This, of course, made Luca think of his family.

  He thought of playing Legos with Anna. He thought about the last time she’d asked him to play with his Ninjago pieces, after he’d put them with his Legends of Chima and used them to build a super fortress. Anna wanted to build a house for Boo, since Boo was so small, but Luca told her no. He didn’t want her ruining his super fortress like she always did. She said that Luca was mean and he said she was stupid, just like Boo. Now that he was in the desert, Luca realized that she wasn’t right until he answered.

  That made Luca want to cry.

  But, of course, he couldn’t.

  **

  Luca kept walking, his skin blistered and sore, throat raw, and body feeling seconds from collapse.

  The sun went hiding behind the horizon as the sky turned from blue to purple, on its way to black. Luca touched the sand, wondering if it was safe enough to lie down on yet, then jerked it back when it was still burning to the touch.

  He kept on, until the sun was gone. Purple turned to black as expected, but darker — blacker than anything Luca had ever seen. The desert was so wide open and giant that it seemed claustrophobic in the dark.

  He reached out, hands in front of him, hoping not to bump into anything — not that he’d passed anything he could possibly bump into so far. Luca hadn’t seen a single cactus. Every step was timid, and since the wind had died, it was replaced by a silence so deep it was deafening, like a high-pitched whistle, constant in his head: one more hurt to pile on the many.

  Luca couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment, something would reach out from the darkness and grab him.

  He kept walking. Slow but steady.

  Suddenly, he heard something move behind him.

  Luca froze, his heart pounding as he tried to hear above the quiet’s high-pitched whine.

  Something brushed by him, bumping against his waist. Luca screamed, and stumbled forward. Momentum carried him forward and he ran — faster than he would have thought possible since every inch of his body was crusted in pain.

  He kept racing into the darkness, hoping that whatever pursued him was as blind as he was. He didn’t dare stop to listen, or see if he’d lost it.

  Luca had to keep running, or he would be dead.

  As he ran, Luca’s mind raced over the possible things that might have bumped into him. There weren’t many; how many predators called deserts their home?

  Some sort of hyena? A giant, poisonous lizard? A wolf?

  Luca’s feet gave out from beneath him. He lost a scream as he plunged forward, down into the darkness. His body hit the black sand hard, rolling, tumbling, out of control down a seemingly endless hill until he came to a sharp and sudden stop, gasping for air and peering into the black, ears perked to hear whatever he’d bumped into.

  Seeing nothing, and hearing nothing, Luca curled into the sound as if it was Mom, feeling Alaska in his bones. The ground was still warm, unlike his insides, and felt relief against the evening’s cool air.

  Luca laid down, pulling himself into as tight a ball as his body allowed, making himself as tiny a target as possible so that whatever was waiting in the dark might not find him.

  Finally, after thinking he would probably die if he fell asleep, Luca could hold his lids open no longer. He closed his eyes and started to snore.

  **

  Luca woke to something licking him.

  He opened his eyes, blinded by daylight as soon as he did. He threw his hands in front of his face, protecting himself from the bright light and whatever was licking him.

  A familiar voice said, “It’s OK, Luca.”

  Luca saw Dog Vader. The dog looked down at his feet, where four bottles of water were lined neatly in the sand.

  Luca grabbed the bottles, unscrewed the caps, and gulped them down, one at a time.

  “Whoa, slow down there, Luca. You’ll puke. And the last thing you want to do in the desert is puke.”

  Luca slowed, and swallowed, water stinging his dry throat and cracked lips.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  Dog Vader said, “You’re close.”

  “Close to what?” Luca’s throat hurt worse with every word.

  “Save your voice,” Dog Vader said. “You’ll need it to speak with him.”

  “Who?” Luca asked.

  Dog Vader nodded with his sn
out toward the distance. Luca saw a dark shape like an igloo, maybe made of dirt, with a small trail of black smoke spiraling into the sky above the igloo.

  Luca asked, “Who is that?”

  But Dog Vader was gone.

  Luca grabbed the remaining bottles, shoved them into his pockets, and stood. His body ached, every movement felt as if he were breaking scar tissue, but he had to move forward. Not only had Dog Vader told him that he had to, but it was the first creature he’d seen in forever.

  As Luca forced himself forward, the sun returned, then climbed in the sky, cooking his flesh as the igloo drew nearer. As he got closer, Luca felt it harder to continue. But he kept on, despite the pain, until the trail of smoke pluming above the igloo had vanished.

  Luca hoped whoever was there hadn’t left.

  He pushed himself to move faster, even though faster was a crawl. As Luca moved closer, he saw that the igloo wasn’t made of dirt, but something darker, which he couldn’t yet untangle with his eyes.

  He finished another bottle of water and shoved the empty into his back pocket as he came within a hundred or so feet of the igloo.

  He was immediately met with a wall of stench that overwhelmed his senses.

  Luca turned, trying not to puke. He remembered Dog Vader warning him not to. He wondered if this was why?

  Luca now knew that the igloo was made of poop.

  I can’t go in there.

  I can’t.

  Luca forced himself to duck down and look through the entrance at the someone inside.

  He dropped to the sand and scrambled into the igloo, despite the reek. The man inside was older, with dark hair hanging in his face. He was also naked, except for the gloves made of poop. His eyes were closed, and he was sitting cross-legged in front of an iron pot. Beneath the pot, a fire’s ashen remains.

  Luca stared, shaking and afraid, wondering why he was supposed to talk to this crazy man. The man hadn’t even twitched since Luca had entered the igloo. He wondered if the man was dead.