by Rob Heinze
They walked mostly in silence. Charley would occasionally glance at Eve, who would smile, and then his eyes would go to John. On one occasion, John had seen Eve smile at Charley, and when Charley had looked at John, he had felt the jealously soar from the man in a ripe wave.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. There’s no way the man could be jealous—jealous of what?
It wasn’t long before they came upon the body in the road.
They saw it from a distance, but they didn’t slow until they were sure it was a body. When they were absolutely certain, they stopped.
“It’s a person,” Eve whispered. “God, it looks like a person.”
John didn’t bother to look at them; he slid his knife out, the blade winking in the sunlight, and he began to creep forward. Charley turned back to Eve, who was wide-eyed and uncertain. He made a motion with his head to indicate that they should follow. He remembered the bat he had found in the Sport’s Authority and wished that he had it.
John was ahead of them, walking (stalking, Charley thought uncomfortably) with a slight hesitation. Charley picked up the pace. The body grew closer, its shape becoming more defined. It was laying face-down. Charley couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
They reached the body and Charley felt all of his muscles turning instinctively in the opposite direction, so that he could bolt in case the body suddenly lurched up. John touched it lightly with his foot. The body didn’t move. John shoved it again with his foot, harder this time. It didn’t move. John glanced to them, clearly relieved.
“He’s dead.”
Charley relaxed and closed the rest of the distance to John. John handed him the knife and then knelt down near the body. He struggled underneath it for purchase, grunting, and finally got the body turned over. Eve screamed. John jumped up and away. Charley stared down in horror at the face of the man (or what had once been a man). It was a fat face, the sort of face a middle-aged, white-collar man might have—one who had forgotten the importance of exercise and will-power.
His face, Jesus. What the hell happened to it?
The fat man’s eyes bulged from their sockets, his mouth hung open, and his tongue peeped out like a tiny rodent. As part of a safety class Charley had once taken, he had watched a video of rescue worker who had been helping someone after a car crash. That crash had resulted in a downed wire under which the person had been working. The worker had stood up and gotten zapped by something like 13,000 volts. The camera had shown his rigid, haunting body; his hands locked down by his waist in ghastly curls, his whole body frozen to an unnatural rigidity. For some reason, that came to his mind now.
This body was worse than that video, though. For one thing, this was actually in front of him. For another thing, there were strange markings along the man’s face. It looked as if the blood vessels in his face had been stained by a brownish-red fluid like Iodine. No, that wasn’t right; they looked black, Charley realized. They ran down the man’s face in grisly tracks until they vanished somewhere under his shirt’s collar.
“Oh God,” Eve whispered.
“What happened to him?” John asked.
“I can’t.” Eve was shaking her head and back-peddling away from the body.
“It’s okay,” Charley said, looking up at her.
She wasn’t even paying him any attention; her eyes were focused on the fat man’s blackened face.
“Eve,” Charley said.
She backed away. John didn’t even notice—or maybe he didn’t even care? Charley didn’t know. He did know that Eve was going to lose it at any moment.
She retched, spun away, and vomited in a white-yellow gush onto the cement. The vomit splattered on the ground in watery chucks. Charley, now feeling sick himself, looked away from the scene. He couldn’t go help Eve yet, not with that smell—God! It would make him puke too!
John looked up at him. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his face contorted to disgust.
“Can something do this?”
Charley shrugged. “The only thing I’ve ever seen close to that is when they inject isotopes into people’s blood.”
“We don’t have any isotopes here, do we?”
“I don’t know,” Charley said. “They usually do that in controlled environments, like hospitals.”
“You have any idea what happened to him?”
Those of the Dark, his mind whispered.
But he didn’t say that, couldn’t say it, for saying it would make it somehow real.
Instead, he shook his head.
A short distance away, hands on her knees for counter-balance against her spinning head, Eve looked up and wiped her mouth. She lifted her head cautiously, hoping it wouldn’t make her sick again.
Her heart stopped, and all her nausea vanished.
Those of the Dark were off on the side of the road. Eyes wide, her whole body tense, Eve backed up towards Charley and John. When she got there, she heard their talking, their discussion, their wondering what could have done this. But, Eve, oh Eve knew what had done this—them. They had done this. Those of the Dark. They had simply touched the man with the tip of an ever-so-small pinkie finger (if what they had were fingers), and the man’s blood had been blighted. They were here again. It was inevitable; they had been following her and John from the beginning.
Blind, terrified, Eve kept backing up and backing up.
“Eve! What—” John startled, looking up.
Her heel struck the dead body and she tumbled backwards. The body let out a haunting gust of air from whatever reserve had been in its lungs. For a single moment, Eve thought the body might roll over on her and suddenly come to life, the murderously ruined face leaking warm spittle into her eyes—
Charley went immediately to help the girl, while the man who had taken her virginity did nothing.
“Eve, what’s wrong with you?” Charley asked.
She pointed; she couldn’t speak. Charley and John followed her finger.
They saw Those of the Dark.
For a long time, they couldn’t think. They looked across the broken, empty highway to the wetlands above which Those of the Dark floated. They were floating; they had to be floating. Charley couldn’t tell how many of them there were. They didn’t move. They didn’t do anything but watch…and wait. Their luminescence was not like Those of the Light; here was the apotheosis of black, a no-color waver that radiated off of them and seemed to blacken holes into the landscape.
A hand fell on his shoulder, and Charley screamed. He looked up to John.
“Let’s go!”
They began to walk away from the body. They walked slowly at first, looking at Those of the Dark from the corners of their eyes. The figures didn’t move. They started to walk faster.
“They’re not following!” Eve whispered frantically.
Those of the Dark began to move, as if to mock her, leaving in their wake that glowing no-color, and could you please explain how black could glow? Charley felt an animal fear stirring in him. This is how a trapped antelope must feel, he thought.
They were about to start running when Eve suddenly shouted:
“Look!”
They glanced to the other side of the highway. Those of the Light had appeared, apparently from the same place Those of the Dark had come—nowhere. Once, in the City of New York, Charley had seen One of the Light outside of the general store and had felt cold fear. Now they were like a light in the darkness. He felt himself smiling, actually smiling!
“What are they doing here?” John asked, and in his voice Charley heard the same excitement that he felt.
Those of the Light and Dark, Charley thought.
Those of the Light began to move, shedding their white light. Those of the Dark shadowed them. The three of them moved in the center. The whole scene was like some alien procession. Charley couldn’t help but feel as if something big was going to happen. He was tense and excited; he felt like a fan before the big game.
Then, abruptly, Those of the Light and Dark stopped walking forward. The three didn’t stop. They continued to walk, not looking back. When they finally did look back, the highway was empty. Those of the Light and Dark were gone.
“What was that about?” John asked, walking backwards so that he could see if they reappeared. They didn’t.
“I have no idea,” Charley replied. He glanced to Eve. She shook her head slowly, her face all eyes.
They didn’t speak about it again that day. They walked on, their alertness heightened. By the time they reached the exit off the Turnpike for Route 78 West, they were exhausted. Charley suggested that they take one of the exits off 78 to find some bikes. It was late afternoon, and they weren’t making as good of time as he had hoped. They agreed and walked onto Route 78 West. The highway stood wide and empty—a giant’s bowling lane. The first exit was just ahead. Before they reached it, John articulated that which Eve had felt upon seeing the black markings on that man’s face.
“Do you think they did that to the body? Those of the Dark?”
Charley and Eve nodded slowly. He said nothing more. Soon the Jersey Turnpike was behind them.
9
They found a Target off one of the exits, and Eve insisted that Target had bikes. The front door to the store was cocked open and darkness was the store’s only customer. They stood near the entrance of the mammoth store, and they all felt warm nostalgia. They could remember coming into Target, the place alive with people. Now it was a husk, a skeletal remain of something they had once familiarly known.
“Which way are the bikes?” Charley asked, his voice ringing in the empty store.
“I think by sporting goods.”
John went first, and Charley noticed that John did that a lot. They might talk about things, discuss things, and then John delved right into it. He didn’t like to consult them. It made Charley a bit angry that John thought their opinions were useless.
The darkness seemed to encroach upon them. They passed clothes in racks. Aisles and aisles, all empty, stood with unclaimed goods on their shelves.
The bikes were in the far back. There were a good lot of them up high, but there were some on the ground-level shelves. They found three pretty nice ones, all of which had air in the tires.
“We should get a pump too,” John said, searching the row behind them.
“It’s been so long since I’ve ridden a bike,” Eve said suddenly, and Charley looked over to her.
She had mounted her bike and was trying to balance herself on it. She turned to him and smiled; he laughed. She started to peddle and soon was moving down the empty aisle. She giggled. She tried to turn the bike around, but bumped into a display box of sheets and knocked all of the goods to the ground. Charley laughed out loud. At that moment, Eve reminded him of Sarah—carefree, playful, and beautiful.
He glanced over at John and saw that the man was watching her without a smile. Charley’s smile faded.
“We better get going,” John said, turning to Charley.
They took the three bikes out of the store, Eve riding hers and laughing the whole while. The sunlight was bright and piercing after the dim darkness. They got on their bikes and began to ride. It felt good with the wind at their faces.
Within minutes, they were back on Route 78 and heading west. The highway felt huge on a bike. Empty, vacant, they pedaled down the stretch of asphalt as the winter-spring sun shone down upon them. They didn’t speak much. Once, Eve turned and said how much fun she was having, and Charley smiled. He liked the girl. She was good-hearted. John said little. Charley found himself wondering (and not for the first time) what had happened to the man to get him here. What had he been doing? Sometimes a gleam came into John’s eyes; sometimes his eyes went strange and distracted, as if he were listening to a conversation in his mind—and not a good conversation. Charley decided that he didn’t want to know how the man had gotten into this no-world.
The sun shifted place slowly in the sky. The highway climbed at one point, and they had to get off of their bikes to walk them. They didn’t take a break. Charley was afraid that they wouldn’t make it back. They ate cereal bars and sipped water as they walked. His legs were watery and noodle-like by the time they reached a decline in the road, and he knew that he wasn’t alone in that regard. They all got onto their bikes and coasted down the hill. The breeze was cool and wonderful, pulling the sweat right off of their faces.
He thought of Sarah. He missed her more than anything, missed the feel of her lips, the sensation of her smooth skin. He loved the way she smiled and shied away if you paid her too much attention. She was the sort of girl God had meant to linger in the back of the crowd, unseen yet so goddamn beautiful you could not ignore her.
The sky was now bleeding red and orange. They were close. He saw the exit—the exit he usually took with his car. He felt an odd tingle in his belly. He was coming home. What if he didn’t recognize it? What if it had changed? What if there was nothing there to help explain where they were or how to get out of here? What if, in his dark empty house, Those of the Dark stood waiting for them?
Dumb thoughts, he told himself.
“It’s that one,” he said, indicating the sign ahead.
The quiet of the place with which he was familiar sent his nerves into electrical eccentricity. They took the curving exit off of the highway, and Charley thought:
I’m closer to you, Sarah. I’m almost home.
10
The houses that he was so familiar with didn’t seem the same. It was like returning some place in your adulthood that you had loved as a child. Things that had once seemed grand and so amazing were no longer grand and amazing. Things which had once seemed inviting and loving now seemed queer and uninviting. All of the houses stood back a good distance from the road as if hiding. There were no sidewalks on the street. The dusk was settling around them, and Charley felt out of place in his home town.
They were on Hills Drive, and the road dipped and rose successively. By the time they were on level road, their legs felt rubbery and weak. This was a road down which he had traveled thousands of times. The turn off of Hills Drive was ahead, and Charley saw the street sign for Meadow Drive and felt a low pang in his belly.
What if there’s nothing here? He wondered.
“This way,” he said, and made the right.
They followed closely behind. No one spoke. Maybe they already knew that they would find nothing, and maybe they were only quiet because they wanted Charley to see for himself. He barely noticed them for the next five minutes anyway.
Meadow Road wound to the right and then to the left. Charley’s heart was hammering in his chest now, really hammering. He took the bike around the curve. How many times had he walked these streets with Sarah? His house was ahead. It was a corner house, blocked by the brush and shrubs from this road.
He stood up and started to peddle faster. He breeched the line of shrubbery and there stood his home. The windows along the side of the house were dark. He felt happy and sad.
There’s no one here, he thought.
Charley didn’t stop until he had turned down the cul-de-sac and up his driveway. He went down the driveway.
He got into the back of the driveway and practically fell off his bike. He stood silently for a long time. John and Eve came down the driveway slowly. No one said anything. They gave him his space.
There’s nothing here, Charley thought, looking to the empty deck, the empty driveway, the vacant windows.
Did you expect to find anything here?
He went to the garage and pulled it. Surprisingly, it opened. He looked in at his father’s Cadillac. Its color looked muted and withdrawn, its usual gleam dulled somehow within the gloomy garage. Charley stood for along time looking at the car, and then he went up the stairs to the laundry room door. This, too, was open. He pushed it in slowly. That familiar scent of Downy filled his nostrils. He walked to the door leading into the living room and opened it.
> He walked in, his steps making the floor creak lightly. John and Eve followed him, but he didn’t even notice. He stood, a stranger in his own house, and listened to the sound of nothing. He stood in the living room for a long time, looking to the sofa that he’d napped on countless times. He moved through the rest of the house, to the kitchen, to the stairs. He passed his parent’s room on the second floor. He stood in the dark hall. He looked at the door to his room. Eve had followed him halfway up the stairs, but something stayed her as she gazed down the hall at Charley’s inert form. She felt that this was something he had to do on his own.
If I open this door and find nothing, what does it mean? Did I come all this way for nothing? I need something. Please. There has to be something.
He opened the door. His room was empty. It was exactly how he remembered it. Sarah was not in the room. There was no gateway back to his reality. There were no helpful hints. He did not have red slippers lying around on the carpet.
Charley Allen stood in the doorway to his room and began to cry.
11
He looks like his mother, John thought.
He was standing downstairs in the living room and looking at the Allen family pictures. Something was beginning to bother John about Eve: she was paying way too much attention to Charley. John strolled through the living room, into the front foyer, and stood looking up the stairs. Eve was there, half-way up, her back to him. She didn’t notice him watching her. Was she crying? He couldn’t tell. He turned away and went to the kitchen, his footfalls quiet.
It was a nice house—a nicer house than John had ever lived in. His finger went to the knife at his waist and caressed it. He was very afraid about Eve. Might be she was falling for Charley. Might be she had already fallen. Might be she and Charley had done the old in-out. True, Charley had said that he had a girlfriend—what was her name? Susan?—but John knew that wouldn’t have stopped him.
