Ashes of Foreverland

by Bertauski, Tony

  It was lilac.

  24. Danny Boy

  The wilderness of Wyoming

  My demons are different than yours.

  Reed wrote that in one of the poems. Danny remembered that every time Cyn ventured off into the trees alone. She’d return with a wide-eyed look and stare into the fire, rocking back and forth.

  It had been weeks and she never left his side; then one morning she climbed out of her tent and took a walk. She didn’t go far, just up and went. Her hands were quivering when she returned, but then she did it the next morning, going out a little farther.

  Her demons are different than mine.

  When Foreverland crashed, a lot of the old men died. They got what they deserved. But now he realized those bastards got off easy. They didn’t have to deal with the demons that haunted dreams, the nightmare sometime lurking in Cyn’s eyes. The ashes of Foreverland would never dust over them.

  Death was too good for them.

  And the ones that escaped—the old men somewhere out there in their young, new bodies—left the survivors with the bill, a debt Danny, Cyn and others paid every day. He could only hope the old bastards would come back to wipe the slate.

  The old women, too.

  ——————————————

  “I’m ready.”

  Danny looked up. Cyn’s arms were stiff, fists balled against her hips. She’d left to fetch water from the stream and was gone longer than ever before; he was about to go looking for her, afraid the wolves had gotten too close.

  Steely tension ridged across her brow. She sat in the passenger seat.

  He didn’t ask what happened, just got in the SUV and began to drive. She’s ready to face the demons. And the demons live just over the hill.

  It was early afternoon.

  The sun was breaking through a cloud fracture, sunbeams gliding over the meadow, but darker clouds shrouded the three buildings ahead. The log cabins peeked through the overgrowth like relics from another era. The brick house was obscured by evergreens, as if hiding from shame.

  Dilapidated wind harvesters leaned near the partially collapsed barn, blades locked in place.

  Cyn’s breaths had become clipped and punctual. Unblinking, disbelief filled her eyes. The boogeyman really did live under the bed.

  “We woke in there,” she said.

  She pointed at the cabin on the left. And then she said it two more times, then nodded.

  Danny put the SUV in drive and idled over the hill. She was still nodding and pointing when they stopped in front of the cabin and opened the door.

  Six beds.

  Steel shafts of sunlight came through the clouded windows, exposing abandoned spider webs. The mattresses were faded and frayed, soiled from a leaky roof or bodily fluids.

  “We woke up.” Her voice bounced in the exposed rafters. “And couldn’t remember anything.”

  Danny remembered that feeling, of waking up on the island and not knowing who he was, where he came from. They told him he’d been in an accident, that he was going to be healed.

  Did the old women tell the girls that, too? Or just feed them to the needle?

  The wood planks were spattered with bird feces, their footsteps echoing in the crawlspace beneath. She stopped at the wood-burning stove. The clouds, for a moment, parted and a dusty spotlight cut across the room. A rogue gust of wind hit the building. The walls creaked and splintered. Outside, one of the wind turbines squealed for a moment.

  She looked at the bed in the corner. The wall above the mattress had been clawed into lines. Cyn sank her knee into the mattress and dragged her fingers over the markings like Braille.

  They were gouged in bundles of five.

  She had been counting the days.

  She woke up scared, alone and confused; she began counting the days when it would all be over, when someone would come for her, take her away, tell her it would be all right. That this couldn’t be happening.

  That someone loved her.

  An enormous patch of weeds had grown next to the brick house. Dried sunflowers peeked above the fray like dying sentinels.

  A slate of rain slid over the sky, casting a gray pall over Cyn’s complexion. Her eyes darkened. The big bad wolves had lived inside the brick house.

  She walked toward the sunflowers, disappearing into the thicket of weeds. The weeds had lain down where she walked, but he lost track of her. He exited near the brick house. He stood and listened, heard her scrambling like a rodent for cover.

  Something began thumping.

  It sounded like a bat dully pounding a bag of rice.

  “Cyn?” He listened. “You all right?”

  He marched back into the fray, plowing through the thickest parts, where thorny vines raked his hands and cut his cheeks, sharp grassy edges slicing at his forearms. Memories of the jungle jumped into his head and his heart beat as loud as the thumping.

  There were whimpers.

  “Cyn!”

  Panic dumped into his veins. Nothing could happen to her. He brought her out here, nothing weird could happen, it would be all his fault. Please, not to her.

  She was on her knees, as if praying.

  Her fists were smudged with fresh earth. She raised them above her head and hammered the ground, again and again and again.

  The first patter of rain touched the ground. The drops were cold. Danny knelt next to her and put his hand on her back. Welts were slashed across her arms from the weeds.

  “I hate who I am,” she said.

  She said it after slamming the earth. Again. And again.

  He put his arms around her. She hid her face on his shoulder.

  “I hate who I am. I hate who I am.”

  He didn’t know why she chose that spot to punish. But he thought he knew why she hated who she was, who the old women turned her into. At some level, she blamed herself for being dragged out here. If she just didn’t run away from home, if she didn’t use, didn’t lie. If she was just a good girl, her parents wouldn’t have hated. Wouldn’t have left her. If she just wasn’t bad to the core, none of this would have happened.

  Danny knew why she cried and shook, knew what was inside her; the guilt she carried was the same as his. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t logical. But there it was.

  I deserved it.

  ——————————————

  The rain came down in icy bullets.

  Danny ushered her out of the weeds. The SUV was parked in front of the cabin, but the wolves had arrived.

  It was a pack of ten.

  Their noses to the ground, they circled the truck. The pack leader trotted between them and urinated on the front tire. He locked eyes with Danny. The pack stood their ground, as if guarding the truck.

  “This way,” Cyn said.

  She pulled him in the direction of the brick house. Danny held her hand and kept looking back. The predators watched their retreat through a blurry curtain of rain.

  The trees in front of the brick house gave them some cover. Danny stood on the bottom step, still watching for the wolves. Despite shivering, Cyn took the stairs one at a time, laying both feet down before taking the next. The railing creaked in her hand.

  Vines trailed from the soffits, moss clung to the brick. Somewhere under a tangle of vines was a porch swing. He followed her up onto the porch and out of the rain.

  “You hear that?” she asked.

  Danny remained still. Had he missed the crunch of a paw or the snap of a twig? He looked back and counted. They were all there, but what if one had been hiding?

  The wind raked the trees and a swirl of leaves tumbled past.

  He realized there was a chance they might be stuck out here for a while. Until the wolves moved, they weren’t getting back to camp. But the brick house was a fortress, a rock-solid castle with security cameras and metal shutters that could withstand a military assault. Stones were scattered on the sloping porch. If the door was locked, they could throw one through a window.
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  It was a Southern-style porch that was wide and accommodating. Ceiling fans were above, their blades wilting from decay; small tables were surrounded by cushioned chairs, the stuffing ripped out and stolen by vermin.

  There was even a tall glass on the far table, one that would hold a cool sip of tea on a summer day when the old women would sit and watch the girls blister in the sun. The napkin was still beneath it, the edges curled and shrunken.

  Cyn twisted the knob. It took a boot to the bottom half to open. The house sighed a stale breath of rat turds and damp fabric. She stood in the doorway.

  A breeze sprayed rain over the floorboards. The napkin fluttered beneath the tall glass on the table. He had assumed it was a napkin, but it sounded more like paper. He ducked beneath limbs and cleared heavy vines to reach the table.

  It was an envelope.

  The paper was warped with mildew, tainted green. He turned it over. The ink was the same color as algae.

  Danny Boy.

  He tore it open without hesitation, without questioning how it had gotten out here. Had it been out here all this time?

  A single sheet inside, folded once.

  Once the past uncovered,

  And the demon cast out,

  Only then forward you move,

  To live without doubt.

  The door slammed.

  The porch was empty. Danny ran to the door, turned the knob and kicked at the bottom. It was jammed in the swollen frame.

  “Cyn?” He pounded with his fist. “Cyn!”

  He put his shoulder into it without luck and found a stone near the steps. The rain had stopped. It took both hands to raise it above his head and crush the doorknob. The door flew open on the third attempt, as if it had been open the entire time.

  The house was silent.

  He screamed her name and searched the house. All the doors were locked, all the windows shut. The house was empty. She was gone. Danny ran outside and discovered something else.

  The wolves had also disappeared.

  25. Cyn

  The wilderness of Wyoming

  She had reached the end.

  The bottom.

  There was no chance to give up the drug of choice until you bounced off the ground floor. Problem was, what you thought was rock bottom could be a false stage—you crashed through to find there was more falling to do.

  But this is the end, she decided. No more running.

  She had beaten the earth where Jen was buried. Even though it happened in Foreverland, even though Jen didn’t really die, not in reality, not in the flesh, she still felt the old man’s hands around her neck in Foreverland. Still fed the worms, in Foreverland.

  Did that make it any less real?

  Cyn had been hiding in fear ever since she left the wilderness. Now that she was back, she was still hiding—from the pain, from the voice in her head. And nothing was working. She was ready to face this. And she knew where the big bad wolves lived.

  No more.

  She walked up the steps of the brick house and heard music, something classical, cellos and flutes. “You hear that?” she asked Danny.

  She twisted the handle and kicked the door open. She expected the smell of death to barrel its fist into her nose. What she saw was impossible.

  The house was immaculate.

  There was an oval carpet in the center of the room, credenzas to the right and left, a television directly ahead. The grandfather clock was tucked in the corner, the pendulum dutifully keeping time.

  Scented candles burned on the coffee table.

  The cabins were still dilapidated, the garden still a tangle of weeds. All was as it should be. But inside the brick house, dreamland waited.

  Foreverland is alive.

  Beethoven floated on the scent of vanilla-cinnamon. A shadow appeared at one of the doorways. Nerves tightened along Cyn’s arms, across her chest. Cold fear gave way to a furious storm. Her fingers curled into her palms; fists clenched at her sides. An old woman stepped into the hall.

  Barbara.

  Her clothing was expensive, a brand Cyn couldn’t name and didn’t care if she could. A loose scarf—zebra print—was bunched around her neck where, undoubtedly, folds of skin hung loosely. Her gray hair curled around large earrings that were outsized by the rings on her fingers.

  And her lipstick, bright red.

  It was her. Only this time she wasn’t looking in the reflection of a shattered mirror. She walked into the hall, a separate person. Their eyes met and they stood like cowboys waiting for a move.

  The music ended.

  The silence was meted out by the grandfather clock. Barb turned her back and walked into another room down the hall. Coffee cups clinked from a cupboard.

  Cyn looked around.

  She could break the leg off one of the end tables or shatter the glass on the grandfather clock, wrap a shard with a blanket off the couch.

  The coat rack.

  She wedged it against her hip, the polished pegs aimed forward like a rack of manufactured antlers. Barb returned with two cups and stopped.

  Cyn’s knuckles whitened.

  “Piss and vinegar.” A smile touched the old woman’s painted lips. “That’s why I chose you.”

  “I should run this through you.”

  “Sweet Jesus, child. You don’t know where you are.”

  “I know who I am...I’m not you.”

  “I didn’t say who you are. I said where.”

  With that, the old woman sat on the wide sofa littered with throw pillows of the same floral print. She sank into the center, placed the mugs next to a thick binder on the table, and slid one toward Cyn.

  “What’s that mean, I don’t know where I am?”

  Barb sat back to sip the coffee, smudging the rim with lipstick. She indulged in another taste before leaning forward to open the binder.

  With a steel grip on the burnished coat rack, Cyn could see the collection of photos of beaches with blinding white sand, impossibly long yachts, and tropical resorts. She kept her eyes on the old woman, waiting for her to fling scalding coffee in her face, or pull a weapon from the cushions. Instead, she leisurely flipped the pages over, one at a time.

  As if she had just arrived.

  “Your life was miserable before I found you,” Barb said. “A street rat, a rag doll. A little sex toy for drugs. For you, death would be easy. You were already killing yourself, you just didn’t have the courage to do it all at once. For me, it was quite the opposite. I worked hard to succeed at life, you see. I had a career and a family and a wonderful marriage.”

  The plastic pages crinkled.

  “If you think I was born with a spoon of sterling silver, you’re wrong. I was like you, Cynthia—beaten by my stepfather and hated by my mother. I made myself, I rose above it. I earned it, you see. And I wasn’t about to give it up to death without a fight.”

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “I had an opportunity to beat Death, you see. To start again, to keep what I earned. There would be one less homeless child causing trouble in the world, one less tick on the mane of society.” She nodded at her, unaffected by the battering ram pointed at her head. “You didn’t want the gift of life, child. I did.”

  “So you took it.”

  “I took it.”

  There was nothing for her to argue. Everything she said was true. Cyn was worthless. Long before Barb was in her head, little voices told her so. She had nothing to live for.

  If you would’ve just asked for my life, I probably would’ve given it.

  “No, you wouldn’t.” Barb answered Cyn’s thought.

  Of course she did. Somehow she was still in Cyn’s head. She’s inside me, part of me. So is this room, this house...it was too real, the colors vivid, the touch, the smell. Where am I?

  “You’re a fighter, Cynthia. Just like me, you refuse to let anything be taken from you. And that’s why we’re here, right now.”

  “Where?”

  “I put a
needle in your head and sent you to Foreverland, where you were tossed into the Nowhere and your empty body left behind for me to rightfully have. I put a needle in my head”—Barb rubbed a tiny scar on her forehead—“and left this cancer-ridden body to move into your body, child—your beautiful, healthy unwanted body. It’s what you wanted; you wanted to die. And I wanted more life. We both got what we wanted.”

  “You know that’s wrong.”

  “But then Foreverland crashed and I hadn’t fully crossed over into your body. That was me that woke up in the cabin, in your body, I just didn’t know it. That was me that suffered through Foreverland’s endless cycle of birth and death because Patricia refused to let us wake up in physical reality. That was me that went to the edge of Foreverland and peered into the Nowhere. And that was you that came out of it, your memories, your soul that came back to your body!”

  She slammed the binder closed, a moment of finality. Or acceptance. Those photos—her husband, her family—represented her life. And she would never have that life again.

  “You’re the only one to have survived the Nowhere, as far as I know. You should’ve been shredded and dissolved, but somehow you fought your way out of it and took your body back. Do you know what happened to me, where I went when you returned, mmm? I was plunged into your subconscious. It’s dark in there, child. And very lonely.”

  “Then get out.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” She sipped her coffee. “Maybe I was wrong, I should’ve chosen a meeker girl, a coward. But then I don’t think I would’ve been at home. It is what it is, no arguing over spilt milk.”

  She was wrong. There were others that survived the Nowhere, that walked out of it. She was forgetting her husband, how he was caught crossing over when Foreverland crashed, how he walked out.

  But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t walk out of the Nowhere. Something pushed me out. Or someone.

  She remembered those memories being forced back into her body. No, more than her memories. Her soul.

  “This is my body.”

  “It’s our body, child.”

  Cyn slammed the coat rack on the binder; the table cracked and the pegs splintered. She swept the book into the television; photos fluttered out.