Bedtime Story

by Robert J. Wiersema

  I stood up reflexively, because she had. “No, of course not.”

  “I’ll be back in a sec. You sit. Enjoy your lemonade.”

  I helped David take a drink, unable to keep myself from expecting a reaction—a smacking of his lips, a wrinkling of his face at the sourness, some comment—that just didn’t come.

  “And here we are,” Carol said from the foyer, and then they were coming through the door.

  Matthew was in his late thirties or early forties. He would have been a handsome man, I thought, if not for Lazarus Took; his body was soft and gangly, though not fat. He was dressed in loose-fitting grey jogging pants and a tent-like black T-shirt. His face was soft and doughy, and seemed somehow fallen in on itself, completely expressionless. Carol was leading him by one hand. His other hung at his side, limp and motionless.

  No clenching.

  And his eyes were dead, motionless and dark.

  “This is Matthew,” Carol said proudly. “And Matthew, this is Christopher and his son David.”

  Was this what the future looked like?

  “Would you like to sit next to David?” Carol asked her son. “I’m sure there’s room.”

  I shuffled over to make space. The two boys sat side by side, distorted reflections of one another, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall.

  “So …” I cleared my throat, still not entirely comfortable with her level of candour. “What happened …?”

  “What happened with Matthew?” She picked up my question with an understanding smile.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I guess it was a spontaneous occurrence, too. The doctors never could diagnose his condition—that’s one of the reasons I started the foundation, so that someday there might be some answers to those questions.” She nodded. “As to Matthew, though”—she shrugged—“one minute he was reading and the next—”

  I seized the moment. “He had a seizure.”

  “Yes.” She looked at me curiously. “We’ve kept that information private, and I would appreciate—”

  “Mrs. Corvin.” I leaned forward, closer to her. “That’s what happened to David. One minute he was reading, and the next he was in convulsions.”

  She had leaned back in her chair. “Carol,” she said weakly. “Call me Carol.”

  “Carol.” I decided to play all my cards. “Do you remember what Matthew was reading when he had the attack?”

  She shook her head. “That was thirty years ago. He was always reading …

  “Does a novel called To the Four Directions sound familiar? By Lazarus Took?”

  “Maybe,” she said, but then she shrugged it off. “What difference does it make?”

  “Mrs. Corvin, Carol, please, just—” I was aware that I was starting to sound like I was crazed. “Please, humour me. Was it an old book? Brown leather?”

  She was nodding slowly as I described it. “With some sort of symbol on the front,” she said carefully, trying to remember.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s the one.”

  “What one?” she asked sharply.

  I took a deep breath. “Carol, David and Matthew were reading the same book when their seizures started. Not just the same book, the very same copy.”

  “That’s not—”

  I pulled the photocopy paper out of my pocket. Unfolding it, I passed it to her. “Does that look familiar?” I asked.

  She looked at the page, at her son’s name, photocopied from the inside cover of To the Four Directions, and put her hand to her mouth.

  “That’s how I found you,” I confessed. “I went online to find out who Matthew Corvin was, what might have happened to him, and I came across the foundation.”

  Her face was pale. “That’s Matthew’s writing,” she said.

  “I know it is. In the same book he was reading when he had his first seizure. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

  “So you think the book had something to do with it?” she asked, staring at the page.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “Okay?”

  “Let’s take a look at it,” she said, her voice strangely calm. “I can get on the phone to one of the local labs, they can test it for mould and spores, toxins in the paper or the binding, psychoactive agents …” She was watching me, and she stopped. “What?”

  “I don’t have it. The book. It was stolen from me, a couple of nights ago in New York.”

  “You don’t have it.”

  “That’s actually why David and I are here. We’re on our way to Oregon—we’re trying to find it.”

  “We could do blood tests, then. They could check both boys’ blood, compare them, look for contaminants …” Carol Corvin was clearly a force to be reckoned with, a woman used to getting things done.

  “Sure,” I said slowly. “We could do that. But, Carol …”

  Something in my voice must have registered, because she turned to me, actually listening, rather than mentally calculating her next half-dozen steps.

  “I don’t think the tests are going to find anything.”

  She shook her head. “Why not?”

  “David’s been tested. For everything. I think—” I took a deep breath. “I think it’s the book itself.”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “It sounds crazy,” I said, forestalling her objections, “but I think something happened to both of our sons while they were reading. Because of what they were reading. I think that the book itself—”

  “You think words did this?”

  I hesitated a moment, then nodded.

  “Well, that’s ridiculous,” she said, leaning back in her chair, pulling as far back from me as she could. “Look, if you find this book, we’ll run some—”

  And then she stopped.

  “Oh my God,” she murmured.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see what she was looking at.

  It was the boys. I felt a leap of emotion in my throat, threatening to choke me, felt Carol’s hand at my shoulder, clutching, as if she couldn’t trust herself alone to see what she was seeing.

  It had been only a few weeks since my son had last moved of his own accord; for Matthew Corvin, it had been three decades.

  But as Carol and I had been talking, Matthew and David had turned on the couch to face each other, their faces only inches apart, their eyes not only open but focused. Seeing. Looking at one another. Their expressions were still mostly flat, but there was something there in both, some faint hint of emotion that I couldn’t quite identify.

  “Oh my God,” Carol said again in a whisper, her fingers digging into my shoulder. “It’s like they know each other.”

  That was it: recognition. They knew each other, these two boys, though there was more than thirty years between them, though they had never actually met.

  In this world, I thought.

  Carol drew in a sharp breath that seemed almost a sob as Matthew slowly lifted his hand and, reaching out, laid it across David’s, squeezing it gently.

  David didn’t volunteer to help the captain row. The way he was feeling, he knew he would be of no use. Instead, he huddled in the stern, wrapped in his blanket, watching the boat break the clear, implacable surface of the water.

  The captain wiped his hand across his brow. He was sweating. The sun was high overhead. David knew, rationally, that there was heat beating down on his face, but it seemed distant, almost an abstraction against the deep cold that he was feeling.

  It’s almost over, Matt said. You’ll be home soon.

  We don’t know that. David’s thoughts were slow and dark.

  But once you get to the end of the story—

  If I get to the end of the story.

  You will, he urged. You will.

  I don’t know, he thought. Have you ever read a story where the hero keeps getting weaker and weaker?

  Frodo, Matt said. In Lord of the Rings.

  David shook his hea
d and stared down into the water. I haven’t read that.

  You’re not dying, David. You just have to get to the end of the story, bring the Sunstone back to the Queen, and—

  And what? What then? We’ve been thinking that that’s the end. But what if it’s not? What if there’s no magical release? What if it keeps going on and on, with me stuck here forever? Or what if, when the story ends, it all just stops? What then?

  Matt didn’t say anything. The only sound was the captain paddling, the splash of the water, and his grunts and groans. David watched him as he worked, the heavy muscles of his arms, the cords of his neck, the tight mask of determination.

  I’m not getting out of this alive.

  Tony Markus made a point of arriving at the restaurant more than ten minutes early. To arrive any later risked being the second person to arrive, thereby putting himself at a disadvantage by giving whoever he was meeting—in this case, Cat Took—the upper hand, primacy of place, all that Sun Tzu Art of War shit.

  Besides, all he had to do was ride the elevator down six floors, step through the hotel’s front door and turn left. Except that as he turned, he almost ran into a woman standing outside the restaurant doors.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping a careful hold on the bag from Powell’s City of Books that he had tucked under his arm.

  “Mr. Markus?” the woman said, extending her hand. “I’m Cat Took.”

  He took her hand, hoping that his wasn’t too sweaty, and cursed himself for not getting to the restaurant earlier. “Nice to meet you,” he said, as warmly as he could muster.

  It wasn’t difficult: Cat Took was a pretty woman, not yet thirty, with long dark hair and glowing skin, the sort of look that seemed to come from equal parts outdoor exercise and flakey New Age thinking. Vegetarianism, probably. “How did you know …?”

  When she smiled, her teeth were bright. “I looked you up,” she said. “So I’d know who to look for. The miracle of Google. A single girl’s best friend.”

  “This is starting to feel like a blind date,” Markus said, shifting a little. He hadn’t expected her to be so pretty, so small and trim, so obviously comfortable in her dark jeans and black top, a large silver medallion hanging just at the neckline. Oh yes, he’d have to be careful in his negotiations, careful not to give too much up. It was easy when it was some crotchety Upper West Side academic, or some overwhelmed first-timer, desperate to get into print. With a woman like Cat Took, he’d have to be very careful indeed.

  Still, it was going to be very nice to have her to look at over dinner.

  We didn’t stay too long with Carol and Matthew after the boys began to look at each other. Carol and I watched in silence as, gradually, their faces lost what little animation they had temporarily claimed, returning to their previous slackness almost in unison. Matthew’s eyes had started to darken as David’s began to flicker, as his hands began to jerk.

  When I looked away from the boys, Carol was staring at me.

  “What just happened?” she asked, her voice rough, her eyes shining.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Matthew hasn’t … It’s been thirty years.” She paused. “You think this has something to do with that book,” she said, and for a moment she sounded like Jacqui. Not quite openly derisive, but dubious.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “So what are you going to do with this book, if you find it?”

  It was the question I had been hoping that she wouldn’t ask; I didn’t have an answer that would satisfy her. “I’ll have to see,” I said haltingly. “If there’s anything in it that might reverse the effect that it had on Matthew and David.”

  “Like a magic spell?” she asked.

  When I didn’t say anything in response, she shook her head. “You know how ridiculous that makes you sound, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

  “I bet.”

  Standing up and edging past me to her son, she laid a hand on his forehead. “He looks warm,” she said.

  I leaned away, giving her space.

  “If this works …” she said after a moment, so quietly I assumed she was talking to Matthew.

  When she didn’t continue, I said, “I’m sorry?”

  “If this works,” she said, still looking away from me, “what do you think is going to happen? To David, I mean.”

  The question stopped me. I had been blithely assuming that once the spell was broken David would return to normal. Hearing the question put so plainly, though, it occurred to me, for the first time, that David’s injuries might be permanent.

  “I don’t know,” I said carefully.

  David and I managed to not get too lost on the way back to the hotel, stopping at a drive-thru to pick up an early dinner.

  “We’ll have a little picnic in the room,” I told David as I tucked the bag in at his feet, but I was keenly aware of how forced the lightness in my voice sounded: I kept seeing Carol’s face in my mind, the way the tiniest bit of hope, hope in something that she couldn’t even bring herself to believe in, had shattered almost three decades of positive thinking and coping.

  Once we were in the room, I led David to the easy chair and sat him down. “We’re gonna need some extra towels,” I said as I picked up the hotel phone and pushed the button for housekeeping.

  Once I had made the request, I took a large towel from the bathroom. “Ta-da!” I said as I snapped it open and let it fall to the carpet. I set the bag at its centre.

  “Instant picnic,” I said to David as I guided him to a sitting position at the edge of the towel. I sat down across from him, close enough that I would be able to help him eat. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” I said, opening the bag and starting to pull food from it.

  I was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “And that’ll be someone with the towels,” I said, continuing the conversation as I stood up. “Cause somebody I know is going to have a bath tonight.”

  I crossed the room and opened the door, expecting to see a maid or someone from the desk. It never occurred to me to check the peephole.

  Jacqui was standing in the doorway, keys in one hand, a look of cold curiosity on her face.

  “So,” she said. “Do you want to tell me just what the hell you’re doing in Seattle?”

  I could think of nothing else to say: “We’re having a picnic. Do you want to come in?”

  The boat ran up the shallows with a grinding of wood on gravel. David climbed carefully over the bow, splashing as he stepped to the shore.

  The captain hopped out of the boat and pulled it high onto the small beach by the guy line. He rubbed his hands against the front of his pants. His face was sweaty, and for the first time since David had known him, the captain was out of breath.

  “That was farther than it looked,” he said, staring across the lake to where they had started out more than an hour before. “But then, distances over water are always deceptive, yes?”

  David just nodded. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to participate in the captain’s sudden, and not-quite-convincing show of camaraderie; he truly had nothing to say.

  The captain looked at him a moment, but turned away when he didn’t reply.

  “I wish they had brought a bigger boat,” he said, scanning the forested slope that loomed just beyond the beach.

  “Why?” David asked, finding a seat on a driftwood log partway up the beach.

  “It would be nice to have my men here,” he said. “It would save us time searching.”

  David nodded. He knew that he should get up, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Or speak.

  “On the other hand …” the captain said, pointing toward the brush.

  Farther up the beach, at the point where the gravel gave way to underbrush, David saw a small building. The stone walls, thick with ivy, blended into the forest. There was no hiding the door, though: it seemed to glow, even in the shade, the Sunstone symbol etched deep into the metal.
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  Tony Markus and Cat Took wasted no time in ordering drinks once they had been seated.

  “I’m glad we were able to get a table,” Tony said, trying to fill the silence. “I didn’t know if I should call down for a reservation.”

  “It’s pretty early,” she said. “It probably won’t get busy for another couple of hours.”

  As she spoke, he watched the light from the candles play across her face. Her skin was so smooth, so clear, and she didn’t seem to be wearing any makeup whatsoever.

  “So what did you do with your day in Portland?” she asked. “I see you went to Powell’s.” She gestured at the bag he had set on the edge of the table.

  “I did,” he said, then stopped. He wouldn’t mention that the highlight of his day had been a lacklustre massage but a very happy ending from a girl named Angi. “Actually, I spent most of the day there, wandering the aisles, spending too much money.” He gestured toward the bag himself. Probably best to come across as a dedicated bibliophile, really show her how much a labour of love publishing was for him. Whatever story worked best.

  “So what did you buy?”

  “Actually,” he said, grateful for the opening. “This isn’t something I bought at Powell’s. This—” He passed her the bag. “Is why I flew out here.” She hesitated, holding the bag in her hands. “Go ahead, open it.”

  He was almost shaking with anticipation as she slid the book out. The symbols on the cover caught the light of the candles, seemed to glow.

  It took a moment for it to register, but her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “Oh,” she said, glancing at him, then at the book, then back at him.

  “I believe,” he said smugly, “that this is your grandfather’s last book. And, if all goes well, the centrepiece of our plans to get his work the attention it so richly deserves.” Always a place for a little genuflecting.

  “But where …?”

  “I found it a while ago,” he said.

  “This is wonderful,” she said, holding the book before her like some sort of holy object.