by J. Thorn
“But we were not able to get to him last time, my lord.”
Deva grimaced and threw his chalice to the floor, where it clanged and echoed throughout the empty chamber.
“I’m sorry,” Shallna said before Deva could speak.
“You speak the truth,” Deva said, straightening his robe and sighing. “And I do not want to consider what will happen to our plans if he regains the ability to slip.”
“Is that possible?”
“Surely,” Deva said. “One always comes through the cycle with resonant thoughts and memories. And the more times he cycles, the more of those residual thoughts will materialize.”
“How many?” Shallna asked.
“For Samuel? At least six. This could be our last chance with him.”
Deva felt his obligation coming to an end. He grew tired of the endless cycle of reversions and the energy it took to manage them. Shallna came to him so long ago, Deva could not remember a time without his apprentice. The man stumbled through the suicide forest alone and disoriented like all the rest. But Deva heard an inner voice that told him Shallna was different, that Shallna’s duty was to serve the lord of the reversion and so Deva taught him the ways of the new world. He showed Shallna the orb and explained what happened to the old world and how the new one, the reversion, functioned. While Shallna did not always assist in every reversion, Deva knew he would be bound to a future master, the cycle’s watchman.
“What about the young man?”
“Jack is a fool, and I’m not sure I have the patience to see him through the number of cycles it would take him to be of use.”
Shallna nodded and placed his hands back on the orb, leaving Deva time to consider his options.
***
Samuel trudged through the shifting sands, which pulsed with a faint glow compared to the consuming darkness above. The mountain stood in the distance, its peak towering over the sprawling desert. With the debris field of boulders and spilled wolf blood disappearing over the horizon, Samuel was adrift on a waterless ocean. Each step felt futile, as if the peak would keep its safe distance for an eternity.
The air hung lifelessly over dunes that had not moved in eons. The lack of any scrub or cacti provided no hope for weary travelers traversing the empty waste. Samuel drew a deep breath and caught the faintest scent of burnt sandalwood, which he attributed to memory rather than reality. He looked over his shoulder at Jack, the young man keeping a pace or two behind and staring into the distance toward the summit.
“I need to stop soon,” Jack said.
“I’ve got, what, fifteen years on you?”
Jack didn’t bother answering, and Samuel let it hang. He stopped to face Jack.
“I know what’s going through your head.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said.
“If universal laws of nature apply across localities, I’m fairly certain we’re going to find what we need over the next set of dunes. Can you trust me on this?”
“You’re the only other human I’ve come across since I woke up in this fucking hell. I don’t have much choice here, do I?”
Samuel turned to look again at the mountain’s peak, feeling its unseeing gaze upon them. “Maybe an hour more, possibly two, and then I’m hoping we find what we need.”
Realizing he would not get much more from Samuel at the moment, Jack bent down to tie the lace on one boot. He stood and nodded at Samuel. The men marched, leaving nothing but their footprints and unanswered questions behind.
***
Samuel pushed on while burying the pang of guilt he felt about lying to Jack. He knew there was no guarantee an hour more through the desert would produce what he was looking for. No number of hours could do that. But Samuel felt consistent energy, even though this locality differed drastically from his last. He placed a hand on his chest, over the triskele pendant that lay underneath his stained, sweaty shirt. Samuel let a thousand questions run through his head while his feet pushed him forward, inching ever closer to the mountain. He thought again of Mara and her final words to him. He remembered bits of conversation with Major and Kole. Before the intellectual exercise could grind his brain to a halt and leave him in a puddle of self-doubt, Samuel saw an anomaly on the horizon. Jack saw it, too.
“What’s that?” he asked, his breathing now husky as more sand settled in his throat.
“What I’ve been waiting for,” Samuel said.
“It’s been more than an hour or two. Either you’re a liar or your sense of time sucks.”
Samuel smiled. “C’mon,” he said, bringing his right arm around in a lazy arc toward the horizon. “That’s where we rest.”
Jack felt a renewed energy in his step as they walked through the sands toward the unknown object on the edge of the world. The dunes spread out to the horizon in undulating waves. The young man wondered how long it had been since the great winds that formed them swooped down from the skies. He thought about crossing an eternal desert during a timeless night with a strange man he did not know. Jack kept his feet moving while trying to keep his thoughts from running away with his sanity.
As the two continued on, the familiar shape of the cabin revealed itself to Samuel. He squinted as they approached, and he saw Mara’s smiling face in his mind’s eye.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
Samuel ignored him, intent on getting to the cabin, where he could sit and close his eyes for a minute. The men approached. The mountain kept its distance while the peak kept its watch. The cabin, however, remained fixed between two dunes threatening to bury it in a tomb of sand.
Sandblasted shingles clung to the pitched roof in a desperate attempt to keep from sliding to the ground. A lone, brick chimney jutted out at an angle as time attempted to pull it over. Weathered, wood shakes covered the front and sides, the stain long since dissolved. One lone window sat to the right of the door. A glaze of time covered the glass, giving it an opaque finish. Three steps led up to the door, which had a single brass knob and no lock.
Samuel took another step closer, scanning the ground for any sign of activity. He saw a long spider web hanging diagonally across the top right corner of the door. Other webs clouded the corners of the front window.
They walked to the right, circling around the cabin. The wood shakes covered the other exterior walls, although some had fallen to the ground in clumps of petrified wood. Jack bent down and sniffed the crumbling shingle, expecting a dry, organic scent. He caught the slightest hint of cedar and nothing more. Coming around the other side and back to the front, they did not find a cistern, privy or other evidence of habitation. Samuel stepped back and allowed Jack to approach the door first.
The front door looked back at Jack, unmoving and uncaring. He placed a foot on the first step and heard the wood crack under his weight. He felt a tingling in the bottom of his foot that climbed past his ankle, over his knee and bolted up to his shoulders. He pulled his foot up instinctively, and the electric buzz faded. When Jack put his foot back on the step, it returned like a low-voltage, electric current. He looked down and his eyes widened. A crisp, brilliant-blue outline surrounded his foot and extended to the outer edge of the step. The line glowed with an intensity that made Jack squint, cutting through the dark monotony of the desert and the black sky.
***
Jack looked down at his foot, now encased in a thin, blue light, standing on the pockmarked cement of a flight of steps leading up to an automated glass door. Young women with thin smiles rolled elderly folks up the ramp to his left and into the Three Rivers Hospice Care Center. He turned around with a slackened jaw to ask Samuel about his apparent teleportation, but saw only the black ribbon of the parking lot extending out to the banks of the Ohio River.
“Excuse me, sir.”
A young girl brushed past Samuel, her mother dragging her by the wrist. The woman glared at him as the girl smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
Jack climbed the remaining steps and went through the gl
ass doors, into the lobby of the hospice. At once, he recognized the industrial-gray carpet and ragged furniture clustered around the soundless television. Magazines and their subscription cards lay scattered across the coffee table, while white paper cups billowed out of the waste bin.
“Are you here to see a patient?”
The question caught Jack by surprise. He turned to see a middle-aged woman in khakis and a white, button-up blouse standing nearby. She wore her hair nestled on top of her head, where gray wisps broke free and danced in the fabricated breeze of the building’s air-conditioning unit.
“Gran,” Jack said. The word came out muffled. “I’m here to see my gran.”
The woman smiled again. The gesture creased lines under her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She nodded with perfect manners.
“Do you know her room number?” the woman asked. She paused for Jack’s reply even though she understood he would not have the answer. They never had the answer.
Jack shook his head.
“If you come over to the reception desk, we can look it up for you.” The woman turned and walked behind the desk without waiting for further information from Jack. She hunched over another woman, sitting at a computer with a phone lodged between her shoulder and cheek.
“Kolton. Mary Kolton.”
The receptionist stood, hung up the phone and looked at the woman helping Jack. Without a word, the receptionist disappeared down a back hallway, leaving the keyboard and mouse sitting behind an empty chair.
“Let me just check our system for you.”
Jack shifted his weight from one foot to the other. With both palms placed down on the counter, he turned his head to look over a shoulder. The lobby shimmered as if he was looking at it through a wall of water. He saw glimpses of the open cabin door, the expansive desert, and Samuel standing motionless in it. Jack blinked, and the hospice came back into existence.
“Room 318,” she said without lifting her head. The woman handed Jack a small white card with the numbers written on it, as if most visitors struggled to remember them.
Jack accepted the card and nodded, walking away from the desk in no certain direction.
“You’ll need to take the elevator to the third floor. It’s at the end of that hallway.”
Before Jack could reply, the woman was back in the lobby, straightening the magazines with fabricated urgency.
Each step on the polished floor electrified Jack’s foot, the tingle moving from his heel and extending all the way to his thigh. Soft, classical music floated in the distance, and he drew in the odor of hospital disinfectant mixed with dying flowers. Jack closed his eyes and inhaled again, grateful for any sensory stimulation, even the kind struggling to mask death.
Jack teleported from the brightly lit hallway on the first floor to the closed door of room 318. He glanced left and right. To his left sat a nurse’s station, abandoned except for a clipboard and an empty candy dish sitting on top of the counter. To the right, the hallway extended and ended in a floor-to-ceiling glass window. The light blasting through the window was so bright that the hallway appeared to open into a cloud at thirty thousand feet. An elderly man shuffled toward the window, one bony hand on the railing bolted to the wall and the other set of gnarled knuckles gripping the head of a wooden cane. Before Jack could look away, the man stopped. He turned his head and looked at Jack. Strands of white hair floated over the liver spots on his scalp. A toothless grin split his face, while a snicker came from deep within a set of diseased lungs.
“We all come to this,” the old man said.
Jack felt his breath catch in his chest. He glanced at the plaque on the door, looking for comfort in the three numbers it held.
“Come to what?” Jack asked, even though he knew exactly what the man meant.
“The end.”
Jack closed his eyes, drew a breath and opened them. When he did, the old man was gone. He reached out and turned the lever on the door, pushing it into room 318.
The private room at Three Rivers Hospice Care Center resembled all of the other private rooms. The narrow door to the bathroom stood open enough to allow the reflected, green light out. The mechanical bed sat underneath the draped window with a generic, particle-board television stand at the foot. The TV blinked and flashed, but no sound came through the single speaker. The closet to the left remained closed, with cards and papers taped to it. They fluttered from the cool air blowing through the vent overhead, which sent a shiver up Jack’s spine.
He saw the lump of broken human underneath cheap, white blankets. Gran’s glasses sat next to a sweating pitcher of water on a nightstand. Her rosary beads spilled off the surface, while an army of orange plastic medication containers lined the outer edge. Jack saw her worn slippers tucked underneath the bed, abandoned. He pictured those same slippers standing at the stove in his parents’ kitchen, cooking him an endless breakfast of eggs and bacon before school each morning.
The door to 318 finally came to rest on the latch with a subtle click. Jack turned and saw nothing but the fire-escape plan fixed to the door behind a piece of yellowed plastic. He walked toward the bed on the legs of a nine-year-old. Jack’s bangs dangled in front of his eyes, and his bronze skin gleamed from the August sun. As he approached the edge of the bed, Gran turned to face him.
Her eyes fluttered until recognition poured over her face. “Jacky,” she mumbled.
“Hi, Gran,” he said, his voice reverting to the high pitch of a boy on the cusp of puberty. “How ya doin’?”
“Not so hot, Spanky.”
Gran smiled, and Jack saw the cracks on her lips break open. The IV bag hung on the rack next to the bed like a lone sentinel on death watch.
“When you coming home?” Jack asked.
“I’m not coming home, Jack. This is the end for your old gran.”
“No,” Jack said, the tears welling up and distorting his beloved grandmother’s face. He pushed them aside and did his best to conjure memories of time spent at her kitchen table, enjoying warm chocolate chip cookies and conversations sprinkled with laughter.
“I’m afraid so. I want to talk to you a bit if we can. Mom and Dad still downstairs in the cafeteria?”
Jack nodded, remembering their location from all those years ago.
“Sit.” Gran motioned to the chair next to her bed. The hard plastic protested as Jack sat down, bringing his face level with hers. “We all get our time here and do what we want with it, but ya know the good Lord always brings ya home. It’s like what Father Boyle talks about on Sundays, right?”
Jack sat and listened but did not answer.
“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, God calls us home.”
A series of ragged coughs attacked Gran’s lungs. The IV line snapped back and forth from her convulsions. Just when he thought he’d need to grab a nurse, Gran settled down. She crumpled a red-speckled handkerchief and drew a half glass of water to her lips. Jack reached out to steady her shaking hand.
“But we’ve had this talk already, haven’t we, Jack?”
He looked down at his body now filling the chair, his hairy legs extending beneath the bed. “Yes, a long time ago, Gran.” Jack felt the deep bass in his voice and recognized it as that of a man. He sat in front of his dying grandmother now as he was, instead of the boy he used to be.
“What is this place, Gran?”
“It doesn’t matter, hon. You’ll always be in here,” she said, tapping a crooked finger on her heart.
Jack smiled and placed his hand over hers. He felt the warmth radiating from her chest and knew it would not last.
The woman looked into his eyes. “Stay with Samuel. Go where he goes.”
The name ran up Jack’s spine, and he felt a flutter in his chest. He turned to face the hospice room door. A transparent wave passed over it, allowing Jack to see the petrified, wood paneling of the door in the desert, the one his mind knew he was still facing.
“I’ll help him, Gran, if you say that’s what I
should do.”
She waved at Jack and placed a hand near her mouth in an attempt to stifle another barrage of coughs. “Go where he goes,” she said again.
Jack dropped his head to his chest. When he raised it again, Samuel was standing on the opposite side of the bed. He looked at Jack while placing a cool rag on Gran’s forehead.
“What are you . . .?” Jack’s question trailed into the ether.
“We have much to discuss,” Samuel said.
Before Jack could reply, the blue lines reappeared at his feet. He felt the room shake, and the vibration came back through the floor and up his legs. A bright flash forced Jack to close his eyes, and when he opened them, he reappeared on the threshold of the cabin’s door, in a desert world with Samuel.
***
“A reflection.”
Jack gasped. His throat tightened and he suddenly felt dizzy, stepping backward until the exterior wall of the cabin kept him from falling.
“What’s a reflection?” he asked.
Samuel turned to look over his shoulder to the west. “The cloud. The reversion is coming, and I’m guessing that’s why you got your first reflection. Something must have triggered it. Mine always came from physical objects. Yours are coming from a different place.”
Jack shook his head, trying to follow Samuel’s train of thought. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know,” Samuel said. He nodded toward the door. “Let’s get inside. If these outposts are consistent across all localities, it’ll provide us with a break and some time to talk.”
Jack nodded.
“Open the door, Jack.”
Samuel waited as Jack stood upright and drew a deep breath. He placed his hand on the crusty doorknob, waiting for an electrical shock. When it did not arrive, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Speckles of dust hung in the air, dancing on thin strings of light penetrating the cabin through gaps in the shakes. Jack blinked twice, feeling his eyes burn from lack of moisture. Cobwebs dangled from the corners of the ceiling and stretched from underneath the cracked plaster.
