Neverworld Wake

by Marisha Pessl

  Maybe it was shock at being forgotten by Jim again, the nagging question of his lies about Vida Joshua, or the understanding that one of my friends had tried to destroy me, deliberately sticking me with the pin to send me to back to some other moment in time, doubtlessly believing I’d be too smitten with Jim to ever leave his side again, trapping me here forever.

  I leapt to my feet, barging through the crowd. In the hallway I snatched my burgundy coat off the coatrack. It abruptly collapsed, sending piles of minks to the floor. I threw down my old coat, seized the fattest, most unwieldy fur I could find, and shrugged it on, hit by a wave of perfume. I ran down the hall, my heart pounding, pressing the down button for the elevator. It splintered under my finger. I wheeled around, shoved open the door to the stairs, and raced down each flight, lightbulbs in the lamps overhead shattering as I passed each landing. I charged out into the lobby, the doormen gawking.

  How could I have forgotten where I was, and what I had to do?

  Didn’t I want to live?

  I sprinted outside. The wind was strong, too strong, the green awning chattering and flapping in the gale. I ran to the sidewalk, about to hail a cab, when I heard a girl’s shrill laughter. Wheeling around, I saw Jim.

  He was perched on the wrought-iron railing in front of the building next door, Delphine and Luciana beside him. They were talking to a doorman, cracking up over his comical impression of someone, what looked like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. They were all howling so hard they couldn’t stop.

  I stood there, frozen, willing Jim to look up and see me.

  But he didn’t. Staring at his grinning face, I realized then. I saw it as plain as day. I hadn’t even crossed his mind.

  Maybe I never did.

  I wanted to shout his name. I wanted to scream like some vengeful witch in a fairy tale, causing clouds to fast-forward across the sky, wiping the smiles off their faces: “Jim Mason, in four years you’ll be dead!”

  He leaned back so carelessly, hooking his arm around Luciana’s neck and nuzzling her ear, my heart felt freshly sliced in two.

  I’d been so stupid, so blind.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I veered around and ran out into the street, nearly getting hit by a taxi before the driver slammed on the brakes, honking.

  I climbed in.

  “Honey, are you okay? What the—? Jesus!”

  The driver blinked, mystified at the sight in front of him. The green awning to Jim’s apartment building had come entirely free in the wind, detaching from the sidewalk. It was barreling down Fifth Avenue, clanging and swooping; it collided with the rear windshield of a town car before soaring straight up into the air, gold poles flying out, bystanders shouting as it was flung through the sky like some strange soaring monster.

  I’m anything but okay.

  * * *

  —

  Martha had said to meet back at Wincroft in the event of an emergency.

  Always go back to the original wake. If we have that as our meeting place, there remains a hope we can all eventually convene there across space and time. To change the wake again, go back to the coastal road if you can and do the exact same thing, okay? If you can’t get to the coastal road, find a suicide.

  I took the train back to Newport. When I arrived it was after ten. I climbed into a waiting cab at the station, asking the driver to take me to Narragansett. It was a half-hour drive, and I didn’t have money, but I figured I’d be able to think of something at Wincroft.

  The gate was open. The lamps were lit. As the cab accelerated down the drive, I could see the driver sit up and glance at me curiously in the rearview mirror, wondering if I was an heiress. The house lights were on. There were eight gleaming cars in the driveway. As the cab waited, I went running up the steps and rang the bell.

  When the door opened, I found myself face to face with E.S.S. Burt. He wasn’t as creepy as I remembered. In fact, he looked like any rich man in a pastel sweater. There were voices coming from the dining room, glasses clinking. Apparently I had interrupted a dinner party.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Whitley.”

  “She’s not here. She’s up at her boarding school. Darrow-Harker.”

  “We were supposed to grab dinner tonight.”

  He was surprised. “Did you try calling her?”

  “She’s not picking up.” I went on to explain that unfortunately I didn’t have enough money to pay the forty-eight dollars for the cab. Blinking in bewilderment, Burt pulled out his wallet, jogged down the steps, and paid the driver.

  “I guess I’ll go back to my hotel and try Whitley later,” I said.

  He nodded, puzzled. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Beatrice.”

  Burt didn’t know what to make of me, a gawky girl in a black mink bulky as a killer whale. I waved to him and took off on foot down the driveway. He watched me, then disappeared back inside, apparently too preoccupied with his party to wonder, if the cab had driven off, how I was going to get anywhere. I circled back to his vintage-car garage, typed in the four-digit security code. Thankfully it was the same code as five years later, and the door rose with a groan. I hurried to the key stand in the back and unhooked the keys to the Rolls.

  Driving out to the coastal road, I expected sirens. None came. My heart began to pound. I could feel the wake coming on. Checking the time, I realized in surprise that this wake had shortened. It had been barely eight hours. I could feel the crushing heaviness pressing into my legs. I floored the gas, engine roaring. The prospect that I might end up with Jim again, back in Central Park, if I didn’t make it into another wake willed me to drive faster and faster. My legs went numb. As I rounded the curves, the car seemed to fly out from under me, tree branches scratching at the windshield like an angry mob. When I reached the hairpin curve, I veered into the bushes, narrowly missing a tree. I barreled out, lurching into the middle of the road, the strong wind shoving me down across the yellow line.

  I rolled onto my back, gasping. The sky was a deep night-blue, freckled with stars.

  I had no idea whether this plan would work. Would the open window even be here anymore? I slowed my thoughts and closed my eyes. August 29. Villa Anna Sophia. Amorgos Island. Greece. I waited for a car to come, but there was only the deafening wind in my ears, the shrill hiss of crickets, the distant whoosh of the sea, even as a metronome. I heard a piercing whistling, growing louder. A bicycle. It came at me suddenly, the rider swerving to avoid me, losing control, crashing into bushes on the side of the road with a clang of metal, shouting. The biker was uninjured. After a moment of gasping and swearing, he lurched to his feet.

  He stared down at me, faceless in the dark.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered as his head jerked up in surprise, headlights of an oncoming car illuminating him like a flash camera.

  He threw himself out of the way as my world went dark.

  When I opened my eyes I was lying on my stomach on wooden planks. Instantly, streaks of vivid blue tore into my vision. It was the ocean. I raised my head, blinking. I was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded pink Captain’s Crow T-shirt. I was lying on a dock, barefoot. I turned my head and saw the white wooden staircase zigzagging up the sheer rock face, at least a hundred feet high.

  Villa Anna Sophia. I’d actually made it.

  Light-headed with relief, I lurched to my feet, only I was so woozy, I stumbled and was sick, nearly falling into the water. Catching my breath, I lurched to my feet.

  I headed up the stairs. With every step I took, pebbles and rocks loosened under the planks, bouncing, plummeting down the cliff into the ocean. I kept moving. I didn’t look down. When I reached the top, panting, the house—a wild architectural marvel of glass and steel—sat before me, totally silent. It looked deserted. I hurried past the pool, an inflated swan raft
drifting leisurely in the center, and tried one of the glass doors. It was locked, the windows shaded. I was just wondering if I’d gotten the wrong day when I heard a woman scream. With a pang of unease I tore down the stone path, past the olive trees, to the front, where I saw Kipling outside the massive double-oak doors. He appeared to be keeping watch.

  I was so relieved to see him, I threw my arms around his neck.

  “Thank goodness,” I whispered.

  “What—my—how did you manage it, child? Martha said we’d lost you, maybe forever.”

  I pulled away. There was no point going into what had happened, not yet. Blinking up at Kipling, though it hurt me to think it, I reasoned he could have very well have been the one to stick me with the pin. Yet he seemed genuinely relieved to see me.

  “I made a mistake,” I said. “Where is everyone?”

  “Inside.” He made a face. “We’ve tied the whole family up and we’re tryin’ to extract information. But it’s not going well.” He shrugged, visibly nervous. “We tried the nice way. Arriving casually, announcin’ we happened to be on vacation, and were friends of Jim’s, and we wanted to know about his death, and so on. But they’re slippery eels, the Masons. They served us grilled octopus and basil sorbet and invited us for a dip in their pool. Before we knew it, four hours had passed. We were all drunk on ouzo, and we hadn’t had one real conversation about Jim. Whitley got fed up. So these last few wakes, she’s gone nuts on these people. The deluxe Whitley special, you know, with the screamin’ and the punchin’ of walls and the throwin’ dishes.” He sighed. “Edgar Mason has his twenty-four-hour security detail, but they switch shifts at noon and they’re lazy, so that’s when we strike. We’ve got two tied-up guards at the end of the driveway.”

  I frowned. “But how many wakes have you had?”

  “Five. Each one lasts about five hours. How many have you had?”

  “One.”

  This had to be what Martha meant about instability, trains speeding in different directions at different speeds, the risk of never being in the same place at the same time to vote.

  There wasn’t time to worry about it, not yet. Kipling had opened the door and was beckoning me inside.

  There on the couches sat Mr. and Mrs. Mason, tied up along with their four children, their eyes red from crying. They were watching Whitley in mute horror. She looked like a South American guerilla, bandana wrapped around her head, T-shirt knotted in a crop top around her waist, a mad glint in her eyes. She was holding a gun on Mr. Mason. The side of his face was swollen. It was a shock seeing Jim’s family like this, when at the last wake they were crisp as fresh flower arrangements, floating around, air-kissing people at Great-Uncle Carl’s funeral.

  Spotting me, Whitley widened her eyes in surprise. She raced over.

  “Beatrice,” she said, hushed. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  I gave her an abbreviated version of what had happened, how I’d accidentally returned to a different date but managed to get back to the coastal road to change the wake.

  “So you’re all right, then?”

  I nodded. “Where’s Martha?”

  “Trying to log on to Edgar’s computer. Not having much luck.”

  “What about Cannon?”

  “He’s gone.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  She shook her head with a bleak look. “He never arrived. We have no idea where he is. One second he was there, and the next? Nowhere.”

  I recalled the person I’d seen sprinting into the woods. Cannon.

  “Hello? Oh, my God. Is that you?”

  Mrs. Mason, sitting on the couch, craned her neck to get a better look at me. I’d never seen her so forlorn. She was almost unrecognizable. Her face was red; her blond hair, usually so immaculate, had wilted like a plant left too close to a radiator.

  “Who? Who are you talking about?” asked Mr. Mason.

  “That little girl Jim went with in school. You know. Her.” She glared at me. “You’re involved in this? You let us go right now. We have no information about Jimmy.”

  I grabbed the gun from Whitley and pointed it at Mrs. Mason. She gasped.

  “Tell me what you know about Jim’s death,” I said.

  She glanced at her husband, terrified, then back at me. She began to whimper. It was an odd sound, like a beach ball losing air through a tiny hole.

  “Leave her alone!” bellowed Edgar suddenly. “Gloria has nothing to do with this, you little con artist!”

  I pointed the gun at him. “What happened to Jim?”

  “I’ve told you people countless times now,” he said, spitting. “We know nothing.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  He shook his head. “The police told us it was suicide.”

  “Jim never would have done that. And you know it.”

  “I don’t. I don’t know it.” Mr. Mason appeared to be crying, staring at the floor.

  That was when I remembered.

  I stepped behind him, inspecting his wrists, which were bound with zip ties. I yanked up the cuff of his shirtsleeve. Mr. Mason knew what I was after, because he immediately began to contort himself, trying to move his hands away.

  “No! Don’t you dare—”

  It was the black rubber bracelet I’d seen him wearing. He still had it on, five years later, though this one seemed an even more sophisticated version, with digital letters and punctuation with the numbers. I couldn’t pull it off his wrist, so I went into the kitchen, returning with a knife.

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”

  I sliced the bracelet off his wrist.

  “Now you’ve done it. Good for you. Bravo. Kiss your future goodbye, missy, because you’ll be spending the rest of your life in a hole so foul you’ll beg to be sent to prison.”

  “I should be so lucky,” I said.

  I turned to Whitley, who was blinking at me in shock.

  “What got into you?” she whispered.

  “I’ll be in Mr. Mason’s office,” I said, racing up the spiral staircase.

  * * *

  —

  Martha was stunned to see me.

  “Oh, my God. What happened?”

  “It’s a long story. But I’m fine.”

  I raced into the all-glass tower, pulling a chair alongside Martha behind the hulking desk. She couldn’t seem to stop staring. Naturally it made me wonder if she had been the one to stab me with the bumblebee pin. But there was no figuring it out. Not yet.

  “I’ve been trying to log on to Edgar’s laptop,” she said, indicating the screen. “It’s impossible. There are three prompts for encrypted passwords.”

  I stared down at the shifting line of numbers, symbols, and letters on the bracelet. They reset every fifteen seconds. I typed the displayed sequence into the three password boxes.

  The computer unlocked.

  “Are you kidding me?” whispered Martha in awe. “Like that? How did you—?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Before I clicked into the desktop, I placed a piece of tape over the webcam. I didn’t know what would happen when it became clear that there was a security breach, but I knew we’d have to work quickly. Edgar Mason had a personalized email interface called Torchlight Command. As soon as I opened the program, a timer recording my activity appeared in the upper right corner of the screen.

  The first thing to do was to search for emails from Jim.

  We couldn’t find one. Searching for the names of his brothers and sisters turned up countless emails, but there was not a single message either to or from Jim.

  “He’s been wiped from his father’s email,” whispered Martha. “Why?”

  “Maybe he wrote something inflammatory.”

  She shrugged.

  On the ha
rd drive, there were over two thousand folders on a cloud server called Torchlight Library. I searched for Jim Mason. Nothing came up. We found a trove of financial records, listings of obscure holding companies with names like Redshore Capital America and Groundview Fund, with addresses in the Cayman Islands and Panama City. There were trade receipts and wire transactions from a bank in Turkey to another in Switzerland, some of which listed dollar amounts so enormous they looked like typos. If any of it was illegal, or tied in any way to Jim’s death, the truth was buried under layers of names, numbers, and symbols, none of which could be easily excavated.

  “Maybe Edgar’s committing fraud,” said Martha. “Sweatshops. Child exploitation. Maybe Jim found out about it, and they had a major falling-out.”

  “If Jim had found out something like that, he’d have been devastated, yes. But he wouldn’t have killed himself.”

  She shrugged. “What if Edgar hired someone to kill Jim?”

  I stared at her, surprised. “His own son?”

  “If he thought he was going to lose the empire he built? Why not?”

  Suddenly she sat up, frowning, pointing at the glass walls. I realized in horror that every pane was breaking. All around us thin cracks were spidering through the glass, branching out, one after the other.

  “The instability of the Neverworld,” whispered Martha.

  I nodded and hurriedly clicked back into the in-box. I certainly didn’t want her to wonder what the destruction meant, if it was all being caused by me. I leaned forward, squinting at the screen.

  “Most of Edgar’s emails are from this woman named Janet,” I said, clearing my throat. “His executive assistant. They have a system where she reads his emails and summarizes them.”

  “ ‘Chris Endleberg, president of Princeton, called,’ ” Martha read slowly. “ ‘He appreciates the way you handled the matter re S.O. They’ll hold off on disciplinary measures.’ Huh. Okay. What else?”