by Keith Knapp
“I missed you, sweetie,” Sophia said, squeezing Jody’s hand.
“I missed you, too.”
Another squeeze, this time from both of them. Sophia stopped them and knelt down. She looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. “We have to stick together,” she said. “Now more than ever.”
“I know, mom.”
Then Sophia laughed. “And it’s not lost on me that we would’ve been better off—probably—had I just turned the car around.”
Jody said, “So this is what it takes for us to be cool, huh?”
“Guess so.”
They then hugged again. Sophia really was starting to think not only would she never be able to let Jody go, but she’d never be able to let the kid out of her site ever again.
Jody told her mother about the events leading up to their reunion: the dog-things in the street; the skeleton in the cell across from her; the previously mentioned bug man. Then she reached into her back pocket with her free hand and pulled out the dollar bill from the ice cream parlor with her picture on it.
“And I found this,” she said, handing it over. “And get this: the names of the people who ran the place was Ma and Pa Banks. Same last name as the folks who ran the Baskin Robbins dad used to take me to.”
Sophia unfolded the bill and nearly dropped it when she saw Jody’s face smiling up at her.
Then Jody—the real Jody—looked from her mother to Mike to Rachel to Brett then back to her mother. “I think we’re dead.”
Before anyone else could say anything, Sophia was rubbing the back of her daughter’s head in a calming, motherly motion. “We all do.”
“And it’s like this town knows us,” Jody said. “Or at least parts of us.”
“Our memories,” Mike said from ahead of them. The rest of the group had stopped without Sophia and Jody noticing, and it was only now that they were making their way back to the mother-daughter duo. “It knows our memories.”
“How is that possible?” Rachel asked.
“I think those three ladies…downloaded them somehow,” Mike said. “It’s the best way I can think to put it. When we were there, it felt like I was taking the Titanic down memory lane.”
“Scott Franklin,” Rachel said.
“Who’s that?” Brett asked.
“An old boyfriend of mine. Hadn’t thought of him in years until I went into that shed.”
Mike mulled this over for a few minutes. Then: “The candles.”
Sophia: “Say what?”
“Those shitty aroma candles they had,” said Mike. “Each one seemed to do something different. One made us sleep, one made us wake up, and one-”
“-downloaded our memories,” Jody finished for him. “I had all these wacky dreams while I was in there.”
“We all did,” said Mike.
And he was right. It was coming together for all of them now, being in the shed and smelling the lilac, the lilac that had been suffocating the room, the lilac that seemed to have the power to bring their pasts into their present.
Mike went on. “They download our memories and play ‘em back for us.” Is it live or Memorex?
“Why would they do that?” Sophia asked.
Mike shrugged. “Beats the shit outta me.”
“So how come they haven’t played any of my memories? Besides thinking of Scott’s name, that’s all I got,” Rachel said. “Or Brett. Brett, have you seen anything?”
“No,” he said. “Just a few…bad dreams.”
“Maybe they haven’t gotten to you yet,” Jody offered. “Maybe they can’t do us all at once.”
“And you weren’t there that long,” Mike reminded her. “Maybe they couldn’t download all of you in time.”
“This is ridiculous,” Rachel said.
Mike grimaced as they came to the intersection and halted. “I won’t argue that with you. We’re all just wildly guessing, here.”
The main street went on for three more blocks ahead of them, then fell into shadows. On their right was yet another three blocks of the town, also ending in shadows. And to the left: three more blocks…then shadows. Even the windmill was bathed in murkiness and it shouldn’t’ve been; it was taller than the rest of the buildings and it should’ve been the last structure in town hit by sunlight. But there it was, all in black, immobile vanes and all.
And the sun was directly above, as it was high noon. The only shadows on the street should’ve been right under their feet. The darkness in front of them was coming from something else.
Mike put his hands in his pockets. Okay, I’m here, Ali. Now what?
Rachel pointed north—straight ahead. “Maybe we should keep moving.”
Is that right, Ali? Do we need to cross the intersection?
They moved forward, keeping to the middle of the road—that way they’d have at least a few seconds should a dog-thing jump out from behind a building for a second course. Harold Benning’s Photography was on their left, a Wells Fargo on their right. Next door to Benning’s was a clock store, its windows sprinkled with time pieces. The clocks were corroded and tattered. Some of the metal hands on their faces had fallen off.
Roscoe hunched down. His ears flapped back and a rumble started at the back of his throat. Staring straight ahead, that rumble turned into a snarl.
“What’s his deal?” Mike asked Sophia.
“I don’t know, he-”
BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!
Roscoe started barking furiously. With his bark came a breeze from the north. It lifted up dust on the street, spiraled it around. The breeze became a wind. Little tornados of dust and dirt corkscrewed around their feet. The windmill’s vanes slowly began to move, providing energy for…something.
The shadow at the end of the block before them—the shadow that should not have been there—began to move with the wind. It came toward them as if the elements themselves were moving this absence of light. The wind gained force, making Mike place a hand on his head to keep his Dallas Cowboys cap on. The shadow moved closer, it was half a block away now, and would be at their feet in a few seconds.
Shit, maybe that wasn’t Ali talking to me. Maybe it was something else. Something bad. We’ve been conned.
Without anyone needing to say anything, they all took two steps back. A professional drumline would not have been more precise. Sophia pulled on Roscoe’s leash—the dog was intent on fighting the darkness coming their way. His paws dragged in the dirt as he strained against Sophia’s wishes. He was able to take two steps forward, pulling Sophia with him.
“Roscoe, come on!” Sophia ordered.
Something leapt out of the shadow. A pointed shape that, when separated from the rest of the darkness, looked like black smoke. That’s what the shadow was, though: a driving fog coming their way. And now part of it was breaking away. It pointed at them. The elongated shape hovered above the ground, still connected to the rest of the gloom, then lunged at Sophia and Roscoe.
Grabbing Brett’s hand, Rachel started to run. Behind them, Jody feverishly pulled at her mother’s shirt, yelling for her to move, they had to move right fucking now. And then Roscoe was yanking Sophia back out of the intersection—he had clearly seen enough and knew he was no match for whatever it was.
Mike was ready to run his ass off but found himself frozen in place. He wanted to make sure Sophia and her daughter were out of harm’s way first. No, that wasn’t right. Nothing as chivalrous as that coming from Mike Randal. He was frozen because, he had to face it, he was hurt. Not physically (although he’d been in better shape), but mentally. Even if the Alison-ghost hadn’t really been Alison’s ghost, the feeling that he’d been possibly lied to by her still lingered, like a dream that was so real it took a few minutes to realize none of it ever happened.
The shape from the fog came within an inch of Mike’s foot, which was all he needed to have his thoughts of self-pity whisked away. Don’t touch my foot don’t touch my foot please God don’t let it touch my foot. He turned and began his own
sprint away from the smoke.
The entire wall of darkness rolled their way…it would have them soon, it’d get Mike first, he was closest…then it paused.
Mike looked over his shoulder. The smoke seemed to be looking at him, taking stock of him.
The fog had created a wall of itself, blocking the street. Smoke curled and webbed its way inside the make-shift wall, giving the impression of breathing, of life. Which, as far as Mike was concerned, might not be too far from the truth. This town was alive, after all. Alive with their memories.
And alive with something else.
To their right a similar wall had formed and hung like a barrier. Behind them the sheriff’s office and hotel disappeared as a third smoke-thing crawled up to the intersection and stopped before it passed the corner. Coming as no surprise to any of them, a fourth wall appeared on their left.
They were now blocked on all sides, trapped in the middle of the intersection.
“What the hell is this shit all about?” Mike asked.
The smoke walls pulsed all around them like a heartbeat, throbbing in unison. Slowly the beats between them began to alter, going off time. Mike was drawn to the one on his left. He took a trance-like step toward it as a bubble of smoke grew from the center of the wall. There was something mesmerizing about it, something magical. The beat of the wall matched that of his own heart.
The bubble grew into an arm. It shot out toward Mike and curled around him. The smoke seeped into his mechanic’s uniform, traveled through his hair, entered his lungs. It was too late for him to turn away and run now. Not that he had anywhere he could go.
I’m taking you to a safe place.
Alison’s voice. In his head.
The arm lifted him up. Before Sophia could scream his name, Mike was three feet in the air and moving toward the smoke wall. In a sudden pull of aggression, the arm dragged Mike Randal into the fog and he was gone.
* * *
Sophia yelled his name even though Mike and the arm were no longer there. Where the arm used to be there now throbbed a bubble again. The wall sucked it in, gurgled, burped, and the bubble was gone.
There was no time to marvel at the experience. Another arm of smoke came from the east wall and encased Sophia. Like Mike, she was raised into the air and began moving toward the wall. A second arm grabbed Jody and whisked her away with her mother.
Sophia and Jody had not yet made it to their wall when yet another arm appeared from the north to seize Rachel and Brett. Shared looks of confusion crossed between Sophia and Rachel as they were dragged their separate ways. After everything they’d been through, they were going to be eaten alive by smoke.
* * *
The pulsing boils of the walls slowly dissipated and died. Roscoe sat in the middle of the intersection, alone, gazing at the wall that had eaten his mistress. He laid down with a frightened and sad moan, put his head on his paws, and waited for Sophia to return.
36.
The smoke was all around Mike. He was pretty sure there was just as much of it in his lungs as there was in front of his eyes. Was he breathing this shit? He should be suffocating. But he was breathing, he felt his chest moving up and down.
Despite that fact that he could still breathe, he couldn’t see a damn thing. His entire world was nothing but smoke. Endless, blinding smoke. Although it didn’t burn his eyes, it made it impossible to see. And it didn’t smell, either…it was just…there.
Mike’s stomach told him he was spinning, and he couldn’t get his bearings, couldn’t decide which direction the ground should be in. Maybe this was Hell. An eternity of spiraling around like a lunatic on an amusement park ride.
He was pushed to his right—and holy shit, the smoke began to clear. Although he was still spinning, although he still had the sensation that he was floating, his vision told him he was in a room. Looked like a hospital room. There was a heart monitor. In the background he heard it beeping faintly, then-
-he was back in the smoke and being pulled the other way. There was more spinning.
The smoke began to clear again. His eyes agreed with his stomach this time—he was still hovering, still spinning, but not as fiercely. He was over a town. Not the town, that wonderful place of bullshit, ghosts and dog-things, but a town of homes.
A suburb of some sort.
And look, there was his lawn.
His house.
* * *
In the days and weeks after Alison’s accident, Mike lived in an empty and silent house. It should’ve been filled with his wife and the hoots and hollers of Wheel of Fortune or the magical tinkling of keys on the piano in the back room, but it wasn’t. Instead, Mike suffered through the quietness of their home by himself as Alison lay in her hospital bed fifteen miles away, slipping in and out of a coma, awake only long enough to look at her crippled hands that weren’t really hands anymore.
He couldn’t stay at the hospital. They had a room for him there, even had a bed, but he couldn’t. Alison was there, and he was pretty sure she was dying, and he should be there but he couldn’t. Although he visited her every day, he wasn’t able to last more than two hours in her room. When she did wake up, which wasn’t often, he could tell she was already gone. She would look around the hospital room quizzically, then would give him the same look. Eventually her eyes went to her hands, supported by rods and pullies above her. She would scan her fingers. The only thing making them look like fingers anymore was all the metal that kept the shattered bones in place. She would shed a few tears then go back to whatever dream world her coma was in.
The doctor had told him that Alison had suffered a brain hemorrhage and chances of her making a full and complete recovery were slim to none. She’d be a vegetable. Mike had the wonderful obligation to make the Big Decision according to her living will, which clearly stated no life-support if she was to come back “dumber than a bag of hammers” as she had once put it.
After six months of hoping and praying, Mike finally did what she wanted.
He stayed in a motel that night and didn’t call a soul, didn’t tell anyone what had happened. He’d do that later. Her parents had died while Alison had been in college, and that was as big as her family got.
The next night he roomed with Gary Schalling, his head mechanic, and had told him the news. Gary was a real pal, had sat up with Mike the entire night while he went over the good and bad times with Alison. Mike had cried, and so had Gary.
The proceedings went forth on the sale of their home the following week. He returned only once (for banking papers, his computer and a stack of Alison’s personal items), then never went back. Never even drove down that street again. Mike had taken a loss on the house but didn’t care. Once Alison was gone he knew he couldn’t spend one more second within its walls. Not alone. Not without her.
But now here it was right in front of him, blue-trimmed windows and all. He hadn’t returned to it—it had come back to him. Hazeltine Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California, where every house was one story and every yard no larger than a minivan. A kid, no more than seven, passed behind him on a bike and waved. Out of habit, Mike waved back. The day was sunny, the clouds sparse, the air uncommonly clear.
For the first time in over ten years, Mike walked up the gravel path to 8229 Hazeltine Avenue. The house was exactly as he’d left it the day he moved out; freshly cut yard, clean windows, a hosed driveway. A “For Sale” sign sat in the middle of the lawn, a brash “SOLD!” sticker covering part of it courtesy of Prudential California. It had gone for $250,000, half the market value, and that was okay with him. He hadn’t cared about the money, he had just wanted out.
There was nothing wrong with the house. Not structurally, at least. It was in pristine condition—the Randals had gone to great lengths to take care of it in the five years that they had lived there. They had planned on being there forever. The foundation was sound. It was in a good location, close to schools and shopping.
Mike shuddered. He didn’t want to go up to that doo
r. But something was pulling him toward it. It was like being in a dream where you could only observe and weren’t really a part of.
Walking up the pathway, the gravel crunching underneath his feet, Mike ascended the two steps to the porch. He reached down and lifted the potted plant (a fern, still alive and well) next to the door. He swiped a hand underneath and snatched the spare key, right where they used to keep it. He held it in his hand, his sizeable palm engulfing the square head.
The doorknob took the key slowly, Mike letting each click of the blade resonate in his ears. Soon the door was open and was inside.
The living room was immaculately clean, a chore Alison gave herself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and two doors down from awesomeness, she’d say. Time had stood still at 8229 Hazeltine Avenue. From the white three-seater couch to the 55” Sony television he had gotten himself for his thirty-fifth birthday in front of it, all of their old belongings were still here.
Mike’s fingers grazed the Ikea couch as he walked between it and the coffee table—also acquired from Ikea. Both he and Alison adored the giant do-it-yourself chain. They’d spend hours in the warehouse that passed for the store, picking out furniture—desks, couches, beds—and spend just as long (longer, usually) putting them together once they got the pieces home. The desk in their bedroom had taken two weekends and one argument (Mike had used the wrong screws on the legs resulting in a trip back to Ikea for more parts) to assemble.
A giant framed poster of three horses galloping across a meadow hung on the wall next to the television. He had no idea who had taken the photo—it had been an Alison Purchase and Mike had the feeling she had no idea who took the photo, either. She just liked it. So did he.
Mike caught his reflection in the television. He looked past the tired and saddened man in dire need of a shave staring back at him and instead saw memories of a happy couple laughing at folks on Americas Funniest Home Videos and trying to get the answers before the contestants on Jeopardy! His melancholy reflection wavered for a second, replaced by a man with a smile, enjoying a fond memory or two.
