City of Sand

by Robert Kroese

  The answer hit him with all the solidity the buildings around him lacked: GLARE. It had to be. Somehow they were behind this. That’s why Glazier had been interested in him. Because he saw things others couldn’t. Just like Sofia. And Felipe. Felipe with his incredibly detailed model of 1950s Sunnyview. What did Felipe see when he looked at the model? Benjamin wondered. Did he see the town as the model portrayed it, or did he see it as Benjamin had seen Sunnyview until a few hours ago, with a false image of a future Sunnyview superimposed on it? And what did Felipe see now?

  Once again, he was struck with the unavoidable sense that Felipe was the key. Whatever was happening in this town, it somehow all came back to Felipe. What would he find if he returned to Lucia’s house? Would Lucia and her family still be there? Would they be able to see or hear him? Would Felipe be there? And would it be the aged Felipe, or the young boy who had been subjected to GLARE’s testing?

  Benjamin turned down Fourth Street, toward the Sand Hill Creek neighborhood where Lucia lived, nearly rear-ending a parked Studebaker in the process. The car was in beautiful shape, but it was hard to tell whether it was still relatively new or if it had been painstakingly maintained for fifty years. Benjamin had been too surprised to look whether it had been bearing a plate identifying it as a classic car. He was tempted to stop and take a closer look—and see whether it was more solid than the motel he had just left—but decided that getting to Lucia’s house was more important.

  He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like the buildings in this area were less flickery, more solid. Was the illusion becoming stronger the closer he got to Lucia’s house? Was that the epicenter of the simulation? If Felipe really was the key, then… was Felipe somehow generating the illusion of modern-day Sunnyview? It was an absurd idea, but it gave Benjamin hope that he might reach Lucia’s house before it too became a phantom.

  The houses in the Sand Hill Creek neighborhood seemed more substantial, and Benjamin even passed a few pedestrians in the street. He honked at one and got no response, but he wasn’t sure if the man couldn’t hear him or was simply ignoring him. Benjamin decided not to try to run him down to press the point.

  He pulled up to Lucia’s house, which looked as real as ever. He ran up to the front door and knocked. That is, he tried to knock, but his hand went right through the door. He was too late. Even if Lucia and her family were home, they’d be unable to see him. To them, he would be an insubstantial ghost. But maybe he could learn something here anyway. Felipe held the secret. Maybe if he could observe Felipe without Felipe seeing him, he could piece together this puzzle.

  He walked through the door into the house, where he saw Lucia’s father sitting in his chair, watching the news. He took no notice of Benjamin, but then he’d seemed oblivious to Benjamin whenever the television was on. Benjamin cleared his throat, but still the old man didn’t stir.

  “Hello,” Benjamin said at last. No response. Either I can’t be seen, or Lucia’s father is determined not to see me. Benjamin heard the clank of a pan from the kitchen.

  He shrugged and walked across the room toward the kitchen. He paused a moment as he got to the door, confirming that it presented no resistance, then continued through to the other side. In the kitchen, Lucia was cooking dinner while Sofia sat at the table doing her homework.

  “I’m sorry,” Benjamin found himself saying—a reflexive response to his intrusion. But of course they couldn’t see him. At least, he assumed they couldn’t, until Sofia turned her head and looked right at him.

  He looked back at her, trying to determine if she really could see him.

  “Someone is here,” said Sofia after a moment.

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucia. “At the door?”

  “No,” said Sofia, getting off her chair and walking toward Benjamin. “In the kitchen. I can see him.”

  “You’re getting too old for these games, Sofia,” Lucia said, stirring a pot on the stove. “You need to do your homework.”

  “But Mamá, I see him!”

  Lucia stopped stirring and turned to look at Sofia. “Is this one of your… visions?” she asked.

  Sofia shook her head. She was standing less than two feet from Benjamin, looking right in his eyes.

  “Hello, Sofia,” he said, feeling anxious and a bit foolish. He’d never been a ghost before, and wasn’t sure how to behave.

  “He knows my name,” said Sofia. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “It’s me, Sofia,” he said. “It’s Benjamin.”

  “He says his name is Benjamin,” Sofia said.

  “Sofia, stop it,” said Lucia. She had moved away from the stove and was reaching toward Sofia as if to pull her away from unseen danger.

  “It’s okay, Mamá,” said Sofia. “I don’t think he’s going to hurt us.” She put out her hand, and it passed right through Benjamin’s knee. “I don’t think he can hurt us.” She looked Benjamin in the eye again. “Are you a ghost?” she asked.

  “I… I don’t know,” said Benjamin. “Something… strange is happening to me. You don’t remember me?”

  Sofia shook her head. “You’re a confused ghost,” she said.

  “I guess I am,” he said. “You don’t remember me, but I remember you. You’re Sofia. You like chocolate. And you have a very vivid imagination. Sometimes when you close your eyes, you see airplanes hitting buildings.”

  “Mamá, he knows about my visions!” Sofia exclaimed excitedly.

  Lucia took hold of Sofia’s shoulders. “Sofia, there’s no one there,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please, Sofia, you need to stop this. Let’s go see what Papá is doing.”

  “But Mamá, I want to talk to the ghost!”

  Lucia said something in Spanish that Benjamin didn’t catch. Then she said, “Papá was right. I need to take you to see a doctor.”

  “No!” Benjamin cried, and Sofia backed away, startled.

  “What is it, sweetie?” asked Lucia. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Benjamin. “But Sofia, you can’t go to the doctor. Tell your mamá you can’t go to the doctor.”

  “He says I can’t go to the doctor,” said Sofia.

  “Come, Sofia,” said Lucia, grabbing her daughter by the wrist. She pushed the kitchen door open, dragging Sofia behind her. Benjamin followed them. “Papá!” Lucia cried. “Something is wrong with Sofia.”

  “Mamá, stop!” cried Sofia. “You’re hurting me!”

  Lucia’s father, still enraptured by the TV, grumbled something in Spanish. His voice was oddly muffled, as if he were speaking through a wall. Benjamin looked at him, and saw that he had begun to flicker like the buildings. Lucia too. He was losing them. And soon, he would lose whatever tenuous connection he had with Sofia.

  “Sofia,” he said, crouching down next to her. Sofia didn’t seem to hear. She was trying to wrest her arm from her mother’s grasp.

  “Papá,” said Lucia faintly. “Turn that off! Necesito tu ayuda. Sofia está…” her voice trailed off, an incomprehensible muffle of syllables. The sound from the TV was muted as well; it reminded Benjamin of the voices of the teachers on the Charlie Brown cartoons.

  “Sofia!” Benjamin shouted, looking into the girl’s eyes.

  She looked up with a start, squinting at his face. “Benjamin?” she said. “I can hardly hear you.”

  “I know,” he shouted. “Please, tell your mother. No doctors! Don’t let them take you to…” But Sofia was now looking through him, and he could see that his words were no longer registering.

  Lucia and her father were gone, and the television had gone dark. The walls around him were flickering, and gradually losing their opacity. Beyond them he saw not the stucco houses of Lucia’s neighborhood, but only trees. The vast apricot orchards that had once occupied this ground, many years ago. Soon the illusion would deteriorate completely, and with it his chances of ever finding out the truth.

  Felipe, he thought. I have to talk to Felipe.

  He raced down the
hall and through the half-transparent door to Felipe’s room. But Felipe wasn’t there. The room was empty, except for a pretty young woman with damp hair and clothes, who stood staring at him, as if she had been waiting for him.

  “Jessica,” he said, despite himself.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Hi, Dad,” Jessica said. She was neither reproachful nor forgiving. There was an air of serene acceptance about her. He wanted to go to her, to hug her, but something held him back.

  “What are you doing here?” he found himself asking. “What is happening to me? Am I dead?”

  “Dad, you need to stop this,” Jessica said.

  “Stop what?” Benjamin demanded. “I just want to know what is happening. Is this whole town some kind of hallucination? Am I going crazy? Am I dead?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

  “But you are,” he said. “Cameron Payne murdered you.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said.

  “What the hell does that mean? Please, Jessica. Just tell me what’s going on. Am I losing my mind?”

  “No,” she said. “Your brain is doing its best to understand things that are incomprehensible. The past, the present, the future. All at once. You aren’t going to be able to make sense of it, Dad. You need to stop trying. Just let it be.”

  Only the faintest outlines of the house remained now. Benjamin and his daughter were standing in the middle of an orchard. Rows of well-pruned apricot trees ran on either side of them.

  “Do you see what I’m seeing?” asked Benjamin, looking around him. “The city is disappearing. Why?”

  “The past, present and future are just different points of view,” said Jessica. “Your point of view is shifting. It’s best if you just accept it.”

  “I tried to leave, but this city won’t let me. Why, Jessica? What does it want from me?”

  “It doesn’t want anything,” Jessica said. “Dad, this isn’t a problem you can solve. This city isn’t a puzzle for you to rearrange until it makes sense.”

  “I don’t care about Sunnyview,” said Benjamin. “I care about you. I came here for you.”

  “No,” said Jessica. “You came here for you. You came here because you feel bad about the way you left things between us. About how you shut me out when Mom was sick. You thought that solving my murder could make you feel better about yourself. But it won’t.”

  “Please, Jessica,” Benjamin pleaded. “I have to do something. I have to try to make things right.”

  Jessica shook her head. “It’s too late for that,” she said. “You need to let go of the past. Just live. Just be.”

  “Let go of the past,” Benjamin echoed, surveying the orchard around him. “I’m in the past. How can I let go of it?”

  “This is a past. You need to let go of your past.”

  Benjamin couldn’t help laughing. He was losing his mind for sure. He was hallucinating a time long since past, and his dead daughter was talking to him in New Age truisms. “What year is this?” he asked.

  Jessica looked around, and seemed to be taking in the same scene as Benjamin was experiencing. “June fourteen, 1950,” she said. “Almost exactly fifty years before you came back to Sunnyview.”

  “But this isn’t real,” said Benjamin. “It’s some sort of illusion, or projection.”

  “Everything is an illusion,” said Jessica. “It’s a matter of perspective. Your reality is comprised of your perceptions.”

  “Uh huh,” said Benjamin. He was starting to get the impression that Jessica—or whoever it was standing before him—was putting him on. She was giving him pseudo-mystical non-answers, trying to retain an aura of mystery while hiding what was really going on. But wherever he was, whatever was happening to him, the rules of logic still applied. Somehow he was going to catch her in a contradiction, force her to tell him the truth.

  “You’re saying that what I’m experiencing right now is the year 1950?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And a few minutes ago, I was experiencing the year 2000?”

  “Yes, Dad, but—”

  “And they are both illusions? Or both real, depending on your perspective.”

  “Essentially, yes. But Dad—”

  “Then why can’t I change the future? Why can’t I prevent you from being murdered fifty years from now?”

  Jessica sighed again. “Dad, I keep trying to tell you, this isn’t a puzzle you can solve. Yes, you can change the future, but you can’t change your past. It’s your past that is tripping you up, preventing you from letting go. No matter what you do, your past is going to follow you.”

  “Because my memories stick with me,” Benjamin said. “But if I find myself forty years from now, keep myself from going to pieces, get a handle on the drinking before it gets out of control, be there for you and your mom….” He broke off, unable to continue. When he’d started, he was just trying to poke a hole in the Jessica-apparition’s nebulous narrative, but the vision of Katherine in the hospital bed, her head wrapped in a scarf, her flesh pale and gaunt, was too much for him.

  “Dad,” said Jessica gently. “You are who you are. You did what you did. It’s okay. Accept it. Move on.”

  With some effort, Benjamin regained his composure. “Who are you, really?” he asked.

  “I’m your daughter,” Jessica replied.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head fiercely. “My daughter is dead. I don’t know who you are, but you’re not going to get in the way of me bringing Jessica’s killer to justice. I don’t fully understand what all this is yet,” he said, waving his arms to indicate the orchard around him, “but I know GLARE is behind it, and they aren’t going to be able to get away with it forever. They’ve got some way of creating mass delusions, of preventing people from seeing the truth. But I’ve seen through them. I found a flaw in the illusion. Maybe that’s why everything is going haywire now. I started pulling on a loose thread, and the whole thing is unraveling. I’m going to expose Glazier and this program, and I’m going to make sure Cameron Payne is dead or in prison.”

  “You can’t do that, Dad,” said Jessica. “It won’t help me. It won’t bring me back.”

  “You are not Jessica!” Benjamin howled. “You’re part of this hallucination, this delusion, whatever it is. A tool of GLARE. Glazier’s puppet. Hell, you could be Glazier for all I know. All you’ve done since I first saw you is try to get me to drop this investigation, to get me to give up. First you distracted me when I was chasing the boy, Felipe, and then when the FBI agents were taking me to….” He trailed off, realizing the truth. “That’s it, isn’t it? Sand Hill Children’s Hospital. That’s where I’ll find the answers. The answers you don’t want me to find.”

  “You’re right, Dad,” said Jessica. “I did try to keep you away from that place. But not because I don’t want you to find the answers. I kept you away because you weren’t ready for the answers yet. You weren’t ready to let go.”

  “Bullshit,” Benjamin snapped. “You are not my daughter. You’re a projection. Glazier fucking with my head, trying to distract me, keep me from finding the truth.”

  “Remember my ninth birthday, when I wanted a Paula Panda?” Jessica asked. “Mommy bought me a stuffed panda, but it wasn’t a Paula Panda, so I cried and cried. Mommy said I was being ungrateful, but you decided you were going to save the day. You took me to three different toy stores looking for the Paula Panda I wanted.”

  “And we found it,” said Benjamin, despite himself. “You—Jessica was so happy.”

  “I was happy to go home,” said Jessica. “The one we found wasn’t the Paula Panda I wanted. I already had the purple one. Mommy knew that. That’s why she bought me another panda. But you were so set on finding the right one that I pretended the purple one was the one I wanted.”

  Benjamin stared at her, not understanding. Was she telling the truth? Or was this some trick of Glazier’s?

  “Don’t you see, Dad?” Jessica said.
“You were trying to solve the problem, to fix everything. But Mommy had already gone to every store in town. She tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. I think the only reason she let you take me along to the stores was to punish me for being ungrateful. It worked. By the time we got to the third store, I wanted to go home so bad that I pretended to be thrilled to find the purple bear.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Benjamin asked. “I know I wasn’t a great father. If Glazier’s plan is to wear me down by—”

  “That’s not the point, Dad. I loved that you cared enough to find the Paula Panda for me. But you got so wrapped up in it, it got a little scary.”

  “I get it,” Benjamin said. “I can’t fix the past. But I can still bring Cameron Payne to justice. I can still stop Glazier. If you really are my daughter, you’ll understand that I can’t just let this go.”

  “It’s because I’m your daughter that I understand how difficult it is for you,” said Jessica.

  Benjamin shook his head. “You want me to let Glazier and Payne off the hook? Then tell me they weren’t responsible for your death. Tell me I was wrong about them, and I’ll drop it.” If this apparition really was the work of GLARE, then presumably it would jump at the chance to assure him that Glazier had nothing to do with Jessica’s death—which would only confirm to Benjamin that he was being manipulated. But Jessica, or whoever it was, didn’t play along.

  “You weren’t wrong,” she said. “I thought I could use Glazier to make me and Cameron a lot of money. But the more I looked into GLARE, the guiltier I felt about it. They just poured all this shit into the water, and when they found out it was causing birth defects, they covered it up because they thought some of the defects might prove useful to them. When I first uncovered what they were doing, I assumed it was all in the past. But I couldn’t find any indication that they had ever stopped. Sure, the EPA eventually made them stop dumping, but the truth about what GLARE was doing never really came out. It kept me up at nights, wondering if they were still experimenting on kids. I finally told Cameron about it, and he pretended to be sympathetic. He was the one who suggested we take water samples from the creek. He asked me to meet him down there, and then he hit me over the head with a rock. I ran, but couldn’t get away. He shoved me down and kept hitting me until I stayed down. I should have known not to trust that asshole.”