TWO
I
At about the same time Tesla was falling asleep in a motel somewhere south of Salem, Oregon, Erwin was stirring from a strange slumber to find himself lying on the floor of his own living room. Somebody had lit a fire in the grate—he could see it flickering from the corner of his eye—and he was glad of the fact, because for some reason he was incredibly cold; colder than he could ever remember being in his life before.
He had to work hard to recall the return journey from the creek. He had not come alone; of that he was certain. Fletcher had come too. They’d waited until dusk, hadn’t they? Waited in the ruins of the house until the first stars showed, and then wound their way through the least populated streets. Had he left the car down by the Masonic Hall? Presumably so. He vaguely remembered Fletcher saying that he despised engines, but that sounded so absurd Erwin dismissed it as delirium. What was there to hate in an engine?
He started to raise his head off the ground, but lifting it an inch was enough to induce nausea, so he lay down again. The motion, however, brought a voice out of the shadows. Fletcher was here in the room with him.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“I think I must have the flu,” Erwin replied. “I feel terrible.”
“It’ll pass,” Fletcher replied. “Just lie still.”
“I need some water. Maybe some aspirin. My head—”
“Your needs are of no importance,” Fletcher said. “They too will pass.”
A little irritated by this, Erwin rolled his head to one side to see if he could get a glimpse of Fletcher, but it was the remains of a chair his eyes found: one of a quartet of Colonial pieces which had cost him several thousand, now reduced to scrap wood. He let out a groan.
“What happened to my lovely furniture?”
“I fed the fire with it,” Fletcher replied.
This was more than Erwin could take. Defying his giddiness, he sat up, only to discover that the other chairs had also gone for tinderwood, and that the rest of the room—which he had kept as meticulously as his files—was in total disarray. His prints gone from the walls, his collection of stuffed birds swept from the shelves.
“What happened?” he said. “Did somebody break in?”
“It was your doing, not mine,” Fletcher replied.
“Out of the question.” Erwin’s gaze sought Fletcher as he spoke and found him sitting in the one chair that wasn’t tinder, his back to Erwin. In front of him, the window. Beyond the window, darkness.
“Believe me, you’re responsible,” Fletcher said. “If you had just been a little more compliant.”
“What are you talking about?” Erwin said. He was getting angry, which was in turn making his head thump.
“Just lie down,” Fletcher said. “All of this will pass, by and by.”
“Stop saying that,” Erwin replied. “I want some explanations, damn it.”
“Explanations?” said Fletcher. “Oh, those are always so difficult.” He turned from the window, and by some trick Erwin didn’t comprehend, the whole chair swiveled with him, though he put no effort into realigning it. The firelight flattered him. His skin looked healthier than Erwin remembered it looking, his eyes brighter. “I told you I’d come here with a purpose,” he said.
Erwin recalled that claim more clearly than any other detail of recent events. “You came to save me from banality,” he replied.
“And how do you suppose I’ll do that?” Fletcher said.
“I don’t know and right now I don’t care.”
“What more do you have to care about?” Fletcher asked him. “Your furniture? It’s a little late for that. Your frailty? Too late for that too, I’m afraid—”
Erwin didn’t like the way this conversation was going; not at all. He reached for the mantelpiece, caught hold of it, and started to haul himself to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Fletcher wanted to know.
“I’m going to get myself some medication,” he said. It would not be wise, he suspected, simply to announce that he was going to call the police. “Can I get you anything?” he added lightly.
“Such as?”
“Something to eat or drink? I’ve got juice, soda water—” His legs were weak, but the door was just a few strides away. He tottered towards it.
“Nothing for me,” Fletcher replied. “I have everything I need here.”
Erwin reached for the door handle, barely listening to Fletcher now. He wanted to get out of this room, out of this house in fact, even if it meant shivering in the street until the police arrived.
As his fist closed around the handle, the firelight—which had been so kind to Fletcher—showed him the state of his flesh. The news was not good. His skin was hanging loosely at his wrist, as though the sinew had withered. He pulled the sleeve of his shirt back from his arm, and the sight made him cry out. No wonder he was weak. He was emaciated; his forearm down to little more than nerve and bone.
Only now did the significance of Fletcher’s last remark sink in.
Nothing for me—
“Oh God no,” Erwin said, and started to pull on the door. It was locked, of course, and the key gone.
I have everything I need here.
He threw himself against the door and beat on it, unleashing a yell. As it died in his throat for want of wind he heard a motion behind him, and glanced over his shoulder to see Fletcher—still seated on the last Colonial chair—moving towards him. He turned to face his devourer, back hard against the door.
“You promised you were going to save me,” he said.
“And is your life not banality?” Fletcher said. “And will death not save you from it?”
Erwin opened his mouth to say: No, my life isn’t banal. I’ve got a secret, such a secret.
But before he could utter a word Fletcher reached out and caught hold of his hands—cold flesh on cold flesh—and he felt the last of his life rushing out of him, as if eager to be gone into a body that would use it more wisely.
He started to sob, as much in rage at its desertion as in fear, and he went on sobbing as the substance of him was sucked away and sucked away, until there was not enough of him left even to sob.
* * *
II
It had not been Joe’s intention to venture far up the mountain. He’d intended to stay among the trees on the lower slope until the last of the late-night traffic had died away in the streets below. Then he’d descend and make his way to Phoebe’s house. That had been the plan. But sometime in the middle of the evening—he’d no way of telling exactly when—he’d decided to walk a little way to relieve the boredom, and once he’d started, his dreamy thoughts had counseled him to keep on climbing until he was clear of the trees. It was a fine night. There would be such a view from the Heights: The city, the valley, and more important than either, a glimpse of the world beyond, the world where he and Phoebe would be headed after tonight. So he’d climbed and climbed, but the trees, instead of thinning, grew so dense for a time he could barely see the stars between their branches. And still he climbed, the narcotic side-effects of the drug leaving him indifferent to the fact that its painkilling properties were steadily wearing off. It almost added to the pleasure of the ascent that some part of his mind and body was suffering: a touch of bitterness to sharpen his bliss.
And after a time out of time, the trees did indeed begin to thin, and repeated backward glances as he cleared the canopy confirmed that the journey had been worth taking. The city looked like a little box of jewels nestling below, and finding himself a rocky promontory, he sat down to enjoy the sight a while. His eyes had always been sharp and even at this distance he could see people walking on Main Street. Tourists, he supposed, out to taste the charms of Everville by night.
As he studied them he felt something tugging at his floating thoughts. Without quite knowing why, he looked back towards the mountaintop. Then he got to his feet and studied it. Were his eyes deceiving him, or was there a light up there, brighten
ing and diminishing in waves? He watched it for fully a minute, and then, seduced by its gentle fluctuations, started up the mountainside again, keeping his eyes fixed upon it as he went.
He could not make out its source—it was hidden behind rocks—but he had no doubt now that the phenomenon was real. Nor was the light its only manifestation. There was a sound, albeit so remote he felt it rather than heard it: a rhythmical boom, as of some vast drum being beaten in another state. And, almost as subtle, a tang in the air that made his mouth water.
He was within fifty yards of the twin rocks now, his eyes fixed on the cleft between them. His cock and balls were aching furiously, their throbs matched to booms of the drum; his sinuses, pricked by the air, were stinging; his eyes were wet, his throat running with spittle.
And now, with every step he took, the sensations grew. The throbbing spread from his groin, up to his scalp and down to his soles, until it seemed every nerve in his body was twitching to the rhythm of the boom. His eyes ran with tears; his nose with mucus. Spittle spilled from his gaping mouth. But he stumbled on, determined to know what mystery this was, and as he came so close to the rocks he would have touched them had he fallen, he saw that he was not the first to have done so. There was a body lying in the gap between the rocks, washed by the waves of light. Though it was the size of an adult, its proportions were more like those of a fetus: its head overlarge, its limbs, which it had wrapped around it in extremis, wasted; almost vestigial.
The sight distressed Joe, and had there been another route to the light available he would have gladly taken it. But the rocks were too smooth to climb, and he was too impatient for answers to try and find his way around them, so he simply strode up to the cleft and stepped past the body.
As he did so, one of those frail, dead limbs reached out and caught hold of his leg.
Joe let out a yelp and fell back against the rock. The creature did not let him go, however. Raising its unwieldy head off the hard ground, it opened its eyes, and even through the haze of tears, Joe could see that its gaze was not that of a dying soul. It was crystalline, as was the voice that issued from the lipless mouth.
“I am Noah,” it said. “Have you come to carry me home?”
* * *
III
Phoebe had stayed at the hospital until after midnight, going through all the paperwork that came with Morton’s passing. Gilholly had reappeared, as she knew he would once he got the news.
“This makes things a lot more serious for you and loverboy,” he told Phoebe. “You realize that?”
“Morton had a heart attack,” Phoebe pointed out.
“We’ll wait for the autopsy reports on that. In the meantime, I want you to holler the moment you get word from Flicker, you understand me?” He wagged his finger at Phoebe, which under normal circumstances would have earned him a choice retort. But she kept her temper under control, and did her best to play the grieving wife.
“I understand,” she said quietly.
The show seemed to convince Gilholly. He softened a little. “Why’d you do it, Phoebe?” he said. “I mean, you know me, I’m no racist, but if you were going to spread a little love around, why’d you go with him?”
“Why do any of us do anything?” she replied, unable to look him in his sorry face for fear she’d lose control and slap him.
He apparently read her downcast gaze as further proof of contrition, because he laid his hand on her shoulder and murmured, “I know it’s hard to believe right now, but there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Is there?” she said.
“Trust me,” he replied. “Now you go home and try to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
I won’t be here in the morning, bozo, she thought as she padded away. I’ll be someplace you’ll never find me, with the man I love.
She couldn’t sleep, of course, even though she was aching to her bones, and the rest would have been welcome. There was packing to do, for one thing, which she interspersed with trips to the refrigerator for a slice of pie or a frankfurter—yellow mustard dripping on her underwear as she sorted through the stuff she wanted Joe to see her in, and the stuff she would leave in the garbage—and then, with the clothes packed, a quick trip through the photograph albums, in search of a few memories to take with her. A picture of this house, when she and Morton had first moved in, all shiny with hope. A couple of pictures from childhood. Ma, Pa, Murray, and herself; her looking pudgy, even at the age of six.
She’d always hated the wedding photographs—even the ones without Morton in them—but she took the group photograph, for sentiment’s sake, along with a couple of shots of the 1988 Festival Parade, when the doctor had decided to pay for a float of his own and she’d made a witty costume for herself as a human pill bottle, which had proved quite a hit.
By the time she’d finished her packing, her photo selection, her pie, and her frankfurters, it was almost three o’clock in the morning, and she began to wonder if maybe Gilholly hadn’t caught up with Joe already. She dismissed the thought. If he had, he’d have called her to crow about it. Either that, or Joe would have used his call to tell her he wouldn’t be coming for her and she should get him a lawyer.
No, her loverboy was still out there somewhere; he just hadn’t reached her yet. Maybe he’d slipped back into his apartment once the streets were completely deserted to do some packing of his own; or gone to find them a getaway car that would be difficult to trace. Or maybe he was simply taking his time, the way he did when they had some hours to spare in the afternoon, idling here and there, just for the pleasure of it.
As long as they were away before dawn, everything would be fine; so they still had two or three hours. She went to the back door, and stood on the step watching the dark trees for some sign of him. He’d come. Later perhaps than sooner, but he’d come.
* * *
IV
Where is your home?” Joe had asked Noah, and the creature had raised its left hand—keeping fierce hold of Joe’s leg with his right—and pointed up the slope between the rocks. Up towards the source of light and tang and boom, which he could not yet see.
“What is it?” Joe had said.
“You truly don’t know?”
“No I don’t.”
“The shores of Quiddity lie ten strides from here,” the creature replied. “But I’m too weak to get there.”
Joe went down on his haunches beside Noah. “Not that weak,” he said, wrenching his trouser leg from Noah’s fist.
“I’ve tried three times,” Noah replied, “but there’s too much power at the threshold. It blinds me. It cracks my bones.”
“And it won’t crack mine?”
“Maybe it will. Maybe it will. But listen to me when I tell you I am a great man on the other side. Whatever you lack here I will provide there—”
“Whatever I lack, eh?” Joe mused, half to himself. The list was long. “So if I carry you over this threshold . . . ” he went on, wondering as he spoke if perhaps he hadn’t slipped from the promontory and was lying somewhere conjuring this as he bled to death, “what happens?”
“If you carry me over, you can put every fear you harbor in this world aside, for power awaits you there, that I promise you. Power that would seem to you unlimited, for your skull does not contain ambition enough to exhaust it.”
The syntax was fancier than Joe was used to, and that—along with the distractions of tears and throbs—prevented him from entirely grasping what he was being told. But the broad strokes were plain enough. All he had to do was carry this creature ten, eleven, maybe twelve strides over the threshold and he’d be rewarded for the service.
He looked back at the light, trying to distinguish some detail in its midst, and as he did so, his opiated thoughts began to make sense of this mystery.
“That’s your ship, isn’t it?” he murmured. “It’s a fucking UFO.”
“My ship?”
“My God . . . ” He looked down at the creature with awe
on his face, “Are there more of you?”
“Of course.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been home in more than a century.”
“Well who’s in the ship—”
“Why do you keep talking about a ship?”
“That!” Joe said, pointing towards the light. “What did you call it? Quiddity?”
“Quiddity’s not a ship. It’s a sea.”
“But you came here in it?”
“I sailed on it, yes, to reach this place. And I wish I’d not.”
“Why?”
“Because I found only sorrow here, and loneliness. I was in my prime when I first set foot here. Now look at me. Please, in the name of compassion, carry me over the threshold. . . . ” Noah’s face began to sweat beads of dark fluid as he spoke, which gathered at the bridge of his nose and in the corners of his mouth. “Forgive my emotion,” he said, “I have not dared hope until now. . . . ”
The sentiment found an echo in Joe; one he could not be deaf to. “I’ll do what I can,” he said to Noah.
“You’re a good man.”
Joe put his hands under Noah’s body. “Just so you know,” he said, “I’m not in such great shape myself. I’ll do my best, but I’m not guaranteeing anything. Put your arm around my shoulder. Yeah, that’s it. Here we go.” He started to stand. “You’re heavier than you look,” he said, and teetered for a moment before he got his balance. Then he straightened up.
“I want to know what planet you come from,” he said as he proceeded towards the threshold.
“What planet?”
“Yeah. And what galaxy it’s in. All that shit. ’Cause when you’re gone, the only way I’m going to have a hope of convincing people of this is if I’ve got details.”
“I don’t believe I understand you.”
“I want to know . . . ” Joe began, but the question went unfinished, as he stepped clear of the cleft between the rocks, and finally grasped something of what lay ahead. There was no starship here; at least none that was visible. There was only the sky, and a crack in that sky, and a light through the crack in that sky that touched him like a loving gaze. Feeling it upon him he wanted nothing more than to step beneath whatever sun shed this light, and meet it eye to eye.