Happy Slumbers
by Tom Lichtenberg
Copyright 2012 by Tom Lichtenberg
Chapter One
Alex Kirkham returned to Spring Hill Lake one summer morning. He was sixty one years old, had taken early retirement a few months earlier and had been doing nothing at all with his life. Then his brother Argus turned up missing. There were no clues, none at all. Argus' wife knew nothing. His son knew nothing either. It was totally out of character, because Argus had been as stable as the moon, following a strict routine, and completely avoiding any risks. Alex had nothing to go on, except for some weird vivid dreams of a giant space-bubble creature extending out through the asteroid belt, past Mars, floating in space and slowly breathing in and out, shifting and reshaping continually, its extremity lightly touching the surface of the Earth.
"If it thinks it can talk to me through dreams," Alex thought, "it's got a lot to learn. No one knows anything about dreams, how they work or what they mean, if anything. There are many theories, and there's been a lot of research, but all of it has lead nowhere. The thing has got to do better than that if it wants to tell me anything. If there is such a thing in the world."But Sapphire Karadjian had never returned, and his uncle, Charlie Kirkham, had never re-appeared again either, and now Argus was gone. Had the thing now taken him too? It had come in the form of a bus for Charlie, who had been a bus driver. What had it been for Sapphire? A war? She was always attracted by those. Alex chuckled to himself as he sat on the park bench along a gravelly path, surveying the greenery that was now Sea Dragon Park, its gently rolling lawn interrupted only by the occasional oak for shade, and a few picnic benches strewn about for the rare families who would challenge the daunting Arizona heat.
"It was a jungle," somebody said, and Alex turned to see an old lady sitting on the next bench over. Had she even been there a moment ago? He didn't know who she was. He was a stranger in this town, even through he'd grown up there. He had abandoned it in his youth, so many years before. His job for the state as a railroad crossing inspector had brought him back around quite often, but other than his brother and his brother's family, he knew almost no one in the city, and he wasn't exactly a favored guest at his brother's house, for that matter. He had garnered their indelible disapproval due to the broken state of his own ex-family.
"At least it sounded like a jungle," the old lady continued. She had turned her head to look at Alex, who was staring at her, with her crown of bright white hair and her blue print dress of a fashion from decades before, matched with shoes he was certain hadn't been manufactured in ages. Her face seemed not so much older than himself, however. A woman in her seventies, he figured, but dressed like her own grandmother might have been.
"I'm sorry," Alex quietly said. "Are you talking to me?" Had he been babbling out loud? It wouldn't be the first time, he silently admitted.
"Yes," the old woman replied matter-of-factly. "You said something about Sapphire. You said it must have been a war to pull her in. But it wasn't a war. It was a jungle. That's what reached her, you know. That was her place, her refuge, her key."
"Key?"
"The thing that does it. For me it was a garden, " the old lady waved her hand as if swatting away a pesky fly. "It's hard to explain."
"So is that what the newspapers said?" Alex asked, and sat back against the bench. He'd come to the conclusion that the old woman was merely repeating one of the stories that had been circulating all those years since the day his childhood friend, Sapphire Karadjian, by then a world-famous war correspondent, had walked into the flaming pit which had ruptured beneath the very ground where Alex and the old lady now sat. It had been a major news story. Everyone knew about it, especially there in Spring Hill Lake. Theories abounded about what had 'really' happened, into any number of which his brother and even himself figured into in some tangential aspects. They had both known Sapphire and even seen her in the days before she'd disappeared hand in hand with The Burning Girl (as that mysterious child was known) as they'd stepped off the edge of the cordoned-off zone and gone, literally gone, as if a light switch had flicked them both into nowhere.
"I was there," the old woman said after a time. Alex turned back to her.
"You worked security?" he guessed, and she shook her head and smiled.
"I was inside," she told him. "I've only been out for a little while now," she added as if to herself, and kept on muttering so vaguely Alex had to strain to make sense of her words.
"It doesn't understand about us. It doesn't know about time, not our kind of time. It thinks it can just put us back where it found us, but what remains when it does? Everything we knew is gone. We know where we are, but ..."
Her words trailed off, and then she just fell asleep right there on the bench. He waited for some moments for her to open her eyes and start rambling again, but she didn't. Alex sat back, wondering what to do. Part of him was yearning to stand up and walk away, give up on this whole pointless quest. So his brother had run off. Didn't middle-aged men do that sort of thing all the time? Leave the wife and kids and start up a whole new life? Okay, it wasn't like Argus to do it, but who could be sure about anyone, anyway? And the police were looking into the matter, or at least they said they were. Alex would find out more from them later. He had an appointment set up for that afternoon. They probably had the same idea he did. Guy takes off, probably there's another woman, wife without a clue. Sitting in a park wasn't exactly ace detective work, either. Nor was chatting with a crazy old bag lady.
Not that she had any bags, or seemed especially crazy. No, she looked and sounded normal and sane, if a bit old-fashioned. "I've got nothing else to do right now," he said to himself. "I might as well sit here and wait."
Chapter Two
At least it was a nice day outside. Alex had driven up from Tucson earlier in the morning for an
uncomfortable reunion with his brother's family. They'd met at a coffee shop in a rest stop off the highway, Peggy's way of making sure the visit wouldn't last very long. Of course he didn't call her 'Peggy' to her face anymore. He knew she hated it and he'd broken himself of the habit years before, but he still said it to himself in his mind. Margaret, then, had not only arranged the place and time of the meeting but had also set the ground rules, including its duration. They were not to discuss the past, their own past in particular. They were not to talk about "it", no matter what. There was not much left to say, just the facts.
Margaret wanted Alex to know that the last time she'd seen his brother, he'd seemed fine. He'd been full of enthusiasm for his latest project, an arena for three-dimensional holographic classic sporting events, re=creating in gigantic fashion the most famous athletes of the past. His input was considered crucial to the architectural design, which was very near to completion. He'd been nominated for yet more prestigious awards to add to his already notable collection. The very park, for one, where Alex now sat. Although Argus' plan had originally been rejected as not profitable enough, the city had finally relented after a few failed attempts to build any structures whatever on the seemingly cursed property. Nothing would stay put in the ground except trees. They had tried to establish a performing arts center, only to see its foundations beginning to sink even before adding the ground floor. They then attempted a simpler visitors' center, but its pillars had vanished without a trace, as if swallowed up by quicksand. They even attempted a tent-centered farmers' market, but no vendors would agree to come, not after everything they'd heard about that location. It was haunted, so blighted it couldn't even function as a tourist attraction. In the end, they had turned it over to Argus, who designed the whole park while refusing to come anywhere near it. He had only seen the finished product in photos, videos and on TV.
The morning he vanished, a few days pre
viously, Argus had kissed his wife goodbye and stepped out the front door, like every other work day. He would walk the mile or so along the waterfront to his office, as he had done for more than twenty years, since the days he'd accompanied his son, Arvid, to school. Arvid was now a serious young man, very much like his father had been, and came along to the meeting with his mother to make sure that his mean Uncle Alex would be nice to her this time. He sat across the table nursing his coffee drink and scowling at his uncle, who did his best to ignore the young man. Peggy - er, Margaret - was talking.
"He never arrived at the office. No one has heard from him since. That's all I know." she concluded.
"What about his phone?" Alex asked. He had tried the number himself, reaching only its voice mail, but he figured he'd ask anyway.
"No answer," Margaret shook her head. "And no, I don't know anything else so don't even bother to ask."
"Okay," Alex shrugged. Margaret was already getting up and Arvid jumped to his feet to join her. The conversation had lasted approximately fifteen minutes. They might as well have left their car engine running, Alex said to himself. He knew they'd never liked him, but this was almost too much. The one thing they had in common - Argus - was missing and possibly in danger or trouble. They could at least be a little less rude than usual. “Oh well,” he told himself, “I probably deserve it.”
"I don't know what to do," he confided, looking up at the pair as they prepared to walk out.
"You don't have to do anything," Arvid snapped. "We don't even know why you're here."
With that, they departed, without even a simple goodbye. Alex's drink was nearly empty, so he decided to get another, and a pastry along with it. He knew he should be watching his calories, but at the moment, he didn't really care. His waistline was the least of his concerns at the moment. He had only one idea. With nothing else to go on, he knew he had to go "there", to that place where "it" was.
"Sheesh," he thought, "after all the trouble it's caused over the years, you know it has to be up to its old tricks again. Argus wouldn't go near it, but that never stopped the thing from harassing him before, sending out agents or whatnot."
Alex reviewed the litany of historical events in his mind. When they were children - he was ten and Argus five - they had first discovered the place on a bus map. They'd gone to explore and found nothing but a vacant lot and a crazy old man who claimed his wife had vanished right into it. Alex's own Uncle Charlie had shown up and said he'd done the same thing. It was nuts. People don't disappear into thin air, but these people – his uncle and the old man - said it wasn't just thin air. It was something else entirely, some kind of invisible black hole or something. Only certain people could see it, and only some times, and it appeared to be something different to each person. Or something like that. Alex was never quite sure what they meant. He'd assumed that his uncle had just gone crazy. He sure acted that way, and then he was just gone again, and no one ever saw him again after that.
The vacant lot was bought out and all the houses around it were torn down as well to make room for a football stadium, which in turn was torn down several years after that. Some time later the gigantic sinkhole opened up, smoldering like an inverted volcano. That's when people say a little girl on fire walked right up and out of the pit. Alex had seen her himself, in the hospital where they'd kept her before she sneaked out and somehow got Sapphire to go back in the sinkhole along with her. Multiple legends sprung up about that, and even more rumors going way back in time about the lunatic billionaire gangster who'd gone on a crime spree of sorts, even trying to kidnap his brother at one point. Alex had never gotten that story straight. It was maddening how Argus would refuse to say anything about Snapdragon Alley. It was like his brother was a sort of mysterious black hole himself. He only wanted to live his normal little life, and blocked out anything that didn't accord with that.
"It has to be here," Alex murmured, glancing over at the still slumbering woman on the next bench over. She was still fast asleep and now slouched over, very still and very quiet. At least she didn't seem to be in danger of falling off the bench. Looking around at the park, he did not get a sense of anything out of the ordinary. It was a pleasant green park, that was all. The few trees here and there looked like they'd been there forever. The paths were kept clean and the grass was as groomed as a golf course. It was hard to think it was the very same place he'd seen all those years ago on TV, a deep hole filled with red, glowing rubble surrounded by barbed wire, guards and armored vehicles. Or even before that, as the place where, as a young man, he'd come to watch an occasional pro football Sea Dragons game.
“Time erases all things,” Alex sighed. He had no idea what he was going to do next.
Chapter Three
The park was remarkably empty. He'd seen no one else, heard no one else until the old woman had spoken up, and now that he thought about it, the silence was all-encompassing. There were no birds, no squirrels even. It seemed like the loneliest park in the world. It was all the more surprising to him then when he turned back to look at the old woman and saw another woman standing over her. This one was younger, middle-aged perhaps, extremely short and even more extremely thin, with a heap of long black hair hiding her face as she bent over the sleeping form and nudged its shoulders.
"Eh, Etta, Etta come on," this new person was saying, over and over again as she gently shook the old woman. Alex almost said something, but changed his mind, deciding it was none of his business. It was clear they knew each other, those two. The black-haired woman turned toward him and he couldn't tell from her expression if she was angry or merely rude.
"You can help, right?" the woman said to him.
"I can what?" Alex replied in unconscious imitation of her accent. She was probably more native than Spanish, and he briefly wondered what her original language might have been, and from what small village south of the border she had come from.
"She's too heavy for me," the woman told him, making gestures for Alex to come over and help her at least get the old lady to her feet. What then, he had no idea, but he stood and found himself standing beside, and towering over, the tiny figure.
"We're going over there," she gestured toward the edge of the park. "Happy Slumbers," she added. Alex nodded as if the words 'happy slumbers' meant something to him. He was feeling like a clumsy giant. An idiot clumsy giant at that.
"I'm Josefa Sanchez," the woman said, tapping herself on the chest.
"Alex Kirkham," he responded with a similar gesture.
"Etta here, she has to go home now," Josefa said, turning back to the old lady and shaking her by the shoulders again. The old woman opened an eye at this, and then the other. For a brief moment she wore the expression of a startled newborn wondering where in the world it had come to. Then the light of recognition settled on her face as she gazed fondly at Josefa.
"Hello, Jo," she whispered. "I was dreaming again, wasn't I?"
"I don't know about dreaming," Josefa said, "but sleeping for sure."
"I do that," Etta murmured, now noticing Alex and seeming to apologize to him for having taken a nap in public.
"That's all right," he felt compelled to reply, feeling even more like a foolish ogre than ever. At Josefa's insistent gesture, he leaned down to offer his arm to Etta, who grabbed it with both hands, and pulled her up to her feet.
"We live right over there," Etta told him as she took a few steps by his side. "At the Happy Slumbers Motel. Josefa works there and she's letting me stay in her room."
"With my family," Josefa added proudly, tagging along just behind them. "I found her, you know. Right over there, by that tree." Josefa pointed to one of the solitary oaks. "She was walking around it. Around and around. So lost, the poor thing. So I took her home."
"She's been looking after me," Etta explained, although Alex already realized that.
"Somebody has to," Josefa added. "My daughter Rosario and her daughter Elma, they help."
"Such beautiful people," Etta si
ghed, then fell silent, concentrating all of her attention on her feet. Every step seemed tentative for her, as if she wasn't certain that her foot, once lifted off the ground, would ever return to it. Alex held her as steady as he could, while at the same time keeping his eyes peeled for the alleged motel. He thought he could make it out just at the edge of the park, a low squat collection of huts looking more like a trailer park than a hotel. A blue and white sign in the shape of a cloud rested above what had to be the entrance, but its writing was old and worn down. He couldn't make out the lettering, even as they drew closer.
"So you live there?" Alex asked Josefa behind him. "It's a residential motel?"
"I clean the rooms," Josefa informed them, "and for part of my pay they give me a cabin. Me and my daughter and hers. It isn't much to look at."
It wasn't. It took several minutes to cross the far section of the park and navigate the sidewalk as well, and when they came to Josefa's abode, Alex could barely conceal his dismay. It was a small, single room, about ten feet by twenty, containing a twin bed against the far wall, a narrow couch along one side, a fold-out cot by the door, and a hot plate resting between the sink and the tub in the miniature bathroom. Alex could tell right away that Josefa had given the bed to the old woman, while she and her daughter and what had to be a small child (there was simply no room for anyone larger) must be sharing the couch and the cot and the floor. For someone with nothing to sacrifice even that was astounding to him. He couldn't help but think of his own two bedroom apartment in Tucson, with its balcony, which by itself was larger than this room the four females called home.