I’m dreaming, he thought.
He could feel the start of a panic attack. It was like the slight nervousness that sometimes came when he stepped onto stage—the kind that came when he was backing up someone he’d never played with before—only increased a hundredfold. Sweat beaded on his temples and under his arms. It made his shirt clammy and stick to his back. His hands began to shake so much that he had to hug himself to make them stop.
He was dreaming, or he’d gone insane.
Movement caught his eye down the street and he recognized one of his neighbors. He stumbled in the man’s direction.
“Bob!” he called. “Bob, you’ve got to help me.” The man never even looked in his direction. John stepped directly in front of him on the sidewalk and Bob walked right into him, knocking him down. But Bob hadn’t felt a thing, John realized. Hadn’t seen him, hadn’t felt the impact, was just walking on down the street as if John had simply ceased to exist for him.
John fled back into the house. He slammed the door, locked it. He pulled the curtains in the living room and started to pace, from the fireplace to the hallway, back again, back and forth, back and forth. At one point he caught sight of the book he’d dropped earlier. Slowly, he walked over to where it lay and picked it up. He remembered last night’s visitor again. Her voice returned to him.
If you change too much . . .
This was all her fault, he thought.
He threw the book down and shouted her name.
“Yes?”
Her voice came from directly behind him and he started violently.
“Jesus,” he said. “You could’ve given me a heart attack.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn last night except today there was a leather bomber’s jacket on over her T-shirt and she wore a hat that was something like a derby except the brim was wider. There was one other difference. Like himself, like the rest of his house, she’d been leached of all color.
“What did you do to me?” he demanded.
She reached out and took his hand to lead him over to the sofa. He tried to pull free from her grip, but she was stronger than she looked.
“Sit down,” she said, “and I’ll try to explain.”
Her voice was soothing and calm, the way one would talk to an upset child—or a madman. John was feeling a little bit like both at the moment, helpless as a child and out of his mind. But the lulling quality of her voice and the gentle manner of her touch helped still the wild drumming of his pulse.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve done to me—I don’t know how you’ve done this to me or why—but I just want to get back to normal, okay? If I made you mad last night, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to understand. It was pretty weird to find you in my house the way I did.”
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t realize you could see me at first, or I would have handled it differently myself. But you took me by surprise.”
“I took you by surprise?”
“What do you remember of last night?” she asked.
“I came home and found you in my living room.”
“No, before that.”
“I was at High Lonesome Sounds—working on Darlene’s album.”
She nodded. “And what happened between when you left the studio and came home?”
“I . . . I don’t remember.”
“You were hit by a car,” she said. “A drunk driver.”
“No way,” John said, shaking his head. “I’d remember something like that.”
She took his hand. “You died instantly, John Narraway.”
“I . . . I . . .”
He didn’t want to believe her, but her words settled inside him with a finality that could only be the truth.
“It’s not something that anyone could have foreseen,” she went on. “You were supposed to live a lot longer—that’s why I was so surprised that you could see me. It’s never happened to me like that before.”
John had stopped listening to her after she’d said, “You were supposed to live a lot longer.” He clung to that phrase, hope rushing through him.
“So it was a mistake,” he said.
Dakota nodded.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
“I’ll take you to the gates.”
“No, wait a minute. You just said it was a mistake. Can’t you go back to whoever’s in charge and explain that?”
“If there’s anyone in charge,” she said, “I’ve never met or heard of them.”
“But—”
“I understand your confusion and your fear. Really I do. It comes from the suddenness of your death and my not being there to help you adjust. That’s the whole reason I exist—to help people like you who are unwilling or too confused to go on by themselves. I wasn’t ready to go myself when my time came.”
“Well, I’m not ready either.”
Dakota shook her head. “It’s not the same thing. I wasn’t ready to go because when I saw how much some people need help to reach the gates, I knew I had to stay and help them. It was like a calling. You just aren’t willing to accept what happened to you.”
“Well, Christ. Who would?”
“Most people. I’ve seen how their faces light up when they step through the gates. You can’t imagine the joy in their eyes.”
“Have you been through yourself?” John asked.
“No. But I’ve had glimpses of what lies beyond. You know how sometimes the sky just seems to be so big it goes on forever?”
John nodded.
“You stand there and look up,” she went on, “and the stars seem so close you feel as though you could just reach up and touch them, but at the same time the sky itself is enormous and has no end. It’s like that, except that you can feel your heart swelling inside you, big enough to fill the whole of that sky.”
“If what’s waiting beyond these gates is so wonderful,” John wanted to know, “why haven’t you gone through?”
“One day I will. I think about it more and more all the time. But what I’m doing now is important and I’m needed. There are never enough of us.”
“Maybe I’ll become a watcher instead—like you.”
“It’s not something one takes on lightly,” Dakota said. “You can’t just stop when you get tired of doing it. You have to see through all of your responsibilities first, make sure that all of your charges have gone on, that none are left behind to fend for themselves. You share the joys of your charges, but you share their sorrows, too. And the whole time you know them, you’re aware of their death. You watch them plan, you watch their lives and the tangle of their relationships grow more complex as they grow older, but the whole time you’re aware of their end.”
“I could do that,” John said.
Dakota shook her head. “You have always been sparing with your kindnesses. It’s why your circle of friends is so small. You’re not a bad person, John Narraway, but I don’t think you have the generosity of spirit it requires to be a watcher.”
The calm certainty with which she delivered her judgment irritated John.
“How would you know?” he said.
She gave him a sad smile. “Because I’ve been watching you ever since you were born.”
“What? Every second of my life?”
“No. That comes only at first. It takes time to read a soul, to unravel the tangle of possibilities and learn when the time of death is due. After that it’s a matter of checking in from time to time to make sure that the assessment one made still holds true.”
John thought about the minutiae that made up the greater portion of everyone’s life and slowly shook his head. And what if you picked a person who was really dull? Everybody had slow periods in their lives, but some people’s whole lives were one numbed shuffle from birth to death. And since you knew the whole time when the person was going to die . . . God, it’d be like spending your whole life in a doctor’s waiting room. Boring a
nd depressing.
“You don’t get tired of it?” he asked.
“Not tired. A little sad, sometimes.”
“Because everybody’s got to die.”
She shook her head. “No, because I see so much unhappiness and there’s nothing I can do about it. Most of my charges never see me—they make their own way to the gates and beyond. I’m just there as a kind of insurance for those who can’t do it by themselves and I’m only with them for such a little while. I miss talking to people on a regular basis. Sometimes I see some of the other watchers, but we’re all so busy.”
“It sounds horrible.”
She shrugged. “I never think of it that way. I just think of those who need help and the looks on their faces when they step through the gates.” She fell silent for a moment, then gave him a smile. “We should go now. I’ve got other commitments.”
“What if I refuse to go? What happens then?”
“No one can force you, if that’s what you mean.”
John held up his hand. He looked around himself. Okay, it was weird, but he could live with it, couldn’t he? Anything’d be better than to be dead—even a half-life.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And no, it’s not because I’m reading your mind, because I can’t.”
“So what’s going to happen to me?”
“I take it you’re already experiencing some discomfort?”
John nodded. “I see everything in black and white—but only in the house. Outside, nothing’s changed.”
“That will grow more pronounced,” she told him. “Eventually you won’t be able to see color at all. You might lose the clarity of your vision as well so that everything will seem to be a blur. Your other senses will become less effective as well.”
“But—”
“And you won’t be able to interact with the world you’ve left behind. In time, the only people you’ll be able to see are others like yourself—those too willful or disturbed to have gone on. They don’t exactly make the best of companions, John Narraway, but then, by that point, you’ll be so much like them, I don’t suppose it will matter.”
“But what about all the stories of ghosts and hauntings and the like?”
“Do you have a particularly strong bond with a certain place or person?” she asked. “Someone or something you couldn’t possibly live without?”
John had to admit that he didn’t, but he could tell that she already knew that.
“But I’ll still be alive,” he said, knowing even as he said the words that they made no real sense.
“If you want to call it that.”
“Don’t you miss life?”
Dakota shook her head. “I only miss happiness. Or maybe I should say, I miss the idea of happiness because I never had it when I was alive.”
“What happened to you?” John wanted to know.
She gave him a long sad look. “I’m sorry, John Narraway, but I have to go. I will listen for you. Call me when you change your mind. Just don’t wait too long—”
“Or you won’t be able to recognize me. I know. You already told me that.”
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
This time she didn’t use the door. One moment she was sitting with him on the sofa and the next she faded away like Carroll’s Cheshire cat except with her it was her eyes that lingered the longest, those sad dark eyes that told him he was making a mistake, those eyes to which he refused to listen.
3
He didn’t move from the sofa after Dakota left. While the sunlight drifted across the living room, turning his surroundings into a series of shifting chiaroscuro images, he simply sat there, his mind empty more often than it was chasing thoughts. He was sure he hadn’t been immobile for more than a few hours, but when he finally stood up and walked to the window, it was early morning, the sun just rising. He’d lost a whole night and a day. Maybe more. He still had no appetite, but now he doubted that he ever would again. He didn’t seem to need sleep, either. But it scared him that he could lose such a big chunk of time like that.
He turned back to the living room and switched on the television set to make sure that all he’d lost had been the one day. All he got on the screen was snow. White noise hissed from the speaker grill. Fine, he thought, remembering how he’d been unable to put a call through to the recording studio yesterday morning. So now the TV wouldn’t work for him. So he couldn’t interact with the everyday mechanics of the world anymore. Well, there were other ways to find out what he needed to know.
He picked up his fiddlecase out of habit, put on his jacket and left the house. He didn’t need his shades once he got outside, but that was only because his whole street was now delineated in shades of black and white. He could see the color start up at the far ends of the block on either side. The sky was overcast above him, but it blued the further away from his house it got.
This sucked, he thought. But not so much that he was ready to call Dakota back.
He started downtown, putting on his sunglasses once he left the monochromic zone immediately surrounding his house. Walking proved to be more of a chore than he’d anticipated. He couldn’t relax his attention for a moment or someone would walk into him. He always felt the impact while they continued on their way, as unaware of the encounter as his neighbor Bob had been.
He stopped at the first newsstand he came upon and found the day’s date. Wednesday, he read on the masthead of The Newford Star. November tenth. He’d only lost a day. A day of what, though? He could remember nothing of the experience. Maybe that was what sleep would be like for him in this state—simply turning himself off the way fiction described vampires at their rest. He had to laugh at the thought. The undead. He was one of the undead now, though he certainly had no craving for blood.
He stopped laughing abruptly, suddenly aware of the hysterical quality that had crept into the sound. It wasn’t that funny. He pressed up close against a building to keep out of the way of passing pedestrians and tried to quell the panic he could feel welling up inside his chest. Christ, it wasn’t funny at all.
After a while he felt calm enough to go on. He had no particular destination in mind, but when he realized he was in the general vicinity of High Lonesome Sounds, he decided to stop by the studio. He kept waiting for some shock of recognition at every corner he came to, something that would whisper, this is where you died. This is where the one part of your life ended and the new part began. But the street corners all looked the same and he arrived at the recording studio without sensing that one had ever had more importance in his life than the next.
He had no difficulty gaining entrance to the studio. At least doors still worked for him. He wondered what his use of them looked like to others, doors opening and closing, seemingly of their own accord. He climbed the stairs to the second floor loft where the recording studio was situated and slipped into the control booth where he found Darlene and Tom Norton listening to a rough mix of one of the cuts from Darlene’s album. Norton owned the studio and often served as both producer and sound engineer to the artists using his facilities. He turned as John quietly closed the door behind him but he looked right through John.
“It still needs a lead break,” Norton said, returning his attention to Darlene.
“I know it does. But I don’t want another fiddle. I want to leave John’s backing tracks just as they are. It doesn’t seem right to have somebody else play his break.”
Thank you, Darlene, John thought.
He’d known Darlene Flatt for years, played backup with her on and off through the past decade and a half as she sang out her heart in far too many honky-tonks and bars. Her real name was Darlene Johnston, but by this point in her career everyone knew her by her stage name. Dolly Parton had always been her idol and when Darlene stepped on stage with her platinum wig and over-the-top rhinestone outfits, the resemblance between the two was uncanny. But Darlene had a deeper voice and now that she’d finally lost the wigs and stage gear, John thought
she had a better shot at the big time. There was a long tradition of covering other people’s material in country music, but nothing got tired more quickly than a tribute act so far as John was concerned.
She didn’t look great today. There was a gaunt look about her features, hollows under her eyes. Someone mourned him, John realized.
“Why don’t we have Greg play the break on his Dobro?” Darlene said. She sounded so tired, as though all she wanted to do was get through this.
“That could work,” Norton said.
John stopped listening to them, his attention taken by the rough mix that was still playing in the control booth. It was terrible. All the instruments sounded tinny and flat, there was no bass to speak of, and Darlene’s voice seemed to be mixed so far back you felt you had to lean forward to be able to hear it. He winced, listening to his own fiddle-playing.
“You’ve got a lot more problems here than what instrument to use on the break,” he said.
But of course they couldn’t hear him. So far as he could tell, they liked what they were hearing which seemed particularly odd, considering how long they’d both been in the business. What did they hear that he couldn’t? But then he remembered what his mysterious visitor had told him. How his sight would continue to deteriorate. How . . .
Your other senses will become less effective as well.
John thought back to the walk from his house to the studio. He hadn’t really been thinking of it at the time, but now that he did he realized that the normal sounds of the city had been muted. Everything. The traffic, the voices of passersby, the construction site he’d passed a couple of blocks away from the studio. When he concentrated on Darlene and Norton’s conversation again, listening to the tonal quality of their voices rather than what they were saying, he heard a hollow echo that hadn’t registered before.
He backed away from them and fumbled his way out into the sitting room on the other side of the door. There he took his fiddle out of his case. Tuning the instrument was horrible. Playing it was worse. There was nothing there anymore. No resonance. No depth. Only the same hollow echoing quality that he’d heard in Darlene and Norton’s voices.