“So it’s another kind of Reaper?”
“No. It is more than that. Much more. It is an object of worship.”
“Like … a god?”
“A power,” said Urszula. “Not a god … not a devil.”
“This fissure. What is it, like a crack in the ground? And you just climb through?”
“Not quite,” said Urszula. “It is not a physical crack. It did leave a mark on the land, but the passage itself was not physical. It was a part in the substance of this particular universe. However long it lasted, it’s long gone now. None have come back from the Deeps in ages.”
“Can you show me the place where this happened?”
“I could, but it won’t help you. There is nothing to see there. The rift is long gone.”
“I want to see where it happened. Can you show me? Please?”
All I wanted was a clue for how the whole deal at happened.
Luther rubbed his chin and smirked. “I may know a better way in, young man. Never tried it myself. But it made a good friend of mine disappear once. I’m pretty sure it will get you to where you want to go.”
“What do you mean? A Reaper’s gullet?” said Bern. “He’s already thought of that … and perished the thought. I hope.”
“Not at all,” said Luther. “There is another way in, a path in that you can take entirely under your own power. No chewing involved.”
A thrill trickled down my spine. This was exactly what I was looking for. “Can you … show me?”
“Depends,” said Luther. “What do you plan to do there?”
“I told you. I want to find Karla. Bring her back here.”
“Hmm. That’s certainly a worthy cause. It would be worth knowing if it could be made to work. I have some dear friends unfortunate enough to end up there who I would love to rescue. Karla, too, of course. I’ll tell you what. I can show you how to get there intact. No Reapers. An alternative entryway, so to speak. But getting into the Deeps is never the problem. It’s getting out that is the issue. If Heaven is like Harvard, the Deeps are like Cornell.”
“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Never mind.” He shook his head.
“Listen. I’m game to go. As long as there’s a chance to get back. I mean … there is, right? These guys did it.”
“It’s not as easy as you think,” said Urszula. “You could not do it by yourself. It requires a collective action.”
“Perhaps,” said Luther. “But someone of sufficient talents might be able to manage on their own. Existences are fragile and flawed things. They have their own quirks and weaknesses, their Achilles Heels. You just need to be clever enough to find them.”
“When can we go?”
Luther leaned back in his chair.
“Well. First I need to see some sign of commitment that you plan to stick around here a while,” said Luther.
“What do you mean? I’m here. I’m ready to go now.”
“No, you’re not. You’re fading again.”
Chapter 7: Newark
I never did get to eat that pasta Ellen saved for me. It was gone from her tray when I opened my eyes. But my soul did return in time to nibble on a ham, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich.
This time Ellen slept through the meal service, so I snagged an extra for her one, wrapped in foiled paper. The flight map showed that we were already over Maine. We didn’t have that much farther to go before beginning our descent so I nudged her awake so she could eat while it was still hot.
Thankfully, she was a much lighter ‘sleeper’ than me. Most people were, when their souls weren’t traveling between worlds.
She didn’t say much but a quick thanks. She just gulped it down and chased it with a plastic cup full of orange juice.
She kept giving me funny looks like she expected me to go unconscious again. But this time, there was no sign of any waves. I felt numb. No depression. A touch of anxiety. Some nervous excitement over Luther’s offer, but also a little fear over what was to come in the Deeps.
In short, I had mixed emotions, not a condition conducive to transporting my soul to the Liminality. For that, I would need a good and pure dose of fatalistic despair. Until I could get a handle on my mood, I would be sticking around this existence for a while.
Our flight arrived over Newark about an hour behind schedule. Once the plane landed, we were kept on board until all the other passengers had deplaned. A US Marshal came down the aisle. He had a pot belly that threatened to burst the lower buttons of his uniform shirt. He made straight for the Jamaicans and cuffed them both.
“Hey mon! This is not necessary,” said Frankie. “We won’t cause you any trouble. We are well behaved. Just ask our friends here from Heathrow.”
“Procedure.” That was all the guy said as he maneuvered Frankie and Rudolph out of their seats.
Ellen and I got up followed after them, uncuffed.
“Hey mon, how come we get the special treatment? Is it because we are black men?”
“You two aren’t US citizens,” said the marshal. “I’ll be escorting you straight to your next flight.”
“James! It has been a pleasure to know you,” said Frankie as he swayed and wobbled down the aisle. “May the road rise up to meet you, or however the saying goes. Watch out, Kingston, here we come!”
“Take care, guys.” Rudolph looked back at me with eyes deep as catacombs. I wasn’t the only one on this flight to visit Root.
***
“Welcome home,” said one of the immigration officials as we entered one of the back rooms of the Customs and Border Patrol area. Our privately contracted escorts delivered us into their custody almost immediately upon exiting the plane. I presumed they got to spend the night before heading back to the UK. Weird job, shuttling back and forth like that. I suppose things got more interesting when the deportees were less passive than me and Ellen.
They had us sit on a bench and wait, while a lady went through some files and forms that had accompanied us all the way from London. I don’t know why, but I had thought we would be turned loose immediately upon reaching US soil. I still had a valid passport and I hadn’t committed any crimes while I was in the UK, other than working without a permit.
I wondered if my absconding with Dad’s pickup truck from the county probate lot might finally catch up with me. It hadn’t felt like stealing at the time, more like getting something back from a lost and found, but I’m sure the authorities thought differently.
I had visions of being taken aside and placed into custody once they discovered whatever arrest warrants were active under my name. Not that it mattered. A jail was pretty close to ideal for someone who planned to spend most of his time commuting to Root.
But amazingly, nothing of the sort happened. My records check must have come up spotless. They made me sign some kind of waiver acknowledging my lack of resources and that was that. Maybe that truck ‘theft’ of mine got pinned on the druggies who had ended up with it.
When they were done with my paperwork they made me wait for Ellen. They probably assumed that we were a couple even though our body language gave them nothing to base that on. She hardly spoke to me or made eye contact. I suppose that didn’t mean anything. To their eyes, we might be a couple lovebirds in the middle of a spat.
When they were done with her, they insisted on accompanying us out to the baggage claim and made me wait even though I had no luggage. Ellen fetched this big, ugly tartan suitcase with leather-reinforced corners. It had a balky wheel, so I head to help her wheel it around the queue.
At least we didn’t have to wait with the long lines of people struggling to get through customs. We got special treatment down the lane usually reserved for pilots and flight crews.
I got to see the contents of Ellen’s bag, whether I wanted to or not. Tons of dirty, rumpled clothes. Kitschy knick knacks. A deflated soccer ball. A jar of Marmite. All the while customs was going through it, one of the Border Patrol folks stuck w
ith us, looking over our shoulder.
“We free to go now?” I asked, when customs finally waved us on.
“Hang on a sec,” said the Border Patrol guy. “There’s a rep from social services coming by to give you a quick interview.”
We were ushered into yet another office and were joined shortly by some lady with a stack of bulging binders. She seemed harried, almost as if she had a car double parked outside the terminal.
“Do either of you have family in the New York Metro area?”
“Connecticut,” said Ellen. “My grandma lives in Connecticut.”
“Do you have the means to get there?”
“Um. Sure. I guess,” said Ellen.
“And what about you?” she said, turning to me.
“Um … no. I don’t really have any family. Period. I mean … except for an uncle in Cleveland. And I’m not really interested in seeing him.”
She handed me a brochure and went over my options for public assistance, including the addresses for homeless shelters in the Newark area. And with that, she turned us loose and we passed through some double doors into the public part of the terminal, and a crowd of anxious, prying eyes—people waiting for other passengers to get through Customs. A guy with long, dark hair kept glaring at us, as he prattled on a phone.
“Well, good luck,” I said to Ellen as she dragged her oversized suitcase with the bum wheel that kept sticking and throwing her off balance.
“You want to share a cab?” she said.
“Um. I don’t actually know where I’m going,” I said. “And … I don’t think I actually have any dollars.”
She fished through her ratty little purse. “Yeah, well. Come to think of it, neither do I. Not enough, anyhow. Not for a cab.”
She studies the signs overhead pointing the way to various forms of ground transportation. “Hey! Looks like the Air Train can take us free to the actual train station.”
“Go for it.”
“What about you? What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. yet”
“You can’t just stay at the airport.”
I was tempted to say, ‘why not,’ but that sounded weird. I honestly had no interest in going anywhere except back to the Liminality. Any old bench or toilet stall where someone would leave me alone for an hour or two was all I needed to accomplish that. I had crackers stashed from the plane that would do me for fuel for a while.
“Come on,” said Ellen. “If we don’t take a cab, I’ve got enough extra to buy you a train ride to the city. How about it?”
The city? I assumed she meant New York, a place I had never been. I shrugged. Why not? It seemed as good a place as any to get lost for a while. Scads better than the airport. And it was the birthplace of the Occupy movement, something that had intrigued me since Rome. I could even make a pilgrimage to Zuccotti Park. Not that there would be anything to see. The movement had been crushed by the NYPD and Homeland Security. Now all they did was hurricane relief.
“Um, okay. I mean, if you’re sure. You really don’t need to do this … but thanks.”
“No problem. It’s the least I can do. If you’re gonna be homeless, NYC is a much better place than Newark.”
If my aim was to descend into complete misery and accelerate my re-entry to Root, I probably should have stayed put. It unnerved me, how easily she was able to distract me from my mission. But I couldn’t resist a chance to see the fabled New York City. My curiosity got the better of me.
The entrance to the AirTrain stop was outside and down a sidewalk at the end of the terminal. I took over dragging her suitcase, to give her a break. It was a real pain in the ass, that sticky wheel. The thing squealed and snagged, making me stumble repeatedly.
At the glass doors at the entrance of the Air Train stop, a guy stood holding a neatly printed placard. It was far from the limousine stands and seemed an odd place to be waiting to meet someone.
He was a short fellow, compact and muscular, with a carefully trimmed mustache. He wore a tailored suit that fit him like a second skin. Smoke rose from a fancy pipe perched on his lips. He didn’t look like someone who belonged in this century. This was not your typical limo driver.
As we got closer, he tilted the placard towards us. My full name was printed in block letters.
I grabbed Ellen by the elbow.
“Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Nobody knows I’m here,” I said. “Nobody.”
I was about to take off running when a car squealed up beside us and a pair of guys came bursting out. They grabbed me and Ellen and muscled us to the car.
“Get in!” growled the guy with the long hair, who had been glaring at us at the exit to Customs.
“What the fuck?” I looked around for some of the usually ubiquitous cops, but they were nowhere to be seen.
“I said get in!” One of the guys pressed something hard and massive bulging from his jacket pocket against my ribs.
I hesitated. It would have been okay if he had shot me right there and then, as long as the wound was non-fatal. What better place to tune out of this world and enter the Liminality than an ICU? And even if I died, worst case, I would and up in the Deeps.
That’s what I assumed, anyhow. But a moment of uncertainty gripped me. Was I all that certain that my death here would send me to the Deeps? If I resisted and got shot, it might not technically be suicide. Might there be other places a soul could end up on the other side?
I saw the distress on Ellen’s face, and I figured I’d better go along. It was me they were after, I was sure. She had no business getting entangled in my mess. Once they realized she was an innocent bystanders, maybe they would turn her loose.
So I climbed into the back seat. The other guy shoved in after me, slamming the door shut.
As we pulled away, the guy in the fancy suit was still standing there. He had lowered the placard and was staring, with an odd expression that seemed stuck between annoyance and amusement. He winked and waved as the car pulled away.
Chapter 8: Barrens
The car hurtled down the surface streets, running lights, crossing lanes to get around backups. Sudden turns flung us against the door and against each other as we careened past hangars and warehouses.
Ellen sat with her knees drawn up on the seat, trembling and hyperventilating. Occasionally, a whimper escaped her breath.
I patted her hand in a lame attempt to console. I could think of no encouraging words. I knew who these guys were and had a good idea what they planned to do with us and it wasn’t going to be pretty. My escapades in Cleveland and Pittsburgh had finally caught up with me.
The three men in the car didn’t talk much, not even to each other. The long-haired guy in the back seat with us kept some kind of boxy automatic weapon pressed against my ribs. If it happened to go off I was pretty sure the bullet would slice right through my innards and into Ellen—two for the price of one. Ellen, the poor thing, didn’t deserve what was coming.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of this,” I whispered.
“How? How can you possibly—?”
“I’ll find a way.”
She stuck her mouth close to my ear. I could feel her hot breath. “Who are these people? What do they want?”
“You two! Shut the fuck up!” said the long-haired guy. “No talking!”
I squeezed her hand, making sure I caught her eye, nodding, to re-emphasize my promise. She had no business getting entangled in all of this. Me, I didn’t care so much about. They could do whatever they wanted with me, as long as she got away. I just didn’t want to be responsible for another lost soul.
***
We drove for a good hour and a half down the New Jersey Turnpike. We got off at the exit for Atlantic City, but instead of seeing casinos, we entered this seeming wilderness of swamps and forests of scrubby pine. The terrain was nothing I expected out of New Jersey.
The guy in the front passenger seat took a call from some
one named Sergei. From the way his voice changed, higher in pitch and oozing with deference, I took it that this Sergei guy was his boss. I wondered if and how he was connected to that Cleveland racket. Seemed so far away. Could their territory range this widely? But then again, these guys had tentacles stretching all the way to Europe. How else would they know I was being deported?
That name—Sergei—gave me a focus on which to train my will. My nemesis now had a name. It wasn’t hard mustering ill feelings. He had been cramping my style and making me anxious for months, getting in the way of me and my Karla, and now here he was terrorizing poor Ellen.
There was a wad of cash, hundreds and twenties, clipped together on a tray between the driver and the guy riding shotgun. I got the topmost note to curl up at one corner, all the way to the clip, and then relax in time with my breaths. My displeasure was manifesting itself.
I folded one corner down and then the other like I was making a paper airplane. It had no purpose. I was just exercising my abilities. Because I could, I made the bill inch its way out from under the clip like some kind of flat caterpillar.
I happened to glance over at Ellen, and all this time, she had been staring at the money, too, watching me do all this. The distraction put an end to all the curling and uncurling. She looked straight at me and mouthed the word: “How?”
I looked at her and shrugged and looked away.
***
We reached a place where some of the pines had been cut back away from the road. They had gone to the trouble of uprooting all the stumps, which were piled in a heap in a corner of the lot. A work team with a dump truck was putting together a stone wall, setting mortared blocks into a frame of rebar and wire mesh.
A broad and rolling lawn, seams still visible in the newly laid turf, rolled like ocean swells up to some kind of half-finished McMansion, its exterior walls clad in some fancy white vapor barrier. Unlike some of its brethren, this house made no attempt to mimic an English estate mansion. This was just a big, 100% American house, an overinflated Cape gone all cancerous and bloated.
A guy came over and yanked me out of the car, but he left Ellen in the back seat. Before I could even react or even protest, the car drove away.
“Hey! Where are they taking her?”
“Relax. She ain’t going nowhere. Sergei wants to talk to you alone.”
“Sergei who? Who’s this Sergei?”