Part 1 (1/2)

Dividing Earth, a novel.

by Troy Stoops.

Prologue.

A Dream, a Memory: 1972.

The boy didn't have to be locked in the car long to notice the heat.

Sweat beaded on his brow, ran down his cheeks, gathered in his hair. ”Don't move,” his mother had told him. ”I'll be right back.” Then she'd rolled up the windows, shoved down the locks, and slammed her door. How long had it been? He felt dull. Thoughts moved over him like slow waves.

He climbed over the gears.h.i.+ft and sat on his knees in his mother's seat, reaching for the steering wheel. His heart raced. She'd never told him not to, but he knew. He glanced around cautiously, but seeing only the sun he turned away, remembering his mother's admonition about staring into it.

He looked out the window at what she'd called a church. It looked like no church he'd ever seen. There wasn't a cross in sight; neither was there a message board. The structure's lone distinctness, aside from its scale, was the garland of colorful banners that hung from the roof, banners that reminded him of the cards his mother sometimes dealt to herself when she sat at the kitchen table. Tarot cards, his father had called them.

The church stood white against a sky that had been blue when they'd first arrived, but was now stained by the red-orange wake of the sun. Stick pines loomed over the earth. The ground was soft clay, here and there mounded by fire ants.

His mother had disappeared inside some time ago.

The boy unlocked the door, then started to pull down the handle. He looked around at the street, saw nothing. After a moment he yanked down the handle and pushed on the door with everything he had. It popped open and he spilled onto the ground. Unfazed, he ground his fists into the earth and took to his feet.

Standing outside the church, a man faced him, his silvery beard whipping in the wind. The man stared his way. His face was a shadow.

Then the church's tall doors sc.r.a.ped the slab of cement beneath them. The boy chanced a look while keeping an eye on the man. A group of old, nearly infirm folk shuffled down the steps. Once on the sidewalk, they all wound around the strange man-though not one of them looked up at him-trudging away in single file. They were silent. Only the wind spoke through the trees. The boy watched, hoping to see his mother's burgundy skirt, her old green sweater, but only made out silver and gray hair, freckled pates, and uneasy, stiff legs. In moments even the sounds of their pa.s.sage, so quiet he'd imagined them silent, ceased.

The man stared at the boy a moment longer, then abruptly turned, glancing back before shambling off. The boy sighed, realizing he'd been holding his breath.

Then his mother appeared.

She was nude. Sores blotched what had been beautiful skin. Though she looked his way, her eyes appeared unfocused. After descending the steps, she stumbled toward him. The boy backed up. The fine hair on his arms bristled, and he felt as though he should hide his eyes. But she didn't seem to be looking at him; rather, she was looking his way, but not seeing him. Her eyes were gla.s.sy.

But there was something else, something that made him stumble back. He c.o.c.ked his head like a puppy, seeing it but not comprehending it. A glow surrounded her, an undefined light that looked like heat waves roiling off a summer road. It seemed to bend the air around her. She s.h.i.+mmered, distorted. He could no longer make out any part of her clearly-her faced looked as if it was trapped in a convex mirror, and her body wavered in and out of distinction.

She shuffled forward, staring into the distance behind him.

He turned, but saw nothing.

She reached out, but seized only air. ”Oh my G.o.d,” she whispered, her eyes enraptured. A weak smile came over her as she focused on whatever it was she saw. ”It's beautiful,” she said, clawing through the air.

”Mama?” A tear rolled down his face, resting on his jaw like a pearl before dropping to the ground. ”Mama!”

Until now the haziness around her had had the formlessness of a cloud, but as the mist began to evaporate, the light surrounding her grew more concentrated. The soft pastels that had been weaving around her began to coalesce, merging until there was only one shade, a sharp magenta. This color pulsed, slithering over her now translucent form. She was brighter now, white as light, and he called her again but she only stared into the nothingness, grinning stupidly, raising her hands and whispering, ”Oh son, follow me, you won't believe it . . .”

And then the brightness exploded, rays of it piercing her through, engulfing her. It was blinding. His mother began to fade.

”Mama!” he shrieked, reaching out.

Light. It shot through the day. For a moment creation was aflame. The boy fell to a ground he could no longer see, threw his arms up to protect his eyes from a light that would leave no ghostly after-burn, a light that would surely blind. The world was deafening silence and blinding light. Then nothing. The boy heard himself breathing, felt his heart thudding away. He lowered his arms, opened his eyes. The world existed as it had before-the church stood, its banners flapped in the wind, and the heavens encircled the earth. Only one thing had changed. The boy rolled over, stood, then turned to where he'd last seen her, halfway expecting her to have reappeared. She hadn't.

The boy felt blank, hollow just standing there, his hands rigid by his hips as the world faded around him, the sun a wound on the flesh of the sky. When he tired of standing, he sat in the dirt, leaned against a rear tire, and watched an army of ants marching toward an ant hill, crumbs on their back like treasure.

The sun set, and six hours pa.s.sed before his father and the police found him. By midnight he was at home and in bed, and his father sat on the edge of his bed with him. For a long time they stared into each other's eyes, the boy's wide, the father's filled with tears. The boy had told his father what had happened, then told him again when he'd caught his father nodding but not listening. Before this silence, he'd told him five times. When his father opened his mouth to speak, the boy knew the truth had been there between them, pulsing in the silence.

Then his father, his eyes still br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, his mouth trembling, told him that his mother had been very sick and that she must have crawled somewhere to die, and that they would find her soon. He told the boy that what he'd seen had not been real, that he'd dreamt the whole thing. He looked away after saying it, and the boy shook his head, laid back, and shut his eyes. Only a dream, he thought, wanting very much to believe it.

Part One: Cancer.

”Its funny how, when you look back on disasters and love affairs, things seem to line up, like planets on an astrologer's chart.”

-From a Buick 8, Stephen King.

Chapter One: Robert.

1.

It took weeks for Robert Lieber to recall the nightmare fully, and drag it back up into the daytime world. But this morning, when the phone rang and woke him, he remembered only an image-a nude emaciated woman, her flesh like wax paper in the setting sun, stumbling toward him, her hands outstretched. There was more, there was always more, but it seemed he could only bring back single image. Sometimes it was the woman; sometimes the strange beach, the sky above it a whirl of pastels.

Robert bolted upright in bed, at first unsure if he was being awakened by the phone or his dream. This startled his wife, Veronica, out of her sleep as well. ”s.h.i.+t,” he mumbled. Another minute and he might have had it. He found the phone under the bed, brought it to his ear and clicked the b.u.t.ton. ”What.”

”Mister Lieber?”

Solicitors at nine on a Sat.u.r.day morning? ”Far as you know. Why?”

”This is Anthony Hicks from Auto South. We haven't received the car payment yet, and you promised us last month you'd be getting back on track-”

”Hang on, sport. We didn't speak last month.”

”Uh, well,” Hicks said, pecking away on his keyboard. ”We spoke with your wife.”

Veronica tapped him on the shoulder, asking him who it was. Robert lifted a finger, but not the one he wanted to. ”So it was late last month as well?”

She winced.

”Yes. When are you going to bring this account current?”

”Tell you what-was it Anthony?”

”Yes, Hicks.”