Part 21 (2/2)

”She should be.”

”Where is she?”

”Your mother should have died years ago, but instead has upset the balance of things. So now it's you who are sick. I made a mistake when I sent her.”

”Sent her where?”

”I am tired of this,” said Monty. ”You'll understand the door if I open it.”

In one smooth motion he stood, tossed off his garment. He was nude. Fat and muscle moved, like worms, beneath his loose skin. He raised his arms with a grunt, opened his hands. They nearly touched the crossbeams.

Suddenly, Robert was very afraid. Fear had been near for so long he was surprised he noticed, but this was more. This was terror.

Monty lifted his legs one at a time, stomped them on the floorboards like a sumo wrestler. It was like thunder. He closed his hands, smashed them onto his thighs, timing the blows to his stomps. After a time of this he paused, reared back, his mouth wide. A deep, hollow sound came from him. Then he brought his entire body down, and both his fists smashed into the floorboards.

Robert stood, reached out, screamed for him to stop, but his voice was swallowed by the echoing sound of the blows.

Then he saw it.

It was in the middle of the room and obscured half of Monty's body. Robert reached out and the room wavered, s.h.i.+mmered like the surface of a disturbed pond. As he neared the hole in the center of the room, he c.o.c.ked his head like a fascinated dog, but didn't notice that it had grown quiet. Everything was utterly silent.

Deep within the black was a color. It wasn't quite purple, and wasn't red, but was as indefinite as fog, and he tried to make it out, but the color dispersed, floating against the black like a cloud.

Suddenly, a sensation Robert had never before felt gripped him: All his life since that day outside Earth Cathedral had been leading up to this. Every moment had been nothing but a preparation for this. He supposed most men had this feeling only once, perhaps twice, in their life: President's and dictator's, philosophers and scientists.

He stepped forward.

His foot slipped, and he looked down, saw a beach and screamed, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Stepping back, he dropped to his knees, clutched long stalks of gra.s.s. Yellow gra.s.s. A heavy, ominous thunder walked across the sky. He flinched, looked up, and the heavens were vast and starless and engorged. Cloud formations drifted, very close. They were gray and black, though off in the distance a slash of purple c.u.mulous rippled with lightning. He glanced over his shoulder. A crimson haze hung motionless. ”Where-” but he knew.

I've dreamt this, he remembered, and thought back to when his mother had vanished, how her eyes had been glazed over, as if she had been seeing past the world, and how she'd disappeared before him. Perhaps she hadn't disappeared at all, he thought. Perhaps she came here.

Slowly, he took to his feet, turned around. He was on the edge of a cliff. Too many steps in one direction and he would fall hundreds of feet, land on a beach. Behind him, foliage met the sky. He stepped to the edge. Rocks surrounded the base of the mountain; some lay near the water.

Water that did not move.

He stared, studying it, kept thinking his eyes were tricking him. His eyes roamed the ocean to the horizon line, but none of it moved with the rhythms of tides. It pooled at the sh.o.r.e. Feet inland, the sand showed none of the signs of erosion. It was dry, the color of bone.

Just then he heard something and jumped back. In the sky above the ocean a tail slipped into a cloud. He made out the ripple of wings. Then something screeched and he spun, his arms defensively before his face, but saw nothing.

He remained in a defensive posture for a time, then he slowly straightened, took a couple of steps, searching the brush for signs of movement. As he neared the edge of the forest, he considered reaching up, touching the curving arm of a branch, then thought, What if none of this exists? What if you never came up from the hypnosis?

This made sense. It more than made sense, in fact, but if it were true wouldn't this very thought awaken him?

He felt like screaming, like tearing through the forest, but he couldn't bring himself to believe the thought that made sense. When the memory of his mother had hit him, it had been real, but he hadn't been behind the little boy's eyes. He'd been a voyeur, a fly on the psychic wall.

What if you're dead?

And that clinched it. Doesn't matter. If I am, I am. But I can smell this place, I can see this place, I can feel it beneath my feet, and these are the criteria human's use to define what is real.

”Boy, some door,” he said, taking a deep breath and looking around, wondering if all he saw his mother had seen as well. If Monty had indeed opened the same door, and she had crossed over, was she still here? Could he find her?

Robert entered the forest.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Death of the Past, Birth of the Future

1.

It was nearly midnight and Robert hadn't returned.

Mary was pacing the living room, biting her fingernails, eying the phone. Finally, she lifted it, dialed her number and waited for one of her parents to pick up. Instead, Grady did. ”Where's Mom and Dad?” she asked.

”They went out,” said Grady. ”Why? What's up?”

”The guy hasn't come back yet.”

”Has he called?”

”I wouldn't be calling you if he had.”

Grady hesitated. For a moment, all Mary heard was the hum of her breathing, which sounded somehow like thinking. ”What are you going to do?” asked her friend, when finally she spoke.

”And here I was calling you for ideas.”

”What if he's been in an accident?”

Mary turned that one over, along with the possibility that his sickness, whatever it was, had bested him. Should she call local hospitals? With that, Mary was off to the races: anything was possible. ”Maybe I'll stay here tonight. No sense waking Jenn.”

”Jenn? That the girl?”

”She's upstairs sleeping.” Mary absently stared through the banister, suddenly getting the feeling the little girl was sitting at the top of the stairs. But Jenn wasn't there. ”Yeah,” she continued. ”Just tell Mom and Dad I'm sleeping here, and that I'll give them a call in the morning. Unless he gets back before then.”

Mary said goodbye, hung up, then sat on the couch in the den and flipped on the television. Conan O'Brien was on. His red hair flopped as he told a joke about Enron. But nothing seemed funny tonight. In time, her eyes shut. O'Brien's whine drifted in and out of her mind.

She dreamed.

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