American Elsewhere (52 page)

Then:

YOU WILL HAVE TO LOOK DOWN

Bolan stares at the tape. This has absolutely no meaning to him. “I don’t understand,” he says.

It barrels on without him:

YOU KNOW WHERE TO TAKE THE NEXT TOTEM

“Yes,” says Bolan. “They’re already on it. There might be a bit of a delay—my boy got his face caved in just today. But they’ll be at the canyon soon.”

The machine pauses for a long, long time. Longer than the machine has ever paused before. Bolan almost wonders if they’ve gotten pissed at him and given up.

But then it types:

I MAY NOT BE THERE

“What? At the canyon?” Bolan realizes this is wrong. “Wait, you mean at the meeting? Then where will you be?”

Another extremely long pause.

The machine types:

DEAD

Bolan is utterly flabbergasted to read such a response. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

It types:

AM ABOUT TO ATTEMPT SOMETHING DRASTIC

“Wait, like… more than what we’ve already done?”

It responds:

YES

“Well… then don’t fucking do it!”

The machine types:

IF I AM NOT THERE TONIGHT YOU WILL STILL BE MET

“By who?” asks Bolan.

The ticker is silent.

“By who?” he asks again. “What’s going on? What are you about to do?”

But no matter how long he waits, he receives no answer.

Evening is falling by the time Mona returns to Wink. She feels as if she is seeing it for the first time. She looks at the quaint adobe homes and the little cottages with sky-blue siding, the old men at the drugstore and the children playing tag at the greenbelt. The streetlamps are pristine, the grass moist, the trees thick and tall. A place of quiet days and quieter evenings.

And yet.

A man stands on the sidewalk, perfectly still, with his hands at his sides. He wears a charmingly cheap suit that is a few sizes too large for him. He stares at the sky with his head cocked as if he is listening to something only he can hear, and when she passes him in the huge truck he looks at her and smiles wistfully. She keeps watching him in the rearview mirror: he returns to staring at the powder-blue sky, a wide smile on his face.

Is he one of them? Are any of the people she sees?

A young woman stands in a gravel alley between two homes. A frail thing with skinny wrists. She holds an empty tin can in her hands and she turns it over again and again, feeling its metal sides, and as she does she twirls about in a slow shuffle, as if dancing with it.

What does she feel when she touches this mundane little trinket?
Mona wonders. What do they see when they look at the world?

An old man stands in the window of the hardware store, staring out with eyes rimmed blue-black. His hands are spattered with what looks like ink, maybe black paint. He holds a bowl and a fork, and he
dips the fork down into the bowl and brings up a steaming pile of mashed potatoes. He opens his mouth hugely, far wider than he should, and paints his tongue with the forkful, unblinking, not swallowing. As his hands rise the black ink runs down his forearms in rivulets to stain his shirtsleeves.

He is one. There is no doubt.

How many are there? They seem to be everywhere, when you look: stragglers occupying drab little between-places in the town, ditches and empty parking lots and alleys behind shops. The interstitial parts of a city no one ever thinks about. These places, perhaps, are where these dazed wanderers go to collect their thoughts, to be themselves.

To be themselves
, thinks Mona.
Whatever they are, behind their eyes
.

And when they are done, will they return home, cheery smiles on their faces, ready to put food on the table? To cut the grass or play a game of cards or share a pipe? To gossip and scratch off yet another day in their peaceful, small-town lives? Is that it?

What do they do? What do such people do? Why are they here?

She circles the block twice, easing through the alleys, counting all the cars and memorizing the license plates. She sees no one watching, no shift of a curtain or movement in any of the cars, and she certainly sees no one tailing her—road traffic here is so sparse it’d be almost impossible to stay hidden.

When she’s as satisfied as she can get, she parks down the street from Mrs. Benjamin’s house and watches it.

Once she had lunch there, only a few days ago. Yet now she wonders what lives in that house, or pretends to live there, and what it does when no one’s watching.

She takes out the Glock and wipes sweat from her brow. She does not want to do this. Yet she must know.

She gets out of the truck and walks to the front door, barely bothering to hide the gun in her hand. She goes to the window and peers in. The house is dark, but she is not sure that means anything.

She goes to the door, and is not surprised to find it is unlocked. After all—why would such a thing ever need to lock the doors?

She walks in. The dark color of the floor and walls makes the house even darker. It is still every inch an old woman’s house, stuffed with ticking clocks and piles of mail and forgettable trinkets. She hears nothing. It seems the owner is not at home.

Mona stalks through the house, gun drawn, eyes hunting for any movement. She turns left and follows a short hallway to the bedroom. And there she sees him.

He is lying on the bed with his fingers threaded together on his chest, peaceful as the dead. Yet she can see he is not dead, not quite: his chest rises and falls, slowly.

He looks the same, like your average old man. Perhaps a little caustic. Someone who has spent too much of his life indoors.

She sits down in the overstuffed chair beside Parson. She looks into his face and wonders what is behind it. It is not, she thinks, an eccentric old man who’s spent his waning years running a motel. Any more than the owner of this house is a doddering old bureaucrat.

She raises the gun a little, but does not point it at him. The clocks seem to tick louder and louder. She wonders what it would be like to break their ponderous ticking and spill his skull across these yellowed sheets.

Would it be such a bad thing? Would it be wrong? Would it even do anything?

There is a voice from the door: “No. No, it would do nothing.”

Mona very nearly pulls the trigger. She looks up and sees Mrs. Benjamin is standing at the door, and though she watches Mona coolly, indifferently, her dress is muddy, torn, and tattered. Streaks of blood show through the rents in the blotchy purple fabric.

“You stay right there,” says Mona.

“I am,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I would wish no violence on him.”

They stare at each other for a moment. In the hall the clocks tick and tock endlessly.

“Why wouldn’t it?” asks Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin cocks an eyebrow, uncomprehending.

“Why wouldn’t it hurt him?” she explains.

Mrs. Benjamin is silent.

“You aren’t permitted to say,” says Mona.

“No,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “We are not.”

“
We
,” says Mona. “How many?”

Mrs. Benjamin still does not answer. The clocks tick on and on.

“Tell me,” says Mona. “Tell me or I’ll pull this trigger and blow his fucking brains out.”

“Did I not just say it would do nothing?”

“Are you telling me the bullet in the chamber of this gun wouldn’t punch through to his brain and turn it to soup? I’ve seen it before. Oh Lord, I’ve seen it before. It makes a mess, Mrs. Benjamin. You’d be doing laundry for days.”

Mrs. Benjamin purses her lips.

“Yeah,” says Mona. “I don’t quite know what you all are, but I know you aren’t bulletproof. How many?”

“If you know so much, why don’t you guess?”

Mona can feel sweat running down her arms. She glances at Parson, then back at Mrs. Benjamin. “Can’t be the whole town. Not everyone. Most of them are people, real people. But you all are… from somewhere else.”

Mrs. Benjamin raises her head and thins her eyes, an inscrutable gesture that neither affirms nor denies it.

“I’ve been up on the mesa,” says Mona.

“Have you,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “
He
sent you there, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. He wanted me to know. And now I do. I saw the records there. I know your mirror trick now.”

She expected that to get some reaction from her, but Mrs. Benjamin does nothing. Then Mona realizes—how could she have expected such a thing to react in any normal way?

“It makes things soft, doesn’t it?” asks Mona. “
Bruised.
It makes the boundaries of things… permeable. And when that happens, things can come through. Things like you, and him.”

Mrs. Benjamin is stone-faced, dead-eyed, totally dormant. Mona gets the feeling that certain muscles are going slack in her face that no
normal person could relax. The hairs rise up on Mona’s arms as she begins to understand that Mrs. Benjamin’s physical form is but a puppet in a very real way, and she’s no longer bothering to maintain her appearance.

“What are you?” asks Mona softly. “Don’t tell me you can’t say.”

“I cannot,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Don’t tell me you’re not fucking permitted.”

“The issue is not so much that,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Then what is it?”

“Such things cannot be explained.”

“Why not?”

“How does one tell a fish it swims in an ocean? How would one tell it of currents, of skies, of mountains? How could you make it understand?”

“Tell me anyway. I’m a quick study.”

“I cannot.”

“Do it.”

“I cannot. It would kill you.”

There is a rattling gasp in the room. Mona tenses up, but does not take her eyes off Mrs. Benjamin. Then she glances to the side and sees Parson’s eyes fluttering. He frowns, shifts on the bed, and opens his eyes. He does not look at the gun, but stares straight ahead.

“She is not like the others,” he says in a croaking voice.

Mrs. Benjamin and Mona do not move. The clocks keep ticking, on and on.

“That does not mean she can understand,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“We can try to show her,” says Parson.

“What do you mean?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“The hell are you talking about?” asks Mona.

He does not answer either of them.

“Do you mean… take her
there
?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“Yes,” says Parson. “And see what she can see.”

“Take who where?” asks Mona.

“It would destroy her. She cannot go to such places mindfully. She is not like us.”

“Mm. No,” he says. He turns his head to look at Mona, totally ignoring the gun in his face. “She is not bound to this place, like we are. But neither is she truly free. She is drawn here against her will. She is different.”

“Different enough?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

Parson does not answer. He just stares at Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin sighs. “Do you really want to see, dear?”

“See what?” asks Mona.

“What we are. What we are underneath it all.”

“What we are on the other side,” says Parson.

“What we were in the beginning,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“Do you want to see?”

“Do you wish us to take you there?”

“To the halfway spot, not here, not there?”

“Where we reside?”

Mona is trembling. They speak so fast it is hard to keep up. “What the hell are you all talking about? If you’re gonna try something, hurry up and do it. But I am handy with a gun.”

“We have no reason to harm you,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“But what I know—”

“You know what you know,” says Parson, “because I led you to it.”

Mona sees the truth in this, but she still is not comfortable with what they are suggesting. “I thought it wasn’t permitted,” she says.

“You know enough,” says Parson. “We would not be showing you something new.”

“Nothing you do not suspect,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

Mona pauses, uncertain. But she cannot turn away, not now.

“All right,” she says.

Mrs. Benjamin and Parson glance at one another, faces slack and dead, eyes watery and small.

“Please put down the gun,” says Parson. “Please.”

Mona hesitates, but lowers it.

“Good,” says Parson. “Now.”

For a moment nothing happens, and Mona thinks they have just tricked her. Yet the two do not pounce on her, but stay stock-still.

The clocks stop ticking in the hallway. Everything in the room is silent: all the background noise, the susurrus of sounds from the forest and streets, has died. Then the walls begin to tremble and shudder, like they are drum skins being fiercely beaten by hammers, and with each blow they become more and more transparent until finally Mona can see out of them, glimpsing red stars and a huge pink moon and a gray, lunar terrain…

And then she sees

(no no)

(please no)

(endless canyons)

(glittering flats)

(and there beside her, swaying)

(a column, a stalk)

(tall, tall, infinitely tall)

(rigid and chitinous and dripping)

(hollow, honey-chambered)

(countless sinews and polyps)

(and in each chamber)

(a tiny black eye)

(like a fungus, she thinks, a huge, dripping fungus)

(roots like the root of a tooth)

(worming down into the heart of the world)

(and there beside it she sees)

(bulky and broad, shoulders spanning miles)

(thousands of powerful limbs)

(clutch the ground)

(a tiny, malformed skull)

(hundreds of spider eyes)

(like black marbles, glittering)