Alice & Dorothy (39 page)

“It looks like a big cat with bleeding moon eyes.”

“It’s
fine
.”

“Dorothy,” Alice said. “
Please.
” She let up on the gas and immediately the car powered down. They were creeping toward the cat now, barely moving.

Dorothy squeezed Alice’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m right here. I’m going to take care of you. You just have to trust me. There’s no cat there, I promise.”

Dorothy was her friend. She was more than that, a
part of her
.

Alice once asked Dorothy if she could be trusted, and Dorothy had said
yes
. Alice believed her. They were out on the road now with nothing but death behind them, and nothing but promise ahead of them. In spite of the giant striped cat on the road, red eyes glittering like blood rubies and its mouth wide open to swallow them whole, there was promise in Dorothy’s voice. The meek girl was gone. She was finally in control for the both of them. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, because Alice herself was barely holding on.

And the truth was that there
was no cat
. Dorothy had said as much, and when Alice blinked, the creature was gone. There was a moment where she could plainly see the eyes and teeth left behind in a vaguely predatory smile, but then they were gone too.

The answer for the disappearance was simple:
There never was a cat
. So many things the past few weeks Alice had seen or heard and simply taken at face value. It was like sleepwalking. Dorothy was showing her another way, though. Dorothy showed her that sometimes belief was enough to make the monsters disappear.

She felt like she was coming up out of deep water for the first time in a while, since before she’d shot that guy in the car and blown his brains all over her shirt.
Maybe this is what it’s like to stop being crazy
, she thought. Like a funhouse ride mixed with a horror movie, only at some point your cart banged against a pair of angry coloured metal doors with ruby red eyes and long metallic teeth and you’re out of the dark and into the sunlight of your real life once more.

Maybe you come to the end of the ride and your eyes are squinty from the sun and you think about how the vampires and werewolves and spooks you just survived were made out of chicken wire and Paper Mache with little Christmas lights for eyes and Styrofoam cones for teeth. And then you feel kind of stupid, because for a little while there, for maybe
just a minute
, you
actually
believed there were vampires in the world who wanted to drain your life away from you, and werewolves were creeping around outside your cart waiting for you to put your hand outside your seat so they could tear it off. Maybe for a moment you thought the ghosts you were seeing were the spirits of the dead, and were back for vengeance because you blew their head off in a gas station or in an old blue car in a deserted parking lot.

And then here was Dorothy, to make it all go away. Dorothy, standing in the sunshine waiting for you to reappear from your trip; holding your sunglasses and your purse because you didn’t want to drop them in there, and who didn’t come along because this was one of those things you just had to do on your own.
By yourself
. And then there was Dorothy and she was smiling at you and excited to see you because she kind of missed you even though you were only gone for a few minutes, and she was glad you took a trip on your own but very glad you were back. And she would give you a hug that smelled sweet and flowery and ask you
how was it
and
were you scared
and you say
no
, but maybe you both know that was a lie because for a minute there, just a tiny moment the funhouse was real and your whole world outside the train tracks was a big fucking lie.

You still have a bit more to see
. Dr Weller’s voice again. Funny that he should be here, when she barely knew the man. Dorothy knew him though, and loved him, because he had tried to reach out and help her. Or help Alice. Now, who knew what was real anymore. Maybe Dr Weller was another figment of their collective imagination. Hell,
maybe Alice was the figment
, and Dorothy had made her up so she could stick around the hospital a bit more.

It didn’t matter now, because she was done with all of it.

“Excuse me?” Dorothy started to pull her hand away. She was smirking at Alice, her eyes brighter and greener than ever. “You’re done
with what
exactly?”

“Not you,” Alice said, holding tight and then pushing her face against the back of Dorothy’s hand. “I’m never going to be done with you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Dorothy said. “
Sooo
much.”

They could see cars lining the ditches on either side of the road, and sitting directly under the overpass with its lights flashing was a large one-ton emergency vehicle. Dorothy slowed down as they approached it. The wind seemed to be picking up speed by the second. By the time the car stopped, it was a lion’s roar that rocked the Volkswagen and showered it with topsoil.

Dorothy got out of the car. Her attention was far away, past the group of people huddled under the overpass. Past a cop in a raincoat now screaming at them to get the hell off the road. Alice opened her door and fell, but dragged herself across the hood of the car and was able to grab Dorothy’s arm.

“I’ve got you!” she screamed. Dorothy rocked her lifeless head in response.

“I know!” Dorothy said. “For ever!”

On the other side of the overpass, its base black and miles away but kicking up dirt and death around it, was the biggest tornado Alice had ever seen. It looked like the sky itself was draining into the earth in a massive, angry funnel. Lightning cracked around its edges and thunder boomed. The noise of the wind grinding across the plains seemed to grab the sound from Alice’s ears and drag it toward the center of the tornado. The monstrosity picked up a house and a car at the same time, and then Alice saw the car hurtling end over end through the shattered remnants of the house as it broke down into its base components.

The cop in the underpass was motioning for them to join him. Alice couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Dorothy either couldn’t hear him or was ignoring him. Judging from the look of rapture on her face, staring into the heart of the tornado and oblivious to the rest of the world, Dorothy was long gone, into her
own
funhouse horror ride. Toto was clamped tight in her arms, huddled to her chest, protecting her heart the way he always did. Animals were so much more dependable than human beings were sometimes.

“
HEY!
” The cop screamed. “
HEY GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!
” He was waving his hands at them as he approached, and he pointed to the corner of the overpass where the ground rose up to meet the road above it. There were about a dozen people huddled together trying to get out of the wind. It was their safest spot to be, as the concrete of the structure would protect them from a lot of the larger debris while providing enough of a windbreak that they wouldn’t be sucked up by the tornado and thrown God knows where.

When the cop got a little closer he suddenly slowed down into a partial crouch. His hand drifted down toward his holster. He lifted one arm and pointed to Alice.

The cop pulled his gun and pointed it toward Alice, and now he was motioning with it for Alice to lay down on the ground. He was probably telling her to drop her weapon as well, but Alice couldn’t hear him above the roar of the tornado.

Dorothy continued to ignore him; they took a couple shambling steps toward the tornado and stopped. She looked back at Alice, confused.

“
HE WANTS US TO LAY DOWN!
” Alice yelled into her face.

“
WHO?
” Dorothy shouted.

“
THAT COP!
” Alice yelled.

“
I HAVE TO GO!
”

Alice nodded. “
I KNOW!
” She pulled the gun up to eye level and pointed at the cop’s head. The act caused the man to crouch into a more defensive stance, and he barked savagely like a trained attack dog.

This is the moment where everything goes to shit
, Alice thought, and then shook her head and smiled.
No. We’re were way past that moment.
They might have passed that moment the second she laid eyes on Dorothy in that hospital, but maybe even before. Maybe when that guy started coming in her asshole with the business end of her gun jammed in his face, shooting hot shame and saying he was sorry at the same time, like the thought of blowing his brains out was the biggest fuckin’ trip he’d ever been on.

“Bark, bark, little doggy,” Alice said. The tornado loomed over top of them. The cop looked at Alice and then peeked over his shoulder. The roar of the beast was beyond anything Alice had ever heard; it drove itself into her skull like hammer hooks and pried the plates in her skull loose.

The cop started backing away from the girls with his gun pointed at Alice, but his free hand was in front of him, palm out. He was looking for a truce while he backed away from the girls. Back toward the safety of the underpass, with a
please don’t shoot me when I turn and run
look on his face.

Alice let him go. She turned and buried her head against Dorothy’s shoulder. Her weight was lessening int he wind. The tornado was bearing down on them. It picked up cars on the far side of the underpass and tossed them like bricks to be smashed in the dirt or bounced off one another. The air was filled with sand and ozone, like standing inside a thundercloud and a sandbox at the same time, and it made a primal, grinding noise that blocked out the shrieking wind.
This is the voice of the earth
, she thought.
This is mother nature’s singing voice
.

“It’s going to be grand,” Dorothy said.

Alice looked into Dorothy’s emerald eyes and kissed the corner of her mouth where her perfect ruby lips met. That was all they had time for. For a moment, it looked as though Dorothy was being buried in sand, and all Alice could see were those emerald pools and her perfect smile. “I love—”

But Dorothy was gone again.

Dr Weller stepped off the elevator and walked toward the nurse’s station with his hand already up. He knew what was coming; it was the same thing that had been coming for a week now. Every day it was the same. Newshounds, agents, and cops,
oh my
. All wanting to piece everything together. Hollywood was knocking, and everyone involved with the Alice Pleasance and Dorothy Gale saga was lining up like bums at a soup kitchen, hats in hand and their mouths open. All were eager for a piece.

Except Dr Weller.

“The lady from
The Times
called again,” the fat nurse behind the desk said. “You gonna call her back?”

“No,” Weller said, and flashed a grim smile when the woman rolled her eyes. She’d already sold out to Hollywood. Most of the people who worked on the ward had turned their bit parts into cold hard cash. Dr Weller had heard the guy and his dad who brought Alice into the emergency room after she’d been dumped off by her pimp were going to be on
Larry King
, and had been paid handsomely for their trouble. Hollywood always got what it wanted, one way or another.

He walked the short hall to his office and stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a flourish. Then he carefully placed his coat and hat on the coat rack by the door and found his seat behind the large oak desk that had served as a divider between him and the misery of people’s lives for many years. For most of those years, he’d dreamt of escaping from that seat and moving on to bigger and better things.

Now all he wanted to do was stay there and keep the world at bay.

He knew he was missing his one shot at doing something bigger with his life. Of course, knowing something, and acting on something were two totally different entities. Maybe that’s what his dad had meant when he said
head shrinkin’ is just a waste of time.
Weller knew what he’d
really
meant was
why spend all that time in school if you ain’t goan be a real doctor?

Maybe he should have gone to medical school and specialized in assets and faces. Then he wouldn’t be sitting here right now hiding from the press and throwing away his chance to be Mr. Bigshot Man of the Hour. The fact was he had watched in horror as the details of Alice and Dorothy’s last few days started coming to light. It seemed to start so small and suddenly erupt into a ball of frenzy and carnage. Like the freak thunderstorm that had spawned the tornado itself; a once in a lifetime event formed by the stars lining up just perfectly. A handful of people had died, including a nine-year-old boy in the gas station massacre. Witnesses said they saw the girls in the last moments before the tornado hit, Alice propping Dorothy up and dragging her along and Dorothy covered in blood and looking like she was already dead, for god’s sake. She walked them both right into the damn thing.