Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (5 page)

"Jesse," Susanna said. "You're drunk. And
Wayne must be, too. Why don't you just have a seat—"

"Maybe if I can't provide
enough for you," he slurred, "you can suck
his
dick instead."

Susanna pulled back, and glared at him. His
eyes were glazed over, a lazy, crooked grin of malice etched onto
his face.

She slapped him. It was the only time she'd
ever slapped anyone like that and meant it.

There was a collective gasp from the
audience.

"I don't need anyone to provide for me," she
said. "I can take care of myself just fine. And I get to choose who
I spend my time with, not you or Wayne. You fucking understand
that?"

Wayne got up from the dirt, wiped the blood
off his face with his sleeve, and spun Jesse around by the
shoulder, revving up to deliver a knockout blow. It was as if all
the vigor that had been missing from Wayne a few moments ago, while
Jesse had been slaughtering him, had been saved up for this
moment.

Susanna tried to interject:
"Wayne,
wait!
—"

The resulting blow was a good one, better
than she had thought Wayne capable of. It sent Jesse ass-first onto
the ground.

She was surprised to find herself happy for
Wayne.

With Jesse still reeling, Wayne grabbed
Susanna by the arm and began to lead her through the crowd.

"Wayne, what are you doing?"

"I have his keys," Wayne said. "I don't want
him driving tonight."

"You're just as drunk as he is!"

From behind them, still within the circle of
people, Susanna heard Jesse let out an animal howl.

"Where do you think you're taking me?"

"Anywhere but here," Wayne replied.
"Civilization."

A crackle of static electricity shocked
Susanna at the point of contact where Wayne held her by the arm.
"Ow."

A rumble of thunder registered from somewhere
off in the distance.

The winds, too, were even louder now.

Wayne pulled the keys out of his pocket and
hopped into the driver's seat of the old Jeep. Susanna took one
more look behind her, at the dispersing crowd. She didn't
particularly care to go anywhere with Wayne, but at the same time,
she didn't want to have to deal with Jesse or his followers right
now. Best to let him sober up. Sort it all out in the morning.

She sighed. "Alright, I'll come with you to
find a motel or something. But let me drive, at least."

Wayne stared at her blankly for a moment over
the idle of the Jeep. After a moment, he conceded. He scooted over
the gear shift into the passenger seat.

Susanna walked around to the driver's side
and put the car into first, pulling away from the crescent of
parked vehicles and in the general direction of the distant
highway. The dim headlight bulbs cast a flickering, incomplete
image of the path ahead, and the dusty windshield made it even
harder to see. She could just imagine shredding a tire on one of
the bits of old adobe building still jutting out of the ground.
That would be just the thing to make this night complete.

More thunder.

A flash of lightning.

And that strange ozone smell again.

"Wayne?"

"Yes?"

"Can the lightning hurt us?"

"I'm sure we're safe," he said, his hands
clasped in a kind of pennant gesture. "I'm sorry for all of this,
Susanna."

In the rear-view mirror, a flash of lightning
illuminated the sky behind Devil's Peak, and for a moment it again
seemed like the monstrous giant it had when Susanna first saw
it.

She couldn't look away—more and more
electricity danced in the sky behind and above the mesa.

It was an otherworldly
light show. She had the distinct impression the lightning was
coming
from
the
mountain.

She wondered what was going on inside the
mesa at that moment—inside that massive, hollow cavern of light and
water that was so impossible, and so wondrous.

The Jeep hit a rock, and bounced
violently.

"Shit!" Susanna let out. She brought her eyes
back to the road.

"Wayne, I gotta keep my eyes on the road,"
she said. "But take a look at the mountain back there and tell me
there isn't something very strange going on with it."

"Strange? What do you mean?"

"Just look at it."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wayne
peering to their rear. A light, like a flashlight, illuminated his
worried gaze.

"Jesus," Wayne said. "He's following us!"

Susanna glanced back up at her rear-view
mirror, and saw the distinctive double-globe appearance of the
Volkswagen Bus' headlamps.

"Oooookay," Susanna said. "This has gone on
long enough."

She braked hard, bringing the Jeep to a dusty
stop. She stepped out and flagged Jesse down.

"Susanna, what are you doing? He could be
murderous!"

"Quit being so dramatic. He's not
'murderous,' he's your brother."

She turned back to the bus, which was slowing
too.

But her attention was pulled away by the
sight of Devil's Peak. Columns of lightning still danced over its
head.

And the mesa was…

…
glowing.

That was the only way to describe what she
saw. Red-hot, exactly like iron in a crucible, not yet cooled—the
whole mountain! Its molten glow pulsed, rhythmic.

The wind whipping up, the skies full of
charcoal clouds, the mountain and thunder—it all struck her as
positively Biblical, like one of those 70 millimeter Technicolor
epics that were popular when she was a little kid.

The door to the VW swung open, and Jesse
stepped out. Even though it was the middle of the night, his shape
was perfectly cut out against the sky, which was more of a dull
grey than black at this point, shimmering as it was with rippling
light. Jesse must've seen the slack-jawed expression on both
Susanna and Wayne's faces, because he turned around, still
absentmindedly stumbling backwards towards them, and looked up at
the light show.

Susanna felt a chill in her bones. She had
the distinct impression this is what it felt like in the last few
moments before a bomb went off.

Devil's Peak was absorbed in a brilliant
white light. But she couldn't look away.

A ribbon of energy shot out from Devil's
Peak, across the desert plain. It was heading for them like a
train.

She didn't have time to say anything. It was
on top of them before she could flinch.

The ribbon of energy impacted with the
Jeep.

She opened her eyes.

She was still standing. Still alive.

She looked around. Wayne was still next to
her. So was the Jeep.

What happened?

But then she looked at the ground underneath
her feet.

It was liquefying. Where moments before there
had been the dusty desert floor, she now saw a sea of molten earth,
floating on a layer of golden light that glimmered through breaks
in the soil. The strange ozone stench rose out of the ground
itself.

Wayne tapped her on the shoulder, wordless.
He was looking up at something behind them.

Susanna turned around and saw it:

A ball of white energy rose from the sea that
now surrounded them. It was four stories tall and just as many
wide, tossing ribboning flares of magma into the night sky. It was,
in its own way, beautiful.

The liquefied earth beneath their feet spun
about the light sphere, caught in a riptide vortex.

Susanna, Wayne, and the Jeep began to move
with the liquid floor towards the ball of light.

"Get back in the car!" Susanna shouted.

She leapt in, turned the ignition, threw the
transmission into reverse and slammed her foot on the gas. But it
was to little effect. They were in the tide now, the Jeep caught in
the paranormal undertow.

Where's Jesse?

Susanna jumped out of the Jeep and kicked
furiously against the spinning vortex, but the phenomenon only
pulled against her harder.

Wayne was saying something to her. She
couldn't hear him.

Everything was going white. And getting
hotter.

She was waist-deep in the liquid earth now.
She had absolutely no control over the situation.

She flipped onto her back and looked up at
the Jeep, which was tipping upright like a sinking ship. Wayne was
clinging for dear life on the back of the car, one futile hand
outstretched to her.

Susanna gave up trying. She stopped moving,
and let the strange waves crash over her, consume her.

"Just give me the fucking keys, Joe!"

Jesse wasn't in the mood to ask politely.
Wayne was taking off with his girl. The one who'd just shot him
down.

This wasn't how the night
was supposed to go. Jesse was supposed to be engaged right now.
Discovering the wonderland inside Devil's Peak had been a
sign.
A sign that this
was the right place to build his commune, true; but also that this
was the place to bring Susanna to propose. Someplace so beautiful
she'd have to say yes.

But he'd read the tea leaves wrong, and now
he was drunk, dirty, and bleeding. Susanna probably hated him. And
he hated Wayne.

So all he needed were the fucking keys from
Joe, so he could take the Volkswagen and chase down the Jeep. Get
his car back. And his girl back.

"Joe," Jesse repeated. "Please."

Joe looked guilty, like he knew he was doing
something wrong. But he handed the keys, replete with lucky rabbit
foot keychain, to Jesse.

Jesse cooled his demeanor. He took a deep
breath, patted his loyal reveler on the shoulder, and said, "Thank
you."

Then he got in the bus, started it up, and
tore off down the desert flat towards the Jeep that was receding
towards the horizon.

Lightning crackled in the sky overhead.

Jesse kept his eyes on the road, but his mind
wandered. He and Wayne had always fought. What brothers didn't?

But there was something different about the
competition between them. It was rabid. Hurtful. It always had
been, ever since they were kids.

Why was that? When had it started? Why did
Wayne resent him so much?

Jesse thought back to the summer of 1958.
Twelve years earlier. The first summer after their parents had
managed to wrap their Buick around a tree, and the two brothers had
gone to live with their grandparents in Jackson.

The move had been a culture
shock to the California boys. The air was different, the bugs were
different. Their grandparents were Depression-era hard-asses.
Bitter people, and if they had any love for the boys, they didn't
show it. Not that Jesse had ever needed touchy-feely shows of
approval, but there was a coldness in their house that was hard to
ignore. Grandma hadn't let him put up any of his baseball posters
in the former nursery room he moved into with Wayne. She said she
didn't want any holes in the wall, and when he offered to use tape,
she said she didn't want the tape to leave marks in the paint. The
message was clear—
this isn't your room,
you can just stay here until the law relinquishes us of your
custody. And when you go, don't leave any reminders that you were
ever here
.

He would be happy to oblige them; it was his
last summer before high school, and he had no designs to live with
a couple of angry old farts in a baby's nursery room any longer
than he had to.

His parents had taken the brothers to
Disneyland when they were good; there was no Disneyland in
Mississippi, and if there had been, Jesse doubted his grandparents
would have seen fit to take them there. There were only the swamps,
portals by which to get lost in one's imagination. Jesse spent
every moment he could that summer away from the city, getting lost
in the swamps.

The swamps of Mississippi give up none of
their secrets easily. In Los Angeles, the waters were clear but the
skies were choked with smog; in Mississippi, it was just the
opposite. The skies were clear and had been for millennia, while
the waters were murky, full of promises of hidden dangers and
hidden treasures alike.

Though the swamps made a
great attraction for Jesse, they were marginally less appealing to
Wayne, who was deep in an Isaac Asimov spell at the time and would
have just as soon stayed in his room all weekend, devouring the
copy of
Foundation
that he'd pulled down off the shelf of his grandfather's
study. Nevertheless, Jesse usually managed to wheedle him into
coming with him, because at the end of the day, the nursery room
was stuffy and even Wayne could only put up with it for so long
without going stir crazy.

After twenty minutes' walk along old dirt
roads and through the woods, the brothers came to their usual spot
at the edge of the swamp. The earthen scent of dirt and stagnant
water filled their nostrils. It was comforting.

Jesse removed his shoes, and dipped his toes
in the muddy bank. "Come on!"

"Yeah, you can go ahead," Wayne said. "I'm
not ruining my shoes."

Jesse looked out at the water. He spotted a
waterlogged, decrepit old raft composed of strung-together timber
just a ways down the shoreline. "Look at that raft!"

He began to run towards it, all the while
splashing water with as much force as he could.

After a moment, he realized Wayne wasn't
following suit. He turned around. "Come on, it'll be fun!"

Wayne put his hands on his hips in an older
brother disapproval posture. "We can't just take someone else's
property for a joyride," he said, exasperated. "Besides, where are
we going to go once we're in it?"

Jesse rolled his eyes. "Out there," he said,
matter-of-fact, gesturing broadly to the deepening swamp behind
him. His finger landed on a small, muddy bit of land in the middle
of the swamp. "Island" wouldn't have been the right word for it—it
was more of a pitcher's mound, albeit one that would be right-sized
for Paul Bunyan. "We can take the raft," Jesse said. "That way you
don't have to look like you're drowning, trying to dog-paddle
across."