Hitchers (18 page)

None of the dead I passed were dressed in out-of-date clothes, no men sporting 1940s fedoras, no flapper women.

We passed an undifferentiated pile of something, bigger than a dog turd, smaller than a terrier. It was slowly, inexorably blowing away.

All at once I realized what that pile was: a person. I thought of the man in the bar, the woman lying on the sidewalk, how they were wearing down. They would keep wearing down until they became piles, then, one day, the last of them would disappear on the wind. That's why there were no men in fedoras.

I tried to get a sense of myself in this place, of my eyes moving, where my mouth was, but I was nothing in this place, an invisible observer peering from behind a window.

The street stretched, swirled as if I was viewing it through a black and white kaleidoscope. I felt a tug that was almost physical, followed by the familiar tingling in my hands and feet that told me I was coming back

Now
my heart was hammering. Images of the place I'd just escaped danced behind my eyes; I doubted they would ever leave.

Gilly was nowhere to be seen, probably driven off by Grandpa. Spinning from the four or five glasses of whiskey Grandpa had downed, I searched until I located the spot where Grandpa had parked, and headed home, haunted by images of the dead blowing away in that silent, empty world.

That was where Grandpa had come from. Or maybe more apt, had escaped from. One day I would go there. It might be a week, a year, or fifty years, but I would end up there in the end. The bald truth of it was like barbed wire pulled up my spine. It wasn't an abstract, philosophical question any more—I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened when we died. It scared the shit out of me.

I tried calling Mick's phone, but he didn't answer. That was okay, because I wanted to talk to Summer first, in person. I wanted her
to help me make sense of what I'd seen.

How had dead people gotten out of that place? I couldn't imagine. And the voices—they were in there doing just what they did at first on the living side, blurting out bits of unconnected conversation, almost like they were emptying it all out for the last time. It reminded me of how people often say their lives flash before their eyes in the moment just before they thought they were going to die.

I pulled into the parking lot of Summer's apartment, called to her as I got out of the car. I kept calling as I stumbled up the steps. The apartment door burst open and Summer came out, eyes wide.

“I was there. Everything he wrote is true,” I said. “Oh, shit. It's all true.”

Summer shook with excitement, or maybe fear. “You saw it?”

Huffing, out of breath, I nodded. “I saw it. It was awful. So strange. I can't tell you—” I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to collect myself.

Summer put her arm across my back, helped me sit on the steps. There were tears in her eyes. “You're back now. You're safe.” She wiped under one eye. “My God, it's like you just walked on the moon. Bigger. I can't believe it.”

“I can't either.”

“I'm so scared.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

She turned to look at me closely. “Are you okay?”

There was a slight delay between when Summer's lips moved and when her voice reached me. Everything seemed very far away. “No. Not even close.”

She put the back of her hand on my forehead. A heartbeat later I felt her cool skin there. It felt nice—soft, and real. “I think you're in shock.” She touched my shoulder. “Come on, let's go inside and you can lie down.”

That sounded good. I knew she wanted to hear everything, but right now I wanted to stop thinking about it.

“W
hat do you think happens to those people over there?”

Mick asked. He was still stunned, and sounded like a lost kid. When I told him what I'd seen he'd gone grey and begun to sweat. I thought he might be having another heart attack. Now he was working his way through a bottle of Drumquish single malt at his dining table.

“I think they blow away,” I said.

Summer was frantically flipping through Krishnapuma's book. Now that we knew it was all true, his cryptic paragraphs were our map of the landscape. We'd gone round and round, piecing together what I'd seen, poring over Krishnapuma's writings.

“So what do we do now?” Mick asked.

“I think we need to talk to some of the dead who are back. Try to figure out what happened to bring them here,” I said. “I doubt Grandpa is going to help, so that leaves Gilly.”

Summer lifted her head from the book. “We could also contact some of the others posting online.” Summer had come across a website that was sort of a support group for people with the voice,
and a few had posted accounts of full-body possession in the past few days. She glanced at her watch. “Hell. I have to get to work.”

“Oh, hell no,” Mick said, rising from his chair. “Here.” He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, extracted all the money in it. “I'll pay you this to stay and help save our arses from eternal sanding.”

“I can't,” Summer said. “I called in sick two days in a row, and that screws everyone else, because they have to cover for me.” She looked at me. “Can you give me a ride?”

I nodded. “Sure. But Mick's right—we need you. Can you quit on short notice and let us pay you to help us? Our Eastern mysticism specialist.” I didn't add that I also wanted to stay close to Lorena. Before too long she would be out.

“I don't know. Can we talk about it later? I really need to get going.” It looked like the topic was making her uncomfortable, and I guess I could see why. From her perspective it might seem like two guys with money offering a handout to their poor newfound friend. It wasn't like that at all, at least not for me. To me it was a life or death situation, and she seemed to have a better handle on what was going on than anyone.

We crossed the underground parking lot, my shoes clacking on the concrete, Summer's worn sneakers silent.

“Your grandfather seems like a complete jerk, if you don't mind me saying,” Summer said. “Was he that bad when he was alive?”

“Careful,” I laughed. “He can hear you. You don't want to get on his bad side.”

“Yeah. Seriously, that wasn't his bad side?”

I considered. How to sum up Grandpa? “He never hit us or anything, not even when my mom was at work, but he was mean. Cutting. Whenever he was around there was tension in the air. You'd be doing something innocuous—washing the dishes, turning the channels on the TV—and suddenly he was letting you have it, calling
you lazy or stupid.”

Or a sissy. How many times had he said that to me?
You're nothing but a sissy.

“He did it to both of you? You and Kayleigh?”

I shook my head. “Kayleigh always got a pass. She was the only one who could get a kind word to slip past that clenched jaw. He could be nice to my mom as well, but they argued a lot as well.”

“What did he look like?” Summer asked. “Was he a big guy? I picture him as a big guy.”

“I wish I had a picture with me—”

“You don't carry a picture of him in your wallet? I'm surprised.”

I threw back my head and laughed. It felt good, especially because we were laughing about Grandpa. It made him seem less terrifying.

“He wasn't particularly tall, but he was built like a laborer—Popeye arms, a thick middle, a ruddy red face. He'd been a laborer before the accident.”

Summer frowned, turned in her seat to face me. “The accident?”

“I haven't told you about the accident?” I asked. We paused as we climbed into the car. “Yeah, he was in a wheelchair. It happened sixty years ago, but we were reminded of it constantly. No one in the family could skin a knee without being told how sometimes what seems bad at the time was actually a blessing in disguise, as if we should raise our hands and thank God for every bout of diarrhea.”

Summer laughed.

“Of course only physical bad fortune counted. No one in the family would dare suggest that Grandpa's bankruptcy after Toy Shop Village failed might be a blessing in disguise. Only accidents counted, because if Grandpa hadn't been burned and crippled he wouldn't have needed to find a way to make a living sitting down. And, as the twisted logic goes, if it wasn't for Grandpa's release from a life of manual labor, the rest of us would now probably be working as laborers, fast food workers, or whores—”

As soon as it was out, I tried to gulp it back, realizing how snooty that sounded to someone who waitressed for a living. “Not that—”

Summer waved me off. “I know what you mean. Go ahead.”

Embarrassed, I tried to pick up the thread. “So we all lived in the shadow of Grandpa's semi-fame. That was another insufferable thing about him—he was always, always telling people who he was. In the time it took for the movie attendant to tear his ticket and point him toward the correct theater, Grandpa would find a way to let the ticket-tearer know that he was the creator of
Toy Shop.
He managed to do this without being friendly for a second—no smile, no ‘So glad you're a fan,' just a simple declaration that he was someone important.”

“Did you at least get to hang out with other cartoonists? Did he know Charles Schulz?”

I laughed again. “Oh, now you're really going to get on his bad side. He despised Schulz. He also hated Mort Walker, Hank Ketcham, Chic Young, Dik Browne, all of them. He hated the newcomers even more. As far as he was concerned Gary Larson was lazy; that's why
Far Side
was only one panel, and why Larson quit after ‘only' fifteen years. Same with Bill Watterson and Berke Breathed. Neither of them had the fortitude to stick it out for fifty years the way Grandpa had. Of course both
earned
a lot more than Grandpa, so they could afford to retire early.”

“It's ironic that the changes you made to the strip moved it into their league.” She put her red Keds sneaker on the dash, retied a loose lace. “It's amazing that he's angry at that. You're doing just what he supposedly valued. Initiative. Business prowess.”

I threw my head back. “Oh, now he hates your guts.”

“What?” Summer laughed.

“You're giving me credit for something.” Inside, I was glowing from Summer's praise. “Hasn't Grandpa told you? I'm a no good slacker who lets women take care of him. First Kayleigh—when we were little she used to talk for me half the time. Then Lorena, who supported me while I tried to make it as an artist.”

Summer leaned back in her seat. “It sounds like he resents your success more than he resents you resurrecting the strip, or the
changes you made.”

I shook my head. “I don't know. Maybe. It's hard to know what goes on in his mind. I barely know what goes on in mine. Sometimes I think I made all those changes to the strip as a way to get back at him.”

“C
an you at least tell me why you're leaving?”
croaked a woman buying lottery tickets at the register. I gave her an understanding smile.

The voices of the dead seemed to be everywhere.

A trickle of cases had become a steady flow, and now a torrent. Some tipping point had been reached. On the streets people reacted to the vocal epidemic with hollow-eyed shock. You could smell the panic on people as they passed, acrid and foul. Thousands of people were fleeing the city, rushing for the exits as the horror show got really scary.

I set my coffee on the counter, feeling like the veteran soldier welcoming raw recruits to the front line.
You think the voices are hard?
I wanted to tell them,
Wait till you see what comes next.

Back in my car I checked the news. NPR's Lakshmi Singh was discussing the epidemic with someone from the Center for Disease Control.

“This is not a disease caused by a contagious pathogen. We're sure of that.”

“How can you be sure?” Lakshmi asked.

“Contagion of disease follows a pattern; it spreads from a point. No one who was not in Atlanta at the time of the anthrax attack has developed this new malady, so it cannot be contagious.”

I could hear Lakshmi inhale as she formed her next question. “The CDC, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the White House are all saying this is psychological. Is there any evidence to support this?”

“The evidence is by process of elimination. It's not a physical illness. It's not some second secret supervirus the terrorists planted. That rumor is completely without merit. Given the symptoms, it's clearly psychological.”

I stopped at a light. A girl whizzed by on a red Huffy bike. She reminded me of Kayleigh. Kayleigh had insisted on a red bike; she hadn't wanted a girly color.