Nod (9 page)

I, for example, was at least somewhat disturbed by the murder and mayhem I was seeing. And I was more than a little put out by the thought, for example, of Tanya’s swelling madness and seemingly inevitable demise. But Zoe didn’t appear to notice what was going on. She was young, but not so young that she shouldn’t be scared. In fact, her normalcy was starting to freak me out.

Of course, I wasn’t completely right in my own head. First off, there was the Dream. Sheepishly, I dub it ‘the Dream’: ‘The Dream of the Golden Light’ sounds like something cheesy from the annals of Chinese folklore or the ramblings of some wake-and-bake New Age guru. Granted, ‘The Dream’ sounds a little pretentious, but what other options do I have? And you can’t say, given the circumstances, that it doesn’t warrant capitalization. Just count yourself lucky that I don’t call it THE DREAM in hysterical all caps. What can I say? Sometimes language just lets us down.

In the Dream, nothing bothered me, like nothing seemed to bother Zoe when she was awake. Did that perhaps mean that she and the other children like her were living in the Dream full time? It was a thought to keep in mind.

Earlier, I’d found a pad of legal paper shoved under a cushion on the couch. Tanya’s TV notes, transcribed straight from the mouths of the Brazen Heads:

Night 6

Symptoms of depersonalization occur and a clear sense of identity is lost. This is called sleep deprivation psychosis. The effects of sleep deprivation are more psychological than physical. Reflexes are impaired but heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and body temperature show very little change. The main physical consequences seem to be hand tremors, droopy eyelids, problems in focusing the eyes and a heightened sensitivity to pain.

So. Something to look forward to.

‘Paul!’

Inside, Tanya was rocking back and forth on the couch, oblivious Zoe pressed tight to her hip.

‘We haven’t got any milk, Paul. This child needs milk.’

‘The power’s out. The milk will have all gone sour.’

She sneered as she mimicked me. ‘
The milk will all be sour
’. Jesus Christ, Paul, use that big fucking brain you’re so proud of. There’s going to be shelf milk in the stores.’

‘But the stores are all…’

‘So, what? We’re just going to sit here and let Zoe die of thirst? Is that your big plan, Paul?’

Instead of replying, I gazed into the calm sky of Zoe’s face. There’s something holy about the face of a child weathering adult storms; I remember this from my own youth. Squabbles over bills and vacation plans; the uptight soccer dads and chain-smoking moms to whom my peers and I somehow belonged. Up to a certain age, kids can’t engage the grown up madness around them even if they try. They don’t have the chops yet; all they can do is watch and wait.

While we bickered, Zoe turned her head toward the door, perhaps thinking about making a run for it. Tanya looked at me then triangulated her way down to Zoe. Then she looked back up at me, and her rheumy eyes were filled with tears. She blinked them away and held the child tight, stroking her hair. I can’t say if the stroking persuaded Zoe to stay with us and not flee our mom and pop Bedlam for the Big Box Bedlam outside, but Tanya’s affectionate arm appeared to play at least a small part in Zoe’s willingness to remain.

Sensing this, Tanya quickly swampwatered her way into the role of the meek and mild hausfrau.

‘I don’t want to fight. We just need something for Zoe to drink.’

‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’

I went into the kitchen and grabbed the scariest-looking knife on the premises—the same one Tanya had used last night. Concealing it beneath my shirt, I went into the front hall and opened the door. Then proceeded to reel.

Someone had spray-painted three neon pink words, in all jagged caps, on the opposite wall:

WELCOME TO NOD

Not exactly the font or colour I’d have chosen for my imagined dust jacket, but there you go.

When Tanya didn’t hear the door close and lock behind me, she came to investigate.

‘What the
fuck
? Did you do this, Paul?’

I didn’t reply.

‘Well, who did?’

Zoe came up behind us, and Tanya shooed her back into the living room.

‘I don’t know…’

‘This is from your book, Paul. Your stupid book. Whoever did this has read your stuff. Who’s read your manuscript? Think!’

‘No one. Just you.’

‘That’s impossible!’

For a moment I found myself wondering if this graffiti was Tanya’s work, but quickly dismissed the idea. Her outrage was too savage to be a sham. Think. The book I’d planned to call
Nod
had been too embryonic to share with anyone besides Tanya. It had seemed a little too poetic and whimsical to run by any of my online colleagues in what we called the Weird Word World.

Tanya let loose a sputtering chain of ‘fuck’s, shaking her head as she spattered them on the carpet, left and right.

* * *

I looked from her to my thoughts made flesh, and then went out to try to find some shelf milk. Emerging, empty-handed, from the third smashed-in store I’d attempted to plunder that morning, I began to understand all the teacher-talk from my youth about the Importance of Liquids to the Survival of the Human Species. Back at the apartment the water was off and we were down to a couple of litres of Coke and two tetra packs of apple juice.

A ragged man and woman stood on the sidewalk at the far end of the block, whispering to one another over a plastic shopping bag. They kept sneaking looks in my direction. Everybody I’d seen since leaving home looked like they were carrying an invisible case of nitro-glycerine in their shaking hands. Both dangerous
and
in danger. Suicide bombers must have felt like this. When I stepped onto their stretch of sidewalk, the couple panicked and ran, dropping the bag. I went up and looked into it and saw the body of a tiny blue baby that couldn’t have been more than a week or two old. The woman, presumably the poor thing’s mother, was peering at me from behind a doorway further down the block, hissing. I crossed the street and kept moving.

Soon after, I saw a guy who jogged the same Seawall route as me coming out of an apartment building. I didn’t know him well, but we’d chatted a few times. I raised my arm to wave, but when he saw me he turned on his heel and hurried back inside.

One block further, in front of an elementary school, forty or so people stood in a circle on kid-pounded grass. Someone in the centre of the group was speaking in a low monotone, too far away for me to be able to make out the words. I was intrigued: this was the most orderly scene I’d come across since my trip to the Safeway a couple of days ago. Crouching behind a mailbox I watched, trying to imagine what could make a group of forty sleep-deprived Vancouverites so quiet and attentive. Then, right behind me, someone spoke in a shrill, threatening voice.

‘Where’s my pillow? Where’d you hide my goddamn pillow!?’

I didn’t have his pillow. That wasn’t good news.

I spun around and faced my accuser’s scabbed and hairy-scary shins.

‘Give me my fucking
pillow
!’

Then, for a while, nothing.

* * *

Someone’s shirt was wadded under my throbbing head, and a steady circle of faces stared down at me, their lips gnawed raw and their eyes abandoned. Behind them the sky. When I tried to sit up, they scattered, as though afraid. After a while they moved closer again, forming a whispering ring around me.

‘What’s going on?’

No response.

I staggered to my feet, thinking fast, hoping against hope to create some fellow-feeling.

‘Did you get the asshole who hit me?’

Still no reply. At the front of the group, a woman in filthy jeans scratched her crotch vigorously, like she was grating cheese. Too dizzy to make a run for it, I started to slowly back away, praying that the circle would break and let me pass. One step, two. Then I bumped into someone standing behind me, blocking my retreat. I turned and saw him.

Charles.

He was dressed all in blue. Sky blue shirt, baby blue slacks, medieval Catholic blue shoes, fresh from some plundered boutique—all the while exuding his customary raw red welcome. I couldn’t take my eyes of the sharp cuffs of his sleeves and his crisp shirt collar. Possessions no longer existed in the old way. As in the case of any catastrophe, things were now just lying around waiting to be picked up. But how to keep them? That would be the new problem that would now replace the old one of acquisition.

Charles pulled a greasy, thumb-damp wad of paper from his back pocket and held it in front of my face. It was the printout of
Nod
Tanya and I had taken to breakfast five long mornings ago. And then, too late to do me any good, it all clicked into place: motive, opportunity, and madness. Of course.

‘Welcome to Nod, Paul,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the dream you’ve brought us.’ And then louder, to the group, ‘Welcome home to your own people, teacher.’

‘What’s going on?’ I hissed.

He smiled and kept talking.

‘Can you hear the humility?’ He turned and addressed the crowd. ‘Didn’t I tell you he’d be humble? That when he came he’d be humble for us? Blemmyes and banshees, no fear! Oh, the devil is out there, roaming between the tipping skyscrapers, dressed as a monk and looking for souls, but no fear! This man can spot the devil from a mile away! Evil Rat and his army are out there, but this man will conjure them away!’

Several people began to dart frightened looks around. Others sneered, but nervously, if you can imagine that. This was a crowd on the verge of some big decision with heavy implications for both Charles and me.

‘Tell us the plan,’ the crotch-grating woman demanded. Less than a week ago she’d been a high-end soccer mom: her blondeness was still relatively intact, and her voice still sounded accustomed to being heard.

Charles grabbed my arm and began to lead me toward the school. The urgency of his tugging told me what I already suspected: he wasn’t the master of this group, only its provisional leader. Eyes glowered as we began to move away.

‘Soon! I need to show Paul the temple first. Then he’ll speak to you! Just wait here!’

And they stayed put, though their blood surged toward us.

‘What’s happening, Charles?’ I whispered as we entered the school.

The foyer was dim, though the pocked linoleum glared in black, refracted sunlight.

He was giggling. ‘It’s all coming true, Paul. All of it. Just like you wrote.’

‘Like I wrote?’

He started playing sly. ‘You know. All the old words are waking up and rubbing their eyes! The Church Invisible is becoming the Church Visible. Now that sleep is finally over.’ He was quoting my own words back at me, distorted through the funhouse mirror of his mind.

‘You think that I…? That’s—’ I was going to say ‘crazy’ but reconsidered.

‘The businessman! While the businessman guzzles his martini, Paul—I really shouldn’t have to be telling you this—while he guzzles, he tells his friends in the bar that it’s all a game. The way he makes his money, I mean. He tells them that while the poor parade on by, outside in the freezing cold. The windows are steamed, Paul, and he can’t see outside and they can’t see in. It’s Christmas, and he makes us all swallow the contradiction, forces it down our throats. He tells his friends that trading stocks and making money is all a game. But is it? To him? Does he even know what a game is? And what about a little boy being forced to eat broccoli that’s been boiled so long he can strain it through his teeth? Is that a game? Does he know? Do you see?’

I didn’t. Instead, I thought of Tanya and Zoe all alone back in the apartment and felt the school’s walls press in on me. How stupid we’d been to remain in the city this long. All I could think to do was keep him talking and look for an opportunity to make a run for it.

‘I don’t understand. Can you explain?’

By feigning interest, I ran the risk of sounding patronizing, but I couldn’t think what else to do.

‘Glad to, Paul. What’s real? What’s fake? Is what we intend to do ever what we
really
want to do? And if not, can it matter?’ He laughed. ‘I can see I’m losing you, Paul. I’ll try again.’ He slapped my rolled up manuscript against his thigh. ‘You wrote this book, right?’

‘I’m—I was writing it.’

‘And this book explicates the things I’m seeing, that we’re all seeing and thinking. Colours are bleeding. Spirits are flashing past. You know all this.’

I thought of the Blemmye from the other evening and felt my ribs creak in rhythm to my throbbing head, my throbbing fucking universe.

‘But how can it do that? It’s just a book, for Christ’s sake.’

Now that I was asking a real question, Charles got angry. He snarled, keeping his words on a short tether. ‘It’s not just a book! Of course it’s not. They’re not just words. It’s a map. All these words have been hidden away and now they’re coming back to the main stage, Paul. You’re a prophet, Paul.’

Each time he said my name I found myself grinding my teeth.

‘But the question is, ‘how did you know?’ How did you prognosticate it, Paul?’

Charles loved big words, loved forcing them into his sentences no matter how much they squealed.

All around us, glass cases on the walls were filled with student drawings and papier-mâché sculptures. Every piece of kiddie art looked as insane and distorted as anything I’d seen outside or written about in
Nod
. Charles caught me staring and smiled even more widely, until I began to fear his face would split from the strain.

‘I noticed it too. All those grotesque heads and jagged lines. And just a week ago, just think of it, Paul—all those adults smiling so condescendingly because they thought their kids were too stupid to get reality right. Oops. What do you think?’

He waited while I thought fast. What did I have to say to get away from him and his greasy mob? One thing was clear: to refuse to play the part he had written for me would probably be to invite more danger than I’d be able to handle. So I started making things up.

‘I don’t know. I guess I was fascinated by what’s buried beneath, by what was buried beneath the old reality. Sometimes I felt like those words were more real than the world around me. But I don’t know what…’