The Lost and the Damned (27 page)

Wait, spike her hair?

I looked at her hair again. It was shorter and spiked with some hair gel… mousse… or some other styling product. It was spiky in opposition to gravity, that’s all I knew. But it was shorter than when I last saw her. I looked back at Max. His hair was shorter than in the hospital as well. It was similar in length to the last time we saw him here at the Well. I looked back at Katie. She seemed to be wearing some makeup as well, not that she needed it. It was possible that Katie got a full fashion makeover since I last saw her, but it seemed so unlikely. It had been maybe two hours, more like an hour since I last saw her. My sense of time has never been great, but unless time had been running differently for her, it just didn’t seem like enough time. Then again, we’d been travelling through time, so there’s no reason that she couldn’t have found the time.

In a flash I knew what I was missing, I knew what was going on. This wasn’t my Katie. It was still Katie, but it wasn’t my Katie. It wasn’t the Katie I knew. This was Katie from the past. Katie had admitted she was at the Well before and that it had been the very thing that had driven her to catatonia. And here she was catatonic at the Well with shorter hair and a Max. I was in the past and Katie was part of this past. The Katie I knew was lost, running around somewhere in time, but this was not her.  This was a ghost from the past, a reminder of who she used to be.

Staring at her, I was reminded of the real Katie. Though her eyes were vacant and her jaw slack, this was the girl who would become Katie. She was punkier with her hair and her makeup, but the same girl was there, locked inside her own mind. What did she see? What happened here to force her deep inside herself?

Suddenly her head whipped around to look at me, her eyes jet black.  Her eyes were so dark, like the blackest pit at the bottom of the universe. And that pit had called my name.  In a distorted voice that was a mix of hers and something else, something much deeper, she said, “KEATS.”

I stumbled backwards, my blood immediately ice, my heart racing.  The sound was like experiencing a nightmare.

 “JOHN KEATS,” the voice from her mouth continued. “WE ARE USING THIS VESSEL TO SPEAK TO YOU. THIS PLACE IS CLOSE TO YOU.”

I wanted to avoid the voice, I wanted to run far away.  Every animal instinct said to run, but something held me fixed in place.  And yet somehow, I was able to answer.

“Who are you?” I asked.  When I looked in those eyes... it was like looking into my own death.  I tried not to stare directly at that which was not Katie.

“UNIMPORTANT,” said the twin voices. “YOU, THE KEATS, ARE IMPORTANT."

"M-me?  Who am I?"

"THAT WILL BECOME EVIDENT IN TIME.  YOU MUST REMAIN UNDAMAGED.  AT THIS POINT IN TIME, YOU MUST STOP MAX."

I turned and looked at Max; it was such a relief to tear my vision from not-Katie.   Max was still chanting from the book. The glow from the table was brighter. I looked back at not-Katie. “Stop Max? What is he doing?”

“FORGETTING.  IF YOU FORGOT EVERYTHING THAT HURT YOU, EVERYTHING THAT MADE YOU LESS, EVERYTHING THAT HELD YOU BACK, YOU WOULD BE MORE THAN A MAN.  FORGET THAT YOU ARE A MAN AND YOU WILL BECOME A GOD."

 “What?”

“STOP HIM, JOHN KEATS.” The voice was growing steadily weaker. “THIS PLACE IS MOVING OUT OF ALIGNMENT.  STOP HIM, JOHN KEATS. WE WILL TALK AGAIN.” Then the voice trailed off. Katie’s eyes drained of all blackness, back to her vacant green. Her head slowly turned back to staring straight ahead of her.

The cold fear I felt drained away as the voice disappeared and Katie's eyes turned back.  Fear gave way to a tired confusion.  What had just happened? It was like I was being drunk dialed from the Twilight Zone. Something (I still felt it was something rather than someone) was trying to tell me something, something that I clearly did not understand. Why were they even trying to tell me? The black eyes and creepy voice did not say “good Samaritan” to me. It sounded more diabolical than angelic.  The chill that seeped through my body while it spoke did not do anything to allay my concerns.  I didn’t understand what it said, but even more so, I didn’t understand why it wanted to help me. Who the hell was I? I thought pretty well of myself, but let’s be realistic for once: why did I matter? How many alien consciousnesses do I even appear on the radar of?

It scared the utter crap out of me.  It scares me more because it said we'd meet again one day.

I don't want that day to ever come.

I looked back at Katie, watching her now slack and catatonic face. I saw light cast on her face. I turned and saw a white pinpoint of light in the center of the table in front of her. As I watched, it grew bigger. Immediately my danger sense went off, full alarm. Something was definitely wrong. Not the washing-machine-made-your-white-shirt-pink wrong. I’m talking barking-cats-are-the-new-overlords-of-the-human-race wrong. It was not just that I visually saw the light growing larger, though that was alarming. I felt something. Something very strong. Something very alien. Things were about to go very sour.

I looked around. Mystical pyramid, check. Max standing there chanting odd words from a book, check. Stone table that could be an altar, check. Glowing objects and severed human arm, check. Catatonic Katie, check. Glowing light hanging in space, check. I had seen enough Sci-Fi movies to know that there was no way this would work out well. Definitely time to go. I had already had to deal with enough weird shit, pillars of light, monsters, and murders. This seemed to be somewhere I didn’t want to be.

Turning to leave, I paused. Katie was here. It was the Katie of the past, but still Katie. She was made catatonic by this. The Katie I knew had been through this, and while she survived, it had royally fucked her up. I was here again. Could I save her? Could I bring her with me? What could I change in the past? Should I change the past? There were paradoxes for sure. If I took this Katie with me, what would happen to the Katie I knew? If I took this Katie, that means she wouldn’t end up at the hospital. If she didn’t end up at the hospital, I wouldn’t be sent to find her. If I weren’t sent to find her I wouldn’t end up here and able to save her. So if I saved her, would it undo my saving her? More importantly, how would I get paid?

My head hurt with the possibilities and implications. The white light was getting bigger and brighter. But what about Katie? Shouldn’t I save her if I could? I stood frozen in indecision. I didn’t want to leave her here, but I wanted to get the hell out of here. It turns out my decision was about to be made for me.

Katie’s head whipped toward me, her eyes black again. That same combined distorted voice shouted at me: “GO!” It shivered through my body.

I needed no more encouragement. I turned and ran from the top of the pyramid, white light growing very bright behind me, the chanting growing even louder. Max was screaming now. I thought it was strange I hadn’t noticed his voice rising. I ran down the steps, looking down at the area around the Well. I didn’t see it before, but with the extra light cast by the pyramid top, I could see things I could not see before. There were bodies of scientists lying all around the pyramid. Blood splotches covered their white coats. I swore as I slowed down near the door hanging in space. The top of the pyramid had some definite bad mojo going on. The bottom of the pyramid had a bunch of corpses. None of these appealed to me. I looked at the darkness of the door. I knew what I’d find in there. The falling, the living room, that poor boy. It was vague in my mind, fuzzy, but I knew I hated experiencing it each time. But it was familiar, a known quantity. I knew it was ultimately safe. This place was not.

Looking back, my logic didn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe it was a man running away. Maybe it was just a man pushed to wit’s end. Maybe I didn’t want to admit to myself that a flipped a coin. Whatever I might rationalize it as, the result was still the same. I stepped through the doorway into darkness.

Thirteen

TRANSCRIPT: OBSERVATION ROOM 6. PATIENT 457, NURSE DAVIS, NURSE JOHNSON. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. ASHBORN.

DOCTOR: Please administer the stimulant.

PATIENT: No! No! Please no!

DOCTOR: Please relax and allow the stimulant to do its work.

PATIENT: No, no, stop! This is wrong!

DOCTOR: Please relax and allow the stimulant to remove any lingering effects of the sedative from your system. We want your consciousness clear and alert.

PATIENT: No! Sedate me already! Don’t you understand?

DOCTOR: I don’t understand, do I? Why don’t you show me?

PATIENT: No!

NURSE JOHNSON: Sir, are you sure? He looks as though he is entering a seizure.

DOCTOR: I’ll not be lectured by a grunt nurse. I will tell you when you need to step in.

PATIENT: I… I can see.

DOCTOR: What can you see?

PATIENT: I can see. I can see.

NURSE JOHNSON: Sir?

NURSE JOHNSON: Sir, what is this?

NURSE JOHNSON: I have a bad feeling about this. This was not in the briefing.

NURSE DAVIS: I can see.

PATIENT: Can see.

NURSE JOHNSON: What did you say?

NURSE JOHNSON: I don’t think you should do that.

NURSE DAVIS: It feels warm and pleasant. Squishy.

NURSE JOHNSON:  Oh… Oh… Oh fuck, oh fuck. Oh fuck.

DOCTOR: What are you doing?

NURSE JOHNSON: We’re not doing anymore of this fucking stuff. I’m sedating his ass.

DOCTOR: I order you not to do that.

NURSE JOHNSON: Yeah, well, feel free to fire me later.

NURSE JOHNSON: What did you expect to happen here?

NURSE JOHNSON: Did you know that we were in danger? I’m a nurse, not a test subject!

NURSE JOHNSON: What the…

NURSE JOHNSON: Let me out! Let me out of here you fuckers! Let me out!”

NURSE JOHNSON: Please! Open the door!

DOCTOR: My God, it’s beautiful.

I again fell through a now uncomfortably familiar blackness. My mind was afflicted with an oppressive blankness. Every thought was squeezed out of my mind the moment it formed, leaving my mind forcibly emptied as I fell without falling through blackness, knowing what was waiting for me, knowing where I was going to end up. Even though I could not form the thought, there was a dining room in my future, with pain and suffering.

I touched down in the all-too-familiar dining room with the boy and the young girl, knowing I was going to go through this all again. He walks into the room, she says something to him, he walks into the living room. Once again I tried to not follow, digging in my heels as something pulled at me, trying to tear me from the spot where I stood and yank me into the room. I was able to resist it longer, my muscles tensed and my jaw clenched. Then the little girl turned and looked at me and said something.

“There could be an end to this. Some things can be forgotten with the right assistance.”

The moment I took to just stare at her in abject confusion was enough for my concentration to be broken. Like the release of a stretched rubber band, I was yanked from my spot, hurtling through the air at great speed to land gently next to the boy in front of the man in his work clothes. They had their conversation again as I watched the boy, just feeling pity for what comes next. The same thing I have to experience with him.

I feel the savage beating the boy felt, his embarrassment at the situation, his betrayal by the man he trusted, the growing hatred, and the acidic desperation that took root in the boy. I welcome the moment when it all went black.

I woke up under a tree. It was actually quite pleasant. I was stretched out with my head resting on the bottom of the tree, as if I fell asleep reading a book. I almost expected to turn to my left and find a novel or a college textbook. Instead I saw only grass and realized I was neither on holiday nor regressed back to my college days. I got up and stretched, my muscles less sore than I remembered.

 I was in some sort of public space. I could see that plainly from the trails and the occasional benches. The trees were well-kept and well-spaced. It was early fall and the leaves were just starting to fall off the trees, fluttering to the ground in a gentle breeze. It was warm, but the breeze was cool. Around me, people sat on the grass reading or talking. They were mostly in their twenties, leading me to wonder whether this was a park or a section of a college campus. Either way, this was the most pleasant place I had been since the start of this long nightmare.

I strolled down the trail, glancing from side to side at the trees and the lazy park goers. When I examined them closely, I realized most had half-formed faces like in the library. It was basically a face, but things were too smooth, features were missing. But I was enjoying my stroll, so I did not look too long at any of them, just feeling comfortable with the quick gestalt of their form: lazy recreational loungers, laughing and talking, studying their books, napping on the grass.

I knew I was still in someplace that was very wrong. The half formed faces clued me into that, if the waking up in a place I didn’t recognize hadn’t tipped me off. I knew I needed to get my bearings, find Katie, get out of here and somehow save the day. While I knew all of these things, this place was pleasantly non-hostile, idyllic, and clean. I breathed deeply of the crisp air, pushing memories of the steam tunnels far from me. For now, I wanted to enjoy the moment. The wind blew gently again and I stretched out my hand, feeling the breeze between my fingers as I walked.

The relaxation of this place made strange thoughts rise in my mind. How did I get here? Not here in the park, the steam tunnels, the hospitals, the insanity – though that was a worthwhile question as well. No, I meant how did my life bring me to here? How did things work out like this? As I looked around, I remembered going to college and hanging out on college campuses just like this. I remember reading while sitting on the grass, studying between classes, as well as staring at pretty girls and never quite figuring out what to say to them. It wasn’t perfect, but there were some good times in there mixed in with the bad. For all it was, I still wondered how it came to this. When I was in college, I never thought I’d be doing this, neither the detective work nor the search and rescue in the Twilight Zone. I didn’t have a clear plan what I’d do once I got out. I had a liberal arts major, which wasn’t preparation for a specific career. I thought I’d figure out something, but I never thought I’d be a private detective. That was the stuff of noir movies and Magnum PI.